Reply #93: There may well be good reasons [View All]

[Donald Ian Rankin]

Not to support Kerry and Edwards, but not fighing on after they'd lost the 2004 election is not one of them.

If they had done so, the only effect would have been for the electorate to see the Democratic party refusing to accept defeat gracefully, and looking like bad losers.

In 2000, the Democrats would have won had all the votes been counted, and there was a real chance of achieving that.

In 2004, Bush's majority was too large for there to have been any chance of overturning it, and to claim otherwise is to let wishful thinking get in the way of objectivity. Kerry and Edwards did the right thing. The problem was not the election, which while quite possibly severely flawed was not flawed enough to change the result, it was the electorate.

It's very comforting to believe that the election was stolen, but the hard truth is that Kerry lost square, even if not fair. To win in 2008, it will not be enough, or even terribly important, to change the voting methods; what will be needed is to change the attidutes of the voters.