Since someone asked about Kucinich and Obama, here are some key distinctions on the issues:

HEALTH CARE

Kucinich offers the gold standard: public single-payer universal health care.

Obama's plan to leave 15 million uninsured is the worst plan of any major Democratic candidate.

MIDDLE CLASS ISSUES

Kucinich gets an "A" on the Drum Major Institute's score for protecting the middle class.

Obama gets a "C" on the Drum Major Institute's score for protecting the middle class.

IMMIGRATION

Kucinich is the most pro-immigration candidate in the race.

Obama voted to build a wall on the US-Mexico border.

PUSHING THE B*SH MEME ON TERRORISM

Kucinich is by far the most pro-peace candidate in the race.

Obama has said he would unilaterally attack Pakistan if General Musharraf did not doing enough to "take out" the "terrorists."

CONSISTENCY

Kucinich's position on abortion has evolved over time, but he has been remarkably consistent (and remarkably progressive) on almost every other important issue.

Obama Obama has moved well to the center since joining the Senate.

on issues, Dennis is the guy, but the 3 cookie cutter seen one you've seen them all people, who are practically indisinguishable based on issues, are vying for the lead.

Msongs

Your link for Kucinich's health care program was not a good link to anything substantial on his program. You could use one of the following instead:

http://www.kucinichonline.com/pdfs/Kucinich_Universal_Health_Care.pdf
http://kucinich.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=1461#Universal%20Health%20Care

Obama? Not so much.

:rofl:

from leaving the Democratic Party for a truly liberal third party.

Kucinich is doing inside the party structure what Nader did as a third party candidate so Kucinich is working within the party to fix it rather than forming a third party which would ultimately hurt the Democratic Party.

quite the amount of impact you credit him with.

He is continually ridiculed from members of his own party when in reality they should be damn grateful to him for not bolting third party...and yeah, then dems would have something to really whine about.

Instead of acting like he is so out there, they really should take a closer look at some of his plans...beginning with his single payer healthCARE...not health insurance.

*sigh*

:rofl:

See this is the problem with Kucinich, much of what he proposes he can't do alone. He can't take the United States out of NAFTA, only Congress can do that. The same with the WTO and CAFTA. Healthcare? Well he can propose it, but that doesn't mean Congress will go along with it.

We need a president who has the ability to work with Congress and not just ideological allies. That's why I feel Kucinich is best served in the Congress, because he's a good guy to have working in that realm. However, as president, I don't see him getting much done. Just as I don't see a guy like Ron Paul getting anything done, either.

Just like John Edwards can't take away Congress' health insurance.

A lot of the garbage that people think is fighting between the two campaigns is really people with bizarre agendas that ends up doing nothing but stirring up shit.

You are nothing but a person with a bizarre agenda that ends up doing nothing but stirring up shit?

How nice to know you support real choice in democracy.

Too many people think that every attack against Obama or Clinton comes from their supporters. It's not true and I am pointing it out. There's a big difference between posting an honest point for debate, and a flame bait hit piece. The OP is a flame bait hit piece full of inaccuracies and talking points.

Tejanocrat provides links that (mostly) come from reliable sources and seem to support the claims being made.

You claim that Tejanocrat is lying. If you cannot back up your assertion with specifics and references, you will be the one who is seen as the liar.

Attacking Pakistan is a lie.

My point to some lurkers is that it is not always Clinton and Obama supporters stirring up this shit. I will not argue with you about the lies in the OP because that is not the purpose of my post. The lies have been debunked, the facts are out there for anybody who wants to be honest about it.

the Urban Institute's Health Research Center's Director John Holohan, and New America Foundation economist Len Nichols.

Source: http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2007/12/03/so-about-that-15-million-figure-you-ve-been-hearing.aspx

Recommended! :thumbsup:

And yes, that's a serious question.

I really think it is as simple as that. As others keep urging, look at the money: the principle donors to Clinton's and Obama's campaigns, and to the Democratic Party at both the state and federal level, are major corporations. That is because the corporations know that both will repay the campaign investments many times over. Kucinich refuses to play ball, therefore he does not get the money and the media delegates him to "unelectable" as ordered.

Added: Kucinich gets high marks here because we, as a group, are generally more informed and more interested in politics; as a group, we are much less influenced by popular media. The vast majority of Americans are not so informed and not so interested, and thus tend to vote as directed by the media. With regards to the Democratic candidate, the only media authorized candidates are Clinton and Obama. Even Edwards is getting sidelined.

Before candidates declare their intention to run, the media runs polls of 'likely' candidates and, big surprise, those who do well in those polls are those who people have heard of--if you were polled in early 2006 and asked who you would vote for if the primaries were today and you heard some names you recognized and some that you'd never heard before, who would you most likely pick?

Poll results are released and we suddenly have two distinct groups of candidates. At the top are Clinton (who had been in the news for the last 15 or so years), Obama (who had been the subject of intense media scrutiny about whether he'd run), and Edwards (who was on the ticket last time around). At the bottom are the candidates that had rarely, if ever, been covered--Richardson, Biden, Kucinich, Dodd, and Gravel.

At this point, the media, which is only really concerned with ratings says, "hey--90% of those polled didn't vote for these guys at the bottom, no one must care about them. We should focus on the candidates who people want to hear about. That'll give us higher ratings." It's a self-fueling cycle. They only focus on the candidates who poll well and cite national polls (which at this point are little more than name recognition contests) as validation.

How much coverage did Kerry get in 2004 before Iowa?

The media hates him.

getting Internet support and has managed to excite a lot of anti-war folks who ignore where he stands on everything else. His support on the Internet (especially here) and in terms of fundraising isn't reflected in the polls, where he has stayed in the 1-5% range.

and that is the big issue for this election. republicans have family in the military just like everyone else and ron is raking in that vote.

part is probably that he opposes the corporate interests that control things...

But, also, I suspect a large part of it is that he is short and kinda weird looking. Stupid, shallow reason, but I think it's accurate.:shrug:

I love Dennis. I have a Kucinich sticker on my car because I think he says a lot of things that people need to hear.

I've come to think that overall Biden is a better choice for President, but I still like Dennis a lot.

Too many allow polls and media to dictate their choices
Too many allow staged media events falsely labeled "debates" to "inform" their choice

Too few investigate their options in depth.

Too few have the courage to shake up the status quo.

Anyone with an internet connection can find out more about Kucinich. Ron Paul has proven that you can be ignored by MSM and get a lot of support. Kucinich doesn't get a lot of support.

Obama is also the most liberal of all the Dem Senators running for president. For more information, take a look at National Journal's Senate
Composite Scores: http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/sen/lib_cons.htm?o1=lib_composite&o2=desc

National Journal has interesting findings in a recent analysis of votes by all the members of Congress who are running for president. The study,
released in March of this year by the National Journal, a respected inside-the-Beltway research report, will help voters cut through the spin and
hype of misleading 527 ads, "fair and balanced" partisan bloggers, TV sound bites, and campaign commercials.

Unlike TV commercials that focus on a single vote, these rankings are based on comprehensive voting records. The 2006 scores, for example,
were based on as many as 95 votes on such issues as federal spending, tax cuts, the war in Iraq, embryonic stem-cell research and border
security.

On the Democratic side, the analysis of “lifetime” voting records shows Obama as the most liberal with a score of 84.3. The most liberal score
possible was 99. The lifetime liberal scores for the other Democrats:

Kucinich, 79.4
Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, 79.2
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, 78.8
Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, 76.8

For more on the National Journal scorecard, go here: http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/

The rankings differ if you look only at their 2006 scores. That year Kucinich edged Obama by only one point as the most liberal while Hillary
Clinton was the least liberal, which is no surprise to any of us.

For those of you who like to look at graphs, here's a statistical map of the National Journal data:

Obama's 'lifetime' score is based on 2005 and 2006. Dodd and Biden's scores are based on 1981 to 2006, Kucinich's is based on 1997-2006, and Clinton's is based on 2001-2006. http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/pdf/06democrats.pdf

If you limit everyone's 'lifetime' score based on 2005 and 2006, you get:

Obama: 84.3
Dodd: 81.9
Clinton: 75.3
Biden: 78.9
Kucinich: 90.4

If you wanted to skew the data for a head-to-head comparison against Kucinich, just put zeros in his column for the years 1997-2004. That would give you Obama 16.9 compared to Kucinich's 79.4 over the same period of time. Do the same thing with him up against Clinton, he gets 28.1. Put Obama up against Dodd or Biden using the same method and his rating plummets to 6.5.

Tougher when it comes to the Patriot Act, the Bankruptcy Bill, amd defunding the war.

But, whether it is "fair" or not due to media and other injustices, Obama has a shot at the White House and Kucinich doesn't. Frankly, I think Kucinich would lose if he got the Democratic nomination, while I consider Obama a strongly appealing candidate -- indeed one person on DU has noted that HRC provides the most sacrifice of Democrat's principles for the riskiest candidate!

At any rate, if at some point an inevitable nominee emerges, which I think that the stacking of too many primaries on Feb 5 makes it likely would be HRC, then those AFTER that point would have no problem voting for Kucinich -- and that is a LOT of states.

or to insure 25 million people who aren't currently insured. I guess it's how you look at it, or maybe how biased you are to begin with.


* - assuming you believe this number is accurate.

For one thing, the figure includes at least 7 million undocumented residents, who wouldn't be covered under Sen. Clinton's plan either!

Furthermore, we have no idea how many will be uncovered by Clinton's mandate, since she hasn't told us how she plans to enforce it. If it mirror's MA's results, then we can expect that up to 60% of the uninsured will NOT be covered within a year of the plan, because that's exactly what is happening in Mass. right now.

With mandated auto insurance, you have 15% of drivers who don't have it, despite the rather hefty consequences if they are caught without it. Assuming the strongest possible enforcement of a national health insurance mandate, you can expect the non-compliance rate to be about as high. That would leave, guess what, about 15 to 20 million people uncovered.

the number is?

Obama and all the leading candidates plan to let private insurance companies keep cherrypicking and denying coverage. We need CARE, not "coverage".

There is no inclusion of for-profit insurance companies in the mix, every single person is included without exception, and there are no mandates about buying insurance. Edwards not only INCLUDES the insurance carriers, he mandates that we sign up with one. Then the federal government is empowered to garnish wages if the premium isn't paid.

HR 676 is cheaper, easier, and less intrusive.

why you think that is so.

The elements I mentioned above are disturbing to me. Can you present his plan in a more positive light?

That's a sincere question; I don't have a "2nd choice" in this race. I'm willing to consider Edwards, Biden, and Richardson for that spot.

because Edwards' plan creates non-profit health care markets which allow for-profit private insurance companies to co-exist with a non-profit public health care program along the lines of Medicare (which is important because it allows the objectors to opt out of public health care plan if they want to and this choice undercuts their opposition to the plan) but MOST IMPORTANTLY these health care markets force the for-profit private insurance companies to compete directly against the non-profit public health care program based on Medicare. Most health care experts predict that the for-profit private insurance companies will be unable to successfully compete directly against the non-profit public health care program, which is how Edwards' plan will evolve into public single-payer universal health care.

Obama's and Hillary's plans do not have this feature.

Here is why you need Edwards' and Hillary's mandates, even though Obama pretends that you don't.

Edwards and Hillary would also eliminate the ability of health care coverage providers (whether private or public) to exclude an applicant based on prior medical conditions. You can imagine what this would lead to: if a person doesn't need to have insurance unless and until he gets sick, he could just go without any insurance and then wait to buy insurance until the day he feels really sick or gets badly injured. You can't do this today, of course, because your day-before-buying-insurance illness or injury would be excluded as a pre-existing condition. But since Edwards and Hillary would both eliminate the right of insurance companies (both private and public) to exclude coverage based on pre-existing conditions, they would create the nightmare that many would drop off their health care plans to avoid paying premiums only to re-sign up for insurance once they get sick. This is one reason why coverage has to be mandatory.

Plus, under Edwards' plan, the vast majority would get their health care coverage through their employer, and for those who don't, Edwards' plan subsidized coverage for everyone making $100,000 a year or less (including a 100% subsidy for the poorest people).

Here is an excerpt from a good article:

Health markets would offer traditional plans from private companies such as Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Aetna and Cigna, as well as a government-run plan similar to Medicare, the federal health-insurance program for the elderly. The public-sector plan would resemble Canada’s single-payer system, in which insurance is publicly funded to control costs but doctors and hospitals remain private.

“The idea is to determine whether Americans actually want a private insurer or whether they would rather have a government-run ... single-payer plan,” Edwards said. “We’ll find out over time where people go.” The mix of market and government initiatives makes Edwards’ plan much harder to attack than Clinton’s early 1990s plan, said Leif Wellington Haase of the Century Foundation, a liberal-leaning think tank. “In this plan, the changes happen much more gradually,” Haase said. “Each element has a market element that deflects the attack. I think it’s a very smart political document.”

Although Haase thinks the Edwards plan does not go far enough, conservatives fear it would take the country too far toward government-run care. “It sets up a slippery slope to move toward a single-payer, government-run health care system,” said Mike Tanner of the Cato Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. “He realizes that Americans are not going to take that in one bite.” Tanner contends that under Edwards’ parallel system, private insurance would be unable to compete with a taxpayer-funded system. The single-payer system, Tanner argued, sounds good. But it would not be popular with citizens because it would ration treatment for expensive and long illnesses, and would discourage pharmaceutical companies from developing new drugs. “Single-payer systems are good if you are not sick,” Tanner said. “They provide routine care at low cost. But they don’t provide intensive, expensive medicine for people with serious illnesses.”

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/news/article/38815/in-a-crowded-field-edwards-health-plan-sets-him-apart/

I'm wondering if the non-profit segment would be run like medicare today, where you can choose between providers. My mom is covered under medicare, but was refused treatment for Dupuytren's Contracture, which has grown steadily worse over the years until it limits hand function.

She has appealed it as high as it will go, and all her appeals were denied, so she is looking to shift to a different medicare "carrier." Meanwhile, her quality of life is affected enough that she doesn't want to wait anymore, and is trying to borrow money for the necessary surgery.

thank you for the information comparing the 2.

get marked down for her crappy vote on Kyl/Lieberman, her crappy vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act, her crappy vote against creating a Senate Office of Public Integrity, her crappy vote for building a wall along the Mexican border, etc.

Leaving aside her support of tax cuts for the wealthy and her support for "free" trade agreements, Hillary's domestic economic agenda isn't all that bad.

If you drop him that easily, your support for him probably wasn't that strong to begin with.