OntheWilderSide

In 2008, Hofstra proved they thought that the only good third party speaker is a dead third party speaker during their presidential debate activities. For the real, Presidential debate held at Hofstra campus, only Obama and McCain were invited. But, in the lead-up activities on campus,  third party candidates from the past, such as Victoria Woodhull, were played by scholars and historical re-enactors. In 2010, Hofstra is telling third parties to drop dead, again.

Hofstra is now partnering with Newsday/News 12 to put on what it calls a Renew New York Initiative.  Hofstra claims that “Statewide elected officials and candidates will discuss New York state issues and politics.” It makes sense that Hofstra has partnered with Newsday/News 12 for this event since those two companies are the media equivalent of the Democratic/Republican Parties:  They pretend to be competing entities providing the only choice you have while at the end of the day they answer to the same corporate masters. Newsday and News 12 are owned by the Dolan family and the Democratic/Republican Parties have the same corporate patrons.  Hofstra ignores that Long Island has a wide range of independent and local media, just as it ignores that 1/3 of voters are not enrolled in the Democratic/Republican parties.  In order to represent this 1/3 of US voters, Hofstra has invited the following 3rd party leaders:

Sen. Dean Skelos, Republican minority leader; and Republican gubernatorial candidates Steve Levy, Suffolk County Executive, and Carl Paladino, a Buffalo businessman; Edward F. Cox, chairman of the New York Republican State Committee, and Jay Jacobs, chairman of the New York Democratic State Committee.

None.

Just more of the same old, same old.  That’s not how to re-new NY.  Hofstra does not seem to get the message that Green Party Presidential candidate delivered during her 2008 acceptance speech:

We will never get a United States that is reflective of different values if we continue to do the same thing. Those who delivered us into this mess cannot be trusted to get us out of it. 

To explain, I said that Hofstra only likes dead third party speakers we need to go back to what I had to say when Hofstra announced their exclusion of any third party candidates from their 2008 presidential debate activities in my post Hofstra Presidential Debate: What Would Victoria Woodhull Do?:

As part of the activities leading up to this debate, Hofstra is having Historical Re-enactments and Discussions on Democracy on Tuesday, October 14, 2008.  If many of the characters included in the scheduled re-enactments were alive today, they would be protesting the exclusion of third party candidates from the actual debate the next day. The following presidential candidates were not invited to the Hofstra  Presidential Debate, even though they are on the ballot in enough states to win in the electoral college: Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin, Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney, independent candidate Ralph Nader, and Libertarian candidate Bob Barr.  All of these candidates will be on a sufficient number of ballots to win a majority of the electoral college votes.

Here’s what I had to say from my October 14, 2008 live blogging post on the day of the event Hofstra: The Only Good 3rd Party Candidate is a Dead 3rd Party Candidate:

Now I am in the Women’s Rights tent listening to Victoria Woodhull mention her status as the 1st female presidential candidate [after having heard Frederick Douglas mention his third party candidacy while debating third party candidate Abraham Lincoln]. I cannot avoid the irony in Hofstra having re-enactors discuss issues from 100 years ago, rather than inviting current 3rd Party candidates like the Green Paty’s Cynthia McKinney to discuss the issues that today’s major party candidates ignore like withdrawal from Afghanistan; Single Payer Universal Healthcare; or opposition to the bailout.

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