Your favorite among the four major Iowa Caucus candidates?

:kick:

Where will the Clark supporters go?

Usually DU polls always have Clark and Dean way out front, with Kucinch and Kerry getting some votes, and the rest with none.

likes Kerry over Dean and voted that way.

..this one!

come to prefer Kerry to Dean. They offer similar qualifications and I'd be happy with either as nominee.

Dean previously had been my second choice, but his nasty words against Clark have driven me away.

IMO, caucus goers for Clark shouldn't vote for him or Edwards either. We can't let them deflate our momentum.

edit: 'Above'., I first had below

Who do you think Clark supporters would vote for? I'm a Clark Supporter with Kerry as my second choice, either way I come out a winner.


And then there were none!
” JAFO”

He said THAT person is usually the nominee.

I like that a lot !

Kerry's gonna take Iowa, Why wouldn't he be favored in this poll?

The handwriting is on the wall, dean is in a free-fall, the voters see it and are backing who they think the man of the hour is. The lies have been exposed, now it's Kerry's turn to walk the walk.

Congrats to Kerry and his supporters.


And then there were none!
” JAFO”

n/t

I've just moved Clark up from #4 to #2 and moved Gephardt to #4 from #2. Edwards stays at #3.

Kerry doesn't have that much support here at DU, on his own. :)

then there would be an easy front runner. In Bush's America, everyone loves a military man.


Unforts, I do not love bush's America.

He voted for a resolution that said use of force was a last resort. Dean supported the same in Biden-Lugar.

Kucinich was against any resolution for use of force.

The insistence by Kerry that they were is one of the things that has made me hesitant about supporting him; they were fundamentally different, and any attempt to say otherwise is, at best, disingenuous.

That was to send a letter to the Speaker of the house and the Pres pro tem of the Senate. That was it.

Some people mix up other aspects of the B-L, but the actual steps to use of force were nearly the same. Parts of B-L were adopted by the final IWR. Try refuting these articles:

Here's the Daily Howler:


http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh011404.shtml
Finally, someone is asking why the press never covered it and merely assumed Dean's antiwar stance was true while he used IWR as the BIGGEST issue against the others.
>>>>>>>
Is Kerry’s complaint about Dean on-target? In fact, on October 5, 2002, Dean did “take a public position supporting the Biden-Lugar resolution” (see Des Moines Register excerpt, below). And to all appearances, that proposed resolution did “give Bush authority to go to war if he found that the diplomatic effort had been exhausted.” Here’s how David Rosenbaum described the measure in the October 6 New York Times:
ROSENBAUM (10/6/02): Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and thus the Democrats’ ex officio spokesman in the Senate on foreign policy, stands somewhere between the hawks and the doves.
Mr. Biden and Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, are offering a proposal that would authorize military action, but only against Iraq and not any other country, and only to rid Iraq of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
By that account, Biden-Lugar permitted war on Iraq over WMD. How did Biden-Lugar differ from Bush’s proposed resolution? On October 3, 2002, Elisabeth Bumiller explained that Bush’s proposal “authorizes Mr. Bush to use force to enforce ‘all relevant’ United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq, leaving the White House free to determine what is relevant. In contrast, the Biden-Lugar language specifies that force is authorized to secure the destruction of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and its ballistic missile program or to defend the United States and its allies against those programs.” Just how different was Biden-Lugar? David Firestone reported, then let you decide:
FIRESTONE (10/1/02): Instead of citing only the national security interests of the United States, as the White House resolution does, would emphasize the defense needs of the United States and its allies.
It would also require the administration to notify Congress within 30 days of an invasion of the degree of assistance from other countries and the status of plans to rebuild Iraq, with further reports required every 60 days. The White House had agreed to report every 90 days.
Every 60 days, not 90! To be honest, it doesn’t sound all that tough.
There seems to be no question that Dean supported Biden-Lugar. And for weeks now, Kerry has claimed that Biden-Lugar would have let Bush go to war in Iraq, just as the final resolution did. But the press corps has made no attempt to examine this belated complaint. Saletan simply dismisses the claim without attempting to sort it out. “Dean bet his whole campaign on opposition to the war?” That is precisely Kerry’s point! Kerry says that Dean favored a resolution that would have let Bush go to war. Shouldn’t someone see if that statement is accurate? Not in this press corps—a corps which now seems to base all its judgments on what sweater or duck boots hopefuls wear.
>>>>>>


He was for almost the same resolution that was passed. He took that sliver of difference and demagogued it reducing the debate to black and white, antiwar and prowar, when the antiwar crowds grew.


Analysis of Biden-Lugar that hits the nail squarely on the head:
(from a proClark blogger)
There are two parts required of the President.
The second part first:
Biden Lugar restricted the authorization of force to UN WMD resolutions against Iraq and the broader concept of self-defense or mutual-defense.
The actually passed resolution (Public Law 107-243) restricted the authorization to use force to - relevant UN resolutions (including repatriation of war detainees and Kuwaiti treasures, the resolution of the fate of our MIA pilot, and the repression of the population), self-defense or mutual-defense, and the nebulously defined war on terror.
Now the first part - the President had to merely inform Congress that there was no other way but to use force against Iraq regarding the above mentioned restrictions.  The only difference between the reporting requirement Biden-Lugar and 107-243 was a time constraint;  Biden-Lugar required notification prior to the use of force, 107-243 allowed up to 48 hours after initiating force to inform Congress.
The actual text in both resolution can be parsed almost exactly like this:
"The President shall make available his determination that...."
Here's the actual 'trigger' for the President to use force:
---------------
Biden-Lugar:   "Before exercising the authority granted by subsection (a), the president shall make available to the speaker of the House of Representatives and the president pro tempore of the Senate his determination that (1) the United States has attempted to seek, through the United Nations Security Council, adoption of a resolution after Sept. 12, 2002, under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter authorizing the action described in subsection (a)(1), and such resolution has been adopted; or (2) that the threat to the United States or allied nations posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program and prohibited ballistic missile program is so grave that the use of force is necessary pursuant to subsection (a)(2), notwithstanding the failure of the Security Council to approve a resolution described in paragraph (1)." 
-----------------
Public Law 107-243: In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force the President shall, prior to such exercise or as soon there after as may be feasible, but no later than 48 hours after exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that
(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq, and
(2) acting pursuant to this resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorists attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
---------------
Now, Gov. Dean has an opinion piece in CommonDreams.org from April of this year which hints at the problem he has.
www.commondreams.org/views03/0417-07.htm
...snip...
Many in Congress who voted for this resolution should have known better. On September 23, 2002, Al Gore cautioned in his speech in San Francisco that "if the Congress approves the Iraq resolution just proposed by the Administration it is simultaneously creating the precedent for preemptive action anywhere, anytime this or any future president so decides." And that is why it was such a big mistake for Congress to allow the president to set this dangerous precedent.
...end snip...
This one paragraph shows is Gov. Dean's conflation of the White House resolution, which was not passed and the final resolution which, as I pointed out above is practically and functionally identical to the the Biden-Lugar resolution which he did support.  What this means is that Gov. Dean has based his entire criticism of his opponents and other Democrats on his incorrect understanding of what happened in the negotiation phase in Congress.  It's quite possible he didn't even read the intermediate or final resolutions involved in the debate, otherwise, he would have known that the 'certification' process for the Administration he claimed he supported in the Biden-Lugar resolution was also an explicit requirement in Public Law 107-243.
Even worse for Gov. Dean, what he claimed was a 'certification' process in Biden-Lugar was nothing of the sort.  Gov. Dean claimed that the President had to prove his WMD assertions were false; entirely untrue.  As pointed out above, the President merely had to show to Congress that he didn't believe Iraq would comply with UN resolutions or that he was acting under self-defense and that the invasion of Iraq was truly a part of the war on terror.
The only difference between Gov. Dean's position and what actually happened is that the report issued by the Administration would have simply deleted the references to the war on terror.  Even that's up for debate, since the war on terror would have been a claim used by the Administration regarding the 'self-defense' angle.  Otherwise, the net result would have been the same if Gov. Dean had been involved in the actual debate about the matter.  Ironically, he even has a quote saying that he 'got it right' while he was up in Vermont while the Washington insiders didn't know what they were doing.
 


  

Far too many Democratic senators refused to support the IWR without the Biden-Lugar Amendment for it to have been 'nearly the same', my own senator included.

I edited the post above to add more info.

There was NOT enough difference between the two bills to claim that one was antiwar while the others were labeled prowar.

I'm beginning to think that's the case.

Such intellectual lightweights as Sen. Byrd, Sen. Graham and Sen. Durbin, not to mention Rep. Kucinich, saw it differently.

:)

They have all pledged to stay the course on some "we broke it, we fix it" pretext!

If no candidate can lock the nomination by the time May rolls around, you are all welcome to the Indiana primary.

If you want peace now, vote Kucinich!

On edit:

I did not vote on this poll!

Surely you know that peace is for longhaired fringe wacky lefty weirdos who live in houses made of tofu.

I didn't vote in this poll either, but it immediately raised the question for me of who gets to decide upon "major" status. It looks like yet another admonition to actual liberals to "vote for me and go home."

1) The starter of this thread honestly believes that certain candidates have no chance of winning?

2) That by implying that there is an "admonition" in the initial post, you are breaking one of the new rules?

3. Posts about the "messenger" rather than "message" are categorically forbidden in the GD: 2004 Primary forum. You may not make any statement whatsoever about another member of this message board, unless it is unambiguously positive. You may not post anything that is insulting or rude to any other member, even if it is extremely mild.

1. It is indeed possible, raising the question that I said it raises about how one makes these determinations.

2. No, my identifying a written construction as an admonition made no value judgement about the poster. Thus, your admonition to me is a matter of text, not author. The same is true of a critique, a paean, invective, an ode, and so on.‡

but out of the four choices, it's really a tie between Edwards and Kerry for me.

n/t

He has been and remains my first choice. Gephardt is second on my list, with Edwards third.

eom

I am so glad that Kerry has come up in the polls ... He truly deserves it.

:bounce:

The more I hear him speak (on C-SPAN), the more I like him. I don't know if he will win, though.

I hope that doesn't screw up the results. :evilfrown:

...it's no wonder his poll numbers are slipping.

Now I have serious questions about Dean's sincerity, and he's not my first choice, but I can't help feeling a bit sad that he may well go down in flames over the next few months. After all, he's the Democratic candidate who really started flexing some internet muscle to raise funds in an end run around the usual suspects. His campaign organization is impressive, to say the least.

but he also left himself open for critisism a lot.

As to feeling sorry for him or any of the others, nope. Its part of the deal and they all knew it.

If his campaign tanks, will it be seen as Dean's fault, or that of his organization? Whatever else, Dean motivated a lot of dedicated activists to pull for him, and drew serious funding from the grassroots. I don't want to see that idea burn with him on his pyre.

Is that too nuanced? I don't know. I don't think he's the best possible nominee, but I don't want him to lose hugely, either. It seems like the other candidates are piling on him willy-nilly, without any regard to what they might be destroying along the way.

n/t

I plan to back Kucinich on monday.

All depends on how support breaks down at my precinct. If we can get over the 15% and get a delegate or more for Denis, great.

If not, I Will join up with the 'Dean Team'.

No more polls. No more Political ads. No more Rallies. No secret ballots in Iowa. Time to stand up for your candidate and be counted.

... I have never seen Kerry do this well against Dean in a DU poll. This is certainly a plus for me and my liberal agenda.

He just doesn't seem to have much support here.

Too bad any voter can participate.

With no Kucinich and no Clark, the choice for me was between Gephardt and Dean. I picked Dean because I preferred his health-care plan, his ideas for democratic reform, and his consistency on the war issue. :thumbsup: