Don't Waste a Vote

The principles of progressivism should never be abandoned. Those principles are not served, however, by voting for a third-party candidate who stands no chance of winning the presidency. Such misdirected idealism can only help put Ronald Reagan into the White House. Difficult as it may be for some liberals to swallow the idea of four more years of Jimmy Carter, he is infinitely preferable to Reagan and should be re-elected.

Ronald Reagan's nomination by the Republican Party scared us; that he may become the next president terrifies us. A Reagan-appointed Supreme Court would irreparably damage civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution, destroy the delicate balance of world peace and turn back the clock for social and economic justice. We are not willing to risk the gains of the last 50 years--and the values of peace, equality and justice--for a fleeting, fanciful wisp of a party and candidate that might never be heard from after November 4.

Liberals who today are tempted not to vote or to cast a protest vote in hopes of building a challenge to the New Right must remember the lesson of 1968. In that year, many college students disdained to vote for either Hubert H. Humphrey or Richard M. Nixon because they considered both candidates to be neanderthals. Perhaps as a result, Nixon was elected by a margin of 1 per cent of the popular vote. The nation paid a heavy price for the liberals' refusal to vote for whom they considered the lesser of two evils. The same must not happen in 1980.