Dear Jim,
It was about 9 1/2 years ago that we first met, at your first public event after declaring for the US Senate. Your staff had brought you to an event at Attila's in Arlington for Democracy for Arlington/Alexandria. During the Q&A you had warmly responded to one question on education from me, but somewhat botched an answer on DADT from a gay man. Afterward I went outside and introduced myself as a former Marine and what passes for our relationship began then.
During the primary campaign I became someone whose judgment you trusted, and I remember after one conversation over beers you told me you wanted me in your kitchen cabinet. On the night you won the primary, when I had just returned from the first Yearly Kos where I spent some time with Mudcat, you repeated that to me.
While I never was that close of an adviser, we talked regularly during the campaign, and after you defeated George Allen you even told me that had you gotten onto the HELP Committee as you had asked, you would have asked me to work for you.
Since you were elected our conversations and emails have been at best occasional, but you always expressed a willingness to hear what I had to say, and even to trust some of what I offered: after one conversation at a banquet to benefit the Sorensen institute you told me you had to pick my brain more often.
I have for personal reasons not been active in the current Democratic presidential cycle, although we did exchange some emails when you first explored running.
Having reminded you of all this, allow me to interject myself as I first did when I heard you might run for the Senate and sent you an unsolicited email about why you should run and how George Allen was a paper tiger you could beat.
It is time for you to step aside from your pursuit of the Presidency.
While there are a number of people involved with your campaign who I remember from 2006, and they are incredibly loyal to you, I worry about your legacy.
I saw a picture of you with Mac on one side and Nelson on the other. I have friends from that time who have been active in your campaign to date.
You have withdrawn from the Democratic contest, in honest recognition that you cannot win the nomination. And yet you have floated the idea of running as a independent.
So allow me to offer some thoughts.
1. As you probably know, being able to get on the ballot as an independent on all 50 states is exceedingly difficult. Ross Perot spent $100 million in his '92 campaign to get 19% of the vote, the high point for 3rd party candidate in more than half a century, and yet he did not win a single electoral vote. And that presumes that you can raise the funds necessary (several times what you have raised so far) just to get ballot access.
2. You cannot win the general election running as an independent. You cannot win 270 electoral votes. Even were you able to win one or two states - highly unlikely - and somehow throw it into the House of Representatives, each state gets one vote and as a person without a party you would be unlikely to win any states. In fact, in that case it is probably you would see the election of the Republican nominee, given how gerrymandered the House is, even should the Republicans nominate someone as unqualifed as Donald Trump or Ben Carson or as dangerous as Ted Cruz. \
3. The best you might do in all likelihood is to flip one or more states that would otherwise be carried by a Democrat to the Republicans. The state in which that would be most likely is our state of Virginia. It is possible that Virginia by itself could make a difference in which party obtains the White House.
4. For all of the disagreements you have on SOME issues with many other Democrats, I remember the thrust of your campaign in 2006. The disappearing of the middle class was key, as was the increasing concentration of wealth at the top. Yet running for the Senate in a "right to work" state you chose to walk a picket line in the midst of that campaign because of your concern for the right of workers to organize for economic justice. There is no Republican running for President who is pro-union, and most would happily try to impose "Right to Work" on a national basis. And most of the Republicans have no problem with further tax cuts for the already wealthy, which would further exacerbate the growing income and wealth inequity in this coungry.
5. You have a track record of important work from your time in the Senate, starting with the new GI Bill (which I remind you was strongly opposed by Republicans, starting with the man who in 2008 was their Presidential nominee, John McCain, and yet compared to some of the current Republicans he is almost sane on this issue). You were an early advocate for criminal justice reform, and yet many of the Republican candidates demagogue criminal justice issues.
6. You have been a strong supporter of the issue that matters most to me, public education. Yet most of the Republicans are hostile to public education, and to public servants in general. They have no qualms about shutting down the government, either by refusing to raise the debt ceiling or by trying to use blackmail over funding the government to impose their ideas. Having represented the hundreds of thousands of Virginians whose livelihood either directly or indirectly depends upon the Federal government remaining open, you surely understand the danger putting minds like these in charge of the executive branch would represent.
I first met you after you told Richard in that first event that you supported DADT. When I went out to talk with you afterwards, I pointed out that Al Gray had been named as Commandant of the Corps despite being gay (something many of his friends did not know) and even having a sham marriage to provide cover. I told you my source - Larry Korg, who was an Assistant Secretary in Defense in the Reagan administration overlapping your service there. You stared at me and told me that you knew, that there had been blood on the floor to get him confirmed but that he was the best man for the job. My response to you was if he was the best man why should being open about his sexuality be a barrier to his service.
During the campaign, I spent many Saturday mornings with Richard, the gay man who was so upset by your answer to his question on DADT -we two, and Florence, worked the Saturday booth at the main Farmers' Market in Arlington, near the Courthouse. He had become a strong supporter.
And you became more forceful in your own approach. I first heard your three-part mantra at an event for Partisans, the largest gay group in NoVa. You said then, and many more times during the campaign, that there were three things for which the government would need a damn good reason before it came through your door - how you prayed, who you slept with, and your guns.
Please consider that helping however unintentionally get a Republican elected president could well result in rolling back the protections that gays have gotten - through the Courts, through executive action, perhaps even through legislative actions. They will move to ban gay marriage, and maybe even civil unions. They will move not merely to reinstate DADT, but some would move to kick all gays out of any public position, military and civilian. They would appoint judges and justices committed not only on these issues, but to overturning Roe v Wade completely.
You knew during your Senate campaign that some of us disagreed with you on important issues, but you were willing to listen to us on others, and sometimes we changed your mind, as I think I was able to in persuading you why you needed to make the phone calls to fund raise for that Senate campaign - you were not asking for money for yourself, but to run the campaign we had begged you to take on.
I remember one fundraising event where you introduced a man with whom you had served, a Vietnamese Marine, whom you embraced like a long lost brother. You said at that time you still felt that war had been worth fighting while you understood that most of us in that room disagreed with that statement, yet were willing to support you.
When one of the other Quakers supporting you had said she would cut out the words "born fighting" from any signs she posted or bumper stickers she placed, and I mentioned that to you, you responded that one can fight with things other than weapons. You showed a respect for those who disagreed with you on things important to you. In the debate you did it again when you refused to attack Bernie Sanders for having sought CO status during Vietnam.
You have a history of service to your nation.
Many of us honor you for that.
We want that to be your legacy.
We do not want to see that legacy tarnished by a foolhardy pursuit of an independent run for the Presidency that you cannot win and which risks damaging the country we both love by electing one of the clown car candidates seeking the nomination of the other party.
I am posting this as an open letter at Daily Kos, a place where you yourself posted during that campaign 9 years ago. I am doing so because I was a vocal advocate on your behalf here, a place where I have been a highly visible member for now approaching 12 years.
I do not know if you will read it, but I am quite sure that it will be called to your attention.
I offer these words as someone who respects you, and does not want to see you do something that will damage not only your legacy, but also the country we both love, and for whom we both chose to serve in the Corps.
Semper Fidelis.