John Kerry [!] would never have gotten as far as he did without armed Iraqi resistance to the US occupation and waves of anti-war activism at home (in response to the 9/11 attacks and the US invasion of Afghanistan, during the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, and escalations of Iraqi resistance and US troop casualties), which created the division in America and made it visible to all and lasted until March 20, 2004. Regardless of individual opinions of Iraqi resistance fighters and anti-war organizers in the USA and the rest of the world, the Democratic Party, by default, stood to benefit from political conditions created by them; even if Ralph Nader had been endorsed by the Green Party and gotten on the ballots in all 50 states, the Democratic Party, due to the greater resources that it commanded, would still have been their chief beneficiary this year. That's the irony of what is called "protest politics." I probably helped John Kerry and the Democratic Party more than the loudest AnybodyButBush ideologue on LBO-talk.
Now, back to Ohio voters, the income-divided voting pattern tells you that, while low-income workers disproportionately voted for John Kerry, they also disproportionately stayed home:
Under $15,000 (7%) $15-30,000 (16%) $30-50,000 (25%) $50-75,000 (22%) $75-100,000 (15%) $100-150,000 (9%) $150-200,000 (4%) $200,000 or More (2%)
Less Than $50,000 (48%) $50,000 or More (52%)
No College Degree (62%) College Graduate (38%) <http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/OH/P/00/epolls.0.html>
The median household income in Ohio is roughly $40,956 ("Ohio QuickFacts," <http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/39000.html>), but Ohioans from less-than-$40,956-per-year households appear to have constituted less than 35%.of those who voted.
It is estimated that 60 percent of voting-age Americans and 65 percent of eligible voters turned out in the battleground states ("Voter turnout in Tuesday's Election Unlikely to Have Been Higher than in 2000," November 3, 2004, <http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/04/1103voters.html>). I'd like to see income-divided estimates of voter turnouts, so I can get a clear picture, but what's undeniable is that the largest bloc of lower-income working-class voters in Ohio, as well as in the nation, are neither Kerry nor Bush voters but a bloc of outcasts (who couldn't vote) and refusers (who were unwilling to vote).
The question is whether those who voted for Kerry would stand up or stand down as they were told by the Democratic Party.
<blockquote>Kerry's separate peace
As usual, the corporate media pretend that the Republican's bullying and official criminality in the weeks preceding Election Day -- events they covered -- never happened. John Kerry collaborates in the farce, proclaiming in his public concession speech that America is in "desperate need for unity, for finding common ground and coming together. Today, I hope we can begin the healing."
But the troops who carried him, the Black men and women targeted for harassment and humiliation at the polls, are bleeding on the field, many of their votes never to be counted or even acknowledged. The vaunted legions of Democratic lawyers that were supposed to descend on Ohio and Florida to tear apart the rigged systems of electoral apartheid were told to stand down on Tuesday night. PBS News Hour's Margaret Warner told viewers that Kerry's legal team advocated a "scorched earth" policy to challenge the crooked system until it screamed -- a result Democratic troops would have cheered. Kerry overruled his lawyers, to make a false peace with the Pirates.
At Harvard, Dr. Dawson reports that "students don't understand how Kerry could concede before all the votes, particularly Black votes, were counted. He owes those people, who stood for hours in line and were asked for multiple identifications. We have another bounced check."
And what of the provisional ballots in Ohio, which Democrats at one time numbered at 250,000? What about all the federally-mandated provisional ballots in each of the 50 states. Are these all to be swept under the rug to avoid what Kerry calls "a protracted legal process?" Once again, reconciliation between the rich and white trumps justice for Blacks every time.
In Florida, the computer-generated Bush-heavy election returns that so dramatically clashed with earlier Kerry-heavy human exit polls are now explained away as the result of the stealth invasion of Karl Rove's church-based mass voter movement -- a half-million strong evangelical invasion force that most hard-wired Republican pundits did not even know existed. As "Ghosts of Florida" author Tom Grayman III writes, "by no method has it been determined that the [exit] polling was incorrect and the voting equipment was not."
On Washington-based XM-Radio, talk show host Mark Thompson remarked that the "third eye" of every Black person in America was wide open, blinking in disbelief as Kerry Democrats and Bush Republicans rearrange the facts about November 2, 2004.
The last thing America needs is unity with thieves, Pirates and punks. The nation and the world need peace, jobs and justice. Let's get back to work.
<http://www.blackcommentator.com/112/112_cover_election.html></blockquote>
The hard truth is that "the troops who carried him [Kerry], the Black men and women targeted for harassment and humiliation at the polls," are not self-organized to make him and the Democratic Party do the job of fighting for their votes despite themselves. If Black voters were self-organized, they would have been out at the statehouse and/or Kenneth Blackwell's office and/or the Republican and Democratic Parties' headquarters in Ohio (and their counterparts in other states where the margins were slim) on November 3rd, or would be there soon, to demand that all the provisional ballots be counted and to make a ruckus about "spoiled" votes (Greg Palast, "Kerry Won," November 04, 2004, <http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won.php>). -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.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/>