2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

<ominous twitch of the eye>

One very prominent Southern Democrat, who asked not to be identified, said of Howard Dean, "This guy will take us down like the Titanic. "

Getting back to the topic (at least I think it is): What do people make of Lieberman's triumphalism after Saddam's capture? Hard for me to accept that this somehow proves him right or makes him a tougher candidate for Bush to beat. If capturing Saddam justifies the war, they why not just vote for Bush?

Huh? Are you guys on drugs?

No more threat of Saddam retaking power after the US leaves.

No more threats from die-hard Baathists about what saddam will do when he regains power.

No more listening to certain people complain about the fact we have captured Saddam. Hell, that last one is probably worth it alone.

Huh? Are you guys on drugs?

No more threat of Saddam retaking power after the US leaves. No more threats from die-hard Baathists about what saddam will do when he regains power. No more listening to certain people complain about the fact we have captured Saddam. Hell, that last one is probably worth it alone.

"thwart terror and the growth of anti-Western Islamism in the Middle East."

Saddam and the Baath Party were not seen as Islamic nor a threat to the West, except in the planted lie by the Neo con Dis-info campaign.

Enter Clark and the American flag. The choreography, the physical embrace of Old Glory, is both compelling and weird. There is an over-the-top intensity to it that is a Clark signature trait. The man is so tightly wound that he seems to be an ambulatory tourniquet. But he is wildly intelligent - and intellectually adventurous. His stump discourses on economics are as sophisticated as his sense of military strategy - if often a bit too sophisticated for his audience. Asked in Nashua, N.H., last week about the trade deficit, Clark noted in the course of a dense reply, "Those of you who studied economics will remember Adam Smith's case of Portuguese wine wrapped in English cloth." He peered at the audience, searching fruitlessly for a nod of acknowledgment. Receiving none perhaps because the wine-and-cloth analogy was David Ricardo's he added incomprehensibly, "Well, we're a long way from that."

[..] His least satisfying position is on the issue he says is most important: the war. He says he has a "success strategy," but he doesn't sound much different from the other Democrats. He wants NATO in charge of the military operation and the United Nations in charge of civil affairs, though neither NATO nor the U.N. has shown any appetite for these roles. He has been studiously vague about increasing or decreasing troop strength. I asked Clark if it is possible that there is no plausible "success strategy" in Iraq, if it is just a hopeless mess. He replied with admirable, if distressing, candor, "Yes, but I'm not prepared to concede that yet."