If we're still fighting & licking wounds from the primary we deserve. . .

. . .to lose again. We lose to George Bush in November and all some on this board want to do is refight the god damned primary. John Kerry lost and made a lot of mistakes but he was the damned nominee and this is politics. . .he did want he needed to do the win the primary and he was our nominee. Say what you want, but the other candidates did not have what it takes to beat him (fair or not they didn't). If a candidate could not deal with whatever the hell John Kerry threw at him in the primary there is no way that candidate would have stood a chance against Bush. This is politics. . .its not for the faint of heart.

Lets stop fighting the primary, lets stop licking our wounds. Lets do what we can to challenge the 2004 results and lets focus on picking up some House and Senate seats in 2006. But lets keep moving forward. And while I would love to see my guy (Wes Clark) run in 2008 and win, I realize that there is good chance none of the contenders in 2004 will be in the running in 2008. More importantly I am not going to fight with others over hypotheticals. We need to move on (feel free to exhaust every challenge to the results, but at some point move the hell on).

The conspiracy continues....

Thank you for writing this one. I couldn't agree with you more.

"If a candidate could not deal with whatever the hell John Kerry threw at him in the primary there is no way that candidate would have stood a chance against Bush. This is politics. . .its not for the faint of heart."

Sad, but oh, how true!

"We need to move on (feel free to exhaust every challenge to the results, but at some point move the hell on)."

However, if we do not exhaust ever challenge to the results, there will be no point in moving on, they will just cheat us out of a win again.

But I think the wounds are just too deep and the voice of reason just isn't loud enough here.

He had the ideas, the vision, and the crowds. What he didn't have was control on the election process. Actually, I blame the DNC for not amping up the fight to make sure the process was clean, that voting machines were in our districts, etc. I have to believe they knew that Ohio would be the battleground state...so why weren't they in the trenches there?. Kerry had his hands full campaigning fulltime. Where was the Party with their lawyers and activists watching the process?

One telling sign - how come we didn't have the goddam exit poll data? Why didn't the Democrats have subscriptions to the service so they could get the data direct without the Republican media spin?

are the historical revisionists, all screaming "My guy (or girl) got robbed!!!"

I didn't support Kerry in the primary. But he was our go-to guy, so I held both my tongue and nose and "pulled the lever" for him. Somehow, I can't help but think, based upon some of the posts in "defense" of primary candidates that I've seen here in this forum I have to wonder if the people posting them actually did what I did, or were so whiny that they either voted third party or not at all.

:kick:

who came together after the primary as a team. That is something to be proud of, and I certainly am proud of what they accomplished. Fighting Bush meant taking on most of the media propping the bastard up and dealing with ALL the GOP tricks in their repertoire, ALL AIMED AT KERRY.

Kerry had to win all three debates DECISIVELY. Anything else would have given the media room to hound him out of the race for bogus reasons. It would have been difficult for any candidate to do given the willingness of the media to play up the dictatortot as some sainted hero on a pedestal. Are Kerry's detractors so certain that their choice would have performed as decisively?

I dunno...it just seems so wasteful and so destructive to our goals. I don't hear the primary candidates all dumping on Kerry. Just a few of their supporters and Dem analysts who want us to believe that THEY alone have the answers and will send us a nice fat bill for their services.

I thank you for your post. As always, it was well said and thoughtful.

the diversity of the candidates in the 2004 primaries offered people a great range of possible futures for the Democratic party. When people "refight" the primary, what they are doing is arguing over that future. If you took out the names, you'd still have the same argument.

It's both healthy and necessary and in a way, it is moving on.

n/t

They worked damned hard, and I persist in thinking that Kerry would have been a good and maybe, great, President. He wasn't my guy in the primaries, but he sure as hell was my guy in the general election. I'm not about to second guess how he ran his campaign.

pains right now. I agree with you, however, and I'm looking forward to what reasonable and hard-working people--not just hard-core Dems--can accomplish in 2006.

:kick:

then coming here to see every sensible post on any subject turned and twisted by the same people, I feel like there is no hope.

Those guys control politics. The David Jones bunch, the others who just laugh over all the cute things they did to hurt others.

As long as they are in control, as long as the ugliness continues here...I refer to the silly stuff, the ridiculous attacks...NOT constructive criticism..

Then I am not sure elections even matter anymore. DFA is set up to run candidates and support them, but I am not even sure it matters much. It is the men behind the curtain who run things.