The BIGGEST waste of time on our side is this rehashing of

[smartvoter]

what Kerry did wrong, or whether he should have been floated, and so on.

We saw this with Gore. The same people who knew he won and were screaming "foul" after the SC selected W in 2000 devoted time and energy to griping about what Gore did wrong. "We all know Gore won, but dammit, here's why he lost..."

Is it fair to take a shot at Kerry for rolling over so quickly on Nov. 3rd? Maybe there's something to be said here. But analyzing his entire race and saying he was a weak candidate and so on is just a waste of time. He managed to get more votes than any candidate in history, except W, despite massive fraud and a wartime president. For some of us, the evidence he really won exists, which makes the arguments moot. For the rest of us, it is unclear who really won, which also make the arguments pointless. Unless we get the election system cleaned up, we'll be doing the same thing in 2008.

I'm seeing Kerry-bashing everywhere right now and think it's a huge waste of time -- especially since he is one of the few doing what we want right now when it comes to standing up to the bullies in power.

I'm all for diversity and dissent, but when it comes to issues like this, I just don't get it.

[Poppyseedman]

1. Kerry who?

Just kidding. But you are right about rehashing the election of 2004.

What more can be said?

The most important thing to do is focus on winning in 2006 as many Senators races as possible and to trim the margin of GOP seats in the House

[FogerRox]

2. focus on Election reform-- then fundraising for DEM CD candidates

I've got my race in 06 picked out--Anne Wolfe in NJ's 5th CD. Planning fundraisers now--hope to raise 50k by July 4th.
then win in "06.

THen we can impeach

[Poppyseedman]

3. Impeach Bush?

Never happen in a million years.

Even if we managed to win control of the Senate, the House is the body that brings article of impeachment up, then the Senate convenes to pass judgment and convict to remove, if Bush is found guilty.

The house is to far out of reach to gain enough control to seek articles of impeachment.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Nothing is out of reach with an honest and transparent election system.

"The house is so far out of reach..." --Poppyseedman

The theft at the top of the ticket was so dramatic, there has not been much investigation or writing about the other races (that I'm aware of) on the matter of Wally O'Dell's voting counting secrets, although there is much evidence that Max Cleland had his Senate election stolen from him in Georgia 2002, via Georgia's all paperless electronic system. The Senate race in N. Carolina was probably stolen via electronics (see ignatzmouse posts here at DU).

In any case, the majority views of the country, on Bush and all Bush policy, as reflected in numerous opinion polls over a long period of time now, dramatically demonstrates that the Bushite Congress is not representative. I would surmise that dishonest vote counting was the prime reason--made easy and untraceable by Diebold & buds--followed by the putrid influence of the rich and of global corporations on who can run and who can win, because of the exhorbitant costs of campaigning.

[Peace Patriot]

6. P.S. I completely agree about "Kerry bashing"--that is, throwing temper...

...tantrums about this one man, and blaming him, which I think implies a wish for a "white knight" to rescue us from our serious difficulties as a country and a democracy.

Kerry is part of a political organization and a general national political scene that we very much need to understand. Most especially, we need to understand WHY the Democrats acquiesced to this egregiously fraud-prone election system (electronic voting, counted by Bush partisans--I mean, really...), WHY they now turn a blind eyes to overwhelming evidence of election fraud, and WHY they don't seem to care if our votes are counted or not. It's a great mystery.

Trying to figure out WHAT happened--overall, or in the Kerry camp on election night, or in Kerry's own mind (for instance, did he KNOW the TV networks had fiddled the data on everybody's TV screens to hide his win of the exit polls?)--is all important, I think. It will be easier to fix this problem, and recover our right to vote, if we understand how things went so very wrong.

Trying to gauge the level of cluelessness or corruption (and what kind of corruption) in the Democratic leadership is important.

Fact-finding. Analysis. Strategy. These are essential. But blaming Kerry is ridiculous--it may have been helpful to some people just for letting off steam, at first, but it is no longer helpful. (And is he really the one to blame? And what level of blame? Hard questions to answer--and the answers are not obvious.)

And criticizing his campaign on the issues or strategy (apart from the election system itself and their failure to warn voters about it) is the height of absurdity. He won!

[m.standridge]

11. well, I mean geesh, he's just a human being

and he was given all these "deadlines"--like Gore was.
All these stupid 1700s deadlines that don't work in a multi-million population society.
They don't even give people time to THINK, much less time to count all the votes.

[rigel99]

9. YES Max Cleland and Roy Barnes were robbed in GA

by Diebold

and eventually someone will have to pay for that mistake.

the election was stolen... visit the new website for details...
www.countpaperballots.com

hint, the cool stuff is in purple..

either way, I will continue to say our cause is incredibly weakened by Kerry taking a walk with our money and our support and he has not said one thing to help us out (only his wife made mention of fraud, making Kerry all the more cowardly).

He took our money and is saving it for a 2008 race which makes no sense.

If we do not ban every single DRE machine in operation (a difficult prospect at best), we will not have a chance to choose another single democratic candidate anywhere DRE machines exist...

that money should be spent killing DRE machine use, period... this is dealbreaker time.

Kerry is out to lunch.

I don't call it whining or having a temper, I call it holding a man accountable for the millions we gave to his campaign and holding him accountable for the leadership he needs to exercise NOW that the press and others are finally picking up the fraud stories...

KERRY staffers must be reading these threads.. they must hear that the citizens have lost faith in his leadership period. I would back almost anyone for 2008 besides Kerry... anyone really....

HIS TAKING A WALK AT THE RECOUNT hearings will forever go down in history as his turning his back on the American people. I don't care what the 'strategic justification' he's a loser and a coward and I won't even give his people access to my detailed Georgia data if asked because I am quite sure he'd bungle the message....

[FogerRox]

8. never in a million---ahhhhhh subfuscus coperlite

Election reform =Dems in majority=impeachment--by summer 2007

[Poppyseedman]

17. I like your optimism, but

Election reform =Dems in majority=impeachment--by summer 2007

is smoke drifting up from your bong.:smoke:

Election reform as badly as it is needed will not happen under a Bush administration.

Dems in the majority is not going to happen in the House at least until 2008. The numbers needed to win a majority are simply to much to overcome in 2006 to impeach Bush in 2007. The Senate is a different story in 2006, but they can't impeach a ham sandwich.

Not trying to throw cold water around, but I'm a realist. Politics is a slow motion drama.

[FogerRox]

20. Ahh monsignor--I never said it had/was/will happen under Bush

It will happen at the local level----it is happinin-- right now

They could stop us at the local level by throwing us all in a Prison camp. Or passing a law mandating DRE's thru out the country.

But for now they seem to be bent on maintaining the facade of a real democracy. And as Long as they do that we have by the shorties my man.

yeah I do try to be an optimist--fight fight win win

roj

[Kip Humphrey]

4. except W? Er, in case you haven't heard...

the election was stolen. 64+ million people came out on November 2nd with the intent to throw Bush out. So, yes, Kerry had the most votes, the most voters, and nothing he could have done would have made the least bit of difference in either the truth of the election or its "reported' result.

[smartvoter]

7. I said flat-out "despite fraud" and that many think he won. nt

[rigel99]

10. HERE"s why it's not a waste of time to blame and hold Kerry Accountable

because hundreds of PHds work their ass off writing quality exit poll analysis and other statistical works.

The media in reviewing their work, put it on editorial pages or don't publish at all because they all say, "why isn't kerry behind this."

Like it or not, his silence hurts all our hard work.

His silence makes Kerry complicit in the crime.

His lawyer agreeing NOT TO BIND TO THE RECOUNT lawsuit (and only later joining as if to cover their asses), really shows the cowardly position

Kerry letting Teresa / his wife make a mention of fraud is cowardly (if it's OK for her to say the machines are hackable why doesn't he say it).

I don't care what anyone thinks, we need to bash Kerry all day long till one of his stupid staffers reads our posts and gives Kerry a clue.

THERE WAS MASSIVE NATIONWIDE FRAUD and when we left our fulltime jobs to prove it, Kerry was busy hoarding our money for a 2008 bid, and then going back on the gay folks by not supporting a Massuchussetts gay bill.

He's a coward and a wimp and I have lost all respect for that man, and Kerry bashing is what it takes to tell future Democratic hopefuls that we will not give another penny to a coward and a wimp and we should be demanding X% of the money spent on 2004 be spent now killing the use of DRE machines across the country....

[m.standridge]

12. well, you're right that was the effect of his actions, but he didn't

have time to think what to do. We're talking about hundreds of MILLIONS of votes here--and these old 1700s deadlines, set up back when we had 10,000 people in the whole country or something.
I mean, all these GOP judges--they were just determined not to give him a hearing, anyway, from the state to the federal Sup. Ct.
Look what happened last time.
And all Gore got from the media, was the HE was a sore loser--not that BUSH--who lost the Popular vote--was the sore loser.
So many people are so hypnotized by these notions that we have long enough to do this (number 1) and number 2 that it's a ball game.

[rigel99]

14. LAST TIME I CHECKED MY CALENDAR

it's May 17th..

Kerry has had plenty of time to do a press release in support of the now mounting evidence of fraud.

But more importantly, just watch his actions..he took the money and ran.

he's deciding not to fight on the side of over 70 Election fraud organizations representing the citizens voice in order to basically keep quiet and play nice so he won't rock any boats and perhaps win in 2008.

No, really, the he didn't have time argument is weak at best, and your wanting to stick up for him is admirable. I truly wish we could have confidence in Kerry, but I'm afraid with time, so goes the lack of my confidence that he has ever considered the citizens in his bid.
I admire your desire for true leadership in America, it is my wish as well.

He started off bad by paying for attack ads against Dean. Like Clinton he came out on the side of big business and we are lucky Kerry lost, because a Democract in office betraying the ideals of democracy is worse than a republican in office doing the same.

Where Dean is in all this is beyond me... I guess America truly does not have any more leaders...

even carter is suspect with his love affair with James Baker, a man who help steal the first election for Bush...

could we be any more like a sailboat caught in Irons, stuck in the doldrums of a leadership vaccuum

while our country's blood and money is being poured out as easily as a drunk man pours a bottle of beer...

No, the only real heroes I see anymore are Boxer, Tubbs Jones, Conyers and a whole slew of quiet democrats fighting like hell... most of the other democrats belong in jail... along with the republicans...

[vince3]

13. It's not Kerry's fault that he won the election.

[rigel99]

15. BUT IT's absolutely his fault to

lend not one iota of time/money or effort to the citizens who have mounted a significant legal case against

Diebold
Kenneth Blackwell
Cathy Cox
Elections supervisors in many counties of Ohio
Elections supervisors in many counties in Georgia


when these lawsuits prove successful, you'll find Kerry will stand up and find a way to take credit for the money, time and effort citizens spent proving out the truth.

HE DID WIN, by a landslide.... my estimates were he won by around 13-15%.

But he did not deserve to win. and he is wrong to make us all work so hard while he snowboards, and plays around and just hangs out like the nice little playboy pimping himself off to rich wives that he's become...

eventually he has to lead .. and if he's not capable he should hand the money he took from us for his leadership to someone who can lead....

[Blue Shark]

16. You are so wrong!....

...had JFK II stood up and said we challenge the reported vote totals...the fight would have been on (look at the Ukarine). I and every Kerry voter would have marched in the street to determine the truth.

...THEN every eye in the nation would have been on the OHIO Recount and they would not have been able to pull off the sham that was subsequently perpetrated. Kerry was hideously unprepared for the emineently foreseeable outcome and instead of the real fight for the presidency that should have begun on Nov 3rd. He gave a surreal concesion and walked away...condeming all of America to the catastrophic damage to be wrought by the dry drunk and his band of boobs given four more years.

...This information alone should have caused an honorable man to eat his gun, but no, he thinks he has a shot at 2008. What a disconnected individual.

...And the relevance of this scenario today? Let the next Dem candidate be aware that she or he will have to manipulate the vote to win...cuz ain't nothing gonna change between now and 2006. We have ceeded three elections now to the lying cheating thugs. Is that enough yet?

[Peace Patriot]

18. Well, here we go again. I repeat, it is utterly useless to blame Kerry

...for this appalling circumstance our country finds itself in, with overwhelming evidence of election fraud 2004, and the news monopolies blackholing it all--even to the point of spiking a well-written column about it, by an experienced journalist (as the Chic Trib did recently).

Neither of you understands what I'm saying. Kerry is part of a political system that failed to HOLD a VALID election, and that deliberately CHANGED the data on our TV screens on election day (the exit polls that Kerry won) to fit the official result (Bush won). Within this political system, the Bush Republicans fixed the election long before the election ever occurred--by blockading a paper trail for electronic voting in Congress, and arranging for their good buds at Diebold and ES&S to count all our votes in secret--with PROPRIETARY vote counting software. The Democrats failed to cry foul on this election system long before the election (when they should have). By the time the election occurred, it was all over.

How does Kerry fit into this picture, personally? Who knows? It could be anything from total complicity (which I doubt) to relative naivete regarding just how bad Dick Cheney and Karl Rove are. I think it was somewhere in between. It's also possible that they threatened him and his. We don't know.

The trouble with blaming Kerry is that you presume it was an honest election concerning which fraud COULD HAVE BEEN fought, and you also presume that Kerry was an honest to God peoples' choice candidate who COULD HAVE stepped into the role of "white knight" to demand an honest count.

There is a mountain of hard evidence against the first. We had a fraudulent election SYSTEM--egregiously non-transparent, unauditable, and unrecountable--going in. Democratic Party failure #1. As to the second, how did Kerry get nominated? Kerry, who voted FOR the war--something nearly 60% of Americans opposed, and something like 90% of all Democrats (the grass roots) opposed? He was SELECTED by the powers-that-be to STOP a genuine anti-war candidate, Dean, with the NEWS MONOPOLIES conniving to defeat Dean in the primaries.

And when these people who selected Kerry told him to shut up about it all and concede, how COULD HE HAVE FOUGHT IT without their backing?

I think this viewpoint of blaming Kerry is not productive. Why, why, why, why, why didn't he fight?--you ask. Okay, why? The man is not a coward. The man is not stupid. The man is not particularly corrupt as politicians go (not personally corrupt--from what I know about it). Why, why, why, why, why didn't he fight?

Unless you and I and others begin to understand the UNDERPINNINGS of our political system--the dark actors, the huge amounts of money involved and what that does to political debate and to candidates--and the influence on it all by war profiteers and GLOBAL corporations, we are not going to get anywhere. We have to know WHY Democrats give us a blank stare when we mention Wally O'Dell & buds counting our votes in secret, and how that doesn't seem quite...

oh...***********F A I R************!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...or something.

How much did they know? How complicit are they? What's going on with these people? And how do we deal with WHO THEY REALLY ARE in our effort to restore democracy?

I believe that people are very complex--and this utterly Byzantine, back-stabbing, lethal political environment doesn't make them any easier to understand.

Kerry coming forward and playing the "white knight" on election fraud and fighting the good fight might have been possible in a Jimmy Stewart movie (Gregory Peck movie?), or in some PAST America that didn't have the most corrupt government on earth, with the worst rulers, heading on a fast train right off the cliff of fascism.

John Kerry fighting the good fight IS a good movie. I LIKE that movie. It is the America I grew up in. But it is not the America that we are now faced with. And we MUST understand this.

And, by God, if they face me with a choice between the Bush Cartel and John Kerry, once again, I WILL vote for Kerry--if my vote has any chance at all of being counted.

I will choose the more civilized corporate rule--the kind that doesn't torture prisoners, rob the elderly, or slaughter 100,000 people to get their oil--over the thugs and gangsters we have in the White House now, any day--if I'm given any say in the matter. (I DON'T think Kerry would have invaded Iraq, on his own, by the way--which is why we had an engineered presidency, in '00, in the first place. Neither would Clinton or Gore have done it.)

These are the kinds of choices we are given, in this rotten to the core political system which has now robbed us of any choice at all. And I am a humanist in that sense--as opposed to a leftist ideologue. I put humans first, over ideology. If life will be a bit safer and better for human beings--say a bump in the minimum wage for the poorest of the poor, or a better chance for poor army enlistees to live out their lives, from a cautious approach to military intervention--and there is no hope of success for a real populist or leftist presidential candidate, I will not sit on my hands or throw my vote away. Gore over Bush, any day. Kerry over any Bush, any day. I also feel that the more civilized corporate rule leaves some room for change, whereas fascist corporate rule smashes all dissent.

It's just not relevant to me that John Kerry broke my heart on November 3, 2004. It was a young heart, living in an America that is gone. I think it was quite foolish of me to expect that he might come through. It taught a lesson to us all. And we had really better get this lesson good. Nobody is going to rescue us. We have to pick ourselves up and re-build our democracy from the ground up, and it's not going to be easy, and it's going to take a long time.

Getting rid of Diebold and its spawn is step no. 1. It's going to be a knockdown dragout over the next decade, at the state/local level (if we can hang on to state power over elections). But if we can start electing people who are accountable to us once again, we CAN restore democracy here. And this movement IS democracy. We are creating the future right now.

No illusions. No disillusionment. Eyes open. Forget about the "white knights" and the lords of the land doing it FOR us. BE the democracy that you want it to be. And never give up.

[Carolab]

19. 100% agree with this.

Let's just work on proving the fraud and FIXING the system so we can STOP it!

[Peace Patriot]

21. Thanks, Carolab! I hope people understand that I am NOT blaming...

John Kerry. I think I've made it clear how unproductive I think that is--and also unrealistic. But, in placing him within the context of this extraordinarily corrupt and distorted political system, and acknowledging that he is part of it, I hope I am not further "Kerry bashing" and placing our focus on the wrong thing. I, too, had the hope and expectation that he would come through on election fraud--but when he DIDN'T, I began to understand the fact that he COULDN'T, and what that may mean. And I really and truly don't have sufficient information to understand why that was. Did those around him misinform him? Did they just judge facing this Bush "pod people" Congress to be an utterly hopeless cause (Congress having the power to decide)? Did they see what the TV networks did with the exit polls and decide that they didn't have a prayer with the Bush lapdog media? Did they NOT KNOW that the exit polls had been changed? Were they savvy about Wally O'Dell and buds, or were they uninformed and naive?

There are so many unknowns about Kerry's position, and the forces against him are so dangerous in so many ways, that it's useless to focus on him personally. We do not know the level of the courage he may have had during the election and on election night. We do not know what he was facing that night, or what he knew. I can't imagine anyone being in a more dangerous and unenviable position.

It is the OTHER factors that we must deal with. The fraudulent election SYSTEM. The vastly corrupt political scene, awash in corporate money. The catastrophic failure of American journalism. Our disconnection, as citizens, from each other and from our government. These we can do something about--step by step, bit by bit, citizen by citizen. We cannot do anything about John Kerry's concession and silence--and I don't think we have enough facts to judge it.

The FACT that we don't have enough facts should give us pause.

[autorank]

22. I agree with you.

That's why I like to say...

NEW LEADERS FOR A NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY


hint...hint...

:hi: