Next week, the voters will elect either Democrat Gretchen Whitmer or Republican Bill Schuette as Michigan’s next governor. That’s how the system is set up to work.
Over the years, I’ve met both, studied them, seen them in action. They are now, however, Major Party Candidates only a few weeks before an election, which means there is no way you could have a real or spontaneous conversation with either.
You could ask either a question on virtually any topic and you’d get a pre-programmed answer.
I imagine that even if you asked them, “Would you prefer Earl Grey or Darjeeling tea?” you’d see the little wheels whirring as they tried to calculate which was, politically, the best answer.
That’s how it almost always is with corporation men, and these are, after all, the candidates of the two biggest political corporations in America. But they are anything but the most interesting candidates. They may not even be the best.
During this campaign, I’ve interviewed four of the so-called minor party candidates on my radio program. One of them, the Natural Law standard-bearer, didn’t seem to be ready for prime time. But the others were surprisingly impressive.
They may, in fact, be the most impressive group of candidates I’ve ever seen who, unfortunately, most of us know little or nothing about. Bill Gelineau, for example, the Libertarian nominee, is a thoughtful and accomplished man who came from Downriver, lost his father when he was still a teenager, and made a career in the restaurant business.
If you think Libertarians are just a bunch of spoiled rich guys who want to party, smoke pot and not pay any taxes or help the poor, the 59-year-old Gelineau would surprise you.
His ideas and positions are clearly worth thinking about, and many of them are far more complex than the standard “just fix the damn roads. We’ll float some bonds … and, uh, eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse,” that passes for thoughtful major party mainstream policy discussion.
Gelineau would, among other things, divide Wayne County into two parts, basically a poor part and a rich part, something that strikes me as a bad idea, though he presents some interesting arguments in favor of it. Detroiters might also be surprised to discover that he would also make it much harder to foreclose on people and evict them from their homes.
He also, again contrary to the stereotype, is an environmentalist. I’m not suggesting I agree with all or even most of his positions. But you cannot help but admire a man who says “I’m not running for governor to be king … if given the opportunity to represent my Party, I would use those philosophies as a guide to behavior – and not a set of chains. I pledge to work with others who are currently in other political parties that share the goal of solving problems.”
Jennifer Kurland, the 37-year-old Green Party candidate, is also a candidate with an interesting and well-thought out ideas. As you might expect from a Green, she did work full time as a field manager for Clean Water Action.
But she also has had a long career as a banker (!) was an office in Michigan’s junior Chamber of Commerce, and has been very active in civic affairs in Redford, and was eventually elected president of the Redford Union School Board.
Todd Schleiger, the nominee of the U.S. Taxpayers’ Party, also deserves some attention … in part because he really doesn’t have much of anything in common with the party.
Michigan has tried to make it almost impossible to get on the ballot as an independent, and so he snatched the Taxpayers’ nomination because it was available.
A former trucker and successful small businessman in his 50s, Schleiger does want to lower some taxes, but also to spend more on fixing the roads and the schools.
Every one of these three candidates deserves to be taken seriously, and if a truly level playing field existed, each would get many more votes next week than they probably will.
Yet in the end, many of their would-be supporters will go back to voting for the lesser of the two evils, knowing their first choice can’t make it and regretfully calculating that they need to cast a vote to keep Whitmer or Schuette from winning.
But there is a way we could all have our political cake and eat it too: IRV, which stands for Instant Runoff Voting, a concept used now in a few cities and in some nations.
Here’s how it would work, in its simplest form. We would all cast two votes – one for our first choice, one for our second.
If no candidate had a majority of the popular vote, all but the top two would be eliminated, and the second place votes would be added in. That way you could both influence the likely result and cast a vote for what you really stood for.
That would have all sorts of good consequences. If the major party establishment saw, for example, that half a million voters really wanted the Green Party candidate, they might be forced to moderate their positions accordingly.
Minor parties would also likely suddenly start doing much better; because people would have the freedom to support them without guilt. Sooner or later, some of them would actually start winning. That’s one reason why the “major” parties, aka the “duopoly,” doesn’t want IRV.
But we should. Unless, that is, you are satisfied with what you have now. My guess is … that you aren’t.
So for 2020, why not get a citizens’ group together and collect signatures to get a state constitutional amendment establishing IRV on the Michigan ballot.
Folks did this for Voters Not Politicians, didn’t they? This could be just as much of a game changer, and might, just might, restore faith in democracy again. Visualize a world where some major party greedhead ended up not even finishing second … maybe one with badly dyed yellow hair …if that doesn’t energize you, I don’t know what would.
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On that massacre in Pittsburgh … No, Donald Trump did not suggest that violence against Jews is all right. Vile and repulsive as the man is, he does not seem to be an anti-Semite, and early reports indicate the deranged apparent killer regarded Trump as a “globalist” who had sold out to, naturally, the Zionist world conspiracy.
That doesn’t really matter. Trump, and those who make excuses for him, is guilty of turning the Oval Office into a sewer from which he has fanned the flames of hatred and intolerance in a way no previous President ever has. This is exactly the opposite from what leaders are supposed to do. Trump, of course, neither knows this nor could care less, but this lack of civility is destroying our nation.
Destroying the presidency too, as a matter of fact. However, as Slate’s Yascha Mounk noted in an excellent essay Oct. 27, the worst thing that could happen would be for those opposed to Trump to sink to the same depths he has. Our anti-president has repeatedly sent a signal that it’s okay to express intolerance, even via violence
Play his game, and we will all be lost.
