there are two reasons why we lost the last election. first, we nominated a nerd. i don't personally have a problem with nerds. as the saying goes i have many that are close personal friends. but friends this is after all a popularity contest. bill clinton was a good ole boy and hid his education well. george bush, a good ole texas boy, hides his education so well that i'm not sure whether he actually got his GED or not. i hate to say it but the current crop of contenders is looking kind of nerdy to me too.
the second thing that lost the election and most importantly, were the people who voted for ralph nader. i hold you personally responsible for our current affairs. especially those of you in florida. before the election i called my nader loving friend in fla. i told him the election will be won or lost in fla. please don't vote for nader. tell your friends. he ignored me we lost end of story. i mean how many states would have swung if we had not split our vote. maybe i expected to much from the state that invented monster trucks, mud wrestling and wet t-shirt contests.
will we learn from our mistakes? i doubt it. with the american idol mentality thats sweeping the nation were in real trouble. george bush is looking too good with the flag rapped around him and we can't figure out that elections are nothing more than contests. they are about winning and losing pure and simple. unless we get all our like minded people behind one candidate, count them one candidate we will be doomed to fail again.

right on all counts, Candide. And the math..don't forget the math. One plus one on one side of the center equals a win on the right. Now, more than ever, lets all vote for the same nerd.

Oh no, not again! I don't have the strength to take on the blame debate again.

Bottom line: I'll admit the Greens support was a major fuck-up, and I'll apologize for it, but y'all need to acknowledge that Clintons quasi-Repub middle finger to the left wing of his party is what gave birth to the Green uprising. We wouldn't exist were it not for that middle finger. I'm serious, that needs to be acknowledged by y'all, so that we can pull together again. The olive branch continues to be extended from this end, but y'all have to meet it half-way.

This greenheart will be voting Nerd-D without question, but would appreciate if the finger-pointing would be allowed to die.

peace

Well, you don't live in FL, lcj. It's not really just finger pointing though. It's fear of Bush again. Can you imagine what he'll do if he's REALLY elected? Sometimes the lesser of two evils is just sooo much less evil.

Whatever. I tried. Again.

I hope that the Dem candidate can pull the base back together better than this. Shaming the 2000 green supporters is not going to be effective strategy for either the candidate or the Dem supporters. If the Clinton/Gore supporters STILL cant admit that C/G played a big part of their own demise, then we're already in real trouble.

o.k.....let me see if i can spell this out.
W..I..N..N..I..N..G and L..O..S..I..N..G
it was a contest. we lost because some people got mad, took their ball and went home. i wasn't really trying to play the blame game, but i am starting to enjoy it. by the way, if memory serves, i don't think bush was running against clinton. i think the man's name was gore. i personally don't like gore, never have. believe me i was not looking foward to listening to that monotonous dweeb for the next four years. i voted for him because he was the only person who had a chance of keeping a vicious freak out of the white house. you however did the freaks bidding because clinton was not envrionmental enough, you say. look what you and your ilk have visited upon the world. you've set lose a crazed redneck,on a robbing and plundering spree. you've put in motion a rampage so heinous that it's likes have not been seen since biblical times. have you been in a redneck bar on a friday night. once they go to drinking there is sure to be a fight. the scary thing is they like to fight. even when they get there ass kicked they'll be back on saturday night looking for someone else to cold cock. if they are good at fighting their balls grow two sizes and their brain shrinks three. then they're really dangerous, picking fights with their own friends, even if it's only tuesday night. now i know bush is off the booze, but he's still got a closet full of shit kicker boots. you know the ones with chrome tips and the spurs. it's probably been along time since bush has been laid out across a pool table, enjoying that acrid smell, that comes from lying in a pool of your own blood. a stinch that redneck vampires never forget, especially when they have inexhaustable supply of blood to spill. he's also got those two alchie daughters egging him on. "daddy can i have some burning oilwells for my birthday? i want to blow them out". speaking environmentally, is that a hydrocarbon haze i see hanging over iraq or did someone just leave a pot on the stove.
okay i'm sorry i didn't mean to pick on you. i know you didn't really want his to happen, but it did. unless you want this evil tyrants reign to go on for another four years then you better wake up. the freak is lose and he's not through yet. he's looking for the bogey man under every bed and dosen't care if a few innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire. reality dictates that a third party candidate cannot win, period end of election. the only thing they do is splinter away votes from the party that might, under the right circumstances and with a little money passing under the table, do a few things that they will like. if you don't believe me, just ask george senior how he feels about ross perot.

"look what you and your ilk have visited upon the world"

oh thats just too much. how fucking arrogant of you.

how dare you. i "woke up" quite a while ago, but continue to be amazed by people like you. You say you're starting to "enjoy it", eh? Pathetic.

... enough venom!

How about using this thread for its original intended purpose?

I admit to being politically naive... though I have had a rude awakening of late. I need to hear people's opinions of the current crop... a few local people have talked of Kerry... and of Kucinich... what is your take on these and other candidates? Would they be viable in 2004? We absolutely need someone who can mend diplomatic fences with the rest of the world... is there anyone who could pull that off? it's gonna be a difficult job at best...

OK: I was going to wait to run for King in 2008 but if I have to I will run in 2004 for President.
My only political policy will be "Common Sense" Will you vote for me?
HomerJ for Prez! <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/naughty.gif" width=15 height=15>

God, I don't know what I think about the current crop. Kerry's credentials have him looking like it could be his moment in history. He's a Vietnam Vet against the war. He did vote for the resolution, but so many people did..that's kind of a wash at this point. However, so far I've only seen signs of animation when he's pissed...which is an improvement over none at all I guess. John Edwards can talk the talk, and he's only one haircut away from looking like a candidate, but he was pro-war. It looks like he's backed off that a bit and is going for vague now. Right now, I guess I'd say Kerry and he needs to improve a bit on looking accessible and human. However, things could change a lot. Things are moving so fast now. One thing that I'm sure of..I don't think I'm going to make it through this election. Last time it was frustrating and very upsetting, but my worst fears didn't conjure up the situation the country is in now.

i'm gonna apologize to group w and lcj for getting off topic. my original post was on topic i think. it was meant as a reminder of one of the reasons we lost the last election. a lesson not learned is bound to be repeated. lcj... i didn't remember that you were a green party supporter until you reminded me. hearing you defend them again just set me off on a rant. i think i ripped on the president more than i did you though. obviously this war is not the fault of the green party. the blame for our march towards oldtime colonialism rests squarely on republican shoulders. however, having said that i am still a firm believer in cause and effect. now back to our regularly scheduled topic. daschle and kerry have both commited political suicide. they'll have a hard time even getting reelected unless their normal constituency is extremely liberal. where i live they couldn't get elected dogcatcher. if liberals are not willing to support a prowar democrat then you guys have missed the point of my first post. we have only one logical choice in any election to vote for the most liberal candidate, who has a chance of winning. lets face the truth here. there are no true liberals in the democractic party anyway. the only liberals in congress are a couple of pages and a janitor. we pacifists and envrirometalists live on the fringes of society. we will never live in a world of our choosing. we can only effect the body politic by cancelling out the far right and by keeping political power a little to the left of center. one can hope to move it far to the left, but that is pretty unrealistic at this point in history. our form of government is based on keeping things in the middle. if we have any chance of beating bush, it will come from someone nailing him on the economy. right now fuel prices are being kept artificially low. that will come to an end soon. one of my favorite quotes from a rightwing political pundit is "follow the money". when the american people see how much this war has cost, the mess we're going to leave over there and when bush's newly created terrorists start showing up, there may be a small chance to beat him. unfortunatly these are bad things. cause and effect at work again. i for one am not going to hope this happens just to get the bumbling cowboy out of office. besides, being a normal selfish american consumer, i like cheap gas.

Although Kerry has sure taken some hits for it, I think his statement about a regime change in Washington was right on the mark and took a set of brass balls. Brass balls can be a good thing when tempered with wisdom, unlike the wimp in the whitehouse that thinks he has a set. He really is a coward. Cowards have other people shoot first and then ask questions later.
The hawks need to understand that simply because Bush thought he did everything that could have been done to avoid war, that does not mean for a second that everything that could have been done was.That is the price for making a simpleton the leader of the free world.
As far as rehashing all the election stuff, and Nader electing Bush and all of that....the door does swing both ways, as it did with Ross Perot.
Frankly, having either the extreme left or the extreme right running things scares me about the same.The extremes can help to steer the boat, but they should never captian the boat.

OK, then, who do you think, Candide? And you really don't think an anti-war candidate has a chance? I'm a great believer in the moderate majority being the key to election success, but I'm thinking that support for this war is thinner than the current numbers suggest and that the events that happen afterward will change things a lot. But I could be wrong. I often am.

It seems Dennis Kucinich is serious about his stance against the war, and it is causing him some grief. He has said that this war is both immoral and illegal. So an Ohio police officer who had been given a citation by Rep. Kucinich, has returned it to him, not wanting his name to be associated with Kucinich anywhere, even on a commendation. This was on our local news last night (Cleveland, OH). I'll see if I can find it online anywhere. The more I hear from Dennis J., the more I like him. I still don't think he has a chance nationally, but as I said, he may force some important debates.