From this month's Tikkun, about the dangers of the Anybody But Bush mindset. Some exerpts:

"Anyone But Bush" is a slogan based in fear and in the past, rather than a vision for the future."

"The fact is that you cannot win Americans over to an alternative to the radical ideology of the neoconservative Right that has been the foundation of the Bushites' success by providing them with a variety of cautious half-measures lacking any coherent intellectual foundation or vision. The unbearable lightness of the Democrats—their inability to stand for anything at all—has been with us since the 1990s, when Congressional Democrats were unable to construct a liberal or progressive alternative to Gingrich's very effective (though from our standpoint reprehensible) "Contract with America," which boosted Congressional Republicans to majority status in the 1994 elections. Even in 2002 those Democrats managed to take a perfect moment for re-ascendancy and present themselves as the party that had no unifying theme or message."

"If we are trying to decide whether a candidate believes in a coherent worldview that coincides with our own deepest ethical and spiritual truths, we can make that determination ourselves by listening to what they say and have said and done in their public lives. But if we are trying to decide whether they are electable, we give the power to the media and the pollsters to tell us who we should be backing. The result is that many of the candidates who most closely represent the American people's highest ideals can be pushed out of the race, opening up the way for a candidate who fulfills the ideals of those who own and control the media."

"Many Howard Dean supporters are on the verge of deep depression. After months of tireless sacrifice for their candidate, they are beginning to feel that progressive politics have been repudiated by the American electorate. Yet what actually happened was a playing out of this Anyone But Bush dynamic of electability and realism. Dean won many of his supporters from the ranks of those who might feel closer to Kucinich on the substantive issues, but who were convinced by the Dean campaign that they should back a candidate who the media was saying was more electable. So when the media turned on Dean, portrayed him for a solid two months before the Iowa caucuses as unelectable, Dean followers had no intellectual or moral foundation to challenge the "electability" argument. Supporting Dean because of his alleged electability, and convinced of the "anybody but Bush" approach, many Democrats who deeply opposed the war in Iraq ended up accepting the media's self-fulfilling prophecy that Dean could not win, and therefore switched allegiance to Kerry or Edwards—even though these candidates supported the war—on the supposition that maybe one of them could win.

Meanwhile, putting a final stab through the heart of his most loyal followers, Dean undermined himself on the one issue that had most energized his core supporters—his maverick style that promised serious confrontation with the elites of wealth and power. When he allowed the media to convince him that declining support indicated public discontent with his alleged radicalism, Dean toned down his approach in the two months before Iowa and began to accumulate the endorsements of Al Gore and mainstream politicians, put business-as-usual political operatives into key campaign positions (including figures from the AIPAC), and made it clear that he was interpreting his declining support as a reason to become more moderate and mainstream.

The denizens of the Center rejoiced at Dean's declining fortunes in February, 2004. After Dean's loss in the Iowa caucuses, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and other champions of the war in Iraq used the victory of Kerry and Edwards to make the point that "the American people" really wanted a candidate who would support the Iraq war and use this moment to reconstruct the entire Middle East (with who knows how many more interventions necessary)!"

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This is a very long article, but if you are serious about getting Bush out of the White House, it is an essential read. Reading it is what convinced me to send $25 to Nader as soon as he had announced.

Tikkun article "Anybody But Bush?"