5 Reasons Not to Vote for Obama (and 10 Reasons to Vote Against Romney)

Don't waste your ballot on a third-party candidate.

Let me confess—or brag—that I am a Pan-African socialist, which means I support a unified and culturally conscious Africa that has an economic system that constitutionally guarantees food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, jobs and human rights. And I support the applicability of this type of socialism for black people throughout the Diaspora, including in the U.S., and for white progressives as well as all revolutionaries here too.

So, should people whose politics are similar to this vote to re-elect President Barack Obama, whose politics are not at all similar to this? Here, why we shouldn’t and why we should.

Five Reasons You Shouldn’t Vote for Barack Obama

1. Barack Obama is a corporate suck-up.
The President’s a member of the Democratic Party, which, like the Republican Party, consists of Washington whores working for their Wall Street pimps. With donations just under two million dollars, sugar daddies Wells Fargo and Deloitte are among the top 20 corporate contributors to the President and Mitt Romney. Obama’s pro-corporation policies led to an average annual corporate profit growth of 6.8 percent, which is three times higher than Ronald Reagan’s 2.3 percent.

2. Barack Obama unleashed unchecked military powers.
He signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2010, which for the first time in history permits the government to assassinate American citizens abroad, to hold citizens and foreigners without charge indefinitely in and outside the U.S., to subject those outside this country to rendition that allows brutal torture by allied governments, to suspend habeas corpus, to hold secret military trials, and to replace revolver-carrying cops with M4A1 carbine-slinging soldiers on our city’s streets. Guantanamo is still open. He escalated the war in Afghanistan and ordered the assassination of African heads of state after unilaterally declaring war on their countries. He continues to order the widespread use of drones over Pakistan.

3. Barack Obama said “to hell with your tired, your poor, and your huddled masses.”
He deported more human beings, most of whom were brown and black, than any other president in American history. In 2011, he broke his own 2010 record of 392,862 when he kicked 396,906 men, women and children out of the country.

4. Barack Obama punished the good guys.
His Justice Department, using national security claims and the Espionage Act of 1917 as pretexts, has prosecuted more whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou. NSA Senior Executive and decorated Air Force and Navy vet Drake’s only so-called crime was to expose the waste, fraud and abuse of the Trailblazer Internet and cell phone monitoring project. Former CIA Officer Kiriakou told the truth about waterboarding.

5. Barack Obama turned his back on the racism issue.
He ignored the oldest, most respected, and safest civil rights organization in America when he refused to attend the 2012 NAACP Convention in Houston. He also dissed the 2009 U.N. World Conference Against Racism, held in South Africa, by boycotting each of the sessions. And during his first two years in office, he discussed race fewer times than any Democratic president since 1961.

10 Reasons You Should Vote for Barack Obama

1. Barack Obama supports advances for black folks.
The President provided $1.5 billion in 2010 to victimized black farmers as settlement in their longstanding class-action suit. He signed the Hate Crimes Bill in 2009 and also signed the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010 to reduce the racist disparity between incarceration for crack cocaine possession and for powder cocaine possession. He fully supports affirmative action. He increased funding to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and increased Pell Grants by devoting $40 billion over the next decade.

2. Barack Obama supports women’s rights.
He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009 to bring about gender pay equality and also signed the holistic Preventive Women’s Health Care Amendment that went into effect in August. He continues to fight to force Republicans to stop their opposition to his reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. He appointed two female Supreme Court justices and selected a female Secretary of State. He has women in his cabinet, not in his binders.

3. Mitt Romney makes Obama look like Karl Marx.
Romney would destroy labor unions, exploit cheap labor overseas, give tax breaks to the filthy rich, and take money from the poor by slashing projects like the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

4. Mitt Romney is a warmongering (chicken) hawk.
Romney would greatly increase the military budget. He wants to attack Iran right now. His arrogant patriotism and his black, brown, and yellow xenophobia makes Obama’s militarism pale in comparison.

5. Mitt Romney says “Let ’em eat cake when they get sick.
He would repeal the historic (albeit relatively small) gains of Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, which provides coverage for 32 million previously uninsured citizens. He would privatize Social Security and Medicare and decimate Medicaid by dumping it on indifferent states.

6. The billionaire tea-bagging Koch brothers support Mitt Romney.

7. Karl Rove supports Mitt Romney.

8. Rush Limbaugh supports Mitt Romney.

9. Donald Trump supports Mitt Romney.

10. You think there’s even one good reason to vote for Mitt Romney?
As bad as Obama has been on many key issues, Romney’s history has proven that he would be much worse.

Like it or not, either Romney or Obama—as opposed to any third-party candidate—will win next week. Votes for progressive third-party candidates (like the thoroughly impressive Jill Stein) actually help to elect the more regressive candidate. In 2000, George W. Bush, after “winning” the swing state of Florida by a mere 537 votes, sent Ralph Nader a thank-you card signed with Al Gore’s tears.

Politics is not for ideological purists. It must be based on utilitarianism. As Malcolm X made clear: “When you have a … gospel, I don’t care whether it’s … a political gospel … (or) an economic gospel, if it’s not going to do something for you and me right here and right now, to hell with that gospel … !”