SMH:
When I walk into the voting booth tomorrow, I’m going to do something somewhat unusual for me … and vote for a Republican. I hope maybe you’ll do the same.
It’s not like I have a streak of conservatism suddenly flowing through my veins. And I’m not even going to tell you which Republican I’ll be voting for, because that’s not actually the point of the exercise.
The point is to deny the Democratic Party in Philadelphia yet another straight-ticket vote of support.
There is a lot wrong with politics and governance in Philadelphia — such a knotty knot, in fact, that I’ll freely confess that I probably don’t quite grasp all the factors at play. But one of those factors, surely, is how voting in the city has coalesced and then calcified around Democratic party favorites over the last 50 years or so — a process that sometimes seems (to me) to have isolated politicians from actual voters and cemented their relationships with special interests, instead.
Joel Mathis. the author of this column, is a good friend of mine. He got me a short-lived column at the Philadelphia Weekly, and is as bonafide a liberal Democrat as anyone else in the tent. Furthermore, as a Philadelphia resident these past 15 years, I truly understand his frustration with the Democrats in this city. Believe me, I get it. It’s no surprise to me that yesterday, at the Tom Wolf rally headlined by Obama, our mayor was treated to a sustained round of booing. He’s a shitty mayor. Philadelphia’s congressional delegation is made up of a special interest puppet and a special interest puppet who’s under federal investigation for corruption. Don’t get me started on the charlatans and frauds that run the city as if each ward was a personal fiefdom.
But if I imagine that my house is on fire and the Fire Department has failed to put it out , the last thing I’m going to do is call for the firebug who started it to man even one single hose.
Look, I understand the desperate desire (and need) for change in our calcified, broken politics in Philadelphia (and for that matter, nationally). But that change isn’t going to happen by electing any members of a party that has gone certifiably insane. If Mathis is truly interested in sparking a change, he should be looking at the Green Party, the Working Families Party (which is trying to establish a foothold in Pennsylvania), or for that matter even the Libertarians, whose candidate, a felon/comedian with no money but a good message took more than 5% of the vote against a machine candidate who barely campaigned. (Full disclosure: I helped out that Libertarian in his campaign).
But supporting a Republican because the Democrats let you down or didn’t get enough done? Might as well light your own house on fire.
