Kerry revives 2004 election allegations

WASHINGTON - Sen. John Kerry didn't contest the results at the time, but now that he's considering another run for the White House, he's alleging election improprieties by the Ohio Republican who oversaw the deciding vote in 2004.

An e-mail will be sent to 100,000 Democratic donors Tuesday asking them to support U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland (news, bio, voting record) for governor of Ohio. The bulk of the e-mail criticizes Strickland's opponent, GOP Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, for his dual role in 2004 as President Bush's honorary Ohio campaign co-chairman and the state's top election official.

"He used the power of his state office to try to intimidate Ohioans and suppress the Democratic vote," said Kerry's e-mail.

Kerry, D-Mass., conceded the election when he lost Ohio and its 20 electoral votes. A recount requested by minor-party candidates showed Bush won by about 118,000 votes out of 5.5 million cast. But Kerry's e-mail says Blackwell "used his office to abuse our democracy and threaten basic voting rights."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060828/ap_on_el_ge/ohio_ke...

In 2008, when the same thing happens again, will it take you another 18 months before you speak out?

That's just what we need to do.

Why don't you realize this - Kerry was a prosecutor, one who was always careful about what LEGAL EVIDENCE he had to make his cases.

YOU didn't have any legal evidence to continue in court on Nov. 3, 2004, and the Dem party team of election lawyers who decided there was no way to continue didn't have any, either.

We have very few Dem lawmakers who even believe in election fraud, especially with the machines, and your intention is to discard one of the most prominent?

smart

that Kerry collected millions in donations from us for a special fund to pay for a legal team he was assembling to challenge any suspicious results/voting irregularities. He never returned our money to us. Then as soon as the polls closed and projections showed Bush was ahead in Ohio, he conceded and sent all his lawyers in Ohio home, all of whom were royally pissed. Edwards was royall pissed as well, and it showed on TV. Kerry had just trotted Edwards out in front of the cameras the night before to renew their pledge to "fight until every last voted is counted" (their phrase for a legal battle for recounts in contested states like Ohio).

Legal evidence doesn't just appear magically the morning after an election. It is developed over weeks and months through investigation, which was the job his legal team in Ohio was there to do. Had Kerry given them a chance to do their job, they undoubtedly would have handled it competently, and gathered all the evidence necessary to prove the Republicans stole the Ohio election. Kerry would have been our President.

I support the things Kerry has been saying since the election about just about everything he talks about.

The problem is, he's 2 years late and too many millions of our dollars short. He wimped out on so many levels in 2004 I went to the polls feeling sicker to my stomach than I did when I voted for Anderson in 1980 as a protest against the weak Dem party which opposed Reagan.

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You just haven't been listening. Kerry's spoken out plenty of times before now.

Where's the rest of the Dems?

Forget it John.

not win the Democratic nomination.

He did, though.

Since he's still in office now, very ably representing his constituents in blue Massachusetts, and since he continues to garner around 100% from liberal interest groups in his voting record, and since George W. Bush is a flagrant liar and cheat, I think he's very much right now.

He's one of maybe 40 people who by law of averages will be in contention for the U.S. presidency.

A handful are Republicans; a larger handful are Democrats.

John Kerry is one of them.

But he's as crappy a campaigner as a bag of broken hammers.

In the words of John Edwards, "We CAN do better."

Don't forget, Kerry won the election. Bush-Cheney cheated in Ohio, stealing 20 electoral college votes and with them the national election.

If Kerry-Edwards had run a bad campaign 1) they would not have won as they did and 2) neither would be in serious contention for the nomination in 08. Both are.

It's an old habit.

I don'thave to lockstep behind anybody, though. That's for the Republic Party.

P.S. Sit down for this one: I loathe Lieberman. Started when he was a Dem.

It's an old habit.

I think that's your old habit.

rules of engagement. We are on very shaky gound here.

Over and out.

"smarting off."

It's in your profile.

Thanks.

You can't be serious?

This is a PUBLIC message board.

Sheesh.

than the DNC? Seems to me that the RNC spent four years PREPARING to crush the Dem winner of the election through vote suppression and machine fraud. How did the DNC counter those efforts over that four year period?

It looked to me like Kerry ran his campaign SUPERIOR to Bush crafting better policy positions, submitted better plans, and gave better speeches and rallies, and then won the debates decisively.

How did the DNC do?

How did the left media do?

slimed by the chicken-hawks.

Sometimes, I think it is hard on the first 2% (like we at DU) to know the truth, months, years even decades before the rest of the population knows.

I loved Kerry when he spoke for the Detroit Winter Soldiers and I have never stopped.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/01/18/ke...

is doing.

It's not too late for any American citizen to object to Democrat Strickland's Republican opponent's complicity in the theft of the 2004 election in Ohio.

If I can say Blackwell is a cheating, lying asshole, so can Kerry. So can RFK, Jr. So can anybody who thinks Blackwell is a deceitful weasel backed by far-right fundie nutcases. Kerry's not only within his rights, his campaigning for Blackwell's opponent is very close to required conduct of party standard-bearers for most of the history of this country.

Kerry's remarks target Republicans in general and Blackwell in particular. That's leadership. Let's dump Blackwell, let's elect Strickland in Ohio, and let's stop slamming Democrats.

Here is one of the first - January 18,2005 - when there were NO big Democrats backing him. Clinton was babbling about Kerry not taking his advice and endorsing all the gay bashing amendments - that this might have led to a Bush landslide, as Kerry was among the first to back gay rights on the Senate floor, was lost on him. Many Senate Democrats and the media stabbed him in the back and acted as though it was presumptuous that he should still have a role as a party spokes man - though that is the norm.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/01/18/ke...
"In his first high-profile address since conceding the presidential election, Senator John F. Kerry used Boston's annual Martin Luther King Jr. memorial breakfast yesterday to decry what he called the suppression of thousands of would-be voters last November.

"Thousands of people were suppressed in their efforts to vote. Voting machines were distributed in uneven ways," the former Democratic nominee told an enthusiastic audience of 1,200 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in South Boston."

"In Democratic districts, it took people four, five, 11 hours to vote, while Republicans through in 10 minutes. Same voting machines, same process, our America," Kerry said.
<snip>
In an e-mail message he sent to his supporters on the day before Congress certified the election results earlier this month, Kerry cited "widespread reports of irregularities, questionable practices by some election officials, and instances of lawful voters being denied the right to vote" in the battleground state of Ohio.


Recently - here are his words from the floor of the Senate:

"Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oregon for his discussion of an important way of having accountability in voting . I must say that I saw how that works out in Oregon. It works well. It works brilliantly, as a matter of fact. People have a lot of time to be able to vote. They don't have to struggle with work issues or being sick or other things. They have plenty of time to be able to have the kind of transparency and accountability that makes the system work. There are other States where you are allowed to start voting early--in New Mexico and elsewhere.
It is amazing that in the United States we have this patchwork of the way our citizens work in Federal elections. It is different almost everywhere. I had the privilege of giving the graduation address this year at Kenyan College in Ohio, and there the kids at Kenyan College wound up being the last people to vote in America in the Presidential race in 2004 in Gambier, at 4:30 in the morning. We had to go to court to get permission for them to keep the polls open so they could vote at 4:30 in the morning.

Why did it take until 4:30 in the morning for people to be able to vote? They didn't have enough voting machines in America. These people were lined up not just there but in all of Ohio and in other parts of the country. An honest appraisal requires one to point out that where there were Republican secretaries of state, the lines were invariably longer in Democratic precincts, sometimes with as many as one machine only in the Democratic precinct and several in the Republican precinct; so it would take 5 or 10 minutes for someone of the other party to be able to vote, and it would take literally hours for the people in the longer lines. If that is not a form of intimidation and suppression, I don't know what is.

So I thank the Senator from Oregon for talking about the larger issue here. He is absolutely correct. The example of his State is one that the rest of the country ought to take serious and think seriously about embracing.
This is part of a larger issue, obviously, Mr. President. All over the world, our country has always stood out as the great exporter of democratic values. In the years that I have been privileged to serve in the Senate, I have had some extraordinary opportunities to see that happen in a firsthand way.

Back in 1986, I was part of a delegation that went to the Philippines. We took part in the peaceful revolution that took place at the ballot box when the dictator, President Marcos, was kicked out and ``Cory'' Aquino became President. I will never forget flying in on a helicopter to the island of Mindanao and landing where some people have literally not seen a helicopter before, and 5,000 people would surround it as you swooped out of the sky, to go to a polling place where the entire community turned out waiting in the hot sun in long lines to have their thumbs stamped in ink and to walk out having exercised their right to vote.

I could not help but think how much more energy and commitment people were showing for the privilege of voting in this far-off place than a lot of Americans show on too many occasions. The fact is that in South Africa we fought for years--we did--through the boycotts and other efforts, in order to break the back of apartheid and empower all citizens to vote. Most recently, obviously, in Afghanistan and Iraq, notwithstanding the disagreement of many of us about the management of the war and the evidence and other issues that we have all debated here. This has never been debated about the desire for democracy and the thrill that everyone in the Senate felt in watching citizens be able to exercise those rights .

In the Ukraine, the world turned to the United States to monitor elections and ensure that the right to vote was protected. All of us have been proud of what President Carter has done in traveling the world to guarantee that fair elections take place. But the truth is, all of our attempts to spread freedom around the world will be hollow and lose impact over the years in the future if we don't deliver at home. The fact is that we are having this debate today in the Senate about the bedrock right to vote, with the understanding that this is not a right that was afforded to everyone in our country automatically or at the very beginning. For a long time, a century or more, women were not allowed to vote in America. We all know the record with respect to African Americans. The fact is that the right to vote in our country was earned in blood in many cases and in civic sweat in a whole bunch of cases. Courageous citizens literally risked their lives. I remember in the course of the campaign 2 years ago, traveling to Alabama--Montgomery--and visiting the Southern Poverty Law Center, the memorial to Martin Luther King, and the fountain. There is a round stone fountain with water spilling out over the sides. From the center of the fountain there is a compass rose coming back and it marks the full circle. At the end of every one of those lines is the name of an American with the description, ``killed trying to register to vote,'' or ``murdered trying to register.'' Time after time, that entire compass rose is filled with people who lost their lives in order to exercise a fundamental right in our country.

None of us will forget the courage of people who marched and faced Bull Connor's police dogs and faced the threat of lynchings, some being dragged out of their homes in the dark of night to be hung. The fact is that we are having this debate today because their work and that effort is not over yet. Too many Americans in too many parts of our country still face serious obstacles when they are trying to vote in our own country.
By reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act, we are taking an important step, but, Mr. President, it is only a step. Nobody should pretend that reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act solves the problems of being able to vote in our own country. It doesn't. In recent elections, we have seen too many times how outcomes change when votes that have been cast are not counted or when voters themselves are prevented from voting or intimidated from even registering or when they register, as we found in a couple of States, their registration forms are put in the wastebasket instead of into the computers.

This has to end. Every eligible voter in the United States ought to be able to cast his or her ballot without fear, without intimidation, and with the knowledge that their voice will be heard. These are the foundations of our democracy, and we have to pay more attention to it.

For a lot of folks in the Congress, this is a very personal fight. Some of our colleagues in the House and Senate were here when this fight first took place or they took part in this fight out in the streets. Without the courage of someone such as Congressman JOHN LEWIS who almost lost his life marching across that bridge in Selma, whose actions are seared in our minds, who remembers what it was like to march to move a nation to a better place, who knows what it meant to put his life on the line for voting rights , this is personal.
For somebody like my colleague, Senator TED KENNEDY, the senior Senator from Massachusetts, who was here in the great fight on this Senate floor in 1965 when they broke the back of resistance, this is personal.
We wouldn't even have this landmark legislation today if it weren't for their efforts to try to make certain that it passed.

But despite the great strides we have taken since this bill was originally enacted, we have a lot of work to do.
Mr. President, I ask for an additional 5 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, on this particular component of the bill, there is agreement. Republicans and Democrats can agree. I was really pleased that every attempt in the House of Representatives to weaken the Voting Rights Act was rejected.
We need to reauthorize these three critical components especially: The section 5 preclearance provisions that get the Justice Department to oversee an area that has a historical pattern of discrimination that they can't change how people vote without clearance. That seems reasonable.
There are bilingual assistance requirements. Why? Because people need it and it makes sense. They are American citizens, but they still may have difficulties in understanding the ballot, and we ought to provide that assistance so they have a fully informed vote. This is supposed to be an informed democracy, a democracy based on the real consent of the American people.
And finally, authorization for poll watching. Regrettably, we have seen in place after place in America why we need to have poll watching.
A simple question could be asked: Where would the citizens of Georgia be, particularly low-income and minority citizens, if they were required to produce a government-issued identification or pay $20 every 5 years in order to vote? That is what would have happened without section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Georgia would have successfully imposed what the judge in the case called ``a Jim Crow-era like poll tax.'' I don't think anybody here
wants to go back and flirt with the possibility of returning to a time when States charged people money to exercise their right to vote. That is not our America.
This morning, President Bush addressed the 97th Annual Convention of the NAACP after a 5-year absence. I am pleased that the President, as we all are, ended his boycott of the NAACP and announced his intention to sign the Voting Rights Act into law.

But we need to complete the job. There are too many stories all across this country of people who say they registered duly, they reported to vote, and they were made to stand in one line or another line and get an excuse why, when they get to the end of the line, they can't vote. So they take out a provisional ballot, and then there are fights over provisional ballots. There are ways for us to avoid that. Some States allow same-day registration. In some parts of America, you can just walk up the day of an election, register, and vote, as long as you can prove your residence.
We have this incredible patchwork of laws and rules, and in the process, it is even more confusing for Americans. We need to fully fund the Help America Vote Act so that we have the machines in place, so that people are informed, so that there is no one in America who waits an undue amount of time in order to be able to cast a vote.
We have to pass the Count Every Vote Act that Senator Clinton, Senator Boxer, and I have introduced which ensures exactly what the Senator from Oregon was talking about: 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? Just accounting for it.

Congress has to ensure that every vote cast in America is counted, that every precinct in America has a fair distribution of voting machines, that voter suppression and intimidation are un-American and must cease.
We had examples in the last election of people who were sent notices--obviously fake, but they were sent them and they confused them enough. They were told that if you have an outstanding parking ticket, you can't vote. They were told: Democrats vote on Wednesday and Republicans vote on Tuesday and various different things.
It is important for us to guarantee that in the United States of America, this right that was fought for so hard through so much of the difficult history of our country, we finally make real the full measure of that right.
I yield the floor. I thank the Chair and I thank my colleague for her forbearance.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California is recognized.

the time's as good now (or better) than it was when he ran in 2004 in those early primaries. The polls had him way down and the political obits were scrawled from Seattle to Macon.

Then he went to work, invested some of his own cash into Iowa, and came from behind to win.

We don't know if he's going to run again or not.

If he does, though, there just might be quiet a few folks out there who still like him.

expanding on the good ideas he had in 2004. If Terrorism, foreign policy and Iraq are the main issues, most of the named contenders simply can't compare.

Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman may have been surprised that Kerry's sound bite tested the highest in a couple of focus groups, but I'm not. Kerry was compelling and an easy winner in the primaries, but his October rallies, speeches and debates were better. Since the election, he has actually improved. Watch this speech or any other on his web site - if you doubt that.

http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2006_05...

It may be that in 2004, not enough people believed that there was a saner way to fight terrorism than attacking unrelated (or even related) countries. Kerry was far ahead of others on this - as seen if you read the "New War".

He is helping to highlight some of the many irregularities that happened in 2004 to inform the masses of something possible for 2008 and this year.

The more people speak up about this issue, the more informed this country will be before the next election.

Sorry, John. You had your fifteen minutes. Shoulda fought it when it was hot.

the last 35 focking years if Kerry was only a 15minute man to be discarded?

You wouldn't know HALF the shit that's out there about the BFEE if he was the person YOU all like to PRETEND he is to make yourselves sound cooler or make a less productive lawmaker sound MORE productive.

Fock That!

Get a REAL history book and subtract evrything Kerry's done over the last 35 years and see what you have left.

I don't think Kerry is in it for fame or ever was, so the "fifteen minutes" bit is rather irrelevant and silly anyway.

Not to mention Kerry's been kicking ass in the Senate for over 20 years, and if a few folks who post on an internet forum don't pay enough attention to their government to know that, I'm sure Kerry really doesn't give a rat's ass - he'll just keep doing what he thinks needs to be done to serve his constituents and move the country forward, or at least stop the hemorraghing brought on by *Co.

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Lost?

reason why some of these flamers in Kerry threads need to be recognized for who they really are, and they have nothing to do with the Democratic Party!

Seriously, you dismiss his progressive credentials because he married a wealthy republican (who by the way is progressive and has denounced the Republican party b/c of her disgust over what they have become) And... his intellect is an act.... really.... what the hell do you base that on???? and by the way... I have no doubt in my mind that whatever *passing* grade the shrub got was by cheating or his parents paying off a prof...

whatever - give me a break... listen to both men speak you know the shrub's IQ has got to be 80-95 and Kerry's 140-160.

John Kerry married the woman he loved, Teresa. Teresa, who was more liberal than the moderate Republican who was her first husband, has more credentials than most on progressive issues. She has actively worked on environmental issues and was a major force in cleaning up Pittsburg. She also is working on issues from woman's pension rights to health care. Kerry would be wealthy now even without Teresa as he inherited money from his parents.

As to grades - for the 4 years, Kerry's were clearly higher. They compared only the first 3 years because the grade method changed in Bush's last year. Bush's grades were pretty uniform. Kerry's freshman year was awful though not bad enough for Yale to suggest he drop being on 4 varsity or Jr Varsity sports, the debate club (where he was a star), the political union (where he spent about 15 hours a week and although a Democrat on a Republican campus, was elected President for his Jr and Sr years) or the flying club he was in. Besides all that, he had a part time job!. Kerry improved each year - so the 4 yr average was much better than that of the first 3. They also didn't take the same classes. Kerry, for instance, got a "C" in French, though he was fluent in French since childhood - clearly he didn't take FR 101.

Clearly the grades reflect what he said of his academic career to Brinkley (before the grades were out) "he was a competent but not consciencious student". He also said he could have used a mentor and other things that implied he was not proud of how he did. As to intelligence, the new Madeline Albright book on foreign policy quotes John Kerry's 1966 Yale speech and comments on it very positively. The likelihood is that Kerry, a top student at the boarding schools in Europe, MA, and NH was more excited by meeting top political figures via the political union and participating in the debate club. (Reading Kerry's journal comments in Tour of Duty show a very well read, thoughtful mind and a real talent for words. ) He looked pretty brilliant in the debates as well.

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as the EVIDENCE warrants. Plenty of articles have been up here throughout the last 19months reKerry and his remarks about election fraud.

And get real about the election system - Kerry wasn't able to do ANYTHING AFTERWARDS. It was the Dem PARTY'S responsibility to secure the machines and counter RNC suppression tactics for the four years before the election.

Kerry told US what the DNC told HIM - that there was an election legal team in place that would be dealing with any election problems. They would have said that to ANY nominee and the nominee would do what Kerry did and TRUST that the Dem party infrastructure was handling their end of the campaign.

And it was YOU who chose to mock Kerry as a 15minute throwaway - if you didn't want your ass handed to you, you shouldn't have bared it. And I say that with ANGRY AFFECTION to someone who should know better.

But it was the RNC that employed the vote SUPPRESSION tactics, some of which were quasi-legal. THAT is what the DNC should have countered with legal challenges from 2001-2004.

There is no uniformity at all between states.

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2006/4/23/115230/700/2...



He's been speaking out over and over again about the fraud in Ohio and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, it may have escaped your attention, but he has constituents in Massachusetts, and has a job to do that involves many more issues than election fraud - issues that touch people far more directly every single day.

When was Kerry ever out of the spotlight and not speaking out? He is one of the people responsible for shining the damn spotlight on every issue since 2004!

swiftboaters, too, imo.



There's no going back, John.

The OP does not raise the issue of the Swiftboat liars.

It is unconnected to the OP's point.

who supported John Kerry in 04.

Your posts in this thread are dismisive and disrespectful.

I'm apologizing to the mirror right now.

btw, you misspelled dismissive.

about the OP's point, but you arrived with a different agenda and a flippant, tear-it-up attitude.

Thanks.

You came here to slam a Democrat.

You were flippant. You were rude and d-i-s-m-i-s-s-i-v-e.

You entered the thread to "smart off" as your profile indicates.

You were disrespectful to all but one of the people you responded to.

You had nothing of substance, nor developed points, to bring to the OP's discussion.

You cut off people without earning any of the dialogue, choosing instead to slam a Democrat and hop away.

At no time did you offer a context for your remarks and at least twice you shifted the context to accommodate your "smarting off."

You were called on these points and you failed to respond.

Thanks.

Logic anyone?

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I respect Kennedy and have since the 1960s. I admire him as someone who fought off some personal demons while writing and passing a huge amount of landmark legislation. I responded to that post because the TONE could most easilly be interrepted as negative to Kennedy.

I actually think that while Kennedy has been a legistor, par excellant, Kerry has more gravitas. The relationship between these two Massachusetts Senators is interesting - and they are at this point very close allies.

My posts are pretty clear to most people. I am a liberal Democrat and I support Kerry. I challange you to find anything I have ever written that is right wing. I also think that Pickles would be very unlikely to have written anything I have ever written on either Kerry or Bush. I think an apology is in order.

What does that mean in relation to Kerry? Sounds like they're making excuses to me.


Does anyone have that Blackwell quote about basically having the election in the bag?

But you didn't. It's a little late now. Let Kennedy and Papantonio's lawsuit move forward.

Like we "backed" Gore in 2000, when it was OBVIOUSLY stolen by ILLEGAL means?

The 2004 election was stolen by methods that were PERFECTLY LEGAL. If "we" didn't do shit to help Gore in 2000, WHY THE FUCK would Kerry expect "our" "help" to be sufficient to overturn a LEGAL election?

or during the writing of the article. As if it happened in vacuum world.

Bill Clinton was already saying that he liked both Bush and Kerry and babbling that Kerry rejected his advice to support all the gay bashing amendments - which with Kerry's record would have been a disaster - not to mention Kerry has integrity and values it.

The media that squashed the Tang story that had at least some merit - while giving thousands of hours of free media to people proven to have lied. (From the beginning Kerry's fitness reports showed these people WHO IN THE 60s wrote these glowing reports to be lying now - since the election it has even been proven at least some made money doing it. Is that the media that would have backed him? As Bush started the invasion of Fallujah?

Would the Democrat Senators who have tried to designate almost everyone BUT Kerry as their spokesman - though he was easily nominated by Democratic people?

Are members of Skull and Bones required to give each other 18 months notice?

.

with Kerry's integrity? Or any possible relationship between Kerry, dimson, and/or the rest of the members from their college days?
I truly can't see a connection other than a group in college that they were both in. They are far removed from each other, from party to ideology to personality.
People change and grow, at least some of them. So help me understand what I'm missing here.

should be held accountable for specific transgressions, I'll be willing to listen.

To convict people on bias alone is an attack.

I was in the goddamned Cub Scouts in 3rd grade and quit by the end of the school year. That doesn't make me a paramilitary rightwinger.

This Skull&Bones bullshit is useless blather.

and dropped out, but I don't even know what a Mason is, so thought better (til now).
Mom was a cub scout leader.

Yes, S&B is useless blather to me as well, Old Crusoe, unless someone can convince me otherwise. That hasn't happened yet.

and good wishes here at the end of summer.

Best wishes, and hopes for November!

and Kerry - How do YOU explain this insidious connection? Both my brothers were too.
(But Laura was probably a girl scout - and I was too.)

THEY were in Boy Scouts! Oh nooooooo!!!

Do you think they might be in some nefarious cabal with Bush and Kerry?

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and for Blackwell to lose this race is a bittersweet outcome after he played hit man for Bush-Cheney in cheating Kerry-Edwards in 2004.

Kerry here reminds recipients of that email that whether he legally is held responsible or not, Blackwell subverted the spirit of citizenship in a constitutional democracy. I'm not siding with Kerry because I am a Democrat, or because I think he's right. I'm a Democrat, and Kerry IS right, but the target here is the Republican Party (which has cheated in other elections as well -- against Gore, against Tilden, etc.), and which is no longer the party of Lincoln and is now a confederacy of corporate con-men and fundie nutbags. The criticism is from History and not from partisanship.

Kerry's on solid ground with this criticism, as he usually is. Ohioans in polls say they are not fond of Blackwell and appear likely to give Ted Strickland a big win in November. Strickland's a good man, and I don't subtract from that here, but Blackwell lost the election in 2004 by cheating to win against Kerry, by playing the Buckeye Sniper for George W. Bush and Karl Rove et al.

Say bye-bye to the nice people, Ken.

I'm going to the Strickland inauguration (unless Blackwell totally loses his mind and tries what he succeeded at in the special issues election last year). It will be the greatest statement of freedom and democracy ever made in this country. Ohio is an oppressed state, occupied by the corrupt and inept and Blackwell is the glue and the brains that makes it all work. Adios dude, and watch for the special prosecutor with your name on it.

And like many on these boards, I'm volunteering for Democrats to sweep these shithead Republicans out of office.

In Ohio, I love the energy for Brown and Blackwell -- and for several other races, including Victoria Wulsin vs. mean Jean Schmidt. I am paying close attention to the Ohio returns on Nov. 7th and I'm hoping to see that tv screen light up with the most lurid, vivid shade of Democratic BLUE you ever saw in your life.

I hope you're doin' well, and all good wishes to ya.

governor.

While I think there were improprieties favoring Bush, I still think Bush won legitimately. However, I stand by my contention that the 2000 election was stolen.

You can't just go screaming "Diebold!" and voting machine conspiracies every time every time you lose an election.

For entirely different reasons, I think Kerry is the wrong candidate for 2008.

.

It is highly likely that Kerry would have won Ohio except for the extremely long lines in Democratic strongholds, some manpulation of changing polling places and some registrations (mostly Democrats) that were "lost". NONE of these are things Kerry could have challanged because you can't claim (or even prove in a legal sense) votes never cast.

The primaries will pick the candidate and it will depend on the issues important at that time and the relative stature of the potential candidates - if National security or the Iraq war is still the major issue, Kerry may well be the best candidate. (Not because he was a hero in VN, but because he was among the few to consider non-state terror an issue pre 911 and because more people now see that he was right on this in 2004. On Iraq, who else has a comprehensive plan - Kerry/Feingold is a plan.

Enough independent sources and investigations have borne that out.

And I find it more than a little ironic that most of the voters Blackwell disenfranchised in 2004 -- African-Americans -- he's now going after big time through his shameless courting of black ministers throughout the state.

Hey, Ken, just make sure that this time around you have enough voting booths and precincts open in heavily minority areas.

Shoot me, flame me, whatever, but John Kerry's statement helps the cause. It spotlights Ohio just before the upcoming election.

I'd rather him speaking about it than not.

Let's stop with the Kerry bashing. He's a great guy and I am glad he's on our team.

Kerry has fought every bad Bush action at least as hard as anyone else since January 2001. He was alone in criticizing Bush at Tora Bora - and was bashed by most Democrats for doing it.

As we turn into the autumn press for 06, I think it matters a great deal that we remain unified and in high spirits for the party.

Kerry's email does exactly what you say it does, and Ted Strickland and Ohio voters are the ultimate beneficiaries.

The Kerry bashing was getting me down.

You had your chance and blew it. You'll never be president now!

06 election.

Screw you for tying Blackwell to the Republican theft of the Ohio vote in 04.

Screw you for lending your time and talents to building the party by helping to elect other Democrats across the country.

Why, it's just goddamned intolerable what John Kerry is up to. Damn his wicked soul.

He's not worthy of the office after how he totally caved after ONE DAY.

You know it isn't true and you know why.

Were they strong enough in Ohio to counter the 4yrs of vote suppressing tactics the RNC focused on? Did the DNC have the machines secured for ALL the candidates on the ballot?

Was the Dem party legal team for elections well schooled on all the election fraud tactics?

And how did the left media do matched against the RW machine?

And how did Kerry match up against Bush again?

Or was it Kerry's job to run the DNC, the left media AND beat Bush?

the REAL problem goes uncorrected.

These elections are being lost in the years ahead of the actual vote.

The democratic party structure Kerry had "supporting" him was pathetic. They let down an excellent candidate and a great man. Not to mention the entire country.

Kerry fought back against everything he's accused of ignoring. His response was (a) not covered by the media and (b) not echoed by an aggressive raft of democratic counterpunchers.

the win during the vote count when it was most important. Many of those Dems who lost their vote lost it to an RNC who worked for the entire four years BEFORE the election to purge voter rolls and develop vote suppression tactics and control over the voting machines input and putput.

What was the DNC and their team of election lawyers and advisors doing all that time?

I have no idea.

Still trying to protect a BS talking point!

Maybe if her husband's allies - like Carville and Begala - would have been the least useful in 2004, Kerry would be President.

after 1996 and get even worse after 2000, the Dem party would have been out there COUNTERING all the vote suppression and election fraud that was used to make sure that any Democrat who won could never make it through the election fraud gauntlet to accept their place in the oval office.

You sound a lot like a child who doesn't like losing, so he's going to "take his ball and go home" Poor baby! I wonder how hard you worked to get Kerry elected. If you worked as hard as some on this board did, you don't quit before the game is finished. Kerry's going back in for the second round baby, and he won't quit until he's been KNOCKED OUT!! Your statement sounds familiar, oh ..I remember....but I won't stoop to your level by calling you out.

that fraud. They needed his voice and the voice of the party to share their outrage.

So why should they rally behind him now?

Same thing with Gore.

Maybe they should study the leadership in Mexico's voter fraud for how one makes a stand.

Kerry is campaigning FOR Strickland against Blackwell.

You got a problem with those provisions of the Constitution?

John Kerry can run for president if he wishes.

He's a titan next to many elected U.S. presidents since the founding days; and he deserves more respect than he's getting in this thread.

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US Constitution, Article II, Section 1

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.
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