What event in the campaign angered you the most?

For me it was the swiftboat scums. It wasnt so much about what they were saying because I knew they had an agenda of revenge, but it was the unwarranted respect they received when on the media programs.

They would come on and the host would always say

1. "I honor your service" then ask questions
2. "you guys are heroes" then ask questions

you get the gist. I hated that. Because these guys were in combat that gave them some kind of credability to come on TV and spread hateful lies about an honorable man.


If I had to choose a 2nd event it would be Zell Miller at the Republican convention and his interview with Chris Matthews afterwards. I wanted to to really have a duel with Miller then and would have loved the chance to. His hate filled speech filled with venom made me want to puke. The fact that hes a traitor made it even worse.

Pathetic personal attack.

may have been one of the major things that made this election close enough to steal.

He should have hit them with a libel suit the day that book came out. Remember, he'd have had a team of rabid lawyers with subpoena power digging up every connection to the Bush campaign and accounting for every dime of their money, all the while tying up their financial resources in fighting the suit. Not doing this gave a tacit admission that the liars were telling the truth, something we know is simply not so.

He failed to act because of the advice from his DLC handlers, who instructed him that if he ignored them, they'd go away.

THIS is why the DLC needs to go. Now. Please.

And you wonder why he lost. Kerry's handlers made Gore's campaign look like super stars.

swift boat was bad, but the nonresponse gave too much room for people to THINK there was validity to the false charges.

DLC, if they were involved in that decision, should recuse themselves from any future campaign.

I got into a debate about this issue. I was asked to specifically state a lie that the SBV claimed. Since I'm not that familiar with the details of their charges, I had no response.

Could someone please arm me with a specific charge that the SBVs have made that have been proven to be a lie. Obviously, they have made numerous charges where there is no proof one way or the other, but I need help on proven lies.

Unfortunately, a couple of their charges have been proven true ... which doesn't make the debate any easier. Plus, JKs unwillingness to release all of his military records give the anti-Kerryites reason for skepticism. I've tried shifting the subject to Bush and the TANG issue, but, I was using that as a diversion and was called on it.

Truth be told, at this point, I'm losing this debate.

It still pisses me off. That, plus his inability to come up with soundbites for the Iraq War resolution and the $87B votes, were inexcusable.

they spun everything to the right, distorted all things left

Really pissed me off to sit here and surf the net, find stuff on AP and Reuters about things going terribly WRONG and corrupt under shrub, and NONE of it making TV media.

I would keep the TV cable news on as I surfed and they were too busy airing shit like the SNL lip synching story every 30 minutes to report news that might put shrub in a bad light!

I mean, I was seeing stuff on the internet news pages like how the Homeland Security Dept put out a report on how their boats and equipment were falling apart at the seams and they were unable to deal with the war on terror, and an article about how TSA overpaid Boeing MILLIONS of $$ for airport security measures that NEVER GOT DONE, all the Halliburtion stuff....if my little ol' mouse and 'puter can find this shit, why the HELL should the media be allowed to get away with ignoring it when they have mega bucks and a hell of a lot more resources than I do??

<ranting done now>. I now surf to background music and not the cable news networks. Maybe if enough people do the same their ratings will tank!

Definitely. It is just unbelievable what they did and how petty they were. How can these discredited scum get back in the limelight?

Total political hack job.

was Giuliani at the RNC telling the story of looking at the smoking ruins of the WTC, putting his arm around Bernie Kerick and saying "Thank God George Bush is president."

I despise that man.

terrific anti-Guiliani ad if he runs for the senate or governor. All the dems have to do is hang his support for the chimp around his neck and make him defend it. He's sunk in NY forevermore.

blaming the troops for the thefts.

I could not believe Kerry said that. He knew the Repugs were labeling him a flip-flopper and he gave them the perfect example. That one statement may have cost the election.

The whole Swiftscum thing was equally as bad. The media at first gave those lying assholes a lot of airtime and deference. Once the facts showed them to be liars, they should have gotten no more airtime. Kerry's campaign failed miserably in response. They really hurt him.

The month of August was a disaster for Kerry. That made me very angry. His campaign was poorly prepared for that period.

It's exactly what happened to Dukakis in '88 and Kerry followed the same non-response strategy. I still remember my brother calling me from his cellphone as he was walking past the Massachusetts statehouse and saying, "Well, it looks like another Massachusetts liberal is going to get beaten by another Bush."

I made several posts here last summer expressing that very thought. Kerry knew how the Repugs beat Dukakis, yet he allowed himself to fall for the same bullshit. It was very unpleasant Deja Vu.

... it pisses me off so much that I'm going to have to either quit talking about it or self-impose a quota on mentioning it. Otherwise I'm going to need blood pressure medicine again, which will remind me of how much cheaper it would be in Canada ...

it's really important to start out with some simple, easily-understood and easily-repeated explanation of how the Senate works. People don't seem to realize there's more than one bill for most issues, and more than one issue in most bills.

And NObody explained that this time (again).

I never heard on the news the explanation. I WANTED THE 87 BILLION $ TO COME OUT OF THE BUSH TAX CUT BUT HE THREATENED TO VETO IT!

as an attempt to ignore issues that matter. especially in the final week with the bin laden video.

Dumbly cheering and applauding every dumb platitude, half truth or outright lie he uttered.

and the lack of quick response to their crap.

The money and the media was stacked against him. I was kidding myself when I thought America was due for an honest leader.

He was a truly for the people candidate who spoke the truth and didn't give a f'k if people liked it or not.

As far as Kerry dooming himself:

Saying he would have voted for the war

Running back to vote on Gun Control stuff killed him in rural areas

Not punching the swiftboats and not responding by running negative commercials tarring bush with responsibility for 9/11, his draft avoidance, his failed business ventures, and his DUI conviction.

A) Getting kicked out a Bush's appearance in my home town and threatened with arrest.
B) Cheney speaking at my school.

Both personal, I know, but still...

Plus those who claimed to be veterans who backed that coward and liar *.

I got very upset when I would try to point out a lie to Reps and they would excuse it because of abortion and gay marriage.

First they claim to be THE Christian party and yet lie lie lie.

The Swift Boat Vets should have been addressed from day one. I never understood Kerry not doing that.

The lies told by Bush and his cronies were parroted by Reps who refused to look into the truth. All it would have taken was to find the complete story in context to see that Bush Co. lied over and over. I'm really mad at the intelligent people who believed their crap.

I'm mad at the media for not asking Bush the hard questions - ever.

I'm mad because people didn't see that if all the Bush campaign could find to attack Kerry was his perfect war record, then he must be one heckuva fella! You know that if there was a scandal in Kerry's background they would have found it. No, they had their base wanting to measure the size of his purple heart wounds. How crazy is that?

emdee

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

n/t

Easily, it was when Howard Dean said that we are no safer now that Saddam is captured, and the DEMOCRATS dogpiled on him, especially that piece of shit Kerry... F Kerry... At that point my hope really dissipated. I knew we had nominated the WRONG GUY.

that were nothing but stump speeches - and all the news stations covered every last word and all of the "boos" when he mentioned Kerry's name. Then the MSM would cover about 5 minutes of Kerry just to make it seem like they were being fair.

By the way, Ed Koch got mad at the audience for booing him on Jon Stewart's show. Koch asked why only democrats boo people. That same day the mobs had been booing Kerry on live TV during one of *'s "major policy speeches".

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

I couldn't believe the way people were fawning over him. I was with a group of protesters holding signs. We were on a hill, so I could see the crowd as it waited to get in. The dumb little sheep were so excited about seeing their Head Moron it made me want to vomit.

All four nights of watching it made me want to puke...especially the third night, with the combination of both "Zig zag" Zell Miller and Dick "Go F*** Yourself" Cheney's speeches.

Watching Dubya morph from village idiot to deranged madman to cheery stoner between them and the fucking media, who made great hay out of the changes in Gore's demeanor (and makeup, and eyerolling, and sighing...) DID NOT SAY DICK ABOUT IT.

with the smeary liars. I will ALWAYS HATE THEM. Forever. And I don't care what they say about hating and forgiving, those guys are absolute SCUM of the earth for smearing a fellow vet for political reasons. They are disgusting and despicable and I was sure my grandfather, a WWII vet who used to say "vets don't tear down other vets," was SPINNING IN HIS GRAVE.

Those scum cost bush some votes, too. I know veterans who were going to vote for him but were so disgusted by the smearliars crap they switched to third party or Kerry.

-both of them at the Dem. convention

1. Being told that, as a delegate, we were NOT to engage in any Bush-bashing -- that this whole event was to be a forum for articulating Kerry's character and vision. And, of course, we all knew that the Repukes would never return the courtesy, and they didn't.

2. Turning on the tv the couple of minutes we weren't out or on the convention floor, and seeing NOTHING but Repukes bashing Kerry and the Dems, and warning us that we better not say anything negative about Bush.

That whole episode was so infuriating. The Dems are given the biggest presidential pinata in history and they won't even lift up the bat, let alone take a swing at the thing. AND then they're criticized by Repukes anyway.
Meanwhile, the GOP puts on a four-day hate fest, and the Dems can't even be found on tv to counter it.

I expect the enemy to attack...not your own side.

And Dean wasn't even my pick.

"Yes, I would still have supported the invasion of Iraq." - Kerry

THAT pissed me off. How do you justify that after having said all along that the REASONS for going to war were wrong and ever-changing? He blew it there. Taking a strong anti-war stance, ESPECIALLY after finding out there were no WMD there, would have been the right thing to do.

election.

That Democrats allowed big city districts to have too few voter terminals and too few voting personel without attacking the problem BEFORE the election.

That Democrats (even if they are RINOs) around the country STILL let Diabold machines into their own precincts.

Kerry saying he would still vote for the war even knowing what we know now-- no WMD's, etc... He just really boxed himself in with that one. And he made the statement with the very dramatic baackdrop- the Grand Canyon- behind him, which made it all the more unforgettable, unfortunately for him.

Bush baited him and he took it.

the Repugs using my city and our tragedy and exploiting it for their disgusting, hate-filled convention. They hate New York, they dismiss us as a bunch of immoral, intellectual liberals, yet they will go to any length to claim 9/11 as their own. We took a hit for this country and the red states didn't take note that we didn't back Bush or his thugs- shouldn't our endorsement have carried more weight than just about anyone else's?

The convention was a sickening orchestrated hate fest embodied by the zombie band-aid wearing, flip-flopper clapping, Zel-Miller zealots. God, how I hate those people.

The greatest waste of time probably in the history of conventions. Kerry's idea to not criticize Bush was made with the assumption that everyone in America was aware of Bush's failures. We sit around and discuss them daily, but the majority of Americans are spoonfed every night what the Bush administration's media wants them to hear. The two speakers who stood out were Al Sharpton and Barack Obama and I don't believe either were seen on the alphabet networks.

Kerry highlighting his Vietnam war record during the convention made the campaign all about him instead of a referendum on Bush and his failures-- I think it was a big mistake.

NT

1. Democratic party not questioning the electronic voting machines, esp. after the '02 frauds.

2. Democratic party not getting their head out of their asses with regard to the whore media's non-stop republican spin.

3. Democratic party not screaming about the incompetence (or worse) of the Bush Junta on 9.11.01

3a. The 9.11 commission members agreeing not to speak out before the stolen election of 2004.

4. Republican slime via the Swift Boat Liars (this was a media problem, as much as a dirty trick)