The Cincinnati Beacon’s Resident Philosopher, Wes Dempster (also my friend since pre-school) has engaged me in a lengthy, private email debate about the merits of voting for a third party candidate. When I heard Ralph Nader would be coming to Cincinnati, I realized I might be provided an interesting opportunity to take my private debate into the public realm. So I collaborated with Dempster to create a single question for Ralph Nader—one to which we had not personally seen him respond, worded in such a way as to limit his answer in a very particular manner (assuming he would not sidestep the question, as politicians so frequently do). I joined the press conference this past Monday to see how Nader would address my friend’s question.
The important components of the question, which I worked out with Dempster via email and telephone, included setting up key elements of context: imagining an election day morning where Nader has not appeared in any televised debates, and where major credible polls have him in the single digits. Shouldn’t a voter in a key battleground state like Ohio choose the “least worst” candidate to prevent the “most worst” candidate from winning?
(For those who don’t know, Nader frequently characterizes voting under the corporate duopoly a matter of selecting the “least worst” candidate instead of the “best” candidate.)
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