Kerry ain't that great, but...

A very good friend of mine doesn't want to vote for Kerry. Is my friend a conservative? Nope. He's a liberal. Further left than I am, in fact. Which I guess isn't that hard to be as I still like to claim I'm an Independent. Anyway, my friend feels that Kerry, while better than Bush, is still not good enough. So he wants to vote for a third party candidate who has no chance of winning but more closely represents his ideals.

Can I empathize? You betcha. When I first registered to vote, I chose Independent because neither party impressed me. And what's more, I was annoyed that it was a fait accompli that our president would come from one of only two parties. I mean, democracy is about choices. If I want to buy a new pair of shoes, I have a helluva lot more options than if I want a new president. So I registered Independent.

I even voted for Ross Perot. Did I like Ross? He was okay, kind of goofy (Remember "I'm all ears"?), but most importantly, he was someone who wasn't a Republican or a Democrat who had a shot. So yeah, I get my friend's desire to vote for someone instead of against someone. It sucks having to go to every election and choose the lesser of two evils.

But this time is different. This time I am truly scared for our country if Bush remains in office. This is a man who flouts the idea of separation of church and state. This is a man who ignores Al Queada, the true threat to our country, to follow his own misguided agenda in Iraq. This is a man who lied to us to justify that war. This is a man who squandered the world's goodwill toward us after 9/11 by pushing a go-it-alone agenda. This is a man who would change our constitution in order to take away rights from individuals. This is a man who has no desire to fix the terrible health care system. This is a man beholden to oil companies. This is a man who will destroy our natural resources. We can't afford four more years of this. We'll be so far down the wrong road, it'll take us years and years just to get back to where we were four years ago.

So I get it. I do. I understand the desire to vote for someone. But we don't have that luxury. We can't afford four more years of this fanatic's reign.