No longer hoping for the best

and I'm beginning to expect the worst. I just can't get my hopes about any of this any more. On election day, I was just about dancing down the isle at the grocery story. I was so convinced that we had done it. That Kerry was going to win in a landslide. Then on election night all those hopes and dreams were shattered. I was a basketcase for two days.

Kerry had run a good campaign and there was no comparison to the level of support for Kerry as compared to the lackluster turnouts for Bush. I know what I saw with my own eyes. Myself and 1000's of other standing in the FL August Sun to see John Edwards and no one had to sign a loyalty oath. I saw the O'Dome filled to capacity to see Michael Moore and 99.9% of the arena was voting for Kerry. These are just two examples of what I saw and know is the truth.


So here we are. The moment of truth is upon us. However, I am afraid to hope anymore. All I can say at this point is that if Jan 6th goes to shit, I don't know what I am going to do.

I do know that I will never again support or vote for any incumbent DEM who does not support Conyers tomorrow.

As far as I am concerned it will the end of the Democratic Party and I might as well quite wasting my time with them.

And for anyone who doubts that I strongly supported Kerry since he won the nomination, I am the person that gave the Kerry campaign prima facia evidence of collusion between the Bush/Cheney campaign and the SBVT. I'm talking documents that would hold up in a court of law.

All along I've defended Kerry. Telling people here to trust him. That he knew what he was doing. Today, I feel a bit like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. I look at Kerry and fear that he and the rest of the DEM leadership have forsaken us. This is the DEMS darkest hour. It's all or nothing now but I am no longer able to hope that Kerry or anyone else is going to save the day and America.

I still hope that I am totally wrong.

Peace be with all of you.
At least they can't say we didn't try.

DYEW

But we don't have a voice of power in the government. The Democratic leadership does not represent us. It's very sad. And I don't blame people who snipped at me either when I told them the day after the election that it was all over.

they packed the place and had to turn people away. I attended the downtown Phila rally for Kerry & Clinton and estimated, along with a cop, that we saw 100,000 people.

Everything, EVERYTHING was pointing in the direction of a Kerry win. He had the momentum. I know down to my bones that he actually won. I will go to my deathbed knowing that, whether the fraud ever comes to light or not.

Like you, I am thisclose to renouncing the national Democratic Party. I thought they wanted what we wanted, but I'm not so sure. If they sit silent, and don't support Conyers, that will be the next-to-last blow for me. The final death blow, in terms of my party affiliation, will be if they allow the Social Security program to die. If they do that, they can kiss my newly-Green ass goodbye.

I was there with you at the John Edwards rally standing in a crowd of supporters in the FL sun and at the packed O'Dome listening to Michael Moore. Remember how hundreds of people were turned away that night due to lack of space. While things are indeed dark, as we know here in Florida, soon the sun will come out. We have to hold on to our hope of a better future.

"place" you are.

If someone does not stand up then America as I believed in it, trusted it and as I knew it will cease to exist tomorrow.

I am to the point of questioning why I devoted a year and a half to JK, why I have devoted the last 6 years to help strengthen my local Dem party.

But we must not give up even if it means rebuilding the Dem party from the ground up...these wimps will have to go and we will build a stronger party...it just may take a heck of a lot longer than we would like.

On Election Day, like you, "I know what I saw with my own eyes."
I said that day and I say it today...."Jim Crow is alive and well." What I find especially dishearting is that people like Blackwell are Jim Crow's brother.

Stand fast and have faith. If you do not, they have won! Many have been blinded by the lies and deceptions of the Rep party, however, the lies and the deceptions will emerge into the light of a new dawn.

I know that it is difficult to believe when there is little to believe in. THAT is the test of faith!

to prove me wrong.

We'll see what happens after that.

...but my wife and I both worked the ground level for Kerry after he won the nomination. I took a giant dose of criticism as a sellout from the Dean folks for working for Kerry.

Like so many thousands of people, Sue and I saw that John F. Kerry was a seriously flawed candidate with huge liabilities in terms of his record and his approach to campaigning. But like thousands of others, we worked our hearts out, on phone banks and in meetings, at our local Democratic headquarters and out in public, for him....and not because we thought John Kerry was a fabulous choice, but because we had (and have) deep reservations about what 4 more years of DUHbya would do to this country.

In the end, we were proven correct about Kerry. There was not enough enthusiasm among the general public for the man Democrats had nominated on the basis of "electability," rather than any real contrasts he had with Bush. The fears of many who were lukewarm about Kerry and yet supported him became reality, as his plodding and at times downright lackluster campaign left the man a question mark in the minds of most common Americans, even many thousands of them who ultimately voted for him as an anti-Bush protest. Kerry's inability to define himself left that work wide open for the Republicans, and they defined him with a zeal and effectiveness that was stunning.

As many of us who had battled John Kerry in the primaries predicted then, there were not enough Americans willing to vote solely on "not Bush" alone, and the Democratic nominee gave them little to no additional reasons to vote FOR him.

Yet I too was swept up in the enthusaism as election day neared and historical precident after precident was revealed, all going against GWB. It looked like it would take a miracle for him to win, he was bucking so many historical trends. I began to tell friends Kerry would win by 5 percent, and that should Bush win by some miracle, he would have made history himself by breaking a huge string of historical trends all lined up against him.

For that time period , I forgot my earlier predictions and actually thought we could win. I set aside my earlier convictions that our candidate had not made a clear case for himself, and hoped that Sen. Question Mark could be bolstered by enough anti-Bush sentiment to win.

In the end, my earlier and more pragmatic assessment turned out to be true. But for a little while, I did see the signs at the White House that they were worrying, too. And that was good, although in the end it was a small, short-lived and bittersweet triumph.

Now, onward to the future, in which we may be able to apply the lessons we ought to have learned.

If we want to win, we need to listen to our base electorate, and then give the general electorate real reasons to vote FOR our candidate. We need to nominate candidates not on the basis of who is safest, but on the basis of who draws the greatest contrast with the opposition, can define himself, and who can fire up the voters. And we need to take Marketing and PR 101 to tune up our message, and all talk about the same coordinated points, every day.

Instead, at present I find our party leaders running from the traditional party once again...running to the right, a place they think will be safe for them. They are so attuned to and so used to running away to be safe, like deer.

Or like lemmings. I watch them rush off the cliff. And sigh, watching current events and wondering where I will go, should the present trend continue, after the Democratic Party leaves me in its quest for more losses.

the people who criticized you were misguided at best.

DFA was actively working for Kerry. Who thought you were a sellout?

...it became Democracy for America, back when it was Dean for America. I was a heavy poster on that blog for a long time. Many of the folks there ultimately went to third party candidates. I mean, I was DRAWN AND QUARTERED for saying I would swallow some of my personal convictions and support Kerry against Bush.

Now, I must go on to say here that it just proved to me once again where one of Dr. Dean's biggest campaign errors was -- he and Joe Trippi let the campaign be taken over by the Far Left. Trippi saw that those folks, frozen out of the process for a long time, would open their wallets over the Net. But that backfired when Dean was then cast by association as a Leftie himself (which he most decidedly is NOT!).

That portrayal of Dean as too left (a joke to anyone who studies his record) ultimately was the seed that was the undoing of his campaign. "Sen. Electability" trumped "too liberal."

Then Bush trumped "Sen. Electability." Heh.

Lemme tell ya, I still firmly believe that had Dean been the nom, we'd be getting ready for an inauguration. This cycle demanded a contrast candidate.

Anyhow, no one has to take me to task for swallowing my convictions to support the party come hell or high water anymore. The Democrats will now have to EARN my vote, not take it for granted. And the way the party "leadership" is going, it is not doing that at present.

why do you believe what the republicans tell you?

kerry DID win. your original gut feeling was right.

all the facts point to that.

yet you are now saying kerry did not win.

there is NO WAY those huge crowds just disappeared, when bush had to bus in people for his events.

there is no explanation for NOT releasing the exit polls, until they had been "corrected".

all the questionable crap that took place in florida AND ohio, and then EVERY SINGLE ONE BREAKING IN BUSH'S FAVOR???

it sounds more like you are telling us to "just get over it".

i have no intention of getting over it. we won. we won 2000, but the democratic leadership could not jump ship fast enough, leaving al to fight all alone, with the exception of the congressional black caucus.

in 2000 the exit polls were right. they just didn't match the "adjusted" results that were give to us by fox (bush's cousin) and nbc (jack welch, who REFUSES to release the tapes to PROVE that he didn't instruct that the election be called for bush). that was the practice session for 2002 and 2004. they have perfected it.

if the dems don't do something tomorrow they are dead.

but I believe they won it from what I saw on the ground in the early vote here and observing the polls. I believe that many Repugs crossed over and voted for Kerry for President even though they supported local Repug candidates. And I know we had the highest Democratic registration and turnout. But, folks were turned away with over 2 hour waits here with early voting and we use mostly Opti-Scan and the Touch Screen.

I know what I saw here..and I know Kerry won. Just like I know Gore won in Florida if all the votes in the state had been "counted."

So...it's very disappointing that Kerry promised to fight (which we thought meant fight for the vote)...and we thought that meant he recognized what he was up against with what happened to Gore. I've begun to think that Kerry/Edwards and the rest of our Dem Party truly believed Gore lost and counting the vote inFlorida was an embarassment for the Party. They decided up front that they would never contest this election because they didn't want a long drawn out fight against the Repugs again. Since they didn't really support Gore during the campaign and allowed the Repugs to disrupt the vote count in Florida it doesn't speak well of our Dem Party and their own integrity.

What does that say? Says the Party Machinery will never stand against the Repugs. They've been losing since Clinton (where we lost the House and Senate) and they keep losing and it's like they refuse to acknowledge why.

I applaud John Conyers and I hope that Senator Byrd will stand up. The Dem Party DNC/DLC can forget it. Unless the new Progressives can make the needed changes...I'm out of the Party also. I give them a year. :shrug:

In your post, you paint Kerry and Edwards as having the same attitude about the concession. In fact, they did not, and this is documented in news stories.

When I heard Edwards' speech, then listened to Kerry's concession, I was struck by how different they were in tone, and wondered why. Then it came out that, right up to the time they went onstage, Edwards was trying to convince Kerry NOT TO CONCEDE, arguing that they had numerous legal recourses at their disposal and that there was enough disconnect between exit polls and the final vote that there was ground there to be explored.

But Kerry was adament. He would not be able to win. So he conceded.

I just want it known on the record here that John Edwards did not share the view that they could not have won, had they pursued their options. You can Google and find the supporting articles, if you wish.

I keep clinking into DU's 2004 Election Results and Discussion forum, hoping for something, anything. Just a glimmer of hope that Superman (Kerry) will appear and save the day. Or that the DEM Senators will pull a fast one and surprise us all. But so far nada, zero, nothing.

Whatever happened to truth, justice and the America way? It seems the good guys never win anymore, they just get killed in plane crashes.