Editor,
These are six reasons why Americans should elect Barack Obama and Joe Biden:
1. It's about the party. Just as a soldier fights for his flag or a sports fan roots for his team, Obama leads the Democratic agenda and McCain leads the Republican agenda. Democrats work for the majority populace in this country, while Republicans work for primarily the wealthy few. McCain may be pleasant to have at your barbecue, like President Bush was, but make no mistake how wrong his politics are.
2. If you consider the character and temperament of the man, then McCain fails on several counts. His moral character is disgraceful, because he philandered and then abandoned his first wife. He is wealthy but feigns a common-man image. He is a want-to-be John Wayne preoccupied with war at the expense of all else.
3. Think about the issues, because this is not a popularity contest. I notice one critical measure of what the Republicans are all about: wealth and income distribution as related to income tax rates. Starting with President Reagan, the Republicans have reduced marginal tax rates for the wealthiest people to 35 percent, less than half the earlier top rates. This squeezes the middle class and has created an unfair income and wealth disparity between rich and average people in this country - what I call creeping feudalism.
4. Women's freedoms are at risk if McCain gets elected and appoints new Supreme Court justices. His selection of a woman for vice president is a cynical ploy, a bait-and-switch tactic, because she is less sympathetic to women's rights than Obama. Women ought to bloc-vote for Democrats the way religious conservatives do for Republicans.
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5. McCain is not ready to be a leader simply by age or time spent as the lackey to the Republicans. His tenure is more like a veritable Rip Van Winkle who slept under a Republican tree for about 20 years and nodded in agreement to their agenda. Now, he suddenly wakes up and pretends to be a new man with fresh ideas. But he has the same old agenda: Step on the middle class to enhance the wealthy, and throw a bone to the social conservatives. He also doesn't have the executive experience now cited as lacking in the Democratic candidates. For someone who promotes himself as "country first," he has endangered the country and the free world by putting a novice next in line should something happen to him. This is crass cynicism and not patriotism.
6. And to all the white males out there, most of us have suffered as much as anyone else by being held down by the wealthy, elite Republicans like Bush and McCain, more so than could ever happen with Obama, who at least has to prove himself for posterity. The Republicans have denied us health care, eliminated jobs, raised effective tax rates, sold out to the oil companies and reduced our freedoms while wrapping themselves in a flag. Don't think McCain sits at your kitchen table and not on your back. Don't buy into the illusion. Vote, and use your own experience on the bread-and-butter issues to decide what is best for you.
Arnold Tranes
Daily Lobo reader
