Maybe it's just me, but I really don't like attacking Dems

[fujiyama]

I don't know. I see a lot of bashing of Kerry, Dean, Kucinich...not so much Clark, but I see a little of that here and there.

Now, I understand criticism. Kerry deserves plenty for certain thins he did or didn't do during the campaign and afterward.

But maybe it's just me...I really don't feel like trashing him. He was a flawed candidate, but I think Dean, Clark, Edwards, and everyone else were as well.

Immediately after the election, I said "No one could have won this". Well, I'll take the words back - MAYBE someone else could have won.

I don't know.

And neither does anyone else.

So Kerry has my respect. I'm not sure if I'd support him in '08 but that's a long ways away.

Likewise, I still like Dean, Edwards, Clark, Kucinich as well...All would have made decent presidents.

[Seldona]

1. And this?

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041207/ap_on_go_co/congress_social_security_1

[TaleWgnDg]

3. Uuummm, it's Florida! And you don't consider this ass has

accepted some kind of "trade-off?" Bushies own FL.

[TaleWgnDg]

2. I agree. It's so damn sophomoric to attack Kerry. And so damn

divisive. However, the Republicans love it as they try to shaft us all.



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[ewulf]

4. Everyone's Flawed, Everyone's Human,

Our challenge is not to dwell on those flaws, but rather to bring out, enhance, and appreciate our candidates good points. Our challenge is to make the media do it to. Picking at every Dem over every little thing will get us no where but ruin.

Kerry was great. He won.

He may not have won by a lot, not by enough that they couldn't steel it, but the margin of theft keeps expanding, who knows how well you have to do to actually have it count these days; really, it hasn't been tested. Given the biased pressure from the media, in support of out "war time" incumbent "president," I'd say a small (~1.5 million) popular victory, and ~300 electoral votes (Ohio, Fl, etc.) is pretty respectable. In the end, making the Republicans come out and commit voter fraud to stay in office, voter fraud that offers up the possibility of disgrace upon their entire party should it be uncovered, is a victory.

We have great policies and we have great people. Lets find more great policies, more great people, and lets get our ideas, our vision, across in a revolutionary manner. This is something for all Democrats, you, me, Kerry, humans all, to strive for and believe in. Some of us may get a little more upset and want to yell, some of us may want to work things from behind the scenes, in the end, its all good; it all works as long as we don't give up and we believe in one another.

[Cuban_Liberal]

5. The lack of proof that anyone else could've done better bugs me.

I read so many criticisms of Kerry, the DNC, the DLC, et al here, and the explicit or implied pith contained in virtually all of them is that "X" would have done better, or produced a victory in November. Note, however, that there is no proof whatsoever to support this hypothesis. Were the problem that simple, I'm quite sure it would already have been done.

The problem is not the candidate; the problems are a more conservative electorate and badly-flawed voting technology. The first is part of an historical trend, i.e., the electorate demonstrably swings back and forth politically between more conservative/more progressive poles, and the second MUST be addressed at the grass-roots, decision-making level.

[Killarney]

6. Great post. Couldn't agree more.

"The problem is not the candidate; the problems are a more conservative electorate."

I think some people here on DU are so isolated--either geographically or by who they hang with--that they don't understand how conservative this country has become. The media has a lot to do with that, too. But we need the pendulum to swing back our way and we need to help shove it along.

[PATRICK]

7. I don't think you are reading ordinary folk right either

way by considering them as having been successfully morphed into the RW. They were and are neither one but in the directions in which they are lead(or not) can behave temporarily as if very liberal or staunchly conservative. And HOW have the Democrats led without benefit of a supportive forum/information network? A dismal quiet or as pawns in the games of others.

I also worked a bit for a great candidate. Her manager was also green and full of prior success so he might be forgiven too. Yet I have to fault the candidates for rallying around a disastrously naive and dangerous tactical ideology and employing campaign managers to match the disease with neither the moxie nor the wiles to even see what they were up against. That is, a simple gangland style campaign NOT a debate over issues or personalities or ABB or focus groups, or regions or classes or any of the sociological surveys and computerized calculations that cut numberless longshot candidates off from the meager moneys that are all we get from caving in to the big donor big business turn of the last decades.

The local organizations are honest and innocent and full of excitement and classical campaigning. The lawyers and the experienced base workers are brimming with poorly directed talent. And NONE of it was marshaled well(if at all) against the simple plan of multilevel theft and deceit. People will respect us for playing the game fair? Being politely better? How can they and what does it matter if their votes(if they get to vote at all) don't count anyway? These same Dem planners, responsible for abstract and classical political contests(having forgotten ALL about how they were cheated by Nixon, etc for many elections), now are rationalizing their defeat the same way they made their initial mistakes, baring their pure souls and conceding to every myth the winning side cares to dump on them. Determined at the very least to save their jobs as if THAT means saving the party from itself.

If we get anymore pros and leaders and experts and gatekeepers saving us from ourselves like this they won't have long to bother. There won't be anyone to save OR the the people will have taken those failed
caretakers to the dumpster of history where THEY belong- not us.

We don't need to bash leaders who cannot win, cannot see, cannot plan but who start out by giving monsters the benefit of the doubt because they have seized the "honored" positions of myth and public trust in a coup supposedly too terrible to rouse the people against. New party? New leaders? Of what relevance is continuing with the path of failure hoping unrealistically events will drop victory in our lap like an drained and rotted milk carton.

As in the past, REAL revolution must come from the middle(NOT the legendary Hamlet swing voters, the workers and talents of the party and country at large. We can join to push the agenda of America against the failed grain of the polluted effluent of the stagnant mainstream in which the wealthiest pigs wallow. If the Reids(worse by a considerable factor than the fallen star of Daschle) wish to confirm their irrelevance as democrats then we don't have to bother about contesting their leadership. It is de facto abdicated, the spirit and letter gone. Better candidates can be brought up against them in the primaries supported by real and enthusiastic grass roots organizations. The RW does that too with much less cause and for a more narrow purpose. The liberal populist way is indeed broader than anything the RW can ever come up with, mainly because it wants competent, wise, dedicated and honest leaders and the rest is discussion. The RW wants crooks and sycophants and NO discussion, no debate. They get what they want and surely, with the force of democracy strong inside the party, the ordinary Dems can get what they want on more generous and fair and broad terms. No matter how they stack the primary beauty contest.

This is a time for building people strength and unity. The old will crumble on its own very nicely. Nation and party are betrayed abstractions. I think this is a challenge to seize the power of definition and myth away from failed caretakers not a game of musical DNC chairs. Your focus groups cannot focus because they are not served or lead or informed or united. Look to the core who can really lead because they are not that victimized by the failure of current party powers..