IF THE AL Gore who spoke to the Democratic National Convention July 26 had been running for president four years ago, the world would be a very different place. With the consultants and handlers (who shaped his every phrase to avoid even a hint of controversy) gone, Gore sounded relaxed and sometimes funny – and a lot more passionate about the issues.

Unfortunately, the Al Gore who ran against George W. Bush in 2000 was a terrible, wooden candidate who couldn't energize his base, refused to take a stand on anything of substance, and didn't even win his home state. That made the election close enough to allow Bush to steal it. And now, four years later, the Naderite argument that there's no difference between the Republicans and Democrats sounds silly: Bush is easily the worst president since Herbert Hoover and will go down in history as one of the worst of all time. He's shifted the tax burden radically, giving the rich huge handouts and stiffing the poor. He's created the most alarming police-state apparatus in modern U.S. history. He's run up a record budget deficit, with no end in sight. And he's taken us into a bloody, unwinnable preemptive war that has infuriated most of our allies and isolated the United States from the world community.

So the absolute imperative this fall is the defeat of Bush.

It's too bad John Kerry doesn't sound as clearheaded and idealistic as he did in 1971, when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a 27-year-old Vietnam veteran who opposed the war. Thirty-three years later, the video of his statement is still riveting. His speeches to the antiwar rallies were powerful. He looked in those days like someone who, well, ought to be president.

The Kerry of today is a lot more cautious and a lot less charismatic. His acceptance speech at the convention was packed with militaristic and religious jargon. We find a lot to disagree with in his platform, his record, and his stands on key issues. But it's pretty clear that Kerry would never have invaded Iraq the way Bush did, wouldn't have appointed John Ashcroft as attorney general, and wouldn't have made a whopping tax cut for the very rich the centerpiece of his economic program. There's a very big difference between the major-party candidates this year.

There's also a crucial component of the 2004 campaign that hasn't received a huge amount of news media attention. For the first time in 30 years, the presidential campaign has become the top priority of a legion of grassroots organizations whose work may well eclipse the Democratic Party. (Tenant lawyer and activist Randy Shaw has a piece about this at BeyondChron.org.) Defeating Bush would send a strong message not only to the Republicans but also to the entire corporate power structure.

And, equally important, as Tom Hayden noted at a forum in Boston last week, in a very real way this election is a referendum on Bush's war in Iraq.

Seventeen months after the invasion, the war has turned into one of the greatest foreign policy disasters in U.S. history. As of Aug. 2, 946 U.S. soldiers were dead, another 4,682 wounded. At least 11,336 Iraqis are dead and perhaps several thousand more. The shaky alliance Bush put together to back the invasion is crumbling as countries like Spain realize that the war has become a Vietnam-style quagmire.

The situation on the ground is grim. As Robert Fisk reported in the Aug. 1 edition of the Independent of London, some 700 Iraqis were killed in July alone, the worst month since the invasion ended. Almost nobody thinks there will be real elections in January. "The American-appointed government controls only parts of Baghdad – and even there its ministers and civil servants are car-bombed and assassinated," Fisk, who has been in Iraq for the past five weeks, noted.

The civilian infrastructure is still in tatters: "Oil pipeline explosions are now as regular as power cuts. In parts of Baghdad now, they only have four hours of electricity a day. The streets swarm with foreign mercenaries, guns poking from windows, shouting abusively at Iraqis who don't clear the way for them."

The Iraqi security forces are falling apart too. The Washington Post reported Aug. 1 that 127 Iraqis police officers have been killed in the past two months – and now the force is rife with desertions. As many as 30 percent of the police and National Guard have deserted in central Iraq and more than 80 percent in the area around Fallujah. Nearly 3,000 Iraqis cops quit or were fired in one week in mid-April alone.

"This country," Fisk wrote, "is about to explode."

As the situation continues to deteriorate, the Bush administration has called up more and more reservists and National Guard units and extended tours of duty to the point where Kerry correctly talks of a "back-door draft." If things get worse – and it looks as if they can only continue to go downhill – the prospect of a real draft will become more and more likely. Iraq is, indeed, as we suggested April 2, 2003, becoming "the new Vietnam."

And yet the Bush administration insists that things are going just swimmingly, that the civilian government is restoring order, and that elections are just around the corner. The war that began with lies is continuing with lies. And the reputation of the United States in the world is as low as it's been in generations.

We wish Kerry were taking a tougher stand on the war. But at least he's talking now about bringing troops home – and he's made clear that he wants an international role in Iraq's future.

If you live in the Bay Area, voting for Kerry won't be enough. The Democratic candidate will almost certainly win California by a sizable margin. So organizers are urging local residents to find ways to help out in the swing states, the battlegrounds where this election will be fought. (That effort too is unprecedented.) As we point out on page 17, there are all sorts of ways to plug in, whether you can take time off to walk precincts in Ohio, or you can afford to send a few bucks to a congressional candidate in Spokane, or you can talk to friends and relatives in other parts of the country and make sure they get out and vote against Bush.

This will be one of the closest elections in history – and one of the most important. Don't sit it out.