When I say there is nobody to vote for, I don’t just mean the familiar complaint that the candidates may be different shades of evil but are all too evil to support, that the earth’s climate does not recover one iota because some even worse policy has been averted, that sadistic bombings and humanitarian bombings actually look identical. I do mean all of that. But I also mean that candidates are campaigning as and being presented as nothing, as empty figures with no positions on anything.
What is the most common foreign policy position on the websites of Democratic candidates for U.S. Congress? Quick! It’s not hard! You got it? You’re wrong. It was a trick question. Most of their websites do not admit to the existence of 96% of humanity in any way shape or form — although one can infer that the world must exist, because so many of them express such deep love for veterans.
Numerous resources claim to fill the gap, but like private weather profiteers regurgitating federal data, they mostly just pick out bits of the almost nothing coming from the candidates and re-package it as Useful Voter Information. The Campus Election Engagement Project has nothing on Virginia’s Fifth District Congressional race, and on the Virginia race for U.S. Senate it has next to nothing. In a nod to the existence of the earth, it tells us the candidates’ positions on the Iran nuclear agreement, plus three questions on the environment. But the fact that one of the two candidates’ whole schtick is hatred of immigrants, glorification of racism, and fascistic devotion to Trump doesn’t come up in the predictable policy questions. Nor does the duplicity of the other guy’s constant support for presidential war-making, while claiming to oppose it, make the cut.
The League of Women Voters is worse. They present seven predictable questions that they claim neither major-party candidate has answered, although they could have grabbed the answers to at least five of them from the candidates’ websites. None of the seven questions admit to the existence of a world outside the borders of the United States, apart from the fact that “immigrants” must come from somewhere. None of the questions addresses any sort of problem related to the habitability of the planet. When it comes to the Senate, the League presents answers to the same questions from three candidates. The League is, however, compelled to indirectly admit to the existence of the world and problems in it, because it explains two questions that will be on the ballot for public votes in Virginia, one related to taxes on flooded property, the other to taxes for spouses of disabled or killed participants in wars.
Then there’s BallotReady.org. This one claims a broader range of issues covered, including “Foreign Policy,” and also “Defense/Veterans.” How in the world “foreign policy” is separated from “defense” (taking the latter to be a euphemism for militarism) and how “defense” is paired with “veterans” is not explained. Each section contains a few sentence fragments, each one in quotes and linked to its source, which is usually the candidate’s website.
VoteSmart.org has 16 things it thinks you should know about a Congressional candidate. Two relate to foreign policy, and each asks — with a straight face — whether the U.S. government should commit the greatest crime imaginable: “Should the United States use military force in order to prevent governments hostile to the U.S. from possessing a nuclear weapon?” “Do you support increased American intervention in Middle Eastern conflicts beyond air support?” The answer that VoteSmart provides for each of the major-party candidates in Virginia’s Fifth is, for each question, “unknown.”
I understand that Code Pink is about to publish a voting guide that will list the dollar figures from OpenSecrets.org that incumbents have taken from weapons dealers, which is certainly useful as far as incumbents go. It will also draw on Peace Action’s scorecard for incumbents, although those have typically graded on a curve, avoiding any votes in Congress that were heavily slanted one way or the other, in order to pick out the votes most evenly split along partisan lines, and omitting anything not voted on.
The most likely place to find what scraps exist remains candidates’ own websites. In some cases, this can be augmented from speeches and interviews. Even after doing that research yourself, you will almost certainly still lack an answer to any of these 20 basic questions:
1. What would you like the U.S. discretionary budget to look like? With 60% now going to militarism, what percentage would you like that to be?
2. What program of economic conversion to peaceful enterprises would you support?
3. Would you end, continue, or escalate U.S. war making in: Afghanistan? Iraq? Syria? Yemen? Pakistan? Libya? Somalia?
4. Would you end the exemption for militarism in Kyoto, Paris, and other climate agreements?
5. Would you sign / ratify any of these treaties: Paris Climate Agreement? Convention on the Rights of the Child? International Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights? International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights optional protocols? Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women? Convention Against Torure optional protocol? International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families? International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance? The Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities? International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries? Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court? Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity? Principles of International Cooperation in the Detection, Arrest, Extradition, and Punishment of Persons Guilty of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity? Convention on Cluster Munitions? Land Mines Convention? Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons? Proposed treaties banning the weaponization of space and banning cyber crimes?
6. Would you halt or continue expenditures on the production and so-called modernization of nuclear weapons?
7. Would you end weapons sales and the provision of military training to any governments? Which?
8. Would you close any foreign bases? Which?
9. Would you halt or continue the practice of murder by missiles from drones?
10. Do you recognize the ban on war, with exceptions, contained in the United Nations Charter? And the ban on threatening war?
11. Do you recognize the ban on war, without exceptions, contained in the Kellogg-Briand Pact?
12. Will you end discriminatory bans on immigrants?
13. Should actual, non-military, no-strings-attached foreign aid be eliminated, reduced, maintained, or increased? How much?
14. 84% of South Koreans want the war ended immediately. Should the United States block that?
15. Should NATO be maintained or abolished?
16. Should the CIA be maintained or abolished?
17. Should the ROTC be maintained or abolished?
18. Should domestic police forces be trained by, collaborate with, and be armed by militaries?
19. Should the U.S. military pay sports leagues, secretly or openly, to celebrate militarism?
20. How large should the U.S. military’s advertising budget be, and how much should the U.S. government spend promoting the concepts of nonviolent dispute resolution and the abolition of war?
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David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio.He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.
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