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Saturday, November 03, 2012

Why I'm Not Voting to Re-Elect President Obama

Ordinarily, I have the greatest respect for Esquire's Charles Pierce. He's one of the very few bloggers/journalists out there who actually inspires me to stay on my tippy toes. Get him off the subject of RomneyCare (which he pointedly endorses simply because his ill wife has somewhat benefited from it) and Barack Obama and he'll generally not only find himself on the right side of every issue but also skewer with a Quixotic razor-sharp corkscrew sword the bigotry, hypocrisy and genetic-level stupidity of what passes for an actual conservative movement.

Unfortunately, we're in the waning hours of a marathon election season that feels as if it's lasted longer than Gunsmoke and Meet the Press combined. And on Halloween, Pierce couldn't help but weigh in with what is indisputably the most ill-informed, skull-chillingly stupidest, head-in-the-sand post I've ever read from a fellow liberal. It's entitled Why I'm Voting to Re-Elect President Obama and there was no way in sulphur-stinking Hell I could let this post go unchallenged. Hopefully, by the time I've finished unpacking my argument, it'll be more readily apparent than it is now why I've chosen to use the video of the Liz Warren rally in Hudson yesterday as a lead.

The central thrust of Pierce's argument is a pathetic attempt to drum up some legitimate consensus for the president. Here's the part that made me leap vertically from my chair a couple of days ago:
Still, I thought long and hard about tossing (Stein) my vote, because I live in the bluest of blue states, and I felt that, in casting my vote that way, I would absolve myself of complicity in the drone strikes, and in the inexcusable pass given to the Wall Street pirates, and in what I am sure is going to be an altogether dreadful Grand Bargain while not materially damaging the most important cause of all: making sure that Willard Romney is not president. And I might have done it, had Jill not gone on TV and talked about how those people who are voting for the incumbent president simply to make sure that Willard Romney is not president are doing so out of "fear."
Horse hockey.
It is not fear. It is simple, compelling logic.
Yeah, folks, he actually wrote that, obviously with a feeling of misguided satisfaction.

First off, I utterly fail to understand why Pierce, a fellow Massachusetts resident, would have to think "long and hard about tossing (Stein his) vote." Really? Unless you feel like burning your red and pink liberal card like our parents did their draft cards and bras, it's either that or voting for a Brooks Brother mannequin/Koch brothers fuck doll called Mitt Romney or a war criminal like Barack Obama.

Secondly, Massachusetts is not "the bluest of blue states." If Pierce had done his homework, he'd know that a full 51% of Massachusetts voters are registered as Independents and with the exception of Deval Patrick, we have voted in exclusively Republican governors in the post-Dukakis years and quite a few before Dukakis. It's just the bifurcated nature of the progressive MA mind: We exclusively elect (until Scott Brown, who ran against a dyspeptic Crypt Keeper who is our Attorney General) Democratic senators and congressmen yet think this or that Republican would be hunky-dorey for our own state budget and job market (they haven't been). In that respect, this Jekyll and Hyde political sensibility is shared with California, the state that gave us Barb Boxer yet overturned gay marriage at the first opportunity when flooded with LDS/Mitt Romney tithing bucks.

Thirdly, and far from least, if Pierce actually thinks that people aren't voting out of a fear of Mitt Romney and aren't voting against Romney and for Obama, then I think he should get his brain MRI'd. Perhaps he got a concussion during this bruising election season. But people aren't voting against Romney out of fear?

Charlie, dude, if I had a nickle for every fucking time I've heard some wet-legged "liberal" ask me after I tell them why I'm not voting for that drone-humping child-killer Obama, "So, do you want Romney to win????????" I'd be able to open up a competing Super Pac for my actual choice, Dr. Jill Stein, that would make Turdblossom's GPS Crossroads look like an Ethiopian's piggy bank by conspicuous relief.

And where I come from, Chuckie, m' lad, that's fear. Pure, unadulterated piss-and-shit-in-your-BVDs fear.

In fact, I'll go you one further: The biggest, most obvious single reason why people (and I'm speaking of African American voters, aka "you people" in Romney World) are voting for Obama is simply because he's black. To pretend otherwise is to join the ranks of those who think the earth is 6000 years old and flat,  global warming is a hoax and evolution a theory. Four years ago, we couldn't stop talking about how fan-fucking-tastic it was that we'd just elected our first black president. Do you think that fact has been lost on all the African American voters who'd voted for him in '08 and would do so again even if he brought back slavery and put all of them in chains and back in the cotton fields?

My ass African Americans aren't voting for him because of his skin color. But it ought to be obvious even to this new (and, let us hope, very temporarily), oblivious Charles Pierce that Obama's level of support isn't nearly what it was in 2008. It's like the first renewal of marriage vows. Yeah, it's kinda romantic but your folks aren't there nor most if any of your friends and while you may get laid a couple of times that night, it wasn't the wedding night sex you had four years ago when you loosened the plaster right behind the headboard back at the hotel. You stop, take a Viagra while wifey calls the babysitter to check on the kids.

It's not the same and we all know it.

While we're deluding ourselves into thinking that we really deserve only two choices and that the guy with the blue tie is better than the guy with the red tie, many liberals and the undeclared Obama Republicans (like Colin Powell) are sticking with Obama because Romney simply scares the shit out of people, including his own wife. Four years may be an eternity in politics but we still aren't that far removed from Bush that we've forgotten the neofascist administration that Obama is still using as his template as I'd predicted four years ago.

Moderate and sensible Republicans get the dry heaves over the prospect of a President Romney, so-called liberals, especially black voters, delude themselves into thinking Obama's the greatest pinko since Eugene fucking Debs, with Romney the sociopath game show host making that comparison a little easier to swallow. Black voters certainly don't want to see their man get voted out after just four years because for them that would mean civil rights have taken a giant step backward. And, let's face it, it has. And if you need further credence to my assertion that people of color are voting with color, ask me sometime how many times I've been called a racist simply for saying I wasn't voting for Obama again (I have two biracial sons).

And Chuck Pierce is hardly convincing when he lazily tries to square a nonfear of Mitt Romney with tepid support for a guy who murders children with complete impunity and would spit on Pierce's trademark hat from on high if there were no cameras around. And that brings us to Elizabeth Warren and her place at the top of this post.

The cowardice that Pierce claims is completely absent from the American electorate now and seemingly forever is to be found abundantly in the Obama administration and this has been a constant since the Obama administration was the Obama campaign. Barack Obama has shown about as much spine as a microwaved earthworm in the face of right wing outrage and faux right wing outrage at that and he'll throw anyone under the wheels of his omnibus, especially if they're black (Shirley Sherrod, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones, etc).

And it was cowardice that set Elizabeth Warren loose on the campaign trail.

Warren, you'll no doubt recall, was Obama's first pick to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau only to recess-appoint Richard Cordray when he could've just as easily made the appointment for Warren when Congress went into recess summer last year. If Obama thought he was going to somehow avoid faux Republican outrage over the Cordray recess appointment, then he's just as deluded as Pierce and many of the idiots who still pretend to be fanatical supporters of the POTUS who'd essentially declared war on the Constitution and Bill of Rights in particular.

That's right. Fear and yet another Obama fuckup freed up Elizabeth Warren to become an even greater force for good than she would've been heading up the CFPB that Warren and not Obama built from the ground up. It's a happier ending than we saw with the other Obama fuckup of installing Janet Napolitano as Homeland Security Chief that resulted in Gov. Jan Brewer and SB 1070.

While I had to bite my tongue yesterday and keep from asking Liz Warren two questions (#1 "Where the fuck were you two years ago?" and #2 "How do you feel about Obama throwing you under the wheels of the bus when the minority Senate Republicans had a neverending hissy fit about your nomination?"), my enthusiasm for her candidacy is as unconditional as Pierce's. The only difference was I never had to think for a second about throwing in my lot with her any more than I had to think for a second years ago about voting third party in the presidential race.

I still respect Pierce's writing but with this colossal fuckup in ascribing false courage to the American electorate, I'll never be able to look at Pierce with the same enthusiasm nor with the same level of respect. It's kind of like a microcosm of how the American electorate looks at Obama. They'll still listen to him but not with the same brainless, unconditional fervor with which they'd listened to his populist bullshit in 2008.
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6 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Jurrassic Pork,
Goddammit, you have completely misquoted Pierce! When he said,"Still, I thought long and hard about tossing her my vote..." he was talking about Green Party nominee JILL STEIN!! NOT WARREN!!!

About Dr. Warren Pierce says, "There is only one vote that I am casting with any measurable amount of enthusiasm. That is the vote I am casting for Elizabeth Warren to be my next United States senator. This enthusiasm is based not solely in my personal affection for her, nor solely in my admiration for the things she's already accomplished...I think Warren has it in her to be a great United States senator on behalf of many of the issues that I think are important to the country. The enthusiasm derives from the fact that, when she was asked in a debate what her policy would be toward our groaning (and increasingly futile) military adventure in Afghanistan, she answered quickly and simply. Out. Now."

PLEASE correct your post to reflect Mr. Pierce's comments accurately.

Sincerely,MSHuiner

Anonymous Anonymous said...
You go on endlessly about Obama and drones.

Do you seriously believe Mitt Romney doesn't love the use of drones as much as Obama does or won't use drones as much as Obama has?

Maybe even more?

Romney LOVES drones!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

During the third 2012 presidential debate, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney PRAISED President Barack Obama for his use of unmanned aerial drones to fight terrorism.

"I believe we should use any and all means necessary to take out people who pose a threat to us and our friends around the world," the former Massachusetts governor said. "And it's widely reported that drones are being used in drone strikes, and I SUPPORT that and entirely, and feel the president was right to up the usage of that technology, and believe that we SHOULD continue to use it, to continue to go after the people that represent a threat to this nation and to our friends."

http://tinyurl.com/bu6hqxj
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

You must also be aware (I hope) that Romney would appoint as many Scalia types to the U.S. Supreme Court as he possibly can.

Are you okay with the devastation even one more rightwing extremist Justice could do to this country?

=================================================

Blogger pbriggsiam said...
http://greeneggsandham.org/wordpress/?p=961

Our country 's history belies the correctness of your stance. Did you civically engage yourself in trying to create the movement needed to make 3rd party a viable voting option? I could respect your position more if you had.

My wife and I are helping other liberals in our community walk our talk when it comes to being the change everybody seems to be waiting for. Look us up - Occupy Democracy - Pasadena. We would support a viable 3rd party movement but nobody seems to have acted to build it. Your vote for Stein won 't make it happen.

Blogger Nameless Cynic said...
OK. Time for facts.

You love Jill Stein. Fine. Meanwhile, are you saying that you're so naive that you believe there is even the slightest chance that Jill Stein might be elected?

When you cast your ballot, and while you ignore the massive flushing sound that accompanies it, consider Florida in 2000. Consider what would have happened if there were no voters for Ralph Nader. If the election hadn't been handed to George Bush by the Supreme Court, as opposed to that phony "ballot" thing you seem to despise.

Work toward changing the system. Lose the electoral college and institute something similar to democracy.

But in the meantime, don't do something stupid and hand the election to corporatists like Mitt Romney.

Blogger Susan of Texas said...
Your comments are like my comments. Although the above comment that says Obama's drones are better than Romney's drone is very very special.

It's also interesting how it's impossible to elect a third party candidate but possible to get rid of the electoral college.

The thing that struck me about Pierce's piece was he said that he wasn't voting out of fear and then he said how frightening Romney is.



Blogger jurassicpork said...
That was a typo. I meant to write "Stein" but I was still thinking about Warren as I was having difficulties uploading the video on Youtube as I was writing this. I made the necessary change.

I don't care what anyone says. In the DNA in the marrow of my bones I know I am right and justified in not voting for that war criminal. I'd sooner see the son of a bitch convicted of war crimes charges then stood up against a bullet hole-pocked brick wall to face a firing squad than see him get elected.

And the fallacious argument of Romney using drones, too, so we might as well stick with the Nobel Peace prize-winning war criminal is so fallacious and risible it's not even worth addressing.

As for Stein's candidacy, of course I know she can't win. But if she and the Green Party get enough votes, it will do one of two things: Raise awareness in the stupendously corrupt Democratic Party that we are fed up with them and are seeking alternatives, which may wrench them a bit more to the left. Or, #2, the Green Party will become a legitimate 3rd party that cannot be ignored any more. I repeat: We do not live in a 2 party system. Please fucking stop pretending we do. That's what TPTB want you to believe.

There won't be a repeat of the Nader/Gore/Bush clusterfuck in Miami Dade 12 years ago because I don't see Stein getting in any swing state the nearly 100,000 votes Ralph got in FL that night. Secondly, my vote doesn't matter because MA hates Romney, former Governor or no, and Obama had this state sewn up back in 2007.

How can you ask me to vote for a war criminal and corporate fuckstick like Obama and still expect me to be able to look myself in the mirror later that night is anyone's guess. It just validates everything I said in this post: That black people are voting for Obama because of his skin color and white "liberals" are voting against Romney out of fear.

People, there's no difference between Obama and Romney. Both will wave the green flag on the XL pipeline after the election, both will install or keep Goldman Sachs shills in the government and both will continue killing foreigners and American citizens at will. I repeat: THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OBAMA AND ROMNEY. PLEASE STOP PRETENDING THERE IS. And please stop asking me to perpetuate the same, corrupt status quo and telling who NOT to vote for. I will vote my conscience for once.