John Kerry and the price of tomatoes - Democratic Underground

planetc

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Thu Jan-06-05 09:11 PM
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John Kerry and the price of tomatoes

John Kerry--MIA? AWOL?

I didn't know much about him when he sewed up the nomination, but I read some bits of his biography while attempting to argue with a True Believer of the right on another forum. Kerry volunteered for the Navy in the midst of the Vietnam War, and served no doubt efficiently, and then volunteered for Swift Boat duty. He speaks of feeling a sense of duty because he had had a priveleged upbringing. Now, combat duty, if you survived it, is always a good career move if you're in the service while a war is being fought. While serving as the captain of a Swift Boat, he fought intelligently and aggressively, and there are about 8 people who served with or near him who think they'd have been dead except for Kerry's actions.

So, Kerry survives, and comes to certain conclusions about the Vietnam war, and he returns home, looking as though he hadn't had a night's sleep in three years or so, and decides to lend his skills to the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. This move, if you had any political ambitions, was sheer suicide--to speak out forcefully and effectively against that war to the Nixon administration was guaranteed to make you instant enemies, and perhaps make yourself unelectable as dog catcher. Kerry did it anyway.

Kerry runs in Massachusetts, wins on his second try (I think), goes to the Senate, and once again succeeds in making himself some nasty enemies, the Reagan administration this time. He also does the dirty work of certifying a lack of POWs still in Vietnam, and helps clear the ground for normalization of relations with that country which suffered so terribly at the hands of this country.

The Year of Our Lord 2004 rolls around, and Kerry makes his move--he is the focus of an enormous get-out-the-vote effort on the part of the Democratic party, which results in, as near as I can tell, a clean and clear victory over his opponent. Only problem is, it's stolen from him and his supporters by the opposing party, who no longer know how to fight except dirty. Dirty and dirtier.

So you say to me, where is John Kerry's backbone? And I say, I've heard politics called the art of the possible. After what I saw in the Senate chamber today, I have to conclude that overturning this election before the inauguration was not possible.

And I say: who do you want me to be loyal to if not Kerry? Who's his competition? It seemed to me that we were lucky to have as good a candidate as we did in Kerry--smart, courageous, humane. Someone who should have earned the respect of his fellow citizens for valor in three or four different kinds of battles, and someone who thinks like a statesman, not a politician. The Democratic Party is the one that has candidates of this caliber: who are the Republicans offering us? The Bush brothers? Running George W. Bush for president was an insult to the country. Running John Kerry was a compliment to the country. He is one of the faces I want to show to the rest of the world as being the finest type of American, along with Louis Armstrong, John Edwards, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Paul Wellstone, and a lot of other civilized, smart, principled people. Barbara Boxer and Stephanie Tubbs-Jones and John Conyers. I'm proud at this moment that these people were raised in this country and are working for me. They are the best of this country, and I intend to go on working for them.