Matt Damon is a thoughtful, articulate, activist-minded actor who’s 40 years old — five years older than he needs to be to run for U.S. President, and three years younger than JFK was on election day in 1960. When Ronald Reagan ran for the highest office in 1980, he was a charismatic, not especially thoughtful, slogan-spouting actor who was 69 years old. Who’s to say which man is or was more suited to the task?
I’ll grudgingly vote for Obama in 2012 because I’ll have nowhere else to go. It’ll be like voting for Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Honestly? I’d love it if Obama could just disappear and not run, and thus paving the way for Damon to run against Romney or whomever those locoweeds nominate. Michael Moore has suggested Damon would be a great candididate, and I for one am down wit dat. Seriously.
I’m sorry but I can’t stand feeling this badly about a guy I used to really like and admire, and whom I now see as a gutless center-right jellyfish.
I realize that if Damon runs as a Teddy Kennedy-vs.-Jimmy Carter-like challenger in 2012, or as a third-party presidential candidate, the Republicans would definitely win. And nobody wants that. But if I had a simple either-or choice between Obama and Damon, I’d choose Bourne in a heartbeat.
“I think that [Damon] has been very courageous in not caring about who he offends by saying the things that need to be said here,” Moore said, “and if you want to win, the Republicans have certainly shown the way — that when you run someone who is popular, you win. Sometimes even when you run an actor, you win. And I guess I only throw his name out there because I’d like us to start thinking that way.
“I don’t really want to spend a whole lot of time running symbolic campaigns. Because there are a whole host of things we need to do, and Jane, you have certainly mentioned a couple of things that you are going to have in your next thing here in September that are really critical, in terms of instant runoff voting and proportional voting, these are really important — things that need to be instituted to make this more democratic.
“But I think these two parties are very weak right now. Dan mentioned 1856 there with the Republicans, and 4 or 5 years later there was a Republican in the White House. These times occur very rarely when a political party is so weak that it literally can be killed off. And I think both parties are in that position right now.
“And I think that a group of people, if we had some real national leadership, and a real commitment to grassroots organizing, to form a new Democratic Party…and call ourselves the New Democrats, in fact that’s the name of a party up in Canada that occasionally does quite well up there….or call ourselves ourselves the Roosevelt Party. Come up with something that would really be catchy.
“Listen I throw these ideas out there, because I recognize the country I live in. Living in Michigan now, the main topic of conversation this week was the last episode of the Bachelorette, and why did Ashley pick J.P. over Ben. That’s the country I live in, and they all vote. And I’d like to communicate with them. I know that they’re upset. And I know they don’t like these wars and they’re desperate for jobs. Living in Michigan, we’re living in a depression right now.
“There really couldn’t be a better time to organize, to run a viable candidate. And to really say the Democratic party has not served us well, so we’re going to Democrats 2.0. We’re brining it into the 21st century, we’re going to be called the New Democrats, or the Roosevelts, or the whatever you come up with, and we’re going to run people who are going to win.”
