I want to get this off my chest.

[Fovea]

My heart literally tells me that I do not have a primary candidate. I will have a GE candidate, but I just don't think I have a primary candidate since Edwards suspended.

I have a candidate who will I think be less electable, it is the candidate the RWNM has been prepping for since 92. I have another candidate I fear might be shot mid election. Neither of them, as great as they are seem adequately engaged with the situations we currently have and face upcoming.

Frankly, I think that any involvement by insurance companies with universal care is like Medicare Plan D, but a mile high, and rabid.

I think that the cost of supporting an imperial military has already grievously wounded the American economy, and the moral cost of a professional military class as a part of the mix has yet to show its true perniciousness. Like the free companies returning to England after the treaty of Bretégny in the Hundred Years War, the hellhounds of Iraq are soon to be the hellhounds of San Diego, as they already were for New Orleans.

For these reasons alone, the age of Oil must draw to as rapid a twilight as we can manage.

I think a candidate who does not face this front and center fails to address the next set of challenges. Katrina was not just the failure of FEMA, it was also the sucess of Blackwater at bringing back the days of the Pinkerton agency and the Ford Motor Co massacre.

Sadly, I don't see them getting it yet. But perhaps the economy can refocus thinking by the strategists of my donkey party. Pursuing the largess of the corporate entities and the uber-rich instead of the huge tide of voters is not a good idea.

When the current power brokers of our party realize that the 08 mandate makes the 06 mandate seem like a polite suggestion, it would not surprise me if they decide to get out of the way. Their generation across the aisle already are. The pundits and strategists of the third way are deserving their cashout, their concept has lived its lifespan. And hey, what a crazy, giddy lifespan it was.

I personally went a decade almost without rest. "Code monkey say maybe manager wanna write goddamn login page himself" as Jonathon Coulton sings. That sort of thing takes a lot out of you, and Bill has already had a heart attack. It takes something out of you, unless you turn to the dark side.

I am not just talking about candidates here. Part of the disaster of the Bush administration was the apotheosis of the marginalia of earlier administrations. Let's not do that ourselves.

We cannot afford anything less than single payer... no, I guess I mean I can't.

My last point will possibly get me little love. But this one *is* about we instead of me.

We need the majority of Green Party voters back. We need to get every one of them back into the fold. We do that by putting Gore's environmental values out as a front and center issue and adding the anti-globalist anti-corporatist platforms that are consistent with Democratic traditional values of reform. Globalism is going to take one in the head from petroleum costs in shipping reducing the profitability of Chinese labor.

China has physically closer trading partners, and the wealth to encourage its huge internal market-- and could eventually take a short position on America as a result.

Our ownership society, wherein most of us are owned, is as tender and over-balanced as the Mary Rose. as it capsizes, it won't jettison money. The value will bury itself in the muddy river bottom, perhaps for as long as the Mary Rose did.

If we can weld Gore's post carbon economy with corporate reform, and Edwards sensitivity to the dangerous inbalance of wealth, the combined effect of that would, with the de-lamination of the wide stance coalition, change the face of America politically in a way that might just save the planet.

And I believe that hope for us all rests on hope for all our children.
And I think maybe that might become more apparent this year.
I am sad for how that is likely to become more apparent.

[leftstreet]

1. "Our ownership society, wherein most of us are owned"

How very true.

Thanks for a thoughtful post.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

2. Clinton's plan has been made for easy transition into UHC at no cost to tax payers...Obama's not

[leftstreet]

3. You mean Universal Health Insurance, not single payer right? n/t

[ElsewheresDaughter]

6. single payer....the infrastructure will already be in place with Clinton's plan

[stahbrett]

4. "My heart literally tells me" - that's some strange heart you've got. :-) (eom)

[Fovea]

9. It is a heart that has had two heart attacks already

and every night before i fall asleep, I hope that I wake up.

My brain tells me this too, and would have even without the stroke.

[smokey nj]

5. K&R!!

[housewolf]

7. Ya know, FRD didn't campaign on The New Deal

He didn't have all those pollicies worked out in advance. He campaigned on the issues. The solutions unfolded after he was elected when there was a pressing need and commitment to come up with solutions.

In our country, one individual cannot impose any sort of solution. There has to be mass public support for a solution - we just saw that with Bush's proposed immigration reform and his Social Security reform proposal that died.

Hillary has a refined a set of policies that she would like to see, but the odds of any of those policies being enacted exactly as she has laid them out is miniscule, at best for the simple reason that there are so many competing interests in the country - so that what seems to one as THE IDEAL solution also seems disasterous to his neighbor and there are multiple gradations between the two. What she is offering may be a pre-formed, pre-set of proposals designed by herself and an unknown group of advisors. The danger in that is that we, the voting publlic, don't have knowledge of what interests those proposals represent.

Obama may be less specific as to the implementation of his vision - he seems to be more open to allowing a greater coalition of folks work out the specifics when and if he gets nominated or elected. He is campaigning on transparency - it's possible that we will have more open information about the vying interests as he refines his proposals.

The odds are that we're not going to see a real progressive agenda such as Ralph Nader or Dennis Kucinich advocate implemented in 2009. What we need to do, INHO, is to decide, each one of us, where we think the real solutions to today's issues will come from. Will they come from the baby boomer's and their parents who helped exacerbate the problems, or will they come from those younger for whom solving the problems is going to be a matter of survival?

You'll have to decide for yourself but please, please, don't sell out on yourself and your heart because of fear.

[Tatiana]

10. I wish I could rec this thoughtful response.

What we need to do, INHO, is to decide, each one of us, where we think the real solutions to today's issues will come from. Will they come from the baby boomer's and their parents who helped exacerbate the problems, or will they come from those younger for whom solving the problems is going to be a matter of survival?

Very true. When you're fighting for your very life, livelihood and survival, it's amazing what you can accomplish.

[Iktomiwicasa]

8. K&R

:kick:

[Tennessee Gal]

11. Thank you for a very thoughtful post.

k & r

[Eurobabe]

12. People who spread this meme "candidate who will be shot"

-- why do you even continue to propagate this awful stuff?

[Fovea]

13. Well, let me see.

I think it was the feeling in the third grade when John Kennedy was killed.
Then it was Robert, and Martin.
And so on to Paul Wellstone.

Sorry I guess that seems like a downer to you, but I have seen hope die before.

[Eurobabe]

14. Don't be so maudlin

:eyes:

[Fovea]

15. Sorry it offends you

The stroke damaged my thalamus and I have a very wildly variable affect.

However, this is about shared life experience. And I experienced every one of those events as a mental and emotional shock and awe event, starting in grade 3. My mom was an ex jazz musician and so I grew up in a racially mixed environment. My maternal grandfather was a wobbly, so my left wing has deep attachments.

I suspect I am not alone about the trauma of the sixties, even among the non brain damaged. So when Daschle got anthrax'd and Wellstone and Carnahan fell from the sky, I figured it was same old same old knife in the heart conservativism that made my childhood such a emo event.