[Peace-discuss] Hedges: only a candidate who calls for an immediate end to the war...

[Stuart Levy]

On Fri, Aug 01, 2008 at 12:15:59PM -0500, Karen Medina wrote:
> > Nader/those foolish enuff to vote for him enabled Bush to assume the presidency!
> 
> 
> No, no, no. The guilty parties are all those that vote FOR Bush/Cheney. 

It's to our national shame that it was even close enough, in 2000 or
especially in 2004, that either Nader or electoral chicanery could
push Bush over the top both times.  It shouldn't have been close.
*Especially* not after the Bush administration had led us into war.

Still the votes Nader drew tilted the table enough to get Bush in in 2000,
even as Ross Perot's gave enough of an edge to get his father out in 1992.
So yes, I think he deserves some blame.  But primarily the blame lies with us,
collectively as US citizens, no matter how we individually voted.


As for the "there's no difference" line -- no, I don't believe that either.
Remember one of Bush's first actions in office after 2000: the Global Gag Rule,
which has hamstrung support for all sorts of reproductive health work around the world,
and which still stands.  With Gore we would not have had that.  Public health is
less dramatic than warmaking but it affects the lives and deaths of vast numbers of people.

Nor would we now have a Supreme Court that rules that, if an employee can't
prove within six months of a pay decision that they're being inequitably paid,
then they have no legal basis to complain.

Nor would we have seen the almost-successful-abolition of what one senator (Trent Lott?)
actually called the "death penalty" -- er, that is, the tax on estates of very wealthy people.

The Democrats are not doing what we want, and we need other parties and other forces
to put pressure on them and on politicians in general, but they are not the same
as today's Republicans.