audience
Stephen Tuttle | May 25, 2024
So let's get started: What do Chase Oliver, Randall Terry, Claudia de la Cruz, Peter Sonski, Michael Wood, Bill Stodden, Joseph Kishore, Rachel Fruit, Tom Ross and Paul Noel Fiorino have in common? I have no idea?
What if we added Cornel West and Jill Stein? No? Well, let's add Robert Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, because all of the above are running for president. And you thought you really had no choice.
We already know more about Trump than we ever wanted or needed to know, and Biden is no secret after more than half a century of public political life.
(Trump has required both of his and Biden's debates to stand, apparently viewing being able to stand longer than Biden as a measure of his true presidential ability. A better approach would be to hook them both up to polygraphs and show them the results in real time. Some might prefer a candidate who doesn't lie when sitting down to one who lies when standing.)
That leaves the remaining group: Four candidates have qualified to appear on the Michigan ballot — Biden, Trump, Kennedy, Stein and Terry — with others who have qualified in other states, and the final five still looking for ballots elsewhere.
Let's start with Robert Kennedy Jr., who is running as an independent. Kennedy has been getting a lot of attention, but not necessarily in a good way. He is opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine, but has said he is not completely against it. Kennedy, who always boasts that he is healthy at 70 years old, recently claimed that part of his brain was eaten by a parasite. The medical community says that while the parasite may have invaded his brain, it is more likely that it did not eat any of it, so the parasite starved to death.
Jill Stein is once again the candidate of the Green Party, and her platform is simple and easy to understand. Stein states that she is “pro-labor, anti-war, and pro-climate change.” This will be Stein's third time running for the White House.
Cornel West, an author, professor, lecturer and longtime civil rights activist, is not yet on the Michigan ballot but has been campaigning heavily in the state, targeting Arab-Americans, Muslims and young black voters disillusioned with Biden.
Randall Terry is running for office in Michigan for a political party called the Constitution Party. To say he's an anti-abortion activist would be an understatement. Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, has been arrested multiple times at protests. He says he's running to “stop the murder of babies and destroy the Democratic Party.”
Michael Wood is a member of the third oldest Prohibition Party in the country, but is running as an independent and is not yet on the ballot. It is interesting to note that they are still around and spreading their pro-drink message, even though Prohibition was repealed 91 years ago.
And Claudia de la Cruz is another independent candidate without a ballot box. De la Cruz is a self-described “hard-line socialist” who is endorsed by the South Carolina Working People's Party and has vowed to “end capitalism for good.”
In fact, the Socialists are effectively divided, with various divisions and chapters: Bill Stodden is the candidate for the Socialist Party of America, Joseph Kishore is the candidate for the Socialist Equality Party, and Rachel Fruit is the candidate for the Socialist Workers Party. That's a lot of Socialist candidates in a country where socialists are rarely elected.
Tom Ross is the candidate for the Transhumanist Party. If you haven't heard of this party, it's probably because it didn't exist before October 2014. The party's platform is to “put science, health, and technology at the forefront of American politics.” (Visit transhumanist-party.org and scroll down a bit to see a photo of the most amazing candidate ever.)
Paul Noel Fiorino is the candidate for the United States Party of America, which has members in 40 states. Their slogan is “Not Left. Not Right. Forward,” but their policies may not generate as much unity as they would like, as they support a balanced budget amendment, the repeal of the federal income tax, and congressional term limits.
Finally, there is Peter Sonski of the American Solidarity Party. They sound like a unionist party, but they're not. Their vision of the “Christian Democratic Tradition” is starting to sound less inclusive, saying we must recognize “the primacy of religion in each person's life.” This sounds more like theocracy than democracy.
We are given so many choices in every presidential election. It is our own fault, not a flaw in the system, that we ignore all but two of those choices every four years. We claim we don't want to “waste” our vote because a third-party candidate has no chance of winning, probably because we don't give them that chance.
