Gore/Kerry would be a magical ticket. Poetic justice! The two men who were unlawfully deprived of the White House, running together. I think the American people would love it! And I think Gore is a man on fire. His speeches last year were amazing! He nailed the Bush Cartel in every way. I was very impressed. And I think Kerry could be brought along as a true representative of the people under Gore's influence (and given Kerry's youthful inclination to truth and justice, decent liberal record and BCII investigatory courage and experience).
But Dean would also be "poetic justice." He was also deprived of the White House by foul means--by manipulations of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, and the War Democrats. I'm pretty sure that the main reason his campaign was destroyed was his strong stance against the Iraq War, with additional reasons being his outsider status regarding the looting of our country by military contractors (he would have cleaned house in DC and in the Dem Party), and his statement, just before they did him in, that he would bust up the corporate news monopolies. (That seemed like the trigger, but I think it was just one more reason to kill Dean's campaign).
I would most certainly support a Dean campaign, or that of anyone with his principles and belief in democracy who has a chance of winning.
But I think people should be aware that NO antiwar candidate or true populist will be permitted to reach the White House. I've lived through too long a history of antiwar populists being assassinated, or sabotaged by war interests. Winning these days has nothing to do with representing the will of the people and the public good. The first criteria for "selection" by our corporate rulers is that you be pro-war and of course pro-big military budgets, with pro-global corporate predation ("free trade," or, more accurate, "free piracy") being a close second. Once those criteria have been satisfied, then they "select" which of the two 'choices' they've given us of pro-war, pro-corporate candidates best suits the fascist agenda. It may be that a War Democrat will be "selected" and then Diebolded into office. I think this is likely, actually, in '08. They need someone who can get a military Draft (Bush can't do it), and to begin taking some of the rap for Bush's financial and foreign policy disasters, to handle (and take the rap for) domestic unrest, and also to maintain a huge US military presence in the Middle East for pork-barrel purposes (to drain us of our last dollar) and to be ready for the "Gulf of Tonkin" type incident that will widen the war into Iran and Syria (to get more control over the last oil reserves).
I am not being cynical or sarcastic. I am being realistic. We must fight for our beliefs and for our democracy, but we must realize--and surely anyone with historical perspective who knows the facts about 2004 realizes--that this country is being prepared for overt fascist rule, Nazi-style, and that we have very little time left to prevent it. My guess is that the War Democrat will barely last four years. WE will rebel, and our rebellion will be one of the things used to destroy that administration. Huge antiwar protests, food riots, veterans' protests, great civil unrest of many kinds will likely occur. And the War Dem's meagerest sops to the poor--or efforts at world peace (if there are any)--will be met with universal derision by the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, who will heap every kind of irrational scorn on the War Dem, including inventing scandals out of whole cloth, as they did with Bill Clinton. And all of this will be preparatory to installation of the real Nazi (possibly Jeb) in '12.
That's the likely scenario, in my opinion. We have no more control over who our candidate will be in '08, and who will "win," than we do over how our votes are 'tabulated'--that is, we have no control over it.
I see one good chance of preventing this scenario, and that is election reform. Even a War Dem has to pay at least lip service to progressive values such as honest, transparent elections. We might be able to get election reform quickly, on a national scale, early in the War Dem administration, and thus begin to influence policy (and protect election reform gains) as real representatives of the people start to get elected (in the 2010 by-elections)--and also, thus to prevent another Bush Cartel coup. (They can't "win" without rigged elections.)
Currently, two Bushite corporations--Diebold and ES&S--are 'tabulating' all our votes with "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY software and firmware, and with virtually no audit/recount controls. Further, in 2004, the war profiteering corporate news monopolies DOCTORED their independent exit polls--put FALSE NUMBERS on everybody's TV screens, late on election day--after shutting down the reporting system for some hours with a so-called "computer glitch, and forcing their exit poll numbers (Kerry won) to "fit" the "results" of Diebold's and ES&S's secret formulae (Bush won). They thus deprived the American people of strong evidence of election fraud, and squelched protests and calls for investigation. (This was not the normal adjustment of the exit polls for election demographics. This was a LIE, a DOCTORED poll, which included in the "adjustment" factors such as a 100% turnout for Bush of Bush 2000 voters--an impossibility, since some percentage of those voters had died in the meantime. See www.TruthIsAll.net.)
This is what I mean by realism. REALISTICALLY, we have NO IDEA how our votes are being tabulated, and major donors to Bush and to rightwing causes are in control of it. It is SECRET. Non-transparent. Unaccountable. And we no longer have a Fourth Estate to speak of (except on the internet, and alternative sources like Air America). The news monopolies are not just propagandists for the war and for the rich, they are positively COLLUSIVE in destroying our democracy.
What chance does a real populist, especially an antiwar populist, have in these circumstances? Virtually none. They will be Diebolded in the primaries.
And even the hope that the election fraud can be overcome by sheer numbers (a hope I developed by analyzing what they did--what the constraints on the fraudsters may have been--in the 2004 election) seems somewhat dashed by the recent results on the four Ohio ELECTION REFORM initiatives. Predicted to win by 60/40 votes. Flipped over to 60/40 LOSSES on election day!--the most audacious flipover we've seen yet, and conducted with total impunity. Ohio may be a special case of Republican corruption and crime, as compared to other states, but I do believe that they are testing out the mechanisms of full-on tyranny there, to be used on the rest of us later.
See Bob Koehler's article on the Ohio initiatives:
http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?custid=67&catid=1824We have a couple of other opportunities to save our democracy. 1. Most states are not yet as bad as Ohio, so "sheer numbers" get-out-the-vote campaigns may be able to overcome the fraud in some places. 2. There are many local election reform movements, working to obtain election verification tools of various kinds, such as backup paper ballots (real ballots to compare the electronic results to); power over election systems still resides at the state/local level, where ordinary people have more potential influence (then we do in DC). 3. Russ Holt's bill HR 550, which will stop the corporate privatization of our elections in its tracks, and reverse it (with changes mandated for '06); possibly a weakened Bushite party has created conditions for it to be passed; sign the petition at
http://www.rushholt.com/petition.html. Or...
4. The American people will get fed up, sooner rather than later, catch the Revolutionary spirit of Samuel Adams and Tom Paine, and THROW DIEBOLD AND ES&S ELECTION THEFT MACHINES INTO 'BOSTON HARBOR' NOW!
That can always happen.
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Information:
For the recent GAO report on the horrendous insecurity of our election system in 2004:
access to pdf:
http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-05-956text only:
http://www.gao.gov/htext/d05956.htmlFor an easy to read pamphlet on the perils of electronic voting ("MythBreakers"). (One of the myths is that HAVA mandated electronic voting; it did NOT; citizens and election officials still have a choice!)
www.votersunite.org
For a project for statistical monitoring and challenges of elections in '06 and '08:
www.UScountvotes.org
For more info: www.verifiedvoting.org
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Note: Our Democratic leadership has been VERY bad on this issue. Essentially, they permitted Bushite corporations to gain control of the counting of our votes, with TRADE SECRET programming. Where was their outrage? Where were their warnings to voters? Where is their activism to change this unbelievably bad corruption of our election system? Are they INSANE? There are still some good Dems. Holt, for instance. And Dean himself. Boxer. Conyers. We know who they are. SUPPORT them on this FIRST PRIORITY issue! And PRESSURE the others--federal, state and local Dems who are corrupt, collusive or oblivious. (And people like Connie McCormack, the Dem head of Los Angeles elections, who supports Diebold, and led the campaign to get rid of our anti-Diebold Sec of State Kevin Shelly, should be fired!) One of the things we need in '06 and '08 are INDEPENDENT EXIT POLLS (independent of the news monopolies). Pressure Dean and others for Dem funding of independent exit polls.