Presidential candidate Mike Gravel has left the Democratic Party, and decided to run for President as a member of the Libertarian Party instead. Explaining his switch, Gravel writes,
“The fact is, the Democratic Party today is no longer the party of FDR. It is a party that continues to sustain war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism — all of which I find anathema to my views.
By and large, I have been repeatedly marginalized in both national debates and in media exposure by the Democratic leadership, which works in tandem with the corporate interests that control what we read and hear in the media.
I look forward to advancing my presidential candidacy within the Libertarian Party, which is considerably closer to my values, my foreign policy views and my domestic views.”
I can’t bring myself to be angry at Mike Gravel for this switch. I understand his anger at the Democratic Party, and I value his strong opposition to the military occupation of Iraq, as well as his strong support for constitutional rights here at home in the United States.
However, I have to say that Gravel is exaggerating when he says that “I have been repeatedly marginalized in both national debates and in media exposure by the Democratic leadership”. The truth is that Mike Gravel has never enjoyed much support among Democratic voters. He’s usually polled at or below one percent among Democratic voters, and that low level of support was a problem for Gravel well before there were any debates. Here at Irregular Times, sales of Mike Gravel for President gear has been very scant as well, much less than one percent of total sales of presidential campaign items. It was very generous to allow Mike Gravel to take part in the debates at all, given his extremely low level of support.
The debates can’t be blamed for Mike Gravel’s poor performance in the Democratic primary race. Gravel’s campaign has been anemic most of the time, though it has had some spurts of activity now and then. Besides, Mike Gravel’s politics have long been more Libertarian than Democratic. His tax policies and his push for national referendum elections to circumvent the power of Congress are not popular at all among Democratic voters, but do enjoy some Libertarian support.
We’ll keep our Mike Gravel category up here at Irregular Times, and report news of the Gravel for President campaign, when there is any. I don’t expect there to be much to report, unless Mike Gravel goes the way of Ron Paul, and starts talking about the threat to American sovereignty from secret Amero coin and North American Union NAFTA Super Highway conspiracies by United Nations bureaucrats and Bilderberg Illuminati druids. If that happens, ain’t we got fun.
He did poorly, yes, but he speaks truth in the quote you posted (at least the part about the Democratic party, like the Republican party, having gone over to the corporate sector).
You know what though, Tom? If the Libertarian Party actually got popular, its leaders would get under corporate influence too. Consider that Ron Paul, in his own little petty way, was bought off by the shrimp industry in his district, abandoning all his supposed libertarian ideals to push for big earmarks for them.
The problem that Mike Gravel doesn’t address is that there is as much problem with the Democratic voter as there is with the Democratic Party leadership. We little people have become much too dependent upon the big corporations, and we feed them their power over the political system. If we want to see real change, we need to wean ourselves away from consumption of corporate products and services. We may not be able to eliminate, but we can drastically reduce.