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No, Senator Kerry, We Won't Get Over It, A Personal Commentary from the Chair of the Draft Gore 2004 Movement
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BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
by
Monica Friedlander, Chair, Draft Gore 2004 (http://www.draftgore.com)
As the nation prepared to celebrate her heritage of freedom last week, Senator John Kerry offered his own peculiar take on the meaning of democracy: "Stop crying in your teacups," he told an audience in response to outcries about the stolen election of 2000. "Get over it!" ("He is impatient with Democratic oratory about the 'stolen' election," a July 2 article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer noted.)
Get over it? We’re talking about one of the most sacred rights of a free society here, Senator, not about getting over a bad hair day. Americans have died to secure our freedoms -- including your right to run for office and our right to have our vote counted. If we believe that right was violated when the Supreme Court refused to count legal votes, it is our patriotic duty to say so.
Kerry's remark is an eerie echo of the Republican refrain of 2000 to "move on, get over it!" But why would a Democrat feel so threatened by people’s vivid memories of the stolen election that he felt compelled to lecture a crowd about it?
For two and a half years the establishment has engaged in a conspiracy to erase from the nation's consciousness one of the ugliest chapters in the history of American democracy. Yet the brainwashing did not work. People are still not getting over it.
How dare Kerry ask us to hide our heads in the sand -- especially when he never raised his voice against the Bush takeover in the first place, just as he never took a stand against anything of any consequence that George W. Bush has done since? Where was his outrage when Katherine Harris picked and chose at will the votes to be counted in Florida? Or when we learned that registered voters were denied their right to cast their ballots? Or when the Supreme Court voided 51 million votes in what's supposed to be the greatest democracy on Earth?
Meanwhile, Kerry rival for the nomination, Joe Lieberman, wrote in his latest fundraising appeal, "My mother likes to say I was elected Vice President. I was just never sworn in." Never mind that in 2001 Lieberman claimed that Al Gore "lost." Now he would rather we remember. Better late than never.
But Kerry is not only denying that the wrong person is in the White House, but he bashes the victims of the stolen election -- the robbed voters -- for daring to remember! Well Senator. Kerry, we are not getting over it. And we are not crying in our teacups, but doing something about it.
This is to a large extent what Draft Gore is all about. It is not just about Al Gore, but about the right of free citizens to take charge of their political destiny and reclaim the vote that was stolen from them two and a half years ago. It is also about the right of the voters, not the party, to decide who should represent them.
Al Gore is not the main victim of the 2000 election. We are. Gore was robbed of his right to serve. But we, the American electorate, lost our vote, our president, and ultimately our belief in the integrity of our democracy. And we are not getting over it.
If rattling those skeletons in our nation's closet means focusing on the past instead of the future, so be it. It's been said that it is the doom of mankind to forget, and throughout history people have dedicated their lives to preventing future generations from forgetting evils of the past. Just ask Holocaust survivors. For more than half a century they have asked but one thing: that we REMEMBER.
And that's why Draft Gore is here: because we will not forget, we will not forgive, and we will not move on until the truth about who really won in 2000 is at least addressed, if not rectified. And no candidate other than Al Gore can do that. People are not afraid of a rematch. They would welcome it. They did not get over it.
Draft Gore is a grassroots movement to nominate Al Gore -- against Gore's alleged wishes, if need be. To be sure, the movement is about far more than an election gone awry. We believe Al Gore is the most qualified candidate, the strongest leader the Democratic Party has to offer, and the only one who can defeat George W. Bush in 2004.
But even all this could be set aside under different circumstances in deference to Gore's decision to heed his party's call to bow out. But not now. Nominating anyone but Al Gore would legitimize the Supreme Court selection of George Bush and say it's OK to overrule the will of the people in America of the 21st Century.
Most likely this is the top reason why Al Gore still leads all declared candidates by an almost unprecedented margin -- 40% to 7%, according to the most recent Time/CNN poll. This is a lead normally enjoyed by an incumbent president. And Al Gore has it because to millions of Americans he is just that.
In this sense, Draft Gore speaks not just to Gore supporters, but to our shared sense of justice undone and our commitment to right the big wrong of 2000. Millions of Americans know the truth, and they are not getting over it, Mr. Kerry. And it would be nothing short of unpatriotic for them to not stand up for the values our forefathers died to defend.
A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
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