Why You Should Vote Kerry

The latest on DemocracyMeansYou.com from Roland X:

Why You Should Vote Kerry
(Hint: He's more than just Not Bush)
(First of a three-part final push into Election Day)

It is heartening for me to see progressives -- former Nader supporters in particular -- line up behind John Kerry. No matter how much they might like Nader, Cobb, or other great leaders on our side, they see the danger of a Bush administration and want to help take our country back. And certainly, the complaining has subsided somewhat after the way Kerry demolished Dubya in the first debate.

Read the rest...

The Purity Brigade

Thus Endeth Ralph Nader:

His candidacy, he argues, should be measured by the purity of his ideas and ideals, not his chances of winning.

Purity.

Pat Robertson and Ayatollah Khamenei believe in religious "purity." The Chinese government believes in ideological "purity." The KKK believes in racial "purity."

Holy Mother, haven't we had enough of purity for one species' lifespan?

(/) Roland X
Member, Non-Idiots for Kerry

The John-John Win-Win

A quick look at the debates.

There's not much to say about the Kerry vs. Bush showdown. It was the Hero vs. the Chimp, and it showed. Bush got in a couple of shots, sure, and Kerry missed a couple of chances to refute a gross distortion. Overall, however, Big John obliterated the Naked Emperor.

Captain Sunshine vs. Dick Luthor was somewhat more interesting. I thought Edwards won on style but Cheney on, um, "substance" isn't the right word when so much of his defense was outright lying, but I had to admit that he did it well, and with so many lies to refute, Edwards had to pass on a lot of them. I figured Cheney would look okay.

Poll after poll has Edwards winning big time, however -- not all of them, certainly, and many of them are non-scientific blog polls -- but damn, did I see a different debate? Even not-so-crazy Andy thought Darth Cheney stank up the joint, and he punted on the Hate Amendment (the one thing I'll give Cheney props for; even the comic-book Lex loves his daughter).

On almost everything else, of course, Dick lied through his Lex Luthor sneer. But he also messed up big time on something important: fact checking.

He told viewers to check out factcheck.com for the straight dope on the bad things that mean ol' Edwards was saying about him and his old company Halliburton. Problem is, he probably meant factcheck.ORG, a site dedicated exactly to what you'd think from its name.

The people who own factcheck.com, as it happens, are not fans of the
Bush/Luthor ticket. So they redirected the link to...wait for
it...georgesoros.com.

Meanwhile, factcheck.org posted a response saying that Cheney was full of it.

At the same time, Captain Sunshine was just beaming. He was the nicest pit bull you'll ever meet. I thought he let Cheney get away with too many falsehoods at the time, but with style meaning so much he just rode his charm to victory. I now think it was a deliberate strategy to let the post-debate debate handle the lies, a strategy that seems to have worked magnificently.

So did Cheney learn not to mess with the Internet? Probably not. This is a
man who continues to push a Saddam/al-Qaida connection, mind you (while
hilariously arguing that he never made an Iraq-9/11 connection). Still, it's
nice to see someone get what they ask for. Especially when it's exactly what
they deserve.

(/) Roland X
Personally, I prefer to go straight to Daily Kos. But that's just me. *G*

Why We Must Win

I turned 35 today.

Now, my birthday has nothing to do with why we have to win. It's going to take me a bit to get there, so please bear with me.

I went to work this morning fully expecting my co-workers to spring something on me, but I was totally unprepared for the outpouring I received. Several nice presents, a delicious double-chocolate birthday cake, a wonderful lunch, and decorations all around my cubicle. From the moment I arrived, my team -- my friends -- went to considerable efforts to make sure I enjoyed my day, especially with several painful changes taking place.

Unfortunately, none of us, except for our supervisor, knew just how painful one of those changes would turn out to be.

A couple of hours into the morning, we were called in to a meeting, all of us but one. We learned there that she was being laid off due to a "lack of work," as part of a mini "right-sizing" going on. No one's fault. Just business. The people upstairs felt it "had to be done."

The last time someone was laid off from our department, it was almost a blessing. She really wanted to leave. This time, though...this time, the victim was a sweet, hard-working woman who really struggled to get and keep this job. I like to think I helped her get it, but ultimately I don't know how much influence I had.

One of the others who was fired is a newlywed. Wonderful in a completely different way from my immediate co-worker, sassier but always had a smile. She wished me a happy birthday while she was literally walking out the door. Damn near broke my heart.

In spite of this very depressing period, everyone who came by was supportive and polite, and we all used the celebration to try and lift our spirits. While the day was good for me personally, melancholy and happiness switched places all day.

So, what does this have to do with November 2, 2004? Simple: our votes matter. Our choices matter. Elections matter, both in abstract terms like "chilling effects" and in the so-called real world of life in the trenches of the daily grind.

I'm not going to say that this couldn't have happened in a Democratic administration. All economies ebb and flow, and this was just a particularly odd current. Beautiful waves on the surface with a nasty undertow. Still, it was far more likely under Bush. He promotes "personal responsibility" while cutting taxes like a madman and throwing billions into corporate welfare. Exactly what "personal responsibility" does one of the hardest working women I've ever known have when she's downsized -- f*ck it, let's be honest and call it being fired -- because the company wants to run as lean and mean as possible?

Sure, if we were in serious financial trouble, I can understand the need as a last resort, but I haven't seen any indications of trouble in a while. And if our government were operating by the ideals of the Democratic party, I wouldn't be worried about her being able to pay her bills. But in Bush's world, CEOs and stockholders get a bigger bonus and people who make their livings doing the grunt work get axed. Then those same bigwigs get a tax break while the poor have less and less to scrape by with. That's the way of the modern robber barons running our country.

This is not to say that all Republicans are like that. One of the co-workers who did the most for me today is a deeply religious person who will undoubtedly be voting Republican this year for all the reasons you'd expect (though maybe not for Bush; she's made the occasional noise indicating that she sees what an incompetent fool he is). While I mourn what happened to others, I take comfort in what was given to me today, not because of the physical gifts I received but in the much more ephemeral and precious gift of friendship. There was an empathy among us today that was powerless against the grey, clanking machine of business but not in the quiet hours we were given.

Nevertheless, there is a point here. The point is, one party wants to make sure these people won't die financial deaths of a thousand cuts because of one hardship, and the other wants to give massive tax cuts to billionaires. One party will use intelligence and discretion in waging war, and the other will use invasion and death as a political tool. One party wants to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, while the other wants to protect businesses from inconvenient regulations. One party wants to give our children a future, and one party wants to mortgage it. And one party works (imperfectly but consistently) to guarantee our Constitutional rights, while the other wants to use it to light the fire that burns our democracy to the ground.

In short, one party wants to help and lift up everyone, and one party wants to turn America into a theocratic plutocracy. Empathy and balance, however flawed, are pitted against power-hungry radical greed.

Now, I'm sure that some people will protest that there are more than two political parties in this country. That is true but irrelevant at this moment in history. Only the Big Two wield any real power in this country; members of the others are either busy trying to build the strength to play in the big leagues, or busy tearing their alliances apart in idiotic purity tests that would have given a Communist the willies. Anyone who can look at the enormous, substantive differences between the Democrats' positions and the Republicans' and say there is no difference between the two is simply beyond the reach of logic and sense. It is certainly excusable to disagree on whether or not that gap is wide enough to suit we progressives, but it is inexcusable to do Rove's work in spreading the obscene lie -- yes, lie -- that there is none.

We are facing a stark choice this year. We can choose to elect the current President for the first time, allowing him to do incalculable damage to the Republic. We can choose to elect a good man, a hero twice over in our worst war -- once as a soldier and once as an activist, fighting for his country both times -- who will be at least a good president, and maybe a great one.

Or we can choose to waste our opportunity by voting for ideological purity, or worse, not voting out of personal ideological purity.

Our choices matter, our votes matter, in the lives of real people struggling to survive, in the battles real people wage to preserve liberty and justice, in the quiet hours that define the pursuit of happiness. It is easy to turn one's nose up at a choice between the "lesser of two evils." It is much harder to admit that maybe, just maybe, we use the word "evil" too lightly, that personal purity is less important than doing what's right, that one choice isn't evil at all, merely distasteful to some.

I used to be a Green. I wanted to believe that we could make a difference, that we could break in without selling out. Well, maybe I'll rejoin the Greens again, but not today. Today, my color is blue. Blue for sadness, blue for working people, blue for my party. Blue for the "vigilance, perseverance, and justice" it represents in our flag. Blue for the only color that can return us to liberty and justice for all.

I've made my choice. Will you?

(/) Roland X
"The penalty good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves." --Plato

Big John's Grand Slam

Senator John F. Kerry had to make the speech of his life tonight. He was following Barack Obama, who became the party's rising superstar in one night. He was following Howard Dean, whose energy gave Kerry the party he needs to win this fight. He was following General Wesley Clark, Al Sharpton, and John Edwards, all of whom electrified the crowd. Senator Kerry didn't just have one hell of an act to follow -- he had several speeches of a lifetime to live up to, especially Obama's, which raised the bar for everyone.

He took a hard, inside fastball and knocked it out of the park. Hell, he shattered the Green Monster -- and sent that blast flying to New York, a gauntlet delivered. Somewhere, Cheney's robotic heart is beating just a bit faster. Somewhere, Rove's shrunken soul shivers, sending him into a cold sweat. And somewhere, George W. Bush sleeps blissfully, as usual unaware of what he's about to face -- a stirring voice ringing out from a united Democratic party. Who knows when his advisors will deign to tell him that this race is now Kerry's to lose?

What has me gushing so rapturously? The "stiff, wooden" Democratic nominee, the "Brahmin" chosen for his "gravitas," the "candidate that no one likes," rocked the house even more than the brilliant and eloquent Obama. There was a genuine and undeniable energy at the convention, all the more real for the script it exploded free of. Kerry's speech was pure genius, blending a powerful progressive message with eloquent centrist language. speaking from the heart while hitting all the highlights of his stump speech. Even the wonks got their time in an hour that he had to spend making himself likeable, when he told those looking for more in-depth policy info to go to johnkerry.com, and he managed to do it in a funny, clever way. The speech, however, was aimed at convincing the fence sitters -- progressives looking for someone to stand up for them, ambivalent voters who want someone "likeable," fence-sitters who want to know if he can really protect the country, or if he's "too liberal." Kerry's aim was dead-on.

Unapologetically, he picked up the populist theme and defended it in stirring patriotic terms. Unabashedly, he stole Obama's best line -- and improved it, calling for One America, "Red, White, and Blue!" Unreservedly, he took on the mantle of an American champion, assuring viewers that he would take concrete steps to defend the nation -- and explaining them. Unashamedly, he spoke of faith on his own terms, albeit with a little legendary help:

"I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side."

And then -- I can't believe he had the guts to do this -- he threw a bone to Earth-based faiths with the "cathedrals of nature" line on trees and the environment. Sure, it's ecumenical, but I have to imagine that with the diverse bunch supporting the Real Deal, something filtered along.

Indeed, there was a great deal of "coded" appeal -- red meat for we partisans that wouldn't give the undecided centrists indigestion. His defense of all minorities and treating people with respect (translation: the FMA is evil). Tying "honor thy mother and father" to protecting Social Security (translation: Bush doesn't care about your parents). Insisting that families won't have to pay for servicemen's body armor when he is president (translation: the corrupt SOBs running this war are more interested in their profits than our soldiers). All of it sheer genius.

Not that his speech was without good, solid blows. "It's time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families" was one of the best lines of the convention. Perhaps his most effective tactic, however, was calling out the Repugs' politics of division. Senator Kerry reminded us of how united we were after 9/11 without coming across as exploitative, then showed how the Bush Gang cynically leveraged that good will and unity for their own foul purposes. His language was always carefully chosen not to go too far, striking the right tenor between condemning the sins while reaching out to the sinners -- and those who believed them.

In short, one beautiful, beautiful speech. Faced with his own legendary question -- "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" -- he came up with a brilliant answer. You don't. You ask men to help correct that mistake, to redeem it, to make right what others have made wrong.

I truly believe that we could have the first unquestionably great Democratic president since that other JFK. I can't do it justice in this short space. For the full text, read the BBC's coverage -- yep, the Beeb's already on the case. Read the acceptance speech of the 44th President of the United States.

(/) Roland
"Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable." --Al Gore