Puh-leeze…
Anyway, elucidator, I second what RTF says. That’s an excellent post, and losing by playing not to lose in 2002 is probably what I’ll always remember of Gephardt.
Eh?
I took that as a claim that he rigged the election. Am I wrong?
Finally the Democrats do the right thing! Someone with charisma on the ticket. After Gore, Leiberman, and Kerry, they finally realized the presidential election is not a Jeopardy! game.
I’ll bet the party leadership were trying to recruit that Ken whatshisname for the ticket.
So John Kerry and John Edwards are running for president.
Is anyone else thinking what I’m thinking?
Evil! Pure and simple from the eighth dimension!
He absolutely rigged the election. J. Kennedy bought thousands of votes for his son, who still only managed to squeak by Nixon.
Well let us not forget the all-star teams of Reagan and Bush I (voodoo economic) and McKinley and Roosevelt (that damned cowboy). Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards may not be blood brothers and buddies forever, but they strike me as a well balanced team for the campaign, with one providing gravatas and nuance and the other gleefully beating the President and his gang of merry men about the head and shoulders for the next four months.
I give it about 15 more minutes before the CREP and its running dogs run up the banner that the Dems are running a New England liberal and a trial lawyer – all the GOP phobias on a single ticket.
This team has a fair chance of winning the election. They have been throughly vetted so I don’t expect any closest skeletons. If elected (my fervent hope) the problems of actually governing with a chaotic world and a hostile House of Representatives and a teetering Supreme Court could be overwhelming. I am willing to face those problems when they come.
Ha! John Bigboote for Secretary of Defense.
Attorney General John Smallberries.
I think I might just need a cite for that. The claim as I usually hear it (which isn’t to say believe it) is that he gave JFK votes in Chicago that helped him win Illinois- which he didn’t need to win the election anyway.
www.ytedk.com/jfk.htm#president
Kennedy’s Electoral College majority was 303 to 219. The winning margin was provided by the state of Illinois, where in the eleventh hour, the votes that came in from Cook County’s mob-dominated West Side put Jack over the top.
“Actually, and this goes without saying, the presidency was really stolen in Chicago, without a question, by the Democratic machine,” recalled mobster Mickey Cohen. “I know that certain people in the Chicago organization knew that they had to get John Kennedy in.”
In the weeks before his inauguration, Jack began interviewing candidates for more than seventy key posts in the new administration. At one point he complained to his father, “Jesus Christ, this one wants that, that one wants this. Goddamn it, you can’t satisfy any of these people. I don’t know what I’m going to do about it all.” Joe Kennedy replied, “Jack, if you don’t want the job, you don’t have to take it. They’re still counting votes up in Cook County.”
(And holy shit, read the whole page if you have time. I was wrong- Joe K. bought his kid a lot more than votes.)
Illinois had 27 electoral votes. Subtract those from Kennedy and add them to Nixon, and JFK still wins by a margin of 276 to 246. I checked that before I posted earlier.
I’ll try and read more of the page later, but it does note that “A shift of 4,480 votes in Illinois and 25,000 in Texas would have given Nixon the presidency,” as well as accusing Republicans of vote-stealing of their own in Illinois.
And if you can’t trust the mob for reliable historical information, who can you trust?
From Edwards’ bio:
That seems lower class to me. Especially paired with “John became the first person in his family to attend college”. He’s rich now only because he earned it.
All due respect, Marley, you asked for a valid cite and I gave you one; if your wish was to dispute whatever info I presented, that’s your perogative.
But my original point was, Joe Kennedy took care of it in 1960. Among other things (all of which are detailed in the aforementioned article, and, I’d be willing to bet, quite a few others):
-He regularly paid off newpaper and magazine publishers, including Time’s Henry Luce, who was instrumental in delivering a hugely influential front-page cover story on JFK in 1960
-He bought politicians who pledged to help Jack’s campaign
-His former partnership with the mobster Sam Giancana bought him the crucial 95%-Protestant West Virginia primary
-He bought the Catholic Church in the person of one Cardinal Cushing:
*One of the couriers told author Peter Maas how it worked. . . if Boston area churches had collected $950,000 on a particular Sunday from collections, Joe would write a check for $1 million to the diocese, deduct it as a charitable contribution, and receive the $950,000 in cash. Thus, in this example, the church got a contribution of $50,000, Joe could deduct the entire amount on his income tax, and he could use the money to pay off politicians without fear that it would be traced.
“The cash is untraceable,” Maas said. “Part of the money goes to the diocese. He gets a contribution from Joe Kennedy for more than what the cash is. It’s brilliant. Nobody can trace the money.”
In 1966, Cushing admitted that he had played a role in making payoffs to ministers. He told Hubert Humphrey, “I’ll tell you who elected Jack Kennedy. It was his father, Joe, and me, right here in this room.” Cushing explained that he and Joe decided which Protestant ministers should receive “contributions” of $100 to $500. As Cushing described the tactic, “It’s good for the church, it’s good for the preacher, and it’s good for the candidate.”*
(“Rigged the election”? I would think by November it was practically academic! - Moody B.)
I love how the Republicans are totally flustered by this fairly obvious choice, one which they could have been preparing to attack for months.
Edwards is too inexperienced to be vice-President! (well he’s got more national experience than GW did to be PRESIDENT)
He’s too inexperienced period! (GW again, and gee, wasn’t it last week that Kerry was TOO experienced in Washington? Is there some magical middle range of experience that is okay with you guys? If you were happy with just a stint as Texas’ hood ornament, can you really bitch all that much?)
McCain was the first choice, but he supports Bush! (A republican senator supports Bush! News at eleven!)
:rolleyes:
And this all has… what to do with this thread?
I love Edwards. This is a great pick. He’s the best orator I’ve heard since Mario Cuomo. It’s nice to see the Dems play to their populist base for once instead of running away from it.
I see that the AP story posted by ABC News describes Edwards as “the rich former trial lawyer and rookie senator…”
Way to pick up on the Republican talking points, AP.
(“Liberal media” my ass…)
He did dispute the info; he noted that Illinois alone did not provide the margin of victory. Also, while you may call that a “valid cite”, if you look around that site that you linked to, you will see that it is extremely, extremely partisan and proposes all sort of conspiracies and criminal events involving the Kennedy family. So, I was suggest that a healthy amount of skepticism is in order. Around here, “someone on some internet web site said it” does not constitute proof.
Here is a more balanced discussion of the 1960 election.
All due respect, but it’s quite a stretch to call some lunatic’s paranoid website a “valid cite.” That guy draws all his material from a couple of conspiracy books that just barely squeak into the nonfiction category: he’s got no primary cites, nothing we can refer to if we want to check his facts.
If it’s a stretch to call that a cite, it’s perilously close to falsehood to say that Kennedy “absolutely rigged the election,” given the paucity of evidence to support this conclusion.
Daniel
Well, isn’t “rich former trial lawyers and rookie senator” a rather valid description of Mr. Edwards, whether you like the words “rich” and “rookie” or not?