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Edited on Tue Nov-09-04 10:41 AM by kristinist
An excellent email I received that I am sure the author would be happy to share...
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Mr. President:
Congratulations, first, on your re-election. While your supporters have been quick to point out that you have been re-elected by the largest popular vote in history, let me remind you that never in the history of our country has a sitting president had more votes cast against him. In fact, Mr. President, Senator Kerry received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history, other than you.
Yes, Mr. President, I was a supporter of Senator Kerry. I stood in the blowing rain in Cincinnati for 14 hours on Tuesday to insure that properly registered African-American voters were not denied their right to vote by Republican challengers. I am very disappointed with the outcome of the election, but must move on. I have removed my bumper stickers and taken down my yard sign, and I am hoping this morning that the issues that motivated me and the over 55,000,000 people who voted against you will receive something more from your Administration over the next four years than what we have had in the past.
Yesterday, in your victory speech, you asked the supporters of Senator Kerry to support you and to assist you in uniting this bitterly divided country. Mr. President, you will have to earn my support -- it will not come on demand or free-of-charge. You have already made a mistake by characterizing the outcome of this election as an unfettered endorsement by the American public of the actions of your Administration over the last four years. It is not. You are the first President with a less-than-50% approval rating to be re-elected to your office. Almost half the people in a record turnout voted against you. You must be aware that a large segment of the American public not only opposes the policies of your Administration, but viscerally dislikes you personally. Whatever your efforts in this regard, you are considered by all objective sources to be one of the most divisive presidents in modern American history. You did not have a mandate in 2000, Mr. President, when you lost the popular vote, and you do not have one now. If you govern as if you do, you will have failed the first test of the reconciliation this country so desperately needs.
What can you do to reach out to me, and the millions who supported Senator Kerry?
1. Let's start with the war in Iraq. It may do no good, but will you go to our allies, hat-in-hand if need be, and ask for their help? Their money? Their soldiers? They may answer that we broke Iraq, and now must fix it ourselves. But will you have the character to respond that your Administration may have made such a mess of things in the Middle East that their own interests are now so imperilled that they must help? That they have no choice? I am convinced that this is what Senator Kerry was prepared to do. Our country owes this to our soldiers and their families, who are now carrying this burden entirely by themselves, and if you have to eat humble pie in the process, Mr. President, then that's what you'll have to do. And will you empower the increasingly isolated Islamic moderates in the Middle East in their debates with Islamic extremists by reaffirming our commitment to the Geneva Convention, and balancing our protection of Israel's right to exist with the appropriate concern for the protection of the rights and the future of the Palestinian people? Will you drop your Administration's opposition to the requests that higher-ups, including Secretary Rumsfeld, testify under oath and be subjected to cross-examination in the ongoing court martials of the soldiers responsible for the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and in Afghanistan? Will you raise taxes, if need be, to insure we have the number of troops in Iraq necessary to protect not only one another but to provide the security the Iraqi people need to move ahead? So that our soldiers aren't reduced to using scrap plywood and sandbags to reinforce under-armored Humvees?
2. Speaking of taxes, will you roll back the tax cuts on persons making over $200,000 a year, as Senator Kerry was prepared to do? I make over $200,000 a year, Mr. President. I don't want to saddle my daughter or anyone else with the debt from a tax cut I don't need. You are the first president to cut taxes in wartime. That was irresponsible of you, and you certainly should not make those cuts permanent. I think it immoral to be cutting taxes while our soldiers lack what they need for their protection, and when one out of five children in this, the most wealthy country in world, live in desperate poverty. On Tuesday morning, Mr. President, my wife spoke to a little black child who likes school because that's where he can get breakfast. We heard a lot about moral values in this election cycle, Mr. President, but will you address the immorality inherent in a little child, living in this country, having nothing to eat in the! morning, when the richest among us are having their taxes cut?
3. With regard to the neediest among us, will you support an initiative to increase the minimum wage to a level that will provide our needy an opportunity to satisfy basic needs? Will you support a revision to the income levels at which we measure poverty to insure that we are accurately measuring the extent of our problem and identifying the people who truly need help? Will you support revision of federal minimum sentencing guidelines to give our judges the discretion to give young people who have made an error in judgment a second chance, and avoid the life-long stigma that comes with a felony conviction and prolonged prison time? Will you now fully fund the "No Child Left Behind" programs, and contribute what you promised to combat the global AIDS epidemic? Will you support a strengthened and enforceable ban on assault weapons, or continue to indulge the supreme irony of letting an assault weapons ban expire during a war on terrorism?
4. With regard to science and the environment, will you support and fully-fund programs to develop renewable sources of energy and alternative energy sources that are our only answer to our dependence on Mid-East oil, or will you open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration when it will address only a tiny fraction of our energy needs? Will you take constructive steps to address global warming, or will you continue to direct your Administration to delete from government reports the paragraphs that merely acknowledge the existence of this critical environmental problem? Will you directly and publicly address the concerns of the over 100 Nobel laureates who petitioned for your defeat because of your Administration's outright hostility to established scientific fact? Will you place a moratorium on the giveaways of pristine public lands to your corporate supporters for development and exploitation? Will you open up the process of developing energy policy to persons who will challenge your assumptions and the profit motive of the energy industry?
5. With regard to our justice system, will you now say that you support Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose? That you support the Supreme Court's landmark ruling for gay rights in Lawrence v. Texas? Or will you appoint justices that will attack and overturn those rulings, among others, that are absolutely critical to our civic health and peace? Will you reinvolve the American Bar Association in assessing the qualifications of your nominees to the federal bench, or will you continue to purposely exclude the ABA from that process to avoid the embarassment of their condemnation of judicial nominees who have no qualifications to sit as judges beyond their satisfaction of your litmus tests? Will you use the Republican majority in both houses of Congress to prevent the Democratic minority from filibustering your most unqualified appointments, as they did in only five of your over 200 judicial appointments in the last four years? Will you condemn Rep. DeLay for his established ethical transgressions and seek a new leader for House Republicans who will reach out to House Democrats, or will you give Mr. DeLay a pat on the back and send him back to Capitol Hill to do his worst?
6. Your Administration has developed a well-deserved reputation for secrecy and media manipulation. You have given fewer press conferences than any president in modern times. Will you consent to give just one press conference a month so that the American people know what you, our employee, are doing and thinking? Will you oppose the increased consolidation of media ownership to insure the independence and health of the fourth estate our founding fathers considered so essential to the protection of our liberties and constitutional rights?
I haven't covered everything, Mr. President. I don't know that I could even begin to. Positive, constructive movement by your Administration on these issues will signal to me and the millions like me that perhaps you deserve our support. But let me be perfectly clear about one thing, Mr. President. If it's more of the same of what we have had for the last four years, then we are all in for a long four years, indeed, you included. Because I, and millions like me, will fight you in the courts, on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures all over the country, in the streets, in the churches. We will fight you wherever we can, and we will be tireless and relentless. We will not be complacent. I discovered on Tuesday that nothing hurts more than not fighting for something that matters.
The choice, Mr. President, is entirely yours.
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