In France’s 2002 election, socialists and other left-wing party members backed Jacques Chirac (who is, despite what many Americans think, on the right side of France’s political spectrum) in order to avoid the far right-wing Jean-Marie Le Pen from winning. That’s like communists voting for Bush.
Many in America seem unwilling to do something similar.
Two things:
First, many conservatives are upset with the McCain nomination:
“I’m really depressed today because this is the first time that I find myself in a position that I will not work for the nominee (McCain),” said a caller to host Rush Limbaugh’s conservative talk-radio show on the verge of tears. (Reuter’s)
Second, Michelle Obama, on the possibility of Hillary winning, said:
GMA: Could you see yourself working to support Hillary Clinton should she win the nomination?
MICHELLE OBAMA: I’d have to think about that. I’d have to think about that, her policies, her approach, her tone.
GMA: That’s not a given?
MICHELLE OBAMA: You know, everyone in this party is going to work hard for whoever the nominee is. I think that we’re all working for the same thing. And, you know, I think our goal is to make sure that the person in the White House is going to take this country in a different direction. I happen to believe that Barack is the only person who can really do that. (Source)
It seems odd to me that people — Democrat or Republican — would risk someone they vehemently oppose (i.e., the opposing party’s candidate) winning because they didn’t like their own party’s candidate.
This is the Nader thing, too.
I wouldn’t be surprised, actually, to discover that there’s some historilogical philosophical root here somehwere that explains this attitude or at least explains where it comes from.
My first guess is that France’s multi-party system creates coalition-government agreements. Party members are better represented occasionally in this, whereas in our two-party winner-take-all system it’s easy to depend on support from a group (the fundamentalist Christians, the Progressives) and then ignore them later because what are they going to do, vote for the other side?
Fundamentalists are pretty fed up with the Republicans because they’ve been in power in one way or the other since the Religious Right was recruited in 80s and haven’t seen much of their agenda enacted at all.
“My first guess is that France’s multi-party system creates coalition-government agreements.”
More than that — they have a two-round election. It’s as if the first round is a general primary that stretches across all party lines, then the top two candidates fight it out for the prize.
Coalition governments do seem to represent a broader range of views, but they tend to fall apart at the drop of the hat, as happened in Italy recently and Poland a year or so ago. Then again, maybe snap elections are a good thing…