Friday, July 8, 2011

To Eli and His Ilk: Let's Draft a Progressive

Perhaps because it's my ox they're goring, propriety requires me to remain silent on Dr. Kidglove's obscene plan to slash Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Fuck propriety.

The crowning glories of the New Deal and the Great Society, these social programs have done more to improve the quality of life for more people than any other act of government in United States history.

What kind of buffoon cannot see the difference between tax money spent to improve the quality of life for American citizens,  and tax money spent to kill imaginary enemies abroad, at the cost of thousands of young American lives as well?

Ans.: virtually every damned buffoon we've elected to office in Washington.

The corporations who profit from this buffoonery, thanks to the Supreme Court Gang of Five, will lavish filthy lucre on the same buffoons, and worse ones, to perpetuate our endless war on innocents, including the American poor and middle classes.

The media buffoons will lie and distort to equate the madness with patriotism; they will continue to refer to the money spent making illegal wars as "defense spending;" they will continue to "report" that our national deficit must be reduced by taking away Grandma's meals on wheels, arthritis medication and government-subsidized hip replacement surgery.

Kidglove/Obama has betrayed millions of people who voted for him.  His campaign statements cautioning against too much executive power to make war without consulting Congress were outright lies.  He scuttled true health care improvement behind our backs before legislation had even been drafted.  He has redoubled his predecessor's worst transgressions against civil liberties and human rights.  He is a disaster.

The spineless "leaders" of his party, and its members of Congress, are incapable of standing up to the corporatocracy that pulls his strings because they, too, are owned by the planet rapers, the makers of deadly weapons, the profit-gorged masters of greed on Wall Street and the compliant ignoramuses of Main Street.

"Liberals" have become pariahs in our oligarchy.  The progressive intelligentsia surveys the political scene and, with a resigned sigh, says there's no choice in sight in 2012 so we just won't vote.

Yet it was far-sighted young people like Eli Pariser of MoveOn who realized the potential of the internet as a political force.  They were highly instrumental in forging Kidglove's successful presidential campaign.  Now they can, if they choose, give progressives an alternative: a Draft-a-Progressive campaign on the internet.

Even without the internet, Eisenhower backers were able to conduct a successful write-in campaign for Ike in the Republican primaries of 1952.

The savvy tekkies of today surely could devise a successful internet campaign to Draft a Progressive.  Then, assuming the draftees consented, they could wage a write-in campaign in the 2012 general election for president and vice-president.

The progressive draftees wouldn't win.  But it would give progressive voters a voice.  Hawaii and eight other states, mostly in the south and west, prohibit write-in votes for President.  Most of the others require some paperwork, often including a list of electors who would represent a winning write-in candidate in the electoral college.  States like Iowa, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont make it relatively easy to run a write-in campaign.

What have we got to lose?  An election?  Hell, we lost the last one, but didn't realize it until after Kidglove had already been sworn in.

Oh, rueful day.