President Bush returned to Power. Time to learn from history and work towards Peace

by votenader - Nader For President 2004 Thu Nov 04, 2004 15:11 P.O. Box 18002 - Washington, DC 20036

Immediate Need for Peace Movement to be Re-activated
Time for Progressive Populists to Stand Up For the Interests of the People
Washington, DC: Independent Presidential candidate Ralph Nader, commenting on the results of the election, stated that, “November 2 is not the end, it is a new beginning. The challenge to the two-party system that is choking political expression and response in the United States will continue and grow. If the parties want to continue losing significance in attending to the country’s necessities, they need only continue to place the interests of Big Business before the interests of the people.”

“The re-election of George Bush would not have occurred had the Democrats stood up for the needs of the American people. Tens of millions of Americans have been left out of the political process because their needs are being ignored. Many of these people did not even bother to vote because they feel unrepresented, others ended up voting against their own personal interests for George Bush because of the absence of clear attracting policies by the Democrats. As the votes are analyzed we will find that significant percentages of union members, low-income earners, seniors and women will have voted for the president. These people voted against their interest because the Democrats did not put their interests on the table and issues like gay marriage, abortion and guns swayed them,” said Nader.

“It is now urgent for the peace movement to be re-awakened. They have sidelined themselves in this election by their silent support for a candidate who has become aggressive on the war. The U.S. is on the verge of a major offensive in Fallujah that will result in mass civilian deaths and, likely, lead us further into a civil war behind a puppet government against the resistance to U.S. occupation. There is no time to delay in order to protest the intensification of the Iraq occupation. The time to act was yesterday,” said Nader. “Not only is the Iraq war an illegal, fabricated one, but it is draining the resources needed to deal with the necessities of the American people.”

“The straitjacket of the political duopoly needs to be broken. This campaign exposed the ballot access barriers that confront all third party and independent candidates as well as the potential for anti-democratic activities as a result of the complex costly web of ballot laws. The Presidential debates this year, with their 32 pages of rules, showed how the Commission on Presidential Debates is an extension of the two parties that is designed to not allow voters to hear diverse views. It is time to challenge the shared monopoly of the two parties at every level and to do so consistently,” said Nader adding, “There needs to be one federal standard for ballot access to federal ballots, not fifty difference state standards plus D.C.”

The civil liberties movement in the United States needs to do some soul searching in reaction to this election. They remained silent while the rights of millions of voters to vote for their candidate of their choice were being trampled on. Civil liberties are for all voters, not just voters with whom civil liberties groups agree. If this is not faced up to, the civil liberties community will have reduced credibility.

by pc Thu Nov 04, 2004 15:38

you better change that mr votenadar?

by righteous pragmatist Thu Nov 04, 2004 15:44

You aint seen nothing yet!
John Kerry ran on trashing our troops, raising taxes, abortion on demand, and gay marriage. Hard to believe he lost.
Now that the senator has officially conceded and President Bush is returning for a second term, here is what to watch for:

Foreign policy will dominate the agenda. Front and center: pacifying Iraq, containing a newly nuclear North Korea, and keeping Iran from building, buying, or stealing their own nuclear weapons. This won't be easy. Americans at the moment don't have the stomach for a war with Iran, but it may be necessary. How else can the White House stop Tehran, especially with Moscow helping the mullahs build nuclear power plants for supposedly "peaceful purposes"? Another crisis is also brewing in the Middle East: Yasser Arafat's days are numbered. The health of the 75-year-old godfather of the Palestinian movement is in serious decline, and various radical factions are jockeying to replace him when he passes from the political scene. The worst-case scenario may also be the most realistic: a Palestinian civil war that could doom the peace process, result in a bloodbath on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, threaten Israeli security, and even unleash a wave of Palestinian suicide bombers headed for the United States if Hamas leaders join forces with Al-Qaeda. Let's not kid ourselves. Round Two in office for President Bush could be dramatically more difficult than Round One.

The battle for judges is on. Will even a larger GOP majority in the Senate — including intensely pro-life evangelicals like John Thune of South Dakota and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma — be enough for President Bush to get his federal judges confirmed? How soon will Chief Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist step down? How many other High Court nominations will Bush get to make? You thought the battle for Baghdad was intense. You ain't seen nothing yet. Watch for shell-shocked Senate Democrats to launch a political jihad to stop the president from reshaping the courts for the next generation.

Musical chairs will begin in the Bush Cabinet. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge will likely be among the first to announce he's stepping down, with Asa Hutchinson as the leading contender to replace him. But will there be a mass exodus? What will Colin Powell do? Will Condoleezza Rice replace him? Where will Rumsfeld go next?

Democrats will eat themselves alive. The battle to define why John Kerry lost is about to begin. Moderates will argue Kerry was too liberal. The Ted Kennedy-Howard Dean-Michael Moore-Al Franken faction will argue Kerry wasn't liberal enough. Watch for the president to reach out to New Democrats like Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, who won Tuesday night in a landslide. Could Bayh become the new Zell Miller?

More tax cuts are coming. That's almost certain. But there could be more. President Reagan made sweeping tax reform the centerpiece of his second term. President Bush talks highly of Russia's 13 percent flat tax, and aides hinted during the campaign that tax simplification is on the docket. Is the White House ready to fight for a simple, fair, 17 percent flat tax? Done right, it would unleash annual economic growth of 5 percent or more and send the stock market into the stratosphere. And the president would find tremendous grassroots support.

Whither Social Security reform? President Bush deserves great credit for making personal retirement accounts for younger workers a part of his agenda since the 2000 general election campaign. He's never backed off. He's just been looking for the right time. This is it. Watch to see whether renowned Chilean Social Security reformer Jose Pinera gets invited to the White House for a private chat, as he was invited to Austin in 1999 when then-Gov. Bush began to consider the issue.

The 2008 presidential race begins. Watch for Hillary Clinton to give a speech in Iowa in January. But if Kerry couldn't steal any southern or midwestern Red States from the GOP, could another northeastern liberal do so next time around? And to whom will Republicans turn in 2008? Rudy Guiliani, Bill Frist, Tom Ridge, and Jeb Bush are interested. Do they have star power for a national campaign? Will the president directly or indirectly anoint a successor?

CBS News will dump Dan Rather. If CBS execs are smart, they'll dump Dan Rather and raid Fox News personnel such as Brit Hume to rebuild. Better yet, give Rush Limbaugh a weekly prime-time or Sunday show and see ratings and revenues go through the roof.

by pundit Thu Nov 04, 2004 18:35

Good analysis of US Presidential Election result from WSWS:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/elec-n03_prn.shtml

Exerpt:

"The election was less a victory for Bush than a colossal, historic defeat for the Democratic Party. In the midst of an unpopular war, massive job losses, declining living standards, growing poverty, a series of corporate corruption scandals alongside huge tax breaks for the rich, the Democrats have proven themselves unable to oust an administration that was installed by undemocratic means and viewed by half the population as illegitimate, and has since been caught in monstrous lies. Kerry and his party were unable, despite the mass opposition to Bush, to expand their social base of support and make serious inroads in the working class electorate."

by Iosaf ipsiphi Thu Nov 04, 2004 19:44

in BCN said they had voted Democrat. The president of Catalonia said he believed Kerry would win. The food was terrible.

Bush is different now.

Today's english language newspaper in Europe's most leftwing city carried two opinion pieces from Democrat supporters typical of the ex-pat American community in Europe who overwhelmingly voted against Bush. The "tell me it aint so" bottom line, was that the shopping malls of middle America will never "bounce to the hip hop of "vehicular bombings" but Europe's cities as already demonsrated from Madrid to Istanbul are going to.
The fact that few americans of merit are now attracted to political office and instead the White House is administered by only those of select industrial complex lobbies, which undermine even the values of honest and good commerce (as best illustrated by the Halliburton and Enron scandals) was also driven home.
Europeans on the mainland at least got it wrong. The leader of the Catalan opposition who last year lost to the tripartite was heard to observe at the US Consul that the youth vote would surely rout Bush. Europeans got it very wrong.
We may hear and read in all the media of the EU the echo of one of the few proverbs that is understood in the languages we speak here-
"Better the Devil you know than the one you don't".
Unfortuantely, those 51% of those who voted and did so for Bush don't really know the Devil from the Deep Blue Sea which keeps us in Europe so close to them
and they in the USA so far away from us.

The final impression is that Bush is tailor made by the Republican lobbies to "win elections" in the Reagan popularist model, and rather than asking why did Bush win we ought to ask "how did Kerry get over 40% of the popular vote?" Because the Lurch, that ungainly husband to a ketchup heiress, the son of New England Mass. really isn't the type for cowboy boots, talking the talk, and saying Fuck Off to Old Europe.

Which they just ineffect did. Someday Europe which is every country (regardless of state) very very Old, will say Fuck off to the USA.
But before that Bush will enter the history books as quite an extra-ordinary marionette and really much more interesting and complicated than many of us ever wagered to think.

by nadervoter Thu Nov 04, 2004 23:02

http://www.votenader.org/why_ralph/index.php?cid=13

by titandgrbl Tue Nov 09, 2004 17:29

Well, they've gone and done it, they wanted him, they got him, and heres the rub, they deserve him!
They deserve everything they get. including Bush, his economic 'reforms', his war, his lies, his contempt even for his own people,
I will never again apologise for sneering at my american cousins.
Any and every struggle against america is justified.
In four years time the ship of fools will have certainly run aground, only complete and certain disaster will teach that idiot nation its lessons. The true tragedy is how many of the rest of the worlds peaceful citizens will be hurt by Amaricas headlong rush towards the rapture. Ha.. 'Bring it on' indeed.

by barry Wed Nov 10, 2004 00:52

They shall undoubtedly reap what they sow. A friend of mine shifted an American bird a few weeks ago and was speaking to her on the phone about Bush being re-elected. She was glad because "he had kept them all alive for the past 4 years" (she's 18 yrs of age)Thats what most of them seem to think. They are all as mad as hatters and an absolute menace. Providing the worlds still in one piece 4 years from now they'll probably elect Arnold Schwarzenegger the next time.