Voters Still Have the Power

I wrote last week about my decision to cut off support for John Kerry. I'm writing now to advocate that all voters take it a step further. I don't know how many people remember Howard Dean's early campaign video, advocating everyone giving $20 in order to help defeat the large corporate-sponsored candidates. I've decided to cease any giving to the Democratic National Committee. There have been too many instances this year of them railroading candidates who had popular support but who they couldn't fit into their one-size-fits-all mold. Paul Hackett, my personal hero, had the rug viciously pulled out from under him in his bid for Ohio's open Senate seat earlier this year by the same people (Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid) who had encouraged him to run in the first place. They wanted him to enter the Congressional race instead, despite the fact that he had promised the people in those races that he would not interfere. Likewise, in the Florida race for Katherine Harris' old seat, the all-knowing Dems decided to back Christine Jennings instead of Jan Schneider, who in 2004 held incumbent Katherine Harris to the smallest margin of any House of Representatives election in the State of Florida. Jennings had a personal fortune to put behind her campaign, while Schneider has a large grassroots organization dedicated to hers. I'm not naive enough to think that you don't need money to run a successful campaign, or that the ability to raise money doesn't indicate a better organization, but knowing that in both these races there are pre-existing candidates with proven track records and large bases of support, and especially in Hackett an amazing candidate with a candor reminiscent of Howard Dean, it looks to me like the Democratic leadership is once again looking for the status-quo, and we all know how well that worked out last time.

Today the two most prominent leaders in the Democratic party are John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. They may be the party favorites for the 2008 presidential race, but as Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos explains in today's Washington Post Editorial, they are the two worst possible candidates we could have. If voters want to be able to vote for a candidate they believe in, now's the time to come out in support of the people WE want. A good start, IMHO, would be supporting PACs that have more than petty political favoritism as their criteria for candidate selection. I really like the goals of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America PAC, who are dedicated to supporting qualified candidates who are veterans of America's current wars. I firmly beleive that getting candidates who appeal only to big corporate sponsors is the real goal of the two major political parties. They don't care about supporting candidates who have the backing of regular Americans, because regular Americans can't offer them lucrative consulting contracts upon their exit from office. Regular Americans can't fly them to meetings where they'll discuss the trade imbalance over an 18 hole game of golf. The American people are no longer their core constituency, and I submit that's partially because we haven't understood our primary role to be financial donors. That's exactly where I think this political game is going, however. If Americans want to be taken seriously by the political machines, we need to start pony-ing up the cash. Don't just blindly give it to the powers that be, though. Find the races run by the mavericks (and I don't mean those mavericks famous for eating their salad with a spoon) and give them $25. If we all do our part, we become a powerful force for change. In today's world, the voters' primary role has moved from voter to financeer. That may seem like a bum rap, but if we suceed in electing people who care about America more than Carribean golfing trips, maybe we can get a public financing law to pass. That would restore the voter's role to voting, and strip corporations of their ability to run our country. We have the power, we just need to use it.

Tags:
Voting, Democrats, Veterans, 2008, Politics, Campaign Finance Reform, Election, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, DNC