Poll: Are Hillary and Edwards hypocrites for their comments yesterday?

These two voted for a War to bring 'freedom and democracy' to the Iraqi People. Now, in America, they want to limit the democratic process by excluding candidates. It pissed me off when the DNC and RNC excluded Nader from the 2004 elections. Although I am not supporting either Gravel Kucinich, these two have been a right about a lot of things (including the War) and say some of the most common sense things in the debates.

Question: Are Hillary and Edwards hypocrites for their comments yesterday. They voted to bring democracy to Iraq, and now they want to limit it in America?

I can see limiting the debates after the primaries and/or funding problems start to weed out some of the candidates in the rear of the pack. However, no one anywhere has had a chance to have a say on any of those candidates as yet, and eliminating their voices from public debate does us all a disservice.

Both of them just want more face time on the cameras. This is blatant egomania and this is wrong.

That would only be at most 3 months before the primaries.

I sincerely hope he rethinks that position.

centuries off

Democracy has nothing to do with wasting everyone's time on candidates that have absolutely no chance of winning. I don't want a debate so watered down that the actual candidates that I care about, that have a legitimate shot at victory, only get the opportunity to make a few comments. Furthermore, campaign debates are not a necessity of democracy. They are the invention of political parties to get their ideas out on the issues. They are funded and decided upon by political parties and candidates, not the government. Nowhere in our official laws governing elections will you see it mandated that a debate even has to occur. In no way, shape, or form has democracy been limited by not inviting fringe candidates with no hope to a debate. NONE.

Make it a sort of entrance test. Let's face it, a candidate who couldn't raise $5 million for a presidential race would not have any of the abilities required to be president.

THAT might 'winnow' the field.

:thumbsup:

by all means, lets have the best president money can buy.

I believed that, and think our political process and our Country would be better off for it.

Now, you want make it anyone with $5 million ????

Unbelieveable. And sad.

TC

The point they were making was that there were no laws barring you from doing what it took to become president. They weren't saying that someone would make it easy.

When someone understands the historical and legal basis for our political system...

Nice post!

:-) Thank you for your comments. It's always nice to have positive feedback.

or is this another case of hysteria on DU?

using Fox as a news source should have been their first clue.

use the "write-in" option on my prezzie ballot.

tying up stage space and airtime so that the candidates with an actual shot at the election don't have to do any more than recite their bumper stickers to look strong. The more the merrier. Yeah, that's democracy. Let's get my dead grandma on the stage, too--she'll draw at least as many votes as Kucinich or Gravel. With enough candidates, no one will have the chance to do more than recite their name and say "vote for me." That way America can have a real choice.

Disclaimer: Joe Bob Bubba and Squiggy the Wonder Worm are fictional creations and any resemblance to actual candidates is purely accidental. Well, since Lieberman isn't running. He bears a striking resemblance to a worm.

that makes you a regressive's tool.

Kill any babies today?

the US Supreme Court.

Why should we assume the more candidates running, the better or more like democracy it is? By that definition the California recall election in 2003 is an oustanding example of a democratic election.

Saying common sense things has its place, but is a debate really that? A debate is supposed to allow us to see candidates side by side and decide who is best based on their vision, their platform and their presentation. If some one is only using the debate as a forum to bring up personal issues or advance a personal agenda (no matter how important the issue/agenda is) is the debate really the place for it? Also, I'm sure there are candidates who have run for office for no other reason than self promotion.

OTOH - who decides who is a serious and viable candidate, who is using their candidacy as a way to promote a good idea that won't be heard any other way and who is just feeding an enormous ego?

That's why I say they're wrong, but still think there may be some good motives behind it.

This is politics, kids, not a cordial game of bridge.

Mike Gravel has raised no money and hardly shows up as a blip in the polls, and yet he is allowed up on the stage and given air time to trash his fellow Democrats.

How about I run for president (I, also, have raised no money and probably wouldn't show up in the polls) and I could spend my time trashing Gravel as a fruitcake?

I have just as much right to have airtime to trash Gravel as he has to trash actual candidates who might have a prayer of winning the nomination.

Trash talking is easy -- winning actual, meaningful support is harder to do.

There SHOULD be some threshold one has to meet to qualify as a candidate.

Maybe at one debate, they should all have a chance, but if then they are unable to advance they should not be up there with the candidates who have won a certain level of support.

have no place in the debates. So, no. But this money/popularity contest is very bad to start with since it just about precludes ordinary Americans from ever running for president. Stifling discussion, which seems to be the aim of the conversation, and if that turns out the case, makes it all far worse. I think Biden has the right idea to limit the topic of each debate so that a deeper discussion can take place. But when just such a debate was scheduled on Iraq in DC not long ago, the leading candidates passed on the opportunity. Not hypocritical, but very wrong.

In spite of being given a place at the Democratic debates and in spite of being given air time, which he used to trash his fellow Democrats, this is the status of Mike Gravel's fundraising

----
Mike Gravel (D)
Former Senator

(as of March 31, 2007)

Total Receipts:......$15,534
Total Spent:..........$18,304
Cash on Hand:...........$498
Debts:..................$88,516


http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.asp?id=N00007982&cycle=2008

You wanna tell me this is a real candidate?

It exposed the shrewdly *political* side of their underbellies. For one of them at least (the one not named "Hillary"), this may come as a bit of a surprise to some.

Wasn't that so slick how they interrupted their plotting just long enough to exchange smiles and niceties with DK and Obama...just like a coupld of politicians?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Liberation_Act

supported 'regime change' and 'transition to democracy' in Iraq. Voting for the Iraq Authorization for Use of Military Force was a huge mistake, since the AUMF gave * powers that only Congress could do. The AUMF also violated the embedded War Powers Resolution of 1973, since the 'clear' 'circumstances' and 'situations' the WPAof'73 requires were not there in the first place. Lies and deceptions, as in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, are just that: untruthful and thus NOT clear but fictitious situations and circumstance.

The Iraq AUMF should be cancelled immediately and/or revised; even R Sen John Warner has stated as much.

Not hypocrites, just gullible.

.. freedom is to exist in this country.

Especially Kucinich's.

Even La Rouche and David Duke types.

Sue

From the bushies who sneer at us comoners, i don't want "imperial candidates" (well said, DK)

Didn't need anything more than that in the question.

We don't know what they were talking about!

I can't stand the thought of Hilary as president, but I'll still be fair to her.

I guess some of the posters here think a bunch of going-nowhere candidates playing "gotcha" advances the interests of democracy.

Democracy is a form of government. The debates are not a part of government; they are a mechanism for the political parties to decide whom they want to have as their nominee. It has nothing to do with "democracy." Anyway, this is not a democracy; it is a republic.

Maybe everyone at DU could declare himself or herself a candidate and demand to be part of the debates.

We could have thousands of presidential wannabes up there at the debates.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

Apparently the only candidates worth considering are those that will service the "Investor "class. Next thing you know, they'll be advocating voting rights only be allowed for millionaires.

They both disgust me.