Why we support Obama

AMY GOODMAN: What about these third party candidates? You supported Nader in 2000. There’s Bob Barr right now, as well as Nader. There’s Cynthia McKinney. Are you encouraging them all to run as hard as they can, even in these last few days and with the stakes the way they are?

MICHAEL MOORE:

Yes, I think it’s good that there are different people running. But in this election I’m voting for Barack Obama. We don’t have the proper setup to where these other parties have a chance. They should have a chance. We should have a different system, so that people could have their voices heard and people who want to vote for these candidates have a chance to legitimately do that and have a legitimate—some form of representation or proportional representation where their voices are heard in Congress.

I mean, that just seems to me common sense—doesn’t it?—to anybody who really believes in democracy, that if ten percent of the country, you know, supported the Green Party, that ten percent of our Congress should be Green Party members. If ten percent were Libertarian, then ten percent should be Libertarian, or whatever the percentages are. But in this election, you know, we’re all too beaten down at this point to take it any longer, and we have to stop what the Republicans have done to this country for the last twenty of the twenty-eight years. I don’t think there’s many of us that are under any sort of delusion that Barack Obama and Joe Biden are going to take us all the way to the promised land, but they are going to stop—they’re the tourniquet that’s going to stop the bleeding.

I’m also hoping that Senator Obama is like all politicians: they don’t always keep their campaign promises, right? I mean, it’s not unusual. It’s certainly not unexpected. They just don’t always keep their campaign promises. So, somehow I’ve told myself that those campaign promises that he will not keep are expanding the war in Afghanistan and pushing a healthcare plan that leaves the profit-making health insurance companies in charge of the plan.