- Boy, am I glad I didn’t try to call this one.
- I’m thrilled with the outcome. Partly, I’m happy because the bloggers at Wampum and Tribal Law have persuaded me that Dean has fundimentally wrongheaded views on race, and is probably substantively worse than Kerry or Edwards on that score.
And partly, I’m happy because the pundits and handicappers have been shown to be wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
- I’m sick of speculations about which candidate is “electable.” My feeling is that if a candidate can’t manage to win the Democratic primary, probably he’s not electable. Time will tell who wins the primary, but in the meanwhile let’s not waste time speculating.
- Think of all the endless hours (and column inches) of news coverage that have been devoted to handicapping and “who can win” and meaningless polls and the like. In hindsight, very little of that coverage was worth the time it took to read, to view, or to create.
What if all that time – or, heck, 75% of it – had instead been spent ferretting out and reporting on real policy or character differences between the candidates? Call me nutty, but I think the result would have been much more useful news coverage and a better-informed electorate.
- I still maintain that if you’re a progressive, your best bet is to vote for Kucinich. Along with Sharpton, he’s the most progressive voice in the race; and unlike Sharpton, he’s a serious and credible politician. True, he can’t win this election, but think of the future. The stronger Kucinich’s showing this year, the better-positioned he’ll be for another run in 2004 or 2008.
Anyhow, those are my thoughts. Yours?.
I am very pleased with the Iowa caucus results. What with all the media attention, I thought Dean would have gotten better than third.
Kucinich is definitely the progressive’s choice.
He’s electable if you vote for him.
I’d love to share my thoughts with you, Amp, but you and I are in perfect agreement on this.
Actually, I haven’t researched enough on Dean and race to decide whether his views are fundamentally flawed, but I’ll still not be voting for him in the primary. Most of that, frankly, has to do with my not liking him and the majority of his supporters that I’ve encountered.
My vote is probably going toward Kucinich, but my mind isn’t totally made up about him, either. Time will tell.
5. I still maintain that if you’re a progressive, your best bet is to vote for Kucinich. Along with Sharpton, he’s the most progressive voice in the race; and unlike Sharpton, he’s a serious and credible politician. True, he can’t win this election, but think of the future. The stronger Kucinich’s showing this year, the better-positioned he’ll be for another run in 2004 or 2008.
Right on. I draw an analogy between 2004 and 40 years past. Barry Goldwater lost the election to LBJ (who was a wonderful guy, wasn’t he?===cough=== Gulf Of Tonkin===cough===the Joe Liberman of his era), but the orginization behind his campagin formed the template for the right-wing takeover in ’80. Yeah, yeah, I know—-unlike the right, the gains progressives have made are in clear and present danger—for instance, Roe vs. Wade. But, considering how the Demopublicans have sold us down the river during the final two decades and a half of the last century, I’d argue that this should make us EVEN MORE willing to break out of the 2-party duopoly plantation. To me, as an anarchist, RVW is a textbook example of something the government ruling class giveth and therefore can taketh away, regardless of which duopoly politician’s in power. In fact, I regard the smug, complacent center of the DemReps a far greater threat to progressives than the right. In the words of a great early ’70’s soul hit: “The enemy won’t do ya no harm/Because you know where he’s comin’ from/Don’tlet the handshake & the smile fool ya.”
As far as “electability” is concerned, I’m becoming more and more convinced that the outcome of the primaries–and, indeed, of the presidential elections–will be a result of media coverage (TV, newspapers, newsmagazines). Since all politicians bend the truth and sling mud, we don’t really know where they stand unless we look up their voting records and official positions on the issues, and who’s going to do that? Most voters, I imagine, will make their decisions based on whoever sounds and looks best, and who they think everyone else is voting for–and the media has incredible control over that kind of impression.
The Democrat candidate will be either Kerry, Edwards, Dean, or possibly Clark. I think any of them can beat Bush (though Dean might lose some votes to the “angry Dean” meme), and I don’t think any is far and away better than the others. I’ll vote for Kucinich in the primaries, but I’ll vote ABB/Democrat in the presidential elections.
Kucinich supporters who haven’t done so yet owe it to themselves to read this article. I’m not saying it should change your minds, but you ought to know some of the details of his political past.
That’s a thirty-year old smear article, with no supporting evidence. Nothing in the 30 years since support its contentions, either. In other words, with all respect, I see no evidence that the article you cite is anything but a vicious lie.
I responded to the smear-job in more detail in an earlier post.
Since you asked,
Compared to Howard Dean, I think Edwards is a lightweight on civil rights issues and race.
Dean’s statements
Edward’s statements
Some of it’s policy, –I think Dean has more concrete proposals. Some of it’s rhetoric. When Dean says “Unconscionable” or “Reprehensible,” I know that he’s taking a stand. Edwards, on the other hand, is wishy-washy and vague. He supports for example the Innocents Protection Act, but see how he couches it:
Source: Edwards on Crime and Justice
That doesn’t strike me as super progessive.
I well remember the “my people” argument, and for a while it made me quite suspicious of Howard Dean. And of course we all remember the Confederate Flag statement, and what a jerk he was not to acknowledge that he offended people and owed an apology. But he did eventually apologize, so I haven’t written him off as fundamentally ignorant. If you look at the way he’s talking about issues, he is, it seems, talking to white people about racism and the injustice of it. He’s specific, adamant, and it sounds kind of real.
My thoughts.
So Dean can talk the talk, but how does he do in practice? It bothers me that Dean has a bad relationship with the American Indians in Vermont. American Indians are, after all, the largest minority in Vermont.
Yes, that bothers me too. It also bothers me, and I hope you don’t take this as a flame, it also bothers me that Kucinich’s conversion to a pro-choice stance is recent and he really doesn’t have the record to back it up. But I don’t doubt that Kucinich’s current stated position is politically genuine, because he says so in no uncertain terms. Likewise, Dean’s current position on Native Americans strikes me as genuine, because it identifies specific problems that need to be addressed, proposes workable solutions, and maybe I’m just not as cynical as I should be.
My basic attitude is like, a guy can be frothing hateful bigot for most of his life, but if he has a conversion, even for reasons of crass expediency, and begins to dialogue with people and incorporates into his politics other, more progressive or more rational views, then I would regard that person as a potential ally. For instance Senator Byrd, who was a much-needed voice of reason against this stupid Iraq war. If he still holds racist views, at least he knows enough to keep them to himself or, if he slips, to apologize for giving offense.
The premise of a candidate being fundamentally wrong, I don’t know what to make of it. Another for instance. Kucinich says his politics are motivated by faith. That doesn’t sit well with me, and is probably one of the reasons I haven’t jumped on the Kucinich bandwagon yet. I don’t like certain aspects of his personality or the reasons he gives for taking the positions that he takes, and that might be a problem for me on election day. It might not. I’m still mulling it over.
All talk isn’t equally valuable. Personally, I don’t chafe at the glittering generalities, but I do want substantive discussion of real issues, and I want to see how the minutia of policy articulate with broad progressive themes to constitute a political weltanschaung, and indicate a modus operandi or trajectory that would tend towards progress. That’s not the same kind of evidence as a candidate’s record, and it does require interpretation. But so does a candidate’s past. All the candidates don’t have the same political history, and it would be a little unfair to say, excuse this one blemish, and not that one, and not lay out what your criteria are.
Well, I’m not supporting Dean or anybody at this time. Just looking into it. For sure his personality mostly grates on me. But I do feel that the image of him as an icon of angry white male privelege is at odds with some of his forceful statements about racial injustices.
So I think I will look at Tribal Law, thank you, and see what I think of stories like “Dean and the Great Whale,” because if there’s any truth in it, it would contradict many of the things Dean has been talking about, including his own representation of his record. Somehow, though, I suspect that the truth, what I take from it, will not lead me to an easy decision.
Ampersand, I can only speak from what I know as a Clevelander and a former Tremont resident. Cleveland politics have changed in a lot of ways since that article was written, and you’d be hard pressed to get too many of the old hands (to the extent they’re even still alive) to talk in public about the old days. But the old days were what they were, and the article captures their flavor with quite a bit of accuracy.
As for corroboration, there’s been a certain amount of recent reporting on the allegations raised in that old piece. Maybe not a lot, but like I said, there’s folks who aren’t talking. In any event as I said in my previous post, folks can take this stuff for what they will. I’m all for the issues he’s promoting right now, and I’m glad he’s interjecting them into this election debate. That being said, I tend to agree for once with George Forbes on this one: Kucinich’s not a racist. He is, however, something of an opportunist.
Howard Dean is toast!
He has proven he is not presidential material, not that Bush is either.
Ummm… so which candidate in the race is NOT “something of an opportunist” ?
Oh, I’m sorry. I guess whichever one you favor at any given moment is on a mission from God to save us from Bush the Beast. The others are opportunists.
Ummm… sure… (scratches head)