Gmail - [Bethlehem_Neighbors_for_Peace] [Fwd: "Why I Voted for the ... http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=9dbe21f0de&view=pt&search=in...

Andy Arthur <andyarthur.org@gmail.com>

1 message

jlombard@nycap.rr.com <jlombard@nycap.rr.com> Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 10:33 AM

Reply-To: Bethlehem_Neighbors_for_Peace@yahoogroups.com
To: "Bethlehem_Neighbors_for_Peace: yahoogroups.com" <Bethlehem_Neighbors_for_Peace@yahoogroups.com>,
"bethlehemneighborsforpeace@yahoo.com" <bethlehemneighborsforpeace@yahoo.com>, nysnet
<nysnet@yahoogroups.com>

---- Mike Keenan <mikekeenan@pefencon.info> wrote:

>
>
> ---------------------------- Original Message
> ----------------------------
> Subject: Fw: Hmmmm.....
> From:
> "Stan Byer"
> Sober - and let me say from my perspective,
> accurate - reflections from the Bay State.
> Clipped
> by a PEF/encon member.
>
>
> Don't Waste Your Vote!
> Why I Voted for the Republican in Massachusetts
>
>
> By JOHN V. WALSH
>
> "Get off your butts,&rdquo; implored Boston Democrat
> Mayor &ldquo;Mumbles&rdquo; Menino. Thus spake the inarticulate
> mayor at the desperate rally featuring Barack Obama last Sunday before the
> special Senate election in Massachusetts. Mumbles was savvy
> enough to recognize that the Democratic base in Massachusetts, the only
> state to vote for George McGovern, was deeply disappointed in Obama and
> the Democrats.
>
>
>
> Why did I vote for
> Republican Scott Brown? It took some persuasion. In the end
> it was my Democratic Party friends and activists who convinced me.
> Let me explain. It was clear that the special Senate election in
> Massachusetts was a referendum on Obama and the Democrats who control the
> entire federal government &ndash; Congress and the Presidency.
>
>
>
>

1 of 4 1/26/2010 10:51 AM
Gmail - [Bethlehem_Neighbors_for_Peace] [Fwd: "Why I Voted for the ... http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=9dbe21f0de&view=pt&search=in...

>
> I must admit that my first instinct was to vote
> for a third Party candidate, a Libertarian. (There was no
> Green or other independent in this race.) After all, the
> Libertarian, a guy named Kennedy, agreed with me on opposition to wars and
> empire and in support of civil liberties. In contrast I knew damned
> well that when push came to shove the Republicrat candidates would be on
> the other side on all these issues &ndash; no matter what they said now in
> the heat of the campaign and desperate for votes. And of course all
> three candidates were against single-payer health care, a passion of this
> writer for twenty some years. So my first instinct was to vote for
> the Libertarian and get someone who agreed with me 70 per cent of the time
> versus 0 per cent
> .
> Would I not risk the failure of the Obama
> health care bill if the Democrat did not win? But I do not want the
> Obama health care bill to succeed. It is little other than a
> formula for permanently handing our entire health care system over to the
> sector of finance capital known as the insurance industry, for taxing
> decent health care plans and for putting off to the indefinite future
> comprehensive, egalitarian, universal health care. Dr. Marcia Angel, former editor of the New
> England Journal of Medicine and long-time crusader for single-payer, has
> taken the position that it would be far better to have no new law than the
> Obamanation known as the Democrat Party &ldquo;health care
> reform.&rdquo; I agree with her on that, and so do many of
> my colleagues in Physicians for a National Health Program, although that
> is not our official position. So on the issue of health care, it
> made little difference which candidate I would vote for.
>
>
>
>
> But why then not stick with the
> Libertarian? Why vote Republican? This is where my
> Democrat Party friends came in. Whenever I went to vote for Nader
> or a Green, they would explain that I was wasting my vote on a
> third Party candidate. Was I not doing the
> same here by voting Libertarian? Suddenly I realized that the Democrats were right. If
> I wanted to protest the lies of the Obmacrats and &ldquo;send a
> message&rdquo; to the Democrat Party elite, I should not waste my vote on
> the Libertarian. And so they convinced me to vote Republican.
> And so Scott Brown, the Republican, won in Massachusetts with my
> vote and that of many others pissed off at the betrayal of the Democrats.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Of course the
> Democratic operatives are now blaming the disconsolate and bewildered
> loser, Democrat Attorney General Martha Coakley, for running a &ldquo;poor
> campaign.&rdquo; But in what did the poverty of her effort
> consist? She merely assumed that the Democratic voters and the
> independents here in Mass who are by and large a pretty progressive lot
> had nowhere else to go. They had to vote for
> her, and so she did not need to campaign very hard after the
> primary. The Democrats were mightily surprised on this score.

2 of 4 1/26/2010 10:51 AM
Gmail - [Bethlehem_Neighbors_for_Peace] [Fwd: "Why I Voted for the ... http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=9dbe21f0de&view=pt&search=in...

> She is not to

> blame, but the Democrat Party assumption that they can take progressives
> for granted is very much to blame for this humiliating
> defeat.
>
>
>
>
> I began to
> understand that something was afoot in this campaign when I noticed many
> folks out in the traffic circles and on street corners in Central
> Massachusetts, in and about Worcester, holding signs for Brown, even in
> the snow and sleet. There was no such enthusiasm for
> Coakley &ndash; not a single sign holder did I see. Now let me
> explain the demographics a bit. Central Mass is blue collar
> country, suffering deeply from the unemployment of the current recession.
> It is not
> clueless about bailouts for the banksters but no job creation for the hoy
> polloi the policy of Bush/Obama. And it was Central
> Mass that delivered a very big margin for Republican Brown who posed as a
> populist and captured their vote.
>
>
>
>
>
> I vote not in central Massachusetts but in
> overwhelmingly and conventionally liberal Cambridge, but even there little
> enthusiasm for Democrat Coakley was evident. She had
> only taken a position against the Obama wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
> when forced to do so by a primary opponent. There were no signs for
> Coakley at my polling place very close to Harvard Square. The
> peace constituency of Cambridge, in the words of the venerable
> &ldquo;Mumbles&rdquo; Menino, was voting with its butt which remained
> quite inert.
>
>
>
>
> After voting
> Republican with some satisfaction at having not wasted my protest vote, I
> told a young student coming out of the polling place with me that I was so
> angry with the Democrats and Obama that I had voted Republican, remaining
> a bit unsure whether I should have gone the Libertarian route. He
> said that he felt the same way but voted Democrat anyway. He
> confessed that he was now having voter&rsquo;s remorse.
>
>
>
>
>
> So Massachusetts has delivered a warning
> to the Democrat Party. Do not take the peace vote or the jobless
> vote for granted. We want peace and we want jobs and we want decent
> affordable health care. If you do not deliver, we will go
> elsewhere. We will not vote for you. We will vote the other
> Party in protest. Or we will stay home and vote with our
> butts.

3 of 4 1/26/2010 10:51 AM
Gmail - [Bethlehem_Neighbors_for_Peace] [Fwd: "Why I Voted for the ... http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=9dbe21f0de&view=pt&search=in...

>
>
> John V.
> Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.co

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