In O Brother, Where Art Thou? the trio decide to vote on who should be the leader. After both Pete and Ulysses vote for “yours truly,” Delmar says, “Okay. I’m with you fellas.”
Delmar, of course, is a lovable idiot. I am neither. But I am with Noam Chomsky. He has said it makes sense to vote for Obama if you live in a swing state. This goes along with my long held opinion that Obama really sucks and that it would a catastrophe if he were not reelected. But I don’t live in a swing state. And I told Obama I wouldn’t vote for him and I don’t want to be a liar. So I won’t be voting for Obama next month.
It had been my intention to vote for the Peace & Freedom Party candidate. But as I was helping my sister vote this week, I noticed that Roseanne Barr was that candidate. At first, I thought this was something of a joke. I still can’t think about her without remembering her reality show freak out over her child abuse. But I’ve since rethought my distaste for Barr as a candidate.
Anyone running for President as a third party candidate is only doing it as a kind of protest. The basic idea is that you get time to push marginal policies into public attention. It is a way of broadening the Overton Window a bit. One of Barr’s issues is gay marriage. This strikes me as pathetic, because this is already part of Democratic Party platform. But her other big issue is cannabis legalization. I would rather she talk about decriminalization of all drugs, but cannabis will do.
And then Roseanne Barr did something that really made me love her. She tweeted “Romney is pro-rape.” What she is referring to is Mitt Romney’s belief that the government should not pay for abortions for rape victims:
So I don’t have any problem voting for her in November. It helps that her vice presidential running mate is Cindy Sheehan.
And because my sister has such a smart and knowledgeable brother, she too will vote for Roseanne Barr.