Anybody But Kerry

This is a probably unnecessary last-minute appeal to anyone liberal to left who plans to vote in the Democratic Party “caucus” tomorrow (8am-noon, Chapel Hill Town Hall). The plea is to vote for anyone but John Kerry. The New York Times today described Kerry’s efforts to paint himself as a “centrist” which is newspeak for conservative. Sure, we’ll all hold our noses and vote for him in November since Bush is so repugnant. But how many of us did the same thing twelve years ago? I nearly threw up (literally!) voting for Clinton but I was even sicker of Reagan/Bush-I. Clinton ran to his left. Kerry doesn’t need to. He’ll run on his center-right record and cower away from media charges of “liberalism.”

How to get the foxes out of the hen house is probably beyond the scope of this blog but we do have a very local opportunity Saturday morning to deliver a small counterpoint to the voices of inevitability.

Issues: 

Comments

Kerry? Center-left?! ( what i meant if this winds up being a double-post)

Laughable.

Caucus Results in Orange County-

Dennis Kucinich 375

John Kerry 312

John Edwards 303

Howard Dean 128

Al Sharpton 39

Turnout: 2.6%, which according to the North Carolina Democratic Party is better than expected.

I did not mean to imply that the participants on this forum don't think critically about what is reported in the media or that they don't understand the complexity of congressional votes. I was/am responding to the simplistics terms in which the media is presenting this campaign. Unfortunately, this thread just hit me very wrong at the wrong time. Sorry if I stepped on any toes!

while it is hard to tell the delegate allocations until votes are counted April 23 (they have bot yet been sorted by congressional districts, and Chatham and Wake are only partly in the 4th district, and some Orange County votes nmay have been cast by students registered in other counties and thee votes will be reassigned there, I ran the numbers and if the Wake and Durham votes are homogeneous and are divided up in the proportion iof Democrats in each part of the district, Kerry, Kucinich and Edwards will each get two delegates from the 4th. Kucinich will probably also get 1 delegate from the 11th district (Asheville) . A candidtae had to get 15% of the vote in a congressional district to get ANY delegates. Dean did his best in the state in the 4th, where he got about 12%.

Kerry? Center-right?!

Laughable.

Ruby--read the bill. It starts with endorsing support of the Security Council. Sure, we all knew Bush wanted to go up against Saddam, but a vote against the bill, given the 'evidence' that Saddam had nuclear weapons and was supporting Al Qaida would have been reported as a vote against national security--the media's and the Republican's same old claim against the Democrats. Kerry's message on this war has always been that we need to establish broad, international coalitions. Votes one way or another do not tell a complete story since the bills are not written to support single issues. To be an informed public, we need to start looking at and considering those complexities instead of accepting whatever the media decides to use as their latest sound bite.

Things are just not as simple as voting for or against a particular bill. For example, Kerry's vote against the $87 billion Iraq rebuilding fund wasn't an indicator that he was against rebuilding what the US had destroyed--he just didn't like all the riders to the bill (one of the 'flip-flop' accusations got thrown in on that vote I believe). BTW, I believe David Price did vote for the $87 billion. That doesn't mean he decided to support the war. From what he (his staff) wrote to me, he just believes we have an obligation to the Iraqi people after our preemptive invasion.

These are not simple times and we need to be critical of what we read and hear in the media. Dan's post really ticked me off. His "unnecessary last-minute appeal to anyone liberal to left" seems to indicate that his opinions are what defines liberal. I take exception to that opinion and tried to express my reasoning. I also take exception to his implication that centrist positions are dishwater.

NOTFONDAKERRY!

Some people did vote for the war, Terri. Did you really think the President was ever interested in a diplomatic resolution to the problem he invented in Iraq?

We deserve better from our elected officials than slavish obedience to a deceptive administration. I'm happy to say that our own Congressman, David Price, was among the 133 House members (and 23 Senators) who voted "no." I hope he will continue to show such leadership in the future, since he represents one of the most progressive districts in the region if not the country.

the bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:HJ00114:@@@D&summ2=m&

the vote: http://www.vote-smart.org/issue_keyvote_member.php?vote_id=3204

I like John Kerry and think a lot of the media coverage about him is shallow and thoughtless. For example, they continue saying that he voted to support the war. He did not--no one did. Congress voted to give Bush the authorization to go to war IF IF IF all efforts at diplomacy failed. That's not voting for the war and is not inconsistent with the majority position that we need more international participation in the rebuilding efforts. Given what we now know about the intelligence failures (both in gathering intelligence, reporting it, and building policy around what was available), I wouldn't necessarily call that a centrist position. Personally, I want a president who will look at facts, challenge them, and then weigh them against experience and common sense before making decisions. I believe that is what John Kerry will do. If you think that's centrist, then that's what I am too.

Terri

 

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