Look, I'm voting for Kerry. But who we vote for isn't the point, because a vote doesn't constitute support from the grassroots.

The question is whether people will vote for Kerry in the "any whore in 2004" logic, or whether the progressive grassroots will decide to sit out yet another election instead of voting AGAIN for a Democratic candidate that ignores their needs as citizens.

This race won't be decided by who votes for whom, it will be decided by whether the Democratic grassroots base will vote at all.

As a former Democrat and current independent voter, I am leaning towards not voting for the first time in 30 years. I voted for Nader in 2000, and in 1988, 1992, and 1996 I didn't vote in the presidential race. The Democrats haven't been interested in promoting the agenda that is my agenda--fixing Social Security for the boomer generation that will be retiring in a couple more years, universal health care, increases in the minimum wage, support for mass transit, increasing wages for workers, like child care workers, nursing home employees, etc. who are now required to have more and more education to do their jobs, without any corresponding increase in wages and benefits, affordable housing initiatives.

Those are all issues that neither party is addressing on the domestic front.

On foreign policy, neither party has done anything on the issues that matter to me, including reform of the weapons industry, working to prevent nuclear proliferation, seriously addressing the need for a legitimate Palestinian state, working on the Kyoto protocols, approving treaties like the landmine treaty, joining the world court, etc--the list is really to long to go into here.

So, since neither party can be bothered addressing the issues that are most important to me, there is no reason for me to support either party, now is there? One is as bad as the other, and continuing to vote for the Democratic party only perpetuates the problems.

The time has come in the US to overthrow the Democratic party, or at the very least, split off a progressive party that will address the issues, needs, and concerns of low and middle income progressives who believe the political system does nothing for them--the people who routinely don't vote.

Kerry's voting record is out there, and he voted mostly with the Republican majority in Congress since 2000. He voted that way because he had presidential ambitions, and wanted to hang onto his senate seat if he didn't make the presidential run.

There is only one senator who is deserving of my vote as a progressive, and that is Russ Feingold, the only US senator to vote against the Patriot Act. John Kerry should have voted against it, Paul Wellstone should have voted against it, Tom Harkin should have voted against it, John Edwards should have voted against it, but none of them did. They didn't vote for it because they all wanted to protect their political asses in the seats of Congress. The Patriot Act was bad, bad legislation pure and simple, but only one US senator had the guts to vote the right way on it.

If we can't count on the so-called "liberal" Democrats to vote against the Patriot Act, then why continue to engage in the charade? They aren't voting their consciences, they aren't voting with integrity on these sorts of controversial issues. They are voting to protect their jobs.

Outsource Congress, and outsource the presidential campaign, I say.