I don’t follow politics as intently as many people. I do know that I don’t like Bush for several reasons which I’ll hold onto for now lest I turn this into a Great Debate.
There is one issue that galls me about the Democrats: Gun control. I’m all for a National Health Care System that allows everyone equal access to medical care regardless of his or her income or employment status. I’m all for increased spending on education. I’m against Capital Punishment. All of these are more closely identified with the Democratic Party than with the Republicans. But the Democrats seem to be The Anti-Gun Party. As a shooter who, like 99% of gun owners in this country, has never used a gun illegally or is likely to do so, I am strongly in favour of our Second Ammendment rights. (And no, this thread isn’t about gun control either. It’s just an issue about which I feel strongly, and which I would like my candidate to support.)
I’ve heard that Dean supports the Second Ammendment. I’ve seen at least one ad (perhaps it was in a news segment about one of his opponents) that points to his stand on gun control as a reason why people shouldn’t vote for him.
But more, pundits say that Dean is “unelectable”. People voting in the Democratic primary should not choose Dean as their candidate because there is no way he can win against Bush.
(I’ve only just sent off my voter registration form, and I don’t recall choosing a Party. How’s that work in Washington state? In California I was registered as non-partisan. I don’t know if I’ll be able to vote for a Republican or Democratic candidate in the primary election.)
If one supports a candidate’s platform, should one vote for that candidate even if he “cannot win against Bush”? Or should one choose the “lesser of two evils” and vote for the candidate more likely to be able to defeat the incumbent? In other words, you’re not voting for a candidate as much as you are voting against the incumbent.
IMO people should vote for the person who represents their views.
Also, what do you think about Dean vs. Kerry vs. Lieberman?
Gun control is just another Republican wedge issue that the Democrats don’t handle well because they basically have nothing to offer people for whom “gun rights” are important.
Kucinich is different. Vote for Kucinich. He gets the votes of people who the NRA try to capture for the Republicans because he is so solidly for the working class that they can’t dent his support even when they gay bait him. 'Nuff said there.
Democrats have never threatened the rights of legitimate sportsmen. Mostly what they have tried to do is get handguns and assault rifles regulated to keep them off urban streets, but there is no problem for people with clean records going out and buying all the rifles, pistols, and shotguns they want. Within reason.
Democrats are also seen as hypocrites, with some justification. When the NRA says the guns are not the issue; the people who own them are, the Democrats have no answer because they do no want to seriously tackle the social roots of crime. Too many wealthy donors would be offended.
As I said, I don’t want this to turn into a gun control debate. It’s just a very important issue to me, and one that I think about when I’m looking at candidates.
At this stage of the campaign, it looks like Dean vs. Lieberman. On the one hand, Dean has been said to support my views and Lieberman has not. On the other hand, I would not like to see Duhbya win. Since I am an idealist, I lean toward voting for the candidate who best represents my views. But as a realist, I wonder if that is the right move.
I just don’t get why the gun issue has to be such a bugaboo. The Dems are divided on this issue, the GOP united. Anyway, in terms of “gun control” why doesn’t somebody propose something like this:
“I have a deep respect for the right to gun ownership for my fellow Americans. But I think we can all agree that there are too many crimes committed with guns. Therefore, I propose that ANYONE who commits a violent crime with a gun get life in prison without the possibility of parole. The right to gun ownership will remain unchanged”
There. I solved the Gun Control issue. Anything else?
I think the NRA has a good-sized block of single issue voters. And that issue is guns. I don’t have a cite, but quite a few of the NRA members I know vote on one issue: guns, and I’ve been led to believe that there are quite a few of them out there.
I’ve been a Democrat for a long time, and gun control has been an embarassment for all that time. In my circle of friends, I know at least a dozen voters who are liberal, but they always vote GOP because of the single issue of gun rights. The party calmly throws away those voters every time.
I would like to see someone explain what the Democratic Party should do differently to claim pro-gun voters. The NRA acts as a wing of the Republican Party. It gives 94% percent of political donations to the Republican Party, more than any other special interest group (I learned that in a New Republic article on campaign finance reform from about a year ago). And of course, they frequently spend a lot on contests where the candidates aren’t really different on gun control issues, the 2000 presidential election being the most obvious example. The claim to oppose the assault weapons ban, but Bush has said that he’ll support it if it comes to his desk just the same as Gore would. Why did they spend so much money preying on people’s paranoia with ridiculous suggestions that Gore would appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn the private gun ownership rights? What could the Democratic Party have done differently?
Then with all due respect your circle of friends are idiots. Do they really think that the Dems and the Pubs are identical 100% except for the issue of gun control? Do they even bother to examine the viewpoints of the individual candidates or do they just assume that the Dem is “anti-gun” and vote Pub?
Erm… I really didn’t want this to turn into a gun control debate, nor a Democrat vs. Republican debate.
Basically the question is this: Should someone who is going to vote for a Democratic candidate vote for the one who he believes will best represent his views; or should he vote for the one who has a chance of winning against a Republican?
In my opinion, the people who are trying to pin the “unelectable” tag on Dean are people who don’t want to run against him. The other democratic candidates would like to see him drop out so they have a chance to regain lost ground and George Bush would like to see Al Sharpton get the nomination.
I have a clean record, and I am a legitimate sportsman. I am also a homeowner.
I would have been open to the idea of owning a home in Washington, DC. It would have been close to where I work, and close to lots of fun things that Mrs. Moto and I like to do.
Only problem is, there is a problem with this legitimate sportsman buying all the rifles, pistols and shotguns and ammo he wants. And that is that ownership of said rifles, pistols, shotguns and even one round of ammo is a felony in DC, except by permit. And no new permits have been granted in twenty-five years
This law, the most stringent gun control regulation in the country, was put in place by Democrats. They are fully to blame. The headlines in the paper have shown, too, what a safe city it’s made Washington.
So, in order to remain law-abiding, keep my great-grandfather’s shotgun, and own a house, I have to live in the Virginia suburbs.
Well, if “they” (I have no idea who “they” are) are saying Dean can’t beat Bush, exactly who do “they” think can? Lieberman? That’s a joke. I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine a Jew being elected President in my lifetime. We’re already reviled for “running the world” as it is. Can you imagine the anti-Semites who would come out of the woodwork if one of us actually did run the most powerful nation on the planet? Forget about it – it ain’t happening.
I completely agree. I couldn’t live with a Democrat whose views are completely opposed to my own, any more than I can live with a Republican (who in almost every instance will be opposed to my views by mere virtue of their party’s general platform). Which brings me to:
I just took the “test” at http://www.selectsmart.com/PRESIDENT and at the moment it re-confirmed that the 2 candidates that most represent my views are Dean (76%) and Clark (69%). Lieberman and I only see eye-to-eye on a paltry 36% of the issues. (And it stands to reason that Bush came in with a whopping 18% – the only one with less was “Constitution” candidate Howard Phillips at 12%.)
I think either Clark or Dean would be an acceptable choice for a “pro gun” Democrat such as yourself. I also think either one has a damn good chance of beating Bush. It’s my fervent hope that enough Democrats are not only still carrying their anger from the 2000 debacle, but are now furious enough over the Iraq war, that they’ll be out in record numbers no matter who the Democratic candidate is who ends up running against Bush. [sub]PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE![/sub]
Dean topped the list at 72%, with Clark coming in second at 65%. (I saw an interview with Clark a couple of months ago, and I liked what he said.) Lieberman came in at 34%. The surprising thing is that Al Sharpton was #3 (or #4, if you include the hypothetical “ideal candidate”) at 64%! :eek: I would not vote for him, because he seems to be a bit of a reactionary (just my uninformed impression).
My Selectsmart rankings were somewhat accurate compared with what I’ve decided based on my personal research on the candidates, but I tend to take what they say with a grain of salt; their belief test gave Scientology a pretty high ranking for me, so it seems like here they’re going by candidates’ stated positions rather than stuff you have to do deeper digging to find out about them (just like Scientology’s philosophy is only cheerily humanist before you pay big money to find out about Xenu ;)).
