The Goal

[RichardRay]

Or at least my goal...

I've had a few exchanges lately with other folks here who want Republicans to be severely beaten, feel great pain, and become thoroughly demoralized in this election cycle. Crushing and emasculation are sometimes mentioned. That seems to be their goal. I have a different goal; I want my country back, I want my country to behave like a grown up in the world community and I want to have a president I can listen to without cringing. In service to that goal I will (grudingly, perhaps) let Republicans walk off into the sunset and have long retirements playing interminable rounds of golf on pitch and putt courses and catching farmed fish in little flat ponds.

I've done the rage thing. After Chicago in 1968 I thought I was a street fighting man. I was one of the vanguard, and the government was going down, god damn it. I did some work, spent some time in federal slam. I swore that when Richard Nixon or LBJ died I would dance on their graves - literally. I planned to travel to wherever their remains were placed, get as close as I could, drink a bottle of good whiskey and caper madly in unconstrained joy. That changed. By the time each of them passed the most I could muster was a head shake.

The same is going to be true for George Bush and Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and that whole crew. At some point each will just toddle off this mortal coil and that will be that. The effect on the world when that happens will be minimal. But, the effect of what we do between now and then will be telling.

My goal is to be certain that all the evil they have created in this world is gone, the inequity their policies supported are righted and that we return to being a country that is at least respected if not always agreed with. If, in the process of achieving that goal, some 'guilty party' gets to walk away, then so be it. Modern day political parties are at most worst venal; I'll forgo my personal satisfaction in punishing them in the interest of getting the job done.

Right now, I feel that a good step in that process would be electing Barack Obama to be president. I also feel that electing Hillary Clinton would be a good choice; certainly better than John McCain!! I refuse to let the feelings that drive that choice become an impediment to achieving my real goal. Some things are more important than other things.

Others may feel differntly. That's your karma. Just think about what you really want to have be so ten or twenty years from now.

[LWolf]

1. My "goal"

at this point: to help us towards a deadlocked convention resulting in a nominee that is neither HRC nor Obama.

I think both are bad for the party. I think neither would make a good president. Most of all, I think neither, after the debacle we've watched play out since Iowa, can win the GE.

I want a candidate that can unify the party and win in November. That's not Obama, and it's not Hillary.

I want a candidate who will act decisively to address the damage done by the Bush administration. I don't believe that either of the two "on the table" now will do so.

I want a real leader, who can bring people together. We've seen that neither of the current two can bring their own party together, let alone the rest of the nation. Both of them seem quite able to work well with republicans; it's the rest of us: their own party, and the natural allies on the left, that seems likely to be thrown under the bus.

My goal: a convention that produces a nominee I can vote for in good conscience. A nominee that can win. A nominee that is NOT HRC, and NOT Obama.