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Even if either Kerry or Bush wins big and the other concedes the election on November 2nd, it will only be by luck that Amerika did not face the ultimate humiliation as a banana republic for the whole world to see. Florida in 2000 was bad enough, but the fact that given four years, Amerika cannot arrange fair elections is utter self-condemnation and proves that MIM was correct all along that the u$a was never a free country.
In 2004, we have already seen enough to know that as of now, Amerika is a banana republic. It brings into question basic bourgeois fairness--whether we can really believe JFK won in 1960 or Nixon in 1968, two other close elections. 2004 is exposing many problems in the electoral system, and if we have those problems now, we likely had them then too.
Up till the last minute, Democratic Party activists have tried to block Ralph Nader from running for president, with the kind of weenie technicalities we expect from the Republican Party. It appears that some Democrats signed Nader petitions with false names, so that they could go to the court system and get Nader kicked off the ballot. Nader said it was: "''the most disgraceful, fascistic practices in the modern history of the Democratic Party.''(1) We do not back Nader for president, but while reminding Nader of all the fascism abroad that the Democratic Party backed while he was still a Democrat in his glory years of the late 1960s and early 1970s, we do back Nader completely on this point.
The public is used to seeing the Republican Party as the fascist suspect. KKK leader David Duke ran on the Republican ticket in Louisiana for Senate and governor. He won 60% of the white vote and only lost because 30% of Louisiana voters are Black.(2)
Since oppressed nationalities vote heavily for Democrats, it is lately the Republican Party that has received the mantle from the bad ole' days in which the KKK challenged voters at the voting booth with violence. Now the Republicans are trying to come up with excuses across the country to stop voting. A court threw out a Republican challenge to tens of thousands of voters in Ohio for example. As we write this, the Republicans are still trying to go outside procedure to get their supporters to have the power to challenge voters at the polls in Ohio, instead of working within the system.(3) This allows known thugs or employers to show up and intimidate voters into not voting, in districts where they know most people will vote for Democrats.
While the civic level of the nation is not high enough to stop such efforts dead in their tracks, there is also an outright shortage of poll workers despite the Florida fiasco. The government agency in charge says they are 500,000 people short.(4) It goes to show that the two candidates can and did spend half a billion dollars in corporate campaigning, but the people have little interest in seeing elections run smoothly. The reason for this is as MIM has said, imperialism is a decadent system, running out of gas. No one has a clear sense of what self-interest civic high-mindedness serves.
With the labor aristocracy in charge of the leg-work, it is little wonder that elections do not come off well. People in both the Republican and Democratic Party put their parties above the process. Democrats are particularly politically dense in not realizing that by treating Nader, MIM and others poorly they are asking to have no supporters in their fight for civil rights for Democratic Party voters. They think they can carry this off with their 48% of 55% of the electorate that votes. Democrats obviously are not thinking about the stability of the democratic process.
MIM has been saying for decades: don't vote. If we had to vote, it would be for the Libertarians this time. Nonetheless, we are outraged by the Democratic Party treatment of Nader and MIM and the Republican Party treatment of oppressed nationality voters.
It is important to separate the question of the overall political system from that of the parties' fates. In some areas, the fascists do in fact overlap with the Republicans in the same organizations. Other Republicans are not fascists but monarchist-style "patriots" who would have sided with England in 1776 with their complaints of "love it or leave it" and "they don't love our 13 colonies." Monarchist and fascist ideologies end up in vote challenges, especially aimed at oppressed nationalities.
The problem today is that though the Democratic Party has the most to lose from that, it cannot fight for its own voters, because the Democratic Party is a bourgeois alliance on no sound underlying basis. In fact, the Democratic Party is in action right now tending to undercut its own voters and the system of civics inculcated in genuine believers in the system. As a result, Democrats are contributing to a slide to fascism.
At a recent public event, Democrats tried to stop the handing out of flyers opposing voting. It is also the Democratic Party bastion of Boston that is pressing charges against a MIM comrade for handing out MIM Notes outside a talk by Howard Dean.
Even on the substance of their partisanship, most Democrats arguing with MIM do not know what they are talking about. We heard that by not voting we limit our future choices. Quite the contrary, the reason Kerry voted for the Iraq War and limited our current choices is that Democrats like himself always vote for the alleged lesser evil, to the point where Kerry can vote with Bu$h. Had tens of millions of voters not voted in 2000 for Democrats because of their permanent war atmosphere contributing to fascism atmosphere, Kerry would have had to think twice about voting for the Iraq War. Rewarding Kerry now for voting for the Iraq War and co-authoring the Patriot Act only ensures that it will happen again with future Democratic politicians in future wars. In turn, the war atmosphere will contribute to more fascism and monarchism. That is the truth, but even if we were wrong, Democrats should respect the process of discussing that.
Whether by attacks on MIM or Nader, the Democrats prove their loyalty to alternating power with Republicans instead of Nader or any other third party. They claim Republicans are fascist-sympathizers and feign concern when Blacks, Latinos and elderly people cannot vote, but then they carry out a variety of cheap stunts themselves. It makes neither civic nor political sense.
MIM speaks for millions of people who do not vote but who do not want to see hypocrites cheat themselves of a fair competition. If Blacks, Latinos and other oppressed nationalities want to vote, then MIM wants to see that they can vote. Yet if the Democrats want the help of the oppressed, they need to respect the process from the discussion forum to the voting booth themselves. Instead of taking undemocratic actions against MIM, Nader and others, Democrats should take action for their party in the voting booth and take the high-road of discussion when they are not in the voting booth.
Notes:
1. http://www.boston.com/dailynews/304/politics/Nader_to_Democrats_It_s_not_ov:.shtml
2. ../mn/mn.php?issue=059
3. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/01/ohio.challengers/
4. Associated Press http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=213933