Thumping my professor on the forehead and saying, “Now I know your mama taught you better” seemed too farfetched. Instead I raised my hand and denounced his shotgun position on the “Anybody But Bush”, or the ABB, bandwagon.
Shortly after, I found out he wasn’t the only one.
Unfortunately, there is a slew of young and old hitching onto the tail of this reckless vehicle.
Most are emerging as left-leaning voters who are simply fed up with Dubya’s cowboy diplomacy and his derailment of American politics.
The others are chomping at the lesser of two evils bit. But in their haste to create an anti-Bush voting bloc, exactly whom are they voting into office?
The majority will say, “John Kerry.” Sure the name sounds familiar, but what is he about? None who I’ve asked can tell me, including my professor. What we have here are thousands of people who have put all their eggs in Kerry’s basket without any reason saying, “I just want Bush out of office.”
Ironically, these are usually the same people thrusting voter registration forms in my hand and giving me a history lesson on black voting rights.
You should witness the amount of flack that ensues when I tell them I’m not sure if I will be casting a ballot this election year.
These ABB campaigners admonish my uncertainty as apathetic and deem my behavior as disrespectful to the turmoil my forefathers endured for my right to vote.
But wouldn’t sightless voting make them even more blameworthy of the same accusations?
At best, their voting strategy reeks of irresponsibility and is making the black electorate that much cheaper for the Democratic Party to buy.
This is why I am calling for an immediate moratorium on all “Anybody But Bush” bandwagons.
As former editor of The Source, Bakari Kitwana wrote, “Being anti-Bush is a political sentiment, not a political perspective.”
Placing issues detrimental to our quality of life on the back burner in order to see President Bush ride off into the sunset would be short of committing suicide.
We must continue to blitz the John Kerry and Ralph Nader campaigns with our issues.
Thus far, neither has produced an agenda to get excited about as far as I can see. Kerry pays lip service to issues like higher paying jobs and education reform, but none of his solutions produce substantive change.
Instead of hashing out more anti-Bush mania we should be grilling Kerry about his reforms. Doing so might actually give leeway for political empowerment.
But until then, Democrats will continue to get the black vote for free because we don’t make them work for it.
Monica Harden is a senior magazine production student from Hockley, Texas. She is the deputy opinions editor for The Famuan. Contact her at mharden82@aol.com.