Because Bush is an ass and a dangerous man, doesn't mean that Kerry isn't also. Kerry is the justification for most anti-war progressives I know who insist the MUST vote for him to beat Bush, have sold out their consciences. It really is that simple. And I could certainly name names of the people in this very thread who are now gung ho Kerry, who were some of the most vocal anti-warriors when Bush went into Iraq, no?

Just because you need to grasp at straws to justify voting for a pro-war candidate, which goes against your already publicly stated position of being anti-war, doesn't mean everyone who is anti-war is going to agree that making a pact with the devil you don't know to rid yourself of the devil you do, is going to agree with your strategy.

My partner, who has the one and only rationalization for voting for Kerry (which incidentally doesn't include anything to do with the war), does make sense, but the strategy is extremely high risk. The rationalization is we need to "throw the bums out" at the election, because when the politicians are guilty of such egregious misconduct, in a democracy, the only recourse you have (if you can't get them prosecuted legally) is to vote them out. So my partner's rationalization is, we need to vote them out regardless of who is opposing them. However, my parter does concede that when this is done, it needs to be done overwhelmingly and decisively. We agree that if Kerry just barely squeaks into office in a 51/49 scenario, we are screwed, and the rationalization and strategy will have turned out to be very, very wrong.

I say, that is much too high a risk to take, and that voting for a pro-occupation militarist LBJ/Joe Lieberman sort of Democrat (which Kerry certainly is) is an even greater risk because Kerry has already promised to EXPAND the occupation (ie send in more troops), not end it quickly. This whole thing strikes me as Bush and Kerry speeding down a four lane freeway at 90 miles an hour--Kerry on the left, Bush on the right, shooting at each other with automatic weapons fire, with the world in between them. A lot of the folks in the middle of their home front holy wars are gonna get killed.

Of course all the pundits said "great speech" because for Kerry it was a great speech. It wasn't a great speech by historic political oratory standards, but for Kerry the speech did what it had to do, which was appease the mongol hordes of media pundits.

But the progressives I know who are suffering from Anybody But Bush blindness and will vote for Kerry no matter what, are all pretty fucking despressed this week. They should be. IMO, they should be ashamed of themselves for having let their animosity towards the Republican personalities in the Bush administration get this far out of hand. Hate truly sucks as a positive motivator. You vote based upon your partisan hatred for the "Republican enemy" and you have become the neo-cons you despise.

If you are a strong anti-war progressive, rationalizing voting for a pro-war candidate "because we have to" to defeat another pro-war candidate, is the height of stupidity. My fearless predicition is those "Anybody But Bush" folks are going to wake up with a very bad hangover and a lot of regret come January 21st, regardless of who wins. Why? Because the most irrational, stupid thing the Democrats have done (again) was vote for the candidate that was more like the Republican they were trying to defeat, instead vote for the candidate that best represented their interests. This year, it should have been Howard Dean, and everyone knows it. But the reason we don't have Howard Dean, and are stuck with Bush Lite, is because of the very political cowardice of middle class nice Democrats akenaton refers to.

The circumstances required Democrats to show some guts, some fortitude, some courage under fire, to nominate a candidate that was actually a Democrat, not a wolf in sheeps clothes. But what did all of you do? You caved. You bought the propaganda line from the ruling elite that Howard Dean wasn't electable. Howard Dean was the only candidate running who WAS electable. But that isn't what the mainstream media and the middle class nice people told us was electable. To be electable, one must be nice, not angry. One must not shout, even in circumstances where you have to shout to be heard.

This is the tyranny of Anglo American moderate centrism run amok, and it is killing people. It is wholly indefensible according to my core values. When people cowardly accept murderers as their leaders in order to be polite and not rock the boat, then those people need to be put in their place, which is NOT the Oval Office.

After all, we know "ethnics and working class raving lunatics" are the fiery speakers. "Ethnics and working class raving lunatics" are angry. "Ethnics and working class raving lunatics" aren't electable.

Well, if that is true, then it is true because of the class bigotry, snobbery, racism, and political and social cowardice of the Anglocentric middle class "moderate" voter who keeps voting for the Bushes and the Kerrys of this world. They are the ones who are now up in arms because the ruling elite is taking away their middle class perks that they won at the expense of the working class and the poor under Clinton/Gore and the Democratic Leadership Council.

My response as a working class political independent? Well, to quote Teresa...shove it.