Gee, ya think?

Amid all the Nader-knocking and Kerry-kissing that surrounds us, Charles Derber, a professor of sociology at Boston College, dares to say on TomPaine.com that "regime change" in the US involves more than getting rid of George Bush. It requires, he writes, a broader shift. Moreover,

Kerry's own corporate ties and cautious instincts make him an unlikely regime changer. He's being embraced as a candidate simply because he is seen as the electable anti-Bush and not because he represents a force for changing the system.

Nevertheless, he says, "Kerry's election could set the stage for generational political change."

The campaign itself has begun to take on the rhetoric of regime-changing politics. Kerry must embrace that populist rhetoric in order to win - and if he wins, it will become leverage for deeper political change after the election.

Personally, I think Professor Derber is right about Kerry but over-optimistic about the results of a Kerry win. We've been down this road before, of rooting for the "moderate" Democrat to reverse the reactionaries only to spend four years feeling frustrated and being betrayed. Think Jimmy Carter. Think Bill Clinton - twice.

This is not to say I think that it makes no difference at all whether it's Bush or Kerry being inaugurated next January. It's rather that I think that the best we can expect from a Kerry administration is that things will get worse more slowly and I fear we will settle for that because it will feel somehow like an improvement - again, as we have done before.

But just as "the lesser of two evils is still an evil," getting worse more slowly is still getting worse. Nonetheless, it is still more slowly and it could give us a breather in which to act.

The important point is that if we do manage somehow to break the stranglehold the selfish powerful have on our political discourse and do manage to expand justice and move to improve the lot of the many rather than the few, it'll be by our own efforts, not by virtue of having a different face in the White House. That is, it won't be because John Kerry provided "leverage." It will be because - unwittingly - he bought us time.