I’m glad to see that Bowers has been able to articulate a way forward without Feingold. I don’t have one yet. I haven’t felt like writing today.
I’m not interested in some for-show progressive candidate like Kucinich or Sharpton. They are just left-wing Gary Bauers and Alan Keyes…there to get a set of issues heard and exact concessions from serious candidates.
We just lost our standard bearer. He cannot be replaced. Not this year.
Tomorrow I will feel better. Today, I am just depressed.
Sounds exactly like the voice of my conscience in 2000 that urged me to vote for Nader. Not that I was actually naive enough to believe he could win, but because I was naive enough to believe that the truth might get through to enough ears to initiate a change.
The loss of Feingold as the true left’s representative is definetily a serious blow. I can’t for the life of me zero in on anyone else who could even get a whiff of being a close second in my book. I think this is a great example of the ideological wasteland that is the current crop of democratic hopefuls. Sooner or later hard choices will have to be made about our direction. Sacrifices will need to be made over the short run to help ensure a better long term field od candidates who understand that we won’t be bought off with dollar store trinkets that look good, only to fall apart later.
Sorry to hear you’re depressed. Hopefully the Giants will open up a can on the Bears and all will be right with the world for a few hours.
I am hopeful for Gore.
Sorry.
No fire in the belly.
Nice man though, apparently.
Nice guys finish second.
AG
You neglect his many political victories including his win in 2000 when you call him a loser.
I think that your kind of unthinking fire-in-the-belly is over-rated. Gore has plenty of gumption. He fought long and hard for that 2000 victory that was rightfully his. He threw in the towel after the supremes did him in. He didn’t want blood in the streets, dude. What else would you have had him do?
Yuh, but he was not aware enough to see that America was not ready for Lieberman to be VP!!
There was no reason whatsoever for America to have rejected the Dems in 2000 with everything going quite well. Even so, it was a close election even with Lieberman on that ticket, but I predict Gore would have won easily without Lieberman. Now we have Bush and things are no going quite so well in America. Gore should have been more politically aware, IMO, and has that changed??!!
I agree with you that GOre was not and is not perfect. Who is?
I disagreed with his choice of Lieberman at the time, but his strategy did work. Remember those 10,000 butterfly ballot voters in the heavily Jewish precincts in Florida? They ended up having their votes counted for Buchanan.
I don’t agree that Gore isn’t or wasn’t politically savvy, so I can’t tell you that anything has changed. I disagreed with his savvy choice, but that’s a different issue.
I agree. Lieberman pulled down the ticket. Campaigning was all about Joe. Lieberman4Lieberman showed lack of confidence when he refused to resign his seat to run for VP. Some message huh! Indies read that loud and clear.
Gore has always been my first choice.
I’m not ruling out a Gore-Feingold draft in 2008. All those so called front runners, including Billary, are likely to bomb.
(I’d like to see him as head of EPA), but I note that Feingold did not rule out a VICE Presidential run…no “if elected I will not serve” from him on that front.
And actually, considering the state of electoral politics these days, I don’t know why anyone with sense WOULD run — it seems to be a case of nastier-than-thou. I feel like I had to take a long shower just WATCHING most of those f-ing negative ads…I felt grateful to be in a secure blue district where the Republicans didn’t even bother airing a single ad, negative or otherwise, against either DiFi or Anna Eshoo…
It’s a tremendous insult to lump Kucinich in with Bauer and Keyes. Kucinich was a big city mayor and has been in the House for a while. In fact, arguably, he has more experience for the Presidency than Feingold. Probably the main reasons why Feingold would have been taken much more seriously are Feingold’s height and announcer’s voice and Kucinich’s more credible lefty credentials. I’m disappointed, too, that Feingold dropped out, but, as in the case of the late great Wellstone (who also declined to run for President, arguably spawning Nader’s bid), I’ve never understood why Feingold didn’t provide the one Senate vote that would have been required to force the recounting of the electoral ballots after the 2000 Presidential election. Additionally, when Bill Clinton needed friends the most, I remember Feingold joining the moralizing finger waggers.
http://www.rense.com/general19/kucinich.htm
Nuff said.
Jeezus Booman, you are so f***ing pathetic sometimes.
Is this:
a classic case of projection or what?
I mean, you link to a post about fucking space-based “mind control,” for God’s sake, and you’re accusing Kucinich of being a boutique leftist?
Do yourself (and the rest of us) a favor and drop the idiotic conspiracy theories.
moron, i linked to Kuckinich’s bill.
Like Mr. lamont…no presence on TV.
Get real.
AG
I recall him on “The Tonight Show”, and they did a version of the dating game. His choices were Cybil Shepherd, some right-wing columnist, and Jennifer Tilly (IIRC). I believe Jennifer was the ultimate winner…this was long before she started dating poker player Phil Laak.
(This concludes this weekend’s Keeping Tabs segment…)
I am still hoping someone comes out of the woodwork like Clinton did and can lead the party to a vicyory. I am upset about Feingold not running but understand and respect his reasons. The others you list are jokes in my opion and could win dog cather in a national election.
When the standard bearer falls, the next soldier picks it up. The idea being that as long as the standard waves there is at least one man left fighting on for — whatever they are fighting for.
Sitting down in the mud and debris of battle and telling everyone around you how depressed you are and you don’t know if you can pick it up until tomorrow — well, I don’t think that’s part of the plan.
But I guess Bowers is holding it aloft until the leader shows up to claim it.
I don’t know…. I’m thinking let’s give him 24 hours to get his shit together. LOL!!!
Good point someone picking up the standard when the standard bearer falls. It is the standard and what it represents that matters, not the standard bearer. What has to happen is that someone from within the movement , often an unlikely person, grabs the standard and presses it forward.
Leaderless resistance is the best resistance. It empowers without allowing decapitation.
I’m sorry, BooMan. I know a lot of people had their hopes on Feingold. I did not. He was never my first choice, so I don’t feel the loss many others must be feeling right now. I deeply respect and admire Russ Feingold for what he represents. I respect and admire him even more for taking himself out of the 2008 race now, cleanly and honorably. I’ve already heard suggestions of a VP slot. Maybe that is to come, but I think Russ said pretty plainly that he feels he can do the most good in the Senate. I tend to agree, but that’s just my humble opinion.
Bowers says, among other things,
I’m with him there. I’m sick to death of hedging bets, of running the safe course. I want to be inspired. I want to feel like we’re out there trying to win because it matters. It does matter. And with the three names he tosses out off-handedly, he hit my first and second choices.
I really, really want Al Gore in the White House in 2009. There are a whole host of reasons why he is my first choice and has been for a while. None of them have to do with replaying 2000, although I think the SC decision that effectively gave the election to Bush was wrong. I was lukewarm about Gore in 2000. I didn’t really vote for Gore, I voted against Bush. But then again, I didn’t really know the real Al Gore back then. I only knew the cardboard strawman the corporate media portrayed him as. Every thing I have learned about Gore since has convinced me how fraudulent and deliberately misleading that strawman image was. Every thing I have learned about Al Gore since then has inspired me. We should have elected him in 2000. No, I mean we should have elected him by such a margin the Repubs couldn’t have done what they did in Florida. But I didn’t know that then. I don’t think many of us did. Hell, knowing what I know now, I think we got the ticket upside down in ’92. Think carefully now, where might we be now if President Gore had taken office in 1993. The mind boggles.
I know, Gore has said again and again that he is not running. And as long as the midterms were up in the air, I’m glad he did that. He never quite made a Shermanesque statement, but he did everything he could not to be a factor in the 2006 midterms. I think he was wise to do so. But we’re past the midterms now. We have a strong majority in the House and at least a majority, if not a strong one, in the Senate. We can seriously think about building on those strengths in 2008. I think, or at least I hope, we can add to our majorities in both houses in ’08. Imagine what a President Gore could do with that in 2009 and beyond. Not just on the environment, but on so many other things as well. I really, really want to see that happen.
And to anyone who says not Gore again, we already tried that, wooden earth tones, blah blah, I say have a look at The Unseen Al Gore. Spike Jonez shows us the real Al Gore, something the corporate media never did. And I think An Inconvenient Truth has shown us that Gore has learned how to speak over the heads of the corporate media. I think it behooves us to pay attention.
And to anyone who doesn’t think Al Gore is the right person to occupy the Oval Office, I have a challenge. Get a copy of Earth In the Balance. Get a black magic marker. Go through the book and blank out everything you find about climate change and global warming. Then go back to the beginning and read what’s left. I think you’ll be surprise to find that the bulk of the book is intact and quite readable. Now read that book carefully. Then come back and tell me that’s not the man who should be our President.
If Gore really, really does not run, will not run, cannot be persuaded to run, the I’d like to see John Edwards as our candidate. He has truly found his voice as champion of the rest of us. He speaks with conviction and eloquence about the issues that matter to all of us. Not the privileged few, not the Beltway boys, the rest of us out here where it matters. I wasn’t sure about Edwards in 2004. There again, the corporate media had already done a job on him before I ever got a good look at him. Stuffed shirt, corporate lawyer, smooth talker, not to be trusted, yadda yadda. The first time I heard his Two Americas speech, I was hooked. It came from the heart and it went to the heart. I think an Edwards campaign would speak to all of us, all of America in a way no candidate has been able to do in a long time. Since Kennedy, maybe.
Obama, not so much. I was as impressed as anybody with his convention speech, and there is great promise there. But I don’t think he’s ready yet, and I’m very suspicious of how quick the corporate media has been to proclaim him a rock star. Rock star? Maybe. Presidential material? I think not. Or at least I think not yet.
Edwards is not a perfect candidate, hell, even Feingold isn’t perfect. No one is. However, having dispensed with the fake hope for perfection, I lean toward Edwards. I do not think that Gore will run, but if he does, I’ll support him. How about Gore/Edwards?
As for the ‘corporate lawyer’ steaming heap of crap about Edwards, I suggest that everyone who is thinking of supporting Edwards read his book “Four Trials”. There is plenty to like about Edwards, including his record as a personal injury lawyer. That book will give you plenty of ammo to use in the fight against the general trial-lawyer-hating right wing and anyone who would claim that Edwards is anything other than a principled man and a fine attorney who would fight for the little guy to the bitter end. His cases speak for themselves, though his prose is also a plus.
Thank you, Blueneck. I wanted to say something about Edwards being the opposite of a defend-the-corporation lawyer, but you did it better and quicker. Just as the Rightwing paints Edwards as a money-grabbing, frivolous law suit ambulance chaser, we dont’ want progressives protraying him as a bought-by-big-business corporate type. He’s neither.
or Edwards-Gore would be a winner now and would have been a winner in 2000, IMO!
That thought has crossed my mind too. And it would be one hell of a ticket. If a Gore-Edwards ticket came out of the convention in either combination I would get on the bandwagon with both feet and all my heart. But I don’t think that’s in the cards for a number of reasons. For one thing, I don’t think either of them would be interested in playing second banana again and I don’t blame them. Each has earned a shot at the top of the ticket. And much as I like and want both of them, I don’t think a ticket with two white guys from adjacent states in the south is a good idea for obvious reasons.
I would like very much to see either of them at the top of the ticket. But I think the VP ought to be someone from west of the Mississippi at least. It’s time and past time. There are a lot of very interesting folks out there who not only could bring some western states with them, but are genuinely interesting progressive voices in their own right. Richardson comes to mind. And Sebelius. And Gregoire. Just to name a few. Oh, and Clark is from Arkansas. That’s west of the Mississippi. Not by much, but still.
Sorry, blueneck. I misspoke with the corporate lawyer reference. I did not mean to insult John Edwards like that. The corporate media kept referring to him as a trial lawyer. You know, trial lawyer. As in bottom feeding ambulance chaser, pursuer of frivolous lawsuits against honest hardworking business people. Pfeh.
Oh, I certainly wasn’t making that comment toward you in particular. I do see how it might’ve read that way, but I read your comment to mean the same thing that mine did, I was just providing some further support to your fine comments. The problem is not you, the problem is the MSM and the right wing nutjobs who hate trial lawyers until they need one.
is quick to demonize “trial lawyers”…but I’d like to see them go into court in a civil case without one…
Take a break Booman. Rest up and then go take a look at the potential candidate who:
You know who I’m talking about. Progressives CAN come from the south.
thinking… I’m thinking…
Bob Dole!
no.. that’s not it…..
Good one!!! Even gets the Elizabeth connection. So I’ll add that he had the sense to marry the Elizabeth who has NOT mutilated her face with plastic surgery (did I just say that – ouch).
Much appreciated, NL. Especially from someone in Minnesota. Your last statement goes far in healing my old wound from arriving my frosh college year in Minnesota for college, and being brushed off with “oh!, you’re from the South! I didn’t know we had a quote for racists here.”
OMG Kidspeak. On behalf of MN, I apologize. Ignorance is not limited to one region of the country either!!
Oh well, I survived, and even came to love Minnesota.
C’mon people – cheer up!
We just took over Congress, for crissakes!
I’m disappointed about Feingold’s decision, but he’s only speaking about 2008. He didn’t say anything about 2012 or beyond. If he can better advance the progressive agenda in the Senate for now, then that’s where we need to be behind him. We need to build and grow the progressive culture in America that will allow a candidate like Mr. Feingold to cruise to a landslide Presidential victory!
Let get on it!
As a fiscally conservative progressive, I worked hard on the Kucinich campaign and I have no regrets. He is the only other candidate to get votes at the Convention because there are a lot of us of who believe in his proposal that we start making Peace an organizing principle and start learning that Peace takes just as much or more work than playing with our DOD toys and ideologies.
The reason we need these candidates is because:
Ralph Nadar annoys me, but he serves this purpose too, and it is essential in a democracy. Of course I’m independent, so I couldn’t give a fig for having allegiance to a party, I vote for the people and the issues. But you know what? It was people like me that voted a straight dem slate this year for the first time in my life that helped the dems to take both houses of congress, so do not be so quick to abandon the candidates who may not win but who do help frame the issues that help mainstream candidates win over us independents.
I have no idea what I’ll do in 2008, because the only potential candidate I have any affinity for right now is Edwards. (I liked Feingold too, but I have a feeling he wants to maintain the Proxmire legacy.) But unlike the party hacks that couldn’t care less about fixing our Constitution in their mad dash to start setting the slate (and setting up a ridiculously STUPID caucus/primary schedule that WILL bite them in the butt), I’m willing to let the cards fall where they may – which may be surprising as the Dems actually take the reins, end the war, and hopefully make some positive steps toward reinstating the Bill of Rights and limiting corruption.
Who would have guessed that we would be hoping for a Murtha leadership in the House a year ago? Who could’ve guessed that conservative Teddy Roosevelt (Veep to the hated McKinley) would come back as a progressive independent and be elected 100 years ago on the strength of supporting those who were establishing anti-trust laws and then become the first president to establish a national park and wilderness area? Who would have guessed in 1992 that Ross Perot would have forced Clinton to coin the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid,” because Perot, strange as he is, did understand that this was the priority and neither candidate was focusing on it. Clinton won a plurality because people voted for the economy, and that means they voted against Bush 41, for either Clinton or Perot.
A lot can happen in two years.
Am I really reading this? I have to keep rubbing my eyes and my vision is all jacked up still but this can’t be real. You guys gotta roll with it. We have Dean, Edwards, Gore, Clark (if the world Georgie created continues to explode away). Envision what it is that you want and look around the room. Grab onto some hands and give some firm handshakes, then roll up your sleeves. We didn’t just win a football game. We won our way of life back! You won’t make abortion illegal on my watch and I will keep all of my other lovely rights as well and the way we are redistributing wealth around here……..well, that stops today! This will not do, this will not do at all – this winning and not knowing how to win. We have no healthcare and our kids can’t go to school, we won now what are we gonna do about it. It never was about one man or one standard bearer. It was always about us together and if this Republic is going to continue marking its daily mark on the wall it will only ever be about us together.