The curse of the Cowgirl--or how I doom presidential candidates to defeat.

[bklyncowgirl]

Does anyone else feel the way I do?

I love a good presidential primary campaign. I like handicapping the candidates, picking out a long shot and watching him or her grow. Sometimes I fall in love--it's a beautiful thing--the problem is that whenever I fall in love with a candidate it becomes the kiss of death. Here's a list of my fallen favorites over the years.

Gary Hart:
What a cool guy, what a brilliant foreign policy mind. My dad met him at a photo op at a neighborhood bar and Gary bought him and everyone else in the joint a beer. Dad thought Gary was the second coming of Jack Kennedy. I was ready to go work on his campaign--then came Donna Rice and that photo op on the good ship "Monkey Business". Oops, maybe he was the second coming of Kennedy after all.

Jerry Brown:
I'd always kind of dug the offbeat, environmentalist, rock star dating, California Governor but when he announced in 92 after years absent from politics he was the longest of long shots. I heard an interview on a New York public radio station and said, Wow, if he can get an audience he's going places. Somehow Jerry managed to catch fire, winning a few primaries and by the time New York rolled around he was the last alternative to Clinton standing. Well, we all know how that turned out.

Bill Bradley:
Alright it was a long shot but Bill was a good guy and I was none too fond of Gore at the time.

John Kerry/Howard Dean:
This one's sort of different. I was an early Kerry supporter, I'd admired his work on the Iran Contra investigation but I was put off by his half-hearted campaign. In the meantime Howard Dean was catching fire. I heard Dean in a long interview with Chris Matthews and immediately fell in love--Sorry John. Unfortunately this was the same interview in which Dean said that he would like to break up the media monopolies--Oops. Coverage of Dean went from wonder at his Internet fund raising to focusing on his unfortunate occasional brain to mouth disconnects--and his more provocative--usually prematurely true--deliberate statements. At the same time Kerry began to pick up steam the minute I dumped him. The curse of the Cowgirl strikes again.

Now we have another campaign. I'm looking to fall in love again. I could easily fall for Barack Obama's charisma and feistiness and the fact that he was right on Iraq before it was popular or maybe Bill Richardson's experience and regular guy demeanor. If Al Gore gets in all bets are off, I fell in love with him after seeing "An Inconvenient Truth".

But I am the kiss of death. Maybe Barack or Bill or Al would be willing to pay me to fall in love with someone else.

Hi Hillary...I'm Bklyncowgirl and I'd love to see a woman president.

[WestHoustonDem]

1. LOL - My support is just as valuable to candidates

Let's get on the Hillary bandwagon before it's too late!

[OneBlueSky]

4. hey, Jerry Brown wasn't your fault . . . when a reporter asked him if he'd ever smoked pot . . .

he said "Yes . . . but I never exhaled" . . . :)

[bklyncowgirl]

7. He actually said he never tried it. Problem was no one believed him.

I mean if you hang around with people like Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, the Eagles, David Crosby people are going to sort of believe that you're not exactly a stranger to the wacky weed.

There were some anonymous former state troopers who claimed that Jerry was none too fussy about his pals using drugs in his presence. There was also something about a couple of roaches found in a soda can in Ms. Ronstadt's bedroom after the Gov. had spent the night. They backed down when he threatened to sue and he had lost the NY primary by this time and was pretty much finished but it's been speculated that this was Bill Clinton's insurance policy.

Read Primary Colors by Anonymous (Joe Klein) it was based in part on this story.

[bklyncowgirl]

6. Loser lovers for HIllary? Maybe she'd pay us to get lost!

This could get lucrative.

[WestHoustonDem]

9. She's got the funds - I'm in!

:rofl:

[mac56]

2. Hmmm...

"Maybe Barack or Bill or Al would be willing to pay me to fall in love with someone else."

Would that then be called....a "reverse cowgirl"?!

Sorry, couldn't resist. :evilgrin:

[shain from kane]

3. Saddle up! Enjoy the ride, even if it's only 8 seconds.

[Bucky]

5. Only 8 seconds!!

Oh, right, we're talking about politics here.

Nevermind.

[flpoljunkie]

8. I'd love to see a woman president, too, but am NOT. BACKING. HILLARY.

Not. Backing. Hillary.
Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate

01.20.06 - AUSTIN, Texas — I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone. This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

<>Oh come on, people — get a grip on the concept of leadership. Look at this war — from the lies that led us into it, to the lies they continue to dump on us daily.

You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine you have no idea what people are thinking. I'm telling you right now, Tom DeLay is going to lose in his district. If Democrats in Washington haven't got enough sense to OWN the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.

Do it all, go long, go for public campaign financing for Congress. I'm serious as a stroke about this — that is the only reform that will work, and you know it, as well as everyone else who's ever studied this. Do all the goo-goo stuff everybody has made fun of all these years: embrace redistricting reform, electoral reform, House rules changes, the whole package. Put up, or shut up. Own this issue, or let Jack Abramoff politics continue to run your town.

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=20250

[bklyncowgirl]

12. If I throw my support behind Hillary--she'll lose! Don't you get it!

I mean I could make some big bucks here.

Right now I can't think of any reason to support her other than my natural desire to see a woman president that and the amusement factor of seeing Bill back in the White House but if some candidate would be willing to make it worth my while to support her rather than him--I'm sure I could bring myself to overcome my reservations about her Iraq War record and her endless triangulation.

C'mon Barack. You don't want to see me carrying one of your signs, do you?

[TomClash]

10. So I hear you're for Hillary and Giuliani and McCain

and everyone else I'm not happy with. :sarcasm:

[Warpy]

11. Yeah, I love the losers, too

only mine started with with Hubert Humphrey, who ran against Nixon in 1968 and was as slimed by the media as Johnson's pro war clone as Kerry was by the Slime Boaters. He was also the last of the solid New Deal liberals.

Then there was George McGovern, slimed as a socialist. If his ideas had been adopted, we'd be nearly as healthy a people as the Europeans are.

It went downhill from there.

All my candidates were slimed by a media echoing GOP conventional thinking and all my candidates suffered from conservative campaign management.

I don't think I'm the jinx, I'm just right about what would have been best for my country. The jinx is a media full of complacent hacks who know that pleasing the corporate board members supersedes any debt to either the truth or the country, and a party full of smug lobbyists who turn campaign manager during every election season, more loyal to their lobbying clients than to the candidates or the country.

It's not us, hon, it's THEM.

[bklyncowgirl]

13. Well, sure, there is that. What makes me love'em is what makes the media hate'em

It did seem very bizarre that Howard Dean started his nosedive right after I declared my allegiance to his cause--on the other hand the interview that won me over was also the one in which he said he'd like to break up the media conglamorates--naturally I loved that--naturally NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN etc. considered that anethema and from that day on poor Howard could do nothing right. It also seemed strange that Kerry started to pick up support the moment I dropped him.

Then there was the Gary Hart thing. Sure he did it to himself but the timing was incredible. I call his office and tell them I'd like to volunteer. A few days later the Donna Rice scandal is all over the media.

What's more incredible is that more more I dislike a candidate, the more likely they are to win a general election.
I didn't care for Jimmy Carter but he won.
I hated Ronald Reagan but didn't like Carter and voted for a 3rd party candidate--big mistake.
I did not like George H.W. Bush but I had a kind of fond spot for Bob Dole's sense of humor.
I really did not like Bill Clinton in 2002.
I absolutely despised George W. Bush from the first time I saw him.

Just call me the diving rod in reverse.

[LiberalEsto]

14. Do NOT fall in love

with Dennis Kucinich - please!

[bklyncowgirl]

15. Don't worry: I like Dennis but I don't love Dennis--It's sort of platonic.

You know, they guy you like to hang around with, you're best buddy but he'll never be THE ONE.