FINAL THOUGHTS: Why I'm proud voting today

I believe that this campaign has shown the American public exactly what both parties stand for. The system has, in fact, worked quite well. This campaign has made for clear choices. For our side, we are going into an election up against a wartime President neck and neck in the polls - think back two years and try and imagine that. That we are here today is no accident.

The Republican Party in these last four years has shown itself for the closed minded, small thinking, backwards looking Party that it sadly has become. With both houses of Congress and the White House finally under their control, we've seen the true face of the Republican Party. People who once obscured their true feelings have been exposed. People like Bill Frist, one time moderates, have shown themselves as shills for an ideological agenda that would impose its small mindedness onto an entire nation. We've seen them pander with the best of them, blowing massive surpluses into record deficits, destroying whatever credibility they had on fiscal responsibility. We've seen them obscure truth to go to war in Iraq while the man who masterminded the attacks on 9/11 is still roaming free. We've seen Colin Powell destroy his reputation with shoddy intelligence that has left the public with no confidence in what its government tells them. We've seen Republicans in Congress fail to hold this administration accountable in any way shape or form for the mismanagement of Iraq once the war began.

In the last week we've seen Rudi Giuliani blame our troops for failing to find explosives in Iraq because he wants Bush to win (and get himself a shot in '08) more than he cares about what happens to our nation's soldiers in a time of war. We've seen John McCain, for reasons that I will never be able to process, campaign for a man who despicably sullied his reputation in 2000.

If the Republican Party goes down in defeat today, they will have no one to blame but themselves. They have been united in their folly.

But this is not the message I'm taking with me into the voting booth today. Instead, I'm walking into my local voting station proud as I have ever been to cast a vote for any candidate for office.

If we win today, as I believe we will, it will be because so many Americans came together and decided to change this nation -- to return it to our core fundamental principals. It took a unique leader to be able to accomplish this, and it took a citizenry to give of their time, their money, their energy, their hopes and their dreams to believe that one by one we could come together and change America. That's what makes me proud to cast my vote today.

So I have to say thank you to John Kerry for being who he is. I grew up in Massachusetts - I know where John Kerry comes from. I know that he could have made many easy choices in life but instead chose to stand up for what he believed in. I want to thank him for going to Vietnam in the first place, for having the courage to come back and tell it like he saw it, and for trying to make a difference. I want to thank him for being a patriotic Democrat and taking patriotism and the American flag back and giving it to ALL the people.

I want to thank him for the campaign he has run, for having the vision to put John Edwards on the ticket because it was the right answer to unify the Party and move us into the general election with a new and hopeful vision. I also want to thank both John Kerry and John Edwards for dismissing the politics of division and instead offering us an opportunity to join together. John Kerry and John Edwards have made me proud to cast my vote today and to imagine an incredibly bright future that seemed so dark just a year ago.

I want to say thank you to the Democratic Party primary voters for having their senses about them to give us John Kerry. But I too want to say thank you to Howard Dean for getting the base motivated and for saying out loud what we all knew was going on in Iraq. It was Howard Dean that got this all started.

Finally, I want to say thank you to everyone who has read this and so many other blogs, who has visited a battleground state, who is going to drive someone to the polls today, who is bringing their friends along just to get them to vote for the first time. Your involvement - getting informed, getting involved, and making your voice heard, is what a democratic society requires to renew itself. It has restored my faith in this country to see us all in action.

When you go vote today, hold your head high and dismiss cynicism. Believe in our nation, believe in your fellow citizens, and believe that they, too, see reality. When we wake up on November 3rd, it will be our nation once again.
-- Rob in Baltimore