And when Mondale ran with Geraldine Ferraro, it was “Fritz and Tits”.
Just FTR, the phrase “loathe the military” does not appear in your so-called “cite”, Shodan, nor does any paragraph that might be paraphrased as such. Quit lying - you’re not fooling anybody but yourself. Clinton explained (in complete sentences no less - remember when Presidents could write those?) that he was opposed to both the Vietnam War and the concept of a military draft in any war, and sympathized with draft resisters, but that’s as close as he came.
Try actually reading it. You just might learn something if you’re not careful.
And what, this is honorable? Allowing Bush to win elections and be in charge of the most powerful military/economic force in the world because you want your campaign to be fair and square?
The Dems had two easily winnable elections slip through their fingers. 2000 was on the heels of 8 pretty decent years under Clinton, the economy was good, we were at peace, and the VP under Clinton was running. That should have been a slam dunk, look how easily GHWBush got elected on Reagan’s heels. In 2004, we had a relatively lousy economy, a war we were mired in, no WMD, 3000 dead in a terrorist attack, and they lose worse than in 2000.
Instead of being honorable, fight for the fucking job, the Pubbies are, and they’re getting it.
False choice. You don’t have to fight dishonorably. You just have to fight.
Gore ran a poor campaign, and nearly won despite his numberless mistakes. Had he been a marginally competant campaigner, he would have beaten Bush. I’m not so partisan that I don’t recognise that simple fact.
Kerry did a better job, but still did not run as good a campaign as he should have. Concentrating on his war record at the expense of issues was a fatal mistake.
By contrast, Bush ran perfect campaigns with few missteps. Messages were well crafted, and grassroots organizing was flawless. This is the hard work of winning elections, and is how the Republicans have been winning lately. The Democrats have to learn to play this game as well.
Just a point of clarification, but the group who claimed John Kerry to be less than the war hero he was presented as was The Swift Boat Vets. How in the world can you call THEM chicken hawks?
To my recollection, the “team” you’re probably referring to (Bush, Cheney, the White House) always said that John Kerry served honorably and admirably.
You’re correct, it does not.
All the letter does is give Clinton’s reasons for breaking his word, and a description of how he dodged the draft. It thus demonstrates how compromised both his patriotism and his integrity were (as the recipient of his letter states), from his earliest involvement in politics and with the military. It demonstrates his cowardice and general unfitness for public service of any sort.
And I am sure Clinton did not loathe the military when he was using it to try to avoid impeachment, or arguing that he should be exempt from being sued for sexual harassment as Commander-in-Chief. I am sure he only loathed it when he didn’t have anything to gain from it.
But I regret the error. That draft-dodging, corrupt, liar and thief did not say he “loathed the military”.
Regards,
Shodan
No, it does not say that either. Go back and read it again, slower this time.
I’d ask for cites about the rest of the crap you’ve spewed there, but there really isn’t any point, is there?
It wasn’t an “error”, you simply didn’t care enough about simple fact to see if your own damn cite said what the RW talking heads told you it did, and I very much doubt you regret it either given your continued demonstrations of simple hatred. Now quit lying.
They weren’t, they were simply liars. The chickenhawks are the talking heads (and SDMB posters) who took every word they said as gospel, which it must have been because it put a Democrat in a bad light, right?
Perhaps you can offer some advice as to how either could have responded more effectively to the streams of lies they were constantly faced with, and parroted in the superficial, entertainment-oriented mass media we are stuck with.
Did Bush spend much time responding when faced with crap like this? It seemed to magically slide off of him.
A campaign moving forward and engaging voters will not have to deal much with this crap. A campaign playing defensive ball will. Gore and Kerry played a lot of defensive ball.
I can understand why they did so, as a lot of their positions can’t be sold outright to the American public - they must be snuck in. Gore and Kerry are running in a more conservative America now, and they are more liberal than Bill Clinton was. They also don’t have the benefit of running with a strong third party effort going on, as Clinton did.
That may mean that the Democratic Party needs to move right to win, a remedy I have prescribed before. This hasn’t been a popular solution to the partisans on this board, though.
Bullshit. There were Whitewater claims - I remember them - that Clinton had people killed to cover up financial misdealings - which were never proved either (not for lack of trying). It’s telling that after the witch hunts I mean serious and nonpartisan investigations :rolleyes: , the ONLY thing they had on him was he lied about a blowjob. Big fucking whoop. The Bush drugs thing can be directly traced to his own words during an interview with a supposed friend named Wead (funny name). So, at least in that one case, the source is BUSH HIMSELF. While the news article (CNN, not some lefty blog) doesn’t specifically say cocaine, it does say drugs. Meanwhile, you don’t have shit. I join the group of other dopers now and call you a blind partisan idiot. Shut the hell up now.
They (Swiftboaters) were just a bunch of “hired guns” and liars. Someone could have asked them to back off, but why should they. The Swifties were able to make up lies and spread them, while the more “important” people could pretend to be innocent of any involvement. First they said Kerry was a coward. Then they said he gave himself all those commendations. Then they said the commendations were given under false pretenses. Then they said he wasn’t wounded enough, whatever that means. Every time one lie was outed, they drummed up a new one. They slandered a person who had been in the war with them, to benefit a group of high ranking chicken hawks. Air National Guard (AWOL). Other prioroties. Yada yada yada.
So McGovern made a fatal error in not making more of his good war record, and Kerry made a fatal error in emphasizing his good war record?
I’m 52, and I cast a losing but impassioned vote for McGovern in 1972, so I guess I’m an ideal qualifier for the OP, though I hardly consider myself a liberal any more. I just figured out yesterday, AAMOF, that I have never voted for a winning candidate for President, since I couldn’t stomach voting for Clinton (and I had a bad flu on Election Day 1976). I was wondering as I read Brokaw’s THE GREATEST GENERATION if I would have been turned off McGovern if he’d made more of his war record, and I decided that I would have voted for anyone against Nixon. Brokaw argues that it wasn’t political strategy, BTW, but simple modesty. McG felt his war record spoke for itself, and he didn’t need to emphasize it. I think he was dead wrong, from a political p.o.v., but I admire his modesty. My dad fought in WWII, too, and he died without ever telling me where he fought and how and when, but if he’d run for President I would have told him to stress that good war record (and he would have preferred losing, as did McGovern, to bragging about it.)
Yep. My point exactly. Fair play has no place in modern politics. I don’t know how many failed elections its going to take until we learn this, but we’d better learn it pretty fucking soon, or this is going to turn into a one-party nation.
The evidence of the last six years shows precisely how stupid this platitude is. If one side fights fair, and the other side cheats, guess which side is going to win? Here’s a hint: they’re in the White House right now. Honor, as it turns out, is for losers.
About as much as Kerry did, and cite for it being crap, please.
Magic? Very doubtful. Try a more mundane set of explanations first. Magic?
They spent a lot of time getting ignored by both the partisan conservative media and the supercilious entertainment media (and there’s a lot of overlap). There wasn’t much media left.
And for very good reasons.
You misread me.
If McGovern had made more of his war record in 1972, it would have made little to no difference. America was not going to vote for him in that election, even though he was a decent and heroic man. They just weren’t on the same page with him politically at the time.
The error Kerry made was not recognizing this fact, and compensating for it. He should have run as if he had no war record to speak of - essentially as McGovern did.
He’ll now join the long list of political losers with nice shiny medals. It would have been better if he would have engaged the voters on the issues and tried to win that way. Clinton has no medals to speak of, military ones anyway. But he has a presidential library.
I remember a joke from the campaign. A Republican sits next to a Democrat at a bar, and while drinking his beer says, “Man, John Kerry’s tax and education policies just make me cringe.”
The Democrat slams down his drink and yells, “Stop attacking his Vietnam record!”
So the Republican sits down next to the Democrat and starts drinking his beer? About right.
So, they were NOt chicken hawks. Glad we cleared that up. And it’s great to know that you think they are liars. Thanks for the news flash. I don’t know who you mean when you say that they took "every word [the Swift Baot vets] said as gospel? But it implies that you (and, no doubt many posters on SDMB) “knew” every word to be a lie “because it put a Democrat in a bad light, right?”
SteveG1:
Even if it is true that they would have backed off if asked–and I don not grant that for a minute–isn’t it possible that their allegations were true?
And please explain this: Why would men who have served their country do honorably, and many of whom were not highly political, decide, en masse, to fabricate such stories. And before you asnswer, let me just ask, you do know some of them were democrats, right?
Here’s a segment of the letter from Shodan’s cite: hope that my telling this one story will help you understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves still loving their country but loathing the military, to which you and other good men have devoted years, lifetimes, of the best service you could give. To many of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is disservice, or, if it is clear, the conclusion is likely to be illegal. The letter certainly contains a form of the phrase Shodan referred to, and could easily be paraphrased as saying “I and others have come to love our country and loathe the military.”
But that is exactly what happened. Re, the Swifties. To me, Kerry’s mistakes were
[ul]He never did more than defend (barely did even that).[/ul]
[ul]He never went on the offensive and attacked - He won the debates so far as substance and keeping his facts straight (while Bush relied on slogans and got several facts wrong) He blew the advantage by not going for the deathblow. [/ul]
[ul]He failed to discredit his attackers.[/ul]
[ul]He refused to poke holes in the other guy’s grand claims of success.
[/ul]
In short, the horse never left the starting gate. Bush didn’t win, Kerry lost.
There is considerable evidence that we DID win the 2000 election. It was stolen. That’s another problem the Dems have to contend with – we have to realize that the Pubbies are WAAAY past “hardball” politics and into Third World Banana Republican election stealing. It’s not enough to be dishonorable ourselves – we have to figure out how to protect the democratic process itself from the Republicans. To hear what’s coming out of Washington, I don’t think the Dem leadership has a clue on this point. For hardened pols, they’re strangely blase about the evidence that the Pubbies can win elections without actually, um, winning the elections.
Easily, yes, but hardly honestly or truthfully. Note that Clinton went to great depths to expression his *admiration * for members of the military along with his hatred of what they had been required to do. To say the opposite is a lie, just as it is a lie to say “Clinton said he loathed the military”, but it is of course typical of the Kool-Aid quaffers.
magellan01, it would help you a great deal to read posts before replying to them in such a way as to look as stupid as you do right now. No, to call someone a liar does not mean that every word they say is false. Nor can one be called a liar for making an innocent error of fact. It is not impossible for a military veteran to be a liar or a partisan hack, either.
Now log off and go do your homework before your Mommy starts yelling at you.