A BRILLIANT IDEA
Let the People Speak Early

MoveOn.org PAC, the progressive online political organization, has turned the political system on its head by rapidly launching an online grassroots political primary long before the political establishment has weighed in on the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.

When MoveOn surveyed its members, 96.3 percent of the 186,000 respondents said they were eager to jump into the process early.

The 1.4 million MoveOn members and new joiners are eligible to vote for one candidate from the field of nine in the primary scheduled for next Tuesday and Wednesday. MoveOn announced that the top tier of contenders, according to a straw poll of its members, are Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean and John Kerry. In response to members' interest in the three, MoveOn is giving them an assist with a special focus email.

Arguing that "the real choices in the presidential sweepstakes are made long before the real primaries," MoveOn hopes to give insurgent candidacies like Kucinich and Dean a chance to be competitive with the more established, well-funded and media anointed candidacies of John Kerry and John Edwards.

Click here.

One of the most depressing things to me about American Presidential politics is the so called "wealth primary." That is, months before the actual and irrelevant primaries, presidential candidates must grovel at the feet of the wealthy in order to fill the all important campaign "war chests." This is the stage of an election run that actually determines who has a fighting chance at winning: without the blessings of wealth, no candidate can even fantasize about taking the Oval Office. The ultimate effect is to render meaningless the voting process--the ruling elite decides on a short menu of candidates who are acceptable (that is, candidates who reflect the views of the super rich), and presents this menu to America as some kind of "democratic" choice. In the 2000 elections, McCain, Bush, Gore, and Bradley were all deemed pro-corporate enough to make it into the final four, the joke primaries. Either one of them would have worked from the point of view of the wealthy, but because there were four candidates, most Americans actually felt like voting for one of them constituted "democracy." In reality, presidential elections just don't matter, anymore, as far as issues that are important to rank and file Americans are concerned.

Remember the dozens of times that Gore and Bush agreed with each other during the "debates?"

That's one of the big reasons I voted for Nader: because both parties are now willing slaves to wealth and the corporate system, there is now "not a dime's worth of difference" between them, to quote Texan progressive, Jim Hightower. This MoveOn tactic sounds like a good gambit for circumventing the "wealth primary" and, perhaps, making the actual, irrelevant primary more fair, less rigged. I've heard recently that the Greens are not going to run a Presidential candidate this year in order to throw progressive support behind some, as yet, unknown Democrat that could conceivably unseat Bush.

I guess it's time for me to start looking at Democrats, again...

Thanks to my old pal, Matt, for the link.

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