There have been a lot of diary entries not only about the Ohio vote, but about how we're reacting to it. These are important issues, to be sure, but let's keep our eyes also on the greater picture: Let's say that by some miracle, we manage to pull this off (and it would really take a kind of Hand-Of-God thing to do that), the question becomes "How long until they start the impeachment procedures on President Kerry?" Because you
know that's exactly what would happen. And the press would start blathering about why so many Democratic Presidents are getting impeached.
The problem is more than just voter fraud. I knew it was going to happen, we all knew it was going to happen, we knew it was going to happen after the fiasco of 2000. It's just like the whole thing about whether or not a plane hit the Pentagon. Did that happen, or did they plant a bomb? In the long run, it makes little difference because the
important thing is understanding that just knowing this isn't enough, we have to have the real political power to stop it, and we have to be patient because that kind of power takes time to build. It didn't happen for them overnight, you know.
We know who these people are, and what they're capable of. We know they don't care about the electoral process or even the idea of self-rule. We know they are either criminally negligent or intentionally allowed these events to happen so they could have the excuse they needed to do what they have been wanting to do since the Gulf War: go after Iraq. And in an even larger sense, we know they want to tear down the entire political infrastructure of the New Deal and bring us back to the days when the government was there to protect the status of those on top, not those at the bottom.
What some of us, however, don't seem to know, is that there is a way to combat this, but not by getting Kerry in office. We have to start small, from the ground up, like the GOP did years ago: Ralph Reed said that it was more important for them to control the school boards and the state and local governments than to control the White House. There are some in the Democratic Party who understand this, but there are too many (like Iowa's Tom Vilsack) who are more concerned about protecting their own little fiefdoms than in the future of the party and the country. These people need to be weeded out and replaced with people who will fight for local issues but also work towards national and global issues. That's the foundation we need to build so that when a Democratic President takes over he or she will have the organization there to support the policies. That's what happened with the New Deal.
I'm not saying we should stop fighting to get the Ohio vote overturned and get Kerry into the White House, but let's not take our eye off the ball, either. Go out and get involved in your local Democratic Party. Take some time, learn the ropes, help bring enough new people in so that you can start making a real change at the local level, and work your way up. That's a winning strategy for us, but it requires patience and determination. They knew that thirty years ago, we need to learn it now.
Let's learn from the past, concentrate on what's going on at present, and always, always, think towards the future.
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