By Dennis Loo
“Take it from me, elections matter,”
Gore said
on June 16, 2008 while endorsing Obama.
“If you think the next appointments to our Supreme Court are important, you know
that elections matter. If you live in the city of New Orleans, you know
that elections matter. If you or a member of your family are serving
in the active military, the National Guard or Reserves, you know that
elections matter.
know that elections matter. If you’ve lost your job; if you’re struggling
with a mortgage, you know that elections matter.”
To which I would add:
If elections matter and they decide public
policy, then why didn’t you, Al Gore, fight harder in 2000 when the
election which you won was stolen? Why didn’t you call upon your supporters
to march on the Supreme Court and demand that the vote count be continued
and that all the votes be counted?
If elections matter, then how come John
Kerry didn’t fight harder in 2004 to make sure that the votes were counted,
and why did he give up even though he actually won
the election?
If elections matter and you want your
vote to count, how come the Democrat-controlled Congress in 2007 decided
that it wasn’t going to do anything about the hackable electronic voting
machines until at least 2010?
If elections matter, then why hasn’t
the 2006 mid-term election that gave the Democrats back the majority
in Congress produced any of the changes that people thought they were
voting for when they voted for Democrats? How come the war goes on,
the torture continues, the spying on all of us persists, and another
war – on Iran this time – is on the immediate horizon?
If elections matter, then how come the
Democratic Party won’t listen to majority sentiment that demands impeachment
and an end to the war?
If elections matter, how come Sen. Barack
Obama, elected to serve the people and the Constitution, doesn’t understand what “high crimes and misdemeanors”
are, how the Bush regime has exceeded the impeachment standard by leaps
and bounds, and how come Obama won’t do anything NOW about a president
and vice-president who are flagrantly and repeatedly violating the law,
carrying out invasions based on lies, threatening to do it again
any week now, and who have admitted torturing people?
If elections matter, then how come we
always hear it said: “Vote. It doesn’t matter who you vote for.
Vote.” How come it doesn’t matter who we vote for?
Dennis Loo is an awards winning sociologist,
co-editor of Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney,
Cal Poly Pomona Associate Professor of Sociology, WCW National Steering
Committee Member, Declare It Now originator