time for progressive Democrats to file for divorce

[DeadElephant_ORG]

This battle is much bigger than Hillary and Barack, and it's been building up for YEARS - at least since Bill and the DLC dems ended welfare.

I thought that our party would fracture directly after Kerry lost. Bear in mind that W. was re-elected during the height of his botched war, after no weapons of mass destruction had been found, and it was plain to see that he had lied. Recall that Kerry had moved sharply right during the campaign, just as Hillary is now: he DEFENDED Bush's war, and said he would have authorize the invasion even if he had known at the time that Bush was lying, and that Iraq did not have WMDs! At that time "mainstream Democrats" called out anybody who dared complain that Bush had lied us into the war. Never mind that they'd just lost an election that they should have easily won, they still wanted to play act at being Republicans - the "Republican Lite" party. And the DLC Dems still considered "activist Democrats" to be a bigger threat than the neoCon Republicans who were rapidly amassing imperial powers: kidnapping, torturing, spying, mocking our minority in Congress, and calling us "terrorist sympathizers" and "traitors".

And now, the night before a do-or-die primary, with no provocation at all, Hillary Clinton threatens to "obliterate" an entire country with whom we are not at war. And you thought "bomb bomb Iran" was strictly for Republicans! This is the same "Democrat" who wants us to believe that she voted for the war, but didn't expect Bush to actually invade Iraq. I ask you, did YOU expect that Bush would invade if he was authorized to by Congress? I sure as hell did. And so did millions of "activist Democrats" who gathered in mass protests all over our nation.

You may not like to hear this, but it is time for progressive Democrats to file for divorce.

The more desperate Hillary becomes to show how tough she is - throwing back shots with the boys, and dodging non-existent sniper-fire - the more she humiliates our Party, and the less we can recognize in her the woman we once greatly admired. If she becomes our nominee, we will LOSE. We will lose the same way that Kerry lost, and for exactly the same reason: If the voters want a Republican for president, they won't vote for a Democrat who pretends to be a Republican. Give the American people credit - they recognize a sell-out when they see one.

We need Hillary, and her DLC sell-outs, like Tina Turner needed Ike. Will it be easy to win without them? No. We'll have to work a hell of a lot harder this summer to put Barack in the White House. If we lose, we lose for the right reasons for a change. No more pandering and pretending, and getting the sh#t kicked out of us anyway. Either way, Democrats will likely control both houses of Congress. And we will once again have a Democratic party that stands up for our long-honored progressive values.

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. Soo... what are you going to call your new party? n/t

[tyne]

6. More importantly....

what will you call your party....because hopefully you'll be pushed out.

[lumberjack_jeff]

19. Good thinking.

You should get a refund on that college tuition.

[DeadElephant_ORG]

8. Our party is the Democratic Party. We honor our many high-minded leaders - like Jimmy Carter. n/t

[lumberjack_jeff]

18. You asked for the divorce. You need to move out. n/t

[Texas Hill Country]

2. you are welcome to leave whenever you like....

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DeadElephant_ORG]

13. yes, well, it's always a question in a divorce: who gets the house? eh?

[ShortnFiery]

3. Obama will deliver on the down ticket. The Clintons can claw and mud sling their way to the WH

but we will ONCE AGAIN lose Congress. Why? Because the GOP LOATHES THE CLINTONS. I now understand why. :shrug:

[kentuck]

4. Not yet...

But it may be close.

It may be time to re-build the Democratic Party from scratch if this election falls apart or is manipulated by the special interests, i.e. "super delegates">

[ShortnFiery]

9. If we go all the way to The Convention, WE ALL LOSE.

History bears out nothing less from past Democratic Primaries of recent History.

It's time for the Superdelegates to "find their damn spines" and put an end to this figurative primary blood bath.

[grasswire]

5. who did you support in 2000?

Just askin'. Are you one of those paid provocateurs whose aim is to split the Democratic Party?

[DeadElephant_ORG]

14. just askin', my azz. I've been an activist Democrat my whole damn life. n/t

[leftofcool]

7. So losing to McCain is okay, eh?

[DeadElephant_ORG]

10. no. But Hillary is going out of her way to ensure that we will lose.

[ShortnFiery]

11. There's been so much figurative "blood letting" if this Primary doesn't end SOON, we may not be

able to reconcile.

The hard feelings run deep and hard now, any longer, our entire party may IMPLODE ... no amount of guilt tripping will bring back the base, either side.

[Hepburn]

15. As a Hillbot, you are now worried about losing to McCain?

How fucking ironic...you support the choice of Murdock, Scaife, Limbaugh and Bill-0 and NOW you suddenly think about losing to McCain.

GMAFB...:eyes:

[newmajority]

16. There should be three parties

Democratic party - made up of Liberals, Progressives, and actual moderates (as opposed to neocon corporatist false-centrists)

Republican party - send the DLC Republicans back home, and let them reclaim THEIR party instead of stealing ours.

Reactionary Fuckwits party - new home for all the theocrats, neocons, and warmongering idiots. It would mostly be the far right of the present Republican party, but Lieberman and Hillary would also be eligible for membership.

And of course, third parties never get significant votes, so the Reactionary Fuckwits party would be locked out of the system, and the worst we would have to deal with would be traditional Republicans on the other side of the aisle.

I can live with that. Especially if we have the kind of majority that we did before the DLC fucked up everything.

[karynnj]

17. Kerry did NOT defend Bush's war in 2004

How does "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time" do that. How does speaking against permanent bases in the debates with Bush do that. How does "He mislead us into war, without exhausting the diplomacy, without letting the inspectors complete their work, without a plan to win the peace ..... That it was not a war of last resort". Kerry said, even on the Daily show, that "war of last resort" meant something to him. It actually should have for many people - it means it was not a just war. Give me a strong comment comment by ANY politician in 2004 - and Kerry said it running for President.

He also spoke of following international law. He called for Rumsfeld's resignation when Abu Gharaib stories came out. He condemned them. How many times did you hear him speak of international law. Did you miss the many times that he spoke of the lack of diplomacy done since the fall of Baghdad. Apparently you missed that the ISG pretty much recommended in 2006 the things Kerry recommended in 2006. Did Bush ever have the regional summit that Kerry spoke of as the first thing to do. Read Kerry's NYU speech on Iraq or his University of Pennsylvania one on non-state terrorism.

It was BILL CLINTON who agreed with Bush going forward and spent the entire month of July 2004 saying so. It was NOT Kerry, who from March 2003 was labeled a Bush critic on the war. (Unlike Edwards and HRC). It also was NOT Obama - unlike Bill Clinton's charge on the eve of NH. In terms of going forward, he was very close to where Kerry was - not Bush. They agreed with Bush only on the need to try to leave a stable Iraq - then they radically disagreed and proposed both the regional summit leveraging the neighbors and removing the American face as quickly as possible and making it clear that we intended to leave.

Even many writers in left leaning magazines, disappointed in the loss of Dean made NO efforts to even look at what Kerry said or proposed. (I was stunned when someone posted a Nichols article that even claimed that Kerry had a mediocre environmental record - when his record there was the best in the Senate.)

He did not ever say he would authorize the invasion. He spoke against the invasion before it happened. He was speaking of the vote and clearly did not hear the if clause that may not have been said - it was not recorded. What was clear was that he repeated things he always said that the authority was given to give Bush leverage. It is clear that there was a mismatch between the question and answer and that he chose to deal with it by including stronger statements against the war in all his subsequent speeches - including saying that it was true that had he been President, Hussein could still be in power. He was on record many times saying that he would not have invaded - including in his speech at NYU a week or so later.

Not to mention who has most led the liberal side of the party on Iraq since 2004? The name Kerry/Feingold might give a clue.

[DeadElephant_ORG]

20. Let read a few Kerry quotes, shall we?

January 31, 2003: “On Iraq, Kerry Appears Either Torn Or Shrewd,” by Ronald Brownstein, Los Angeles Times. John Kerry said:

“If You Don’t Believe . . . Saddam Hussein is a threat with nuclear weapons, then you shouldn’t vote for me.”

December 15, 2003: Fox News’ “Special Report,” Senator John Kerry said

“Iraq may not be the war on terror itself, but it is critical to the outcome of the war on terror. And therefore any advance in Iraq is an advance forward in that. And I disagree with the Governor (Howard Dean).”

Even after Bush's lie became obvious, that there were NO weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Kerry insisted he would have authorized war anyway:

August 9, 2004: John Kerry on CNN's "Inside Politics"

Response to President's question about how he would have voted if he knew then what he knows now, Kerry confirmed that he would still have voted for Use of Force Resolution.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: "Yes, I would have voted for the authority.

If that's what you call strong opposition to Bush's war, there's a party for you, and it's not the party of FDR, and John F. Kennedy.

[karynnj]

24. Each of those is cherry picked - and there are no links

On the first - do you know how to interpret an if clause? Not to mention what was said in the .... matters. Kerry is NOT saying that SH had weapons of destruction - but that there is a problem if he did. Read the IWR speeches - most people who voted against it made similar comments that those weapons in SH's hand were a problem. This is dated a week after Kerry's Georgetown speech that ends with the words "don't rush to war". Look at the title of the article.

On the second: By December 2003, we needed to stabalize Iraq and then get out - as Kerry also said millions of times - Al Queda was not in Iraq before the war - the problem by December 2003 was that it was important to the war on terror not to leave a failed state. I think the Dean quote was a case where Dean was asked about the situation in December 2003 and he answered it about whether we should have gone to war - which he often did. To make sense of this, you need the question that Dean was asked and his answer and the same for Kerry. Do you think that resolving Iraq in December 2003 would have impact on the war on terror going forward? From Kerry's answer that was likely the question - and they likely included a Dean quote for him to respond to.

On the third - as I said - there is NEVER a quote of the actual question and there is no video - we in the JK group have looked and there aren't any. Also - it doesn't give Kerry's full answer. Bush had thrown out the question as how would Kerry vote knowing what he knew now - but it is not clear that Kerry had even heard Bush's question as he was campaigning 16 hours a day. The response as I said matched the answer Kerry always gave on the IWR - where he specifically said in his IWR speech and in the Georgetown speech before the war and in many other comments in 2004 - that he voted for the inspectors and diplomacy. Kerry then moved towards more aggressively saying he would not have gone to war - 2 of the most prominent times were his NYU speech where he said:

" Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and from our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists.

Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight. "

he also said:
" A month before the war, President Bush told the nation, If we have to act, we will take every precaution that is possible. We will plan carefully. We will act with the full power of the United States military. We will act with allies at our side and we will prevail.

Instead, the president rushed to war, without letting the weapons inspectors finish their work. He went purposefully, by choice, without a broad and deep coalition of allies. He acted by choice, without making sure that our troops even had enough body armor. And he plunged ahead by choice, without understanding or preparing for the consequences of postwar. None of which I would have done.

Yet today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again the same way.

How can he possibly be serious? Is he really saying to America that if we know there was no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaida, the United States should have invaded Iraq?

My answer: resoundingly, no, because a commander in chief's first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe. "

here is a link - you can read the whole thing - I am not Cherry picking. Kerry since then has conceded that giving teh authority was right - but this defines the context and it was the context that he put it in in 2002 when he voted, in 2003 when he spoke against going to war, and in 2004 constantly.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35515-2004Sep20?language=printer

Here is a write up of the Letterman appearance the same day - http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2004/09/20/letterman/


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think Kerry was wrong to vote as he did - but the fact is he NEVER said he was for invading Iraq or that it was a good idea - and even your cherry picked quotes don't show that. I also think that Obama - who I support - was wrong not to vote for Kerry/Feingold. (In fact both took in the 2 different critical votes the one considered safer and both were wrong. Obama would have an easier time with Clinton lying about his Iraq bill had he voted for K/F.)

[Vinca]

21. It seems like we have 3 parties now:

Republicans, Republican-Lights and the rest of us.

[Carrieyazel]

22. But if you look at her domestic Senate voting record, she's among the most progressive Dems

on paper.

[IronLionZion]

23. What I wouldn't give for Hillary and Barack to start making out in the middle of a debate.

:evilgrin:

[Romulox]

25. DLC vs. Activists is a false dichotomy

Many of us don't fit into either category, and are merely caught in the middle. I think this bogus dichotomy distorts the debate, such as when Barack Obama supporters call working class voters in places like PA, OH, and MI "DLC Democrats". :wtf: