For the love of god and humanity please dont vote bush in again. But then again the picks are truly pathetic. Best of luck. Remember you screw up who gets elected, you screw the world.
Poor Joe Lieberman. Gore didn't even have the decency to give him a telephone call to advise him in advance of this decision. Joe loyally placed his nose way up Gore's butt during last election and even after the defeat. He wouldn't even announce for President until Al decided he wouldn't run. So much for loyalty.
MV, did you read today’s Oped piece in the NYT? http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/09/opinion/09BROO.html
The Mysterious Stranger
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: December 9, 2003
My moment of illumination about Howard Dean came one day in Iowa when I saw him lean into a crowd and begin a sentence with, “Us rural people. . . .”
Dean grew up on Park Avenue and in East Hampton. If he’s a rural person, I’m the Queen of Sheba. Yet he said it with conviction. He said it uninhibited by any fear that someone might laugh at or contradict him.
It was then that I saw how Dean had liberated himself from his past, liberated himself from his record and liberated himself from the restraints that bind conventional politicians. He has freed himself to say anything, to be anybody.
Other candidates run on their biographies or their records. They keep policy staff from their former lives, and they try to keep their policy positions reasonably consistent.
But Dean runs less on biography than any other candidate in recent years. When he began running for president, he left his past behind, along with the encumbrances that go with it. As governor of Vermont, he was a centrist Democrat. But the new Dean who appeared on the campaign trail — a jarring sight for the Vermonters who knew his previous self — is an angry maverick.
The old Dean was a free trader. The new Dean is not. The old Dean was open to Medicare reform. The new Dean says Medicare is off the table. The old Dean courted the N.R.A.; the new Dean has swung in favor of gun control. The old Dean was a pro-business fiscal moderate; the new Dean, sounding like Ralph Nader, declares, “We’ve allowed our lives to become slaves to the bottom line of multinational corporations all over the world.”
The philosopher George Santayana once observed that Americans don’t bother to refute ideas — they just leave them behind. Dean shed his upper-crust WASP self, then his centrist governor self, bursting onto the national scene as a mysterious stranger who comes out of nowhere to battle corruption.
The newly liberated Dean is uninhibited. A normal person with no defense policy experience would not have the chutzpah to say, “Mr. President, if you’ll pardon me, I’ll teach you a little about defense.” But Dean says it. A normal person, with an eye to past or future relationships, wouldn’t compare Congress to “a bunch of cockroaches.” Dean did it.
The newly liberated Dean doesn’t worry about having a coherent political philosophy. There is a parlor game among Washington pundits called How Liberal Is Howard Dean? One group pores over his speeches, picks out the things no liberal could say and argues that he’s actually a centrist. Another group picks out the things no centrist could say and argues that he’s quite liberal.
But the liberated Dean is beyond categories like liberal and centrist because he is beyond coherence. He’ll make a string of outspoken comments over a period of weeks — on “re-regulating” the economy or gay marriage — but none of them have any relation to the others. When you actually try to pin him down on a policy, you often find there is nothing there.
For example, asked how we should proceed in Iraq, he says hawkishly, “We can’t pull out responsibly.” Then on another occasion he says dovishly, “Our troops need to come home,” and explains, fantastically, that we need to recruit 110,000 foreign troops to take the place of our reserves. Then he says we should not be spending billions more dollars there. Then he says again that we have to stay and finish the job.
At each moment, he appears outspoken, blunt and honest. But over time he is incoherent and contradictory.
He is, in short, a man unrooted. This gives him an amazing freshness and an exhilarating freedom.
Everybody talks about how the Internet has been key to his fund-raising and organization. Nobody talks about how it has shaped his persona. On the Internet, the long term doesn’t matter, as long as you are blunt and forceful at that moment. On the Internet, a new persona is just a click away. On the Internet, everyone is loosely tethered, careless and free. Dean is the Internet man, a string of exhilarating moments and daring accusations.
The only problem is that us rural folk distrust people who reinvent themselves. Many of us rural folk are nervous about putting the power of the presidency in the hands of a man who could be anyone.
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*Originally posted by PakistaniAbroad: *
rumor has it that Bush will dump Cheney at his secret location and might get Tommy Franks to run for VC..
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yo dawg...Cheney is the one who calls the shots man..
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*Originally posted by myvoice: *
Poor Joe Lieberman. Gore didn't even have the decency to give him a telephone call to advise him in advance of this decision. Joe loyally placed his nose way up Gore's butt during last election and even after the defeat. He wouldn't even announce for President until Al decided he wouldn't run. So much for loyalty.
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I was a little bit surprised at Lieberman not getting Gore's support, but maybe Gore thought loyalty to party and country was more important than loyalty to former running mate. Heck he may have won had he picked a diff running mate.
The thing that amused me after the elections was that Liberman was much more tenacious and vocal about the voting issues than Al.
so.. this may get to be bush/cheney vs dean/TBD... those are my options?
I am thinking of digging out that old bumper sticker Piccard/Riker ..make it happen.
Bushj will win not because of any great achievement. But because the democrats went too far left. We don't like Lefties much i'm afraid. bad for business and they rarely shower or shave...women that is.
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*Originally posted by Fraudz: *
I was a little bit surprised at Lieberman not getting Gore's support, but maybe Gore thought loyalty to party and country was more important than loyalty to former running mate. Heck he may have won had he picked a diff running mate.
The thing that amused me after the elections was that Liberman was much more tenacious and vocal about the voting issues than Al.
so.. this may get to be bush/cheney vs dean/TBD... those are my options?
I am thinking of digging out that old bumper sticker Piccard/Riker ..make it happen.
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Who Gore endorsed is of less interest to me than how he did it. Does loyalty to party and country mean that you don't even give your loyal old running mate who stood beside you through thick and thin and continued to promote you as the leader of the party long after the election was over a personal telephone call to talk to him before making the endorsement? What a creep.
MV, as I recall clinton went kicking and screaming to endorse Gore. And he has to do one better, no?
Its an interesting article. Brings a lot of things into perspective. For some reason, Dean doesn't look presidential to me. He looks like a guy who will make a decent concession speech in Nov 2004 (if it comes to that). Personally speaking, I thought Clark is much better. Too bad he ran out of steam even before the race truly began. For Dems to select Dean is to give 2nd term to Bush in a platter.
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*Originally posted by Matsui: *
The old Dean was a free trader. The new Dean is not. The old Dean was open to Medicare reform. The new Dean says Medicare is off the table. The old Dean courted the N.R.A.; the new Dean has swung in favor of gun control. The old Dean was a pro-business fiscal moderate; the new Dean, sounding like Ralph Nader, declares, "We've allowed our lives to become slaves to the bottom line of multinational corporations all over the world."
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What I gleam from this is that Dean is playing his cards one at a time. Due to the strange way of American politics, a candidate first has to convince his core constituency that he is the right person for the job, and then go and convince the whole nation that he is not as bad as they think he is. In simple terms, at this point all serious Dem Pres Candidates are out to prove that they are left of the left. Who ever then bags the nomination will go out to prove he is actually at the center. To give more clarity to this argument, if Schwerzenegger had to run Republican primaries, chances are he would have lost in a handsome manner. He is too much to the center to ever have gotten the Republican nod. Same with Dean. Anyone who is in the center, will not get the Dem nomination, and anyone on the left will not win the Presidency.
Pir ji there's plenty of buzz around that Bushy will dump the tind to break clean of the stigma of going to war without sufficient proof and other war profiteering accusations now beginning to be easy targets for the lefties..
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*Originally posted by PakistaniAbroad: *
Pir ji there's plenty of buzz around that Bushy will dump the tind to break clean of the stigma of going to war without sufficient proof and other war profiteering accusations now beginning to be easy targets for the lefties..
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I would not be surprised to see a diff VP for Bush in the next election but not for these reasons. In Bush/Gore election, Cheney helped considerably in overcoming the inexperience in foreign affairs negative. GW doesn't face that charge anymore and the tables will be turned on the Dems particularly if a guy like Dean is his opponent.
In a second term, political parties like to have a VP that can be groomed for a run at the Presidency in the next election. Cheney, because of health and age, simply is not a viable Presidential candidate for 2008. Maybe Tom Ridge. He's from a key state with lots of electoral votes and has attained good name recognition as Director of Homeland Security.
MV..maybe gore is upset at Joe, its possible.
Faisal- you got it right, actually from a republican perspective, Dean is the best candidate dems can send, because he is going to become a pretty good pinata by the republicans, with some of the others it could have been a little bit different.
PA- its possible. Cheney will prollyhead on back to Halliburton then.
Now...if for some reason..somehow..dems do win, who do u think will be on W's pardon list. I am assuming enron folks, kenneth lay and skilling, and assorted other thugs who are kinda chilling these days?
MV
Ridge would make an excellent running mate, not only is PA an important state, but he would be from the north east area..balancing the ticket a bit.
what do u think will happen if any of the dems pick hillary as their VP?
Hillary won't like to delay her Presidential ambitions for four more years. If she is planning for '08, running for Veep (and winning) will delay that till '12.
^ She told you that? She told me the same thing, saying it was as secret. Dat biyatch!!!!
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*Originally posted by Fraudz: *
MV
Ridge would make an excellent running mate, not only is PA an important state, but he would be from the north east area..balancing the ticket a bit.
what do u think will happen if any of the dems pick hillary as their VP?
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The one thing I have never accused either Clinton of is being stupid. I think Hillary has seen the writing on the wall and made a very wise decision to sit this one out. If the party goes down in flames in 2004, they will look for a saviour and she's it as long as she doesn't get sullied by a huge defeat in 2004. She'll get easily re-elected as Sen in 2006 and have four more years to bash Bush and Republican policies before the 2008 Presidential election.
The war on terror will still be ongoing in 2008 and a lot of Americans will, by that time, be awful tired of it. I just don't see the "It's time for a new direction" campaign being sellable in 2004. The battle is still too new. Too many American servicemen are at risk. The economy will probably be good to very good. The Bill Clinton years are probably still a little too fresh in a lot of people's minds and the wounds have not totally healed. And, for all his faults, GW is a pretty likeable fellow and we as a people have shared laughs, smiles and tears with him.
2008 is much more likely to permit the "new direction" campaign to be successful. And by then, time will have glossed over a lot of negatives from the Clinton years and Hillary can campaign strongly on the good old days.
I just don't see the economy as being the great Republican issue in 2004. Once again we are mortgaging our future with astronomical budget deficits. The dollar is weakening, the trade gap continues to expand, interest and inflation rates have no where to go but up, jobs continue to flow out of the country and new job creation is mostly in the low paying service sector. And all of this is barring another attack on US soil which could send the economy due south. All that said, I don't wish a bad economy just to see Bush lose. I think there are plenty of other reasons to vote him out of office. He didn't win the majority of the vote when we thought his lack of foreign policy experience could hurt the US. Now that we know that to be the case, one would surmise that he gets even less votes. Unfortunately, Dean is not the best candidate to beat him. Gore was no prize either, but he did have foreign policy experience.
Y'know, I'm gonna have to side with the conspiracy nuts on this Gore endorsement thing.. this is a Gore vs Clinton ego match. Gore and Dean are the new Nader, that's all.
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Originally posted by Seminole: *
I just don't see the economy as being the great Republican issue in 2004. Once again we are mortgaging our future with astronomical budget deficits. The dollar is weakening, the trade gap continues to expand, interest and inflation rates have no where to go but up, jobs continue to flow out of the country and new job creation is mostly in the low paying service sector. And all of this is barring another attack on US soil which could send the economy due south. All that said, I don't wish a bad economy just to see Bush lose. I think there are plenty of other reasons to vote him out of office. He didn't win the majority of the vote when we *thought his lack of foreign policy experience could hurt the US. Now that we know that to be the case, one would surmise that he gets even less votes. Unfortunately, Dean is not the best candidate to beat him. Gore was no prize either, but he did have foreign policy experience.
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When was the last time that a President got elected based upon his platform regarding the trade deficit or a weak dollar? Budget deficits have been important issues but mostly in peacetime. Ronald Reagan created the largest peacetime deficits in history in his first term and trounced Mondale in his re-election. Inflation and interest rates hit home. Remember the Misery Index during the Carter years that Reagan ran on? The Fed Funds rate is so low right now that plenty of room for increase exist between now and November 2004. Deflation has been a bigger fear lately than inflation and a 3-4% inflation rate will probably be viewed as healthy.
The flow of jobs out of the US has been an issue for many, many years and I can’t see how that issue falls at GW’s feet.
The biggest unknown right now and for our foreseeable future is the devastation that could be caused by another terror attack on our soil. BUT, if such an event were to occur between now and November 2004, I wonder which way that would cut in a Dean/Bush election. It is very possible that the reaction would be Americans clamoring for even more military force and action rather than less.
MV
do you think that its possible for us to see candidate bids from Gore, as well as Hillary in 2008, if W wins, he will not be running again anyways, and unless Jeb has presidential aspirations duno who the next leader from GOP could be, Ridge comes to mind.
because..i may be wroing, but Gore did nto say he did not want to run again, but just that he did not want to run in 2004.