2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

sweet - My personal experience corroborates your observation, though I tend to question my perception given that I am likely to notice it more from "the other side" than from my own.

I fear some here will reactively assume that I'm responding just to offer a gleeful "see, I told you so", but that is not my intention. My primary reaction to your comments was to think that--whether your perception is accurate or not--if we were all as willing to consider the flaws we and those like us have, there would be a far better chance of meaningful, productive dialogue for everyone.

Whatever, buddy boy setanta, (OOPS!!, that's right, I'm not supposed to call you that, am I?)
call it what you will, sweet still showed clairvoyant capabilities, for all to see.

<hanging head as no sandbagging occurred>

devillishly and admirably addressed by dys and Setanta.

6/4/03
Liberals 1
Sofia 0

<sigh>

Wearing sign which says "churlish". :wink:

Turn it around, Boss, and inscribe "Nobility" on it . . .

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean will begin making "house calls" at homes, hospitals and workplaces to sell his health care plan.

Dean outlined his plan to bring health care costs under control by reducing the burden on doctors and the cost of prescription drugs.

The cost containment ideas are part of Dean's Healthy America initiative, which he says will be the centerpiece of his campaign. Another part of the initiative is his $88 billion plan to expand health insurance, which he announced last month.

Dean's house calls will begin next week with stops in Texas, South Carolina and New Hampshire, according to his campaign.

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Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry called President Bush "arrogant" in his dealings with foreign nations and multilateral institutions such as the United Nations.

"You can't do it if you're arrogant and behave indifferently to those other nations on this planet," Kerry told the audience of about 350 people. The lawmaker is a 1966 graduate of Yale University.

The country needs "a president of the United States who understands the importance of multilateral institutions, who respects the concept of rule of law and order and the way in which you work your will upon this planet."

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Presidential candidate Al Sharpton says he is committed to supporting the Democratic Party and has no plans to run for president on a third-party ticket if he fails to win the nomination.

"If I was interested in running as a third-party candidate, I would have done that from the beginning," he said on CNN's Crossfire. "I will be in the party, I hope to support the nominee, I hope to be the nominee, but I will not be running as a third party."

Sharpton rejected suggestions that he's not getting enough respect from his party or that Democratic leaders are snubbing him because of his race.

"I will say in defense of my party that I've been treated a lot better than (the Republican) Party treated Alan Keyes," Sharpton said, referring to the former Republican presidential candidate who also is black.

AP via nj.com

Well, I see everyone is having fun here today.

I do, once again, find Tartarin's post most reflective of my own observations and experience.

There are conservative thinkers who I commonly disagree with, but for whom I have much respect. They are good listeners, they appreciate the complexity of social and political matters, they are careful in thought and in discourse, they have great respect for education and little respect for the easy answer or the cliche, and they deride dishonesty issuing from the mouths of civil servants (most particularly, civil servants in the White House).

Such a description, however, does not match many in the current crop of vocal right siders. Ann Coulter or Rush are pretty much everything Lincoln would have despised.

Somehow I find it difficult to accept a model of our political spectrum composed of just three groups; Liberals and Conservatives who are reasonable and well behaved, though the Liberals are (according to Tartarin), better educated and more articulate, and a third group, the Radical right, who are the embodiment of all that is disliked by the majority of posters on these threads.

Somehow something about this model subtly suggests a bias. Could it be that the only loonie element identified is on the right, and happens to be the favored whipping boy of that same majority of posters? Is it really possible that there are no loonies on the left? Since alliteration seems to be good for perjorative labels how about "lunatic left"?

Will Blatham and Tartarin accept a four component model for our political spectrum? C'mon guys, how about it?

Bless your heart, PD. Hang in there with the Democratic stuff. Dean's "House Call" approach has a positive ring to it. Now, we will see if it takes hold.

Kerry's remarks should appeal to some, but I'm not sure the general populace will be swayed. It's difficult to buck the "blood and guts" flag PR of the war; unless, of course, it comes back to haunt Bush. Or, the economy sets new lows. Remember the "It's the economy, stupid! ?

I have not been An Al Sharpton fan, but I do like the above information blurb. He may be able to revitalize the traditional black vote for the Democrats.

PDiddie -- Ol' Howard's gonna be up in Our Liberal Capital (as it once was), Saltillo Square, on Saturday. Don't know what time.

Anyone read about Graham's daily diary (open to all, I think)? Pretty anal. Not sure about that guy.

George -- I don't think you read my post very carefully. I gave Libs and Conservatives equal points and respect. Of course there a radicals at both ends -- that, after all, is how we define the political spectrum. But the radical left (such as it is) barely whispers, if indeed they're still there at all, while the radical right dominates the airwaves and would like to dominate the culture -- houyhnhnm's braying and pawing the ground... Where the genuine conservatives lose respect is when they can't free themselves from this awful group.

How is it that "genuine conservatives" can't free themselves from the radical right, while right thinking Liberals have no trouble freeing themselves from the radical left? What does that mean? How is it so? What is your point?

It appears to me that the gathering storm among the Democrat contenders very definately has major ingredients of struggle between the centrist elements of the democrat party and the radical single interest groups that make up its left wing. It is hardly a whisper.

Setanta - coming late to this tonight, I just read your evaluation of ML being a control freak. What ho! ML, are you going to stand there and take that? Fie!

But yes, all the interesting discussions have side roads; somehow we do find ourselves wandering back to the topic at hand.

Tart - yes, I read Graham's diary, and I am perplexed. He seems to account for every moment of his personal life, but there is no mention at all of his political one. The same article goes on to describe him as being one of the most knowledgeable and respected members, and beginning to emerge.

This child tax credit could also provide a little fuel. Tom Delay grabbed headlines with his statement, but I don't know how much good it will do him with so many republicans wanting to re-instate the credit. What it does is establish him quite firmly as being on the other side of the angels.

Perception is always in the eye of the perceiver. One's perception of the earth being flat has been proven incorrect.

george

Tartarin and I aren't really suggesting such a 3 point model. I suppose, if we wanted balance, we could add some goateed commies over there on the far left. Then, if we shifted the control point on the scale as far left as we see it now on the right, that would put Jimmy Hoffa in the White House. You can understand our concern.

I know I've recommended Hofstadter's 'Anti-Intellectualism in American Life' to you previously, but I do wish you'd find a copy. He did win a Pulitzer for it, and it is American history as well written as it gets. He wrote it in the fifties, a time in important ways not dissimilar from the present.

There are facets to American culture which are anti-intellectual and they have deep historical roots. Evangelical, or born again Christianity, is a large part of this history. So is the valorization of the 'practical man' and the derogation of the professorial class, and the distrust of city culture (and art, and Europe). Also, the faith that 'businessmen' can be counted on to carve out a world of magnificence (and munificence).

Gee, George, I thought the conservative right considered the liberals as the radical left. What is the difference?

And what gathering storm? I think you're misreading this one. I read very little about "radical single interest groups that make up its left wing." If anything, the candidates seem more united in standing against many Bush policies as a group. I have yet to read anything about them or from them that can be construed as a vicious attack. With nine candidates it stands to reason that they will be winnowing themselves out - everybody knows that.

The only single interest item I've read about recently had to do with a local candidate who ran on a single platform of medical malpractice. It was in a republican primary, and he lost.

(Bear with me, PDid, I'm gettin' to it!)

Blatham:

Good to see that you have gone from telling us what we think and believe to telling us what dead people would have thought or believed.

That's a great trick.

And as a result, may I suggest you take another look at Dennis Kucinich and his candidacy?

His new age beliefs are right up the alley of someone with such heightened psychic abilites as yourself.

max

I don't think I have ever suggested what it is you personally think. There's a reason for that.

blatham: On this very thread, you said:


So, when you said this:

You should have stopped at this:


Now that I have caught you in an out and out lie, I am going to do the conservative gentlemanly thing and let you off the hook.

I believe you when you said the above, It appears that you do it without thinking about it at all, which sadly, makes it even more egregious.

Now, what was that reason again, blatham, hmmmmmmmm?

I do recognize the existence of an anti urban/intellectual/professorial strain in American life. Likely it began with English dissenters in New England and Scotch Irish immigrants escaping James I etc. No doubt it blossomed with Cotton Mather and the evangelical "awakening" and revival of the 1830s and all the rest. However one can make too much of this. We also have a huge class of immigrants from the cities (and hinterlands) of every troubled country in Europe who flocked here from 1850 to 1920. Most settled in cities and developed their own version of an urban and cosmopolitan world view.

I believe the thing you are focusing on is indeed here, but I suspect you exaggerate its effects. Further, I believe you are examining the right with a much more discriminating eye than you apply to the left. While all liberals may appear to you to be reasonable, intellectually oriented and free of cant, they don't appear that way to me.

I see an equally dogmatic and closed minded fundamentalist religion on the left. Its holy doctrines are agnosticism, secularism, diversity and a somewhat hidden contempt for the individual human spirit. Its language is the mind-numbing cant of political correctitude. It is particularly urban and thrives in academic environs. It is no less dogmatic and intolerant in its precepts than is the radical or religious right against which it rails so energetically. Indeed it is its mirror image. It applies the same religious fervor as does its counterpart beyond the looking glass to the key issues that inflame the two extremes. Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

As to the issues between the U.S. and Europe, the history of the last two centuries suggests to me that in every conflict or encounter between the business oriented, pragmatic, low brow American and that of the more cultivated and urbane European has yielded an American result. The great malevolent social and political contagions that have beset the world since the French Revolution have been largely of European origin. America was created by risk takers who fled the ghastly history of Europe. No surprise that we distrust them.

Control freak here...and to think this thread may go on until the next election. I have not read all of the dribblings of this interaction; so, I could of been too quick to control Still.....

Will it take the National Dem. Convention to finally force the Democrats to define themselves? Are the Dem. powerless to affect the results of the next Pres. election, unless, Bush's people shoot him in the foot?