Nothing GW Bush has done has really surprised me. I've been dismayed , but not surprised. 9/11 surprised me. Anyone who closely watched Bush's tenure as Governor of Texas and his career prior to that time shouldn't have been too surprised. I'm more surprised that his father has had so little apparent influence on him. The biggest surprise of all will be if the Democratic Party can find a good candidate and beat him. It will take a very large amount of money, unfortunately, but that's the way the game is played these days. You always needed money, but the sums being talked about these days are in the hundreds of millions. And Bush will have all he needs. The Democratic Party needs someone with charisma, intelligence, experience and deep pockets... I'm still waiting for him or her to make themselves known. Right now, I'm hoping for a miracle. Nader is a fool.
I'm with wowming on this. You wanna blame somebody for Gore's loss? Look first at Gore and second at the party bosses. Nader never should have been a factor. And if the party nominates someone who couldn't cream Bush in that last election, blame them second. It's not our job or our responsibility as Democrats or supporters of various issues in the Dem platform (or as opponents of Repub issues) to hold our noses and eat whatever they feed us. I've had it up to here with that lesser of two evils crap. Give me someone to vote FOR. Nader didn't lose it for Gore, Gore lost it for Gore. With plenty of help from his handlers and other sissies from the DLC who are so intent on standing for nothing but winning. I will not be a party to it. I don't deplore Gore, but he ran a terrible campaign, he stood for nothing and he deserved to lose. Anyone who even barely beats a zero like candidate Bush in 00 deserved to lose. I didn't vote for Tony Sanchez either. wowming's right. It's time the Democrats learned their lesson. Give me someone to vote FOR or I'll FIND someone to vote fon. They do it again, I'm voting for Oscar the Grouch. wowming: I'm curious. Would you vote for any of the candidates running for the Dem nomination?
Well, it's a good thing, for you I guess, to have the greater (especially since you're not, that I know of, a woman, a veteran, or an Iraqi who just had his head blown off). If anything Nader has and will accomplish the following: moving the democratic party further to the right and further eroding the humanist principles for which he supposedly stands. (Pelosi's promotion has nothing to do with Nader, by the way. If anything, she has risen despite Nader's "work" to deliver tie-dyed clownsuits to all true liberals). Meanwhile, he can keep running his masturbatory campaigns, illiciting masturbatory votes and promising a rendevous with the Big Peace-N-Love Mothership, due any day now. For what it's worth, I'm not saying Nader cost Gore the election. Gore sucked. I'm just saying Nader's a straight up poser who hasn't worked an honest day's work. Build the Green party from the roots up (B-Bob votes Green local). This self-inflated buffoon (Nader, not me in this case) rising up every four years to dust off the same tunnel-visioned speeches isn't going to get the Green party anywhere except the margins. Is he working at a grass roots level to build the party? You should ask him, if you've got a spare $K sitting around to attend one of his fundraisers, or if you can get his campaign to ever answer your letters or emails (never answered any of mine, not even the first few sincere and polite ones). Batman, just so I can attempt to speak your language: Nader is Tartuffe, but not quite as clever, and unlike Moliere, this **** ain't funny!
First off, B-Bob, good try but that's not exactly my language and I don't particularly find Moliere funny. On a side note, Tartuffe originally had a considerably darker ending and was changed to appease the royals -- a strangely little known fact. But I digress. Nothing in my post was meant to defend or support Nader. My opinions on him are irrelevant. My point was there comes a time when enough's enough. I want my freaking party back. I'm not talking about ideology here nearly so much as I'm talking about not taking core constituencies and core values for granted, leaving only an "electable" candidate who doesn't get elected and the small comfort that the guy they gave us wasn't as bad as the other guy. Democrats stayed home in record numbers last year. This cynical strategy is not working. Not my fault and not Nader's. If you're upset about all the horrible things Bush has done (like I am), lay blame where it's most deserved -- at the feet of a party which has forsaken everything it once valued (like I do). I want a vote of No Confidence in this country like they have in Australia. Until they give us one, and as long as they continue to nominate DLC milksops who stand for nothing and betray Democratic Party principles, I will continue to vote No Confidence. That may mean writing in roydelton and it may mean voting Green to remind the party that if they leave their core principles unattended, a less than perfect (maybe even a pure ass) candidate will step in and use them. Wanna neutralize Nader? Believe in something. If the party refuses to do so, it can continue to lose without my support. I am a Democrat. When they run a Democrat for president, I will vote for him or her. Until then, I'm sick of hearing this stupid crap about Nader giving us Bush. It's no more true than the stupid myth that Perot begot Clinton.
I'm sorry, Batman, but I just don't get it. Did Gore run an abysmal campaign? Yes, he did. So did Bush. But as much as you might dislike Gore, as I do, who would you rather have making lifetime judicial appointments? Who do you want setting this country on a course insured, to a large extent, by those appointments? Bush? That's worth satisfying your angst about the Democratic Party's failure to nominate a candidate who more closely fits traditional Democratic Party values? And, as much as you may dislike Clinton... and many Democrats do, in my opinion one of Gore's biggest mistakes was not using him in the campaign. He would have got many of the Democrats you complain about staying at home to go out and vote. And he can actually give a speech, something Gore seems incapable of doing. Yes, why not let the country go to hell in a hand basket so we can satisfy our need to put the Party on the correct course, with traditional Democratic values, while Bush and his friends destroy what's left of those values. That makes a lot of sense. (from a friendly Democrat... hope I didn't offend you )
I would also like to add that it seems disingenuous, at least to me, to say that Nader didn't cost the Democratic Party the White House because the Supreme Court did. Ergo, Nader wasn't to blame if you use that analogy. Whether the Supreme Court cost Gore the election or not is debatable. What is not is who makes those Supreme Court appointments... whoever is elected President. Think about it.
First, you misinterpret my position. If I held the tiebreaker, would I have cast it for Gore? Of course I would have. And I wanted him to win. That in no way lessens my fury toward the party for nominating a poor candidate and running a terrible campaign. Since the invention of the DLC, the party's been about equivocation, triangulation and cynical manipulation. And it has ceased to be about any of the things that made me a Democrat in the first place. Clinton's welfare reform thing was unconscionable and I will never forgive him for it. I feel similarly about many of his and Gore's positions on various issues. Do I prefer him to Bush? Of course. But I don't have the tiebreaker and as such I am free to vote my conscience. In Texas in 2000, in an electoral system, my vote for Gore would have been worth less than all the other worthless votes I've cast put together. So why not use my vote to send a message? Why not use it to help the Greens get closer to the 5% (or whatever it was) they needed to qualify for funding and debate inclusion -- especially when the two major parties continue to fail us so badly? This isn't about what I think of Nader. And it's not about hoping Bush would win to spite a party which has so woefully disappointed me and so many other Democrats. If I'd lived in a state where the race was in question, my vote might have been different. But I like to think it wouldn't have been. I'd like to think I'd never be an enabler to a party which has been on a fast track to suicide since the invention of the terrible DLC, whose express purpose was to trade principles for victory. Why doesn't the GOP have to stoop to these tactics to win? They do better when they "say what they mean and say it mean." I have voted 'against' rather than 'for' candidates before (Lee Brown twice, a plethora of Dem candidates for Congress), but I largely see voting as a symbolic, and also a solemn, act. If I'm inclined to try and make a difference, I certainly don't do it by voting. I do it by working for a candidate or a cause. Those who wring their hands trying to make the 'important' decision of who to cast a single vote for and impotent and silly. But that's a topic for another thread and another day. And I repeat, my opinions on Nader are irrelevant. My point posting in this thread was to say that the Democratic Party does itself and its constituents a grave disservice to try and shift blame to Nader or his supporters. They are at fault. And as long as they continue with this philosophy of being all things to all people, believing in nothing but the safest route to victory, they will lose and they will deserve to lose. I'd like nothing better than to see Bush lose the next election (with the possible exception of personally punching him in the face), but I don't have the power to make that happen. I will continue to reserve my greatest scorn for those who DO have that power and continue to squander it.
