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A Vote for Gore is a Vote for Bush

By Paul Glover, Ithaca Today
http://ithacatoday.com/
27 August 2000

During his U.S. Senate career (1985-93), Al Gore voted to approve conservative anti-abortion justice Scalia to the Supreme Court. At heart a "pro-lifer," Gore received an 84 percent approval rating from the National Right to Life Committee for anti-abortion votes he cast while in the House (1977-85). By contrast, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League rated Gore's House career decidedly anti-choice. Among the 30 votes the group scored against Gore was his "yea" in 1984 to define the word "person" under four existing civil rights laws to include "unborn children from the moment of conception." NARAL characterized that as a move toward an "all-out prohibition on abortion."

This year, Gore has NARAL's endorsement only as a presumed lesser evil, because his "position has changed." Indeed, the abortion issue has seen many surprising turnarounds. The Senate's Democratic majority on the Judiciary Committee approved anti-abortion justice Clarence Thomas. Democratic President Clinton appointed anti-abortion justice Breyer, Democratic President John F. Kennedy appointed anti-abortion justice White, while Roe v. Wade was written by Republican President Nixon's appointee Blackmun, with concurrence of Nixon's appointee Burger. Republican President Bush appointed Souter, one of the most liberal current justices, who wrote the reaffirmation of Roe v. Wade in 1992. Republican President Eisenhower appointed liberals Brennan and Warren. Democratic President Truman appointed conservatives Burton, Vinson, Clark and Minton. And so on.

Voters cannot be assured Gore will protect the Supreme Court. However, were Al Gore elected, you can be sure we'd have Executive endorsement of (or acquiescence to) GATT, NAFTA, WTO, death penalty, Star Wars, nuclear arsenal, arms sales, prison-industrial complex, "50,000 more police on our streets," fat cat elections and ever-greater lesser evils, clearcuts, mining of public land, oil spills (Occidental), Oil Wars, crackdown on legal protest, no national health plan, tax breaks for rich, higher taxes for middle class, welfare repeal, ever-more children in poverty, War on Drugs, union-busting, corporate-sponsored education, Iraq embargo, the School of the Americas.

By now, Clinton's presidency should have taught progressive voters that a cute smile can mask bitterly conservative willingness, after elections, to sell out environmentalists, labor, middle-class taxpayers, small businesses, African-Americans, and women.

Had progressives begun twenty years ago voting our own platforms (ecology, social justice, nonviolence, grassroots control) rather than fearing greater evils (which we got anyway), then today we'd have a strong electoral challenge to the devastation noted above.

Your choice is not whether this devastation will continue, but whether it will continue with the Green Party established as a national party (needing 5% of total vote), with federal matching funds, helping to raise stronger challenges to corporate government.