Kerry: 'If I was president, this wouldn't have happened'

Kerry slams Bush on Lebanon war
'If I was president, this wouldn't have happened,' Dem senator says.

Kerry knocks Bush on handling of Mideast conflict
Valerie Olander / The Detroit News

..................

"If I was president, this wouldn't have happened," said Kerry during a noon stop at Honest John's bar and grill in Detroit's Cass Corridor.

Bush has been so concentrated on the war in Iraq that other Middle East tension arose as a result, he said.

"The president has been so absent on diplomacy when it comes to issues affecting the Middle East," Kerry said. "We're going to have a lot of ground to make up (in 2008) because of it."

..................

"This is about American security and Bush has failed. He has made it so much worse because of his lack of reality in going into Iraq.…We have to destroy Hezbollah," he said.

more at:
http://www.rawstory.com/showoutarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.detnews.com%2Fapps%2Fpbcs.dll%2Farticle%3FAID%3D%2F20060723%2FUPDATE%2F607230360

and again
and again
and again

wouldn't have happened!

say "I AM the President and this shouldn't have happened." The majority of folks (except Faux News viewers) know that already.

it's "If I were President", not "was"

just one of my little pet peeves.... English usage...

:-)

Which I hear all the time up here, from truck drivers, garbage collectors, and waitresses, in eduficated, high-falootin' New England...but some folks apparently thought it was a frou-frou expression.

He might have been told by his handlers to dumb it down. Sad state of affairs, if that's the case.

The other alternative is that the reporter wrote it in the notebook incorrectly. If there's video anywhere, we will get the accurate quote.

I think the subjunctive "were" isn't required here because the proposition isn't impossible, e.g., "if I were you," but contrary to fact, e.g., "if I was finished."

But I'm too lazy to look it up.

I missed out on a lot of that sentence diagramming crap that was all the rage in schools back in the dark ages, because I was educated abroad and they didn't do that sort of thing.

My teachers, mercifully, cut me some slack because I usually managed to put a sentence together with reasonable alacrity.

so "were" is the proper form. (Of course, in a less bizarro world, the simple reality that he won the election would be recognized as fact, but since Bush was installed, the conditional clause does express a condition contrary to fact.)

I actually have an article on the subjunctive posted on my Grammar and Usage for the Non-Expert website of you want to check it out:
http://grammartips.homestead.com/subjunctive.html

100 years ago, all contrafactual statements were in the subjunctive. Today, as you point out, they tend to be limited to contrapossibilities, not merely contrafactuals. That's what I like about living languages.

I am unfamiliar with "notzi"

swami beyondananda calls many people "not-sees", which I adore.

He's from Baustin, you know.

heh heh. edit for spelling.

German usage. :hi:

be the first thing they comment on.

We'd maybe be better off, but I doubt that Kerry had the right vision to end all this nonsense as he does seem to be saying.

because it most likely wouldn't have started. I would imagine that he would have practiced diplomacy, surrounded himself with intelligent people, worked on getting us out of the mess in Iraq....you know, like a President should. Diplomacy often works, although this administration doesn't ever seem to want to give it a try.

Since he probably has double the IQ of the chimp-in-chief, I think his "vision" as you call it, would have saved us from ever getting to this point to begin with. It took a bit of work on *'s part to get us where we are now, I do believe Kerry would have done...well...just about EVERYTHING differently. I don't doubt what he says at all.

if you had blah blah blah

rather than that half-assed thing he put together, he would be president

Where he pissed me off was when he rolled over when about a million different voting "irregularities" were coming to light.

Remember that first debate? Kerry annhiliated Bush.

every time he opens his mouth lately. I think he seems to do "too little too late." Maybe it's just his personality. He has to wait a long time to think about and issue and "digest it" before he feels it's time to "Speak Out." But, SHEESH! America is WAITING! How long should it take to know "Right from Wrong," here? :eyes:

That means he admitted defeat. Admitted he lost. Even Gore did more to contest what was going on... and I'd rather vote for him in 2008 if we have to dig up old candidates because nobody new can unite everybody in ways digging up the old ones won't.

n/t

All of them did but Kerry was pretty lame.

"he would have done better" against Bush.

That makes no sense.

Dean's issues were mainly his shitty ground game in Iowa and his habit of telling the truth at the wrong time.

are STILL replaying the '04 primaries.

Will people ever get over them?

that both halves are present.

There are oodles of folks running national campaigns. I believe Kerry-Edwards won in Ohio, and that would have pushed them into an electoral college victory.

I believe Bush-Cheney cheated, and I believe Ken Blackwell KNOWS they cheated, and I think two things are going to happen next:

One, Ohioans are going to drown Ken Blackwell in Cowan Lake, and two, RFK Jr's law suit is going to unearth some very interesting things about how the GOP has been operating in the Buckeye State.

Historians should be licking their chops as we speak.

Too bad about the rest of us, though. :-(

about politics from historians.

I'm a political history junkie. It's ok with me if a few historians make a few bucks, long as the finished product is as good as Schlesinger's work on RFK or Bruce Catton's on the Civil War, etc.

I'm a bit too old to be a groupie, but in my next life, I may want to try being a groupie to a historian or two.

Or three.

and commercialized that I wonder if they can be put in the same category as quoting you:


Schlesinger's work on RFK or Bruce Catton's on the Civil War, etc.

Every Historian has there time in history, I guess. I just worry that the new ones will be seen as the "Bush II Court Historians" and there will be a "footnote" suggesting that much might be a biased view. :shrug:

I love history..wherever it comes from..but ..just saying about these folks and their "historians." (more like Pharoah's of Egypt's "fave scribes ...than real..maybe)

types.

The recent history work on John Adams, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ben Franklin, to throw in 3 more examples. A trend writer on current topics may go in for a quick kill at the cash register.

I mean the pros. The multi-volume, messy-desk long-rangers.

:D We are arguing from the same page of "respect" for the "scriveners" who aren't the Media Primp and pumped who get their money "over the transome."

I got what you said...I understand...Peace. :-)'s

Good vibes your way.

:toast:

i was behind him during a walk for hunger in boston ten years ago. as best as i could discern, both halves were present; this was before '04, however.

i agree with both of your points. i just wish kerry had.

whalerider

him what kind of mail he received in the days following his tour of duty and during (or immediately after) his testifying before Congress regarding U.S. commitments in SE Asia.

I know what others who read the papers then know; what I'd be really interested in knowing is what Kerry could reveal about those times that has to-date not seen print.

There were rumors of very strong mail, including very threatening mail, to Kerry.

You've guessed where I'm going with this: I'd be interested to see if any of the Swiftboat Liars were signatories on any of that hate mail.

and complain that we need to get "over it" because they somehow refuse to accept that voter fraud occurred in Ohio.

I'm so glad that great investigative reporting is behind the citizens of Ohio in these challenging times. :sarcasm:

a major hit in the Buckeye State in November.

While those number may tighten, I don't think there will be a reversal of fortunes for the GOP: Blackwell loses. DeWine loses. Possibly Jean Schmidt loses.

Look for a big blue wave in Ohio on November 7th. A very big Democratic year.

not in office.

If I had been elected to Congress, Hayworth would never have published that pile of drek Whatever It Takes, if I had been elected to Congress I would have been able to work on getting coalitions together to get universal health care passed, if I had been elected to congress I would have finally gotten used to flying enough to stop being scared of it...If if if...does not mean anything because I was not elected to congress.

For the record I think that there were fishy things in the counting of the votes in Ohio but Kerry should have fought for a recount and he did not.

thought he had a hefty stock of political capital after cheating to defeat John Kerry and John Edwards in November of 2004.

Either I misperceive his position or he never had any political capital to begin with.

His international profile during the recent G8 summit was strictly Animal House, as Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York TIMES. "I thought you were going to ask me about that pig." "Yo, Blair, you leavin' or what?" "I'm looking forward to that pig tonight."

Plus the assault-massage on Angela Merkel.

I would feel infinitely better if President Gore or President Kerry, both rightfully elected candidates, were overseeing the list of challenges facing our country and the world right now.

And at the very damn least, both a President Gore and a President Kerry would use grown-up language when they spoke on the world stage.

Unlike a certain incumbent I was thinking of.

thing goin' on.....

show him a synopsis of the news, Bush might pretend not to be bothered by it.

But I still recall Dubya's behavior in the first debate with John Kerry. Dubya looked like an 8-year old who couldn't understand what the adult was saying. There was a vacant, petulant look to him as he shot a kind of stare of resentment from his podium to Kerry's.

Hunter S. Thompson wrote later that Kerry "steamrolled" Bush in the debates. That's exactly the verb.

I really do worry about Dubya's state of mind. He has never been up to this job, and when things went his way in the polls and approval levels, he was more or less happy, but now as the public knows he's a lying weasel and a vacuous cad, his behavior has been erratic and coarse.

There's a kind of edgy feel to things whenever Dubya opens his mouth.

can't do as much verbal misconstrusion of the facts

don't you?

You can't trust Dubya on his own with pretzels...

Killing and destroying is working so well. And prefacing it with "If I was President," in a bar no less. Gee, I wonder how Fox will play that.

And I wouldn't bs crying in surprise over that...

Instead of a wimp.

So many times he could have not only countered flip-flop accusations, but put the same questions back onto Bush.

And has been said about the Swiftboat stuff too; Kerry was being very... disappointing.

And he conceded fairly quickly too, despite numerous incidents of electronic voting and other fraud. I started to think he was deliberately being lax.

And, in retrospect, it's easy to think all sorts of things. Would Kerry have stopped offshoring? I dunno. At this point, it makes no difference.


Still, Kerry is right regarding Hezbollah.

Not everyone believes Kerry did poorly in those debates, HynoToad.

I think he kicked Dubya's hind end from here to Hong Kong.

If C-Span ever re-runs them, keep a close eye on Dubya's body language and facial expressions. That will tell you who won the debates.

I'm so glad to see Senator Kerry speaking out!

K & R.

Bush has been MIA on foreign policy for years!

before midnite and meandered from my oath that every vote would be counted..."


sorry. Kerry is the Senator from my own state, I've voted for him every time he has run for office except once (before I moved into the state)...

too late. too frickin' late. save it for '08, when you give the nominating speech for Al Gore at the demo convention.

whalerider55

and I actually lived here for all of his races, I'm not a transplant. He did not concede at midnight, they had reports coming in all night ab out Ohio. There have been plenty of people who have written at DU and DKos about how that night went and the fact that Kerry had people on the ground involved in the counting and in the fight.

A lot of what went on in Ohio was legal and was do to the one-party Republican control in that State. That means that there was no legal means to overturn the election. A lot of the stuff that came in was underhanded and awful, but it could not be contested in court.

Kerry was involved in two court cases over the voting in Ohio. One was thrown out recently because the judge thought the issue was settled when Bush took the oath of office. The other if scheduled, unless there is a delay, to start in court this August. The types of abuses that happened were not amenable to a quick fix, they are systemic problems that have to be dealt with over the long haul.

homie. forget the transplant talk- this board is about discussion and not name-calling, right?
and btw, my friend, John Forbes Kerry was born in colorado. A transplant.

Not to pick at a scab, but Edwards stepped out to address Kerry's crowd around 11 that night; he pointedly did not concede, and told us that every vote would be counted. Kerry's people told us he had 10,000 lawyers on the ground, ready to step in at the slightest hint of voter fraud, at a moments notice; cam kerry even told the press there was a plane waiting at logan for "the team." that plane never took off. They worked with lawyers already in Ohio, who had arrived much to late too do anything but react, despite the warnings about Ohio given to kerry and flashing across the blogosphere.

Kerry conceded at 11 AM on wednesday the 3rd. he must've had a pretty low threshold for conviction that every vote had been counted.

And kerry initiated no lawsuits; he reluctantly joined the two lawsuits filed by other groups; one of them being the green party.

as i recall, when the black congressional caucus and Boxer decided to contest the election, Kerry was out of the country. In Iraq, if I remember.

if you really want to cast a vote in Massachusetts for someone who really worked his ass off to try to address the injustice of ohio, vote for John Bonifaz in the upcoming election.


whether or not there were illegal shenanigans going on in ohio (duh), Kerry conceded 15 hours after the polls closed. not a profile in courage. we knew the Las Vegas team of republican vote subverters was in ohio for two months, it was common knowledge; the strategies were common knowledge.

so for me, it comes down to this. Kerry would have been a better president. Sheet. An eggplant would make a better president. But a leader leads. They don't concede.

Yeah he was jobbed. I don't blame him as much for that, although if i could see it coming, and you could, why couldn't kerry and his beltway kitchen cabinet smell it.

But he gave it up after 15 hours; he never addressed the people waiting for him on the street that night, never addressed america that night, never initiated anything to challenge the results. He kissed off thousands of votes that never got counted, he knew they were being turned away from the polls in Ohio; perhaps had he flown out there with all the tv cameras in tow to look at the lines for himself something woulda been different. i dunno.

i still like him as a senator. i'll vote for him again. but a) there is no chance he'll be the nominee again b) a leader would rage, rage, rage againstv the dying of the night. Edwards did on the night of the 2nd; kerry sat with his head in his hands while his pockets were picked in broad daylight, with full warning, with a frickin' roadmap that lead from florida '00 to nevada '04; then folded his deck of cards 15 hours later.

yeah, the ohio problems were systemic. they weren't amenable to immediate action, although any action taken by kerry would have made a difference. imagine what might have happened if Kerry had scheduled his campaign victory party in Ohio, and spent his last day there going from district to district, followed by the ravening press?

wish we could agree on this one, but that would require more revisionist history than I have the stomach for.

whalerider

Kerry continued legal efforts:




Almost a year later:

Thanks for the links. they do prove my point that kerry didn't initiate a damned thing when it came to contesting the election; it was actually the two 3rd party candidates that initiated the lawsuit; and that the Kerry team took three months to figure out whether they were going to join the suit; i'm still not sure that they are actually a direct party to the suit or have some sort of amicus relationship.

The full quote from the first truthout post is:

"In December 2004, presidential candidates David Cobb and Michael Badnarik filed extensive documentation with the court demonstrating that the recount they had requested in Ohio of the 2004 presidential vote had been conducted with inconsistent standards throughout the state, in violation of the equal protection and due process guarantees under the US Constitution (see Bush v. Gore)."

Your quote does come later.

"Thu Feb 24th, 2005 at 06:32:43 PM EDT :: Voter Rights
Kerry-Edwards 2004 has just made two filings in the Ohio recount case currently pending before Federal Judge Edmund Sargus in Columbus, Ohio."

you also left out this little gem, which follows immediately after your snip:

"Kerry-Edwards 2004 has been relatively quiet in this case for the past several weeks and its filings today indicate its continued interest and involvement in this litigation."

interest? involvement? if you concede democracy is at stake here, wouldn't you like to hear a little more... passion? like i said; leaders lead. they don't follow. they inspire hope, they don't generate interest.

whalerider.

and i agree... it may have been boxer's finest moment in the senate, and made me proud to be an american.

whalerider

i said the Kerry/Edwards campaign initiated no lawsuits with regard to ohio; don't just tell me I'm incorrect, send me a link that proves it and i'll amend my incorrectness.

joining a lawsuit two monhs after it has been already filed is not the same as filing one; the issue has to do with leadership.

whalerider

This was one of many alternative views on DailyKos, which I have heard from a lot of Kerry people who were in there fighting.



BTW, Edwards came out once and said for people to hang on that night in Boston. He was not there throughout the night. Ahm, doesn't anyone else remember how horrible that period was for him and his wife. They were very worried about medical problems and had other things to do. It is a myth that Edwards was there egging Kerry on. Find me one name that says otherwise. (This is not a slam on Edwards, it is a slam on people who make things up and make up memories to back fit a theory. It was not that way and understandably and humanly so.)

Why so touchy about being a transplant? That's not a slam, just what is. There are a lot of people who moved to Massachusetts expecting to find a liberal state and find out the place is pretty conservative in a lot of major ways. One of the reasons for this is the difference between lifers and people who move here after college and such. There is a huge disconnect between the groups. That is just truth.

Oh, and about those lawyers on the ground. That was messed up. I have a white paper with actual names on it from actual people willing to go on the record, not just on conjecture, that say what the problem was with the 10,000 lawyers on the ground. A lot of them were volunteers from other states. This paper mentions Florida and how there were a lot of lawyers from out-of-state who were not certified to practice election law in Florida, were not familiar with the system there and were transplants without knowledge brought in to 'help.' That was no help and confused the situation more in many cases. The Democratic Party doesn't need more lawyers, they need smarter lawyers who actually know what they are doing and who are familiar with the areas they are charged with overseeing. Same thing for Ohio. You can't just dump people into a situation and then declare that you have 'fixed the problem.' Sigh! We need a more organized effort from the DNC on down. (Which is finally starting.)

Kerry's future is uncertain, as is every other Dem potential. It was so in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. That part of the story is unwritten. What I have learned about the Dem Pres cycle is that a lot will happen between now and next summer when candidates really start to get serious. I do know that Kerry has money, supporters and the will to run. Just like all the other serious potentials.

the daily kos snip is from a conversation a kossack had with another kossack who knew people in the kerry campaign. no names, no quotes, no nothing to verify anything.

in late november 2004, i spoke with folks in the state dem party, at the highest (executive level) who were besides themselves that kerry folded too soon, and begged him to reconsider. i'll hold onto their names, because they are still active in the party and i see them socially; although i am not a democrat. they were frustrated beyond belief. i'm happy to consider your snip of a conversation between two kossacks discussing what a third party told them as an alternative to my own ruminations with the same grace you'll consider my take.

any sensitivity i might have about your reference to me being a transplant might stem from the fact that I currently serve and have been twice elected to a local office, and have worked hard to bridge that perception of difference people think exists betwen lifers and "move-ins"that seems endemic to New England; that in fact, when it comes to organizing and working for a sane, compassionate and coherent community, and not one that is subject to third generations playing out "your grandfather screwed my grandfather and i'll be damned if i'll see you build that affordable housing..." i accept being sensitive about it; respect that I have worked to find reasons to find common progressived ground together as a community and not just try to label things as conservative, liberal... whatever. increasingly, the terms are irrelevent; if i can get elected, then maybe the disconnect is not quite as strong as you think it is. frankly, any argument that promotes differences when it could be drawing attention to common ground leaves me pretty cold.

I never said edwards stayed out all night; i said he came out and promised that every vote would be counted and that was not the ultimate case. i am aware of what was going on with his family; while tragic, that is irrelevent to anything i said. I will agree with your point regarding whether Edwards "egged on" Kerry to fight for uncounted votes that were obvious on the ground in ohio by Novemeber 3rd; my recollection stems from a very disilluioned former mayor who worked for the kerry campaign; again, a name i cannot bring forward because the person is still active in politics, and I do try to respect confidences.

of course there were problems with the lawyers on the ground. the strategy was that every state would have a lead team of lawyers licesnsed to practice in each state, and the 10,000 (or whatever the number was when you subtract the core teams) would be dispatched to work under those attorneys- doing legal research, drafting arguments, helping to file injunctions. i ran a trade association of consumer attorneys for 5 years, and find that strategy perfectly workable and have seen it effectively employed. the decision not to go forward with what would have amounted to a breakneck discovery to bring people forward who would testify (remember, there were plenty who came out for the Conyers hearings),plenty already on the ground crying foul as the election was taking place- Kerry's decision short-circuited that whole, well-thought plan.

that was a great strategy that was never implemented when Kerry conceded. I'd be interested in seeing that white paper. it might explain some things to me that remain fuzzy.

if you have a link to any suit, injunction, anything kerry filed independently of Cobb/Badnarik to contest any single result in any single district in the 2004 election, i'd love to see it. Yeah, he signed on,(I don't believe that Kerry/Edwards have officially added their name to the suit; they remain interested and involved, and didn't sign on until three months after the suit was filed.

finally, if you're goinna tell me i'm flat out wrong, that's fine. my motto is "often wrong, never in doubt." since being wrong is both something of a hobby of mine, and a great opportunity to learn something, i like the give and take of proving or disproving a point, of learning something new, of having my head turned around by facts.

but gimme a little more then a cut and paste of a column where two people discuss the issue using feedback from a third un-named party as having influenced their discussion. you can believe me or not, but at least i'm telling you that i've got it directly fvrom two people who were involved with the campaign at very hiogh levels.

and so, we can disagree.

yer right kerry has cash. a lot leftover from 2004, as i recall. and he may run again; that's fine. i think the primary process is especially critical now that we are seeing a genuine, grassrootsie populism asserting itself in the democratic party. i'll even bet he's learned a thing or to about a national campaign against republicans.

but selfishly, i have to say that 2004 meant so much more to me because i'm a parent. i needed a democrat to fight back, to learn the lessons of '00, to be prepared, to not lay in the weeds while the snakes were swift-boating his ass. and what i got was alito and roberts, who my kids will have to live with for the next 30 years. there was a lot on the line, but there was also enough history to fight this battle before it got to Nov 2 2004.

i'd love a link to a site where kerry says "i never realized they would steal the election, the way they did, intimidating voters, purging voter rolls."

you won't find one. he was either an idiot, or overconfident. neither are good qualities in a president, wouldn't you say?

whalerider

http://audio.wegoted.com/podcasting/122105SenatorKerry.mp3



From the RFK Jr. article:

I appreciate all the research you are doing. however, my central point is this.

leaders lead.

despite his conversation with Ed Schultz, you have still presented no evidence that Kerry initiated any legal action at all re:ohio. he joined a suit already filed. he may want to revise history, and as painful as that history is, i don't blame him for that. but claiming brought a couple of lawsuits is not the same as joining them a month after they've been filed. as i recall, the $113,000 needed to file the green/lib suit was raised by the community, and not a dime from the kerry 10 mil warchest.


"Arnebeck and Fitrakis began compiling evidence for a lawsuit against Ohio election officials following reports from voters that Election Day procedures had been mishandled and e-voting machines were malfunctioning. So far, the lawsuit hinges partly upon analysis of poll records from precincts where Kerry won fewer votes than a Democrat challenger to a conservative state Supreme Court justice."

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=1269



"Monday, July 24, 2006

The lawyers for Green presidential candidate David Cobb and Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, along with Kerry-Edwards 2004 have added election tampering to a civil suit filed against the state of Ohio over problems with the state's recount, RAW STORY has learned.

The suit, detailed here, alleges that a manufacturer of voting machines, Triad Election Systems, which serves 43 counties in the state, is tampering with the recount. It is unclear exactly what recourse the plaintiffs' seek; the filing adds on to an original suit to have the recount take place before Ohio electors meet, which failed in the courts. Green Party spokesman Blair Bobier said the party hoped to reform the recount process and suggested Ohio should secure or impound voting machines.



http://rawstory.com/exclusives/kerry_ohio_suit2_1215.php


"AP , COLUMBUS, OHIO
Saturday, Dec 04, 2004,Page 7

"Senator John Kerry's campaign has joined a lawsuit by third-party presidential candidates seeking a recount in Ohio. A lawyer for the campaign said on Thursday the campaign does not question the Democrat's loss but wants any counting to take place statewide.

(a bold move on Kerry/Edwards part... we don't question the loss, we just think enough votes to tip the balance may have been missed)

Kerry's campaign this week joined the suit filed by Green and Libertarian party candidates seeking a recount of the vote in Delaware County. A judge in that county issued a restraining order blocking that request, but the order expired on Thursday. A hearing was set in federal court in Columbus for yesterday on the recount request.

"The Kerry-Edwards campaign felt it had to intervene," said Daniel Hoffheimer, a Cincinnati lawyer who represents the campaign in Ohio. "We did not want a recount to go forward if it only was 87 counties."

The two minor parties also have asked for a statewide recount, but a judge ruled that cannot begin until Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell certifies the vote, likely on Monday. The parties say they have raised the US$113,600 fee the state requires to conduct the recount.

The Kerry campaign isn't disputing the outcome of President George W. Bush's Nov. 2 victory in Ohio -- a 136,000-vote margin, based on unofficial results -- but wants to make sure any recount is "done accurately and completely," Hoffheimer said."


As for Kennedy's piece, which is commendable, he missed a very important point.

"Litigating the Election
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 22 November 2004

On Election Day, Sarah White filed a class action against Blackwell and the Board of Elections of Lucas County, claiming they violated the Help America Vote Act, passed in the wake of the 2000 election debacle, that gives voters in federal elections a right to cast provisional ballots. White claimed that although she requested an absentee ballot one month before the election, she never received one. Blackwell ruled that persons who had requested, but not received their absentee ballots, would not be permitted to cast a provisional ballot. U.S. District Judge David A. Katz, however, ordered that "the Board of Elections of Lucas County shall immediately advise all precincts to issue provisional ballots to those voters who appear at the voting place and assert their eligibility to vote, including that the voter is a registered voter in the precinct in which he or she desires to vote, and that the voter is eligible to vote in an election for Federal office."

Last week, the Ohio Election Protection Coalition held public hearings in Columbus. Extensive sworn and written testimony of Ohio voters, precinct judges, poll workers, legal observers, and party challengers revealed a widespread and concerted effort by Blackwell to deny primarily African-American and young voters the right to cast their ballots within a reasonable time. Precincts were deprived of adequate numbers of voting machines, so voters waited in lines from 2-7 hours, even though 68 electronic voting machines remained in storage and were never used on Election Day. Blackwell, who oversaw the election in Ohio, also served as co-chair of the Ohio Bush-Cheney reelection campaign. Lawyers for the Ohio Election Protection Coalition plan to use the testimony from the Columbus hearings to challenge the results of Ohio's presidential vote in the state Supreme Court next week."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112204A.shtml


The White Lawsuit was filed on election day, in the midst of what was happening- the problems were self-evident, Kerry's people on the ground in ohio saw them, his lawyers had to have seen them; there were kerry pollwatchers everywhere. They were even carried, to a surprising extent, in the MSM. so kennedy's claim that there was no evidence on the morning of the 3rd to possibly overturn the election, the basis on which Kerry made his lamentable decision, misses the lawsuit filed while the problems were actually occuring.


The basis for contesting; or at least not conceding was there and self-evident; the conyers commission merely validated what was known on election day.

So despite hindsight, i have ended up believing that Kerry's decision to concede was political, not moral;not based on the evidence (admittedly confusing but certainly massive, as even Kennedy revealed). it was made with an eye on the future, not the present. Yes, the majority may require an investigation, but in my own experience as a fitful student of the alinsky school of community organizing, there are ways to move the question to the community.

What Kerry did, knowingly, I think, although I am willing to consider he did it in ignorance, was cut the legs out from any real challenge to what was a deeply flawed, and ultimately illegal effort to deprive voters of their right to vote.

f*ck the presidency. he knew people were being screwed out of their right to vote, and he shut it down. that is why what edwards said that night, the 2nd, in his brief appearance in front of the crowd, buoyed me.

it was always about the vote. the vote. and that is why i find kerry's actions sad, and lacking in leadership. perhaps he was unprepared for such blatant and massive fraud, although after '00 that doesn't speak well of kerry and his advisors... maybe they weren't ready for prime time.

but the recorded history of those moments don't offer much refuge for Kerry if his argument was we have nothing to hang our hats on. the polls hadn't closed, and there was already a class action lawsuit filed. i simply don't believe, and hope i have offered evidence that proves, that this is not just an effort to revise history to cast aspersions or assert a hazy claim.

i don't really want to go quote for quote here; i simply want to see the lessons learned manual. kerry can write the forward to it if he wants, but as far as presidential elections going forward, he's a footnote to me.

whalerider
undecided, but optimistic the dems have more than a few dogs in this hunt

As regards the 'native' versus transplant theory, that is a mainstay of Massachusetts politics. There are people who have been living in that area of the country for generations. They distrust the people who come in and tell them what they have been doing wrong for so many years. That is not so unlike other parts of the country, in that regard. The native resent the newcomers telling them what to do. Successful campaigns in Massachusetts have been unifying, not divisive in reconciling these sides. (They can be negatively reconciled as happened in 1978 when Democrat Ed King got the Governor's office because he 'put all the hate groups in one pot and let them boil.')

Class based politics is as much a part of Massachusetts as fall foliage. It's an easy card to play because the lunch bucket Dems do not trust the liberals who they must align with in order to succeed at the pols. It will be played again this fall. (The State chapter of the SEIU has already released a radio add that plays on the Muffy and Charles at the countryclub theme.) It is a part of the fabric of the place and has been played by both Democrats and Republicans for the last century or more. This is because it works. You can take the high road and say it doesn't matter, but it does and is a determining factor in why overrides fail and why the Democrats have been unable to win the Gov's race since 1990.

Take the race with Jon Bonifaz. Very few people here know him. People who follow election news on the blogs have heard of him, but almost no one in my delegation to the State Convention last June had ever heard of the guy. Of the few who had heard of him, many didn't understand how his campaign benefits Massachusetts. That's a good question. The office he isrunning for is Secretary of State for the Commonwealth and the citizens have a right to ask, what are you going to do for me? Election fraud may be an issue, but it hasn't effectively been used as one and no one has told the average voter how it connects to them and why they should elect Bonifaz to solve a problem that hasn't been articulated. (Most people don't read blogs. Also, I actually voted for Jon Bonifaz at the State Convention. I don't expect him to win more than 20% statewide and probably won't do that well. Nobody knows him here and his issues are not perceived as relevent to Massachusetts voters, no matter what the liberal blogs think. It hasn't permeated down the ranks.) BTW, I can easily see Kerry Healey winning this fall, based on the Republican interpretation of class and regional politics in the State. Perhaps if more people actually cared to look into why there are native and transplant issues instead of trying to make it go away with a false sense of unity that comes down only on one side, we might actually start to build winning coalitions for Governor here. Instead, one side believes it is 'right and true' and the other side thinks they are out-of-touch with regular voters. Sigh!

Massachusetts people are afraid because things are changing so rapidly. They are afraid that their kids won't be able to live in the State because of high housing and other costs of living. They are afraid that they won't be able to afford basic living expenses. They also fear that a lot of what they grew up with will be gone. (More land has fallen to development in the last 50 years in Mass than in all the time from the 1620 settlement to then.) People fear that they are losing the sense of what made New England special. A part of the puzzle of why newcomers and natives don't get along is on that disconnect.

It is not a matter of waving aside the differences and pretending that the high road is the only road to take. (That's how we lose elections in this state.) The differences are there and should be looked at with more than just a 'why can't we unite around me' attitude. (This is how natives often perceive the newcomers arguments. It's much more complicated than you lay out. And there are ways to overcome it. There are ways to unite the concerns of people from the older decaying cities with the richer suburbs and find common cause. But blaming the natives is not one of them and is divisive.)

Now about that fraud in 2004: Let's go check the facts file and see what Republican states were warned about election problems.



or this one:



There is a lot more on the election and how the lawyers were prepared. (hundreds of articles. I've been collecting them.) The report on the Florida lawyers and what went wrong is too long to post online. PM if you want it and I will send it to you.

Finally, this is what people 'in the room' saw in Nov 2004. This is first hand, public knowledge that does name names, including a current Mass candidate for Governor.



Maybe you should call the Patrick campaign and ask them what happened. Deval was in the room. (I trust him. I was a Patrick delegate at the convention. He's a good man.)

patrick is my horse as well; bonifaz has my heart but i'm not a registered dem- although it was two delegates from the Newburyport contingent (one a failed mayoral candidate, the other a dem apparatchnick who opposed me in my most recent election locally) who were elected as patrick delegates and switched on the floor for gabrieli- "Well, he wasn't in the race when we were elected for patrick, so we know the voters would have wanted us to exercise our judgement".

right.

as for homie v. transplant dynamic, i've found it particularly pernicious in NE, as opposed to other parts of the country i've spent time. even some areas in the south. stoic and independent NE.

as for a false sense of unity and how that lands, i agree with you 100%. in trying to preserve open space (something we are desperate to do here in Nbpt) we have been able to build a strong coalition of transplants and natives, which is really changing the political dynamics. it's kind of like environmentalists working with hunters to preserve tracts of lands; working with genuine common interests seems very promising.

poltically, it has actually been pretty easy for me personally. as you know, few small cities vote along party lines; i'm green. it has to do, i think, with your willingness to identify important process values (transparency is a big one, and very threatening to established powers), being willing to stand up for them, and being open to real community dialogue in decision-making. i poll equally well in the progressive sections of the city and the most conservative sections, populated by people who have lived all their lives here, it doesn't have much to do with me I think (thankj G-d), more that i see my role as clearing obstacles to genuine community participation in governing. I've never spent a penny in either election; last go-round the only publicity beyond challenging my opponent to a Lincoln-Douglas style debate on the issues (she refused) was to pen a piece in a local journal entitled "5 reasons not to vote for me for School Committee."

here in Nbpt, the sad reality is this; about 10 years ago, more than 50% of the population had moved in within the last 15 years; we have lost a lot of socio-economic diversity.

i have no doubt about Kerry's description of the morning hours of November 3rd, and i remember the op ed, i remember being puzzled that he was not specific about the advice being given to kerry- especially from those on the ground, who had to have known about the White lawsuit (see my other post)filed on the 2nd.

as for healy, i do think she's cooked. i think patrick will win, he has generated tremendous excitement in the hinterlands (and activated some real debate and reshaping of how local committees do or don't do business); i left the dems when it became clear that they were so set in their ways that it would take, in my estimation, a generation to change. Nominating hacks and sons and daughters of hacks... i never thought it would end. I applaud your work in the party, maybe someday there will be a place for me in the tent.

i find your analysis of lunch-bucket vs. liberals interesting. here in Nbpt, we see it as faux-liberals vs. progressives; wine and cheese vs. yard sale fundraisers. Faux liberals talk the talk, but don't walk the walk; they often cave to mayors around development issues, and seem to mutter about important issues but never get around to confronting needed change with an action plan. the progressives are very interesting; they really cross the board- townies, new folks, environmentalists; they find ways to build relawtionships and work towards common goals, and when they disagree, the disagreement lacks the venom and permanent scarring so common in politics.

This conversation has been on the whole very illuminating for me. i regret any snarkiness i mght have shown. glad you're in MA.

we should probably call a cease fire and move this to the MA listserve, or IM.
whalerider

the bane of my existence. On so many levels. Sigh! When coalitions work, they can result in great things like the Net Days held around the state in the 90's, wherein you get 'the new people' to come and donate time and expertise to a group effort to wire up schools to the internet. But it is oh so easy to exploit this and exploit the divisions.

New Englanders tend to stay put, despite what you read in the papers about the population loss. (Wrong question in my opinion. Massachusetts is the 3rd most densely populated state. We are only around 112 miles top to bottom and about 178 miles east to west. That is not a lot of room for 5 million plus people. Sigh again!) This gets into the politics when the 'new people' want 5,000 + square foot homes and max out to get them and just barely can make the payments. Then they don't want anything to do with fair taxes because 'fair taxes' is a poisonous phrase. Sigh!

BTW, transplants (which is the word I have always heard as a neutral adjective, with blow-ins being an example of a bad phrase which is unquestionably perjorative) are responsible for a lot that is good in the state. Oh for Gawd's sake, the food alone has gotten a hundred times better. Not to mention other cultural things that are just so much better than the '60's and '70's. And to go briefly way, way off topic, I still think the Big Dig is part of the insular culture around here that doesn't want anyone else to look into anything too hard because it is that 'insider vs. outsider' thing. Stuff like that strangles the region. (Long, long, long story.) This type of thing is everywhere here, where people protect 'their own.'

Ah, it is a longer post than this. Point the way to another forum and we can go off and discuss. I love Deval Patrick, but I worry that he will face problems this fall after the general election. My indicator is that almost no tax overrides have passed these last couple of years. I think there were only six on the ballot this year. People are feeling squeezed and they will not listen to certain subjects and Healey is only too happy to play on those. Sigh! But it's still early. (Gawd, I hope I'm wrong. But the areas that the Dems lost last time are not in any better mood this time. Sigh!)

Also a pretty inaccurate prediction of what will happen in '08.

kerry gave it up at 11 am, 11/3 (15 hours after the polls closed and his exhaustive search for impropriety somehow missed the White class action lawsuit filed on 11/2 alleging gross improprieties in ohio, litertally dozens of stories that were being picked up by msm about problems with machines and lines in ohio, the order of a judge in ohio to offer provisional ballots to those who mysteriously didn't get their absentee ballots....)

as for an inaccurate prediction about what will happen two years from now,don't you think its a wee bit too soon to call it inaccurate?

wishful thinking perhaps, bile perhaps, but making an inaccurate prediction for something that won't or will happen 2 years from now?

isn't that revisionistic futurism?

whalerider

elections are about American security and Bush and all the rest of you politicians, who remain silent about the elecion theft machines, have FAILED.

Sen Clinton's Count Every Vote Act, which has only six co-sponsors, was proposed in 2005. Obama's bill adds two more. Sen Kerry has co-sponsored both.
So, nine of 44 Dem senators have signed on to legislation to guarantee our votes. Where are the rest?

This from a Kerry floor speech last week re Count Every Vote:

"...that every voter in America has a verifiable paper trail for their vote. How can we have a system where you can touch a screen and even after you touch the name of one candidate on the screen, the other candidate's name comes up, and if you are not attentive to what you have done and you just go in, touch the screen, push ``select,'' you voted for someone else and didn't intend to? How can we have a system like that?

How can we have a system where the voting machines are proprietary to a private business so that the public sector has no way of verifying what the computer code is and whether or not it is accountable and fair?"

this is the second time Kerry has spoken out that I can remember, Kerry needs to get more aggressive about the secret vote counting machines, Kerry has a group that would get behind him that knows and understands these machines, if Kerry got ON TV and challenged the Repubs to a PBHC election in Nov, and it could be done, because its a smaller election.


Kerry would gaurantee himself the top job in 08, it would be the fastest way to get our kids home from Iraq, all we need is for Kerry to make the challenge, what possible excuse could the Repugs have for not wanting a straight-up PBHC race other than being cowards!

<sarcasm>

What is with all the BS ill-informed John Kerry Bashing sour grapes comments?

He is right - Bush has been totally irresponsible re middle east policy.

:hi:

I'm not sure there is anything Kerry could have done to avoid this. He might have tried to bring them to the table sooner, but I don't think the Israelis would listen.

It would be American troops firebombing the hell out of Lebanon, causing masive civilian casualties, and formulating futher terrorism in the hearts and minds of the Lebanese, rather than letting the Israelis do it?

Uhm... I'd rather not trade the asterik in a Roman Legion helmet for a question mark wearing a Prussian Guard helmet. Thanks anyway.

but hte state of Israel seems to be drawing no such distinction.

500 pound bombs seem to shred people pretty equally regardless of their political ideals.

Kerry was so much more Presidential, there was no contest in my opinion. Ah, but the teeming masses of freepers love their dumb cowboy so much they wanted him in another four years. Plus the diebold factor.

But what Kerry and everyone else fails to realize is that perhaps this plays right into the Bush doctrine - destabilize middle east countries, then install western-friendly democratic governments. So maybe Bush WANTS instability because it furthers his cause.