Reply #20: We've lost our way. Ideals, values, issues -- that's what our votes should be about. [View All]

[Totally Committed]

Instead, we allow the "media" to convince us that it should be about "appearance", "image", "charisma", "star quality", and "buzz".

The hell with how the candidate will vote... How much do their haircuts cost? How big is their house? Who are they married to? Do they eat sea bass? What movie star or celebrity has endorsed them? -- You know, stuff like that. That's all we're told we need to know. And, that's EXACTLY why we have had to suffer through 8 years with a President everyone wanted to have a beer with as we watched him destroy this country and our way of life.

There was a time when a candidate's ideas were the measure of who (s)he was. There was a time when candidates for office had to tell us what their vision for OUR lives and how they would make things better for US was what was needed to win a vote. Now they have stylists and handlers and advisors who run focus groups and "place" articles in the media and find ways to destroy the "viability" of other candidates. Our welfare is forgotten next to all the big corporate donors the fundraisers bring into the campaigns. It's all about whose "machine" is best now, not whose ideas are. It's about how "popular" a candidate is made to appear, rather than how honest or (s)he is. A vote for the little guy is seen as "courageous", even when it is the only right thing to do.

Politics have gotten filthy, and this atmosphere rarely breeds a real, honest-to-goodness populist candidate. Kucinich is one of them, and THAT's why they spend so much time telling us how "unelectable" he is.

TC