November 3, 2004
President George W. Bush

Dear Mr. President,

Congratulations on your election despite the best efforts of about half of your constituency. I am writing on behalf of that portion of the electorate that did not vote for you. We voted for John Kerry because we don’t want to trade our civil rights for security. We voted for him because we are tired of paying taxes on behalf of corporations that pay no income tax, rob our pension funds, and export our jobs overseas. We voted for him because we know that medical savings accounts and individual retirement accounts will not benefit people who have no money. We voted for him because he said he would attract allies to our struggle in Iraq by offering them contracts for post-war reconstruction, and because we thought he would bring our valiant fighting men and women home from Iraq whole and soon.

We are not some isolated disenfranchised minority. We are 49% of your people. We believe that government should work to benefit all the people, not just the wealthy few. We want wild lands and natural resources to leave to our children, as well as an economy unfettered by excessive debt. We want independence from foreign energy sources. And we want at least some of the billions of dollars taken from our paychecks and put into Social Security to come back to us in our old age.

Your slim margin of victory is not a mandate to ignore us. It is instead a second chance. Forget the hearts and minds of the Iraqis. Think instead of winning the hearts and minds of the millions of Americans who look upon today as a catastrophe and the next four years as a possibly fatal challenge to American democracy.

We will be watching very closely.

Sincerely,
Tom Rubenoff