A Vote for Kerry is a Vote for Bush
Ralph Nader has taken an undeserved beating thiscampaign season, especially from Democrats who wrongly believe that Nader is the reason Bush stole the presidency four years ago. In all the attacks I’ve read, no one has challenged Nader’s claims about the influence on and dominance of corporate interests in American electoral politics. The harshest words are aimed at the man himself. I challenge Democrats to stop the hate and ask themselves why their party is losing its most progressive and left-leaning members to independent candidates. The answer can be found in the nearly equal votes cast for the Democratic and Republican candidates in the last presidential election and in the similar polling for the current election. The numbers are so close, and will continue to remain close, and future elections will continue to be contested on that basis because of the essential similarity between the programs of Democratic and Republican Parties. In this year’s presidential election, a vote for Kerry is a vote for Bush.
This election should be an indictment of Bush’s dishonest and murderous foreign policy and the cowardice of the Democrats in the face of Bush’s lies, but it’s not. Once again, the Democratic leadership has wooed its party members into supporting its corporate agenda with the bombastic rhetoric of progressive reform. While the majority of Democrats have been protesting and calling for Bush’s impeachment, the Democratic leadership wants to tone down the campaign by distracting voters with the perennial token issues of health care, education, and the environment.
John Kerry, like nearly all Senate Democrats, voted in favor of the Patriot Act, Bush’s illegal and immoral war against Iraq, and in favor of funding Bush’s open-ended war of aggression. Rather than explain their support for nearly all of the president’s major policy efforts, the Democratic leadership only claims to be able to do the job better. Like the Republicans, the Democrats only goal in winning the presidency is maintaining imperial control over Iraq (through a puppet regime on camera, by murderous force off camera) and extending the American imperial enterprise to Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and other countries when the bad publicity dies down. The DNC’s chosen representative John Kerry won’t admit the war was mistake and that the United States has abused its power. The Kerry campaign claims to have an alternative “exit” strategy for Iraq. Asking (or bribing) other countries to act against their citizens’ interests and to send troops to participate in creating a new police state in the Middle East is simply the Kerry team’s way of managing the distribution of the cost (the lives of our the soldiers) and spreading the loot (oil and other reconstruction contracts) of this latest imperial enterprise. Kerry Inc. is not the least bit interested in the lives of the people of Iraq. Like any good CEO, Kerry seeks to increase profits while minimizing costs by outsourcing the military duties to independent contractors such as Poland, Romania, and South Korea. The methods may be different, but the goal remains the same, as does the same avoidance of the even more fundamental question of why our troops are there at all.
Americans have a funny way of idealizing even our most horrible actions. Even well-meaning liberals insist that those poor Iraqi savages could not possibly be left to govern their own lives as they see fit. In true orientalist fashion, the Democrats can not see a solution to the problems in the Middle East that does not place the USA at the permanent center. Kerry’s team hopes to appease voters in proportion to their rising guilt as the increasing number of casualties becomes a topic worthy of the news. With more than 6000 American casualties, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians deaths, still no WMDS, and no end in sight, why do the Democratic faithful not see the disturbing parallels with the Vietnam War and draw the logical conclusion that this war is being fought for reasons the current political leadership won’t talk about?
In four terms as US Senator, 24 years, John Kerry has organized the passage of only 7 bills out of 317 introduced. Can you name even one? What significant piece of legislation has John Kerry written and won passage for during his tenure in the Senate? In his four years, Bush has a not only worked to pass more legislation than Kerry, but the legislation he has worked to pass has fundamentally changed the structure of our government, turning those funny terms “liberal” and “conservative” on their heads. Under Bush, the federal government has expanded exponentially, the federal deficit has once again risen to threatening levels, and taxes have essentially been raised on the majority of the country’s working class. Aren’t those supposed to be liberals’ goals? And the Democrats are now standing up for a stronger military, tighter restrictions on personal liberties, and an “America First” attitude? Just who are the Democrats and who are the Republicans in this campaign?
Kerry voted in support of NAFTA, the WTO, and the disastrous Plan Columbia. Kerry, like Bush, has strong ties to Enron, especially through his formerly Republican wife, who conveniently switched parties when her first husband died and Kerry was looking for an alliance. Kenneth Lay even serves on the Heinz Environmental Defense Fund board of directors. In 1995, Kerry cast the deciding vote to override Clinton’s veto of the very bill used by Enron and other multinational corporations to conduct their now well-known consumer rip-offs.
The blueprints for the Bush administration’s War for Global Dominance were hatched in right-wing think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute more than a decade ago. The New Democrats currently guiding Democratic policy have their own version of the AEI, the Progressive Policy Institute, who have developed their own blueprints for the American empire of the 21st century, Project for the New American Century. The Democratic Party has a long history of “muscular internationalism,” going all the way back to Woodrow Wilson who lectured at Columbia University in 1907 that the USA needed foreign markets and that national sovereignty should not be an obstacle to the pursuit of profit. In his campaign book A Call to Service, John Kerry lifts almost word for word the New Democrats’ warmongering manifesto. Kerry represents the liberal wing of the Democratic Party that has built and defended empires as “moral” enterprises.
One of the specific aims of the Democratic Party and its supporters at this moment in history, and the recent efforts of Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton exemplified this, is to give the impression that a diversity of opinion, and even opposition, is possible within the current political framework. The real lefties never had a chance. What the Democrats have got to understand, if they intend to survive much longer, is that party members may be progressive and leftist, but the leaders who run your organization and whom you elect to office are not. Like Republicans, they make many wonderful promises to obtain power and say anything to stay there.
The best way for us to change the Democratic Party is to turn our backs on it. It’s not enough to “talk” progressive. It’s not enough to get us riled up by talking about our lives and ideas, not enough to offer us warm anecdotes about hard-working fathers and loving mothers straight out of a Hallmark movie. I want my candidate to take action. I want my candidate to ACT like a progressive and I want his or her actions to be reflected in the voting record and in the legislative record. Americans forget how our government functions. The President of the USA executes the laws passed by Congress; that is, he makes sure that the laws are implemented and enforced. Americans seem to want the return to a monarchy. We revere the single messianic leader who exercises both legislative and executive powers and just wants to take care of us. We ignore the tremendous responsibility that living under a democratic form of government is supposed to require of us. It’s not enough to rock the vote. Today’s presidential elections are not a bit different than voting for your high school’s homecoming queen: who is prettiest? Who makes me feel good? Campaign ads, like McDonald’s ads, are meant to make your mouth water at a fictitious creation. Will you fall for the trap again? The “lesser of two evils” argument is killing the working class in this country and it’s time the argument was retired.
By attacking the Nader-Camejo campaign, the Democrats reveal how much they fear people actually organizing and changing the makeup of the government to better represent and better enact the people’s interests, that is, the democracy our fearless leaders keep boasting saying we have. The leadership of the Democratic Party believes its owns the votes of every progressive or leftist voter in this country, that the voter must prove to the Democrats why he or she isn’t voting for them instead of the Democrats proving to the voter why they deserve the vote.
So, when you hit the polls this November, ask yourself: am I voting for principles reflected in action that reflect my interests, or am I throwing away my vote by voting for the same old party machine? When the choices are between Coke and Pepsi, you still end up with rotten teeth.
