Indecision 2004- the Campaign for the White House-

welsh

welsh

Junkmaster
Well we have talked american politics alot on this board so I guess its only fair to start a thread.

So here it is and so it begins. Lets compare Bush with Dean-


For more on Dean-

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=2208896

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=S')HL+QA/%! "4

Lexington

Cut from the same cloth

Nov 27th 2003
From The Economist print edition

A lesson in blue-blooded political management

THERE is no sorrier branch of literature than the books that presidential candidates write to boost their campaigns. Who now reads Michael Dukakis's “Creating the Future”? Or Bill Clinton's “Putting People First”? And who, in six months' time, will read John Kerry's “A Call to Service”? Or Dennis Kucinich's “A Prayer for America”? If literary standards count for anything, these sententious tomes should all be consigned to the flames.

Howard Dean's forthcoming campaign biography, “Winning Back America”, is a slight exception. This is partly because Dr Dean is an unusually interesting candidate: a no-hoper who turned himself into a front-runner by tapping into a rich vein of anger in the body politic. But the book also tells us about Dr Dean's similarity to George Bush.

The most obvious likenesses are draft-dodging and drink. Both men avoided the Vietnam war: Dr Dean failed his army medical with a bad back, but then spent ten months skiing. Both were drinkers: Mr Bush woke up with such a hangover on his 40th birthday that he decided to give up alcohol forever. It turns out that the same is true of Dr Dean. “When I drank, I would drink a lot and do outrageous things, and then I wouldn't drink again for a while. I realised that what was very funny when you're 18 is not very funny when you're 30.” He woke up with such a hangover after his bachelor party that he too decided just to stop drinking.


The deeper similarity has to do with social background. Both Howard Brush Dean III and George Walker Bush hail from the same White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (Wasp) establishment: a world of blue blood and old money, of private schools and deb balls, of family connections and inherited first names. Their fathers and grandfathers were educated at the same Ivy League university, Yale. One of Mr Bush's grandmothers was a bridesmaid for one of Dr Dean's (they had been at finishing school together). Dr Dean's father worked as a stockbroker at Dean Witter Reynolds, and the young Howard grew up on Hook Pond in East Hampton and on Park Avenue. He was educated at St George's in Newport, a posh boarding school, and then at Yale, where he overlapped for a year with Mr Bush, who had been to Andover.

So why do people with such similar backgrounds have such different political views? Fifty years ago America's Wasps saw eye-to-eye on politics just as much as they did on trust funds and Ivy League universities. Most of them were relatively relaxed Republicans: high-minded and fiscally responsible at home, Atlanticist and Anglophile abroad. The Bushes and Deans were both rooted in this tradition. Mr Bush's grandfather, Prescott (who, incidentally, also went to St George's), was a senator for Connecticut who believed in progressive taxation, internationalism and birth control. Dr Dean's father, “Big Howard”, managed the campaigns of a Republican congressman, Stuyvesant Wainwright II. His mother wore a dress emblazoned with the word “Ike” during Eisenhower's re-election bid in 1956.

These moderate Republicans began to lose their grip on the party in the mid-1960s. Dr Dean's first political experience was at the 1964 Republican convention which chose the upstart Barry Goldwater as its candidate. Big Howard had a soft spot for the Arizonan, but the convention in San Francisco, where hundreds of decidedly unWaspish delegates from the South and the west booed Nelson Rockefeller off the stage, was a turning-point. Goldwater's subsequent obliteration by the Democrats gave the Wasps some comfort, but the debates that followed over the Vietnam war and civil rights polarised the country, pushing the Republican Party to the right. Every elected Republican president since then has come from the Sunbelt, and the religious right has pushed all sorts of issues into politics—from abortion to prayer in public schools—that the Wasps thought had no business there.

A handful of blue-bloods continue to uphold the great tradition of progressive Republicanism, Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island being the most conspicuous example. But most of them have had to jump either to the left or the right. George Bush senior was the first Wasp to throw in his lot with Sunbelt Republicanism. The current President Bush's ideology, especially on social issues, is by many measures to the right of Goldwater's. Until recently, Dr Dean might have been cited as a Rockefeller Republican himself, masquerading as a moderate Democratic governor of Vermont. But he has become a national figure only by jumping to the left, espousing campus liberalism, denouncing NAFTA and calling for a wholesale re-regulation of business.

An old order, remade
Have the Wasps been marginalised? The Preppies certainly no longer rule on their own terms. Look at the way Jim Jeffords sank into obscurity when the moderate Vermont senator abandoned Mr Bush's party to become an independent. For a Wasp to get anywhere in politics, he has to put on cowboy boots or Birkenstock sandals. On the other hand, Messrs Bush and Dean also demonstrate the extraordinary adaptability of America's old ruling elite. As David Brooks of the New York Times has pointed out, fancy boarding schools did quite well at turning “the sons of privilege” into “paragons of manly virtue”. Eton, which has not turned out a British prime minister for 40 years and may never do so again, should be jealous.

Indeed, the amazing thing about the survival of America's Wasps is why their prominence arouses so little comment. Britain would be on the point of revolution if its election could be caricatured as Eton v Harrow. The 2000 contest between Al Gore and Mr Bush was also a struggle between St Alban's and Andover. Next year, it looks like being Andover v St George's. There is nothing wrong with America's old elite. Whether there is anything wrong with America's commitment to upward mobility is a much more open question
 
Ok, just keeping you all abreast of what's going on in election politics.


The race for the White House

Let the games begin

Dec 30th 2003 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition

The next 60 days will decide the Democratic nomination—and the shape of the presidential contest

THE coming months will see a flurry of electoral activity that is even more concentrated than in recent American election years. The first votes to pick the Democrats' presidential candidate will be cast in Iowa on January 19th and New Hampshire on the 27th, both slightly earlier than usual.

Thereafter, the votes come thick and fast. Seven states hold ballots a week after New Hampshire, including South Carolina (see article). Four days later come Michigan and Washington. Nine more hold their votes in February, and the process culminates on March 2nd—Tidal Wave Tuesday—with contests in ten states accounting for one-third of all pledged Democratic delegates to the nominating convention. They include California, New York, Ohio and Georgia.

The frontloaded timetable was designed by Democratic bigwigs to benefit one of their own—a senator, say, like John Kerry, John Edwards or Joe Lieberman, or Congressman Dick Gephardt, the party's former leader in the House. The idea was to give the establishment's anointee more time to raise money and heal wounds from the nomination battle before taking on the 800-pound gorilla, George Bush.

The timetable may still have that effect. But it seems almost certain to benefit a rank outsider. Cast your mind back a year. In early 2003, Howard Dean was one of the also-rans, the governor of a boutique state with about as much chance of winning as Carol Moseley Braun.

Now, the former governor of Vermont has achieved an unprecedented political transformation. By appealing to the party faithful's anti-war sentiments and especially their fury at President Bush, Mr Dean has won the “invisible primary”, the contest for money, momentum and endorsements. He is far ahead of the field in New Hampshire, and neck and neck with Mr Gephardt in Iowa (a state the congressman, who is from neighbouring Missouri, might have expected to win easily). Insurgent candidates have won the nomination before, of course—and Jimmy Carter went on to win the presidency. But no insurgent has become the prohibitive favourite before a vote has been cast.

There is many a slip twixt the cup and lip, of course: even successful presidential candidates tend to stumble at some point, and Mr Dean has already made a few slip-ups. Yet the plain fact at the moment is that the Democrats' cup is Mr Dean's to grasp. But how unified can the party be in 2004 if he is its candidate?

As his grip on the nomination has tightened, the Stop-Dean machine has gone into overdrive, with ever-fiercer attacks on his temperament, veracity and electability. Optimists (and Mr Dean's campaign staff) say that there is nothing unusual about these attacks: contested primaries are always bitter, and become even more so when an insurgent launches a hostile takeover bid against the establishment.

Besides, add the optimists, Mr Dean is not really out of the mainstream. Except over Iraq, his foreign policy would be squarely in the post-cold war tradition of tough-minded American multilateralism. He ran Vermont as a pragmatic centrist. Mr Dean, on this view, has plenty of ways to scramble back to the centre (by, for instance, picking a centrist running mate). And, because of the frontloaded schedule, the party will have plenty of time to rally round him before November.

Pessimists argue, however, that the divisions within the party, and unease about Mr Dean himself, are more profound than normal. Just before Christmas, Mr Dean said he was unwilling to pronounce Osama bin Laden guilty of the September 11th attacks before a trial—a curious restraint considering that al-Qaeda's leader has boasted about his role in them. Mr Dean has also said that Saddam Hussein's capture would not make America safer. Mr Bush's henchmen will use such pronouncements to paint Mr Dean as ambivalent about national security.

At the same time, Mr Dean has hammered a wedge into his party's long-standing ideological division by accusing Bill Clinton of not doing enough to stand up to Republicans, saying he had tried “simply to limit the damage they inflict on working families”. It was bad enough to be sceptical about the most successful Democrat in living memory. But Mr Dean also called the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (which Mr Clinton once led) “the Republican wing of the Democratic Party”.

Such criticism, argue the pessimists, goes beyond normal primary-season sniping to a structural problem facing the party itself. Mr Dean has so far been successful by mobilising party activists, but in doing so he has deepened the party's ideological rifts. Democratic moderates may not openly attack Mr Dean, assuming he wins the party nomination. But the risk is growing that they will sit this election out, waiting for more propitious times in 2008.

Over the next two months, then, most political activity will be on the Democratic side. Thereafter, attention will shift to the Republicans, because elections with a sitting president almost always turn into a referendum on the incumbent.

In the abstract, Mr Bush looks vulnerable. Asked “would you like to see Mr Bush re-elected?”, Americans are split down the middle: 46% say yes, 46% no. But beneath this apparent vulnerability, there is a hidden upturn in the president's fortunes.

Mr Bush's job approval rating stood at around 55% in December (one Gallup poll put it as high as 63%). That approval level is the highest for Mr Bush since June and, more significantly, higher than any of his four predecessors enjoyed at the same point in their campaigns.

That does not mean Mr Bush is coasting to victory. His father had a 52% approval rating in December 1991 and lost with 37% of the vote. Mr Carter had a 54% approval in December 1979 and lost with 41%. In both cases, the economy turned sour in re-election year. But in 1996, with the economy strong, Mr Clinton held on to almost all his December approval, while Ronald Reagan's vote in 1984 was higher than his rating of December 1983.

The notable feature of this historical pattern is that sitting presidents who fail on polling day do so after losing a big chunk of their December approval ratings (13 points for Mr Carter; 15 for George Bush senior). So one way of thinking about 2004 is to ask whether anything might happen to depress Mr Bush's approval rating substantially.

Clearly, it would have to be something big. A perception among voters that the drawbacks of the complicated new Medicare bill outweigh the benefits would not be enough. The obvious candidates are the economy and national security.

Democrats will attack Mr Bush as the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over net job losses. They can also point out that he inherited a bouncing budget surplus and blew the whole thing. Yet this line of attack is likely to be blunted by the recovery in the second half of 2003: the economy has been roaring back, with 50,000 jobs being created each month and consumer confidence rising. A year before the re-elections of Presidents Clinton and Reagan, the University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment stood around 90. A year before the defeat of Presidents Bush and Carter, the index was below 70. In November 2003, it stood at 93.7.

So the economy could well push up Mr Bush's ratings. Even at its worst, the economy looks likely to be a wash in political terms. Criticism and praise will cancel each other out. That leaves national security as a point of vulnerability.

Obviously, a sharp deterioration in Iraq could damage the president. So, potentially, might a report, due in May, from a commission set up to investigate the attacks of September 11th. If that commission were to find, say, that low-level people in the administration had information that might conceivably have deflected that attack, it would hurt Mr Bush's claim that his administration has made America safer. To make matters worse, it is an open secret that the new Department of Homeland Security is barely getting to grips with improving domestic security.

On the other hand, all this is hypothetical. The Democrats would have to show not merely that the administration had failed (which they might be able to do) but that they themselves would do better (which they have not done thus far).

None of this means Mr Bush is a shoo-in. In a country as evenly divided and polarised as America, no one can be. But it must mean he starts as the favourite. And, on the eve of the first votes, the president's position is strengthening, while the Democrats are still fighting.
 
Looks like it will be an interesting election year, after all.


Here we go again

America's angry election

Dec 30th 2003
From The Economist print edition

Prepare yourself for an unusually divisive year

AND so the greatest show in modern politics rolls back into town. Four years ago, the American presidential election outdid itself in terms of spectacle. First, John McCain ran the front-runner, George Bush, surprisingly close in the race for the Republican nomination. Then, in the real election, the “50:50 nation” produced a dead heat. Finally came the drama of the Florida recount, twisting all the way up to the Supreme Court before Mr Bush was eventually declared the victor. Now 2004 promises to bring an even more combative show.

A surprising number of people will dismiss the contest as mere hoopla. Even in the United States, only around half the electorate will bother to vote. Yet the contest is crucial—and not just because it will choose the most important man in the world. The election will be a verdict on the determined yet controversial way in which Mr Bush has steered his country. It also comes at a time when America is more bitterly divided than it has been for a generation.

The stakes are high for both sides. For Mr Bush, success in November would dispel doubts over the “stolen” election of 2000 and counter the charge that he has exceeded his mandate in the war on terror. For the Democrats, the presidential campaign represents something of a last chance. They look unlikely to regain power in Congress. In the Senate, they are defending more vulnerable seats than the Republicans are, and in the House of Representatives another bout of redistricting to protect incumbents should reinforce the Republicans' position. Hence the Democrats' fear that a Bush victory would allow the Republicans to “conservatise” the country's institutions, particularly the judiciary, for years to come.

If that seems paranoid, it reflects the atmosphere in which the contest will be fought. Much has been made in Europe of the way Mr Bush's policies have set America apart from the rest of the world; less noticed is the way that those policies have polarised his own country.The president's approval ratings show a huge gap between Republicans and Democrats. The divide is geographical, too, with the Bush-loathers clustered along the coasts, particularly in California and New York, and the Bush-lovers buried in the South and the west.

How much is this Mr Bush's fault? American politics has been getting more ideological and partisan for the past quarter-century, as the conservative South has transferred its allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans. Yet the current president, a conservative southerner himself, has tended to exaggerate the split. Right from the beginning, fume his foes, he ignored the narrowness of his mandate and set off in an unambiguously rightward direction, pushing through an even bigger tax cut than he had promised. The tragedy of September 11th produced a rally around the presidency, but many liberal Americans, like many Europeans, have since been taken aback by Mr Bush's hard-line approach to the war on terror.

The division between these two Americas will have an enormous impact on both phases of next year's spectacle. In the primaries, Mr Bush's popularity with the party faithful has already paid off: unlike his father in 1992, who was mauled by a conservative rebellion led by Pat Buchanan, this Bush faces no challenge for his party's nomination. So far, no sitting president who has avoided a primary challenge has lost.

Meanwhile, the Democratic contest has been dominated by the rank-and-file's loathing for Mr Bush and its contempt for the way the Democratic leadership in Washington has kowtowed to the president. Senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and John Edwards and Congressman Dick Gephardt have all suffered for supporting the Iraq war; instead, activists have flocked to the standard of Howard Dean, a former governor of tiny Vermont, who opposed the war and promises to represent “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party”.

Mr Dean's partisanship has already forced all his rivals, except Mr Lieberman, to step up their own attacks on Mr Bush's foreign policy. Yet their change of tactics has not halted his advance. If the fiery Mr Dean can clobber Mr Gephardt in Iowa and Mr Kerry in New Hampshire, he may have the nomination in his grasp by early February. In that event, a polarised country would have to choose between a conservative Texan and a liberal north-easterner—on the face of it, the oddest couple since George McGovern took on Richard Nixon in 1972.

The receding centre
Like most caricatures, those of Mr Dean and Mr Bush are both a little unfair. The supposedly “conservative” president has expanded the federal government and its budget deficit at a speed few French socialists could match. As for the “liberal” Mr Dean, he was actually a rather conservative governor of Vermont, even supporting gun rights. He has tried to head off comparisons with the hapless Mr McGovern by stressing his willingness, normally, to send troops to fight overseas.

As the focus turns from the primaries to the general election, both men will valiantly strive to prove they are really centrists. As they court the “soccer mom”, “Joe Sixpack” and all those other mythical floating voters who normally help decide American elections, Mr Bush will play down his views on abortion while Mr Dean will try to stay clear of gay marriage.

Yet political caricatures have a habit of sticking—and there may be less to be gained by moving to the centre next year than in the past. With America's abysmally low turnouts, the focus in political campaigns is moving from the “air war” (all those ads aimed at floating voters) to the ground war (getting out your core supporters). And core supporters like red meat. Polarisation will, however, bring at least one benefit. It will force a brutal debate on how to make America (and the world) a safer place. In the last three presidential elections, foreign policy played second fiddle to the economy, health care and pensions. In this election, it should dominate.

Mr Bush will come under fierce questioning about those missing weapons of mass destruction and the failure to plan Iraq's reconstruction. Any Democrat, but particularly Mr Dean, will have to explain what he would do differently. The campaign may well be nasty, brutal and long. But it will also drive to the heart of issues that matter for the whole world.
 
President Bush is doing well enough for me. Afghanistan is getting along really well, especially now since their constitution has been ratified, our economy is bouncing back, although democrats would still complain (of course, after all, a republican is in office), and things in Iraq are looking better, not good enough, but better. If you ask me, however, I think Bush had this all planned for some time now. Just when things look down, he pulls out a few surprises from his pocket. And now, in Iraq, there are terrorists being caught by the masses left and right, attacks are going down, and Iraqis are beginning to get more and more luxeries back again. It's only a matter of time before they get thier constitution. It took Afghanistan some time, but I didn't complain, I was patient. Something many people aren't. Of course, things can still turn bad. But I have high hopes for 2004. And I think Bush will pull through. I don't want Dean in office however. He wants us to pull out of Iraq. He will create a bigger shit storm than ever. I wonder then, if the Democrats will complain. Of course they won't. Whether it's democrat, or republican, I don't care, just as long as we don't have a pussy or someone who says stupid things, lies about saying them, then admits it, then says it was blown out of proportion by Fox News or CNN. If I could vote, however, I would vote Bush for now, but that one general has my attention too.
 
Don't register with N.Y. Times or MSNBC. They will send you tons of spam e-mail. I almost had to bluff/threaten legal action if they didn't stop, it was like a plague.

By the way, don't care who becomes president...

Just wanted to warn everybody about the flood of spam.
 
Hmm... Why no mention of Clark on these boards? I see him as very likely to win the Democratic nomination, and he probably has the best chance out of the candidates of beating Bush...
 
I think the biggest obvious difference between Dean and Bush is the level of intelligence. In all the debates that I have seen Dean participate in, he has seemed very well informed and articulate. Bush, on the other hand appears to have either missed those college courses on public speaking or is not intelligent enough to form his own literate opinions.
 
JJ86 said:
I think the biggest obvious difference between Dean and Bush is the level of intelligence. In all the debates that I have seen Dean participate in, he has seemed very well informed and articulate. Bush, on the other hand appears to have either missed those college courses on public speaking or is not intelligent enough to form his own literate opinions.
Click to expand...
Read the Rotten article on him.

He graduated from Yale. Not the best in this class, but this is Yale, not University of Illinois, Chicago..

He just does not care about the names of certain people or places, which is A-OKAY to everybody save the eletist elements of the Democratic party.

My main perceived diffirence is that Dean reminds me of my father; bitter, arogant, a screaming maniac and an ass, if somewhat intellegent.
 
Looks like its Kerry and gaining momentum.

Dean is probably finished. Unless he can pull in a big switch soon. Lieberman is down for the count. Clark- hasn't gotten it yet. Nice try though

I am still hoping for more from Edwards. Of all these guys, I think Edwards is the only one with a sincere interest in looking out for the little guy. Of all the politicians, he strikes me as cleanest.

It would be nice to see a Kerry/Edwards ticket against GB and Cheney.

At least Kerry was trudging through the swamps of Vietnam while Cheney and Bush were ducking out. Hey, landing a plane on an aircraft hero doesn't make you a war hero GB.

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2388532

For more on Kerry.

"Mr Kerry is no wimp. A decorated Vietnam war veteran who risked his life to save his fellow soldiers, he is addicted to macho sports such as ice-hockey, wind-surfing and killing many forms of wildlife. He rides Harley Davidsons and has a passion for red meat."

Even Republicans should like this guy.

For more news-
www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball
 
This talk about Kerry being a war hero is total bullshit. Right after he got back, he started claiming that "every action in Vietnam was an atrocity", and was with a group of protesters waving upsidedown American flags near the Iwo Jima memorial. That should and will bite him up the ass.
 
The fact that he did that doesn't mean he isn't a war hero. YOu can be a war hero while being anti-war, you should realise that.
 
Veterans Should Politically Banish Kerry for Disgracing The Marine Corps Memorial
By Rick Erickson January 26, 2004

On the cover of "The New Soldier" by John Kerry and Vietnam Veterans Against The War, hippies clad in a mismatch of military uniforms are pictured mocking the legendary image of Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi in the 1945 battle for Iwo Jima. Today, the Iwo Jima image is a memorial statue that sits above Arlington National Cemetery and honors all Marines killed in action since 1775. It is one of the most recognized and visited sites in our Capitol City.

"The New Soldier" never made it on the reading list at our military academies. In the cover photo that ridicules the Marine Corps Memorial, one of Kerry's cronies is tugging on our flag, which is hung upside down as the ultimate symbol of sedition and treachery to all veterans who rallied behind our flag in battle. On the day of that shameful photograph and with its mass circulation on the cover of "The New Soldier", at least 6,821 Marines who died at Iwo Jima turned over in their graves.

Of all the reasons why John F. Kerry will not become President of the United States, the biggest reason has to be that, once he returned home from Vietnam, he betrayed his fellow servicemen who remained at war. Kerry not only allied with the likes of Hanoi Jane Fonda, but, before the United States Senate in 1971, Kerry went as far as to belittle the bravery of embattled troops by generalizing their every action in Vietnam as an atrocity.

No one questioned General George S. Patton, III, when he accused Kerry of treason in giving aid and comfort to the enemy, especially when it was revealed that North Vietnam incorporated Kerry's exploits into its communist propaganda machine. However, because of the prevalence of treason at the time and the monumental task of prosecuting Kerry and his proclaimed "revolutionaries," Kerry's actions went unpunished and the associated advances of communism went unhindered.

Fortunately, today's veterans and Americans who overwhelmingly support our armed forces tend to disparage those who dishonor military service and then pretend to be capable of our country's highest office. This political reality afflicted Bill Clinton, whose anti-military past kept him from winning any more than forty-nine percent of the popular vote. No wonder Kerry's presidential campaign is doing its best to subvert his estrangement from veterans and service people in general.

The tact of Kerry for President looks a lot like Clinton-Gore's approach to deceiving voters that such an obvious liability is really the opposite. When Kerry marched in the Veteran's Day parade in Phoenix last year, in tow behind him were a few people carrying "Veterans for Kerry" placards. Some placard carriers looked like the ragtag types on the cover of The New Solider in that they were unshaven, wearing circa 1971 clothes and appeared disoriented.

The ongoing insult is that "Veterans for Kerry" is supposed to represent the veteran community's support of Kerry, when the reality is that very few veterans support him. Most veterans cannot forgive Kerry for Vietnam Veterans Against The War and its promotion of communism when we were fighting communists. As far as U.S. Marines are concerned, we ought to ensure that Kerry is forever banished from the White House for dishonoring our Memorial on the cover of "The New Soldier".

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

Major Rick Erickson writes as Director of Americans for Military Readiness, a Washington, D.C. non-profit devoted to ensuring troop morale and combat preparedness. Rick is a veteran of infantry operations in Mogadishu, Somalia and serves regularly as a reservist Deputy Judge Advocate at NORAD/USNORTHCOM. An Arizona attorney, Rick also serves on Military Academy Review Boards for U.S. Senator Jon Kyl and U.S. Congressmen John Shadegg and Trent Franks. Send comments to media@readymilitary.com.
 
newsol_cov.jpg



I dont think you can be a war hero after this, then throwing away another soldier's medals.
 
Bull. Being a war hero has to do with your actions IN a war. IN other words, you are a war hero if you saved many lives in the war, or if you fought bravely for your country etc. etc. etc. As long as you did your duty while you were in a war, you're a war hero. It doesn't matter what you did afterwards.

Your claim could be compared to saying that someone who has been president, and did many good things during his presidency, and then campaigns against the principle of presidency, can't have been a good president.
 
Honestly, considering that he was on patrol boats in the Mekong Delta, got a number of decorations, I am not going to begrudge him being anti-war.

A lot of the country was anti-war and it was a crappy war. And we shouldn't gloss over atrocities that happened.

But I think, CC, you raise the big liability for Kerry- that he was anti-war and that perhaps there is more in Kerry's war record than we know.

But speaking out against the war when he came home, no. I am not going to fault him that.

The strength of the american system is not in honoring symbols but honoring values. Values include free speech and right to assemble and protest. That was a crappy war and while we can respect the men who fought and died there, we should still question why we did it. I am willing to bet that if you a lot of people about what that war was about, you will get lots of different answers.

The problem is that it's still a devisive issue and may blind us to the issues of today.

Still I would rather have a Kerry who fought there and protested it, than a Bush or Cheney that ducked it and then sent men to die.
 
http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/updates.htm

For an update and a quick analysis of yesterday's primary.

I'm still hoping for Edwards.


from the economist-
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2404010

"By winning five more states this week, John Kerry has bolstered his front-runner status in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. But John Edwards and Wesley Clark, who came first in South Carolina and Oklahoma respectively, are hanging in there."

but it didn't all go his way and the election isn't over-

"The race is not over yet, since Mr Kerry still has only a fraction of the 2,162 Democratic delegates needed to win the nomination in July (see our primer on America’s electoral process). Two of the seven states contested on Tuesday did not fall to Mr Kerry. Senator John Edwards of North Carolina won decisively in South Carolina, the state where he was born. Mr Clark eked out a victory in Oklahoma’s primary with 30% of the vote, beating Mr Edwards by just 1,300 votes. (Mr Kerry came third with 27%.)"

Personally, I am hoping for a Kerry-Edwards ticket. But-

"As the field dwindles, Mr Edwards may be the biggest remaining threat to Mr Kerry. His southern charm and populist cry to reclaim America for the have-nots have drawn enthusiastic crowds. Besides winning South Carolina, he has posted strong second-place finishes in Iowa and Oklahoma. But Mr Edwards’ Achilles heel is his inexperience. He is still in his first term in the Senate and held no prior political post. The coming weeks will be crucial in showing whether he can win outside the South. Talk is growing of a Kerry-Edwards ticket, though Mr Kerry (if he becomes the nominee) may look elsewhere, perhaps to Bill Richardson, the Hispanic governor of New Mexico and former ambassador to the United Nations."

and if there were the election today?

"President George Bush, of course, lies in wait for the eventual Democratic winner. This week, a CNN/Gallup poll postulating a Kerry-Bush contest found Mr Kerry leading Mr Bush by 53% to 46%."

Hey, where was George Bush during the Vietnam War?
 
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