2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

I saw Gore after the election on Letterman - he came accross as an entirely different person than Gore the candidate. He was warm, funny, charming, and very real. I think he finally realized (alas, too late) that all he really needed to do was be himself.

In Dean's case, however, I think he IS being himself. That should be ok, it really should. People ought to listen to what he is saying; people ought to examine his record. Unfortunately what SHOULD happen almost never does.

Dean is bright, strong, courageous, and honorable. America would do well to have him as president. I'm not suggesting that he should attempt to be someone he is not. I'd just like to see him develop some basic effective "speech" skills, and bring out some of the passion that certainly must be within him.

I dunno. I sort of think Kerry may lead. He's come a long way, and that military background may be good, as the Iraq mess gets worse. Besides, I think he's got the presence. Now, I've been a Dean watcher for quite a while, and I think whoever wins it owes a huge debt to Dean. He opened the door and showed the way, and gave the democrats back a belief and strength. But I'm not so sure of his national appeal. I thought Edwards showed well, but I don't think it's his time yet. And Mosley-Braun - what a mind, what insights. Kerry, however, looked to me more like somebody who could carry it off against Bush. The republicans started out by worrying about Kerry - then Dean took them by surprise. But Kerry still worries them. And, if that stupid George Bush doll in uniform really does make its appearance in Spetember - think what hay Kerry could make of it, rather than any of the others.

I like Dean. But practically speaking, I think we can win with Kerry.

The best thing about all this is, the field of candidates shows how rich the democrat party is in human resources. I almost feel sorry for the repubs - they are really stuck with Bush.

Lash Goth's revelations about Kerry, if true, are very disturbing.

I like Howard Dean. He is the only one who is getting most of his financial backing from the common folks on the internet. I sent him $25.00 a week ago.

He is the only one who talks frankly and who doesn't seem to try to cover his flanks with double talk like Kerry does.

It is a shame that the Democratic Candidates are engaging in internecine conflict which can only exhaust their warchests and leave them bloodied while President Bush builds up his funds( rumored to reach 250 Million).

I guess when there is a horse race, the horses will always jockey for first place and blood will be spilled.

With regards to guidelines, can a modest proposal be made that each poster should use spellcheck?

On this thread, several posters have made egregious spelling errors which really detract from the integrity of their messages.

we all have our good defects and our bad defects.

From The TNR Primary:



I'd agree - giving the reins over to the UN is a good idea, but pulling out altogether is a really bad one. The alternative to the misguided Rumsfeld internationalism is not a screw-'em-all isolationism.

Holy Crap.

Dean suggested bringing the troops home? He just lost the election. I can't believe I haven't heard this elsewhere.

I didn't hear/see the debate, only a fairly thorough discussion with clips just now on NPR and am wondering how the candidates rate, in your (plural) views -- those who heard the whole debate -- in terms of taking on the military-industrial complex?

"Dean on Thursday mentioned his opposition to the war, but just in passing. Sen. Bob Graham of Florida noted his vote against last fall's resolution authorizing the war, as did Kucinich, who called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/la-na-dems5sep05,0,2242185.story?coll=sns-newsnation-headlines

"Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said the United States must get more help from the United Nations, NATO and Muslim nations. "We need more troops. They're going to be foreign troops, as they should have been in the first place, not American troops. Ours need to come home," he said.
http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-debate-issues,0,7574999.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

About spelling -- hey, we all do topys tpyos uh typos and even in my most judgmental mode I can overlook that slut, Miss Spelling, but using a big fat pretentious wrong word makes my judgmental self step around that poster thereafter, kind of like he'd suddenly squatted and planted a big turd on A2K's floor...

Nimh -- I think a lot of people will now look for problems with Dean. It's 'uman nature: it's a characteristic of the crowd which becomes suspicious of the stand-alones. In the matter of "pulling out," we have to be careful not to make the assumption that without us, Iraq would fall apart. Possibly without us Iraq would pull together. Possibly what Iraq needs is well-trained facilitators. In fact, I heard a discussion yesterday about recasting our military to include post-invasion or post-war facilitators of all kinds.

OK, now thats useful complementary info. Seems like TNR was quoting a little maliciously, doesnt it?

They made it seem Dean proposed to withdraw all US troops. But this fuller quote makes it seem more like he said, more troops should be coming in, but they shouldnt be ours; if anything, we should be thinking about getting some of ours back home.

I still starkly disagree with that (even if overall coordination is handed over to the UN, if anything, more American troops are likely going to be needed), but its nothing quite like the kind of reckless demand TNR was insinuating.

Still, sounds like Dean was being multi-interpretable, I dont know if that was deliberate - its not sympathetic, in any case.

And so it goes ...

RE: Spelling
Most of us edit as best we can. The A2K spellchecker leaves mistakes in, so that when I use it, I get thsithisisthis, for example.

The comparison of the two "quotes" from Dean does leave significant wiggle room. I imagine Dean will be called on to clarify.

The Gloves Come Off Very Slowly.

Some interesting views of the Dem 'debate'. Lieberman on the offensive--Kerry doesn't take Dean on, contrary to expectations--

From the article.

LIEBERMAN SAID he found "stunning" a quote attributed to Dean in an interview in the Washington Post on Aug. 25 in which Dean said he would not have trade agreements with any nations that did not adopt American labor and environmental standards.
For good measure, after the debate in the "spin room" where reporters interviewed the candidates, Lieberman called Dean's statement "outrageous" and "shocking."
Dean answered Lieberman by saying the human rights, labor and environmental standards in trade accords need not be American, but could be those set by the International Labor Organization. He added, "We can not continue to ship our jobs to countries where they get paid 50 cents an hour with no occupational safety and health, no overtime, no labor protections, and no right to organize."

MISLEADING THE AUDIENCE?
And the Dean campaign issued a statement that said Lieberman had misled the audience by using a paraphrase from the Washington Post story, not a direct quote from Dean.



Lieberman told reporters after the debate he was "impressed" by Dean's success in building momentum toward winning the nomination, but added "the American people now have to examine the statements Howard Dean makes about our security, about our prosperity, and our trade policy and decide whether he has the experience, the strength of leadership and the ability to calmly make decisions under pressure and take our country forward. That is exactly the same set of judgments I expect to be subjected to."
Asked whether he wanted to be remembered "as the guy who knocked off Howard Dean," Lieberman told MSNBC.com, "I want to be remembered as the candidate who said to the American people what he sincerely believed was right for our country's future, regardless of whether it was politically popular at a given moment."

Lieberman almost sounded as if he were prepared to lose the nomination in order to prevent Dean from winning it and becoming president.
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What do you think of Dean's statements re: trade?

I wholly agree with the last bit, and it would be good if the US army took some lessons from the Brits on that, for example.

But lets not make the mistake of thinking that, just because "we" (the US/GB/etc) made major mistakes, all will be just dandy if we pull out - the Iraqese, liberated from our occupation, will embrace each other in harmonious co-operation. That would be a misestimation of dangerous proportions. Here's a country burdened with the psychological and political consequences of decades of the worst kind of totalitarianism, with an acute lack of long-term political self-organisation outside or against Saddam. It's fragmented in ethnic-religious groups that have bones to pick with each other as well as being in a state of acute and violent power struggle (see the Shi'ites) amongst themselves. They're not going to spontaneously "pull together" when we leave.

To be realistic means looking at existing models. Forget US occupation - how are post-totalitarian and post-war nation-building efforts of the UN progressing? How are they implemented? We want the UN to take over from Rumsfeld - so, what would they need from us when they do?

I think TNR was making a good point when reminding us that the ratio of troops to the general population in Kosovo is far greater than that in Iraq now. Such existing UN "projects" pose examples of the effort it takes to install the basic situation from which democratic self-government can start up. You cant just invade a country, bomb its infrastructure, dismantle their (totalitarian) state structure, and trust they'll figure the rest out by themselves (ironically, that was actually the logic Rumsfeld seems to have had in mind). In Iraq, presently, there seem to be just enough troops to do basic US army self-protection, chasing after some of the Baathist deck of cards, and preventing riots. Regular police work - or, to pick up on your cue, working to facilitate police work, as well as administration, ensuring water & electricity, etc etc, requires many, many more men - from whereever they may be - for a while to come. Bosnia and Macedonia also suggest what long-term effort can be required to prevent hostile population groups from (re)turning to the strategies of violence, usurpation and intimidation.

Now if you look at the experiences of ex-Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, its clearly a superhuman challenge even for the UN to scrape together the required troops from among the "allies" for these kind of efforts. The UN is practically doing the rounds begging for men and money, every other year. And with Iraq we're talking a country for whose post-war reconstruction countries that opposed the war will feel little responsibility, so it'll be worse still in this case, even if the UN does take over.

To suggest, in that context, that if we involve the UN and other countries more, the US can start withdrawing its troops, is misleading the voters. The UN will be needing them. So you're back to the question of truth. Do you really want to insist US troops should be pulled back, and appeal to a voter demand for that - when you know that? That - to my mind - would have nothing to do with any suggested, anti-Bush, peace-idealism - it would be a straightforward appeal to egoistic fuhgedaboutthem isolationism. Its a wholly different discussion from that about US vs UN co-ordination. Or do you accept the responsibility the US has taken on by invading the country in the first place, and provide whatever support to the UN is necessary to clean up this godawful post-invasion mess? Then you're just going to have to admit front-up to the voters that, if anything, there will be more GIs in Iraq. Either you care about the country you just invaded or you dont. Not to mention that opening up the road to a Somalia/Afghanistan scenario is damn short-sighted as well.

Well, at this point I think assigning the idea of complete withdrawal is along the lines of setting up a straw man, Nimh. I don't think anyone is pushing for it -- it looks to me as though TNR was grinding a political axe (which is why I stopped reading it some time back and am often surprised, when you quote it, to see that they still write good stuff once in a while).

Back to Dean for a minute, though what I'm saying could apply to any candidate who gets ahead of the pack: It's inevitable that an unexpected frontrunner will have analysts zeroing in on every tone of voice, bit of phrasing, sentence, or word around which a good article or editorial could be written. I don't know whether you've ever been the subject of, say, a newspaper or magazine article, but even the most common among us are astonished to read what someone says we said and the conclusions which are drawn from it!

And you're right about the US not being able at this point to walk off and say bye-bye to Iraq. The quag is there and we're mired, like it or not. How we will handle it (France and Germany are rightly skeptical and cool), how we will put things to rights in Afghanistan -- all of this is a great and very expensive unknown. It would be nice if the US and the UN would get together and recognize that what's needed is a much better system of righting wrongs -- finding or developing professionals in court systems, intelligence systems, protection systems, sewage and water systems, development of national and subnational governing systems, etc. etc.

Nimh -- I'd just posted in the "Lefty Boom" thread something which would fit in nicely here, for your interest:

What continues to surprise me, though it's become a regular occurence, is listening to right-wing radio out of San Antone (in my car, as I'm doing my errands) and hearing the various talk show hosts condemn the administration. Though they were all pro-Bush two years ago, only two of the hosts continue to defend him.

This morning's host, a conservative+libertarian, had a guest from Washington -- I'll try to come up with an identity -- with whom she obviously agreed. He was recounting from apparently first-hand knowledge the mess Iraq is in. "Remember when Bush was saying we should invade Iraq and put in a stable government to prevent terrorists from operating from that soil? Well, as we know now, terrorists weren't operating on that soil. Saddam, terrible though he was, provided a stable government and was antithetic to Al Qaeda and interference from the outside. What have we got now? We have no stability there and we have terrorists coming in to take advantage of the unstable situation. Quagmire? Worse than that." (Paraphrase)

(The speaker turned out to be one Simon Marks, a regular on many shows, often on public radio...)

I was pretty impressed by the debate - even Gephardt had a good one - matter of fact, everyone needs to make it the mantra - the failed presidency, let it catch on. If thats the last thing you think of before you pull the lever, hmmmmm. I think the GOP is very disappointed, Dems stayed on issue. They are out to beat Bush and the other evil ones - any one of them is better than what we have.................

What I heard and read impressed me too, Bill. All of them. I liked the fact that they called a spade a spade -- Busy IS a lousy president! (It seemed as though that had been coordinated before the debate, didn't it to you?)

I don't know about coordinated, I feel that the Dems are far more solidified than the media and GOP is trying to let on (or should I say - hope). There is a concerted belief that the country is failing too and there is but one evil!!!!!!!

Mamaj is correct - poor, poor Bush - maybe that should be poor, poor GOP - Bush is failed and you have to stick with him