Do you think it is to late for Clark to enter the race?

[VoteClark]

I don't think so. I think he has enough support from DraftWesleyClark.com and yahoo groups to be just fine in this race.

I also think with Billionaire Soros and the Stephens Corperation behind him he will not have trouble getting cash and being competitive in this race of 9 other candidates.

:kick:
J4Clark

[Avalux]

1. Agreed

Let's not forget Clinton didn't enter the race until October.

[dfong63]

3. not quite the same thing

Let's not forget Clinton didn't enter the race until October.

Clinton had a track record in electoral politics; Clark doesn't.

[VoteClark]

4. Is that a plus?

Aren't a get deal of people sick of career politicians? They are ones that got us in this mess in the first place.

:kick:
J4Clark

[tameszu]

2. Plus, don't forget the grassroots: $500,000 in pledges already!

I assuming his campaign gets off to the right foot, Clark's 'Net fundraising operation will grow to rival Dean's very impressive outfit.

As the 'Net activity and MeetUp numbers show, there are tons of grassroots people who are primed to hit the ground as well as give to Clark, if he shows real potential when he announces.

Remember, Clark is the target of a sincere draft movement, which has already funded more radio and TV ads than some of the declared candidates.

[Vap Noose]

9. pledges

that's alot different from the real thing.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

5. Actually, I do...

He seems like a fine gentleman, but the nomination has already turned into a two or three horse race. It's Dean, Kerry, and maybe Gephardt. Everyone else is barely treading water. There simply isn't breathing room due to all the other candidates. In fact, I'm pretty sure such a late entry would be met by derision in the media -- ANOTHER Democratic candidate??? Sheesh...

If Wesley Clark wants to be President, he has two realistic options: angle for a V.P. spot, or gamble that the public still isn't smart enough to dump Bush, and wait four years.

- C.D.

[virtualobserver]

6. I think Clark has the stature to become a major player

And the worse it gets in Iraq, the more attractive a General may become.

I think he's a great candidate.

[Bread and Circus]

13. The only guy I have seen get better press....

than Bush is Clark. They love him and I
bet the farm they are going to be falling
over themselves when he announces.

[ranger25]

35. Agreed.........

.............the press loves him, he's a shoo in, eight years even. Anybody see him slap the taste out of Tom Delay's mouth on Wolf Blitzer?

[pa28]

7. No hurry

He can afford to wait because his supporters have already formed an impressive organization and fundraising base just waiting for the word "go". The timing of the entry is not important . . . only the quality of the candidate.

[deutsey]

8. Of course not

I'm just glad that those who have jumped in already chose to do so early. Bush/Rove Inc. has been planning for 2004 probably since before it stole 2000. We need to get our side fired up now. Maybe a Clark candidacy announced in September or later will help maintain interest and energy as we head into the fall and winter.

I for one am not at all annoyed at the number of candidates the Dems have; one more candidate like Clark won't be a bad thing, IMHO. Each candidate is energizing a certain part of the Dem base.

This is why I wish we could stop all the in-fighting. One day all these parts are going to have to unite behind the nominee. How easy that will be is largely determined by how much animosity we build up now among the various camps.

[Kahuna]

10. Nope. Still a lot of undecideds and lukewarm supporters out there...

If Clark enters I believe he will get the financial support and organization he needs to get the job done. He's already getting the media attention.

[Fleshdancer]

11. It all depends....

If the California fiasco didn't exist, I think Clark wouldn't have any problems entering the race. However, because the media is so focused on this insane recall, it might be harder for Clark to get his message heard. Dean is doing a great job right now, but there are still a lot of Americans who don't even know who he is. I was shocked to find out a few weeks ago that my own mother in law had no idea who Dean was. I get so wrapped up in politics, I forget that the average American doesn't even know who's running. Sad.

Even with the recall, Clark could do well...it just means that his campaign and his supporters will have to work extra hard on getting people educated on who he is, what he's running for, and where he stands on the issues. I recommend taking meetup.com seriously, it helps to organize the grassroots efforts in a way I've never seen before.

[VoteClark]

15. We rank 3rd and 4th for meet-ups

Behind Dean, Kerry, tie with Kucinich. So that is OK. Many politically active people know who Clark is because he was on CNN. So that helps. I imagine that once Clark declares we will go up in numbers in Meet-ups.

:kick:
J4Clark

[Fleshdancer]

16. Clark's meetup numbers

are impressive considering he's not technically running yet. Have you been to a meeting yet? If so, how was it?

[ignatiusr]

19. Yes

They are very impressive. I've been to a meeting locally, but it was just in a small town, and I was the host. I've seen footage of the big Meetups and gotten feedback from those who attended, and it definitely sounds like an entertaining and passionate crowd.

Interesting note about Clark's Meetup numbers: They went up by nearly a thousand when Clark was on Meet the Press. If he can get almost a thousand just from one appearance on MTP, think what he'll do when he actually makes an announcement, and continues to be in the news day in and day out. And that doesn't even take into account all the support he'll get from direct outreach, i.e. campaign ads, appearances, etc. It could get interesting.

[Bread and Circus]

12. Where can I find proof that Soros is behind him...

I would like to see this. I know the Stephens
connection, but have not read much on the Soros
connection.

[VoteClark]

14. Here are a couple links

Here are a couple links. They meet when Clark was the NATO Commander.

http://nevadansforclark.com/blog_page.html
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/people/features/1748/

[Aaron]

23. Can you quote the portion of those links that says Soros backs Clark?

I couldn't find it. I saw on the blog link that they were 'friends' - eh, it's just a blog. The other one said they were introduced to each other at a party - but nothing else. What am I missing?

[VoteClark]

28. Follow these instructions

go to "Edit", then "Find on this Page" then type in "Soros" then hit "find". It should take you right to it.

:kick:
J4Clark

[Aaron]

37. I did that and found no mention of Soros' supporting Clark

From one:
"Introducing Clark to billionaire financier George Soros and Canadian press lord Conrad Black, Holbrooke teasingly calls the general, whose formal title is supreme Allied commander for Europe, "The Supreme," then launches into a hummed rendition of "Stop! In the Name of Love.""

From the other:
"George Soros has pledged $75 million to help defeat GWB. Soros is a friend of WKC."


They met. They are 'friends' according to a blog(?) site. Where's the evidence that Soros supports Clark?

Has Soros even praised Clark in print? He has Dean and Kerry:

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/politics/national/n_8376/

“Howard Dean impressed me as a serious candidate with a broad vision and a fresh voice,” Soros says via e-mail. “Like Kerry, he is certainly a very attractive alternative to Bush."

[genius]

17. No problem. Did you see the article about dark horses.

I alrady have a favorite candidate and I don't know much about Clark. But he can't be worse than one of the people who is running.

[MercutioATC]

18. I watched the Clark TV ad and I liked it, but I'm concerned that

NOBODY in the general population has ANY idea what "draft" means. I really think the ads should say "ELECT Wesley Clark".

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

20. Yes.

[GOPBasher]

21. Not too late at all.

He already has grassroots organization in the form of the "Draft Wesley Clark" movement. I'm sure he'll have no problem getting money either.

Bill Clinton didn't get in the '92 race until October of '91, and Chimp went in pretty late in '99 as well, if I remember correctly.

[AntiCoup2K4]

22. The only problem I see with it is....

.... 9 candidates is already a crowded field, even under the best of circumstances. And it's true that most people, if asked, would say that only 2 or 3 of them have a real shot at the nomination. (Which 2 or 3 depend on who you ask.)

But these are NOT the best of circumstances. This nomination can't wait until late spring, let alone the convention. The nominee needs time to not only unite the Democratic party against Junior, but also to draw in reasonable Republicans, who must realize that Bush isn't a "conservative" by any stretch of the imagination, while also bringing back the Greens who realize Ralphie had his head buried deep in his own ass when he uttered the damnable lie that there wasn't "a dime's worth of difference" between Gore and Bush Jr.

The difference between the two has brought disaster upon this nation and the entire world with a regime very reminiscent of one financed by the ancestors of the very same people in the 1930's. And neither America nor the rest of the world can afford 4 more years of the son of a bitch who claimed he was a "compassionate uniter" but in reality is a ruthless dictator and a lying bastard.

Wesley Clark in the #1 or #2 slot on the ticket may very well be a great help in making this a reality, but he needs to make up his mind NOW whether he is in or out. Because in my opinion, the campaign to save America from the Bush Criminal Empire needs to be solidified by April 04.

[tameszu]

24. I think we will know one way or the other in 2-3 weeks, tops

There was a report that said he might not decide for sure until sometime in October, but Clark himself said "in the next several weeks," and previously said that he'd decide by the end of the summer, so I am thinking 1st week of September of maybe even earlier.

[UrsulaFandango]

25. Oh please - not a military man

The last thing we should be advocating is a military general to be our president. I have trouble how anyone could morally justify such a thing.

Clark lead a brutal air campaign against the people in Kosovo that resulted in many more civilian casulties than in Iraq. Congress never authorized that war, and in the end, the lies that had been told about genocide and mass graves of 1,000,000 people turned out to be a complete hoax.

[tameszu]

26. Why? Don't want to defeat Bush?

Clark is a retired general. In a liberal democracy, a retired member of the armed forces has as much MORAL right to stand for president as any other citizen.

In fact, every president since FDR except for Bill Clinton (and, I would offer, W) has served in the military. Some of them were pretty bad, yes, but I liked Eisenhower, Carter, and Kennedy.

On the war: I should note that at the time Congress was Republican-controlled, and that party didn't and still don't give a damn about any region of the world that isn't "directly in the U.S. interest" (narrowly defined). Because of the politcal pressure of those Republicans and Clinton's political cowardice (I like the man, but on these issues, he was a wuss), the U.S. failed to intervene or even lend the necessary assistance to UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda and Bosnia, leading to over 1,000,000 dead of genocide and ethnic cleansing and an uncountable number of rapes in those conflicts.

Second, the leaders and peoples of most of the world's developed liberal democracies--namely, the members of NATO--approved of this intervention. Nothing close to this can be said of the Iraq intervention.

Third, no one EVER claimed that there would be mass graves with 1,000,000 dead in Kosovo. That is simply wrong. The entire Kosovar Albanian population before the conflict was less than 1.5 million. You would have to be crazy to make that claim.

But the UN HAS however verified that there were mass graves containing around 5000 bodies and human rights groups and historians also conclude that the intervention stopped a massive and longterm refugee crisis from occuring, and relieved a still-existing one, which resulted from the Bosnia conflict. It was ethnic cleansing and traumatic, permanent, and massive dislocation that the intervention hoped to prevent. And it did.

I have no idea how anyone who has any knowledge of the slaughter that happened immediately before the Kosovo conflict in Bosnia--and not decades later as with Iraq--could think an intervention unjustified. NATO bombs and rearming the Bosnian army were what stopped the killing in Bosnia, of which Milosevic was a major player, and the awful siege of Sarajevo.

As for a hoax, I quote a joint, non-partisan http://shr.aaas.org/kosovo/pk/p1_2.html#descriptive">report written by European and American human rights lawyers after the Kosovo conflict:

"By comparing the estimated numbers of people who left each municipality over time to the times when NATO airstrikes occurred, the AAAS study concludes that only a small fraction of Kosovar Albanians fled Kosova/Kosovo as a direct result of NATO bombing raids. It also concludes that the mass exodus of refugees from Kosova/Kosovo occurred in patterns so regular that they must have been coordinated. In the context of descriptive accounts given by refugees, the most likely explanation for the migration is the implementation of a centrally-organized campaign to clear at least certain regions of ethnic Albanians.

(SNIP)

Previous work has concluded that the geography and timing of Kosovar Albanians’ mass departure from their homes suggests that there was an organized campaign to clear ethnic Albanians from parts of Kosovo. The patterns of people killed in Kosova/Kosovo over time and across space are similar to the migration patterns and also imply coordination. Narrative reports in the interviews in these datasets attributed the vast majority of the killings to Serbian forces. This claim is consistent with the information collected by other organizations such as the International Crisis Group30 and OSCE.31 In light of the descriptive sources’ attribution of human rights violations to Serbian forces and given the conclusion that the patterns of killings suggest central coordination, this report concludes that Serbian forces were responsible for conducting a coordinated campaign of killings against the Kosovar Albanians."

[tameszu]

27. The Kosovo campaign resulted in far fewer civilian deaths in Iraq

The assertion that Clark led a "brutal air campaign against the people in Kosovo that resulted in many more civilian casulties than in Iraq" is simply wrong. Human Rights Watch--while indicating that NATO could have done more to minimize civilian casualties--reports that NATO bombs caused at most 500 civilian deaths. The Iraq conflict has probably led to the deaths of over 5,000 civilians.

Civilian deaths in a war are always tragic and if preventable worthy of blame. It's a crime if the war itself was unjust. But in this case, considering the political constraints, NATO didn't do badly. The alternative was 250,000 dead as a result of the Bosnia conflict, as a result of the rest of the world's inaction.

[VoteClark]

29. Provide evidence of this?

Counterpunch does not count.

[VoteClark]

30. I thought Clinton and the Rupukes backed that war?

Would it not be odd for Repukes to condemn a war they supported? Or the Democrats to attack Clinton? Maybe not, but if we back off for that reason, we don't stand a chance in the 2004 election.

:kick:
J4Clark

[kilo50]

32. May be just what we need

After the military debacle in Iraq a successfull general who led a near bloodless ( for the US ) campaign may be just the person we need to conduct our withdrawl.

[ranger25]

34. Keep voting Green

Moderation in all things, need another clue? you do seem rather clueless.

[TacticalPeek]

43. Puh-leeze...

Plant, water and grow a clue.

As a little lab experiment, invest time/effort/resources and elect an anti-military or anti-religious candidate to state-wide office in two states first.

I doubt very seriously if that will yield a promising prototype for similar election to the presidency.



edtd:tipo

[DrFunkenstein]

31. Not Too Late To Be Kerry's VP

Kerry/Clark ticket would be decorated one-two punch

"Whatever the merits of all the other candidates, it would badly complicate Mr. Rove’s "patriotic" strategy if Messrs. Bush and Cheney were required to confront not one but two progressive Democrats who served in Vietnam."

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15172&CFID=7975769&CFTOKEN=28445278

<>

<>

[ranger25]

33. Clark/Richards 2004

Watching Wesley Clark slap the taste out of Tom Delay's mouth on Wolf Blitzer, makes Clark look like a shoo in. Tom may have to hire Ann Coulter to do his talking for him now. Wesley Clark and Ann Richards 2004. We can all watch Cheney's heart explode on stage in the VP debates. Anybody hear the #2 Chimp dissing conservation as irrelevent due to our energy demands. He's got ANWAR for balls.

[phillybri]

39. Not too late, BUT he needs to move soon....

Man, I hope he does. Kerry is losing me fairly quickly....

[robbedvoter]

36. Have you seen Peperbelly's poll on GD?

Everyone like me who somewhat supports dean 9but balks at the NRA thingy) will happily jump in Clark's field. I am ready to volunteer for him. Also, I checked the Meet-up tracker - for someone not yet in the race he's doing pretty good:

MeetupTracker 2004

Dean (D) 86617
Kerry (D) 8800
Kucinich (D 8308
Clark (D) (Draft) 8085
Edwards (D) 1201
Bush (R) 971
Gore (D) (Draft) 572
Graham (D) 481
Gephardt (D) 427
Lieberman (D) 251
Nader (G) 131
Moseley Braun (D) 87
Sharpton (D) 82
Smith (L) 25
LaRouche (D) 5

As for the dreamer with "Kerry's VP" - you may want to check into how people feel about the war in Iraq, the stolen election and about "the guy who said he invented the internet not doing so good". If I wanted contempt, I'd vote for bush!

[VoteClark]

38. Yeap, it is amazing actually!

I was surprised by that to be truthful. I know that if Clark is doing that well in DU he going to do very well in the off-line world. You got to think about it. Dean is at least 2x ahead of all the other candidates online. So if Clark is tieing or coming close here, well, he is going to kick butt off line, with the elder crowd, and moderates on his side. I even see afew Republicans pulling for this liberal slanted General. Even Rush and Charles Black can't find anything to insult him to much on yet.

GO CLARK!

:kick:
J4Clark

[davidinalameda]

40. nope

I think that a strong candidate could still get in up until late autumn

beyond that, probably not

[LynneSin]

41. I'm slightly torn

Because it seems the democratic race for the nomination is starting real early and the way the fur is flying it'll be tough for another candidate to jump in the fray.

But I do like what Wesley Clark is all about and he could jump to #2 on my list of candidates I'd support in the primaries (which doesn't change from the fact that I'm supporting the dem once the nomination is picked).

Personally, if Clark doesn't get the nomination I do like the idea of him as a VP.

[disgruntella]

42. I don't think it's too late

Honestly, I think only two groups of people are paying attention to who's who in the Democratic primaries at this point:

1) Committed Democrats and progressives who vote in every election
2) People committed to a particular Democratic candidate for 2004

Maybe I'm buying into the media's non-coverage of the Dem candidates, but I think there's lots of undecided Democrats and people who are sick of Bush. And I think a lot of those folks couldn't name 5 out of the 9 Dem contenders at this point.

Clark's unique background and style will make him stand out amongst the other candidates no matter when he enters. I do hope it is soon, though, just so I can get a little more info than the "Draft Clark" web sites provide.

[poskonig]

44. Yes.

This alone won't sink him -- there are a lot of undecided. However, many who have already given money and volunteer hours to specific candidates are going to be reluctant to jump ship at this stage in the game.

[The Sushi Bandit]

45. Clark "Appears" to be for the environment???

This is from the draft clark website:

Environmental protections "appear" to be part of Clark’s overall global and progressive vision for America.

Just one caution... Appearances can be deceiving!!

[carpetbagger]

46. He opposes ANWR drilling

He views global warming as a problem requiring action.
He's also the chairman of the board of a corporation that is developing more efficient electric engines.

I'm sure you'll hear more.

"... a hundred years out you have to think of the environment and your legal, constitutional institutions. And if you’re going to work the environment and those institutions, that work has to start today. Because, it takes a hundred years to work effectively and protect the great gifts we’ve been given in this country. A hundred years from now, it’s going to be very important that we make America a beautiful, safe land. We want our grandchildren to really love it here. We want people from all over the world to come here. We want it to be a natural, a national park, a treasure, all over the world. We can do that but we have to start now." _-Wesley Clark, June 2003

[VoteClark]

47. You should stick to talking about your own candidate

You OBVIOUSLY don't know that the reason that the word "appears" was put into the website is because it is an "unoffical" website for Clark.

The authors of the website are allowing Clark to speak for himself. They can not say with "absolute fact" on what Clark stands are.

All they can do is find quotes of what Clark says on the issues and comment on them.

:kick:
J4Clark