All the candidates need to understand that we need radical change...

It will do no good to trim around the edges. The corporations have us all by the throat. They have filled the pockets of the politicians in Washington as they haul their ill-gotten profits off shore to hide so they don't have to pay taxes. It doesn't matter if the tax rate is 1%, they do not want to pay it. If we want a government of the people, it has to work for all the people - not just the wealthy and the corporations.

We are headed into a deep slide, perhaps a recession or depression. The dollar is sinking like a rock. The borrowing and spending of trillions of dollars has broken us down. Our jobs have left the country. We are all customer service representatives.

Bank of America has just bought Countrywide in attempt to stave off bankruptcy by them. Unemployment is going up and there are no life boats for the working poor or those that used to be on welfare. Small change will not correct the problems we face. We need radical change. I don't know if any candidates understand this need.

replaced by better jobs. We just needed to create them. Well I don't know how they expected those of us who lost our jobs because of outsourcing to hang on until those great replacement jobs materialize? Let's hope new energy products will save our economy.

They serve their corporate pay masters and have done so for a very long time.

Don't look to any "electable" candidate to break this cycle; historically, such change for the better always stems from the bottom up, not the other way around.

Other things to consider. We've been encouraged to invest our life savings and future in a stock market that is sinking like a rock. Gas prices mean a lot of homes that wouldn't be on the market otherwise, will be due to inability to afford the gas to continue to drive to work. Due to the fact that no one else can drive either and I'm guessing the possibility of loans that are almost impossible to get, these farms are going to go cheap; probably to corporate farmers and even if you did buy it there's the little problem of what do you with it after you buy it because you won't be able to farm. NAIS (passage of which has become a yearly if not more often occurrence) is intended to nail down the coffin lid by putting small farmers and your local farmer's markets out of business; that probably includes organic farming. Actually, according to what I've read recently, they've already started moving toward blocking small farmer access to the market via other means but NAIS is intended to make it complete. Corn is being diverted into making ethanol but even if they switch to something else, they'll be using that crop land (a finite resource) to produce it; ergo less food production, more imports from God knows where. And then there's all the water that alternative fuels such as ethanol require and the water shortages that we have even now.

Our infrastructure is crumbling as was stated last night on Moyer's Journal. I was watching a boil water order they have had out for several days around here for a town with a population of about 50,000. That's insane.

I don't think any of the candidates have a clue and I don't know what they could do about it even if they did at this point.

We do live in a democracy, and we need a candidate who can get 51% of the vote.

Don't forget that large numbers voted for Bush in both 2000 and 2004. If we have a candidate that is too blunt about reality, the republican candidate will win in a landslide.

I'd rather a candidate that appeals to the majority, and who will start things going in the right direction, than one who will lose in a landslide and give us another 8 years of republican destruction.

perhaps you should make an OP on this subject? It has merit.

Another rightward/hawkish dem {intentionally closer to the right} will only bring the same old song and dance, albeit with a slightly friendlier face. If someone who was very outspoken and, as you put it, "blunt about reality," had national exposure, it could create a domino effect. The establishment powers understand this all too well. Hence the mainline media obscuring 'real change' candidates.