The Anybody-but-Bush/Kerry campaign is getting more strident and acquiring more adherents with each passing day. The core question that they seem to think doesn't even need answering (on account of how evil Bush is) is: 'Is Kerry going to be a better President for the majority of Americans?' That's the difficult question tackled by <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/mickey05172004.html" source="CounterPunch" author="Mickey Z" title="With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness">With Friends Like These</a>. <h>Kerry's not Nader</h> If he is, then you should vote for him, right? I mean, there are people who are more than just mentally suffering under Bush (like you and I). Another four years of Bush policy will probably mean a lot of suffering both in America and around the world. Even Chomsky says that he usually <iq>holds his nose</iq> and votes for the lesser evil. But, I'm still not convinced that Kerry (and whatever cadre he pulls into his cabinet) is actually less evil enough for me to sacrifice my principles. If I vote for him to protect people being royally screwed by Bush, and then Kerry royally screws them too, nobody's better off and I sold out. Chomsky also mentions that <iq>small differences can translate into large outcomes.</iq>, but I'm still looking for those small differences that will make a difference. <box align="right" class="excerpt" width="12em"> <iq>Anybody but Bush? Anybody but Bush? ... what about Nader?!?</iq> </box> The campaign-trail Kerry is expressing regret for almost every major vote he's placed during Bush's reign: Patriot Act, Iraq War, etc. This is similar to the behavior we got from Slick Willy, who showed us for 8 years that a Democratic president can ignore <iq>like environmentalists, African-Americans, feminists, and civil libertarians</iq> just as well as Reagan and Bush I did. In fact, <iq>those groups have not been the "core constituencies" of the Democratic Party for a long, long time</iq>. Assertions to the contrary are coming fast and furious from otherwise critically-thinking people, constantly asserting that Kerry's flaws will never add up to the sum-total of Bush's, no matter how many are pointed out, so just vote for Kerry and sit down and shut up because we have to save this country from another Bush regime and there's no time for third party candidates right now because it's too dangerous to have that much choice. Some go so far as to build straw men that any far-right pundit would be proud of, like <iq>If you don't vote for Kerry, you must agree with everything Nader stands for.</iq> Pathetic. No, a vote for Nader is simply support for a candidate who is at least expressing <i>some</i> viewpoints with which I agree, which is what voting should be all about, no? I'm voting <i>for</i> a candidate, not against one. (Incidentally, election reform is a plank in Nader's platform, where ranking candidates would be a possibility and the whole issue of 'throwing your vote away' simply disappears.) <bq>Speaking only for myself, when I urge readers to consider voting for Nader, it's meant as a statement of protest, i.e. let the powers-that-be know that what we want is not on the menu. This is hardly a blanket endorsement of Nader's record (which, not so incidentally, is light years above and beyond John Kerry's wettest progressive dream). However, this is not what the Alternet/MoveOn/Nation crowd hears. Sadly and ironically, for many Bush-haters it's: 'You're either with us or against us.'</bq> <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0507-15.htm">A Progressive Response to the Nader Campaign</a> is a typical example of this, citing that <iq>yet poll after poll shows the Nader vote depleting Kerry and helping Bush</iq>. Why is that? Because Kerry sucks. Hard. He doesn't offer an honest choice to thinking people. They see through his dissembling and his moderate opinions and don't want any of it. They see Nader, with all of his flaws, as head and shoulders above Kerry. So they say they're going to vote for him. People have pride; they aren't going to use their vote as a lever to get a guy they think is shitty into office. As the author of the article himself says: <iq>I agree with Nader on virtually every issue, while agreeing with only about half of Kerry's positions (or what can be deciphered as Kerry's positions)</iq>. Then comes the 'but'. The 'but' which indicates that this a clever, politically-savvy mover and shaker who's going to vote Bush out of office. And he's got the facts to prove it: <iq>Bush/Rumsfeld/Ashcroft regime is far more dangerous than the regimes of Nixon/Kissinger/Mitchell or Reagan/Weinberger/Meese</iq>. Why don't you ask a Cambodian or a Nicaraguan/Guatamalen about that? Dumbass. That is just such an ignorant statement. Unless he means that Bush/Rumsfeld/Ashcroft is more dangerous to <i>Americans</i> ... the only people who really matter. <iq>There can be no greater imperative for progressives this year than to Vote Bush Out</iq>. Once that's accomplished and Kerry is safely ensconced in the White House, without having committed to a single progressive policy during his campaign (because ABBers are ensuring with their support that he doesn't have to make any populist concessions), then and only then, <iq>progressives must stay mobilized in '05 to ensure that our agenda is heard by the Kerry White House</iq>. What a fucking joke! So, Kerry, who's not really taking any strong positions while <i>on the campaign trail</i>, where every politician promises everything, will, all of a sudden, because receptive when he's already won a 4-year commitment? What a pipe dream! How could you be more naive? If this is the best the Left can offer, they really are a bunch of fucking sissies. That plan doesn't even have the remotest possibility of working; the only ones being heard by the Kerry White House, will, as ever, be his corporate sponsors (as Ralph Nader keeps trying to tell people). Then, amazingly, he says of the Clinton years that <iq>[w]e won't be fooled again.</iq> Bravo, Tommy, your self-delusion knows no bounds. <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0510-12.htm" source="Common Dreams" author="William Raspberry">Kerry Might Well Pause, Listen to Nader</a> suggests that the merging of platforms happen <i>before</i> the election. Interesting notion, but not one that Kerry is likely to adopt. As Nader has said in an interview: <bq>Democrats have become too cautious --- too indentured to the same money the Republicans are dialing for. Kerry's consultants and handlers are telling him to tone it down, and he has. For example, he's now saying `I'm not a redistributionist, I'm a centrist,' and that speaks volumes. Because the issue isn't redistributing wealth in the old-fashioned sense but stopping the redistribution that's already going on through corporate welfare.</bq> Ralph pretty much always gets the issue around to corporations pretty quickly, but it's a critical point in US "democracy" today. If Kerry is funded by corporations, sponsored as it were, he's not going to listen to you and I. He certainly isn't going to be allowed to do anything to diminish the donors that got him there. They did, after all, pay for a product and they expect a good preformance. What kind of wacko issues does this guy suggest Kerry take from Nader? <iq>Support a living wage ... [go] after corporate crime [jailing Martha doesn't count] ... [r]epeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy ... [p]rotect the poor</iq> What, is he crazy? How's that going to make America better? I mean, that's really it, isn't it? It doesn't matter a damn if Kerry's just less radical than Bush, what's he going to do for me? He seems to be kowtowing massively to corporate interests, an issue on which Nader has called him out again and again. Is he going to do it less than Bush? Probably. Is it going to be noticable in US domestic and foreign policy? Doubtful. The only real advantages I see in Kerry are that he's far more likely to elect reasonable judges to the Supreme Court and he'll probably stay away from women's wombs. <h>Kerry's camelot</h> <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0520-09.htm" source="AlterNet" author="Arianna Huffington">John Kerry And Bobby Kennedy's Unfinished Mission</a> does have some rather nice things to say of Kerry, pointing out similarities tying him to the Kennedys. My problem with the article, of course, is that it hopelessly romanticizes the Kennedy administration, again painting it as a triumph of Democratic populism --- which it was not. The screws were turned harder than ever on Cuba and almost forced WWIII. Somehow, the image of Camelot is all that people want to remember because we all need a hero --- why not one who was assassinated before people could find out what he did? Huffington found a speech in Kansas Kerry gave to be quite Camelot-esque. <bq>We have not met the promise of Brown when one-third of all African-American children are living in poverty. We have not met the promise of Brown when only fifty percent of African-American men in New York City have a job. We have not met the promise of Brown when nearly twenty million black and Hispanic Americans don't have basic health insurance. And we certainly have not met the promise of Brown when, in too many parts of our country, our school systems are not separate but equal - but they are separate and unequal. For America to be America for any of us, America must be America for all of us.</bq> I love this sentiment and agree with it 100%. I would really love to have a government composed of people who believe this. I really want to believe that Kerry will, by sheer force of will, choose a cabinet that pushes just as hard for these ideals as Bush's cabinet pushed for war with Iraq. I just don't yet. We've heard it before ... most recently from a Mr. Bill Clinton, who had phenomenal support from minorities for exactly this kind of rhetoric. History shows what he did for black people in his 8 years --- it's not George Bush's policies that have led to the conditions that John Kerry cites today. <h>Kerry's war chest</h> One of the big points against Bush is his massive war chest, collected from all of the special interests to which he will continue to be beholden, if reelected. This is the stuff that really rides on Nader, who is staunchly against the runaway privatization train, staunchly against the elite citizenhood of corporations and against special interests instead of common interests driving all government decisions. That's his big point, and, as mentioned, one to which he gladly turns at the drop of a hat. It's an important point --- with a government beholden, from top to bottom, to an extremely small group of people, those people (and/or corporations) will work and pay to keep the system producing wealth for themselves. So, while Nader's pumping out articles like <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0510-09.htm">Outsourcing Democracy at Taxpayers' Expense</a>, which delves into how much it costs when you outsource military capacity to the private sector (<iq>$120,000 for a corporate cook to do a six month tour of duty in Iraq to feed the Army troops</iq> sounds like a pretty sweet deal compared to pay of an enlisted cook --- hell, it sounds pretty sweet compared to my job), what's John Kerry up to? <a href="http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=04/05/24/04453988;cmt=82" source="Plastic" title="I, John Kerry, Do Proudly Accept The Nomination Of My Party ... When I Get Good And Ready">When I Get Good And Ready</a> lets us know that John Kerry is looking <iq>to delay officially accepting the nomination for about a month</iq>. Why? He "war chest" is so freaking immense that he's got way more money left over from the primary campaign. <bq>One of the things that Kerry has been extremely successful at doing, other than gathering delegate votes, is gathering political contributions. During the last three months, the Kerry campaign has been able to collect close to <b>$90 million in contributions</b> for his campaign.</bq> This sounds like a problem only to nervous nellies like Nader --- who might casually wonder where that $90 million of <i>campaign contributions</i> came from (was there a time when they just admitted it was bribes?). It's also a problem for Kerry, who wants to be able to spend it. However, <iq>once a candidate officially accepts his party's nomination, he or she is bound by some rather stringent campaign spending rules.</iq> Those horrifically stringent rules are that he will only thenceforth be able to use money raised during the general election campaign (not the primaries), including <iq>a check, courtesy of the US taxpayer, worth about (US)$75 million.</iq> Isn't that the saddest thing you've ever heard? Only $75 million to last 4 months? What ever will he do? Well, he and his team have several ideas, including <iq>postponing the convention, having Kerry show up and say "thank you" without officially accepting the nomination, reconvening the convention over the internet at the end of August to hear Kerry officially accept</iq>. <img src="{att_thumb}fns-panel-topics-and-time.png" href="{att_link}fns-panel-topics-and-time.png" align="right" class="frame">What a stand up guy. Nice to see he's got his priorities all lined up. Maybe he can use all of his leftover money for the 2008 campaign. Once America's left-wing, liberal media (I'm looking at you, Al Franken) is done chewing him up and spitting him out for this move, more people will vote for Perot than Kerry. As a post about <a href="http://uggabugga.blogspot.com/2004/05/priorities-we-watched-fox-news-sunday.html">Fox News Sunday</a> indicates, the attack dogs are already hard at work.