If the Dem. candidate you hate the MOST wins the nomination, what then?

[Pale Blue Dot]

My editorial position: If choices 1 & 2 get less than 100% of the vote, I'll be very disappointed.

[ShaneGR]

1. Well, if it's Lieberman

I'll hold my nose and vote for him. Anyone else and I'll gladly vote for them with a big smile.

[xJlM]

5. I voted for Joe (for VP)

When he ran with Al Gore, I had no problem voting for Joe. I suppose I could hold my nose and do it again. I just hope it doesn't come to that.

[pansypoo53219]

25. don't worry

he ONLY has name recognition. he AIN't getting $ like Clark or Dean.

[soleft]

6. If that happened I'd seriously have to leave the country

It's one thing having the opposition in power and trying to change that - having your only chance at changing things for the better evaporate by your party becoming the other party - it's time for Margaritaville

[HFishbine]

2. I'll

move to Canada.

[mw]

3. I will vote for a tree before I vote for a Bush

And the tree will screw up our nation LESS than Bush is.

[Cocoa]

4. I love all the dem candidates

not saying this in a touchy-feely way, but seriously they all have extremely high positives in my view.

[RichM]

10. Ridiculous and naive. It isn't possible to support both DK and, for

example, Clark, if you understand what both are about. The only way to overcome a contradiction like that is to be so blindly loyal to the party that you don't care about contradictions.

More precisely: if you really like either DK or Sharpton, you HAVE to oppose Clark and Lieberman, and vice-versa.

[Divernan]

11. Whatever contradictions there are between and among Dem candidates

PALE in comparison to the contradiction between Bush and any of them.
Don't confuse the primary with the general election.

[Cocoa]

14. that's a fallacy

you're assuming politics is like a spectator sport, where you have fans that love their team and necessarily hate the other team.

It's not that way.

And your putting DK and Sharpton at one end, and Clark and Lieberman at the other, is just one model. It's not in any way the truth, it's just an approximation that someone else could disagree with.

[CWebster]

15. A very important point

An essential consideration. I can't imagine that a good portion of the progressive wing could be coralled into backing the Right-wing of the Democratic party.

It just isn't going to happen after all that has gone down.

[pansypoo53219]

26. this is just STUPID if DK

supporters do that. THE OTHER CANDIDATES ARE NOT THE ENEMY. our enemy is BUSH. he is the worlds enemy and the big issue is his REMOVAL.

[RichM]

30. Exactly wrong. Bush is not the enemy; the enemy is the corporate

oligarchy -- the social forces that stand BEHIND Bush. And these social elements control MOST of the Dem Party too -- and Clark is their boy. The only Democrats not controlled by those elements are DK and Sharpton. The rest are, to varying degrees, corporate tools and advocates for the military-industrial complex. That is exactly what Clark is.

[Terwilliger]

31. I can oppose Clark on a philosophical ground

but I dont even know where he stands on anything yet.

Given clues of his obvious flim-flam on the Iraq issue (some people also don't understand that just being a pundit for the warmonger media makes you a warmonger) I am hard pressed to give Clark any credit.

We'll see where he maps out his actual beliefs on the several issues, but, you're right, I can't come close to supporting Clark at this time.

[salin]

7. Not only will I vote for the candidate

I will work for the candidate. The worst of the lot is a VAST improvement over the current lot. The worst of the lot will turn back policies of this criminal lot. Stakes are too high to get so wedded to a single candidate to lose sight of that. In another time I might feel differently. But there is far, far too much at stake. I fear to think what the Grand US will be reduced to after another term of Bush.

[RichM]

8. Your poll failed to include "I will vote for a 3rd party" - unless

"I'll sit it out" is supposed to be lumped together in that category.

[clar]

9. I can't take part in your poll

because I don't hate any of them. Not even Joe. And I will vote with great enthusiasm for whoever ends up with the nomination. Getting bushco out is what really counts for me. He's the one I can't stand.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

12. if it is Joe...i will sit out the election

[mw]

16. "Sitting out the election" is a vote. For Bush. n/t

nt

[sham]

20. Not in my state.

Don't know where you live, but this state is redder than a baboon's ass, and if I don't like the cadidate, I'm abstaining. There are currently three that I will not vote for.

[Monte Carlo]

27. Then it is. I can be cynical, too.

Holy Joe would be the slow, painful death of the Democrats.

[CMT]

13. I honestly don't "Hate" any of them

even Joe Lieberman. I may not agree with some of them on some issues but I think each of them would be an improvement over Bush--a man I do despise.

[Az]

17. Sorry to say

But if Lieberman pulls the nomination I will be seeking another party to vote for. On every issue I value I find insignificant differences between Lieberman and the right. A vote for Lieberman IMHO is a vote for no change. Its an empty vote.

[Athletic Grrl]

21. And in a race too close to calll....

that sort of dissension among us will ensure 4 more years of Bush Co. In presidential elections, I must go with my party. Those of you in battleground states are far more important than I am in the big scheme of things. Do NOT throw your vote away as that equals voting for that lying sack of shit we already have in DC (through no fault of my own...I didn't like him much but my vote went to Gore).

[Isere]

32. Insignificant differences between Lieberman and the right?

Lieberman has 100% rating from NARAL and 88% from the League of Conservation Voters.

I don't call that insignificant.

[IrateCitizen]

18. Lieberman won't get the nomination anyway.

So it's really a moot point. But I would hold my nose and vote for him anyway, making sure I took a vomit bag into the polling station with me.

[Atlant]

19. A choice left out: Vote for someone other than the Dem *OR* Bush

I've given this a lot of thought, but I'm fairly certain that
if the Democratic Party think so little of my worth to them
as to nominate Joe Lieberman, I'll be voting further "left"
from the Democrats.

If Nader and LaDuke are NOT the Green candidates, I'll
probably vote Green. Otherwise I'll go one step even further
left from the Greens (because I'll never vote for either
Nader or LaDuke, the bringers of the 2000 debacle).

Atlant

[CWebster]

24. Actually

Lieberman has a decent Democratic record on many issues.

I would vote for Lieberman first despite his hawkishness and his Israeli policy because he at least has a few redeeming features compared to Clark -the DLC's "democratic" General who has probably even a more sinister history regarding Israel under the pleasant claptrap. Bet my bottom dollar---at least we all know where Lieberman hails from.

[zeemike]

22. I voted sit out

That is not to say I will because I could vote for most of the candidates, I like them all, but to explain that if I smell a rat in this election…feel like I have been manipulated… and it is a fix, I will not vote Democrat or republican.

[sphbecker]

35. Independent

In that case you should vote for an independent or a small party (such as the Green party) that you may support.

It is never wise it sit out an election. Its better to vote for someone who has no chance.

[Terwilliger]

23. Hate none of the candidates, and this shouldn't be an issue

[starroute]

28. The enemy is not Bush -- it's the destruction of American democracy

The real power elite in the US -- roughly speaking, the military-industrial complex -- has for many years had a two-prong strategy. You could call it a political version of good cop-bad cop.

The Republican Party is the bad cop -- brutal, heavy-handed, threatening, unscrupulous, and half-crazed. The Democratic Party is the good cop -- apparently sympathetic, helpful, concerned about protecting the prisoner from the bad cop, but ultimately just as set on getting that conviction.

It's a set-up, and the only ray of hope I see is that the analogy isn't a perfect one. A police force is a closed system, where the cops have no loyalty except to the force. But our political parties were designed as an open system, responsive to the voters themselves, and although corporate money has almost destroyed that, there is still a potential for thinking Americans to stand up and make their will known.

I will *not* vote for another good-cop candidate. Not now, not when so much hangs in the balance. I've spent a couple of decades practicing defensive voting, and it hasn't worked. If the political system has finally lost its last shred of openness, then it's time to move on and find other avenues of action where the will of the people still matters.

[slappypan]

29. I'll hold my breath until I turn blue.

Yeah, that'll show show 'em.

[bitchkitty]

33. A bush vote?

Who voted for Chimpie? Own up!

[jonnyblitz]

34. I would vote for him/her without a moments hesitation.

Only a Democrat can beat Bush.

[lancemurdoch]

36. The vote marker for sit out of election is colored green

And that's what I'd do - vote Green, one of the options not listed. And the one I would not vote for is Lieberman, since he is the most conservative, especially economically (Clark just entered the race, I have no idea where he is on that map yet). I think the Democrats have to draw the line somewhere, if we don't, why not just make Bush the Democratic candidate as well and see which party he gets more votes under?

I also personally feel winning isn't everything. I think working people in this country have been struggling for centuries. As far as the future, I hope it's only for some more decades, although it might be centuries as well. But it will be at least decades nonetheless. And in that long-term struggle there must be principles - and I think the Democrats have tossed out of the "Cross of Gold" and "New Deal" principles in the past few years to be replaced by Democrats for a Leisure Class's "New Democrats" (which looks to me like they want the New Democrats to be - a Republican, perhaps minus much of the intolerance). The line has to be drawn somewhere. And I want it known to the Democratic leadership that if they go to far to the right to try and get swing voters or whatnot, they can kiss goodbye to people like me, who will not be organizing to mobilize the base (which they would have abandoned), and who will not be voting for their candidate.

Recently I was reading a book called "The Long Detour", most of which I thought was junk, although some good and interesting points were made. One was that, just as the Republicans are the strange bedfellows of wealthy businessmen and fundamentalist Christians, so is the Democratic party an amalagam of interests, mostly the bedfellows of identity (race and sex) and working people. Or rather a coalition of interests. If the DNC follows the DLC, so that the Democrats abandon even the very limited way they represent the interests of working people now, I don't see why a worker myself should stay with that coalition, at least during the year that the people wishing to oust working people's interests from the coalition take charge.

[JVS]

37. Why no 3rd party option?

[w4rma]

38. I'd like to see this poll again, but reworded to say "except Lieberman" nt