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Now I'll use it to say goodbye to John Kerry, and to clarify my thoughts.
I started out supporting Kerry as Gore's VP choice in 2000.
In 2004, Howard Dean caught my head and my heart, and gave me a reason to believe in someone and something. When Dean lost to Kerry, I was so bitter I could hardly speak, but I did my duty and switched support to our candidate.
As the campaign wore on, I found myself feeling glad that Kerry won. He's a good man, and intelligent man, a war hero and a hero for peace. By the time of the debates, I had actually became as excited about Kerry as I once was about Dean. I thought Kerry would make an excellent President. One who could undo what Bush had done.
Then we lost Florida. No problem. Florida was never in my playbook.
Then we didn't win Ohio. No problem, I thought. There are provisional ballots. Kerry will fight for those votes, man! Kerry doesn't back away from a fight!
Then, I slept, excited and confident that in the morning President elect John Kerry would be out kicking ass! I woke, played with my kids, and grinned. When I finally turned on the news, the first thing I saw was that somehow, while I slept, the world that I knew was gone.
Kerry, before a single provisional ballot was counted, had quit.
This hurts worse than the 2000 fiasco. Then, I believed that Gore fought as hard as anyone could have without igniting a chain of events that would have lead to violence. When Gore conceeded, I felt proud of him. Today, I felt only as if I were going to throw up.
I don't blame John Kerry for anything that happened leading up to November 2nd. He fought a good fight. But I will NEVER understand why he quit. His lawyers wanted him to fight, but he quit.
John Edwards seemed like he wanted to fight, but Kerry quit.
He doesn't get it, I thought. This was never about it being Kerry's chance to be President, to hold onto or to throw off if he so chose. This was OUR chance to take back our country. We trusted him to fight, and he didn't. We trusted him to die fighting, and he quit.
Then he had the nerve to ask us to work with George Bush. A man Kerry had done everything but call out as a liar. I can't do it John.
I cannot work for the badguy.
But I don't need a Daddy/President anymore either. Or a Dem party that cant define itself, except in contrast to the opposition.
That's why I'm starting out my 1000th post here to say goodbye John Kerry, you would have been great.
Now let me finish my milestone post by asking everyone who still wants to take back our country to start by taking back our party.
The Democratic Party is dead, or dying. We've suffered some serious losses in three straight elections. But the death we are facing isn't the permanent death of the grave. The Democratic Party has not been tombstoned!
We are facing the Death of 1000 Changes. It's a good death. A healthy death. A death that speaks to us saying "To live, the party must change." We can not become more like the Republicans, because the Republicans are simply better at it. Nor can we become the Green party, and be marginalized.
The strength of the Democratic party has been that we faced America and spoke the truth. At the same time, we held the far left in one hand, and the very center of America in the other. We WERE the big tent. Now, we grasp for a center that the Republicans have convinced us is several feet to the right. It Isn't, and that's why we can''t find our center. We think it to be somewhere it is not. We have lost a third of our strength.
So we hide the hand holding the far left behind our back, thinking this will make our struggle for a lost center believable, we lose another strength, for we no longer face an America and speak the truth.
Please. Help us.
I'm going to get some WATER
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