If you don't want Kucinich as our nominee, than get other Dems to embrace Kucinich's platform

[Ken Burch]

The polls(the same ones the HRC people use to claim we shouldn't even bother with primaries)show that the party and the country want REAL progressive change.

We can win with single-payer.

We can win with a real commitment to get out of Iraq fast and NOT to bomb Iran(since we all know that the U.S. can't bring anything positive to Iran through force).

We can win by doing massive voter registration. We don't have to focus on the donors and the finicky suburbanites. We can win the burbs by sounding confident and authoritative.

Centrism and weasel words equal defeat. Conviction, principles, hope and optimism mean victory.

For a REAL victory that REALLY matters!

Let's fight hard and fight for the truth.

[daninthemoon]

1. I think that's the hope.

[RiverStone]

2. Kucinich's platform truly represents DEM values

No equivocation, NO grey areas, NO B.S.

Yes, I truly hope DK plays a major role at the convention!



peace~

[calteacherguy]

13. "no grey areas"

You see, that's the problem I have with Kucinich.

And it's a big one.

[Ken Burch]

14. What's so great about "grey areas"? All they are are an excuse for betrayal.

When Dems talk about "nuance", they always mean "I'll always take the conservative choice when the chips are down".

Grey areas always leave us burned.

[calteacherguy]

17. Too simplistic for me.

I understand the point you are making, but you are taking it to an extreme in the other direction. Not all Dems agree with everything the far left advocates. In fact, the majority don't.

[Ken Burch]

18. Watch it with the use of terms like "far left"

Nobody here is in the Khmer Rouge, Slim.

And most Dems are clearly to the left of HRC.

[RiverStone]

23. I hardly see the "right" here at all

Not all Dems agree with everything the far left advocates. In fact, the majority don't.

What - certainly your not referring to DU?

This is DU and we are without a doubt, to the left of center on most issues. Hillary represents the right of the Democratic party - she is the most repub of any of the declared candidates.

I will agree that not all Dems (out there) agree with the far left; but almost all Dems on DU agree that DK has taken the most historically consistent view against the war from the get go. Nothing to interpret there ---- unlike all the shades of support (therein lies the grey) that folks such as Hillary or Biden have a history of offering up for Shrub's war.

If you believe the majority of Dems do NOT agree with the left of the party, then I'm afraid you have been marginalized by bullshit propaganda from the MSM. They love to be the tail that wags the dog; and people love to believe what they see on their almighty TV (as truth). Corporate TV likes to blur the line between the blue issues and the red issues; from where I stand, I know the difference between a Democrat and a rethug. No grey at all....

[truedelphi]

26. There ya go again. With the RW talking points.

WE ARE NOT, I REPEAT NOT, THE FAR LEFT.

WE ARE THE AVERAGE GUY AND GAL WHO HAVE BEEN BURNED BY THE LAST SIXTEEN YEARS OF THIS COUNTRY'S OPERATING SYSTEM.

OUR JOBS ARe NOW OVERSEAS. MANY OF US ARE IN OUR FIFTIES - AND UNLESS WE THROUGH SOME MIRACLE HUNG ON AT THE CORPORATION WHERE WE THOUGHT WE WOULD RETIRE, WE ARE WITHOUT HEALTH INSURQANCE (DUE TO PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS, IN MANY CASES, NOT BECAUSE WE WON'T PAY)

WE KNOW NOTHING ON THE HOME FRONT WILL CHANGE FOR THE BETTER IF HRC GETS THE PRESIDENCY.

Hillary's Presidency will work exactly as the Democratic Majority in Congress is working right now.

There will be no change in direction in terms of Iraq.

There will be no change in terms of outsourcing of jobs. The banks and the utilities will continue practices that were once illegal. (Banks standard operating procedures are now "usury" - a criminal activity that before the corporate buyout of Congress was only expected to occur during business deals with the Mafia. And even Mafia loan sharks held the interest rate down to 125% - the paycheck loan places have you at 900% a year!)

National Health Care will be established that will be so influenced and bought out by the insurance industry that Health Care will continue to be a system by which the working class will be bankrupted should they need it, and worse: their health and their lives will continue to be irrelevant to the overall Health Care game...

Abortion will probably remain legal.

And the Corporate Industry tax credits, green point exchange will be seen as the standard for the Environmental Movement: industry can destroy the air in this region as long as they buy hay for the elk in some nature preserve miles away. With much fanfare and kudos to all - because the word "environment"gets used a lot - never mind that the people living in the region where the air is polluted will still die early from respiratory illnesses.

[ljm2002]

32. Oddly enough...

...issues polls tend to show that a majority of Democrats agree with Kucinich on major policy positions. So how is he "far left"?

Here is a site that asks questions on issues:

http://www.dehp.net/candidate/index.php

And here is a page showing results so far in graphical format:

http://www.dehp.net/candidate/stats.php

Granted it is not a random poll kind of thing; however, people who make the choices are choosing on issues alone, then seeing which candidate best matches their positions on the issues. And as you can see, Kucinich wins handily. So again, spinning him as "far left" seems to be a media construct more than anything else. BTW I do not accuse you of spinning, I just wanted to point out that it would appear to be an inaccurate representation of his views, except in the sense that his views are actually in the center of political thought right now, but the MSM has decided that the far right is actually the center -- therefore any inhabitant of the actual center is "far left".

[GreenArrow]

31. sometimes grey is indistinguishable from black or white

.

[GreenArrow]

30. DN Convention 2004 saw 90 some percent of delegates

wanting anti-war plank in the party platform. They didn't get it, receiving instead a line of meaningless pap to the effect that "reasonable people disagreed on the issue." Never mind that 90 some percent wanted the flippin' anti-war language in! You might also remember that DK stayed in the race until Convention, in the hopes that things like anti-war language would make it into the platform. Didn't work then, won't work this time either.

[The Wielding Truth]

3. Gee, I thought there would be tons of posts here. Dennis is

certainly the man with the best outlook on life, politics,and government. He has consistently fought for the rights of all who can't quite get through the glass ceiling made of corporate lobbyists. He has always stood for integrity in following the vow he gave to protect and defend our Constitution.

He is well informed in foreign affairs and has a straight forward thought out way of following the best way to better situations and pursue what all the other have forgotten, Peace. He will not give up when it comes to rooting out injustice and corruption. Just think of all the bills and special hearings he is responsible for. All of them for us. He is not there for the fat cats. He stands with the workers.

He doesn't jump ship because he is on solid ground. Compare all other candidates by listing like causes and who supported our views and you will see the only candidate who truly is democratically sound.

Dennis Kucinich!The man to restore our dignity as Americans.

[silverojo]

4. K&R

And a big AAAAA-MEN!

[alittlelark]

5. They would if they were not CORPORATE WHORES

and if they did, they would be destroyed in the MSM for supporting the beliefs of 70% of us (The USA voters) , and assasinated outright if all other measures failed.


The Corporatocracy MUST prevail!!!




damn, we are sooooo screwed.

[robinlynne]

6. agreed!

[calteacherguy]

7. I don't agree with a lot of Kucinich's platform. So I'll pass on that. nt

[lligrd]

10. Really? What Don't You Agree With?

You don't like single payer and prefer the corrupt insurance companies? You don't want to get out of Iraq and prefer to stay in the quagmire further enraging the Middle East and creating more hatred at America? You want to bomb Iran and help start WW III? Is it just one of those or all three?

[calteacherguy]

11. The comments he's made about Iraq have been irresponsible and unrealistic, imo.

Also, I don't think it's wise to try and go immediately to single-payer. I think it would create a lot of havoc. Changes need to be made gradually with a system so complex.

I do agree we need real diplomacy with Iran, as do all the Democratic candidates.

[lligrd]

15. I Think If We Go With Any Other System

it will be nearly impossible to ever get to single payer. We will not be starting from scratch. There are plenty of working models out there all ready to work from.

Diplomacy with Iran does not begin with threatening military action and if they don't stand up to the plate soon, Cheney will most certainly get his way.

Iraq was never winnable. It never will be. There is absolutely nothing we can do to fix the mess we made and staying only prolongs the misery.

[Nutmegger]

8. R&K ........ enough of this spinelessness.

We all can learn something from Kucinich.

Strength through peace.

[burrowowl]

9. Hopefully a big vote for DK

would get some of his planks in the platform. Like real universal health care.

[Sapphire Blue]

12. Dear John Edwards:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Sapphire%20Blue/541

[Proud_Lefty]

16. No other nominees will take his platform

because they will become as unelectable as Kuchnich is. Everyone has played the political game that got them where they are. They are all indebted to someone or something for how they made it to their high level positions. No. It's not the people who elected them. Election fraud has been proven over and over again since 2000. Actually, it goes back much, much further than that even. Since this presidential campaign started, it's been about money, money, money. That money can buy what the media tells you about each candidate's popularity, whether its true or not, and believe me, it's not true. There's absolutely nothing in this campaign about appeal to the masses. Kuchnich has extreme appeal with his platform and those someones who make people presidents are doing everything they can to minimize his effectiveness. And we wonder why no one else will stand firmly on an exit strategy. They are walking a tightrope between what the people want to hear and satisfying those who put them into their current high level positions. And where do they lean in their allegiance? That's an easy one for me to answer. Makes total sense when you hear their platform. I still can't figure out why we're still scratching our heads trying to figure out why they don't understand why we put the democrats in office.

[TreasonousBastard]

19. I'll start with single-payer...

what's so great about that? It's universal care we're looking for, and no one has made the case that single-payer is the only way to get there. Or even the best way.

All of those polls are very interesting, but this isn't Dennis' first time out, and no matter how much his fans want to blame the media, the DLC, or sunspots for his lousy showing every time, the fact remains that he seems to leave the voting public cold. Could it be that people like his goals, but not the way he plans to get there?

Voter registration and all that basic good stuff is as necessary as it always has been. Why is this a Dennis thing? It's always been part of local Party functions, and the Parties have generally been pretty good at it. (Unless the local parties have been taken over by bright-eyed newbies who haven't yet realized that grunt work is more important than grand statements and pizza parties.)

[Ken Burch]

22. What's so great about it? OK, I'll give you a few things;

1)It's going to be simpler and far less bureaucratic than an insurance industry-controlled plan.
2)It would most likely cost less than an insurance industry-controlled plan because of this.
3)It's much easier to eventually expand than an insurance-industry controlled plan, since private profit would not be the driving force.

And it's been us activists who had to PUSH the party to do anything about voter registration(Jesse Jackson was begging the party to do it for years, let me remind you).

And Dennis' problems stem largely, in my view, from the fact that he isn't the favorite of the big donors(the ones who want to pay the party to abandon its principles)and he gets dragged down by the petty obsession with looks that's used to attack him and probably also because some people are uncomfortable with the fact that Dennis is openly spiritual.

[TreasonousBastard]

27. You haven't explained what's so great about...

single-payer, just made a number of assumptions. You claim that replacing a number of small bureaucracies with one larger one will work better, but with no data to back it up. With healthcare being such an enormous business, I doubt there is any data that would prove anything either way. My point is that we explore all ways to get to universal care, and not be held to any particular way.

I've been involved in voter registration drives for 30 years or so, and I don't remember any activists pushing anyone to do it. Maybe in some areas it was a problem, but not in mine.

Yes, you do have a point that big donors call the shots. After the Buckley decision it may prove almost impossible to solve this problem, but too much money and too long campigns are destroying any populist campaign platforms.

[illinoisprogressive]

20. even tho I support Obama, I would not complain if it was Kuncinich as nominee

[Ken Burch]

21. Thanks for the thought IP

n/t.

[Sparkly]

24. With all due respect, that sounds like a Naderite tactic.

It takes a lot more power in numbers to make such a tactic work.

I DO like Kucinich's positions, but "we" are not going to "get other Dems" to do anything. If there are 3% who won't give someone a vote unless they promise X, and 30% who won't vote for them unless they promise Y, guess what they're going to do?

[Ken Burch]

25. Not Naderism at all. I wasn't saying "Adopt our whole platform or we walk"

And I'm not just talking about our 3%. I'm talking about the much larger group who keep saying they love what Dennis stands for but then say they can't vote for him as a candidate.

[Desertrose]

28. Kick for DK

[GreenArrow]

29. if the current lot of candidates wanted these things and others

they would be fighting for them, tooth and nail. They don't, they aren't and they won't.

If the American people truly wanted these things, they would be fighting for them tooth and nail. They don't, they aren't, and they won't. They still want to have their cake and eat it too.

[riqster]

33. That's part of what a Primary vote is for

...to influence the platform. I'm voting DK in the Primary, and for that very reason.

[Vinca]

34. I've always said - and I've told his campaign - if John Edwards

wants to be the next president, endorse the Kucinich plan. As long as the so-called "mainstream" candidates stick with big insurance, they'll lose a good chunk of the vote.