I’m not even talking about being open to attacks. By making himself out to be “the” liberal candidate in the nomination game, Dean is also in turn alienating undecided moderates. Moderates are more prone to vote for more, well, “moderate” candidates. If a candidate makes himself out to be ultra-liberal or ultra-conservative, Hell, even liberal or conservative, that candidate will not fare well with the undecided voters. Part of the reason Clinton was elected was because he appeared to the undecided voters as a moderate, maybe left-leaning moderate at the worst, candidate. Going by political ideology alone, Lieberman represents this part of the Presidential candidate best on the Democrat side, with others such as possibly Edwards or Gephardt to a lesser extent.
I think most of the reason he’s looking ultra liberal is because of the current political slant in the country. Relatively, he IS more liberal. In reality, I’m not sure.
And if the current political spectrum of the voting population of America is more conservative than absolute moderatism (or some such nonexistant, value judgement standard), that makes the moderate, undecided population more conservative. As such, someone who might be perceived as liberal under a different standard will appear as ultra-liberal under the current standard. As such, it still weakens his chance to be elected. Likewise, if he was even perceived as just being liberal when in fact he is a left-leaning moderate, it still hurts his chances to receive the undecided voter vote. It doesn’t matter where he falls on the political spectrum; it only matters where the voting public perceives him to fall.
Bush ran his business into the ground. Bush favors the big company owners. Bush even ran Texas pretty damn badly. What made him think he could run the whole country. Stupid politicians don’t even know everything, but they jump right in.
Originally posted by Sephiroth Katana
[b]“People need to stop bitching about the war on Iraq, that bastard needed to be taken from power anyway.”Who gave you the right to decide what “needs” to happen in another country halfway across the world, when that country has nothing to do with you and is no threat to anyone at all? The reason people are unhappy is because the neoconservatives in charge of our foreign policy lied us into the war. This war was never about removing Hussein, it was about a supposed threat to America in the form of weapons of mass destruction. If Bush and Cheney hadn’t lied by saying that Hussein was making nuclear weapons, and if Blair hadn’t lied by saying that Hussein could deploy chemical weapons anywhere in the world in 45 minutes, and if the extremist neoconservatives didn’t constantly lie by raising the spectre of “another 9/11” - in short, if they hadn’t lied by claiming that Hussein was a direct, imminent threat to the country, which was a lie no matter how you look at it - the war simply could not have happened. When we have 300 dead Americans, 1,000 wounded Americans, 10,000 dead Iraqi civilians and upwards of 100,000 dead Iraqi soldiers, only because of a lie, the liars should be held accountable.
Every American soldier killed in this war is killed in the service of untruth.
“America: The only country to invade someone and built them stronger, better, and faster. Yeah, we’re fucking stupid.”
It may surprise you to learn that we’re having problems supplying our own military over there, not to mention rebuilding the infrastructure (running water, electricity, sewage treatment) that we destroyed. At this point, reconstruction efforts have shown to be incompetent, at best - even this long after the war, occupied Iraq is <i>still</i> producing less clean water and electricity than it did when Hussein was there. The Iraqis think we’re doing it to punish them; they don’t believe that we just can’t do it right.
“I don’t know why we didn’t just send in some assassins and take his ass out; you KNOW we have them!”
And then the power vacuum would immediately be filled by someone else, probably a fundamentalist theocracy. That sure solves a lot. [/b]
Just like I said before. We went to war because Beush said that Iraq posed such a great threat to America and it had weapons fo mass destruction. However, now you never hear about that, you hear about rebuilding Iraq and how the war was over freeing teh Iraqi people.
Also, as SK said about the military being short on gear, it is true. My unit had a hard as hell time making sure that everyone had a full gear issue and WE (the invidual troop) pay fro much of our stuff. All of our stuff we receive in boot camp comes out of our salary, EVERYTHING (our first paycheck is around $100 for a month of work if we’re lucky, it’s usualy closer to $50-$75 for a MONTH of work). We have to pay for the personal items (like sorts, shirts, underwear, toothpaste, etc.) which adds up very fast, especially since you are buying enough to last about a year since it can be hard to buy anything out there. So the troops aren’t on an easy ride in any aspect.
Yeah, the war was based on a lie, but Saddam and his followers were sadistic bastards. You can’t not have heard about the atrocities they commited against their own people. No, we didn’t NEED to get rid of Saddam, but it was a good thing to get rid of him. Unfortunately, the follow up was horribly unplanned.
So instead of letting Saddam kill 100 or so of his own people, we have to go in, lose hundreds of hours troops and his people. We went to war to save innocent American lives. However, we’ve lost many troops that wouldn’t have died had we not gone to war. Iraq didn’t pose a threat to us, and we ended up forcing what we tried to stop and prevent, American deaths, despite knowing that there was no real threat.
George W. Bush isn’t too bad, but the people he listens to are horrible.
No, it is Bush. His advisors were against the war. Besides, Bush made every effort and reason to go to war. Top US military leaders opposed the war. The UN didn’t want the war and told Bush not to do it. Bush was determinded to go to war no matter, which was clear from the start.
I just read in the New York Times that only $20 millions of the 87 is actually going to be used to rebuild Iraq, the rest is military expenses.
Because our gear is messed up and we are stretched as far we can go that we need to keep at a high level of readiness. I filled out some paperwork to fix 24 vehicles totaling about $10,000 for just one company. We have many many more. Plus, there are many benefits for being a veteran and going to war (such as the pay is very nice). Also medical for those who were injured or have anything wrong with them. That is just taking care of the stuff here. Then the stuff our there is at least twice as much. That money is sort of needed, not qutie that much, but still. Such as my unit is getting ALL brand-new gear because of this war since the money for it comes out of that fund since a war can tear that stuff up.
If Dean is claiming liberality now, once he gets the nomination he’ll tone his rhetoric down a lot to appeal to the middle road most likely.
Originally posted by Merlin
If Dean is claiming liberality now, once he gets the nomination he’ll tone his rhetoric down a lot to appeal to the middle road most likely.
He’s already there. His three main issues are balancing the budget, opposing Bush’s foreign policy, and establishing guaranteed health care. Health care is the one liberal issue of these, but there he wouldn’t introduce a lot of reform to the system. The pundits are trying to present Dean as some kind of far-leftist in order to marginalize him, but like most of what they say, that has little basis in reality.
You deserve a cookie.
Thanks.