November Strategy
by Zbignew Zingh
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 29, 2004



 

Here's an election strategy for those who feel abandoned by their political leaders, but who are torn between voting their conscience and getting rid of the Bushies.

First, recognize that you gain nothing by declaring your voting intentions at this time. Those who would have you fold your political hand and cash in your chips with the Republicrats months before the election are simply poor poker players. The good poker player holds his or her cards close to the chest and doesn't give a clue how the last card will be played. Instead, raise the ante, do not betray your intentions and keep your own counsel.

Second, everyone now recognizes that the only group of voters that anyone pays the slightest attention to are those who are “undecided”. Therefore, if you want to win friends and influence politicians...and, my friends, that is the name of the game...from this point forward declare yourself as “undecided.” If Kerry and Bush remain statistically deadlocked right down to the wire, then the “undecided” block will determine the election in November.

Third, please keep in mind that how you actually vote in November is nobody's business but your own. No poll-taker, no exit pollster, no politician or pundit has any right to know who you will vote for. In fact, democracy is healthier if you keep them guessing right down to the wire.

Fourth, regardless what you profess to the outside world about your “undecided” status, that will not prevent you from politically proselytizing anyone else for the agenda or the candidates you really want to win. Neither does remaining “undecided” make it any less important to register voters... who you may encourage to remain “undecided” until the last minute, as well.

Therefore, should you be one of those very rare people who are contacted by a major political poll-taker, you should consider declaring yourself UNDECIDED. Remember, these polls are not taken under oath and there is no legal requirement to tell a pollster anything at all. Remember also that some of these polls are conducted by corporate entities whose agendas and affiliations are suspect.

You cannot even know that the polls you see on television or read about in the papers or on the Web are accurate, or skewed or completely confabulated. In fact, you can be sure that shortly before the elections, some or several contrived “polls” will be released (just like on the eve of Venezuela's recent recall election) that seem to prove that the Bushies will be chosen in a landslide and you might as well stay home. Therefore, because we deem the polls to be unreliable, let us increase the general perception of their unreliability. Confound them, confuse them, dumbfound them and deceive them.

So tell the pollster who may call you that you are truly “undecided”. If you are asked whether you are “leaning” one way or the other, you certainly do not want to say you are leaning toward Bush; but you might be leaning toward Nader, or Cobb, or Kerry or toward the Libertarian or Constitutional or Reform or Communist or Socialist parties, or all of them simultaneously. But beyond that, you are steadfastly “undecided.” If you are asked about issues, then, of course, tick off your views as decisively as you can. When it comes to the candidates from the major parties, however, in the spirit of good fun and democracy, let's resolve to thoroughly confuse the pollsters, and the parties, and make the candidates work for our votes, for a change. So let us increase the size of the “undecideds” as much as possible.

But wait! Do we already hear the howls and protests? The party's honchos and faux-liberal leadership undoubtedly will squeal that this will drain valuable time and money from their campaign chests that they need to implement their southern white male NASCAR strategy. They become apoplectic as they read these words; they are practically frothing because their strategy demands that we be taken for granted this close in time to the election! They fulminate that TOO MUCH IS AT STAKE to play this silly game! They curse that we must focus on deposing Bush and not on changing anything of substance! How dare we have fun tweaking their noses when they are telling us what to think and what to do because they know so much more than we do?

Well, squeal away, party honchos and faux-liberal leaders. This is hard-ball politics, dude! If any political party or candidate wants our vote, then we want the attention lavished on us, too! And, therefore, if a candidate or party chooses to take us for granted so they can focus attention on someone else, then we just have to increase their anxiety by making it clear that they DO NOT have any 'entitlement' to our votes.

We are steadfastly, resolutely, decidedly UNDECIDED.

Is too much at stake for us to play hard to get? On the contrary, it is precisely because so much is at stake that we flatly refuse to play the choreographed and invisible role that the Party has scripted for us.

Remember that regardless how you “declare” yourself before the election, the only thing that matters is how you actually cast your ballot. In that regard, remember also that the secret ballot is a special right of democracy.

Therefore, the exit pollsters also have no right to know how you voted.

If America wants to know how the election was decided, let America do something truly radical: COUNT ALL THE BALLOTS! So what if that takes some time. In a Democracy, decisions are made by counting the votes not by taking a statistical snap-shot based on an exit poll. The Venezuelans made a mockery of their stooge exit polls when they resoundingly defeated the radical conservatives' efforts to recall President Hugo Chavez. The Venezuelans proved again, as we, too, must prove, that the exit polls are meaningless and only the secret ballots are worth counting.

Therefore, when the exit pollsters ask you how you just voted, remember that you have no obligation whatsoever to tell them. (Of course, if you vote for Bush, then your decision will be betrayed by your steaming cloven footprints, the forked tail and trail of green slime that follows behind you.) You could vote for Nader or Cobb or anyone else. Or (if he ever cares to try to win your vote) you might hold your nose and cast a ballot for Kerry... but only at the last moment and if he has managed to earn your vote. However, you could still tell the exit-pollster that you voted, for example, for Nader.

Why not? You have no obligation to tell anyone how you actually voted and it's none of their bleeping business. No matter who you actually vote for behind the curtain, imagine how much fun it will be when the instant election exit polls report that an amazing percentage of the voters seem to have cast their ballots for Ralph Nader or David Cobb or any one of a number of third parties!

But wait, the pundits cry! Aren't we taking the risk that Bush will be reelected? Aren't we risking a 2000 Election Redux?

Nonsense.

First, no one is more to blame for losing the 2000 presidential elections than the Republicrats themselves. And they should heed this message: their contrived lamentations about their loss in 2000, their sly protests and incessant attempts to 'shame' Nader-leaning voters to vote for Kerry this year to avoid a repeat of the prior debacle serve only to further alienate many from the Kerry ticket.

Second, who you and I ultimately vote for in November is our own business. All we are talking about at this time is appropriately raising the anxiety levels of the Republicratic Party before the election in a legitimate last ditch effort to finally, finally make it address the issues that concern us. Like, hey, John! We really don't give a rip what you did in the old Vietnam War thirty years ago fighting to prop up an American puppet regime – what are you going to do to get us out of the new Vietnam War that you and your wretched Republicratic colleagues authorized to prop up the current American puppet regimes? And, BTW, John, do you have any meaningful positions on NAFTA, the WTO, corporate personhood, peak oil, Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela, the stranglehold of corporate media, universal socialized medical care, reining in the Pentagon budget and reversing the Patriot Acts, other than me-tooing Mr. Bush's positions, but with a happier, multinational face?

So let the Republicrats demonstrate to me exactly why the world will be a better place with them at the president's tiller.

In the meantime, here I am.

On the fence.

Completely, resolutely, defiantly undecided.

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