reality check: Bush got more Democratic votes than DK did in 2004.

It's not a perfect comparison, but DK hung in until the end of the primaries, and even with protest voting and so on, still didn't get that much support. It simply is not a liberal country out there.


DK = Dennis Kucinich

who is DK????

Guess Dean was a real loser. And no one voted for Dean at the National Convention. But Dennis got votes there.

who is that?

If so, you should spell his name out at least once in your post.

I hear he's gonna try to run for higher office there in Ohio. Hes refering to Kucinich guys.

BTW do you remember what office?

I hate to say, but I don't think he has a chance in hell. Ohio is still a pretty conservative state.

It's worth a shot though and I'd wish him luck. It'd be a good way to get the issues out there.

It was either Dewine's senate seat or the governorship, either or, it is by no means official but I hear its possible. Yes, Ohio is damn conservative, damnit if Cincy had got more immigrants, it would be a dem area. It really is only a few counties that enable us to compete in Ohio, Kucinich's home county of Cuyahoga County is one of the most dem ones out there. I think it would depend who they run, and if he could get well funded.

that leans a little right. The Southern part of the state is basically Kentucky. I wish they'd just move out!

What kind of funding? How was he able to get his message out? What kind of media coverage did he get?

Answer all these questions before you ASSume what kind of country this is.

Without the support of the larger party, a candidate is simply labeled "unelectable," which is what happened to Kucinich. It happened to Dean, too, even though he was able to do an end run around the party hacks and assemble a huge grassroots organization via the net.

Remember, the party has been losing power for a long time, even since the end of the Johnson presidency. Since the party has abandoned liberalism during this period, you might want to ask yourself why it's been losing so much power.

...to which I respond by yawning. Whatever. "It simply is not a liberal country out there." Really? Gee, and I thought all the knuckledragging backwards ass religiously insane wingnuts I meet in Branson, MO were liberals. Just because it's a bandwagon, doesn't mean it isn't flawed, stupid and fuel inefficient.

Given that there were what... 7 candidates vying for the Democratic nomination?

Braun, Kucinich, Sharpton, Edwards, Gebhardt, Kerry... who'd I miss?

So It's not really saying much that Bush got more votes than Kucinich from Democrats... if that's true, that is.

;)

Edwards got more votes, I think Dean might have, I think Clark did as well. But Dennis stuck it out until the end, and still, never got that many votes. He also presented the most compellingly different choice among the candidates. Clark, Kerry, Edwards, and Dean were all very close to each other on the positions, which makes them kind of one candidate for ideological purposes. Kucinich was uniquely positioned on the political spectrum among them, and he didn't draw a lot of support.

Again, it isn't meant to be a perfect comparison, but I think it's really indicative of where the country is.

in the primary. In the gneral election, Bush seemed to be a Florida Democratic favorite. This is a useless statistic and reslies on his poll rigging.

in the running either.

hunky, silver fox, Rhodes Scholar, and highly-ranked decorated war hero gets more leeway for liberalism than does a short, twice-divorced vegan who is the darling of the gray-haired ponytails and converted Greens.

this is why i grieved for his campaign being so bad - embodied in Wes was the potential to reclaim an assertive, masculine, broad-appeal liberalism that vanished when the hardhats started voting for Reagan.

as opposed to Bush's 14% of Dem votes, so what's your point?
Please remember that this election was won by vote fraud.
Please?
Has nothing to do with "liberal" votes or values.
Do the math.
Des

I didnt know that. I do know that Bush got more dem voters than Kerry did republican voters, shame because if they had stayed even, I think Kerry wins the popular vote and the electoral college.

it broke down to 54% Kerry, 45% Bush according to exit polls(I think). This was in the heat of the "the religious vote saved Bush" phase, and this reporter was trying to make the point that it had nothing to do with Kerry not being "conservative" enough. He got the majority of moderate Repub votes.
Des

moderate Republican vote. Kerry won all moderates 54 - 45. 34% of the voters identified themselves as "conservative," and I would bet the vast majority of them are Republicans. So that would leave about 60% of Republicans as "moderate."

37% of the voters were Republican. Of those, let's say about 60% were "moderates." (1 - .34). That means about 1/4 of all voters were moderate Republicans. Kerry won independents 49 - 48, and Democrats 86 - 14. If Kerry even split the moderate Republican vote he would have crushed Bush, picking up roughly,

32 (Kerry's share of Democratic voters, .86 x 37) + 13 (Kerry's share of Independents, .49 x 23) + 11 (Kerry's notional share of the Republican vote) = 56% of total vote. It would have been a landslide.

In actual fact, Kerry got 6% of the Republican vote. 32 (Dem share) + 13 (Indy share) + 2 (Republican share) = 48% of total vote (rounding errors). Does the final number look familiar?

It's a mathematical impossibility for Kerry to have even come close to winning the moderate Republican vote.

Kerry won 6% of the Republican vote. According to your statement, that means only about 12% of Republicans are "moderates." I'd like to see how "moderates" was defined, especially considering that only about a third of all voters consider themselves "conservative." So where are the rest of them?

"Kerry won 6% of the Republican vote."

According to whom? CNN? Fox News Channel?
They also said that that Latinos broke 53% for Kerry, and 44% for Bush.
This is a flat out lie.
A latino polling group said that the REAL numbers were
69% Kerry and 30% Bush.
They said young people voted for him as well.
HUGE lie.
They voted in landslide porportions for Kerry.
They said that 68% of BLACKS in Florida voted for Bush.
That is INSANE.
I have relatives in Florida.
They waited on those long lines just to vote him OUT.
So just because you hear that 6% of Repubs voted for Kerry does not mean it's true.
They need an excuse for Bush's unlikely win so MSM are adding more votes than Bush actually received, and taking away more votes than necessary from Kerry.

"According to your statement, that means only about 12% of Republicans are "moderates." I'd like to see how "moderates" was defined, especially considering that only about a third of all voters consider themselves "conservative." So where are the rest of them?"

Wha?
All Repubs are not right-wingers.
They are actually a minority in the Repub party but they get all of the leadership positions.
Conversely, there wouldn't even be a Repub Party if not for moderate Repubs.
Go figure.

But all of this is irrelevant to my original point which is that it is not a matter of liberal or conservative, but vote fraud.
Don't lose sight of that fact.
That's exactly what the Bushies want.

What you *should* be asking is if turnout was up roughly 20% with millions of new voters all over the country, why are the vote tabulations roughly the same as 2000?
Where the hell did all those votes go?
Des

and it may never be his time but he was bringing important issues up the entire time and keeping them out there for the public. I appreciated the effort he made. I would support him again.

except the part about supporting him. ;-)

Someone has to be the standard bearer for those ideals, and Kucinich did it. He also knew when it was time to fall into line and get the job done.

We can't all like the same person or the same issues. Dennis Kucinich did the correct thing IMO, those of us who supported him did as well. I continued to support him but worked for Kerry because I could see a long time ago how this was playing out, it certainly was not a surprise to any of us. I hope he does run again, maybe for another office next time or for president again. If he does I will do the same thing again because his issues are human issues and important and as you said, someone has to do it and who better?

Good way to get heard I think.

I hope he does it.

As much as I would want to see him be a party leader in the house, its just not pratical, you can't jump to party leader just like that, requires stepping stones.

I don't think he could win a US senate seat or be elected as Gov.

...if only they had chosen Kucinich as their candidate.

Look, folks, I like Kucinich, but it wasn't gonna happen with him. Wasn't gonna happen with Dean either. Wasn't gonna happen with Clark. Good men, all, but all were deeply flawed as candidates for a multitude of reasons.

I think Dems put up a terrific candidate in John Kerry. Yes, mistakes were made, yes, Rove's negative campaigning hurt, yes, fraud played a part, but I think Dems did the right thing choosing Kerry.

But that's just me.

here but I missed that one. I don't think we could have won with Jesus as our candidate.

After all, W wouldn't have been able to claim his endorsement, right?

they would still have cheated. :hi:

...a remarkably charismatic ham sandwhich, and the results would have been the same. Bottom line: men willing to let 3000+ US citizens die, and willing to send thousands more to die, and willing to bomb hundreds of thousands, and starve and deprive of health care millions; men such as Bush & Cheney are not going to give up the reins of power because of some silly notion of democracy.

Of course, could we have been more victorious if we'd nominated someone willing to call these criminals out? Perhaps, who knows. We might have still suffered the same end result, but some of us might feel better about it.

about today when looking at the exit poll data. It had nothing to do with Kucinich or his supporters per se; it's just that Kucinich was the most liberal candidate in the primaries, and stuck it out until the end, and so served as a perfect benchmark. The guy who started the "run Kucinich" thread got bent out of shape and assumes this thread had something to do with him, when it was actually a coincidence.

Would DK have conceded?

EOM


dp

I sincerely doubt it.

Whether to concede or not concede after losing by a very narrow margin would not have even been an issue.

but from my point, DK was, and would have been in the race for the long haul.

the votes would have been counted with his voice forefront in the issue.

and that is, at this point in the game, the issue.

dp

:shrug:
Shows what I know.

I heard the sun is pretty hot too.

hey You! :hi:

so why wouldn't Kucinich get support if the media ever covered him and people knew who he is? DK came in second in the MoveOn.org online primary vote because that was a group of people who knew the issue and the candidates very well. That's what happens when we have an informed electorate.

totally, it was very hard to even find Kucinich mentioned. I never did find out who finished third in the moveon primary that said.

i was hesitant to mention that, since it would have been seen as Dean bashing. not my intent.

but those who knew the platform of DK felt he was the real deal.

dp

Dean stole all of Kucinich's potential support even though he was in the running long before most people had even HEARD of Kucinich.
:eyes:

Most people never heard of Kucinich. That's the point. Dean got support because they heard about him in the media. He was the corporate media's liberal in this race until December.

So, like, DUH.

What a silly post.

or something.

Clark. Dean. Kucinich. The rest of the primary contenders offered little that was original. Comparing primary votes to general election votes is meaningless. It is likely Clark or Dean could have done as well or better than Kerry in a general election.

I'm a Clark man myself ... but if we ignore or marginalize thinkers like Kucinich we might as well join the GOP.

Every day that passes, this nation sinks deeper into the shit Bush is creating. Extracting the nation from this mess is not going to be easy. Repairing the damage going to be harder. If this party is going to be able to serve the national interest and benefit the people, we're going to have to create a new expression of liberalism backed by a coherent and sensible platform.

Like it or not, the general feeling out there is that Kerry offered no signficant alternatives to the policies in place today. In retrospect, I think that general feeling is probably correct. We need to remedy that.

the point (some intentionally).

If you put the candidates on a political spectrum, Clark, Kerry, Dean, and Edwards would all be very close. They were all fighting for the "middle ground" Democratic voters. Then you had Lieberman, who was looking a shade to the right of those guys, but still pretty much pointed at the middle ground. All by himself on the left was Kucinich. He had that entire territory staked out for himself, while the other candidates fought over the same turf, and Kucinich was in the race until the end. These comparisons of Bush to Dean and Bush to Clark and so on really are meaningless, as they are comparing Bush, all alone on the far right of the spectrum, to Dean, who was splitting the centrist vote with 4 other candidates, plus all those guys dropped out. Kucinich stood alone, and Kucinich was there until the end.


You have some of the smart people here saying this comparison is "meaningless," but it was never going to be a perfect comparison, as I noted right off the bat. It is, however, as close as we can come to matching a far right person against a far left person. At the end of the day, 14% of Democrats voted for Bush. Kucinich, despite having his niche virtually to himself, and staying in the race to the convention (unlike the other candidates) didn't draw nearly that much support. It's evidence. Not conclusive evidence, but evidence, that there is no groundswell of liberal support waiting for the right candidate to come along. It also suggests to me that we haven't quite seen the last of the Dixiecrat-style defections to the Republicans.

How can you claim to have any percentages of Dems voting for B*sh after this election farce??

How can you compare the "press" and public awareness of Bush to the horrendous lack of coverage Kucinich received??


" Not conclusive evidence, but evidence, that there is no groundswell of liberal support waiting for the right candidate to come along. "

Sorry -I totally disagree...it'll never be a fair look at things unless the media & RW spin change...which doesn't look too likely.

DR

but the media won't clue them in?

Here's where we part ways: you think Kucinich did poorly because he got no media coverage; I think he got no media coverage because he did poorly. Even at that, if the media are so hostile to the man that they won't cover him, what does that say about his electoral prospects? Or, since this really isn't really about him, about the prospects of any candidate who shares his political views?

its the whole insider/outsider thing....

IMO- not a big difference between the corporate dems & repubs. Neither want to rock the happy corporate money vote. Anyone who has ideas to help the people directly will not fare well as far as getting their message out.

If the people actually heard the truth about everything...I like to think they'd make different choices....but since that will no longer happen, I think we are all pretty well fu*ked.

As far as candidates.....the last two centrist leaning ones didn't do so well either if their message could be so easily distorted and so difficult to refute...
all rather moot now, wouldn't you say?

We are gonna need such a movement...probably more like a revolution...to take back what was basically handed to these fascists.

My point about Kucinich, Clark and Dean is that each brought original material to the table. The problem, however, is that a coherent conceptual framework supportive of liberal causes has not been established. We're running with a paradigm that was designed for the problems of the 1930s. Things are somewhat different.

For example ... NO ONE (except Kucinich ... loosely) explained how the global warming problem presents enormous economic opportunities. We're gonna have to replace our entire energy and transportation infrastructure eventually. SOMEONE is going to create a lot of wealth doing that. Looks to me like its gonna be the French and the Japanese.

When people say "liberal" they subvocalize "tax and spend". It doesn't have to be that way ... to be viable, liberalism has to do more than redistribute wealth. It must create wealth and achieve a just distribution of that new wealth.

The Democratic party has been unable to construct a new conceptual framework by which liberal values can be clearly shown to advance the interests of the common American. Until we do that work, we will be unable to counter the spin, the sound bites, and the cliches. Nor will we have a methodology by which we can achieve the common good and successful surf the waves of change coming at us.

I disagree. Most of the country is liberal, but the media aren't and the Democrats aren't. The Democrats are republicans now and the republicans are... I dunno, some kind of corporate representatives.

most are for universal health care, for civil unions or gay marriage, and for RvW.

however, most who believe all this call themselves 'moderates'