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Kerry is as good as Roosevelt, Nader as bad as Bush |
Current rating: 0 |
by Heckraiser
(No verified email address) |
12 May 2004
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“Progressives need to understand that Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932 on a wishy-washy platform no bolder than the Kerry platform....poll after poll shows the Nader vote tipping swing states and their electoral votes to Bush." |
A Progressive Response to the Nader Campaign
by Jeff Cohen
I am ideologically aligned with Ralph Nader, not John Kerry. I agree with Nader on virtually every issue....But I'm also distressed by the deception coming from the Nader campaign. We keep being told that Nader will draw votes away from the Evildoer-in-Chief, George W. Bush; yet poll after poll shows the Nader vote depleting Kerry and helping Bush, and tipping swing states and their electoral votes to Bush.
In my view, Kerry vs. Bush is not Coke vs. Pepsi. It's more like Coke vs. Arsenic (quite literally, in the environmental sense). The Bush/Rumsfeld/Ashcroft regime is far more dangerous than the regimes of Nixon/Kissinger/Mitchell or Reagan/Weinberger/Meese.
There can be no greater imperative for progressives this year than to Vote Bush Out. In the 17 or so competitive states, that means building the Kerry vote to defeat Bush.
But our work doesn't end on Nov. 2. After we mobilize to oust Bush in '04, progressives must stay mobilized in '05 to ensure that our agenda is heard by the Kerry White House. If the Iraq war drags on under the Kerry administration, I'll be in the frontlines of peace protests.
Progressives seemed to demobilize in 1993 after Bill Clinton ended 12 years of Republican rule. In the absence of powerful and independent networks of activists, we saw that a Democratic White House was capable of enacting pro-corporate Republican-oriented policies. We won't be fooled again. Thanks to the Internet and the youth-infused antiwar and global justice movements of recent years, it will be easier to sustain progressive activism in '05 and after to hold a Democratic White House accountable.
Progressives need to understand that Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932 on a wishy-washy platform no bolder than the Kerry platform. But powerful social movements, especially militant unions, propelled the New Deal agenda and pushed FDR to being the most progressive president of the last century.
2004 is a crucial juncture in our country's history, with millions of people in our evenly divided country -- especially people of color, labor, feminists, enviros -- yearning for a path to end the national nightmare of George Bush. Progressives need to be a bridge forward, not an obstruction. Noam Chomsky has described the choice we face: "Help elect Bush, or do something to try to prevent it."
Ralph Nader has long set a standard for public integrity: speaking truth to power no matter what the consequences. But in recent months, he's sounding more like a politician, making promises that he must know he can't deliver on -- like his claim that he will help defeat Bush by pulling "more votes away from Bush than the Democrats." And Nader is being ridiculed as just another politician: "Conservatives for Nader," scoffed Comedy Central's Jon Stewart. "Not a large group. About the same size as 'Retarded Death Row Texans for Bush.'"
This election is not about Kerry. Nor Nader. It's about putting Bush out to pasture before he does any more damage.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY
* * *
Jeff Cohen founded the media watch group FAIR and was communications director of Kucinich for President. The views expressed here are his own.
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/05/con04206.html |
See also:
http://greensforkerry.com
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This work is in the public domain |
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Re: Kerry is as good as Roosevelt, Nader as bad as Bush |
by NRA4Freedom
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
12 May 2004
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No, it's about living in a "fairly" safe Country, and world "fairly" safe for our children and their children. Democrats have proven over and over that they don't have the chutzpa to protect and serve. Heck, most of them seem more horrified by a little humiliation of a few prisoners than they are by the murder and desecration of Americans trying to help the oppressed in Iraq. |
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You forgot to pose as a Nader supporter |
by Heckraiser
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
13 May 2004
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But it's redundant to point out your stupidity. 90% of those torture victims were picked at random, in a country which that did more to fight Al Queda than Bush did before 9/11. But I know enough about republicans to know your idea of justice is to punish at random anyone with the same ethnicity as the culprit - because you guys are ever competant enough to actually find the bad guy.
You're the guys who invented lynching, after all.
BTW, NRA4FREEDOM, don't you find it ironic to pretent you're anti-terror when terrorists buy their explosives at your own gun shows, and you want to defend their freedom to do so? |
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Re: Kerry is as good as Roosevelt, Nader as bad as Bush |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
13 May 2004
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So Heckraiser, the Republican Party invented Lynching??? Do you have any proof of this? As a percentage, more Republicans voted for the civil rights acts than did democrats. A Republican president freed the slaves as I recall.
Roosevelt a great president? His economic policies failed to end the great depression and his complete and utter lack of military prepartion left our country vunerable to attack by the Japs were just a few of his failures.
The reality is that we, and future generations will continue to pay for the socialism that was the Roosevelt Administration.
I would hope you could do a little better by Kerry, but I understand that it is hard to sell something when you have no product.
Jack |
