It Almost Looked Real
By Chuck Zlatkin
http://www.rightiswrong.com/zlatkinletter.php
The protest against the alleged results of the 2004 Presidential Election can't qualify as a Santayana moment because of a technicality. This time one senator did come forth, but other than that, we were seeing history repeat itself. George W. Bush will sit in the White House because the people who represent us in Congress have certified that George W. Bush was elected legally for the second time!
I didn't vote for Bush or Kerry but I still ache when presented with this reality. I watched the show yesterday. The Black Congressional Caucus was going to challenge the election of George W. Bush on the floor of Congress on live television! (CSPAN does qualify as live television, right?) The only way we got to see them attempt this challenge in 2001 was when we watched Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 in 2004! Liberals will call that progress. At this rate an illegal presidential election will be overturned in about 200 more years. And people wonder why I'm no longer a Democrat.
I tip my hat to Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones for being the person to object and for giving a wonderful speech. She detailed how registered voteres were denied their rights as citizens to vote in the presidential election in Ohio. She reported on the irregularities that prevailed that day. She didn't use the word conspiracy once.
I also have to congratulate Barbara Boxer for being the Senator to sign on to Ms. Tubbs Jones protest which sent both houses of Congress into the legally mandated two hour session to debate the issue. It was nice to see this issue debated in Congress and shown on CSPAN, while being broadcast on Pacifica. It almost looked real.
The speeches were great theater. Sometimes I was even moved. John Lewis' impassioned speech reminded all of us that people died to get the right to vote. He showed us that we can't ignore that fact, and that it should never be taken lightly. Lewis dramatically presented the horror of what occurred in Ohio. But none of the supporters of this protest called the results of the national election invalid. They were using this forum to report the irregularities that took place and to call for study and new legislation to prevent this from happening in the future.
(Everyone who lives in a state where you are confident that the election took place legally and that the vote count was tabulated accurately, please raise your hands. That's what I thought.)
My favorite Republican speaker was Ric Keller from Florida. He was one of the people to speak of the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party. That's another reason I'm no longer a Democrat. The left wing of the party is now referred to as the Michael Moore wing. Moore was the most fervent supporter of General Wesley Clark to be the Democratic nominee. Clark, a big fan of using anti-personnel weapons and depleted uranium was the proud overseer of the School of the Americas. Wesley Clark wouldn't get my vote for dogcatcher. Voting for war criminals is unhealthy, obviously not the only weakness of the Michael Moore wing.
Now to the vote itself: A number of people were not there to vote. A few were off somewhere supposedly studying the theft of an election in the Ukraine. Maybe they were there to find out what went wrong since the stolen election was overturned. John Kerry wasn't there, because he never wanted to be president in the first place. Anyway, the Senate vote came first because they had so little to debate. The vote was 74-1 to reject the protest.
I should make one thing clear. Only Barbara Boxer voted in favor of the protest. That means that Robert Byrd, who sometimes has been the voice of conscience in the Senate on issues effecting our freedom, didn't vote in favor of the protest. That means that Hillary Clinton, with all her knowledge of what went wrong in Ohio, voted against the protest. That means that the new Black Hope, Barack Obama, in his first major vote, ignored the Black Caucus and voted for George W. Bush to be president.
In the House, the majority of Democrats voted with the Republican Majority and approved the election of George W. Bush. Are we saying that there is only one Democratic Senator capable of voting her conscience? Are they're only less than 40 members of the house who can take a principled position? Where was Ron Paul?
I'm sure Barbara Boxer knew that she was going to lose. I'm quite convinced that Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening knew that they were going to lose when they were the only two senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964. The two men voted their conscience even though the House voted unanimously in favor. Maybe that's why I remembered their names forty years late; I didn't even have to google.
Maybe the legacy of being an activist for forty years is that you learn that the number of elected officials that you could call leaders in the struggle can be counted on one finger. And you know which one.
If you've spent anytime lobbying elected officials, you know that their primary concerns are raising money for their own re-election. It is a real victory when you see that they even understand what you are talking about, let alone take a leadership position. In the case of both Gore and Kerry they didn't even show leadership qualities in their own elections!
The outcome of this election, both real and imagined, is more of a symptom than a cause of our problems. The election is the theater where we look at each other as the source of problems rather than looking up at those in power.
Conscience and courage are not too much to demand from the elected officials we put in office to represent us. We should accept nothing less.
ChuckZlatkin@yahoo.com
www.rightiswrong.com
