I'm over-posting, but since you ask an important question, allow me to reply. I don't believe that all who vote for John Kerry vote for him because he stands for more wars, continuing occupations of Iraq and Palestine, and empire. In fact, the opposite is the case.
Among the Democratic Party leaders and organizers, voices against the wars and occupations are silent, and yet a whopping 56% of the rank and file Democratic voters say the US troops should "leave Iraq as soon as possible, even if Iraq is not completely stable":
In the past, Democrats have sometimes been badly divided, to the point of riots and walkouts, by fights over the platform. This happened over civil rights, for instance, in 1948 and over the war in Vietnam in 1968. But this year, the party appears determined to remain unified to challenge Mr. Bush.
Even the most ardent opponents of the war in Iraq have said they will not bring challenges to the platform's stand in favor of a continuing American military presence in Iraq. That is the case despite the finding in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll that, by a margin of 56 percent to 38 percent, people who call themselves Democrats say the United States troops should "leave Iraq as soon as possible, even if Iraq is not completely stable" rather than "stay in Iraq as long as it takes to make sure Iraq is a stable democracy." (David E. Rosenbaum and David E. Sanger, "Democratic Platform Focuses on National Security," New York Times, July 4, 2004)
If fewer US leftists were fearful of getting flaks from the Democrats, they could have made the most of the widening gulf between the rank and file and leaders of the Democratic Party this year, building the Green Party -- led by the Nader/Camejo campaign -- as the anti-war alternative to the Democratic Party, which still would not have won Nader/Camejo the key to the White House, of course, but which would have been a good way of building a strong foundation for the campaign against the occupations after the election day as well as for preparing for an even stronger challenge in electoral politics in 2008, when John Kerry will be running again after four years of wars, occupations, and fiscal austerity under his administration.
By now, though, as you say, the Nader/Camejo campaign, without the 23 ballot lines of the Green Party, will not be as meaningful as it could have been. That's something that all Nader/Camejo supporters acknowledge, but we are thinking beyond the election day, not just about firing Bush. Registering some dissent -- through not just votes but also all other available means, including cultural politics -- is better than no dissent, and it is extremely dangerous to let John Kerry win without any vocal dissent from the left, as such a victory of a pro-war/pro-occupation Democratic candidate accompanied by complete left-wing silence about the problem of the Democratic Party's plan for Iraq and Palestine is likely to make it difficult to rebuild the campaign against the occupations (as Shane Mage's last posting also suggests). Supporting the Nader/Camejo campaign (and Green Party and other progressive candidates -- even progressive Democrats where there is no candidate from the Green Party or any other party on the left -- for the down-the-ticket elections), unlike actively or passively endorsing the Kerry/Edwards campaign, doesn't demand self-censorship on the part of leftists about Iraq, Palestine, US foreign policy in general, and their links to US domestic policy. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>