MoveOn.org sent out e-mails the morning of the election asking bloggers to help with the GOTV effort and, in our district, to mobilize support for Democratic Congressional nominee Jack Davis. This makes me wonder if they understand what it is that we want to move on
from.
Here are excerpts from the platform for Mr. Davis, a wealthy industrialist:
- I will fight to cancel all free trade agreements and promote balanced trade.
- I am for a strong national defense and I support the troops in Iraq. [...]
- I will not raise income taxes.
- I will spend your tax dollars as if they were my own.
- No amnesty for illegal aliens and seal the borders.
- I support elimination of the Death Tax.
Do you notice anything about, oh, say, poverty? education? civil liberties? collective bargaining? the environment? If these lacunae make you wonder whether Mr. Davis is actually aligned with any Democratic values, read on. You ain't seen nothin yet.
Under "Immigration News," you'll find this gem (emphasis mine, but the words are all his):
Our southern borders are being invaded by up to 20,000 illegal aliens daily. This adds to the army of 20 million illegals already here. How many of these illegals are terrorists? No one in Washington knows or do they seem to care.
followed prominently by a link titled "
Professor Predicts Hispanic Homeland" where an AP article (genus: xenophobic; species:fear-mongering) is reproduced:
A University of New Mexico Chicano Studies professor predicts a new, sovereign Hispanic nation within the century, taking in the Southwest and several northern states of Mexico. Charles Truxillo suggests the "Republica del Norte," the Republic of the North, is "an inevitability." He envisions it encompassing all of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and southern Colorado, plus the northern tier of Mexican states: Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. Along both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border "there is a growing fusion, a reviving of connections," Truxillo said. "Southwest Chicanos and Norteño Mexicanos are becoming one people again."
Elsewhere, Davis links to Pat Buchanan and to something called "ForTheCause.us," a group which supports the armed militias which have taken to patrolling our southern border ("Americans doing the job government won't do!"). Hey, don't take my word for it.
Under "Supporting Views," where Mr. Davis had perhaps hoped to list endorsements (there is only one: from the Niagara Falls Reporter), he ends up listing people whose views he finds compatible: Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Warren Buffet... Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan... At the bottom of the page is the boogeyman: Karl Marx says that free trade "breaks up old nationalities... [and] hastens the social revolution"! I knew it! A communist plot all along!!
Now, I'm always happy to not vote for Mr. Reynolds. The most disturbing detail about his background, to me, is that he felt moved to join the Air National Guard in 1970, the same year in which the Ohio National Guard shot and killed Kent State students protesting Nixon's invasion of Cambodia. Mr. Reynolds' website notes (coyly) that he was "educated" at the Springville-Griffith Institute and Kent State University (prudently refraining from claiming that he actually earned a college degree). Had Mr. Reynolds already dropped out and signed up when his classmates were shot to death?
On the assumption that Mr. Reynolds signed up for the Guard in order to avoid being drafted, rather than because he found this outrage motivating, I still have to ask whether, for example, he wrote a letter protesting the shootings. Did he rethink his enlistment? Go back down to Ohio for the funerals of his slain classmates? Did he pull his pastor aside and say he felt conflicted? Or was he already practicing that handy discreet silence with which he greeted news of Congressman Foley's criminal behavior?
On Tuesday, I again exercised my right to not vote for Mr. Reynolds. But it disappoints me that MoveOn and the Democratic Party expected people who object to Mr. Reynolds to be able to vote for Mr. Davis. How in the world did this admirer of Pat Buchanan and supporter of border militias become the endorsed Democratic candidate? Not just this year, but in the previous election cycle as well? More to the point, how can our leadership appeal to me to support him on moral grounds?
MoveOn should take Howard Dean's message to heart. If we want to govern, we must have a plausible and honorable candidate in every race in every part of the country. The time has passed when people of conscience could be pressured into voting for morally repugnant candidates just on the strength of their (alleged) party affiliation.
And that's because, precisely, we've moved on.