Open Letters to Presidential Candidates

The reason I voted for Nader in 2001 and support Kucinich still is that I am sick of living in a corporate fascist nation.

Why don't you call for cuts in our obscene, bloated war budget??? Why don't you demand a paper trail from those right wing voting machine manufacturers. Shall we allow another blighted election! Don't you realize that industrial hemp can't make you high but if cultivated and used, could very well save our beleaguered planet! Get with it, Kerry! We don't need the evil of two lessers again! Wake up and fight for your working and not-working people instead of the corporate masters! If you show some balls and some heart, my friends and I could support you!

peace,

Marc Smason, Seattle

Dear Ralph,

For decades you've been one of my personal heroes, and I really don't want you to mess that up by running for President this year. In 2000 I voted for you and even sent you a campaign contribution in support of your having a potential voice in public debate in a two party system that seems to have been playing good cop/bad cop instead of offering meaningful alternatives to a society run by pimps for multinational corporations.

Many of these same conditions apply in 2004, but I'm not going to support you this time because the Bush Regime has been so manifestly evil that I would like to see it rejected as resoundingly as possible, even if it means holding off for another four years before focusing on issues you rightfully want to raise (at least at the level of Presidential politics).

Personally, I feel Kerry is a puke who voted for the Patriot Act and War on Iraq, and that the best that can be hoped for with him is a major anti-Bush message, and then a Presidency that's unlikely to be any better than that of Grover Cleveland or Bill Clinton (without dysfunctional zippers). However, that would mean that in 2008 it would be possible to have a Green Party revival on a national level (against the corporate sell-outs that would be likely to happen with a Kerry administration), without the dangers of four more years of the bad cop in power instead of the lesser of evils.

One of the things that really bothers me is how much a 2004 Presidential attempt would damage your wonderful legacy. Instead of thinking of you in terms of your life-long fight against corporate hegemony, Gandhi-like personal habits to support PIRGs, and other good stuff, there are people I know who think of you as the guy who won the election for Bush in 2000 (which is crap, because Gore could have won if he was more like you and less like Bush), and now perceive you as a self-promoter who has no chance to become President (or even get the Green Party funding for the next election).

If someone like myself (who has admired you long before you got into Presidential politics) won't support you this time, you seem to be at risk of losing a lot of the respect you so much deserve. On the other hand, I appreciate your having the courage to risk that loss of respect to have anything other than good cop/bad cop corporate agendas considered in Presidential politics this year. It sure would be a lot more popular if you dropped out of this Presidential campaign and left it to the good cop/bad cop corporate pimps, but maybe it's ok to do what you can to let Ralph into the debate.

If it's looking like a Kerry landslide in November, I would prefer to write you in rather than voting for him, but I would rather have that happen in a context where you were not an official candidate for President (maybe until 2008, when it would be a matter of repudiating a badass Democrat playing good cop rather than such an obvious bad cop as Bush).

Tony Formo Seattle, WA