Election 2004: Remember, California, to Breathe Early and Often (tags)
Fear not, my worried friends: November 2 is almost upon us, and in a few days, it will all be over -- and I mean that in a good way. For additional calming details, read on.
Kerry's pledge to win the peace is a public plan to escalate the war (tags)
You can see now why I pine for Nixon. Running for election in 1968, he was smart enough to claim he had a secret plan to end the war, which had to remain classified. Even though he later intensified the war, he knew what people wanted to hear. He gave it to them and they bought it. It's easy to see why Kerry, in contrast, is less popular than Nixon: Kerry's pledge to win the peace is a public plan to escalate the war.
Despite the ways Kerry and his supporters might want to spin it, the Democratic nominee--like President Bush--is a militarist and a unilateralist quite willing to undermine the authority of the United Nations in order to assert American hegemony in that oil-rich region.
Gag and Bear It: Why We Lefties Have to Vote for Kerry (tags)
It’s time to face some hard realities—Nader is not going to bring us a third party, but too many votes and he could bring us Bush and the Republicans, and these days, that could mean we’re on the road to a real one-party state, not just a state with two parties that seem pretty indistinguishable.
Breaking the Principled Voter (tags)
Kerry Pursues the Politics of Fear Instead of Hope CounterPunch August 7 / 8, 2004
We strongly doubt that building democracy in Iraq will rally America (tags)
In our annual forecast we stated that the election was Bush's to lose, and he is making an outstanding attempt to lose it. Why? Because he has needlessly adopted a two-tier policy: a complex and nearly hidden strategic plan and a superficial public presentation.
If it’s war you want, vote Kerry (tags)
As the Bush administration comes under increasing fire for its decision to attack Iraq, the Democratic contender, John F. Kerry, is profiting from his perceived status as a critic of Bush’s foreign policy. A patrician grandee with a pleasing mix of liberal and patriotic views might seem to many Americans a welcome relief from the bellicose Texan with his faux swagger and his team of men who seem to have ‘military-industrial complex’ written across their menacing foreheads. But if anti-war Americans do elect Kerry for that reason, they will have duped themselves. Warmongering will be worse under Kerry than under Bush, and real peaceniks should therefore vote for Dubya.
Kerry Indicates He Would Continue Bush’s Pro-Sharon Policy (tags)
Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, who was present at a recent meeting in New York City between Kerry and 40 Jewish leaders, reported that Kerry laid "to rest a nagging concern - that relentless Democratic criticism of Bush’s foreign policy implied criticism of Bush’s closeness to Israel." This is according to Ron Kampeas in a column published in The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. The article further quotes Foxman as saying that Kerry "tried to exempt Israel from the [Democrat's] critique of Bush’s foreign policy." According to Kampeas, Foxman characterized Kerry as "agree[ing] with administration policy on isolating Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, [and] supporting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and on the security fence."