Voting For the New

[post-scripts added]

Every New Year's Eve, the cry goes out around the nation: "Ring out the old, ring in the new!" This year, as the Seattle Times would probably put it, you have a chance to vote for the Party of Commons (the Times, in their editorial endorsing the incumbent, Dunn, said that Mark Greene was running as a Party of Commons candidate). Mark never denied that the election for county council was non-partisan, but he also never denied his new party, or his affiliation to it as founder and chairman. Virtually no non-partisan election in government is without its partisan influences, and you can be sure that the incumbent in this election has the backing of the state Republican party, and in the unlikely event that Dunn finished 3rd in the primary, the Republicans would be backing Harison Tonda in the general. So in a sense, the Times is right and the Party of Commons could become prominent in a general election through the August 18th vote, just on the basis of the candidates' party affiliations.

In that sense, this could be yet another occasion when a minor party faces a major party in a two-candidate general election. Nothing new, it's happened before many times around the nation, probably most often in state elections, but it presents an opportunity to vote for the new, break down old barriers, and to build up the alternative parties that many Americans say they want. A new establishment in government replacing the "two-party system" that has failed us miserably. There is no two party system in the Constitution, so competitive alternative parties are neither theoretically exceptional or historically unheard of, but it would be a break with a tradition that badly needs broken down in this early part of the 21st Century, which just goes to show that there is flexibility as far as the tradition part of our motto is concerned.

[revised on 8/15/09]

Post-script: We shrugged our shoulders when the usual suspects from the media and the blogosphere endorsed Reagan Dunn for county council, but the Seattle Medium!
No comment other than to say that some folks are obviously overly impressed with money, power and incumbency.

Post-post-script: The 74th anniversary of the signing of the Social Security Act by President Franklin Roosevelt is tomorrow. Can you imagine if there would have been a multi-millionaire Limbaugh-ite corporate media glitterati in 1935 as influential as they are today? This great governmental provision of basic economic assistance to the elderly and the disabled may never have come about. To the memory of that Congress that passed social security - thank you.

[revised on 8/14/09]

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