I cannot tell you which candidate won the first presidential debate. What I can tell you is who lost–the American people. Democracy was snuffed out by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which was set up by Republicans and Democrats, when it excluded Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan from the stage.
Mr. Buchanan is the candidate of the Reform Party, a party that receives federal money to run a campaign because it received enough votes in the last election. Federal money is the taxpayers’ money. Whether you agree with his positions or not, it is anti-democratic to keep him from being heard in the debates.
Ralph Nader, the candidate for the Green Party, was also excluded from the debate, but an even greater injustice was done to him on Tuesday evening in Boston. A student from Northeastern University gave his ticket of admission to the debate to Mr. Nader as a gift. When Mr. Nader arrived, ticket in hand, he was forcibly removed by a “security consultant” of the commission, as well as three state troopers. Is it not completely outrageous that a citizen with a ticket can be treated in this manner? I believe it is yet another sign of a further erosion of our once great democracy.
There is a monopoly controlling our government today in the form of two parties that are more and more the same. Republicans and Democrats are controlled by the same interests, the same powerful, out-of-control corporations and their truckloads of money. Our democracy has been hijacked by this monopoly, and it will take a true third party, led by a consumer activist like Ralph Nader, to rescue it.
The government is supposed to be of the people, for the people, by the people. But sadly today, it is bought and sold by large corporations. Now it is the people who must, and can, take it back. Rather than voting for the lesser of two evils in this system that continues to get worse and has stolen our democracy, a vote for the Green Party is an investment in a political movement that can take our democracy back.
