Although it will infuriate my friends in the DFL to learn it, I have a confession to make: I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. (I thought Gore would win Minnesota pretty easily. Oops.) I ventured beyond the pale as early as 1996, when I also voted for Nader. I had voted for Clinton in 1992, but after he signed his atrocious welfare "reform" bill into law, I couldn't support a second term for him. And in fact, if the Lewinsky scandal hadn't absorbed all of Clinton's political energy, his second term might have witnessed further disastrous "triangulating" on his part. He might have pursued the partial privatization of Social Security. But this would have enraged his party's base, and he needed it to survive.

So how do poor-weather Democrats like me — the ones whose heads the DFL poobahs would like to see mounted on spikes lining Interstate 35 from St. Paul to Duluth — see the current presidential contest? It's not a pretty picture. Thanks to Iowa Democrats, we've got only John Kerry standing between us and a second term for George W. Bush, who has made a terrible mess of things. Bush is putting us in a hole so deep we and our kids will spend years filling it back in.

To liberals who supported Nader in 2000, the case for Kerry is simple. Bush is a far more radical and ruinous president than almost anyone predicted in 2000. This guy's killing us. He's bankrupted our government with tax cuts for the rich, justifying this with ridiculous Enron accounting. Many of his influential supporters hope to create a fiscal train wreck that finally, finally will justify — Republican Holy of Holies! — liquidating Social Security and/or Medicare.

Most spectacularly, he has plunged us into the foreign occupation of a hostile land, justifying it with one falsehood after another. As a response to the 9/11 attacks (in which, as it happens, a second cousin of mine died), the Iraq invasion was absurd. But Bush knew that becoming "a war president," as he anointed himself, was his ticket to ride. To a politician of his intelligence, that became obvious when he simply showed up with a bullhorn at Ground Zero and found himself compared to Churchill.

Besides, Scalia & Co. stole the last election. Want to prove that we remain a democratic republic? The only way to do that is to deny Bush a second term, and the only way to do that is to vote for Kerry.

How would Kerry's policies differ from Bush's? Let's be honest: All signs point to a restoration of Clintonite centrism. Back to fiscal discipline at home. It's become the historic function of Democratic presidents to clean up the fiscal messes Republican presidents leave behind. Why do you think the stock market does better under Democrats? Abroad, Kerry might actually get serious about al-Qaida, as Bush has not.

In Iraq, counterinsurgency isn't working. (Here's a little history puzzler: When has it ever worked?) Kerry would have to redefine "success" to mean stability in Iraq, so that our troops can leave. Bush seems to want us to occupy a big chunk of the country permanently and let the rest of it go to hell (that's what he calls "democracy"). Kerry briefly has mentioned that he opposes this, and wants our troops home within four years. It's not much to go on, but those are very important differences.

In both domestic and foreign policy, the compelling case for supporting Kerry is the obvious one: We've got to stop the bleeding before we can plan for the future.

Jeez, would you want to succeed Bush? Are you crazy? If Kerry wants the job, for pete's sake, let him have it! If he wins, and then he disappoints you, you can vote against him next time.

Rossinow is associate professor of history at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul. E-mail him at doug.rossinow@metrostate.edu.

© 2004 Pioneer Press