The Primaries are about DIALOGUE as much as candidacies [View All]

[Armstead]

The article by Joe Conason on anotehr thread prompted me to write something that has been on my mind anyway.

There's a lot of passion and heat in the Democratic primaries. Which is a good thing, if we can focus on real issues and substance, instead of image, personalities and buzzwords.

Much as I hate to think it, next year's genral election could well be another in a long line of Zombie Elections. There could a Democrat who will shrink the issues down to a centrist muddle of meaningless pablum. Meanwhile GW will also tone down his act to be more palatable to the "swing voters" too.

The whole healthcare issue will be shrunk down to some inane meaningless plan with the goal of "health care for everybody within 30 years." There will be NO talk of WTO "free trade" or the hollowing out of the American Economy, or the erosion of the middle and working class. Corporate Power -- and all of its manifestations -- will be ignored. Foreign poilicy will be "We support Imperialism too, but you have to be smarter about it." etc.

At least in the primaries, those issues are getting raised. And that's why it is important to have a varied field. Without Kucinich, Dean, Sharpton and Mosley Braun, the Democrat Establishment would happily bury these issues and merely focus on how bad George Bush is (with all of the usual qualifiers that he is a good president BUT...)

And in places like DU, and elsewhere, instead of flaming each otehr over nonsense about whichever candidates we may support or dislike, or strategic "electability" arguments, we ought to be taking advantage of this time to air the REAL issues.

Hopefully, if we do that, and make it known that we want some substance next year, the General Election may be slightly less Zombielike than it would be if the "acceptable" candidates are allowed to have a cakewalk to the nomination.