Charlie Pierce’s latest Esquire piece is entitled “Why I Am Voting to Re-Elect President Obama.” But Charlie says in the article that his heart really belongs to Elizabeth Warren (emphasis added):
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, nor solely as a reaction against the unnecessarily crude and boorish campaign waged against her by incumbent Senator Scott Brown, nor solely even in the fact that I think this race is still agonizingly close and that 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.
On Obama, Charlie says he has known Jill Stein a long time, he admires her and agrees with her on the issues, but (1) she has no chance of winning; (2) she has no chance of enacting her agenda in a Congress that won’t change much from this term; (3) he strongly disagrees with the notion that people are voting Obama purely out of “fear” of a Romney presidency. Says Charlie:
It is not fear. It is simple, compelling logic. We have two major political parties. Until that great gettin’-up morning, when purists on both sides of the ideological ditch manage to create workable third parties that look like something more substantial than organized unicorn hunts — which won’t happen until we have proportional voting, and I wish you as much luck with that as Lani Guinier had — we always will have two major political parties. One of them is inexcusably timid and tied in inexcusably tight with the big corporate money. The other one is demented.
Thus, he says, he’s voting Obama “without enthusiasm. And without a sliver of a doubt in my mind” because:
It is vitally important that the Republican party be kept away from as much power as possible until the party regains its senses again. It is not just important to the advance of progressive goals, thought it is. It is not just important to maintain the modicum of social justice that it has taken eighty years to build into the institutions of our government, though it is. It is important, too, that that you vote for one of these men based on whom else, exactly, he owes. Who is it that’s going to come with the fiddler to collect when you get what you’ve bargained for?* * *…Willard Romney owes even more to the Wall Street crowd, and he owes even more to the military, but he also owes everything he is politically to the snake-handlers and the Bible-bangers, to the Creationist morons and to the people who stalk doctors and glue their heads to the clinic doors, to the reckless plutocrats and to the vote-suppressors, to the Randian fantasts and libertarian fakers, to the closeted and not-so-closeted racists who have been so empowered by the party that has given them a home, to the enemies of science and to the enemies of reason, to the devil’s bargain of obvious tactical deceit and to the devil’s honoraria of dark, anonymous money, and, ultimately, to those shadowy places in himself wherein Romney sold out who he might actually be to his overweening ambition. It is a fearsome bill to come due for any man, let alone one as mendaciously malleable as the Republican nominee. Obama owes the disgruntled. Romney owes the crazy. And that makes all the difference.
As usual, it’s a good read with a lot of cogent points.
My grandchildren will be reading Pierce 40 years from now when they want to find out what was really going on during these weird, dark times.
Unless, of course, Republicans take full control of our country and outlaw “reading” along with “math”, “science”, and those other tricks that we Liberals use. Then we’ll see how Charley’s writing works as oral tradition. Although the word “oral” wil be outlawed, but whatever.
that he can even seduce me into caring about professional sports for whole minutes at a time!