Do tell. So what you’re saying is, a bunch of incompetent college cronies, with an astounding and constant display of corruption (and indictments/conviction), lying and incompetence are the better choice? And the only way to deal with the UltraRight is to remove the politicians who feed at their trough.
Uh huh. Getting the knob polished is far far worse than the lying and cherry picking of already manipulated data to start personal wars of choice. Hidihg the salami is far more evil than illegal detentions without trial, torture, illegal spying, and leaving an entire city flapping in the wind. Everything can be explained away with “I didn’t know” or “nobody could have foreseen”. My Pet Goat. Deja Vu all over again. Self serving speeches by Willy, or self contradicting speeches that always revolve around someone else helping the terrorists (paranoia or manipulation?). All dissent is “almost” treasonous. Got it.
He never said that. It was part of a campaign to make him look stupid. "Even IF Gore came across as “I’m smarter than you”, that is a hell of a lot less offensive than “you’re a librul commie God hating freedom hating traitor”.
Tax everyone except the oil companies - they are getting another tax break, in the face of record profits. Roe? South Dakota. Other states following suit. Texas Republican platform clearly stating it is against abortion of all sorts and for any reason. What was that again?? UltraRights ARE hoping to get Roe overturned. UltraRights issuing “resolutions” about christianity (which particular brand anyway) becoming some sort of official religion (southern states mostly).
Democrats need some balls, they are too willing to give in, they are too scared that if they DO something it will “energize” the Repulbican base. You don’t win any fight by just standing there getting hit.
Republican (Bush) plan? He had none either. He never thought anything through, and the stock answers seem to be “stay the course” and “I’m protectiong you whether you like it or not - even if it breaks the law”. What plan? Nobody has a plan.
I think you always want to fire up the base, don’t you? The reason it can be especially important in the midterm elections is that voter turnout tends to be lighter. If the Dems can get all the voters out there who voted in '04, that would be a tremendous boost.
But isn’t it still a bit early? I would suspect that once the primaries are over, that’s when you want to start rallying the masses. Then kick into high gear mid-late summer.
Although, it is certainly valid to question the wisdom of voting for the GOP in the expectation of less government spending! And while I would vote in favor of smaller government in general, I think it is valid to question the intelligence of those who voted for the current administration simply based on the current administrations blind incompetence.
The question becomes, is firing up your base counterproductive in the general election? The “base” of either party tends to be those with more extreme views to the left or the right. I submit that a fired up Democratic base will elect candidates in the primaries who are the most left leaning, which is where their personal philosophies lie, but these candidates may in fact be less electable in the general election where they are seen as extremest, and rejected in favor of Republican candidates who are not as far to the right as these Democratic candidates may be to the left. I don’t know for sure if this is the case, but given the amount of wailing about how stupid John Q. Public was not to intuitively recognize the innate superiority of the liberal vision for America after the last election :rolleyes: , I think it’s something to consider. Many liberals rejected out of hand the notion that they were out of touch with the mainstream in favor of a "How can they be so idiotic as to reject what we tell them? We know we’re superior, what’s wrong with the electorate that they don’t?’ mentality. I’ve seen no lessening of this attitude in the interim, and in that attitude I see a continuation of recent Democratic failures at the polls.
Well, considering how low Bush’s numbers are now, they don’t like him NOW, and pretty much for the same reasons that the rest of us thought they shouldn’t like him THEN, so forgive us if we continue to regard them as a little slow…
Gee . . . thanks mom. What makes you think I’m not doing something about it? Do you know how hard it is to get a new party started in California? It takes a lot of time, money, and support. (California Election Code 5100) So could you please forgive me for not getting a new political party started while drinking my morning coffee?
I beg your pardon. I’m not encouraging you to start a new third party. We already have plenty of those. They can’t get any traction because of our electoral laws, which effectively discriminate against all non-Republicrats, and because of the single-member-district system for electing legislators, which effectively forces anybody who wants to participate at all to huddle under one major-party “big tent” or the other.
I am encouraging you – and every concerned citizen – to fight on that front. Wage war on the two-party system itself and everything that perpetuates it. Campaign to reform the system, to switch to instant-runoff voting (for single-office elections), proportional representation (for elections to multimember policymaking bodies), and ballot fusion (for all elections).
I notice you convienently neglected the point of commiting perjury.
You also neglected to address the point that these issues occured AFTER the election. My point on Slick Willie was that his peccadillos were know BEFORE the election, so unless you were psychic, no one would have known about the clusterfuck that is the Iraq War.
OK you win - he didn’t invent the internet, he created it.
I remember the perjury, and I also remember the “what is the meaning of IS” situation. He evaded. He equivocated. He avoided. He perjured. However, I don’t see any equivalence. None. His perjury was about a blowjob. This was at the end of a concerted effort by Star to get him. Banking investigations failed. Connecting the dots to supposed murders failed. Starr was sent to get Clinton, any way he could. It’s telling that the only dirt he found was something this relatively trivial. I wonder how many of our current “leaership” would be guilty of perjury, if we started having hearings Under Oath, instead of the current practice of not requiring anyone to tak an oath. Then, there is still the question of Libby and his current “problems”. So, forget Clinton, he is not relevant except in the most obscure way.
Actually it is quite relevant. This was the same behavior he demonstrated over the Gennifer Flowers issue during the campaign. That was my whole point - with Clinton we knew what we were getting before we elected him, with Bush it was after the fact.
In fact that was the whole point of my discussion, that Demos don’t seem to be putting forth candidates with recognizable platforms other than “Republicans are bad” and that the three previous candidates have been virtually unelectable. Of course the same could be said for the Reps with Bush I and Dole more unelectable than Clinton, Bush II less unelectable than Kerry, and Bush II and Gore in a tie of unelecibility.
Fair enough, and you are probably right so far as my memory of the times goes. We seem to get some pretty sad “contenders”, some of whom you have to wonder, did they even want to win. It’s not getting any better either.
As much as you guys beat the drum about Diebold and allege that they fixed elections, what are you going to do when the Democrats take seats in this election? Will it be perfectly legit then, or will you demand recounts in close elections because the machines were “fixed”?
Dunno about anyone else, but I’ll still be demanding the removal of all unverifiable, paperless-trail electronic voting machines, regardless of who makes them or who benefits from them.
I have a friend (prone to conspiracy theories) who is convinced it’s all a sham and Kerry didn’t even want to win – in fact, he was handpicked by the Powers That Be to lose.
