should be the lead off thought with many of the critical posts today concerning the current Congressional picture, defined pretty well before the 2006 elections by the slate the party offered in the current wisdom and power structure of that time. Back then, any real thought that the future Dem Congress would stop the war, etc, etc, etc, was easily forecast as doomed to disappointment. Each compilation of the inevitable has not made such grim wisdom any more palatable.

In the aftermath of a crushing war defeat and occupation, a nation is forced to do a radical about face it would have behooved democratic forces to accomplish before all the trouble. We would be getting off cheap, even with the spectacular crimes and losses of the past 8 wasted years to start that same path.

First, for the future that makes sane, responsible and clear-headed legislation possible we need the simple steps: effective, all sweeping campaign finance reform, media reform. Remove the money insanity that clogs Congressional arteries with rich, beholden to rich interests representatives who at the their most admirable must be schizophrenic or weirdly eccentric to act on the "public service" model sold to the public and essential for national survival. Remove the blinders of decadent media owned by fairly mindless corporate interests and one-dimensional single owners.

That is the opportunity, the gateway to just get started being what the Constitution and the popular myths say we are(and maybe have not been yet).

Then, taking a deep breath we can get started. In that time it may be impossible or at the least long delayed and imperfect to get at the crimes or the damage down in the past and thus all their threat to the future. There will be no silence certainly TRYING to get sane performance out of the current party leadership mixture. Nor will there be a lack of disaffection that even basic things cannot get done, much less shot down by the Bush SCOTUS these people let in.

The excitement and drama of greed and fascist glory, the pugilistic self-affliction that is all so unnecessary and a threat to humankind can be ended. The hangover follows. The dissatisfaction with responsibility and human limitation lingers, cooperation with all just interests strains against competitive reality and hatred has nowhere to go.

There is no cure, no surrender, no victory for any of this but the perspective of truth and certainly no punishment in this world to match the scale of crimes committed. For those of us believing in the judgment of a God rather than the bland eye of far removed generations, letting the crooks off the hook is delegating the negative to a more perfect retribution.

Nothing however can even get started until we win the future and that future is not won by new faces in
DC but by law and new ideas, and surgical excision of the most corrupting influences of irrational, morally destructive money. Meanwhile let the truth cast a harsh light to grow these new seeds out of the old corruption. Our party has been, as all history shows for all competitive factions, tragically more won over to the "winning" ways of the corruption that beat them so that victory becomes the new hollow thing their dominant rivals intend for them always. bad, wrong, seduced choices made all the worse for being chosen by "pragmatic" good people. If you carry that over into the power and privilege and money control that a dominant Congressional party wins you will have a new race between inner corruption and new reform.

We could lose not just the cause of justice for the vipers plotting profit and a return but our own party. We have to keep it all in view and move on the first cause of danger to all. Get the money and media private interest crap out of politics. Under even the future shadow of that great scythe things can change now for the better and in fact are only insofar as it begins to be felt.

some big substance, i.e. a dramatic rivalry in the party, that is what people key on. Even after a Convention(how many Dems watch enough or any of it?) the gatekeepers of knowledge and consciousness have the greatest sway over anything except broad public awareness which today favors Dems. It is very very clear most Dems have no understanding of any negative complaints against the Clinton except for the news- which ironically they have learned to distrust on this one issue. That distrust allows the GOP media to play a temporary double game of keeping the Clinton perception status quo in static mode(with both parties) until they are ready to unload both barrels with new material as Vanity Fair has just released about Bill- enough at least to discourage all Dem voters had Hillary succeeded.

Hillary still wins states with machinery beholden and in place loyal to Bill. The public perception is largely rooted in the past. There is a deliberate illusion created by the MSM that race is not over, has not been over despite the math. The significance for Obama is what you stated. It is also a basic education of the enormous difficulty in moving the electorate and its mindsets. As H2OMan stated, that underlying massive consciousness in the electorate will coalesce around Obama once the past has been put aside. The real work is to connect Obama to it through GOP distractions, the sorry but sustained McCain myth and the vast grass roots ground work needed to earn the day.

it won't just happen, but Obama, we, and the will of the people will make it so. Maybe with the continued help of the abysmal GOP and its discredited, insane machinery. It won't be rationally pretty or all that clear but the mass movement of the body politic remains ready to leave the circus behind.

That is bigger than all of us, even Obama, but especially better than petty criminals using power and psych devices to stop a tidal wave.

OK, in the NY-29 Congressional race, my guy Eric Massa has been running since the close defeat in 2006. Without(and still without) a nickel of corporate backing, and very little party fund backing, he has done the party an immense service in breaking the back of a safe gerrymandered region whose imminent collapse(Walsh out, Reynolds out) is pivotal in our future hopes.

He still must meet the rising bars of funding from private donors that the party expects to see before they pony up. 500,000 toward what will likely be a 14 Million dollar race. By April 1st. That can be done easily through several venues such as www.massaforcongress.com . As of today they need several thousand more. We can all sit back and say probably he will do it or someone might be motivated to get involved in a way that effects our district and the nation.

A 24 year Navy vet, onetime terminal cancer patient, progressive self-styled FDR Dem, friend of General Clark with whom he worked, great campaigner, and positive qualities I recommend with absolutely no reservation or caveat(for those who might be familiar with my ideas and support for other candidates in the past). He vows his very first address to Congress as a Freshman will be to refuse the super duper Congressional health care perk until(pardon the caps) EVERY SINGLE VOTER IS PRIVILEGED WITH THE SAME. This from a man who has close acquaintance with extreme personal health care costs. He is not rich, he is not a professional career pol(yet!). He advocates single payer health insurance for all. He is on board with the best election and campaign finance reform. You can go on and on yourself and add to the consistent list.

Now WHY, among all the other tiny little supporters of Congressional campaigns am I posting here?

Because this man is receiving daily extreme hate mail from people trying to get him to endorse either Hillary or Obama. And he will not bow. If you have been watching NY pols and personalities you know there is a fierce pressure to circle the wagons around Hillary. Clark endorsed her. If anyone wants to talk about openly opposing McCain he is more than willing. It is not his business to be divisive, to curry favors but for many loyalists in the presidential race they have gone out of their way to exact a price and attack him even before Randy Kuhl gets his smear campaign in gear.

If you wish to make amends for any of the negative, crazy side effects of primary negativity, one neutral way to repay the party and good Dems like Eric Massa could be a token donation, a small peace offering, penance or goodwill. I suggest you consider the same to other candidates and super delegates who are the beneficiaries of more pressure and insults than help for November. Is this a self-serving
distraction from the usual posts? You bet. I want my area purged of gerrymandering and get a great rep and another progressive vote for whoever is the Dem President next year.

It is not all about Hillary or Obama. It is not about misdirected anger or attacks. it is about building hope through action.

On edit. I rarely start a post and I'm off to work. Was at a house meeting with Eric this afternoon. We should all meet the people we support(or judge). We have great people trying to get the opportunity to serve us.

the posters here because the supporters of both candidates, I mean those representing the vast bulk of actual voters and workers are not so vicious. Maybe the campaign enthusiasts, typical of all fans of any sort have gone the wild-eyed route and exhibit some group-think in their angry defensiveness. had Edwards attracted more support I am sure he eventually he would have had an unpleasant skim off the top in this fashion.

I would dismiss them as well for using MSM sources, GOP interference and every anti-Dem temporary ally all to eager to laughingly participate to savage their own party in their madness. I would dismiss them for hate, too easy to justify against Bush but revealed in its darkness by rather turning against our own burning down our own ghetto because we can't get at the real cause.

Some people reveling in sadistic put downs are their own sick joke, refusing to see they have become the common enemy.

And, as always they are few. Some are perennial haters from a number of issues. For some it indeed is cultural rivalry, hatred themes.

What must be sadly faced in this riot of midgets is that we can be once more very ashamed of a great deal that passes for leadership in the crust everywhere. In particular, our superdelegates have shied away from setting hard rules to a beleaguered campaign they once favored and profited from. We burn in the fires they flinch from, as always. We, the people.

So, in the exercise of leadership that now devolves to us- to us and no possible single candidate- we should boil and stew and cook our own leadership and rules. Without guidance, paternal or maternal, we can because we know better. The masses of the less noisy less incendiary less personally dishonest or dangerously ignorant have to.

Are we all like the voter in my district who was so put off by the fierce campaigning(caused by the threatened GOP going dirty negative) as not to want to vote? To walk away and poke through the ashes of hope later?

This is not going to be a nicey nicey campaign until our candidate is either victorious(despite cheating,lying, slander and suppression) or has so overwhelmed the polls that basically(as with Bob Dole facing a popular incumbent) the GOP fades.

Until then we have to be strong, patient, focused. Rein in or ignore or tolerate the usual rantings of those with the lower gifts. Remember who those enemies really are because how else can you love them unless you know them? Since our party still cannot quite responsibly lead nor our institutions work for us nor our avowed malicious enemies put down their desperate hatchets it is up to us, not our candidates to center our own leadership within the vast electorate.

When it is all over and Dems rule everywhere, where will all this hatred go? I expect the few will find something better to attack, some nastier little discussions to dissipate into and a lot of the ranks of the flamers flocking to the arsonist fest will simply go away.

Now there is is a well meaning unbiased critic who is accidentally right upon occasion but effectively Right Wing all the time.

This is an intentional pose, this well-meaning analysis. It seeks to "dull-down" the election and cripple both candidates at the same time. One thing that seemed to me- as an enthused youngster at the time- to hurt the JFK campaign was when he was pompously put on the defensive over his religion and youth. His fall run was an attempt to portray gravitas and distance, and in my unstudied connection to the race, the excitement and youthfulness and hope of the race began to be lost. It turned into a razor thin race with Kennedy out hawking Nixon on the missile gap, a 'triangulation' tactic that had Eisenhower howling from the sidelines. It was the Cold War, serious times.

Our times are ironically more serious and infinitely more silly. Sacrificing "emotional" leadership for all the gravitas of a shopping bag hobo when Bush instigated foreign policy and economic crisis(NONE of it necessary) blockades unavoidable climate catastrophe and population pressures(to name just two) is something only the GOP really needs to resurrect. All of our dangers, most unmentioned or with dismaying indirectness during the campaign, are internal. The enemy within is ironically personified in a typical mouthpiece of destruction, namely Mr. Brooks. Corporatist media. Outlaw corporate recidivism devouring capitalism like Marx eating his personal copy of "Das Kapital". Royal corporate political dynasty going to any lengths to lower everything that might give the illusion of them remaining on top of the dung heap. The sickest, most compromised group of self-destructive, ill-focused, people advocates, that make collaborationists and agents of the RW look honest or intelligent by comparison- and less harmful overall. A nation blinded and muted by TV and gutted newspapers and radio so useless that the only thing that passes for radio Free America is the BBC and Air America who are ill suited for the simple hunger for information bearing some semblance to critical truth. Unlike the Soviet Bloc,
the thing keeping people from seeking the forbidden fruit of knowledge is a forest of choice and unrecognizable lies and distractions. Pravda never offered Western Entertainment. Radio Slave America offers nothing but in a flag colored drape of misdirected hate.

The GOP Ministry of fear and propaganda wants Hillary, wants her dull, divisive and defeated and failing that wants to sucker the "new JFK" into unnecessarily surrendering his appeal across party lines and entering the sucker game that will lead to the Straits of Hormuz instead of the Bay of Bigs and Hoover 1929 instead of FDR recovery. In essence, either let the GOP win or they will gleefully take it all down and themselves off to their offshore bank accounts.

Don't listen to them. These are messengers well worth spurning WHATEVER they say, not because of the content(they have nothing to offer we don't already know) but because of their clear intent. Well worth spurning is ANY DUer, old or new, who is eager to use the Word of Rove to advance their candidate's argument. A few tombstones on anyone quoting the mass media carelessly might do wonders even if it won't eliminate the nonsense.

Politically both candidates are right to do and present as they are. The issue, the temptation, of backroom deals to settle a close election may be resolved by apparent Obama victories coming up. From ALL the politicos I have ever known, if the Clintons were to go totally inert on picking up superdelegates, they would deserve a unique medal- and it certainly would mean an end to their present ambition. It is as unlikely that they would be rewarded in any way for such a passive sacrifice as for Edwards(or Gore) to become the nominee. Obama is becoming successful toward a landslide through sincerity, which is unfortunate for personal policy- perhaps- but a boon for progressivism and the nation.

We are ALL, without an exception fundamentally stupid in various ways that a critical election must bring out if we are ever to emerge at least from the general stupor. We should strive to know ourselves ruefully and know the very public, conniving stupidity of untrustworthy gatekeepers of discussion like Mr. Brooks.

point that any serious ambitious candidate is unable to acknowledge first. That the cost of winning the nomination and its mere possibility is not the main concern of the candidate but of GREAT concern to just about everyone else except stalwart or unknowing supporters.

If she would win a string of strong victories now the damage would be erased in large part, but not entirely. In fact, that was ever the case, a huge cost in supporting this particular nomination. Forget her merits entirely, the prospects of a three race with a muted, somewhat divisive Democrat(let's even just call it media bias), a moderate bi-partisan something called Bloomberg, and any rabid GOP candidate of your choosing in sheep's clothing would immediately provide the possibility, the unpredictability, the motivation of the moribund GOP and a media circus impossible to bring back to the Dems. In other words the ultimate revenge against Clinton/Perot/Bush has been easily pushed to the front with the cooperation of all. Hell, Jeb might even run with a daring credible enough to get inside the cheat limits behind a third party eating away at not our most engaging speaker.

But we are at the point where the public itself can get a mere glimpse of what this is. Can the inertia switch to fear or zeal for someone else in time? Will the strong base Hillary enjoys feel the pinch BEFORE the campaign powers past the rivals? Can a brokered convention really gut the entire party and Hillary have to make the awful choice of exacting further cost to deal herself into convention intrigue as the manner of her victory?

Her cause WAS legitimate and in a REAL election demands respect and acceptance. Yet now we are at the point where all other pols around her sweat and growing ranks of dimly informed people. It is apparent now that no matter what she offers or thinks she offers to the nation, the cost and peril makes her continuance a disservice(to put it most mildly, to everything dear to humankind). Even bowing out in a self=revelation of the call to sacrifice personal ambition, were she able to see what possibly no other candidate in history could, cannot be precipitously done without causing more damage, wrath and discouragement. She would have to reduce her personal campaign and ironically maybe win votes by doing that. She would have to fire all those quasi-GOP advisers and stop the bleeding of money away from November. In fact she should do those thing anyway because ultimately if she doesn't, HER price is becoming much too great.

This point might never have happened and Hillary would have breezed to more strength. Now she is wounded as Bush intends, everything as Bush intends and toward a firm result that Bush intends. Not everything that the Bushes really want come to pass, but count on this one, all scandals looming large,
to be number one. So at this point she can't, won't see the inevitable cost as her responsibility and neither yet do most people focused still on other issues.

The future is mutable but taken an awesomely threatening form. On this unnecessary focal point the fate of the entire world, unfortunately, madly hinges. And it shouldn't in a year rationally made for Dems but irrationally steered toward disaster at least of mandate stealing proportions. It is NOT all about electability, but the hidden line has not been made clear enough to people. The cost to the party will be high and the future of the Dem first term a continuing doubt beyond an increasingly theoretical November win.

So she could still sweep aside doubts and rivals. She could continue to falter and divide. She could simply win enough delegates through deals to prevail. The future is come to its crisis point in the sole democratic process remaining to America, and candidates trapped like tragic implacable figures in someone else's play. The real villain, the dark author of all this, as is usual in all engaging fiction
vanishes behind this artificial fate and the suspension of reason and reality.

We look at ourselves a lot to no avail on DU, but what about the general population? What do they want, how are they engaged and how are they being led to the polls this fall? In terms of sensational flame wars someone quotes a firebrand denouncing that part of the black base that has doubts about Obama. Well, stop a minute. A black co-worker asked me if I thought Obama could win. A typical question on its face but not in the tone. Did the news spread that doubt which seemed stranger and stronger than the nauseous adage "the country isn't ready for a woman president" that I still hear at work(in New York)? So much for a fired up base with a passionate symbol, a first almost revolutionary thrill, a liberal fruit finally falling from the tree. It is not just doubters, but the presence of doubt. Do they know about the sate of the nation and world and what they can really do about that?

Do they know about rigged elections the media only teases at in a way that nothing is even suggested that needs be DONE about it? As they are used to being told about their fervent desire for election finance reform and health care and energy, etc. Do they feel justified in their small life preoccupations by seeing that BIG PICTURE priorities otherwise are banal and trivial celebrity news stories? Do they want good jobs, health care and election reform and peace and economic justice but finding this not to be too clear even in an election year have doubts about all that too? Does anyone care to LET someone try and wake the people to their own knowledge and power as something other than MSM induced camp followers to celebrity politicians and the news hacks that follow then for their respective tabloid and corporate soapboxes?

If the bases that are powerful to win a nomination are embarrassingly, substantively, perhaps irreconcilably divided, isn't that alarming in a year when any rational person must be deeply concerned and conjoined with every other rational, patriotic or just plain fellow human traveler? For their own survival? Are the people, vote deprived, poisoned in mind and body, murdered by war and law and lawlessness on high, sold short for the strategy of mere power and finding some of the Dem gambits rather secondary? Are they merely parroting memes from campaigns that seem to touch them, or when they believe them, is there something more important they are crying out for- and hoping will happen or be planned in secret or subject to sudden change for the better upon being crowned President?

Within that unvoiced and unaddressed blind hope, hopelessness or rage or whatever, as they ever more weakly defend the foibles of candidates weakly enabling the blindness, are we going to generate the temporary excitement of a mere contest or a longterm revolution? Or some struggling or doomed thing between?

And if one were to choose a candidate, would the first thing be to dare to lead the people out of the chains that exist today, right now, or pretend this is a personality contest based on side issues, strategy based on power and money presumptions- and smoke? With all the debates, the people in general following mainly the media spin about what is unfolding and what it all means(to the frustration of ALL) we end up with dissatisfactions that will lead to doubts engendered by past criminal defeats never challenged? Why allow this? Why is it deemed necessary to some campaigns?

Never mind the candidates for a moment? Where are the people, really? And are they going to stay there except for a tired paroxysm of crazy quilt voting where a decisive number will not even bother to try and very many will just be glad(and be told they they think so) that it is all over. And that one is as good as the other and that the expectations will take on a surly note that will quickly be led by media spin all over again. Is anyone from the commanding roost up there really going to bother to lead and rouse and empower the people? Do they want reform more than undoing the anti-reforms of the past eight years or weak tea compromise legislation they will no more read about than Senators read the patriot Act? Isn't this where all the underlying doubt comes from? How can we be satisfied with campaigns that need choose this side effect of their person and presentation? And how to break out of the mad determinism from on high that keeps people down, vaguely but certainly knowing they have no power and less a voting right each year?

Are we going to churn out another typical party GOTV like butter in a gauntlet of fraud based on ignoring and ignorance and optimism, restrained by DLC reserve and wisdom? Are we going to rouse and enlighten and enable people by TV ads and yelling at them? Is inertia all there is to political reality today? That and reaction sinking into the quicksand of bi-partisan gridlock and the incumbents fortifying themselves with tyrannical protections against the Samson in Gaza mob.

We firmly hope or believe that upon awaking the day after election, hope and possibility will be enough of a beginning, the relief of not being driven insane by a petty crooked tyranny and its fawning court. We need not deferentially sneak up on that from the side, cross our fingers or proceed by vagueness, half-measures or stiff necked repetitions of losing ways or we might not get even that rather bland victory of merely stepping back from the brink. The "lame duck" we are trying to ignore has crony candidates so lame that there exists even the option(to us, unthinkable) of installing Jeb Bush or some surrogate into the real world process we do not take head on.

take all anywhere in the process unless people give up their votes repeatedly. Your vote can win delegates. Delegates win platform planks and other things. You empower your candidate. you effect the voice of the party and the direction of the campaign.

But let's get back to winning. I am trying to puzzle out this unique season compared to others. usually, despite the drama, the expected candidate of weight prevails. Hillary has some of that incumbency glow that helps in those cases. Kerry had to earn it hard but by the end of the season the whole roller coaster arrived back where it started. People running for the first time, senators particularly in this post brokered convention world, have a real tough time. They are the contenders against the favorite or front runner or someone emerging from the pack who has the opportunity and smarts to capitalize on "inexperience". Obama seems good at this for a young Senator. Neither one though has a lock on the factor that seals the deal. The media has purposefully/stupidly obscured everything but that is not so unusual either.

There is a good chance in the locked three way so far that Edwards can win. This is the stuff of past drama. Number one: he is running a very effective and smart campaign with better personal experience. He is not being left behind on any memes or issues like last time. He is leading and driving many aspects of the campaign and issues even if he doesn't seem to get anything out of it himself yet. He is providing beef and passions and specificity to the issues, passion and challenge to the politicking, and is a de facto better lure for everyone, especially party pros who want the biggest surest, widest spread win. He has defined he is going to be progressive leader, not crowned head of the status quo. None of these aspects add up to the portrait of a loser as much as the doubts and puffery of the other two, shaky and stumbling at times(though by no means fatally or significantly- yet).

Forget about the material disadvantages, the ideological opposition that is STILL braying bipartisanship with criminals as if nothing had happened that needs accountability. His is a remarkable and shining candidacy well worth playing out to the end. Bill Clinton had worse but with better bucks and worse rivals. With the seesaw in place, the whole process is still in play. Iowa and NH have been washes and blips despite the hoopla. The REAL excitement happens now. I would not bet the farm against
Hillary or Obama, as opposed to other years when it became apparent how and why someone say, like Jimmy Who? was going to win.

But votes for DK and Edwards are vital no matter the guesswork because we must swell the voice that has the most important facts and ideal based ideas. We can bleed and we can lead. That isn't about numbers and winning or we wouldn't be in this mess now. It is about putting what is right against what is wrong, until something eventually gives. Edwards seems vastly pledged like the liberals of old to stand by his platform and the people even when the prospects of personal ambition fade. As democrats, if we believe in that type of platform and that kind of candidate we have to ramp it up and prove what we think we know. To ourselves if no one else. The best challenge and the best candidacy and the best result. Compared to the giants of the past, some winning, some not, how can we give up heart with this man? And he will not just make us feel good or secure and passively taken care of after election day. He will lead our charge to the future and open the doors to OUR democratic power, greater than his own advancement by far. The potential to win is very very strong in essence and dynamism and while the establishment searches for the flaw in the muffled silence that surrounds the grass roots, the mammoth or tragic flaws of the system's misguided collaborators eat away sourly at the absurd, tattered myths
that reduces patriots to weak fans and citizen participants to infrequently enervated spectators.

I'll be buried where I fall, advancing, not where I lie down and submit. Man, message and a most reasonable chance for "miraculous" success.

So the first casualty of truth will be capitulation on progress. I totally sympathize with your position and was ready to ditch this party years ago until I saw what was going on in 2000. In retrospect I had been had totally in my pessimism- not in my hopes. I saw how all the people had been misled in a total culture poisoning for which reasons and actors began to appear. The big simple blanket assumptions disappeared along with earlier assumptions that Americans might muddle through what was going wrong and the fall back law merely assert itself.

We are not faced with an election this fall, perhaps not even an ideal example of democracy in the primaries. We are faced with a hidden plebiscite on fascism or rather RW corporate dominance by a cannibal elite exploiting, trashing, EVERY ideology for personal gain. In your darkest views you could be driven mad by realizing that the election of Hillary(or anyone initially) will simply not be allowed to be even recognized as a simple victory for democracy. The other side will hide its victory as well, couched in democratic illusions with nearly full media support. The great falsity of this being an election is not just something we cling to, but part of the grand illusion overall, beneath which misdirected, murky discontent of the sane victims- the vast majority- simmers helplessly. IT will be a small, falsity enforcing, vulnerable, compromised step under Clinton. Our own grass roots will be intimately fought by the presidential establishment in ways that Bush could never hope to do. Raw concessions on election and campaign finance reform will not be quickly or easily granted by any President's efforts. That would be the first major hope.

We are simply mired in the evil of the power system. The chief players are still entrenched. The party has entrenched itself with losers from the era of lies and fraud, abandoning its nascent strengths in the LBJ election when hope was spoiled simply by having the WRONG MAN at the head of the ticket. So yes, I can well understand your decision. It has sound basis in experience. The sea-change Kenndyesque liberals began to vanish and fail and the primary drawbacks become fatal in losing influence to check the evils from Reagan on. The struggle for FDR models and coalitions staggered on with the strength of sheer sanity and value under cultural assault. Our politically stupid party establishment abuses that automatic gasping for air and weighs down the electorate with topdown concessions to sheer absurdity and evil. Have to have center left Southerners or establishment picks, screw democracy and McGovern style reforms. Retreat from the language of FDR while holding out the programs like so much residual candy hoping for appreciation in the long dark cold of corporate media dominance.

Yet, despite the party leadership, always despite it recently, we HAVE injected more progressives into the network and into Congress and fostered actual movement. How long have members in the labor caucus and black caucus suffered the same things intimately that drive us to despair? Decades of declining, in your face, influence to check the party itself from destroying itself and the Constitution. We do have new members joining that club despite that lack of unity and top leadership. The appalling reality is that the new wave of Dems about to be swept in in in 2008 has been repressed in what it could and must be. The top of the ticket may be another LBJ horror show in the making, perhaps worse on the corporate angle.

I balance this only with hope that truth and the people are pushing back, not just resigning themselves to personal retreat. The choices are: another party with the odds of a Kucinich looking good in comparison, local activism and ignoring the national, national engagement with an undisguised string attached, getting like people together to start something from scratch and ignoring the whole false political scene. How many in the Black Caucus resigned when abandoned in their right and proper judgment for us all in 2000? They know how bad things were, are and will be. How worse they are without
a fight and where they came from in this nation. The same seemingly hopeless resistance is exemplified by Israel whose people have learned the hard way for millennia and still no lasting relief in sight. AFter 100 years of brutal RW dictatorship and horrors beyond the imagining of any past generation those future ghosts who will be will be rattling your windows imploring you to DO something, because whatever the case may be, it is in our hands alone to try to fight or accomplish the possibilities of hope.

No candidate can accomplish all that and send us back comfortably to our private life niches. If that was the case, trust me, that person would die swiftly. The core of our choice must not reside in a primary contest but in ourselves. The Democratic party gives power to the people available no where else. The cold cynicism of the sane begins there. When the Religious Right insanely sold its soul to the Mammon worshiping GOP elites they KNEW the principles of party power. Corruption rewarded them and the moral path down matched the power path up. Sell out Third Way loons are even more insidiously corrupted- and betrayed in their choices. In this corrupted balance the daunting choice of "liberals" is to work up through this mess accepting no corrupting awards(which will be meager or none) and giving no gushing fantasy support for garbage. The moral path up is as difficult as the power path will be, unlike anything offered to all the other teeming players who comprise such a minority in this country that fewer and fewer people bother to vote.

In 2008 a non-vote, suppressed vote or tampered vote is to the advantage of the GOP. A depressed activist, a drop out, a vocal critic who can used by an eager GOP media, is to the advantage of the GOP. A speaker of truth who creates cynicism or an atmosphere of discord and anger can be more easily twisted to support the GOP and at the least weaken the ruling party. The same disappointing leadership will take a huge mandate as their own self-entitlement and vindication. Conversely, a defeated or struggling establishment leadership will retreat to its own lines of established bad conduct and appreciate gridlock and compromise as cover for its philosophical error and cowardice. The current nascent engagement in public internet forums will still be threatened rather than spreading inexorably to liberate the world's collective mind. If the party splits it can used to the advantage of the GOP. That is not even getting to the raw lies and power of the owned GOP itself. That is why their despicable stooges can have the temerity to be taken seriously- and have a good chance of "winning". All this and more- and there is no place to go but over the top.

Pitt would have you slug it out in the fearless optimism of getting something from the abyss of nothing. Screw fear itself. We WILL get a lot done. He is as correct as you are. Facing the actual situation is too much to expect from the people who are kept forever in the dark. We have an absolute, more absolute than faith itself, duty to do something and do it together with as many others as possible. And make that known on every field of struggle. Or our children and grandchildren will have the truly brutalized options springing from lives of total misery and oppression, too much to admire their forebears who couldn't get their act together.

I sympathize heartily and urge you to do the opposite of what the real crap on top expects. Not to go along and submit. Not to opt out. Not to tear each other apart. Not to accept activism this fall as a deal to compromise with current bad party leadership. Not to disappear or grow silent after November.

The Edwards are giving the last of their short time together for this, but life is not an automatic fairy tale, not when things have come to be so bad. Sen. Church would say we HAVE already crossed the abyss based on only a few things the leadership caved to. So, we do what we must anyway, what difference does success make? We will teach the "powerful" the true meaning of fear and desire. Some will keep the torch lit and held high. Any party that has such people has hope.

We can't vote for DK because he can't win. Can't vote for Edwards because he will only hurt Obama. And soon we will be asked not to vote for Obama because the fragile Hillary campaign will be damaged so badly(quite quite possible) they will less able to win 2008. The last abominable pill will be to pressure Obama to "stay positive" and be polite, and lose quickly.

Anyone interested in hope will stick with DK, keep backing Edwards, stay on course with Obama and try to bury all the opposition fast with Hillary.

I submit that the it is the Hillary people who have put us into this cycle dominated fear and despair. We won't have any other candidate so long as THAT attitude predominates. As long as we can't focus united on ONE god candidate with will have to take the scary plunge and let candidates show themselves worthy or succumb to the media stacked deck which will plague us for years to come.

Don't underestimate the power of the voters once it begins exerting itself according to the candidate and not the hype and media contest strategy. At this stage Bill Clinton himself was in far worse shape right up to the inevitability of the VOTER in the new York primary. It was discounted by the media and tough then, it is tough now. If the inevitability of the voter choice takes hold, as it swiftly did with Kerry it will be immensely more strong for the qualities of an Edwards- as it would be for Obama should he prevail.

The the party pros could be left with a choice they never had. Whether to let the machine pack leader trod on with ugly establishment advantage or start turning those tables around too for the coattails man. RFK who was hated in his own way by many in the machine backing HHH(for all the political hatchet work and stepped on toes and anti-war position) could only hope to win by that turnaround. Nothing in the primaries then could possibly give him enough votes even for a brokered convention(which is less a hope now). When the people turn this time, it should be stronger than then and the consequences with all the exposed election fraud, much more obvious to career pols everywhere in the party. Hillary as HHH(with tons less charisma and liberal credentials), trodding heavily in establishment compromises is more ripe for such a fall.

That is how and it never got to happen in the example I quoted. But RFK definitely thought it would, with more than just idealistic hope, I can tell you that. In California he had just swept aside Eugene McCarthy in one debate. The clash of liberal titans was set which no money or political IOU's was going to predetermine. That clash would have been decided by the passion of the voters.

The passion which is is verified by the simple calculation of looking all around at one's neighbors and noting WE have the power. We are the change.

other than dark theories that he is just another corporate plant. (What happened to the old accusations he was just another DLC choice?)

His record as a beginner is ever this optimistic, polite and open humility toward the establishment he is joining. I think he came to view the second Senate term as a moral trap and practical uncertainty. What he had learned was he was getting taken, defined and set up. he saw the only possibilities as being a presidential candidate. I think he learned that early on in trying to be Gore's running mate but only crystallized his nature after an awkward 2004 run. An honest man who learns hard and then goes ballistic for the common man. Is he a classic pure liberal? No, he has the homespun, respect for authority conservatism as part of his make-up, a more genuine religion, a more genuine personal morality.

Has he learned all the lessons? Is he ready for everything? Until we have a dozen DK's running and voting in Congress, his is an extraordinary candidacy. Common roots. Anti-corporate track record. Shoved aside rather than enabled by the establishment whenever he accommodated. A better personal moral life than lost past presidents. Most openly committed to progressive change than a great majority of presidents. More accidental advantages in the electoral system.

Many people channel Truman, but the huffy media ever turns up its aristocratic collective nose against the real "give'em hell" campaign. Truman was pushed and pushed back liberally with a Senate record every bit as accommodating as the establishment could wish. With a state machine a lot more tainted. Edwards does it with a winning smile and they call him negative.

In the search for the perfect candidate, we have none. Do any exist? The problem is in the aggregate insufficiency of the present ruined representation within the party leadership. Our fears and demands are based on fears we are becoming as choiceless(not yet) as the current cartoon of the GOP. But in looking at Edwards(much can be said of the others as well) we see the potential and the personal attributes far superior in ways to our greatest presidents. And unfortunately, we have great times being imposed upon us. Millard Fillmores will not do. Thomas Jefferson would be destroyed as Strom Thurmond would not for having a black mistress. Jefferson had mansion- with slaves- as well and would be destroyed my modern slavemasters. The only benchmark where we sadly reminisce is the very very few presidents who were popular and skilled rhetoricians AND stump pols. The ghost of JFK whose actual first term was riddled with mistakes and lack of strong follow through. Teddy Roosevelt was an accident for the GOP that had none such after Lincoln, the master of the spoken political word.

Now, with Edwards, we have the speech that comes from within the populace as much as it is above in leadership. We have less faith in ourselves versus the treasonous establishment that weighs down our souls and shutters our eyes and floods our ears with a cacophony of evil. His weakness is ours. Time to be strong again, for ALL of us to be the lone Truman. The message is right and so is the man and the moment cries for something so much, that if we fall short, the cost will be unimaginable as it is another gift to the Bush crime family- against all reason and morality.

You can argue for other candidates. At least our work is cut out for us because there is no reliance simply on a Kennedy, a TR or FDR, who can be taken down with the bulk of the agenda by a mere bullet.
The human wave cannot be defined only by the leader chosen by our harrowing primary process. The reason we do not have as many potential leaders and less faith in our possibilities is that we have been dispossessed, despised and misled. We choose as best we can and move as one.

is corporate news setting the agenda above the candidates. What some of us have been warning about is that the Clinton team will run on a business conciliation agenda, back to schmoozing with past and future enemies, nascent Enrons, and makers of the problems that need to be addressed. They are trying to shove the whole progressive agenda or any hope to restore democracy and good government down a black hole where they think DK is already confined. That comes first and explains why Obama is nearly overlooked in the attempt to raise up Hillary on a corporate platter and sink Edwards for being "negative" about criminality and treason.

I see nothing wrong with this endorsement but what it gives Hillary with one hand it takes away hope with the other. Not that the Clinton campaign is not already playing it this way but it guts any idea of 'big' change by Dems although horrifying changes have already happened with little newspaper fanfare.

It is weird and very sad to see DUers stubbornly going against the grain of what most of this board stands for as far as leadership, agenda and resounding victory are concerned. In the negative and the limited positive, the leading candidate's campaign is shaped by the GOP and at the least will not enter office with any concern for us except as pariahs as defined by Al Frum. Can the register deliver votes with this principled stand for big money interests? If Hillary wins it seals the relationship and the mutual favors on into the WH. The strategic accommodation years that also brought us some of the disasters that led to today has far far outlived any rationale. Now it looks cartoonishly naive and even arrogant, siding with the very crocodile smile people with the knives ready and the people, as always, the biggest losers.

Tell us the Clintons have a secret plan to unleash their inner Roosevelt. Tell us how they will grasp some blown away mandate to accomplish this theoretical turnaround. Tell us how this is not the salvation of the totally decayed and dangerous Bush GOP. Electability. Experience. There is no rocket. No launchpad. Even an insane but understandable perception of little difference whether she wins or not.

Tell us how this peachy keen for the impassioned liberals on DU.

on Bush was a lot simpler and arrived at the same conclusion that usually applies to ALL Presidents. Your past behavior does not change by moving on up. It usually becomes entitled and worse. I tried preaching that in vain all over the place in 2000. Empirical evidence shows exactly how Bush will misbehave, and yes, oh boy, did he get worse, closing on the Imperial madness model which his tiny soul cannot handle. Along with Cheney the real doer, of course.

In vain against the meme of "honor", charm and being a "nice guy" with a super "team" to make up for his simple corporate delegating ways. All the Dems in fact salivated in being able to influence and "work with" the good old boy just like his handlers in Texas. So bad was/is that judgment behavior by Dems it becomes taint by association, justified by the evidence always(yes Bill, schmoozing with George I tells it all. Yes, Hillary, piling praise on Powell is even worse than believing his lies about Iraq in the first place.) If there was anything to the lies against Gore that succeeded, they were trivial to serve the greater lies about Bush. Almost mathematically elegant. Who needs polls of the gulled and the crapped on? Just look. Period.

Hillary and Obama go out of their way to accept Third Way lunacy despite ALL evidence and results. Such a minor thing as yet ANOTHER study of video game violence shows exactly the kind of nonsense two of our leaders will engage in as President/ The poster digs into the iraq funding votes and polls. Just keep looking at words and behaviors and opinions so fixed they proudly, gratuitously, offensively parade them out for no special political reason at all worth the telling. It could be just trivial politics, but that is a bad sign too. Looking into their lives and past is not the chamber of horrors you see easily with the unpunished Bush crime family. But it is proudly consistent and will drive their presidencies. Into the ground if the GOP can't prevent their election.

What is inconsistent? The memes are inconsistent. Now with Edwards it becomes difficult to paint consistency because of his learning curve and Senate record and residual good will to his peers and the traditions of the system. The most revealing thing he has said lately was that he presumed everyone in his various careers at the outset, were smarter than he. So his fault was trust and perhaps not having over-weaning self-confidence. After that, what reasserts is what he preaches now. Powerful advocacy for the little guy and change. he was tentative in 2004 and Obama is now when it came to advancing the message and the means. Even then he quickly reasserted to progressive banner carrying. Obama is still following the middle way model with consistent life experience philosophy. He will never be that progressive or fee of the establishment.

What you get with Edwards is not the one term Senator but the experienced anti-corporate lawyer. That is the tougher sell for my take this time around, but it is simple. Very very simple. And people enamored of other candidates will simply ignore it in their zeal, and will get what they ignore, and will not like it, and will never admit they should have known better. Edwards failings will be in the early learning curve as president and then will only get better.

point than Bill as upstaging yet unhelpful campaigner is how he will be the world's biggest albatross around an actual Hillary presidency. Selling him as a the number one aide in any policy area could backfire 100 times worse than Hillary's foray into health care. He steals her gravitas like the larger star in a destructive binary system. yet she needs him both politically and in policy moves. This idea of a co-presidency can't work anymore than his political teaming when HE does not have the top "Bill"ing.

His gaffes to date pretty much cement that opinion for me. His attempts to edit history for example cannot succeed under the gross double standards that apply to the Boy King and the GOP. Nor can he really challenge them for all his "fight" and force. The efficient fighter machine that was supposed to give the party confidence after two sandbaggings is not working.

And it is early. The real messing up has not even begun. The dem voters are just beginning to wake up to this and this is where the nail-biting comes in.

In the end though, because Obama has been less than brilliant or progressive in key aspects, it will be a contest between others. I think Obama's awkward and new lashing out sent the vulnerabilities of the Clintons into a tailspin and the undecideds coming on board ALWAYS were lukewarm at best to the nationally weak Hillary candidacy. The one person quoted voiced her own change of heart but it speaks of every single logical point one could imagine totally derailing Hillary's campaign. The more this is voiced, the more it is all over.

Yet, there never has been a possibly losing candidacy so strongly poised to go the distance. Certainly none that have failed to. The epiphany has to come in the queasy establishment support and the judgment of voters like the above.

Right after his election Obama drew back from the DLC which had listed him as "one of their own" success stories. Since then he has made more accommodations while staying independent. His book and several quotes in the heat of the campaign shows some of those destructive Third Way notions are unfortunately embedded in his politics. If we are accommodating to the lunacy of both parties, he has enormous power but somewhere along the line, the GOP which dragged the party into the middle of the Third Way roadkill stagnancy, will start to pull the plug.

One can hope only that Obama will change because changing the country is a long way past where he is now, and perhaps winning it all as well.

In any event, he has done the party(and nation a service in testing the Clinton myths now and asserting real competition because the media granted him that opportunity). Myths that failed are being dispelled. Real choice is opening up, for example Biden. If we simply shift the spotlight to another clay messiah, trying to forget all the others according to media horse race handicapping, let the skeet shooting begin- and we will see.

Udall had been a leading liberal leader and competitor for House leadership. he was even more clearly the one, albeit self-deprecating and gentlemanly, to advance the liberal progressive leadership of the party.
As usual he got sideswiped for exactly that.

The go along, Southern strategy folk who conveniently ignored the Westerner appeal of Udall and ignore their own southern strategy candidate today, and dimmed the progressive bulbs for decades.

The same crap that happened to Carter(or Carter did if you want some liberal complaints about his policies) could happen all over again for the same reasons and under the auspices of an unnecessarily close election that fudges the revolutionary NEEDS of our times. I wonder about the "nice guy" Udall and now think we would have been much better off all around had we voted for him. There would have been no surrender and fudging of the "democratic wing" of our party. The weaknesses of Carter were precisely what OUR party leadership wanted.

Talk about disaster economics, this is disaster politics.

After surviving a rocky, compromised presidency perhaps the DLC choice will be honored and esteemed as Carter is today- at long long last- with reservations. But to go along this path AGAIN risks too much altogether- even defeat against a vicious, rigged GOP machine. It certainly sets back AGAIN any, any movement at all to get the party under the leadership of progressives who could LEAD and end disaster politics once and for all. You can love Hillary and rightly so and stoutly defend and work for her administration. You can buy her books twenty years from now as she receives the Nobel prize or something.

And the cost to the future, to the party will be agonizingly high- if not ultimately fatal.

To my brother who backed Udall while I voted for Carter in NY, in the terrible balance of things I think now I was wrong. It is not just a matter of TRYING the progressive road with Edwards or DK but of saving everyone from the mistakes of past which the GOP is more prepared than ever to write large in our future- if only to distract from their own black hole collapse. To top it off, like I said, the ELECT ABILITY argument that sent Carter over the top in places like NY is just the reverse now. Just the reverse and we are contemplating justifying the center right choice FOR WHAT? Just WHAT is automatically delivered that does not come with qualifiers and enormous price tags- and NO progressive championship to match world shattering crises ahead and crimes against humanity in our current legacy? Crimes in our very business economic identity?