Democrats vs. Democracy

So, the Democrats have been bellyaching for the last 3-and-a-half years about George Bush’s “stolen” election. Well, here in Pennsylvania at least, they’ve decided that turnabout is fair play. Local Democrats are pulling out all the stops to keep independent candidate Ralph Nader off the presidential ballot.

Nader’s campaign has reportedly collected over 40,000 signatures, almost twice the number needed to get on the ballot. But Democrats from the state House of Representatives have vowed to challenge those signatures in court. H. William DeWeese, the minority floor leader, is mounting a legal challenge to Nader’s petitions with backing from the AFL-CIO.

The irksome thing about this is the assumption that any potential Nader votes naturally belong to John Kerry, as if by divine right. And that the hapless voters are too stupid to vote in their own best interest.

This may come as news to the Democrats, but tere are any number of reasons that a potential Nader voter might not vote for Kerry even if the Nader option was precluded. Maybe he wants to cast an anti-war protest vote, and voting for Kerry, who supported the Iraq war, would hardly be an effective way to do that. Maybe he’s concerned about some other issue that neither of the major candidates are addressing, like civil liberties or the drug war. It’s even possible that he’s a disgruntled conservative upset with George Bush, but who can’t bring himself to pull the lever for Kerry.

In any event, maybe if the Democrats worked a little harder on making their candidate attractive to voters they wouldn’t have to worry so much about restricting our choices at the polls.