queerbychoice | Calling All Kerry Voters

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Calling All Kerry Voters

Quite a while back,

ksuzy made a brilliant post that I've been meaning to link to and expand upon. In it, she commented upon the massive civil uprising of protests against Bush, and how:

. . . as hated as Clinton was and is by many Republicans, 200,000 people did not show up to protest his possible re-election at the DNC in 1996. This is sociology in action happening all around us right now.

I wonder though, if Bush DID get re-elected, if it would finally trigger enough people to snap out of this false consciousness? Here's why I say this. Just two years ago, two years, when I would talk about social movements in my Intro class, and ask them what kinds of social movements they could think of, they could only name things that occurred in the 1970s and before. It's not that social movements aren't occurring all the time, but they are essentially ignored by the mainstream media (at least gay rights was until the Supreme Court decision summer before this one). The students perceived these things happening as kind of sideshows, as just marginalized people participating in occasional demonstrations and that social movements were "over" and not "trendy." The students on the South Oval who held demonstrations against sweatshops were just something to shake your head at.

Now, just two years later, we have hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of New York City and San Francisco and Chicago and Washington D.C. and it's a big deal when the news stations cover it, when 800 groups are involved in protesting our current president's actions, when half the country literally is opposed to actions taken by the current administration, particularly in terms of war, but also in terms of jobs, health care, civil rights, and free speech.

Two hundred thousand people, adults, are taking time out of their lives, their jobs, their schoolwork, to march, sing, hand out flyers, talk to people, talk to the media, hold up pictures of their loved ones, and tell their stories.

Are the reasons why these protests are occurring going to go away if Kerry gets elected? No. Because Kerry's not promising to end the war, or offering any solutions except bringing in other countries. He wants to increase the minimum wage over the course of three years to a rate that is still below what a living wage would be in most large cities. He wants to insure more Americans, but many would still go without health insurance. In addition, Kerry has no stated position on the war on drugs so we can probably assume that will be business as usual, and Edwards is pro-death penalty, despite its racist application and his running mate's desire to be "the second black president."

Granted, many of the economic issues are not Kerry's fault.

But if Kerry gets elected, will the massive protests that are screaming out, "This will not stand!" continue?

Not likely. Because the "big bad" overt threat will be gone. And people will recede back to their quiet lives in the suburbs, leaving the "marginalized" to take on the burden for us all once again.

(Okay, I really did intend to quote only excerpts from her entry and insert ellipses in the rest, but it was so brilliant that no matter how hard I tried I couldn't bring myself to delete any of her words.)

Now, here's my number one biggest concern about the prospect of a John Kerry presidency. It's simply NOT TRUE that the mere fact that John Kerry intends to do somewhat less evil things than George W. Bush does will automatically make a John Kerry presidency better than a George Bush presidency. Rather, the amount of evil that each of them can accomplish is calculated as follows:

Amount of evil the president desires to accomplish
MINUS
Amount of angry opposition that successfully blocks the president from accomplishing what he wants to accomplish
EQUALS
Amount of evil the president successfully accomplishes

Remember, the most dramatic breakthroughs in politics have come not from people inside the system just initiating the change voluntarily, but rather from massive civil disobedience and protests such as have not been seen in America since the 1960s managing to force the system to adapt. And in an election where we have two candidates who both plan to continue the war in Iraq for at least four years (Kerry said he hoped to start removing troops after six months in office but did not expect to remove them all until after four years; Bush said it could take seven or eight years), it is absolutely vital that the antiwar protests must continue and remain energized no matter who gets elected president.

I'd like to request that you make a list of everything you can think of that you fear that Bush might do to wreck the world if he's elected. Include minor items and best-case scenario situations, not just "cause a nuclear winter" and such. Then, next to each item on the list, write down what you would probably do in protest. Be realistic - don't claim you'd go try to assassinate the president when all you'd really do is write an angry LiveJournal entry about it. Just admit that you'd write an angry LiveJournal entry about it.

Now, go through that same list and ask yourself what you would do if Kerry gets elected and does those exact same things. Ignore for the moment the issue of how he might be less likely to want to - just ask yourself whether, if he did, you'd do exactly every bit as much in protest against his doing it as you would if Bush had done it. Would your LiveJournal entry be worded every bit as angrily? Would you send letters to the exact same number of Congresspeople?

It's absolutely essential to me and to anyone who cares about preserving the antiwar protests' momentum that you must be able to answer "yes" to that question. So I have a challenge to everyone reading this who plans to vote for John Kerry (which, I gather, is the majority of people reading my journal who are eligible to vote in American elections). I'm sure that Kerry voters in turn could write their own similar challenges to third-party voters, and that's equally fair and I look forward to seeing such challenges, but I'm not the right person to write them. So my own challenge is to the Kerry voters reading this - and it's not an attack, it's actually an opportunity for Kerry voters to help win over to Kerry's side the votes of those of us left-wingers who are currently very reluctant to vote for him, by helping to reassure us that a Kerry win might not actually sap the energy of the antiwar movement like many of us fear it will. By making a pledge, you might win some votes for Kerry, and by keeping your pledge, you can help win some action for people severely dissatisfied with Kerry (who you may even be one of, despite voting for him) - so we all win.

[Poll #366263]

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I really want to be able to fill in the first bubble, but no, I cannot be 100% sure that I won't, even if only unconsciously, be something of a Kerry apologist sometimes. I've sort of been a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat all my life, and my parents are the same, and so it can be very hard for me to maintain perspective. But thank you for bringing up the point. It'll remind me -- in the event that Kerry does get elected -- that I need to make a conscious effort to look at his policies critically.

I do want to add to that, though, because it feels too depressingly deterministic: "I was raised a Democrat, so I am fundamentally incapable of identifying the flaws of Democratic candidates." I do swear, on whatever oath you want, that if Kerry becomes our next president, I won't get complacent. I will hold him to the same standards to which I hold Bush.

Use the liberal media to your advantage!

1 million people protesting Bush's policies = treason
1 dozen people protesting a Democratic president = headline news in a neutral to favorable light.

Think about it!

Heh, you might have a point there - except for the fact that I think if the protesters are protesting Kerry for not being left-wing enough, the media would just declare them to be more fringe lunatics than ever. I think protesters against Kerry would only actually get an advantage with Kerry if they were Republicans protesting that Kerry was neglecting to start a nuclear war.

Well, you have to spin it correctly. I don't think they'd like you any more for a gay rights type protest, but if you could spin it so that you were nonspecifically dissatisfied with Kerry's handling of the war, you might could get some coverage.

I'm not sure what good that would do, really, if I wasn't allowed to say anything about "PLEASE STOP BLOWING PEOPLE UP."

Amount of angry opposition that successfully blocks the president from accomplishing what he wants to accomplish
Exactly what angry opposition has successfully blocked the president from accomplishing what he has wanted to accomplish?

The Democrats in Congress aren't actually rolling over and doing tricks for him nearly as complacently now as they were a few years ago. He hasn't been able to pass Patriot II yet. Granted, this isn't a hell of a lot of an achievement, but I do think that if Bush were re-elected the public outrage might get angrier than ever.

Okay, but I fail to see how a Kerry presidency will necessarily worsen or even be equal to this situation, unless we start inserting other contingencies.

I think it depends upon where your priorities are. If your priorities include issues like health care and domestic budgeting, Kerry is going to be fairly inarguably an improvement overall. If Iraq is the only issue that you're basing your vote on, though, or if it completely dwarfs the other issues in your priorities, I can imagine Kerry being sufficiently close to Bush's policies and the outrage against Bush in a second term being sufficiently greater than the outrage against Kerry that Kerry might be at least equally as bad as Bush.

You didn't mention the environment. People tell me that Kerry would probably be better for the survival of the planet. Does Iraq dwarf that? Or is it untrue?

It's definitely true that Kerry would be better for the survival of the planet than Bush. I'm not clear, however, on how much better. For example, neither one of them is willing to join the Kyoto treaty as it stands; the difference is that Bush has walked away from it entirely whereas Kerry says he would rewrite it to "fix" its "problems," which I do not like the sound of but I haven't heard the exact details of what he considers its "problems" to be.

Iraq is also part of the survival of the planet, because the amount of depleted uranium still being dropped on Iraq on a continual basis is causing a hell of a lot of permanent radioactive contamination.

The latest CounterPunch article "Kerry and the Environment" does a pretty good job of summarizing Kerry's environmental shortcomings.

Being that Bush's evil is cumulative, I will be more angry and work harder against the Bush-in-general. I also won't have to work as hard for basic things with kerry, being that he's a democrat (oh, I hope).

I filled in the bubble today for kerry.
I can't believe I'm letting myself choose the lesser of two evils.
They're all just awful.

I'm only voting for Kerry because he's not Shrub and he's not a fundy. I definitely plan to protest whatever evils he is behind. That said, in this particular election, I fail to see how voting for a 3rd party candidate is any better than not voting. As I see it, the first step is to get the current madman out of office, then worry about other priorities.

Voting for a third party candidate sends a message to the political parties that you were not merely too lazy to bother voting, that you did get up and bother driving to the polls and merely hated both of the major candidates.

Given that I live in California, it's not as though my vote is going to decide the election outcome anyway. My vote is never going to be anything other than a statement, and I want my statement to be one on behalf of a political policy I actually wholeheartedly believe in.

Fair enough, I'd be tempted to do the same if I lived in a state that was as solidly for Kerry.

That said, in this particular election, I fail to see how voting for a 3rd party candidate is any better than not voting.

These things build slowly. Twenty years ago, the Liberal Party were in the same position in the UK. Now they're an effective third partty, with real power in many of our regional governemnts. This wouldn't have been achieved if a faithful few hadn't still regarded voting for them as better than not voting.

The UK is not the US, of course, and I'm not saying that it could happen there in the way it has here. But I think the principle stands.

Whether or not voting for a third party is better than noting for Kerry (given a basic anti-Bush stance) is a more complicate issue, but it's certainyl better than not voting at all, if you believe in the policies of that party. It is possible to take a long-term view of these things.

I think this has a lot to do with the difference between UK and American systems of government.

Very possibly - I'm less familiar with the US system than I possibly ought to be. What difference in particular were you thinking of that makes it true in the US that voting for a third party candidate is not better than not voting at all?

It's just that American presidential elections are a pretty bad place to vote third-party. As far as I know British Prime Ministers are usually just the leader of the dominant political party in Parliament, but American Presidents are elected directly by the people (well, semi-directly- there's this complicated state-based electoral congress that complicates it, but nevermind that for now). The basic problem this poses is that the President is just the one that gets the plurality of votes, and so candidates from small third parties never have a real chance of becoming President. Votes for third-party candidates are therefore mainly just "protest votes," and that's the main reason people give when they vote third party.

Now, in America, like in England, third parties do have a way better chance in local governments and even in Congress, because it's easier to find an area of people who are disaffected by the two major parties, and therefore want to vote third-party. People who are really dedicated to nurturing a third party and turning it into a more powerful, valid party therefore start with those kinds of goals. The goal is getting more and more people from that party into the upper eschelons of the government. Even then, though, the party only really has a chance of getting one of its candidate elected as President when it's gotten SO large that it has shoved one of the other two parties into third place. Whereas in England if there are three major parties, they can form coalitions to nominate a Prime Minister together.

Of course, we wouldn't need that drastic a change. All we need are instant-runoff ballots. OTOH, the two parties in power are never going to vote for anything that undermines that power.

besides, it would have to be in the form of a constitutional amendment. And we'd probably also have to abolish the electoral congress (or at least make states' electoral votes proportional, rather than all-or-nothing) in the same amendment in order for it to REALLY work...

Interestingly enough, this one friend of mine has pointed out that it's actually been mathematically proven that a perfect voting system can't actually exist (at least not when you define "perfect voting system" with pretty basic assumptions, like "more than one person's vote counts" and "adding more candidates doesn't screw up people's preference rankings" and such).

Well, it is difficult to imagine the leader of the third largest party becoming Prime Minister. This position has always been held by the leader of one of the largest two parties, even during coalitions. So I think our situation is similar to the US in that respect.

Britain and the US both share the plurality voting system, which is immensely unfair. So, whereas in Germany, for example, a party which wins 30% of the vote in parliamentary elections obtains roughly 30% of the seats, in the UK the result can be completely non-proportional, and in the last six or more elections, a party has won a majority (sometimes a large one) in Parliament on the basis of a minority (typically 42-44%) of the vote. Coalitions are very rare (since 1945 there has been only one, and it lasted less than four years).

The US is even less fair to minor parties than the UK, because it often disbars minor party candidates from running at all (disallows them access to the ballot), whereas in the UK all you need to become a candidate is ten signatures plus a modest amount of money (which is repaid to you if you win more than 5% of the vote).

I certainly see your point and it is one of my main worries. I must say though, I'm voting for Kerry, and every opportunity I get I tell people that I hate Kerry. I'm already writing angry LJ posts and bitching to my friends and co-workers about him. But I'm scared as hell that once Kerry gets elected people will stop protesting the messed up things in the status quo and I'll just be that fringe lunatic instead of one out of 200,000 (and it's really a lot more, I didn't even go to the RNC, I've got no clue how to count the many more who are fighting right now in there own way.)

I also have to express my skepticism about just how much protest has affected the Bush administration. Perhaps it's affected the Democrats... or perhaps it's just that the mind-numbing obedience the 9-11 attacks inspired in so many people is wearing off, despite Bush's best efforts. But I have yet to see any sign that Bush himself (by which I mean "Cheney and the rest of the inner circle") is (are) affected by any of this outrage.

From what I hear, since I wasn't there, Lyndon Johnson's entire presidency was disrupted due to the Vietnam protests, yet Bush has somehow managed to avoid all that through a strict programming of avoiding contact with anyone who disagrees with him. And the mainstream news and most elected officials - including Kerry - just let him get away with it; the way they present it, which is unfortunately what a lot of Americans believe, the massive nationwide and worldwide protests against the Iraq war basically amount to background noise. Maybe things would be different if it wasn't just poor people and foreigners dying in Iraq, I don't know. Or maybe it's because Bush feels he can do without the support of everyone who's appalled by his actions. If he wins, though that will only give credibility to those ideas.

That said, I wish I could vote for the top option... but I'm voting the second out of honesty, because I can't promise never to be mislead by unconscious lesser-evil sympathy. I'm guessing, though, that if I keep reading your journal you'll be doing your best to snap me out of any misleadings that should occur... right?

Bush has wanted things he hasn't been able to get. He wanted the whole 9/11 commission's inquiry suppressed. He hasn't been able to get that, and that's because the Democrats aren't as cooperative as they used to be right after 9/11, and the reason they stopped being so cooperative is that Bush's public opinion ratings in the polls came down from their previously sky-high levels.

And yes, I shall be doing my best - but then again, I get a lot of my news via left-wing sources that are also often biased to favor Kerry, so it's very hard to avoid picking up the same biased information.

Bush has wanted things he hasn't been able to get. He wanted the whole 9/11 commission's inquiry suppressed.

... so instead they just spun the 9/11 commission's inquiry. I've talked to people who honestly believed that the 9/11 commission said Bush was doing an abslutely fantastic job at fighting terror, and that Bush is the objectively correct choice if you want a president who protects us from terror. After all, nobody wants to actually read that whole thing...

Yeah, but people who believe the spin are people who find it comforting to believe the spin and are emotionally invested in doing so.

I was against the war in Iraq before it started, and ashamed of what our governments did, but I think that saying the war should end now is a little simplistic. Having started something we kind of have an obligation to see it finished. Maybe pulling foreign troops out will reduce some of the anti-american feeling in Iraq, but it could also leave the country in more of a mess while the factions continue their squabbling.

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that if I had faith that the U.S. military was actually capable of helping put Iraq back together instead of just making things worse by firing at civilians. Unfortunately I am having immense difficulty summoning any such faith.

I can't really fill in a bubble, since we all know I'm not entirely convinced of who I'll be able to stomach voting for exactly, although odds are good I'll cave under that "swing state" pressure and the notion of a Democrat being a better choice even though it's not what I personally believe. What I can say, though, is if I vote for Kerry -- or for that matter if I don't -- I will be all over organizing against the errors of his administration in a way that I wouldn't be even against Bush, because the apparent widespread idea that he's a comparative Savior figure grates on me that much.

That's the single most cheering comment I've yet received. Thank you.

I filled in the first bubble because I don't really go to protests now, so it would be hard for me to go to even fewer under Kerry. Though I went to many, MANY more protests during the Clinton administration, so it's certainly possible that Kerry in office will make me go to more.

I think of it this way- I only protest the actions of officials who haven't already discounted my opinion. Bush doesn't give a shit what us liberals think. We didn't vote for him, we never will, and, honestly, even if he didn't fuck up as awfully as he had, we still wouldn't have wanted him reelected, because, after all, we're liberals. So really, he has nothing to lose. However, when Democrats, do something we don't like, and we get pissed, they're more likely to take that seriously, since they're potentially alienating their voter base.

Moreover, recent protests get treated like mere circuses by the media. The mainstream just doesn't give a damn. I don't really know why, but I personally like to blame people who, say, come to death penalty protests and carry signs about environmentalism, or vice versa, because then people say "look, these people don't even have one coherent thing to say, they just want to march around and be angry" and write off the protesters as mere nuisances.

It's also important to note that if Kerry gets elected it's very likely that there will be a split government again - Republicans ruling Congress and a Democrat in the White House, instead of Republicans in both. If you hate both parties, it's a good idea to aim for a split government, because at least then nobody will really get anything done, which is better than the government getting a lot done, and it all being stuff you hate.

Interesting. I went to more protests under Bush (none under Clinton).

I cannot vote because I am seventeen. I am sure that in less than a year I will be exponentially more capable of deciding who should represent me at all levels of government.

It pisses me off because I've actually tried to pay attention and figure out how I feel about issues. I've been trying to figure out what school board candidates I'd like to vote for, for example, even though I can't. Because school board really DOES affect me in a way that some guy I'm never going to meet can't (although I'm GOING to be 18 within the next four years and the war is going to affect people like me and my friends and THAT'S BAD).

There were some 18-year-olds in my government class last year who were like "I think I agree with Kerry more on the issues, but I'd probably vote for George Bush because he'd be more likely to win."

WHY SHOULD PEOPLE LIKE THAT BE ALLOWED TO VOTE AND NOT ME?

i was the eighth third-party bubble filler-inner on your survey.

i will vote for leonard peltier/janice jordan (peace and freedom party) in this election.

i am not someone who is waiting around for ideas of what to protest next, and certainly not expecting kerry voters or other such democrats to refer me to issues that concern them. i think that anyone who follows the news and thinks critically about things should be able to find quite a number of issues to be outraged about at any given time. this world is so in need of repair!

on a side note, though somewhat related, i guess, i am tiring of having discussions about what are appropriate discussions surrounding any given issue, how to have these appropriate discussions, what are appropriate responses, etc. this ties in both with realizations i am having with online and real-time feminist communities and realizations i've already had with activist communities. can we just limit the talk about how we might do things and especially how we might do things without offending anyone and just DO them? can we get over this need to not offend anyone, or even worse, the need to limit a person's ability to have moral or ethical objections to something that we support?

I totally agree and had actually planning on doing so.

I saw you posted an article awhile back about some sort of corruption in refrence to Cobb. I still haven't decided with certainy if I will vote Kerry or third party. Could you give me the URL? Thanks in advance.

The article I linked to is here. Actually, the whole CounterPunch website is a good source of anti-Bush, anti-Kerry, and anti-Cobb information from a pro-Nader perspective. (For anti-Nader information you have to go elsewhere, because CounterPunch is so pro-Nader they might as well be considered his unofficial campaign newsletter.)

What about those of us who don't actually think most of the things Bush and Kerry have in common are wrong, and like the fact that the Kerry/Bush dichotomy is tricking the radical left into supporting a candidate who wants to do sensible things like aggressively pursuing the War on Terror. I'm voting for Kerry *because* it will sap the energy of the anti-war protest movement, and hopefully actually push more anti-war activists into the moderate camp. One of the reasons I don't like Bush is that Bush is *so* hardcore right-wing and *so* very very bad at courting his political opponents that he's energized the annoying far left a lot more than I or the DNC are comfortable with.

(I guess I could make just as many enemies on this list by saying I'm a Republican voting for Bush, but I prefer to be honest as well as inflammatory.)

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Calling All Kerry Voters

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I wish I could let LJ's spellchecker replace Cheney with Chewy.

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the antiwar stance

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eight is my favorite number.

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