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Wednesday, February 25, 2004

#@!$% Democrats!
I was all prepared to ignore Nader this year, and hold my nose and vote for Kerry (or slightly preferable, IMHO, Edwards). But these ridiculous attacks on Nader only make me think (even) less of the Democrats. The two-party system is what gave us Bush and the rubber-stamp Congress which approved the wars and the Patriot Act, and it has to go.

I'm anti-Bush, but I'm even more anti-war. If enough people would reject the two-party stranglehold, Bush and Kerry would split the pro-war vote, and Nader would win in a landslide! (Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?) But given the (awful) reality of the situation, I WANT the smug, character-assassin Democrats to worry about how I'm going to vote. I want them to try to earn my vote. I'm still befuddled that Kerry somehow has come out ahead; Kucinich had the best positions on everything (and probably would have kept Nader out of the race), Dean and Sharpton had the best rhetoric, and Edwards had the best style. In all my months campaigning for Kucinich, I ran into a lot of Dean and Clark supporters, and of course lots of Bush supporters. But except for the one guy at the farmers' market, I almost never met any Kerry supporters. (I know, look at the vote totals, but still, why? And who?) Kerry's vote for the Iraq war was a complete sellout--I just don't see why anyone who opposes war should be supporting him, at least until he fully repudiates that vote by taking a strong anti-war position. Being better than Bush is a VERY low bar, and shame on the Democrats for not pushing it higher. The war in Iraq was brought to you by the Republicans AND the Democrats, and John Kerry was a part of it.

So, the first thing Democrats can do if they really want Bush to lose is to stop attacking the candidate with the best positions. The next thing they can do is to adopt some of those positions. I don't think Ralph is wrong to run, and he sure is right on just about everything else!

It's amazing that the media machine, in addition to the Democrats, is playing Nader's announcement up so much. I just did my review of Slate's political cartoon page (where I find most of the cartoons that I post here), and there are many about Nader's announcement. There seem to be three types: Those that just simply insult Nader, those that show Democrats horrified by his announcement, and those that show dancing Republicans. Only this one,


from David Horsey, and this one,


from Kirk Anderson, begin to actually address and respect the issues that Nader raises. Nader is right--the two-party system sucks, big time, and BOTH parties are run by the corporations. Democrats should be addressing those issues, not attacking Ralph for raising them. And in response to the second cartoon above, Nader did express support for Kucinich last year, saying that he would be less likely to run if the Dems chose Dennis. Only when it became certain that that wasn't going to happen did Nader decide to run.