These days, it seems just about everyone is for John Kerry. Whether you're a minivan-driving soccer mom, a farmer, a creepy old hippie teacher who wears long purple dresses, or the guy who flips off the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance, the "in thing" to do is to throw your weight behind the old rich guy who proudly claims to be Fighting For You-and who may win the election because he is Not George Bush. Even perennial third-party candidate Ralph Nader, in a statement endorsed by the likes of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Jim Hightower, urged voters in swing states to vote for Kerry instead.

Now, George 'Dubya' Bush is scum, no question about it. Freom the Federal Marriage Amendment, to the USA PATRIOT Act, to that horrible TV commercial with the wolves that claims if John Kerry is elected, the terrorists will kill us all, it's absolutely clear that this man is a dancerously stupid corporate asshole that's trying to shove our country back into the toilet it was in at the end of the nineteenth century, only wiht fewer civil liberties.

But let's just take a second to look at his opponent. This is a man who voted for the Iraq war and the Patriot Act. Thsi is a guy who believes marriage should be limited to one man and one woman. Regardless of what Bush and his commercials may say, Kerry does not support single-payer health care. (No, of course he doesn't, silly me. That's just a little to close to -gasp- socialism for comfort.)

Fact is, John Kerry is just another corporate politician. Another old rich Christian capitalist white straight guy. Why support him just because he happens to be marginally better than the alternative?

For example, let's take his economics. In the second debate, Kerry claimed he would raise the minimum wage to $7 an hour. Let's assume he actually accomplished this.

My family's grocery bill comes to about $120 a week. If my mother worked a full-time job-40 hours a week-at minimum wage, a little less than 40% of her total hours (about 16) would have to be spent on food alone. Add electricity, phone, gas, mortgage, insurance, and the everyday expenses of raising theree kids and an insane housecat, and that doesn't leave much for the old savings account, now does it?

Truth is, my parents don't work for minimum wage. However, some 39% of minimum wage workers are sole breadwinners (Tom Tomorrow, 1996). John Kerry's plan does little for lower-middle-class America.

No, John Kerry is, to me at least, jsut another politician. And even abject hatred of the Stoned-Looking-Idiot-in-Chief couldn't make me like him.

So, all you progressive, libertarian, socialist, or liberal voters, get otu there on November 2nd and cast your vote for Mr. I'm-Not-Bush. I'll be over here, shaking my head, lamenting the loss of the fair-weather Brown supporters.

But they'll come crawling back. They always do. And there's always plenty more where they came from.