Reply #64: When we starting picking candidates on how "good" they look...

[no name no slogan]

....we've all but ceded the whole election.

Dan Quayle looked like a movie star, but didn't do much as a Senator. Paul Wellstone looked like a garden gnome, yet his stature in the Senate was much bigger than his 5'6" height.

Quite frankly, most people don't care what a candidate looks like. The only reason they focus on any of that trivial crap is because the candidate has NOTHING NEW to offer the electorate, other than the same warmed-over "me-too" tripe that we've been offering for the last twenty years.

In the last three presidential elections, did any candidate offer a true change in direction? Despite the fact that more and more Americans feel that this country is going down the wrong path, did ANY major-party presidential candidate offer a truly different way?

Did any nomine (R or D) stand up for single-payer healthcare? For serious restrictions on corporate abuse? Did any one of them say that war is not an acceptable tool of foreign policy? Did any of them promise to break up agribusiness monopolies, and restore family farmers to their proper place in the economy? Did any of them promise that EVERYBODY would receive equal protection under the law, regardless of race, sex, ability, income, sexual identity? Did any one of them even ONCE say that mass media and large transnational corporations have too much control over our daily lives?

No wonder that, even with a gangster as president, we still can't get more than 60% of the population to vote.

Once you get a Democratic candidate who's not afraid to stand up for these issues, THEN you'll have NO TROUBLE getting a theft-proof margin of victory.