I'm voting for ... what's-his-name (Chris Dodd)

Article about why no-hopers run in Presidential primaries, but I'm more interested in what this Chris Dodd is like as a poltician.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6254093.stm

Veteran Democratic Senator Chris Dodd threw his hat into the 2008 presidential race this week. He joins a field that includes former Senator Mike Gravel, former House armed services committee chairman Duncan Hunter, and former Governors Tom Vilsack and Tommy Thompson.

Outside Washington, all these men are likely to elicit exactly the same reaction: Who? In the capital, the question would probably be slightly different: Why?

Americans will not decide who replaces George Bush in the White House until 4 November 2008, but the number of likely winners is already shrinking.

For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton has been sweeping up the money and sits on a war chest in the tens of millions of dollars - and she has not even announced that she is running. Neither has fresh-faced Senator Barack Obama, who has generated incredible buzz, apparently off charisma alone.

from a poll I took this morning. http://www.marketsurveys.com/ Click on survey results on the left, and Presidential Candidates 2008 should be at the top of the list.

I was interested in several results. Hillary Clinton polls the greatest amount of support among the candidates but she also polls the greatest negatives.

Also interested that you broke down the results by m/f, which gives some interesting insights I think.

no-hopers. It's way too early.

ES&S. He was the corporate Bilderberg 'Democrat' who colluded with the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress--Tom Delay and Bob Ney--to engineer the "Help America Vote for Bush Act" of 2002, which appropriated $3.9 billion to fast-track electronic voting machines all over the country, run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls.

Code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it.

Code so secret that, in the recent FL-13 Congressional election, in which 18,000 Democratic votes for Congress were 'disappeared' by ES&S election theft machines, and which the Republican "won" by 300 or so votes, ES&S successfully argued, before the first judge in the case, that divulging their secret vote counting code violated their "right" to profit from our election system.

DIEBOLD: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer," right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004"; and

ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things). Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship; they were, until recently, run by two brothers, Bob and Tod Urosevich.

These are the people who "counted" 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, under a veil of corporate secrecy. That's what we have Christopher Dodd to thank for.

The American people managed to overcome the handicap of a 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" for Bushites, warmongers and corporatists--that Christopher Dodd helped to inflict us with--in the '06 by-elections, but could not vote in a truly representative Congress with the numbers necessary to stop the war on Iraq and Iran, and to impeach the criminals in the White House. SEVENTY PERCENT of the American people oppose the Iraq War and want it ended. EIGHTY-FOUR PERCENT of the American people oppose US participation in a widened Mideast war (--in a poll posted at DU last summer). Does Congress reflect these numbers? No. Why? The answer is obvious.

So, if Christopher Dodd--who voted for the war, and who helped destroy the American election system--ends up as president, you will know why. It will not be by choice of the American people. He is the stealth candidate of the Corporate Rulers and the War Profiteers, lurking in the shadows, to be Diebolded into the nomination and the White House, if necessary (or perhaps as the first order of Corporate Ruler and War Profiteer business--hard to say, at this point).

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(Note: Interesting fact--maybe relevant, maybe not. Senator Clinton was one of ONLY TWO votes in the US Senate against the "Help America Vote for War Act" of 2002. Her and Charles Schumer--possibly related to New Yorkers' attachment to their old, reliable and virtually unriggable, mechanical lever voting machines, rather than to Clinton's and Schumer's devotion to democracy. Still, rendering our elections non-transparent and unrecountable, and giving them over to Bushite corporations, was Christopher Dodd's pet project in the leadup to the Iraq War--and Clinton voted against him on it.)

(Note 2: I heard Christopher Dodd's announcement on the Al Franken Show (with a substitute host) of his "exploratory" campaign for president, some months ago, and what he said was that Hillary was "in trouble with the antiwar crowd" and we don't want any "losers" to be the nominee (Gore, Kerry), and that leaves HIM. That's how he's thinking--crude, calculating, ignoring the plain facts of stolen elections in '00 and '04, with the "antiwar crowd" as the enemy of Democratic candidates, and looking for the main chance for himself. Disgusting fascist SOB, and traitor to democracy, is what I think of Dodd.)

the machines were fine and that machine fraud was a conspiracy theory. Even after the discrepancies popped up, Dodd stuck to his statement.

I think Dodd has recently acknowledged problems, but when it was HIS JOB to be the Dem represenative on voting security he didn't do his job competently.

I always WANT to like Dodd for his affability but he really dropped the ball on election security when it was his duty to lead congress on the issue. Same with Terry McAuliffe - it was his JOB to secure the election PROCESS in every state of the country.

on this matter. Will relay what his office says on this point.

here at DU at the time. I think it was AFTER the RFK article in Rolling Stone.

"Counting" all the votes with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls--and furthermore with machines that are extremely insecure, unreliable and insider hackable?

I mean, come on. It's a no-brainer.

That is much worse than "dropping the ball." That is malfeasance on a grand-scale. And I agree, Terry McAuliffe is the other major 'Democratic' culprit. (I put ' ' around 'Democrat' for these two, because I cannot fathom the depths of corruption involved in selling away our right to vote. It is so treasonous to democracy--and so antithetical to everything the Democratic Party is supposed to stand for, and has traditionally stood for--that I cannot even think of them as belonging to our party. They don't, in my opinion. They are fascists. At least, with Bush, you can see the boots.)

The party has so many conflicting aspects that it just rips me up inside.

You are 100 % right

Bushite corporations. It was UNFORGIVABLE!

We might even forgive some people for voting for the Iraq War--or for voting for the "Help America Vote for Bush Act" on Christopher Dodd's advice, and then shutting up about it on pain of denial of funds from Terry McAuliffe's DNC. But we really can't forgive the ARCHITECTS of what may well have been the death of American democracy: the end of transparent vote counting, and the empowerment of a fascist dictator. Dodd and McAuliffe cannot explain this away. They cannot claim ignorance. They COLLUDED with it. They knew what it was. And no remedy NOW can cleanse them of their guilt. It is very difficult to know the levels of guilt throughout our Democratic Party leadership (federal and state) on this critical matter.* But one thing is crystal clear: that Dodd led the way, and that McAuliffe was the enforcer in the Democratic Party ranks. They were the one-two punch for secret Bushite corporate vote "counting."

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*(We had a situation in California, for instance, where our elected Democratic Secretary of State, Kevin Shelley, went after Diebold prior to the 2004 election, sued them for their lies about their voting machines, decertified some of the worst machines (the touchscreens), and demanded to see their source code. When the "swiftboating" began, and the Bush Junta began to engineer his removal from office, a DEMOCRATIC county election official led the attack (Connie McCormack, Los Angeles--who does sales brochures for Diebold), and the DEMOCRATS in the state legislature (with 2 to 1, and 3 to 2, majorities in the state houses) either piled on, or abandoned Shelley, or hid under their desks, strongarmed by the new Democratic legislative leadership to SHUT THE FUCK UP. The new Democratic leaders then colluded with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the APPOINTMENT of a Republican Diebold shill--Bruce McCormack--as Secretary of State. It was the ugliest thing I've seen in California politics in my lifetime. So, here, at least, we know who they are--the collusive Democrats, the Democrats who consider non-transparent vote "counting" by Bushite corporations to be a negotiable point, or who are so corrupt that they are in outright conspiracy with the Dark Lords. Elsewhere, the perps and colluders are not as well known. Some Democrats were ignorant, and got trapped by non-transparent electronic voting--now they're beholden to Diebold and ES&S as much as they are beholden to the voters, if not more so. Some were/are scared--will "swiftboating" be their fate, too? ruined careers? stolen elections? their small plane falling out of the air? Best not to look too closely at Diebold and ES&S (and at the war they made possible?). It was one of the shocks of my life to discover Democratic leaders' colluding on Bushite vote "counting." And I think we need to be aware of it, and make judgments about it, and try our best to recover from it--to RESTORE transparent elections. But being ignorant of what really went down is not a good basis for strategy. We need to realize, for instance, why the Democrats in Congress are trying to PRESERVE the Diebold and ES&S optiscans (that have a paper ballot backup), when these criminal corporations and ALL of their machines clearly should be removed from our election system. We should not be rewarding them with MORE billion dollar contracts! And a paper ballot backup--to machines run on SECRET CODE-- is fairly useless without a full handcount. They are proposing we continue to use Diebold and ES&S voting machines with only a 2% handcount. Why? Because if they DON'T give these billions more of our tax dollars to these secretive Bushite corporations, THEY will be dis-elected! It's blackmail! --and in some cases, collusion.)

Read this NPR interview:

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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/regulatio...
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HEDRICK SMITH: But what happened next stunned observers.

Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD (D-CT): But I believe that the override is the proper course to follow here.

HEDRICK SMITH: Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, then head of the Democratic National Committee, led the effort to overturn Clinton's veto.

Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: It is with a deep sense of regret that I'm on the opposite side of my president on this issue.

CHARLES LEWIS, Center for Public Integrity: Chris Dodd, here he is, he's Chairman of the Democratic Party, but he's also the leading advocate in the U.S. Senate on behalf of the accounting industry. And he helps overturn the veto of his own president, who installed him as Democratic chairman. Chris Dodd might as well have been on the accounting industry's payroll. He couldn't have helped them any more than he did as a U.S. senator.

HEDRICK SMITH: By way of thanks, the accounting industry gave Senator Dodd nearly one quarter of a million dollars in political donations, even though, at the time, Dodd was not up for reelection.

<www.pbs.org : Accountants and campaign money>

RICHARD WALKER, SEC Enforcement Chief (1998-2001): The accountants were the big winners with the Litigation Reform Act. The law imposed a proportionate liability standard, which means that if the accountants only contribute to, say, 20 percent of the loss, then they would only be responsible for 20 percent of the amount that would have to be paid.
....
CHARLES LEWIS, Center for Public Integrity: Many of the people complaining loudest about how shocked, shocked they are that there's a problem with this industry not being closely regulated were two peas in a pod, close with the industry themselves, helping the industry get deregulated throughout the '90s- Billy Tauzin, Chris Dodd, Senator Lieberman from Connecticut. And when journalists try to talk with them now about their flip-flop, many of them are just not available for comment.
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I seem to remember Arthur Levitt's book describes Dodd's involvement. (Former SEC Chairman -- Arthur Levitt.)

Get a copy of Arthur Levitt's book

Also, from the NPR interview:

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SARAH TESLIK: Well, the insurance companies in Connecticut and the accountants are heavily based in Connecticut. FASB is in Connecticut. Both Senator Lieberman and Senator Dodd have historically been very protective of accountants and very protective of executives. Even though they talk a good liberal Democratic line, if you look at the votes and you look at the actions, it's not there.
>>

And while he's on our side generally, I have been underwhelmed by his performance on issues like voting accountability, the Iraq War, the influence of the insurance industry, etc.

Also, based on the gut factor, childhood friends of mine have met him personally and tell me they got "bad vibes" from him.

I used to like the idea of a presidential run by him, but now I'm convinced he'd be fiscally to the right of Bill Clinton.

Besides, the job he really wants is Senate Majority Leader. If that one vote had gone the other way in the 90s, Daschle wouldn't have won (and then lost), and who knows if the Senate would've had more of a backbone?