I think Democrats/Progressives deserve answers from John Kerry

John Kerry's response to this election, or lack thereof, is unacceptable. This is not a choice a true Democrat would make.

By making this choice, it threatens to further disillusion and shake the confidence of this party, nation and needless to say, our election process.

As a result of his choice to back down from any option of becoming president, he is jeopardizing the faith in the Democratic party and should consider relinquishing his position as Senator for his decision to throw in the towel and leaving Americans vulnerable to an extremist Administration.

He should also publicly apologize to every other candidate for which he eliminated their chance of leading this country.

What Kerry did was not the choice of a leader. It was a choice of someone who is easily comprimised and prefers comfort to responsibility.

Im curious to know what his choice was for running in the first place?

we may not have all the facts. On second thought, we definitely don't have all the facts, and I will reserve my decision for after the recount is done.

I have seen posts here tonight where people are pissed because Kerry won't call this voting mess a conspiracy. Now demanding answers. Yes, just have him commit political suicide because people here are pissed off.

Not only does he have 2008 to consider but if he is going to be taken seriously for the next 4 YEARS in the senate fighting BFEE let him handle this the way HE see fit.

BTW, I think you are totally wrong about Kerry and his leadership. He doesn't owe me an explanation and he doesn't owe any other candidate an apology. He is the one who won the primaries.

and that's enough for me. This must be under the radar. The minute, THE MINUTE, Kerry looks like he's giving credence to the voter fraud theories and EVEN HINTS that he thinks he won the election, the BFEE would be in like a shot to block, stonewall, destroy.

Even if none of this behind the scenes investigating leads to an overturning of the election, it would be great if we could wipe "mandate" out of the Repub vocabulary, and make damn sure the next election is set up properly. A few indictments would also be nice, but I imagine it would be someone pretty low level being fed to the wolves.

I have no idea why anyone would expect the Kerry camp or anyone surroounding them to shout from the rooftops, "WE'LL BE GOING INTO OHIO AND FLORIDA NOW TO SEE IF WE CAN'T FIND US SOME FRAUD. DON'T TELL ANYONE, OKAY? IT'S A SECRET."

We were hunkering down for the fight. Then, he conceded.

Maybe Im wrong, but hI dont think he's oming back on this one. I see no hail Mary coming our way.

its time to move on and start thinking about 2006

I want all the voting irregularities investigated as much as anyone else. I disagree with all of this anger towards Kerry. He fought a hell of a fight and I don't think he needs to commit political suicide just because I am pissed at the results nor does he owe me an explanation. I have an idea as to what happened. Kerry doesn't have to explain it to me. If he can get to the bottom of it, I am certain he will.

he is on vacation....................................................
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Knock him all you want. I'd expect no less from you...but one certainly can't say he didn't play to win and didn't fight.

backhanded insults notwithstanding Kerry ran a campaign designed to appease the corporate donors not one designed to enlighten the electorate.

Note I did not feel the need to respond to your childish insult.....

Kerry is the victim here not the perp. Like smearing him and using the rational "Well, he brought it up," blaming the one who just got raped politically because he didn't say "no" loud enough ain't gonna fly either. Not with me.

Fifty five million deserve to hear from ALL OF OUR LEADERSHIP.

We need to hear from our Representatives and Congressmen much more. We need them to actually come BACK into town for a cameo appearance once in a while and hold a few town hall meetings in PERSON.


We need the Supremes to act more like humans and less like the Star Chamber.

Do I even need to mention what we need from the Executive Branch?

Someone who deserves it would be nice.

I understand your feelings here. Could there be an outside chance that there is more than meets the eye here?

The issue is really one of possible election fraud - a coup d'etat. If it turns out to be true, the whole world will be turned upside down. It will be the greatest scandal in the history of the country. It will precipitate a Constitutional crisis, and could lead to violence or terrible repression. It would also bring the entire religious right and BFEE crashing to the ground in ruins.

Those are the stakes. Had Kerry not conceded, or were he to speak now, all attention would be on him and away from the wrong doers and the ongoing investigation.

If people are looking for leaders, why not line up behind Nader, Cobb and Badnarik. They have nothing to gain personally by what they are doing now, and no possible motivation that makes any sense unless they believe that the stakes are as big as I belive them to be.

"A true patriot would keep the attention of his fellow citizens awake to their grievances, and not allow them to rest till the causes of their just complaints are removed. Our ship is in the hands of pilots who are steering directly under full sail to a rock. The whole crew may see this course to violate our liberties in full view if they look the right way." - Sam Adams 1771

system of ours is about as broken as it can get. Too many special interests, lobbyists, greed. In the end, it will harm all of us. Why the extremists dont see it, well, maybe that is why they are called extreme.

Great points on the Green party candidates! They are suiting up and showing up. Thanks for the reminder.

I dont think we can fix it from the inside out. I think we have to put our money and our time and energy into building something new.

Who knows? I believe what Americans and Lady Lib* need more than anything right now is some truth and accountability.

We may or may not have lost this election fairly. We KNOW we don't get a fair shake in the media. John Kerry not only got more votes than any Democratic candidate ever, he got more of a percentage of votes than Bill Clinton did either time.

He won't help any of us by becoming a laughing stock. If he is doing anything, he is doing it quietly. Interestingly enough, other people are heeding the call without the fallout getting all over Kerry. We may be being called conspiracy theorists, but he isn't.

The reason I say YOU are the problem is this. If I am playing on a team that lost by three points....we get together, regroup and plan on how to beat the clock and win the mext game. We don't break the legs of our fellow team mates. For some reason, liberals prefer cannibalism to devouring their political enemies.

Well, when you lose the Super Bowl, you don't throw out the entire team. You look to see where you can improve, and come back next year.

We got all the way to the Super Bowl. Even if we can't prove the game was fixed, I'm sticking with my team.

Just don't tell me that the team we beat in Week Three should have been the ones in the Big Game instead. If they were tough enough, they'd have made it through.

Somehow I don't think Dean himself is down with this stuff. Has anyone heard him whine about how he should have been the one. He got behind Kerry too. Does he have any regrets? The only thing I've heard him say is that he was unready for the nastiness of big politics, but that he'd learned a few things for next time. I admire him more now than I did. I hope he gets a leadership position somewhere in the party.

touchdown for the other team, thereby granting them the victory?

He has already conceded NSMA. He has been adament about that. I think thats the reality.

in evidence. He looked at Ohio..the numbers weren't there..he conceded. Now he has his lawyers in Ohio...other team mates are getting out in front and protecting the quarterback as it should be. If it turns out he won...he will be all the better for not being tagged SORE LOSERMAN or any of the other ad hominems. If it turns out he didn't win...he's in a MUCH better position of strength in the senate for not challenging the results...if he did otherwise, then EVERY time he challenged Bush, he'd be dismissed...it's going to be REAL easy for Kerry to say I TOLD YOU SO over and over...like GORE could have but for his year long sabbatical.

Frankly, I want Kerry to run again. as I pointed out...he got 55 million people to vote FOR him..something no other democrat has ever done.

for Kerry's behavior.

I started out as an ABB and ended up having an extremely high opinion of Kerry.

The pre-mature concession and successive silence was out of character for him. The respect I developed for him over the course of watching his campaign over time, and by looking into his history, makes me confident that there is some VERY GOOD reason why he acted the way he did.

Even if you don't subscribe to the popular 'he's massing evidence for a sting' voter fraud theory, there are several possible explanations.

I saw an article today that suggested Bush/Rove had deliberately timed the siege of Fallujah as a post-election November surprise. Imagine if Kerry was grandstanding and hogging news bandwidth while the largest battle of the Iraq war was going on and over ten thousand American troops were directly in harms way. The right-wing attack machine would shred Kerry for pushing for his own political gain at this time of national crisis; using up time and resources while our troops were dying on the battlefield. Going after voter fraud would be walking into a trap.

There's also the possibility he has reason to believe that the voter fraud issue is a trap. By that I mean that Rove has a plan, and has things in place to devastate Kerry if he raises the issue. This theory does not depend on whether Bush really won or not. The thing is how a recount demand by Kerry would be played. Rove may have even planted easily discovered evidence of voter fraud so that it would be found and cause everyone to squawk. The whole issue may be a red herring to keep us from noticing that Bush is appointing his own council, an Enron crony, and the Torture justifier to the Attorney General positing.

These ideas do not come close to exhausting all the possible reasons why Kerry acted the way he did, and did not 'just surrender and abandon us'. I hope time will let him explain himself to us. Until then I'm going to base my opinion of Kerry on the evidence of his record to date, which is NOT that of a quitter or a coward or of someone who hides when the pressure is on (he did NOT back down under EXTREME pressure on the Iran/Contra or BCCI investigations).

I dont know. It is hard to understand the logic though.

Is it possible the election was just a formal process, and Kerry was a safety valve to secure a definate, guarenteed second term for Bush ?

I've had this nagging thought in my head since Kerry so passively admitted defeat , of the possibility he could easily have just been "seen" to run for President, with no intention of defeating Bush, and his administration at all.

It's almost bordering on paranoia ... but it was always my contention Kerry never really convinced the public of the necessity to remove Bush from office, and he had plenty of ammunition to use to had he so desired to use it.

"Shance", mirrors exactly my thoughts , and would be interesting to read other forum members' thoughts on this subject too.

If this election transpired to be so corrupt as to ensure a Bush victory no matter what ,it sends out a very ominous message for world democracy .... in that .... it really doesn't exist anywhere on the planet !

It makes me shudder to think a political agenda could be drawn up and pursued no matter which party, or which Leader, raising another question .... who are the real authors of American politics ?

Someone said recently we are enslaved and dominated by the worlds' financial institutions .... and you don't give prisoners freedom ... or democracy !

Scary thought !!!

Don't we?

I think Kerry owes an explanation for his delivery of the democratic message/platform but clearly not for the message itself. How anyone could so effectively botch/muddle the opportunity to clearly define the Democratic message against that of the republicans is beyond me.

I take great heart in the fact that we are the party of FDR, we are the party of JFK, and we are the party that has always and will always represent the interests of the poor, the disenfranchised and the environment. And finally, we are the party that seeks to protect our nation, without unilaterally imposing our will on others. THAT message seems to have been lost by Mr. Kerry in his campaign, but it's a message that remains as true and bright as it was in 1944.