Since the morning of Nov. 3, I have watched as innumerable liberals have gone to great lengths to make known their displeasure with the results of last Tuesday's election returns. From sidewalk chalkings with an expletive printed before \Ohio"" to commentators complaining about working-class voters casting their ballots on cultural issues rather than economic ones, there is an overwhelming tendency for the blame to be placed on Republican voters.
Yet all this vile hatred of Republican voters is self-destructive. Though my own politics are radically left of even the leftmost Democrat, both my parents are Republicans who voted for Bush. I do not think they are bad people. I genuinely believe most Republican voters are decent, principled and intelligent people who care about their communities and the world at large.
Now the punditocracy in the corporate media is trying to divide the United States into a culture war of red states vs. blue states. It is a sad remark on the Democratic Party that it's falling for this fallacy. To make things worse, many activists who should know better are buying into it too. One friend even went so far as to suggest that the blue states should secede from the union, so the red states will stop using our tax dollars and giving us corrupt politicians, and finally have to face the dire consequences of their misguided voting behavior without burdening those of us who see through the Republican fa??ade.
This mode of thinking is a trap. The supposed culture war is an illusion being created by the ruling corporate elites. It is being imposed on us by those waging a one-way class war against the working class and people of America. ""But shouldn't that be the perfect reason to vote Democrat? These people voting Republican are too dumb to realize it!"" the liberals might respond.
Quite the contrary. The Democrats are part of this system, and have given every reason to vote Republican by running an elitist, corporatist, message-less campaign. Bush did not win the election despite Kerry and the Democrats, he won it because of them! Rather than offering a popular agenda of workers' rights, ending corporate welfare, major electoral and campaign finance reform, raising the minimum wage to a living wage level and running hard against the war in Iraq, a war which he should not have voted for to begin with, Kerry presented himself as simply ""anybody but Bush."" Kerry's campaign legitimized the corporate agenda, rather than criticizing it and offering an alternative.
Indeed, the decision to invade Iraq turned out to be unpopular a year after the fact, and most swing voters actually considered themselves antiwar voters-they simply believed that Bush was better suited to finish the job and end the war. They, like many Kerry voters, were only voting for the lesser of two evils. In fact, Kerry's proposal to send 40,000 more troops abroad and ""stay the course"" was actually more hawkish than Bush's plan of just ""staying the course.""
But despite all this, the sheep-like liberals continue to think that in order to stop the corrupt corporate reactionaries currently sitting in the White House, we must work to elect Democrats. It is precisely this attitude which allows these fascists to hold onto power to begin with. There are two sides to every issue-the side of the people and the side of rulers. Despite appearances to the contrary, when push comes to shove, the Democrats are usually on the side of the rulers. They always have been and always will be. This party is a far bigger impediment to progress than the Republicans.
It is absolutely imperative that progressives make a clear break from the Democratic Party and its minions in the liberal corporate media, because it is holding us back in ways we don't even realize. Then and only then can we begin the work of fighting corporate power, empire and social injustice while capturing the support of working-class Republicans who are unknowingly voting against their own class interests. The Green Party is the electoral arm of this growing citizens movement for social and political change. We are the true resistance to the Republican agenda, being deeply involved with the peace movement, campus anti-tuition campaign, organized (and unorganized) labor and innumerable social justice causes.
Rather than wasting energy capitulating to corporate Democratic campaigns which do not really share our values, and have proven themselves time and time again to be ineffective mediums for change, progressives must build independent popular grassroots movements to demand democratic change from the entire corporate-driven political system as a whole. If we can do that, it doesn't matter one bit which Republicrat sits in office, because we will be on the people's side and they will be on ours. Nothing can defeat us then.
