Four more years!

[Pure]

Seems likely.

Any ideas as to how to cope?

1. Buy stock in Halliburton and some private security companies, like Blackwater Security.

from www.blackwaterusa.com

BLACKWATER USA IS THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE PRIVATE TACTICAL TRAINING FACILITY IN THE UNITED STATES.

 

[Pure]

2. Find Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I've got to say that Colly was right. The Dems are waging one of the weakest and most ineffective political campaigns I can ever remember seeing. Almost like they didn't want to win. Part of it is no doubt that I'm in Illinois, which is already considered a Kerry state, but I haven't even seen so much as a bumper sticker.

Does Kerry have anything to recommend him other than the fact that he's not Bush? Does he have any policies or plans? If so, he's not telling anyone about it. You know, if you're going to go down in defeat, at least go down swinging.

Any way you cut it, Iraq has been a total disaster. The economy is in no great shape, the deficit is out of control, and Bush continues his transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich and no one says boo about any of this. What a bunch of incompetents!

---dr.M.

 

[rgraham666]

I'm thinking of moving to Alpha Centauri.

 

[pop_54]

Well I rarely get involved in politics, especially yours over there with is even stranger than ours over here... but like our Tory party, your Dems have shot themselves in the foot choosing old long face as a front runner, should have researched his background before they put him on a pedastool for the other crew to take shots at... and what a happy looking handsome guy.

The Tory party over here keeps choosing leaders no fucker has ever heard of before they appear as leader... Not that I vote Tory, but they are the only ones who could unseat Teflon Tony.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I've got to say that Colly was right. The Dems are waging one of the weakest and most ineffective political campaigns I can ever remember seeing. Almost like they didn't want to win. Part of it is no doubt that I'm in Illinois, which is already considered a Kerry state, but I haven't even seen so much as a bumper sticker.

Does Kerry have anything to recommend him other than the fact that he's not Bush? Does he have any policies or plans? If so, he's not telling anyone about it. You know, if you're going to go down in defeat, at least go down swinging.

Any way you cut it, Iraq has been a total disaster. The economy is in no great shape, the deficit is out of control, and Bush continues his transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich and no one says boo about any of this. What a bunch of incompetents!

---dr.M.

Kerry was a poor choice to run against GWB. You can't control the primaries of course, but I feel pretty strongly that the Dem's didn't expect to win this year. After the primaries, when GWB's stock was falling faster than a dot com's, they suddenly realized they had a good chance.

By then, they had their man and the GOP wasted no time in ripping him apart. The dems simply haven't asnwered back. The campaign has been poorly run, the candidate left ill defined, and the issues they could hit hardest with are the very ones they avoid mentioning.

I think their concerted effort to keep Nader off the ballots in swing states is another strategy that will back fire on them. It's being painted as proof that they are desperate and that they don't care about people's right to choose. Trying to narrow peoples choices to just Bush or their man is likely to make those who would have voted or considred Nader feel disenfranchised. Some of them will choose the lesser of two evils and vote Kerry, but I suspect a good number just won't vote and some will vote Bush out of spite.

I think everything they have done has been a disaster. It should still be a close race, since Bush is so odious, but they haven't done anything I can see to seize on his multiple short comings and hammer the points home. The GOP has defintely seized on every weaknes real and imagined in Kerry and struck hammer blows.

It's almost like watching a fight between a very big, strong man and a very small fast man. The fast man works to avoid the blows, neglecting to hit back. He can't avoid them all however and the ones that land are telling. The big man just keeps punching away. He knows eventually he will connect and when he does it will hurt. Unless Kerry starts counter punching and soon, he is going to loose a race that the GOP through it's ineptness has practically handed him on a plate.

-Colly

 

[Guest]

 

[cynter]

*whimper*

I'm thinking of moving to Alpha Centauri.

take me?

 

[Quiet_Cool]

Seems like the Dems have thrown in the towel - will they wait until the election's over before they start up the 'Hillary in '08' campaign?

I'm one of those people who think that this was the point the whole time, that Kerry was never really expected to win, but to be a loser in an election that the winner couldn't really win. The next four years are going to do forwhoever wins this election exactly what the last four did to the Bush administration. Make them look awful. I'm not saying that they weren't at all responsible, that they made good choices, or anything like that, just that the circumstances that await the next/current president aren't ones that anyone can really deal with well. The Dems look great going up against eight years worth of Iraq and Al-Queda with the Republicans in charge. Their next candidate will have everything in their favor. Basically, I think they used Kerry to begin with... The worse he looks, the better Hilary looks in comparison.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I'm one of those people who think that this was the point the whole time, that Kerry was never really expected to win, but to be a loser in an election that the winner couldn't really win. The next four years are going to do forwhoever wins this election exactly what the last four did to the Bush administration. Make them look awful. I'm not saying that they weren't at all responsible, that they made good choices, or anything like that, just that the circumstances that await the next/current president aren't ones that anyone can really deal with well. The Dems look great going up against eight years worth of Iraq and Al-Queda with the Republicans in charge. Their next candidate will have everything in their favor. Basically, I think they used Kerry to begin with... The worse he looks, the better Hilary looks in comparison.

In my e.mail today:

> Hillary Clinton is elected President and is spending her first
> night in the White House. She has waited so long..........
>
> The ghost of George Washington appears, and Hillary says, "How can I
> best serve my country?"
>
> Washington says, "Never tell a lie."
>
> "Ouch!" Says Hillary, "I don't know about that."
>
> The next night, the ghost of Thomas Jefferson appears... Hillary says,
> "How can I best serve my country?"
>
> Jefferson says, "Listen to the people."
>
> "Ohhh! I really don't want to do that."
>
> On the third night, the ghost of Abe Lincoln appears... Hillary
> says, "How can I best serve my country?"
>
> Lincoln says, "Go to the theater."


It looks like the GOP or at least some factions of it feel like you do, if they are already getting a head start on the attacks for 2008.

-Colly

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I'm one of those people who think that this was the point the whole time, that Kerry was never really expected to win, but to be a loser in an election that the winner couldn't really win. The next four years are going to do forwhoever wins this election exactly what the last four did to the Bush administration. Make them look awful. I'm not saying that they weren't at all responsible, that they made good choices, or anything like that, just that the circumstances that await the next/current president aren't ones that anyone can really deal with well. The Dems look great going up against eight years worth of Iraq and Al-Queda with the Republicans in charge. Their next candidate will have everything in their favor. Basically, I think they used Kerry to begin with... The worse he looks, the better Hilary looks in comparison.

I don't believe in conspiracy theories. I believe that human incompetence is a much more convincing and direct explanation of things than human intelligence.

But I'll be damned if I know what the Democratic leadership was thinking about for Kerry's campaign. Run on Viet Nam?

---dr.M.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I don't believe in conspiracy theories. I believe that human incompetence is a much more convincing and direct explanation of things than human intelligence.

But I'll be damned if I know what the Democratic leadership was thinking about for Kerry's campaign. Run on Viet Nam?

---dr.M.

I'll take a stab for you Doc. They never expected Kerry's war record to be a negative. He was selected because he did go and did fight and thus, to their minds he wouldn't be assailed on that front, especially considering that W did not go.

I believe they, like you & Sher & Minsue & others felt protest was partiotic and showed principal in the man. What they failed to grasp, is that to a lot of folks, especially folks in the Southeast, protest is the same as treason. I was raised withthat view and I assure you, it is far from rare south of the mason Dixon line.

It seems to me the entire Democratic National convention was geared to establishing Kerry isn't anti-military or anti-us. I firmly believe the attention and play his protest activites have garnered were a shock to the people who run his campaign. A shock from which they seem to have never recovered. They lost the initiative. They lost the ability to define their man on thier terms. Perhaps most importantly, they lost the ability to talk about anything else because of the beating he was taking on that one, as they saw it, non-issue.

Any way you slice it, his campaign has been horribley mismanaged. The issues that are most important, attacks on our civil liberites, loss of jobs overseas, the deficit, and many others just don't get any play from them. I am not a big believer in conspriacy theories either, but I am stuggling to find any answer for the gross ineptitude.

-Colly

 

[Colleen Thomas]

On a related note I just saw my first swift boat ad. All I can say is wow.

Who ever put this one together was a master of the propagandist's art.

A few nice cut shots while a solemn voice reminds us of the importance of the symbols of the U.S. Marines marching, the Washington monument, I think the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unkowns, and then a waving U.S. flag.

Hard cut shot to a longhaird John Kerry renouncing the symbols of his country. Five or six replays of him saying that. Just rewinds of the exact same words, no context provided, but obviously Kerry. Then a big word trust flashed up over his face with a question mark.

No wonder these things riled up the Democrats. They're vicious.

I haven't seen anything out of the Kerry camp that was even memorable. This thing was 1940 Joseph Geobbles tight.

-Colly

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I don't think Kerry won the primaries based on Viet Nam. I think he won because he was considered the most main stream and the most electable. Dean was too wild, Edwards was too young, and the other ones were just too blah.

The senate makes a truly lousy steppingstone to the White house. Kennedy used it, Johnson and Ford got there despite it, but I'm hard-pressed to think of anyone else in the recent past.

---dr.M.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

I am getting sick and tired of listening to armchair experts pissing and moaning about how Kerry is bound to lose and the Dems aren’t really trying.

Dubya took a bounce after the GOP Convention. Did anybody not expect that? He has already lost part of it.

There are far too many people that believe the last loud voice they hear.

Unless you actually WANT George the Lesser to win, don’t let your voice be the one that convinces somebody Undecided not to bother voting. Not even yourself!

 

[Guest]

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I don't think Kerry won the primaries based on Viet Nam. I think he won because he was considered the most main stream and the most electable. Dean was too wild, Edwards was too young, and the other ones were just too blah.

The senate makes a truly lousy steppingstone to the White house. Kennedy used it, Johnson and Ford got there despite it, but I'm hard-pressed to think of anyone else in the recent past.

---dr.M.

I think Vietnam was a non issue in the primaries. I think that is part of the reason it was such a shock to the Dems when it became the issue.

-Colly

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I am getting sick and tired of listening to armchair experts pissing and moaning about how Kerry is bound to lose and the Dems aren’t really trying.

Dubya took a bounce after the GOP Convention. Did anybody not expect that? He has already lost part of it.

There are far too many people that believe the last loud voice they hear.

Unless you actually WANT George the Lesser to win, don’t let your voice be the one that convinces somebody Undecided not to bother voting. Not even yourself!

Burley,

You are going to vote for Kerry, in spite of the comercials. I have no doubt Doc will cast his vote for Kerry as well. I will vote third party, not sure which third party, but third party.

Observing that the Campaign the Dems are running has been badly mismanaged isn't a crime. I noticed they brought on a couple of folks from Clintons successful campaigns recently. Bully for them, even they seem to realize they are mangling their chances.

Docs points and the points I have raised earlier are very valid. Who is John Kerry? What is his plan of action? What is he going to do differently that is going to make a difference? These things haven't been answered and the Dems are now fighting tooth and nail to change the public perception that he is anti-military. That perception is out there, well funded, well aired and driven home with avengence in swing states.

I've studied propaganda. I've studied political campaigns, going back to the really nasty ones in the early days of our country. I may not be a paid pundit, certainly I wouldn't qualify myself as an expert, but I do think I have a strong grasp on the subject.

If the Dems bury their heads in the sand, give the thumbs up and stay the course, they are going to get clobbered. Bringing on people from Clinton's campaign staff is a definte step in the right direction. those guys knew the pulse of the country, where to hit, how to hit and where to take and how to take.

No one has said it's hopeless or over. Doc as well as other are lamenting how badly their party is being shown up. I've been pointingit out for a while. Kerry could still win, but if he dosen't do something to establish who he is and what he plans to do, he will get beaten. The idea that not being GWB is enough to get you elected is being proven to be false. Letting the GOP define you is proving even more disaterous.

You are a very intelligent person, can you honestly say you think the Dems have done a bang up job thus far?

-Colly

 

[cantdog]

Kerry didn't win the primaries. Dean did. Dean was then pulled by the party itself.

The dems told you straight out they didn't plan to do much this time around.

"We're saving the big push for Hillary in 2008," the state chair here said. This was about this time last year.

The dems pulled their antiwar candidates in '68 too, and substituted Humphrey. He was the only halfway winnable candidate that wasn't antiwar. The party decided it was the war we needed, even though antiwar candidates (in '68 that was Bobby and McCarthy) got sometimes 80, 90 percent of the primary votes.

The field was too large for that this time, but the antiwar group of idiots got lots more votes than idiots like Kerry and Lieberman, almost in the '68 proportions.

And it's not conspiracy theory, Zoot, it's plain reportage. I asked the state chair personally when he came to town for a Kucinich whistlestop in Pierce Park by the city hall here. The national party didn't like the picture of putting a lot of effort against an incumbent in a "war" but, rather, felt more good would be had waiting for 2008.

Besides, we all conspire. We sit in rooms and plan things for our advantage. You don't believe these guys plan or is it you don't think they use rooms? Zoot, do you imagine they use headphones and leap from planes to speak while skydiving? Use spaewomen to communicate via spirits of the departed? Nope. They sit in rooms and plan. I've seen 'em. It therefore isn't so difficult to believe they do it, for me.

Go to your caucuses or attend party meetings. What the hell? You want to keep guessing what the party is doing your whole life? They don't use mind-rays, you still get to think independently even if you get involved talking, or even if you take the radical step of collating mailings or stuffing envelopes. Politics isn't mysterious, just stupid, sometimes.

 

[vargas111]

I'm voting for Kerry, of course. Four more years of bush will be a long term disaster. But Kerry was not the best choice, althought he was better than Dean. Clint on showed, Carter showed, The coulntry will vote for a centerist Democrat, In both Kerry and Dukakis, the Democrats put up an obvious left liberal and then tried to disguise him as a centrist. I did not work with Dukakis and I'm afraid it will not work with Kerry.

It's a shame that Democratic primary voters are so far from the mainstream they cannot select a viable candidate.

Let's hope for Democratic control of the Senate to prevent [?] W2 from doing more damage.

<sigh>

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

I haven't decided whom I'm going to vote for. I really don't care for Kerry in office--I don't see that bringing anything to the table. I don't think I'll vote third party... they have tended to blow hard.

I will probably vote Bush, unless something changes. At least he brings Chapter 2 to the table.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

It’s not just that the Bush Administration has lied, it has lied about the most important subject it has in its power to lie about, the reason to go to war, the reason why citizens must give up their lives.

They not only lied, but they can’t even make a good job of lying. One day it’s WMD, then they were misinformed about WMD by the CIA, then Perle admits that the WMD were just a ruse to get the citizenry behind a regime change, then Cheney claims that they are still expecting to discover what Saddam did with the WMD, like maybe he shipped them to Osama.

Kerry is a career politician with a valid war record behind him. Had Bush not made the idiotic claim to being a War President, Kerry’s 30-year-old war record would not have become an issue. Since it did become an issue, the Bush Administration did what it invariably does when faced with a reality which doesn’t suit them. They lied, and hired others to lie.

Anybody who says that there is no difference between Bush and Kerry is either blind or too partisan to think straight. At a time when it was not a certain, safe choice, Kerry expressed his doubts about the validity of fighting the war in Vietnam. As it turned out, almost every historian and participant now accepts that American soldiers died in that war due to the faulty reasoning of its leaders.

Kerry told the truth when their was no certain benefit to be derived, other than telling the truth.

Bush lies, his administration lies, their policy is based upon a whole tissue of lies.

Six years ago this country was torn apart daily over a president who lied about what he did with his penis. Now, the same people who claimed that THAT was an impeachable offense are claiming that lying about the reason this president sent over a thousand American servicemen and women to die in a foreign country is somehow laudable.

The choice is between Kerry and Bush. Either you are in favor of having a liar in the highest office in the land, or you are not.

 

[cantdog]

I'm voting for Kerry, of course. Four more years of bush will be a long term disaster. But Kerry was not the best choice, althought he was better than Dean. Clint on showed, Carter showed, The coulntry will vote for a centerist Democrat, In both Kerry and Dukakis, the Democrats put up an obvious left liberal and then tried to disguise him as a centrist. I did not work with Dukakis and I'm afraid it will not work with Kerry.

It's a shame that Democratic primary voters are so far from the mainstream they cannot select a viable candidate.

Let's hope for Democratic control of the Senate to prevent [?] W2 from doing more damage.

<sigh>

Kerry a left liberal??

Holy mackerel. That leaves us with a damn narrow spread, right-to-left! Sharpton, maybe, but Kerry is the corporate candidate. The only declared dem candidate more to the right than Kerry was Lieberman.

I met one of his neighbors (Lieberman's neighbors) and the man ought to have been a republican. It's just that his personal history was in the other party, he made his bones there. But his positions have largely been indistinguishable from moderately conservative old-school republican.

Besides Kerry, every other candidate stood more or less in opposition to the Bushites on the police state measures, the corporate giveaways, the tainted water and air, the bad meat, and the blowing the tops off mountains to mine easier.

Kerry hasn't said much about the mountaintop removals or the Kyoto thing, the ABM or Nuclear Test-Ban treaties, apart from vague language about being more responsive and engaged in internationalism. Which is only common sense at the very least.

He (Kerry) has no position about the Bushite repudiation of the Geneva Conventions, even though as a former military man he ought to have some idea what having no conventions will mean for captured GI's!

He has not rethought his rash donation of Congressional war powers to Bush; he stands by his vote to do that.

He wants more, not fewer, troops in Iraq, in contrast to Dean, Kucinich, Sharpton and all the rest of the initial roster but Lieberman.

He is very softly pro-choice, opining that a few anti-choice judges is okay.

He is for gay marriage, so long as it isn't really marriage, as opposed to Kucinich, Sharpton, and a lot of others. Sharpton said, "You might as well ask am I against Black marriage, am I against Jewish marriage."

Most significantly he is unrepentant about the PATRIOT act, which establishes the excessive police powers and universal single-payer surveillance Ashcroft needs to control all dissent.

These are not the positions of a left-anything. Who told you that was lefty stuff?

Jesus.


cantdog

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The choice is between Kerry and Bush. Either you are in favor of having a liar in the highest office in the land, or you are not.

There's no doubt in my mind that Kerry's the superior candidate. Hell, Ronald McDonald would be a better candidate than Bush. I can honestly say that W is the most incompetent, destructive, dishonest and dangerous president I've known in my life. I believe his War on Terror is just smoke and mirrors to distract us while he engineers the redistribution of wealth in this country, which is his real priority. His administration is cynical to the point of nausea.

But I still maintain the Democrats have done a lamentable job of running a presidential campaign. And I still don't buy this Hillary in 2008 excuse either, which as far as I can tell was manufactured by right wing talk radio. What the hell is so holy about Hillary that you throw away an election that's almost been handed to you on a platter? You mean to tell me she wields that kind of power in the democratic party? Or they think she's so fabulously popular that her election is a shoo-in? She's probably the most hated figure in American politics today. The only ones talking about her running are Rush Limaugh and his ilk, using it to whip his minions into a frenzy of fear and hate.

And Dean didn't win all the primaries. He lost rather spectacularly in the first primary held outside the Northeast, and then strangled himself with the infamous Dean scream, frightening off the very voters he needed.

---dr.M.

 

[GingerV]

Just an idea, but I honestly think there's a point being missed here. Watching the polls, 90% of the votes were cast before the democrats even knew who was running. This country STARTED this election polarlized. 45% of the votes were going to go to Bush, folks who like him, like his policies, like the idea of doing something about terror even if that 'something' is counterproductive, people who vote republican no matter what. 45% of the people were going to vote democrat, for the reverse of any of the above reasons or a new set all their own.

The 'Anybody Buy Bush'ers don't have to be appealed to, they don't have to be appeased, at least not in the eyes of the Kerry campaign. You just have to give them a candidate that COULD win, and they'll turn up to vote. THAT was the appeal of Kerry in Iowa, and that's when Dean's dominoes started to fall. I don't think it was any deeper than that.

And from my perspective, it looks like the campaign's still working around that central idea. They can't loose their base, and they can't win Bush's. It's all about that middle 10%. The folks who could go either way. The campaign seems to think that those people are turned off by attack ads, so they are very careful not to run any. They think the swing vote likes positive messages, so they're trying to offer one. They DO feel that they'll be swayed by the debates, heaven only knows if that's true. I have no idea what the reality of the situation is, whether it's working or not. But I think that the fact that Kerry's playing to a very select audience isn't a badly run campaign. It may turn out to be an unsuccessful strategy, but I think it's a very intentional one.

Mind you, I agree that I'd like to see more stand up campaign. More real policies discussed. More numbers, more hard questions and more real answers. There's a part of me that wants the Bush administrations record well and truly aired and run against, and another part that wants to know what Kerry will do in his first 100 days. But you can't put those policies or answers into practice unless you successfully get yourself elected. And honestly, it's not my vote Kerry has to fight for. Bush ensured I'd vote Kerry before Kerry knew he was going to run. That being true, I can't be all that surprised that he's not running a campaign designed to woo me and those like me.

Random thoughts, worthy pretty much what you paid for them .

G