2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

PDiddie ... do ya think if Mosely-Braun had worn a different dress, she might have placed higher on your list?

You seem to have an inordinate attention focused on Ms. M-B's wardrobe , timber.

edited so that you still look like the one with the problem :wink:

Too quick for me there, PDiddidie ... I meant to say 'Higher on your list", and noticed the ommision after I'd posted I corrected it, but you'd already quoted the original screw-up I think our respective posts there crossed in the ether

Just caught and edited a couple typos in this post after submitting it, too Wonder if the original will be grabbed and hung out for all to see

I am surprised that the scholarly Hobibit did not come up with any research. Acquiunk and P. Diddle have not done so yet either.

www.gallup.com/poll/releases/default.asp?YR=2000&MO=10

quote;10/27/2000( Just before the election and after the three debates)
"George Bush and Al Gore appear to be fairly evenly matched on a series of major issues tested in the CNN/USA today report Monday through Wednesday of this week. But the Texas governor has an edge on the Vice President on SEVERAL CHARACTER AND LEADERSHIP DIMENSIONS. Bush is more likely to be seen as honest,. sincere and a strong and decisive leader although Gore beats Bush in the ability to understand complex issues. The poll also shows that Bush's record in Texas appears to be a net positive for the governor, giving a little over half of the likely voters confidence in Bush's ability to serve as president."

end of quote.

Now I did not write that. The Gallup Poll people did.

Hobibt wrote his post with no help.

Acquiunk wrote his post with no help.

I wrote my post with a link.


My post with a link to the Gallup Poll which showed that after the debates Bush had an edge over Gore trumps the unsourced comments by Hobibib and Acquiunk.
Sorry..........

You're excused; however, you continue to place unhealthy emphasis on oneupsmanship.

Try to stay on-topic.

Gergen says Clark did really badly, and Lieberman and Kerry finally started to look better.

Said Dean didn't make a move up or down--so, in effect should still be considered the front runner--despite polls....

He also said Gephardt is underrated.

Since Dean was passed over by the movers and shakers in the Dem party (Clintonistas) when they drafted Clark; Clark's candidacy is an affront to hopes and confidence in a Dean nomination. They obviously felt the Dem nominee must have military credibility, and drafted Clark. Clark is sinking like a stone--leaving the Dems back at square one. No Democrat No Military Credibility.

P . Diddie. You are correct. We should stay on topic. However, you must remember that you are the one who made the comment- Image "Dubya" on stage with any of these men or woman"

You stay on topic, I'll stay there with you.

Your gratuitous comment led, as you must know by now, to a riposte concerning Bush.

I will go along. You stay on topic. I'll follow the topic.

Once again, Italgato is the winner in a contest he is having with no one but himself.

<smacked Hobitbob on the back of the head>
<pantsed PDiddie>
<ran>

The MSNBC News site's front page was headlining, "Democratic wrangle: Democrats blast Bush — and Clark", just now.
On the CNN site, you really have to dig to get to info about the debate.

Sofia<pantsed PDiddie>

When was I un-pantsed?



More at msnbc.com

Fair enough ... Guess its not so much just a question of Schwarzenegger being safe till 2005, after all, but of the whole thing just not happening for a long while to come. And Italgato's info (on the Schwarzenegger thread, about the legal conditions for recalls in other states) pretty much seems to show that "export" of the example to other states is quite unfeasible, as well. Perhaps no genie / bottle stuff, then, after all.

(I didnt know there'd been 31 recall efforts before, btw - I dont think I said that yet - so a belated thanks for the info <smiles>)

A quick couple of hits from my very favorite blogmaster, Kos:

It seemed to me there were really sorta two camps ... Kerry, Lieberman, Gephardt, Edwards, Kucinic, Sharpton and Mosely-Braun pretty much against not only Bush but also against both Dean and Clark, and Dean and Clark each idividually against Bush and everybody else, including each other. I figure Clark is definite sooner-than-later gonner, with Kucinich's departure not far off, one way or the other, from Clark's withdrawl. Mosely-Braun will bean early dropout too, but I suspect Sharpton will stick around. If Edwards can't catch fire here pretty quick there's little point for him to press on evn as far as the early primaries and caucauses. That leaves Kerry, Dean, Gephardt, and Lieberman to battle it out among themselves, with Sharpton as a sideshow. One thing I note about Dean is that the best that can be said of his debate performance so far is that he has done himself no harm while both Kerry and Gephardt seem to me to have acquitted themselves increasingly well with each succeeding performance. Lieberman still bores me; pretty much "Republican Lite". In that regard, I much prefer the full-bodied brew.

i really wish at least braun whould drop out so that the other candidates have more time to respond during these debates.
i wish lieberman and gephardt would drop out but that's not happening. gephardt needs some new words in his vocabulary. as for lieberman, if i wanted to vote republican i would vote for bush.

we need sharpton for the entertainment. clark, dean, and kerry are my picks for who should be duking it out. i like edwards a lot but he just doesn't have the numbers. and kucinich though also unelectable and looks like a troll, is the straightest talker so he's good for the debates.

my pick is still clark.

Italgato, I'm in the middle of mid term exams (they take 'em but I've got to grade 'em) so I'm just ducking in for flippent remarks at present.

What a farce!


One Democratic Debate, Nine Losers
Democrats whack each other in the Phoenix face-off.

You can say this about Richard Gephardt: He sticks to his ideas, even when they make absolutely no sense.

Gephardt's unerring consistency was on full display at the presidential debate Thursday night when a woman named Joy Clayton, the owner of a small business called Bobby C's Lounge and Grille, rose to ask the candidates what they would do to help ease the burden that government places on her business.

"I found that there were so many taxes associated with going into business," Clayton said. "There were taxes upon taxes. There's a privilege tax that you're levied just for the privilege of doing business. What would you do to try to help those of use who are trying to be in small business accomplish it without so much of the pain?"

Debate moderator Judy Woodruff turned to Gephardt. You've advocated repealing the entire Bush tax cut, she said. Wouldn't that be a tax increase for people like Joy Clayton?

Perhaps Gephardt didn't hear the question. Or perhaps he just didn't understand it. In any event, after telling Clayton that "small businesses like yours are having to pay a lot of tax," Gephardt said the solution to her problem would be to...repeal the Bush tax cut.

Gephardt explained to Clayton that even though she was struggling under high taxes, by raising her taxes even further, he would be able to fund universal, single-payer health care, which would save her the money she spent providing health care for her employees.

The problem was, almost anybody watching could guess that Bobby C's Lounge and Grille, like many small businesses, probably didn't have a full-scale employee health-care plan. Even John Kerry could figure that one out.

Full story

The National Review? A website whose front page has ads for books about how the Universities are the horbeds of communism, and books by Coulter, a news source with Pipes and co. as editorial staff? That's pretty funny! What an excellent jocular post!

Okay, hobitbob -- to be fair here's The New Republic's twist on the debate (I have to cut-and-paste as non-subscribers can't reach it from a link):

October 10, 2003
DAILY EXPRESS
War Footing
by Ryan Lizza

Wouldn't it be reassuring if a Democratic candidate stood up at a debate and tempered his or her (justifiable) criticism of the Bush administration's failures in Iraq with some small acknowledgement that Saddam's overthrow was a good thing? I'm no speechwriter, but it wasn't long ago that one could imagine a Democrat saying something like this:


Can anything be more moving than the joyous throngs swarming the streets of Baghdad? Memories of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the defeat of Milosevic in Belgrade flood back. Statues and images of Saddam are smashed and defiled.

Liberation is at hand. Liberation--the powerful balm that justifies painful sacrifice, erases lingering doubt and reinforces bold actions.

Actually, one of the candidates did say this. That's a choice excerpt from an article by Wesley Clark published in the London Times the day after Saddam's statue fell in Baghdad. It was the hot new piece of anti-Clark oppo research at last night's debate. Joe Lieberman mentioned the article in the middle of a devastating summary of the various positions Clark has taken on the war. "After the war he wrote a piece in the Times of London praising president Bush and Tony Blair for their resolve," charged Lieberman. Later on, Candy Crowley quoted at length from the piece, wondering why the general had flip-flopped on Iraq.

But whatever "lingering doubt" the general was writing about back in March, it seems to have been un-erased. Instead of heady talk about the balm of liberation and comparisons with his own achievements in Kosovo, Clark's standard response when asked about Iraq these days is, "I would never have voted for war." The general even complained that Lieberman was taking his Times column out of context. "I did praise George Bush and Tony Blair for sticking with the offensive in Iraq once it had begun," he insisted. "But I also noted in every op-ed, in every comment I ever made, that there was not enough forces there."

Actually, in the very same Times column Clark said just the opposite, arguing that the military went into battle with the right number of troops. "American and Brits, working together, produced a lean plan, using only about a third of the ground combat power of the Gulf War," Clark wrote. "If the alternative to attacking in March with the equivalent of four divisions was to wait until late April to attack with five, they certainly made the right call."

Clark still can't seem to get beyond the debate over his past statements about the war. In every exchange featuring Clark during the first half of last night's debate, before the format switched to audience questions, the general was either defending his position on the war or defending the fact that he was a Democrat. Clark once had complicated and nuanced positions about the war. As his op-ed shows, he wrote movingly about the liberation of Iraq. Last year he supported the congressional war resolution as the only way to give Bush leverage for a U.N. resolution. But the first thing he has learned about being a Democrat is that his new party's nominating process does not reward nuance on this question. Three weeks into his campaign the Democrats' great hope to beat Bush now has the same position on Iraq as Howard Dean and the same reputation for inconsistency as John Kerry.

It's hard not to conclude from watching the debate that, so far, Clark's candidacy has been a blessing for Howard Dean. Clark was the focus of most of the attacks last night, absorbing all of the criticism that would otherwise have been aimed at Dean. If the general hadn't been on stage, Dean would have been pummeled all by himself. Even better for Dean, much of the anti-Clark criticism is forcing the general further to the left than he may want to go. In fact, Clark's relentless antiwar rhetoric has the virtue of making the Dean position on Iraq sound utterly mainstream and respectable. And yet Clark still poses no discernable threat to the former Vermont governor. The latest poll in New Hampshire shows Clark barely registering at 5 percent, and his campaign apparently has no plans for a major presence in Iowa.

Clark is supposed to be the moderate alternative to the "unelectable" Dean. But that's not how these guys came across last night. Because of his late entry and the questions over his allegiance to the Democratic Party, Clark is slowly shedding his independent image. His most common stump-speech line is a pledge of allegiance to Democratic interests groups ("I'm pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, ...") Dean took care of that kind of pandering six months ago and has been moving to the center ever since. The expectations for the general are also the opposite of what Dean experienced as he rose to the top. Dean rose slowly and with the help of a press corps that was fascinated by his progress. The governor didn't face much hostile questioning from the media or his opponents until he was already the front-runner. Clark began the race with impossibly high expectations based on relatively meaningless national polls. After an initial burst of glowing coverage, most of the press corps and--as last night showed--all of his opponents have been tearing him apart. If Dean could have invented a four-star general who sounds like Dennis Kucinich on the war, absorbs the attacks otherwise meant for the front-runner, and doesn't actually threaten his own campaign, he would have. Fortunately, Wesley Clark jumped into the race.

Ryan Lizza is an associate editor at TNR.

(You might note that when one goes to the Home Page of The New Republic, you're not onslaughted with ads huckstering the latest propaganda tomes).