Hey, John Kerry! I Want My $25 Back!

by Phyllis Hasbrouck

Hey, John Kerry! I want my $25 back!

I gave it to your campaign specifically for the fight around a contested election. Your e-mail said, "In the post-election period of 2002, the Republicans had four times as much money as we did. With your donation, we'll be ready this time, with an army of lawyers prepared for any contingency." You probably raised millions from that appeal, and we figured you really meant it.

Early Wednesday morning, we heard John Edwards say "We've waited four years for this victory, we can wait another night." Later that morning, on "Democracy Now!" I heard stories that made my blood boil, about how Ohio voters were deprived of their right to vote by 10 hour lines, broken machines and late absentee ballots. I heard that the votes in Florida's cities, cast on easy-to-hack Diebold machines, were not reported until after it was clear just how big a margin Bush would need.

And then at noon you caved in and gave a concession speech. Say what?! I heard that you were under pressure from "members of (your) own party to concede for the good of the nation." What the hell is that supposed to mean?

How can it be good for our nation to be subjected to four more years of Bush? If you think that a tidy beginning to a national nightmare is more important than a messy beginning to a fresh start for America, why did you bother to run?

Why did you campaign so hard and speak so eloquently about the reign of death and destruction that the Bush gang of thieves is about to intensify, if you couldn't stand a protracted legal battle to uncover voter intimidation and fraud? I volunteered for your election for a month, putting in 78 hours on 25 days canvassing my neighbors (and many more hours calling and entering data). My house is a wreck and my family neglected. I was dead tired at the end, but I would have worked that hard for another month or more if you had led the effort to make our votes count.

You can be sure that if the Republicans had been in your position they would have fought tooth and nail to pull a victory out of defeat. Why didn't you give investigative journalist Greg Palast a million of our donated dollars to run an investigation into black box vote fraud in Florida? Why didn't you send your army of lawyers to fight for every provisional ballot in Ohio? Why did you betray our hopes?

A real leader would have organized a coordinated strategy of legal challenges, popular demonstrations in the streets and a public relations blitz to let the actual votes of the American people be counted fairly. Sound familiar? It's what the Republicans did in 2002, and it worked. I'm not suggesting that we should cheat like they did, but we would have shown an avalanche of activism in defense of the people's right to vote, if you had only led the way.

You had on your side Air America, MoveON, ACT and many more groups who would have joined the fray to make it possible, for the first time ever, to stop and reverse, and possibly rerun, a fraudulent election. Think of how glorious it would have been, how energized your millions of dedicated volunteers would have been, had they actually beaten back another right-wing attempt to steal their democracy!

Do you really believe that stuff you said about "a time for healing"? The time for healing comes after you win a battle, not in the middle of it. The totalitarian leaders of the new Republican Party will never "work in a bipartisan spirit," nor do they give a damn about "our desperate need for unity." They have left behind the old rules of civility and are marching us toward a one-party police state. You too need to leave behind old assumptions, like "When you lose an election, even if it was stolen, it isn't nice to make too big a fuss. Someone might accuse you of not being statesmanlike."

In the game of politics, it seems that the Republicans are one step ahead of us: Just as the American electorate starts to wake up to the fiscal, moral and environmental disasters the Republicans have created, presto! -- a voting "reform" brings in the magical black box voting machine, guaranteed to produce a Republican victory every time. The people's movement for real democracy needs to make paper ballots our No. 1 priority.

So goodbye, John Kerry, and send me back my $25. You obviously don't need it anymore, and I'm looking for a group that can use it