I don’t much care for MoveOn, even though I’m a member. It’s a political action committee (PAC) and PACs are clearly the largest part of our shared political problem (MoveOn raised more than US$2 million for congressional campaigns in 2000 and more than US$3.5 million in 2002). MoveOn boasts that it champions progressive causes, but focuses solely on supporting Democrat candidates.
Over the past while, the turmoil between my heart (“go Greens”) and my head (“transplant the Shrub”) has intensified. For some time, I’ve been solidly in the Green camp that advocates our not running a presidential candidate in the 2004 election cycle. If that makes me a “light” or “chartreuse” green, so be it. I’m solidly behind Greens in local races�and I’m quite certain my home town of Saint Paul will see its first Green city council member in Elizabeth Dickinson�but Shrub has done too much damage in his tenure and simply must be replaced.
I find myself in uncomfortable alignment with MoveOn that the best way to assure that Bush is replaced is to get behind a supportable and electable presidential candidate as early in the election cycle as possible.
To that end, MoveOn is running an online primary starting Tuesday, 24 June 2003 at midnight and ending one minute before midnight on Wednesday, 25 June 2003. If more than 50% of participants (MoveOn boasts a membership of 1.4 million) prefer a single candidate, the MoveOn PAC will endorse that candidate. If a clear majority fails to emerge, the primary process will continue.
In late May, MoveOn held a straw poll to identify the leading candidates, and the following emerged as the front-runners:
- Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun
- Governor Howard Dean
- Senator John Edwards
- Congressman Dick Gephardt
- Senator Bob Graham
- Senator John Kerry
- Congressman Dennis Kucinich
- Senator Joe Lieberman
- Reverend Al Sharpton
To my mind, it’s fairly easy to narrow the field. Edwards, Gephardt, Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman can all be eliminated because they voted for the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT). Kucinich gets extra credit for having voted against it. Moseley Braun says she wants to let it “expire by its own terms.” Dean says he’ll “repeal those parts of the Patriot Act that undermine our constitutional rights.” Sharpton wants to “revisit” the issue and draws parallels to J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO. I’m by no means a single-issue voter, but I just can’t cotton any of the bobbleheads that supported this legislation. It became a litmus test for the late Senator Paul Wellstone, and I’ll be damned if I will lower my standards for the likes of this collection of spineless congressional refuse.
That leaves us with four unlikely possibles: Mosely Braun, Dean, Kucinich, and Sharpton. As Richard Daly, the patron saint of ballot boxes everywhere used to exhort, “Vote early; vote often.”
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