Anyone here who refused to vote for Kerry in November 2004 because of his vote for the IWR,

[Nye Bevan]

his support for NAFTA and free trade, his opposition to marriage equality, his support of the death penalty, his lack of support for single payer health care, his enormous personal wealth, or any other reason?

If so, what did you do? Sit out the election, vote for someone else, or write somebody in?

[merrily]

1. Primary or general?

[Nye Bevan]

2. General.

Edited to clarify.

[merrily]

7. Thank you. I voted for Kerry in 2004, but I was relatively clueless then and he

was (a) a Democrat, (b) a favorite son and (c) not Bush. I not only voted for him, I waited on line for hours in the rain to vote for him as Massachusetts had only one day to vote until just this year.

I honestly don't know what I would have done, If I had known then what I know now.

Being in Boston, though, I have the luxury of not having to worry overly much about how I vote, unless it's something like Brown v. Coakley--and even then, Brown won by so much my vote for Coakley didn't much matter.

In a Presidential, only certain counties really matter, though not the same counties in every Presidential. http://www.democraticunderground.com/12778561

[JonLeibowitz]

3. I did not cast a ballot for Kerry. I could not in good conscience do so. Don't blame me, ...

it was against my ethics to do so.

(As I was only 12 at the time I think it would have been illegal to have cast a ballot. Made you look! )

[MADem]

4. Susan Sarandon claims that is her reason for not supporting Clinton.

Yet she had no problem supporting Cheatin' John Edwards...who voted the EXACT same way.



Things that make you go hmmmm!

[peace13]

5. Just so ya know...

.....I'm not saying Hillary, but people like her , have more than one reason not to vote for them. What we want to focus on is reasons why a voter couldn't refuse her, or someone like her. Let's say the top Ten attributes.

[WhiteTara]

6. I've asked the same question

but my answer was crickets.

[gcomeau]

8. Kerry was the most leftward viable candidate (After Dean crashed and burned out of the gate).

So it was perfectly acceptable he get the nomination even if he wasn't perfect since nominating him was the best we could do.


This year the Democratic Party decided to pull out all the stops to make sure the most left viable candidate by a MILE.... who also happened to be the strongest most progressive candidate the left of the party has fielded in fucking FOREVER... in an election year with a massive tide of anti establishment sentiment... was boxed out while supporting the establishment candidate who trashed Single Payer, adopted the GOP attack line against progressive social programs as giving away "free stuff" and promising people ponies, gets her pockets filled by the Big Banks to obscene degree while refusing to disclose what she gave them in return in those speeches (because they weren't paying a couple hundred thousand dollars a pop to hear the sound of her voice), and generally did everything she could to screw the left of the party over at every turn, and who is to the right of the President we already have (what direction are we supposed to be progressing in again?)



Little different. NOT rewarding that behavior with support. Period.

[SammyWinstonJack]

12. +1000000

[Fumesucker]

14. What really rankles is I think they all voted for it to maintain their "electability"

Anyone who is not a maroon could see Dubya and Cheney were straining at the leash like two particularly stupid and vicious pit bulls.

But really Cheney isn't stupid, he knew exactly how Iraq would turn out, it was common knowledge among the intel elite.

[arcane1]

15. Kerry did worse: he said in a debate that he would've invaded Iraq too.

So in his case, it wasn't about giving Bush some vague "authority" that was then betrayed. Kerry wanted to go into Iraq.

[Fumesucker]

17. Hopefully he wouldn't have bungled it quite as badly as the Dynamic Duo

I recall when the Coalition Provisional Authority's website first went on the net the GIF image that was displayed said "Coalition *Provincial* Authority". The badwords couldn't even speak English with any degree of fluency.

[CentralMass]

9. No. I also voted for and supported Hillary in 2008. However

Last edited Wed Mar 16, 2016, 06:50 PM - Edit history (2)

her decisions regarding Libya and very late admission that her Iraq War vote was a mistake indicate that she is prone to making poor decisions. Costly mistakes. Her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs and the many financial contributions recieved by the Clinton Foundation and the influence peddlers that she has running her campaign leave the appearance that she can be bought.

[blm]

10. Kerry voted against DOMA, does not support death penalty, and only inherited wealth

after the death of his mother in 2003 which he did not receive until 2005.

He also helped author the amendment to NAFTA with environmental and labor protections. When the majority voted against it became a much tougher vote for him - Clinton promised to revisit NAFTA and fix parts that weren't working.

[Bluenorthwest]

11. Kerry was a DOMA no vote and a supporter of equality who parsed it out as candidate and I did not

care for that and still hold it against him as he has yet to send a card or an envelope full of cash. Of course I voted for him, I was not thrilled to do so and he lost. I was never fond of Edwards at all and I was vindicated on that one fully.

I'm not crazy about examples that involve a shameful Democratic defeat. But since that's what you are into I'd say that candidates like Kerry don't excite people and serve as a sort of employment agent for the Republicans who defeat them. Kerry lost to Bush. One of the reasons he lost is because of that vote, in spite of all the people like us who voted for him anyway. We are not the ones who stay home when unimpressed.

[Warren DeMontague]

13. I supported him in the primaries because i bought the stuff about his being more "electable"

In retrospect i came to belive strongly that we would have done better with someone who could articulate a consistent moral opposition to the iraq war without "i voted for it before i was against it".

In 2008 i felt very strongly that we needed to nominate someone without that albatross, and thankfully we did.

[azurnoir]

16. I voted for Kerry in 2004 however I did not vote for Clinton in 1996

I wrote in Wellstone then

[MerryBlooms]

18. I'm a Dem straight-party ticket no matter how angry I may be with my party.

I'm a Sanders supporter and voted for him in the Illinois primary, but I will vote for the Democratic nominee in the GE, no matter what. imo, there needs to be some changes in the party, but that will come from us continually fighting for change, it won't come from abandoning the party. We can't win if we're eating our own.