Electing Kerry will not restore the balance of power. Truly, no offense intended, but that is just silly. The Democratic and Republican party leaderships have been equally corrupted by big money. The system isn't salvageable, as the McCain-Feingold Act proved all too well.

The problem of an imbalance of power between the legislative and executive branches is not one that can be fixed by any president or presidential candidate. They are already wholly corrupted when they reach that level of power. The presidency is corrupted. People need to just get the email on that one.

The citizenry can't take back the government, simply by believing that their guy ain't been bought, and that voting for their Democrat or their Republican will fix the imbalance. Every viable presidential candidate has bought and paid their way into the conventions, and into the Oval Office if they win. Citizen Kerry is no exception, he is the epitome of the rule. The US presidency is a rich white man's game.

The legislative branch is an entirely different story, however. Viable third parties can be built at the local and national levels that can successfully elect representatives and senators to Congress by running effective and savvy grassroots campaigns. They can then challenge the executive branch, and restore the legitimate constitutional powers of the legislative branch that has been completely corrupted by the two party, winner-take-all system.

I believe Clinton desperately tried to be a uniter, but the Republicans were and still are not interested in bipartisanship. In a winner take all system driven by big money interests, it is nigh on impossible to have bipartisanship at any level of government. The problem isn't just at the national level, but at the state and local levels in far too many states.

Kerry will not only be less effective, you need to understand that the Kerry agenda does not include what the Anybody But Bush camp seems to think it includes, like bringing the troops home, overturning the Patriot Act, reversing the 2 1/2 decade long assault on New Deal social services, reforming the tax code to start collecting a fair share from the wealthy, overturning the regressive trade laws that are destroying the planet, the standard of living in the US, exploiting the third world, exacerbating human rights catastrophes, and propping up nasty oligarchs and dictators all over the globe.

Wishful thinking and voting won't make any of that so. We have to fight, and not just at the ballot box. These problems the Anybody But Bush camp keeps attributing to Bush and the Republicans, but the Kerry and the Democrats, who are just as complicit, can't be solved at the ballot box.

Kerry's administration could be pure as the driven snow, open and transparent, the epitome of the very best of nobless oblige, and it won't matter one iota, because the corruption at that level is everywhere. They can't root it out without Congress. No president, including John Kerry will willingly give up the imperial powers of the presidency because it is the right thing to do. Those powers will have to be forcibly taken away, by the legislative branch using the judicial branch to check the powers of the executive branch. It will be messy, bloody, hand to hand combat.

Which brings me back to the REAL solutions I keep talking about...