I’m sorry, but evertime someone brings up this distinction without a difference, it drives **me ** crazy. If Kerry was truly so politically stupid that he didn’t know he was “voting for the war”, then he’s not fit to be president. And now that he is on record as saying that we would ***still ** * vote for the resolution knowing everything he knows now, I think he has lost the perogative to parse his vote as you are allowing him to do.
What is it that you’re afraid would happen if Kerry becomes president? Because based on what he has said in the campaign, and his anti-war stance after Vietnam, I just don’t see him as the kind of president who’s going to get us into another situation like Iraq. He’s made it pretty clear that he’s not ever going to do an end-run around the U.N. like Bush did. So what exactly is the problem?
And Nader is not a welfare state liberal? Sounds like you should be writing in Pat Buchanan.
Already answered. Do you really think that a President Kerry would have invaded Iraq? Any evidence of this?
Who is controlling Kerry, again? Who told him to take the unpopular anti-war position when he returned from Vietnam?
What Bush policies do you think Kerry wants to implement that Bush hasn’t been able to? You think he is going to put extreme rightists on the Supreme Court? Invade some more countries? Beef up the Patriot Act?
In 1968 George Wallace said “there ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two candidates,” Nixon and Humphrey in that case. Sounds like what you are saying. It’s hardly ever been more wrong in all of US history.
Voting to give the president the authority to go to war is not the same as voting for the war itself. I think it’s a distinction with a huge difference. Kerry voted with some expectation that inspectors would find WMDs. He stated position is that he feels (wrongly, IMO) that the president should have this authority as a matter of philosophical principle. IOW, he feels that the (generic) President should have the ability to authorize (generic) military actions when such actions are required to defend the US. That’s not the same as taking a position that once a president has the authority, he should abuse it, as Bush did, by exercising that authority when it is not necessary.
I haven’t said anything about being afraid, but as I’ve said in another thread…
I have no doubt Kerry would not have voted for the war if he knew then what he knows now. But I don’t like to have to play mind reading games to figure out what a candidate’s true positions are.
What bothers me about Kerry is the only “principle” I can see behind his voting record is either “whatever the Democratic party voting recommendation is” or “whatever will get me elected to the presidency”. Bush has his own pandering problems, but he seems to stand on principle much more readily than Kerry.
I haven’t decide for whom I will be voting, but on the issue of standing on principle, it’s Bush 1, Kerry 0.
Then why does Kerry insist he’d “do it again” even if he knew everything he knows now. There is no question that on the issue of the war in Iraq, Kerry wants to have to both ways.
The constitution gives Congress the authority to wage war, as you well know. By Kerry saying he thinks a generic president should have this aurthority is basically saying he thinks the constitution is wrong on that point. It’s a cop-out on the order of Bart Simpson’s “I didn’t do it”.
He’s just saying he hasn’t changed his philosophical position that a President should have that authority. He’s wromg but he’s not inconsistent.
I’ve already said that I think he’s wrong on this point. But it still doesn’t mean that he voted for the invasion of Iraq.
What Diogenes said (and on preview – in both posts, but since I have this typed out already, I’ll submit anyway…)
Not so. He says he’d still vote for the President to have that authority because he still believes the President should have that authority. Didn’t we hear all those righteous speeches at the RNC about how much better GW is than Kerry because at least he has the balls to make a decision and stick to it? Well, isn’t that what John Kerry’s doing here? He believed at the time that the President should be authorized. He’s not “flip-flopping” on that stance. Even knowing that Iraq didn’t actually have WMD, doesn’t (in his mind) mean the President shouldn’t have the authority to go to war if it became necessary.
How he feels about the constitutionality of the issue, I don’t know, because he hasn’t commented on it. But he has commented, repeatedly, on how he feels about having waged war on Iraq. Read the link I provided and see all the times he’s said, over and over, that all diplomatic and legal avenues should have been exhausted first. His stance has not changed. War was an option. But it should have been the last option, and in this case, it was not.
Hello? When one says he is “afraid that X will happen”, it simply means he is concerned, e.g. “I’m afraid that if we take the expressway, there will be a lot of traffic.” That doesn’t mean his is scared or terrified. That’s a different meaning of the word. You didn’t know that?
What I’m asking you is why Kerry’s voting for that resolution is of such grave importance to you. I’m not accusing you of being a coward.
Yeah, I’ve heard this a lot, but I think people are confusing stubborn with principled. Bush has reversed himself on many occasions. He made a huge deal about how important it was to capture Osama bin Laden, but later said it wasn’t important. He made a big deal about the importance of cutting taxes for the top income brackets, then later blithely proclaimed that it doesn’t matter because they’ll get around paying taxes anyway. He made a huge deal about how important it was to quell the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, but when it turned out there never really had been a threat, he just as happily claimed he was going in there to “liberate”. Now it is true that Bush had his mind set on invading Iraq from day one of his presidency, but I hardly think that had anything to do with principles. If it did, he wouldn’t so readily change his justification for it.
That’s what I thought. You aren’t really concerned with Kerry’s stance on war and foreign policy, you’re just looking for excuses to slap the “flip-flopper” label on him, as the Republican party is trying so desperately to get you to do. Problem is, Bush is just as guilty of that, if not more.
Umm, we already have this. It’s called the Green Party on the left, and the Libertarian Party on the right (and/or scads of other small parties). The options already exist. The fact that the Lefties and the Small Government Conservatives *aren’t[/y] leaving the Dems and Reps should tell you something. And that something is that people want to win.
Guess you never heard of coalitions, have you? All parties are coalitions. All Lefties and all Small Government Republicans don’t agree with each other on all issues. Your third and fourth parties would still be exercises in the fine art of compromise, just as the two big parties are now.
Look, I am my own political animal. I have my views on scads of issues, and no party, Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian or Beer Drinkers, agrees with my position on all issues. So what do I do? I perform triage. I decide which issues are most important to me, and I vote for the party that agrees with me on the largest number of my key issues and has the support of sufficient other voters that I have a decent chance that at least some of my important issues are addressed the way I want them to be. Having more, smaller, parties makes it less likely that at least some of my key issues will be addressed in the way I like - there will now
It’s sufficient if you think four more years of Bush would be a very bad idea.
Sua
Oops, didn’t finish my thought. In a four-party system, there will be three parties opposed to my POV, not just one.
Sua
Ah, hell, one more thought.
Nader claims he’s only thought of as a spoiler becaue of the dominance of the two-party system. Um, Ralph, you are thought of as a spoiler because you only poll, at most, 5%. The polls aren’t affected by the two-party system, only elections are.
Sua
Jeeze, I barely finished high school, which puts me in the lowest percentile of intelligent SDMB readers, and I get that, have always gotten that. Why do so many much more intelligent Dopers refuse to see or accept this nuance?
The way I see it, the people who voted to give the president the authority to go to war TRUSTED George W. Bush to use that authority as leverage to pressure Saddam Hussein. They TRUSTED George W. Bush to not use that authority to go stomping into Iraq and throw bombs around willy-nilly on a whim.
The way I see it, that trust was badly misplaced.
The people who didn’t vote to give GWB the authority caught a lot of unpatriotic crap (as Kerry would, then and now, had he voted that way) but they were right! DON’T TRUST THIS PRESIDENT!, they were saying and they were right.
Kerry, and a lot of other people, were just a tad too old-fashioned in their thinking, in that you should be able to trust the president when he and his top officials are telling you the intelligence is good, the situation is dire, we must exhert pressure NOW! Dumb saps, they should have known better, huh?
It’s not of GRAVE importance. It’s one piece of information I’ll use in making may decision.
I’m not. I’d say that Bush is BOTH more stubborn and more principled than Kerry. They’re not mutually exclusive. I think Bush has shown that he is more likely than Kerry to take a principled stand, even if it’s not popular. A lot of times his principles are wrong, IMO, but at least I know what they are. An example is stem cell research. Bush is going to lose some votes because of his stance on this issue. I think he’s wrong, but I understand where he’s coming from.
Now you’re putting words in my mouth. I’m having a difficult time understanding ***what ** * Kerry’s position is on war and foreign policy. If Iraq was not a threat to the US in 2002, and if Kerry would have authorized war powers even if he know they weren’t a threat, then under what conditions would he NOT vote to authorize war powers? Why did he vote AGAINST that authorization in 1990? The one significant difference between the two events is that it was the Dem “party line” to vote against Gulf War I and it was the party line to vote for Gulf War II.
If John Kerry offers Nader a cabinet position, I’ll vote for him. If anything, this would call Nader’s bluff. Is Nader actually serious about being in government? Let him prove himself at a level where he can be fired if incompetent.
If John Kerry promises not to invade Iran, I’ll vote for him. But right now, I’m not sure that a trumped-up cause to invade Iran isn’t in the works. While Bush couldn’t get support, a Demo President & a nice frame-up job just might. Sounds wacky, but lots of “liberals” have been calling for a draft, & Kerry loves that militaristic past of his. Conspiracy theory? Remember me when our boys are bombing Teheran.
Right now, I get the feeling the Republicans want the Democrats to win, & while it may just be that they know taxes have to be raised & they don’t want to do it themselves, I’m wondering if it isn’t a more insidious plot.
Aah, I’m probably just being paranoid. I’m about an adrenaline spike away from paranoid delusions at all times, anyway. Carry on.
As for the two-party system, see this: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=269169&page=1&pp=50
As for the trigger for my raving, see the invasion of Iran thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=273463&page=1&pp=50
You’re still missing the point - deliberately, I suspect. If I could get you to turn your focus away from the words “afraid” and “grave” for a second, and focus on the content of what I said, that would be great. Obviously, this concern you have with Kerry’s voting record on foreign policy is important enough that you brought it up, so quibbling over whether it’s “grave” or not isn’t germane to the discussion. Feel free to substitute another word for grave if it pleases you.
Neither are they synonymous.
:dubious: That’s an odd take on it. I suppose you could say that Hitler remained consistent and true to his principles, but I certainly wouldn’t have supported him.
(Yes, and I know somebody’s going to whine about ‘Godwin’s law’, but I’m not comparing Bush to Hitler. I’m pointing out the general notion that sticking to a point of view is not a good thing if that point of view is wrong.)
Are you kidding? He’s pandering to the religious right. THAT’S where he’s coming from. He knows that’s his base of voter support.
What words did I put in your mouth? I’m trying to get at the reason why you are concerned with Kerry’s “yes” vote on the Iraq resolution. Is it because you (1) believe he will get the U.S. into an unnecessary war if elected president, or is it because (2) you won’t vote for a “flip-flopper”, or is it (3) because of a third reason? You seemed offended when I suggested either of the first two reasons, so I’m asking you, what’s the reason? I invite you to put your OWN words in your mouth.
He’s been quite consistent in the campain. He is against military force unless absolutely necessary, and he does not believe in acting unilaterally without the sanction of the UN.
Well you have me at a disadvantage, because you obviously are more aquainted with every detail of Kerry’s voting record than I am. I think that would be a good point, IF the person you are voting for instead of Kerry has never contracticted himself. But of course, Bush has contradicted himself on foreign policy quite frequently - most notably when he pledged in the debates never to engage in “nation building”. His foreign policy as president is 180 degrees opposite what he said it would be. So before you say, “I’m voting for Bush because Kerry voted differently on 2 resolutions over a span of 12 years”, I’d ask myself if Bush is really any more consistent.
I think your problem in understanding where I’m coming from is that you assume Bush and Kerry are the only choices. If I don’t vote for Bush, I will not automatically vote for Kerry. In order for me to vote for him, I need to know what his principles are. I know what he says they are, but I’ll judge him by what he does, not what he says. I don’t need anyone to give me reasons to vote against Bush-- I can think of plenty. I’m looking for reasons to vote FOR Kerry.
Nope. It’s the same thing for Kerry and gay marriage. He can say he’s against it because those who support it aren’t going to vote for the other guy. The “religious right” isn’t going to vote for Kerry or Nader or the Libertarian candidate. Your statement about Bush only makes sense if you believe no one opposes stem cell research due to religious beliefs. I think Bush’s beliefs on the subject are sincere, and I see no reason to think otherwise.
See the first part of this post.
Except for his initial success in pushing for automobile safety, Nader has been a complete failure as a reformer as a liberal. Mostly this is because of his intense ego. He is completely incapable of dealing with anyone who isn’t prepared to hand over everything Nader wants. He has lost all of his liberal and Democratic allies in Washington, because he’s screwed them over so many times – every time someone on the Hill advocated pro-consumer legislation, he’s gotten nothing but grief from Nader.
Nader has spent his whole career giving grief to liberals and sabotaging their efforts and campaigns.
There were several occasions on which the Congress was on the cusp of creaing a Department of Consumer Protection – supposedly one of Nader’s long-term goals – but Nader has sabotaged every attempt, because he couldn’t get everything he wanted in the legislation. In one notable event, a liberal Democrat, voted against one of these bills, giving his verbal finger to Nader – “This one’s for you, Ralph.”
Nader would be a disaster as a president.
Got a cite for that? I find it hard to believe that Nader could wield so much power that he could alter the will of Congress. If he can, that might be strong case to get him elected. 
Plus I think Nader’s clinically paranoid. Every time one of his employees disagrees with him in any way, he goes on a hell-bent-for-revenge campaign.
Excerpts from an article by Jonathan Chait in the New Republic (March 8, 2004):