By John Tabin on 10.30.03 @ 12:55AM
It's not too late to serve your country as an infiltrator.
What's it like to be a Democrat? I'll soon find out.
A few months ago I moved to a district with no serious
Republican contenders for any office, in a state, Maryland, with a
closed primary. There's plenty of reason why I'd like to vote in
the Democratic primary, and little reason not to.
If you don't have a contested Republican primary to vote in, you
might consider making your voice heard, too. First make sure
your state's primary is on or before March 2;
the likelihood that the nomination will still be contested very
long after that date is small enough that you needn't bother
worrying about this. If you're registered to vote in South
Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, Ohio, Texas, or Vermont,
you simply need to show up and ask for a Democratic ballot; in
Missouri, Wisconsin and Minnesota you get both parties' ballots
automatically, and your choice is private.
It'll take a little more work in other states. You'll have to
register as a Democrat by a certain deadline in Connecticut and (of
course) Maryland; in New Hampshire, Arizona, Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, and Washington, you don't need to directly affiliate
yourself with the Party of McAuliffe to influence it -- you can
vote in the Democratic primary if you register as an independent.
(In New York and Delaware, the deadline has already passed, and New
Hampshire Republicans had better hurry -- you have only until
tomorrow.)
If you do decide to cross over, for whom should you vote?
If you're a fan of President Bush, you might be tempted to vote
for a candidate that starts with an electoral disadvantage -- too
liberal, too Northeastern, etc. But that's folly. The American
electorate is very narrowly divided, and politics is volatile;
anyone who can get a major party nomination has a serious shot at
becoming the president.
Much better, then, to vote for someone you could actually live
with for president. I won't attempt to argue for a particular
candidate; since there are now disagreements on almost everything
within the broadly defined Right (by which I mean conservatives and
libertarians of every stripe), one could hardly expect
non-Democrats to agree on which of the nine dwarves is least
offensive. If he's still in the race, I'll vote for Joe Lieberman
-- he's serious on foreign policy, a free trader, and less vehement
than his rivals about raising taxes. But some
dovish libertarians might prefer Howard Dean, and at least
one dovish conservative has had nice things to
say about Wesley Clark. That's fine. The point is simply that the
Democratic nominee is too important to be picked by the Democratic
base that cheers at Al Sharpton's one-liners in debates.
Do we infiltrators really have a chance to swing the nomination?
Only toward a candidate who makes strong inroads among genuine
Democrats. John McCain's 2000 campaign for the Republican
nomination, which relied heavily on independents and liberals
(especially sycophantic ones with press passes), ultimately failed.
But if you plan to vote in the general election, and you live in a
state that is a safe win for one party or the other, you already
cast a vote that won't swing anything. Clearly, you find some civic
satisfaction in doing so. There's no reason that that sentiment
shouldn't extend to a party's Presidential Primary -- whether or
not you happen to like the given party very much.
topics:
Taxes, Foreign Policy, Trade, John McCain, Law
