The sad part is this: Kerry would have won if he made BBV an issue.

[TruthIsAll]

If he did made it an issue BEFORE the election. Not now.

It's too late baby, it's too late.
Though he really did try to make it.

He avoided it like the plague.

In fact, virtually all the candidates avoided it. Why, we will never know.

Except for Dean. He appeared with Bev Harris on TV and learned how to hack the votes. Did Kerry watch or hear about it?

I just don't get it.
No verified-paper ballot, thanks to the Repubs in HAVA.
It would have been easy to pound that one every day.
It was issue Numero Uno.

But no.
Oh, sure, he talked about 17,000 lawyers.
But not about BBV.
We talked about it every day.

He really thought they would play fair?
Just like he didn't fight the swift-boat liars.
Until it was too late.
Inexplicable.

I guess we'll just have to wait until 2008.
Things should be in great shape by then.

[renaissanceguy]

1. That is the reason I would be hesitant

to support him if he ran in 2008. He simply didn't do a good job fighting back.

http://www.cafepress.com/liberalissues/479727

[fasttense]

2. In 2008, they will have gotten even better at stealing the vote.

They seem to try something new each voting cycle. They try it out and when the public swallows it, they use it on a massive scale. Next year watch out for barricades, missing polling places and more of what we got this year.

[mazzarro]

4. You are absolutely right

You can also bet that the lazy-brained democratic party leadership will be left behind fighting "yesterday's war". These reThugs will definitely find a way of assuaging the democrats on the paper trail issues while at the same time discovering new angles to keep themselves ahead of the curve in their election stealing voyage. For sure disenfranchising voters is almost a routine for them since they have mastered so many of it's corners and they have so many reThuglican SOS's that they can always find another state to designate as the new battlefield state and the SOS as vice-Chair of the their candidate's election campaign - in 2000 it was Florida; in 2004 it was Ohio; and in 2008 it will definitely be another state. And presto - it is another election manipulated and stolen for the reThugs again while the dems are so slow to catch on as always.

[Democrat Dragon]

18. Sad but it has a high possibility

Let's just say we need to make sure Mitofsky or other pukes aren't involved in any more exit polls.....

[rainy]

3. Maybe that is how he won the primaries

How DID he win the primaries when he wasn't leading in any polls?

[Karenca]

9. I support Kerry.........

but I always did wonder about the Dem. primary polls. :think:
I thought for sure Dean was going to be the nominee.

[flpoljunkie]

12. Dean and the Deaniacs lost Iowa all by themselves.

Thinking otherwise is only wishful thinking.

[AtLiberty]

5. That's why we must push the movement NOW...

...long before 2006. If we wait until it becomes a campaign issue, it will be logistically too late. We can't afford to continue "losing" to fraud.

[SmokingJacket]

6. Yep, absolutely right.

I'm afraid Kerry has to eat the cake he baked, or failed to bake.

But I'm angry that Americans have to suffer because no one took this issue seriously.

[bush_is_wacko]

7. I agree, but he would NEVER have been able to withstand the litany

of conspiracy theorist, tinfoil hat, x-filer, etc,, etc, catcalls from the administration if he had made this an issue. It took 2 stolen elections to get as many Americans as we have now looking in that direction and we still don't have a majority at this point, from what I can tell. Give it another couple months and a little media coverage and I think that could change, but there is no way Kerry could have run on a policy that controversial.

BTW, I'm not so sure Kerry did think they would play fair. I think he just knew the issue didn't have enough bite for the average American during a time of war and mass hysteria. Don't get me wrong, I understand the importance of the issue and always have, but I just think it would have backfired. The thugs could have used the creation of HAVA and all that as the excuse to lam blast him! The kool-aid crowd would have accepted that hook, line, and sinker...or should I say STINKER!

[seabeyond]

8. Kerry would have won if

oh lordy you cannot say that. well, lol lol you can say it, but you cant know it. we are in the oddest of times i think you of all accept that. you look at your numbers and say why dont people see, it is right there in front of them, numbers for goodness sake. why doesnt news report this. it is here calculated, done.

if kerry mouthed about bbv who knows what the repugs and media would have done with it. what did they do with the info that dean and others talked about on air. nada. nothing. why if kerry said it would it have been an issue. and he had so many things he had to talk about that he didnt get to talk about, or that was even put out when he talked about it.

lol lo lol, the mess we create

[helderheid]

10. he mentioned it in one of the first debates

but not once after as far as I could tell.

[Catamount]

11. The sad part is HE DID WIN! n/t

[flpoljunkie]

13. Quite possibly won in Ohio. How do we get a media consortium to count

all the votes--like they did in Florida after the 2000 debacle. Those 93,000 "spoiled" ballots--those which did not register vote for president when run through the machine-- deserved to be looked at and counted, if they meet Iowa's test of valid votes.

This ought to have been done in Ohio, but was not. Were they even looked at in the precincts that were "randomy" chosen for recount?

[TruthIsAll]

15. Of course he won. But...

by not making it an issue, he gave them carte blanche to steal it again, just like they did in 2000 and 2002.

[glitch]

16. I really really hoped that he knew what was coming and had set a trap

to catch the fraud and indict the bastards. You cannot believe how much I hoped that.
I am probably more disappointed in that failure than in any other political failure in my memory.
I believe this was our best chance to catch and prosecute, and we won't get another within the system.
Very sorry to say so.

[DARE to HOPE]

17. Me, too... :-(

[GettysbergII]

14. And of course Dean was sandbagged by his own party

If he did made it an issue BEFORE the election. Not now.

It's too late baby, it's too late.
Though he really did try to make it.

He avoided it like the plague.

In fact, virtually all the candidates avoided it. Why, we will never know.

Except for Dean. He appeared with Bev Harris on TV and learned how to hack the votes. Did Kerry watch or hear about it?

So what is it with the BBV issue that Democrats have been so willing to ignore it? Certainly they aren't that stupid, particularly at the highest levels of the party, the evidence was clearly out there before hand that in its current manifestation BBV was insecure and in the hands of the rightwing. And if they aren't that stupid, the alternative is just as scary. All the more reason for us to transform the DNP from a top down party to a bottom up party, or barring that is possible to form our own bottom up party.

I may be a bit cynical but I fear that both the liberal and rightwing elite in this country realise that things are going to only get worse in our oil dependent economy as it is generally agreed that peak oil production has been bracketed as occurring between 2004 and 2007 after which its a ever increasing downward spiral. And I doubt a purely profit motivated capitalist economy can adapt to this situation or it would have started to thirty years ago when peak oil production in this country was reached. The elite will continue to pass 100% of the burden on to the working people in this country as they have been for decades. Ineveitably it is just a matter of time before the average working stiff gets politicalized and starts looking out for his own interests. Obviously by that time the elite would like to have complete control of both the media and the voting process and leave the American population with the choice between the Replantation Party and Plantation Lite.

[LittleClarkie]

19. There are those who said when it was mentioned to him

that his eyes would glaze over. It must not have sounded credible to him. I think the explanation that came from the person with the story was that he saw it as tinhat stuff.

Ironically, he was called a tin hatter during Iran/Contra.

[Stevepol]

20. So true TIA!! I admire JFK but I cannot understand how the Dems can't

see the obvious. Unless they come out AS A PARTY, COMPLETELY UNIFIED ON THIS ONE ISSUE, NOTHING ELSE IS POSSIBLE. And in fact before long they'll all be on the ash heap of history just like Tom Daschle. Every two years, more Repub "stunning and surprising" victories over Dems holding leads in the polls going in and leads in the exit polls following the voting.

I suspect many a Dem Congressperson has beaucoup skeletons in the closet and is afraid of Rove and his henchmen revealing something or instituting lawsuits as they have done with Shelley, the SOS of CA because of his rulings re Diebold. Richardson in NM may be in that category. LBJ supposedly said the reason he went along with keeping Hoover at the FBI is because he wanted the guy pissing out rather than pissing in.

Other than that I can't for the life of me understand why a person would willingly agree to his own annihilation.

DEMAND A VOTER-VERIFIED PAPER BALLOT AND FAIR AUDITS FOR ALL ELECTIONS