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11/04/2004:

"Ahoy Kerrycrats! Welcome to Our Nightmare"

by Donna J. Volatile
It is now the morning after, the morning after, and Kerry supporters should be moving from mourning into anger as the ice cold splash of reality begins to settle in.

Your guy lost, plain and simple but was he really your guy to begin with?

Most of the people who got behind Kerry were people vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq and the use of pre-emptive strikes. Most of you are caring, thoughtful and intelligent people who truly wanted to make a difference. Yet, in mass you got behind a man who didn't represent your ideas and values, a man who couldn't define himself or differentiate himself from his opponent, a man who supported the invasion of Iraq and continued to do so throughout his campaign. Was Kerry really your guy?

All of you claimed you wanted regime change! Some of you really believed your guy would be capable of saving the country by implem! enting real change but many of you got behind Kerry because anybody would be better than Bush.

Hey, don't feel too bad, you were in some pretty good company! You had a wagon load of intellectuals, progressives and even some down right radicals that climbed on board the same bus. You all fed into the fear factor, not the Republican one, spewing trumped up terror alerts and threats but rather the one put forward by the Democrats: DON'T VOTE FOR NADER OR ELSE!

The Republicans cleverly played the fear factor and the terror card but the Democrats were equally duplicitous and devious in their political maneuvering. I wonder if it ever occurred to any of you just how un-democratic the democrats truly were throughout the course of this election? The Democrats didn't promote democracy, they impeded it and in the end, they decimated the third party alternative and spent billions of dollars doing it.

Regardless of whether! or not the Bush cartel stole yet another election (and there is plenty of evidence to suggest they did...), you backed the wrong horse. A chimpanzee was able to figure out a Diebold electronic voting machine faster than any of you pushing buttons for Kerry. I'm sorry, I don't wish to be mean. The truth hurts and you've got to hear it, better to hear from a friend who knows that in spite of good intentions you all behaved like naive and errant children.

So, here's the reality, slowly sinking in, as another day dawns over the evil Bush Empire: we cannot change the system from within. The Democratic party is washed up. You were failed by Kerry and by the party that foisted him upon you, against your better judgment.

There was no choice in this election! Repeat after me: There was no choice in this election, only the illusion of choice, more than that, the bill of goods you were sold was the illusion of democracy. Maintaining that illusion cost billions of dollars, like an over budgeted Hollywood epic that fails at the box office, that money would have better spent elsewhere.

Now, those of us that didn't jump on the Kerry bus were greatly relieved and yes, we gloated just a little bit but by the time John Kerry conceded, few of us had any doubts: the fix was in. Kerry caved before they had a chance to tally the remaining votes! Once again, just as in 2000, the democrats didn't put up any fight and instead called for unity. Unity?! Everybody just fall in line, get with the program, let bygones be bygones, let's all learn to get along, after one of the most emotional and divisive political campaigns in our history?!
Full Article: counterpunch.org

The Self-Fulfilling Prophesy of Lesser Evilism
by Sharon Smith
...The entire supposition of lesser evilism, of course, is that the best we in the U.S. can hope for is the election of a slightly better version of the Republican candidate. The logic of lesser evilism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when no left wing party ever gets built to challenge the two-party system.

The 2004 election exposed the reverse logic employed by the ABB left--when Kerry's "electability" (that is, his similarity to Bush) failed to get him elected. That is how, in a country where a majority of the population views the Iraq war as a mistake, the man who led the country into that war on false pretenses managed to eke out a victory.

Using the same strategy as Gore and Clinton before him, Kerry abandoned the Democratic Party's traditional base to appeal to swing (i.e., white middle-class) voters. That meant that Kerry allowed Bush to define the framework of the debate, which in this case was terrorism. Kerry did not even pay lip service to the labor movement, while distancing himself as far as possible on abortion rights and opposing gay marriage outright. His opposition to the Iraq war was so conditional, contradictory and confusing--since he was a pro-war candidate--that he squandered the enormous opportunity to congeal the massive antiwar sentiment into a coherent electoral opposition.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

It really is quite the spectacle watching the progressive pundits who told us to shut up and vote for Kerry falling all over themselves now trying to make sense of what must be the inevitable outcome of 'Anyone But Bush.' It's aka 'No one but Bush,' and the anti-war majority sold themselves out.