Progressives, not conservatives, will determine the next election

Progressives, not conservatives, will determine the outcome of the next Presidential election. Circular arguments about "electability" when given by conservatives reinforce the false and deceptive role conservatives think they should have over the debate.

Gore got over 50 million votes and Bush got about 50 million in 2000.

According to election consultant strategy, the 40/40/20 rule means that 20 million of those voters were "independents" so Bush got 10 million and Gore got 10 million.

Around half of those "independents" who voted for Gore thought he should be more liberal, and about half thought he should be more conservative - so that means the Democratic take for Gore from conservative independents was worth 5 million votes.

Nader got 3 million.

And 5 million voted for Gore but wished he were more liberal or populist.

Kucinich is the only candidate positioned to take BOTH the 5 million independents who wished Gore were more liberal, AND the 3 million who voted for Nader.

THE ONLY ONE!

No matter how you slice it, 8 million beats 5 million.

The Dean demagogues are pushing us toward a weaker candidate at our own peril.

The last time, the election was close enough to steal, and the Republicans have only gotten better at is since then. Some activists are cautioning beyond rallying around Rep. Rush Holt's black box vote-verification bill to guarantee voter-verfied election results by the general election next fall, for lobbying for the necessity of "all paper" ballots in time for the "primary" votes in early 2004.

The only way to win the next election is to beat the Republican theft spread.

The only way to beat the spread is to put forth a candidate who will *really* be the anti-Bush, not some namby-pamby former Governor whose last re-election percentage was a piss-poor 50.4% of the vote.

Kucinich is the candidate best positioned to beat Bush.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota

:-)

Screw the confederate flag on the pickup truck crowd. They're firmly in the camp of the BFEE. Those 5 mil moderates are the types who don't make up their minds until they get to the polls anyway. They are as unpredictable as the weather and there's almost no guarantee they'll vote our way.

OTOH, if you court the 3 mil who voted for Nader, AND for other left-leaning 3rd party candidates, you will get a coalition of informed, die-hard supporters who will WANT to vote for a candidate who not only shares their core beliefs, but is at the top of a major-party presidential ticket and can WIN!

And then you have the soft Gore voters who almost voted for Bush who would be repulsed by a DK candidacy.

Who are mortified by what President Codpiece has done to their party.

the current occupier is a talking house plant.

nt

The side of the bell curve on the liberal side is wider and deeper than it is on the shallow, conservative end.

With 5 million Gore votes from people who will enthusiastically vote for a candidate more liberal than Gore (and who themselves can be counted upon to bring other voters to the polls because of their enthusiasm), and with the 3 million Nader voters who will do the same thing, the only question is whether or not 2.5 million and one of the 5 million who voted for Gore but thought he was too "liberal" would vote for Kucinich (or other votes would come from elsewhere to cover the spread).

That takes the race from an effort to secure the votes of 10 million voters in the mushy middle down to a race to appeal to just 2.5 million of the voters who voted for Gore but thought he was too liberal. Kooch doesn't even need them all - Dean needs them all and more.

Kucinich already gets a substantial number of the Republican votes in his district.

Withdrawing from NAFTA is, in many parts of the country, a Republican goal.

Kucinich will have no problem appealing to not only the former Gore voters on the conservative end, he will appeal to many, many other Bush defectors as well, making Kucinich the candidate who is best able to create an uncheatable spread.

Dean's last re-elect in 2000 gave him barely 50% of the vote, and before you say it's because of the civil unions law, he got barely 54% of the vote in 1998. Dean doesn't even inspire the mainly white voters of Vermont to vote him in decisively.

Dean is not the candidate to produce a definitive margin of victory against Bush.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota

He elect margin of victory declined rapidly from 96 to 00.
In 1996
Howard Dean (D) 179,544 70.5%

John L. Gropper (R) 57,161 22.4%

The rest went to 3rd parties or other.

1998

Dean, Howard Democratic 121425 55.67%
Dwyer, Ruth Republican 89726 41.14%
the rest went to 3rd parties or other.

2000

Howard Dean, Burlington, Democratic 148,059 50.4%
Ruth Dwyer, Thetford, Republican 111,359 37.9%
the rest went to 3rd parties or other.

What is interesting is that the Anthony Pollina, of the Progressive Party (28,116 votes or 9.5%) in 2000, vs. in 1998 the Progressive Party had no one on the ballot offically.


Why is that the democratic nominee lost the governorship of Vermont to the republican party? Since Dr. Dean states that he had a great tenure as govenor of the state of Vermont. The growth of the 3rd parties or the lack of respect of the democratic party?

2002 results
DOUGLAS-R 103436 (44.940%)
RACINE-D 97565 (42.390%)

Over the last four elections of the registered voters the democratic party lost over 70000 voters and the Republicans gained over 45000!!!!!!!

Plus 3rd parties percentage went from 6.1% to 12.6%..hmm did Dean do to shift the voting population so hard!!!!

Yes I know that the population did grow and contract over that point but not too the point of this huge shift.

"The Dean demagogues are pushing us toward a weaker candidate at our own peril."

Not alone, they're not.

Dean demagogues?

That's pretty overblown rhetoric, especially coming from the Events manager of the Kucinich campaign. Especially since it's towards fellow Democrats whom, I assume, you want to vote for your candidate.

eom

Really?

Looks more like carefully thought out reasoning, to me.

nt

I agree it wasnt the right thing to say, but is it an official Dean memo that some of the candiates are "Vichy Dems", I saw them refered to that, Ive seen my own candiate called some pretty petty stuff, I agree with you that this wasnt the right thing to say, support who you wish, it goes both ways, and Ive seen just as dirty if not even more so from your camp, I dont think its an official message or what not. I wish people didnt act like dicks too, I really do, its gotta stop on all sides. Sorry but this is mild compared to what Ive seen in the past.

The English language works quite fine without trying to gain some sort of advantage by making someone angry before comments are even read.

Calling someone a name is the best route to having your actual message fully ignored and/or attacked.

I dont like this either. It goes all ways, I hope people know that.

and attacking candidates.

'Dean demagogues': attacks candidates' supporters (Democratic voters)
'some of the candiates are "Vichy Dems"': attacks candidates.

I'm being personally attacked by Mr. Dan Brown, Kucinich Events manager (of Minnesota).

Not sure. I disagreed with the comment myself too. Youre right, I didnt mean to overreact, look we've been slandered in some pretty nasty ways too, I forget what.

have infiltrated that particular candidate's campaign) A massive boiler room operation that keeps eternal vigilance over DU and other message boards

Didn't notice that comment before. Should have read more carefully.

Point taken.

Where did you get that title? Completely out of thin air. Made it up for demagogic purposes perhaps?

For the record there are no staff in MN other than dozens & dozens of volunteers. At one point there were various committees created and folks volunteered to chair committees of interest. Dan was recruited to chair events committee. But that structure has not really been operative since last summer. So he chairs an inactive committee.

What does that have to do with the substance of his well-written post?

Alerts me that the person posting only wants to blast their opinion..they're most certainly not interested in any discussion with the targets of their attacks.

This poster works for the Kucinich campaign. He is the Events Manager for DK. He has every right to post whatever he thinks here at DU. He should just acknowledge that his partisanship may be a paying position. If it's volunteer work, I have less of a problem with it. No big whoop.

:shrug: I dont know, I dont live in MN. Sorry for overreacting if I did.

We have NO paid staff in MN. NONE. Everybody listed on that page is a VOLUNTEER. Unlike Dean's and the other candidates' campaigns, we don't have mounds of cash to work with. However, we make up for it in dedication and energy.

Contrary to how you wish to paint us, our campaign is VERY grassroots-based and most of our work is conceived and done on a local level. We've been so successful here that we get calls from NATIONAL for help.

You can slam the poster all you want, but to cast aspersions at the hardworking VOLUNTEERS of the MN for Kucinich campaign is something else.

Furthermore, I can't see how he could make his partisanship more apparent-- He's using a DK avatar after all.

If you can't tell where his sympathies lie after reading the post, seeing his avatar, or searching his previous posts, than I'm afraid that I (nor anybody else) will be able to help you.

Point out where I said DK's campaign wasn't grassroots.

I said if it was volunteer, I have less of a problem with it.

I've said nothing ill of DK on this board. :shrug:

You didnt slander DK.

but he's not the national events manager. Read a little closer and you'll see.

The language may be a little strong, but the facts are still solid.

Fact is Dennis is at the bottom of every poll. Thems the facts...

I certainly didn't mention anything about poll numbers. And I can show you any number of polls that show DK at or near the top if that's what you need to feel validated. :eyes:

However some of us are worried more about substance and integrity than what the judges at the poodle show have to say.

*snore* ;)

I just help by doing whatever I can in Minnesota for Kucinich.

No one is paid.

No one is official.

There isn't even an "events chair" in Minnesota anymore.

And my dictionary says a demagogue is someone who "tries to stir up the people by appeals to emotion, prejudice, etc., in order to win them over quickly and so gain power."

If that's not you, then don't take it personally.

I have, however, been attacked, and mocked, and sneered at, and belittled, and taunted, and sworn at, and lied about, by people who identified themselves as supporters of former Governor Dean.

I've been told that Kucinich should just quit.

I've been told that Dean will be the nominee no matter what.

These are appeals, and insults, that take their basis and their power from emotion and prejudice, and not from logic.

No one can predict the future. No one knows now who will go to caucus. No one knows who will face up against Bush.

I've offered several arguments on DU in favor of Kucinich, and I've tried to anchor them in logic. In return, I've gotten what I guess some posters consider "witty" retorts basically adding up to the idea that I'm somehow deluded for holding out for the best candidate, because Dean is as good as it's gonna get, and I'd better just get in line.

Not logical arguments.

When logical arguments are offered, I try to rebut them in as clear a manner as I can.

If someone makes a logical point I can't refute, I admit it.

People who lob obvious lies like "Kucinich bankrupted Cleveland" don't win any points.

The logic is sound about the sides of the Democratic voter bell curve currently favoring the liberal side.

With a candidate going in who's already got the 8 million who thought Gore was too conservative or voted for Nader sewn up, that takes many of the potential voters, and some of the risk, out of play.

The candidate can then focus on creating an echo chamber reverberating Democratic core ideals, and will awaken a significant number of those 80 million people who didn't vote, along with the core of the Democratic Party, and most of the people who voted for Gore, even from among the 5 million who thought Gore was too "liberal."

So far I haven't read any logic from among the "Dean-a-fist Destiny" disciples refuting the idea that having Nader's voters would not be a postion of strength.

Instead, people have just focused on the "rhetoric" - relying once again on appeals to "emotion" and the "prejudice" that Dean is going to be the nominee so supporting other candidates is futile - in other words, being demagogues.

If that's all you've got, I'm not convinced. Kucinich will win by a much larger margin that Dean possibly can, and if the spread is narrow, the Republicans will steal the election.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota

When everyday people working hard for a candidate are belittled as "Dean demagogues."

Again, looks like language Dennis Kucinich wouldn't support.

that Dennis can win!

Dean '04...

Supporting Kucinich is hardly Republican, hence this poster loses whatever credibility he/she thought he/she had by insinuating that the only choices are Dean or a Republican.

Thanks for playing.

His supporters consist largely of angry, mainly white, moderately to very well off people who think they have to "rebel" against the Democrats and Bush at the same time to "shake things up."

Dean's belligerence won't play well against Bush, who's a dyed-in-the-wool sociopath and with Rove's help will turn Dean's positions into mush and his hot-headedness into a character assassination effort that may well work.

Dean was nearly rejected by the mostly white voters of Vermont in 2000, when he got barely 50% of the vote (down from his paltry 54% of the vote in 1998), so a conclusion that can be drawn from his poor showing is that he can't even inspire mostly white voters to vote him in decisively.

Kucinich, Clark, Kerry, and Edwards are all easily better candidates stacked up against Bush than Dean is.

It'll be sad if we have this albatross of a candidate foisted on us by Dean's over-exuberant nomination machine, because he'll be trouble as a final candidate.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota

Other than the fact that Flash is possibly the most worthless thing to ever pollute the web, I highly doubt anybody besides adolescents will find anything "useful" in your little link.

However, if you believe that we should "take back" the Democratic party by tearing it away from the grip of one group of Clintonite corporate apologists and handing it over to yet ANOTHER group of Clinton apologists, then go right ahead.

Just don't expect the rest of the liberals and progressives to let you get away with it.

Also, don't you think it a bit odd that you link to wellstone.org when most of Dean's platform flies directly in the face of what Paul Wellstone (and many of us who worked for him in MN) believed in?

:eyes:

If democrats think they are angry about 00, and ready to take the country back, they should take a closer look at progressive democrats, who are just as angry and ready to act on the party's conservative shift. We want to not only take the white house back, but take the country in a progressive direction.

And the 3rd party members who left the democrats specifically because of that shift; they aren't going to cast their votes for a conservative dem in the general election.

There are many of us, and we are voting. We are voting for candidates whose vision, direction, and plan are clearly different from the conservative wing of the party. We are not going away.

Because despite the one word people can choose to focus on and get offended, the message is valid.

Kucinich is the one.

zero to 100.

For everybody else, 2 is smaller than 50. It's even smaller than 48, smaller even than 5.

Oh well, let's not trouble ourselves with reality.

I would vote for DK and then I would have to throw up. I would only have to hold my nose to vote for Leiberman (no anti-choice voting record and he's not talking about a little totalitarian executive order strategy for what he knows he can't get congress to pass).