Who are your political idols, and why?

[More Than A Feeling]

"Well I have a test for politicians. I ask them who their political idols are, and why. And what Ned Lamont told me is the single most impressive answer I have ever gotten. His favorite politicians are Bill Clinton and Bill Bradley, and the reason is because he believes we need a more entrepreneurial style of politics." -Matt Stoller, "Ned Lamont, the Political Entrepeneur" http://mydd.com/story/2006/2/17/165938/836

My political heroes are Barbara Boxer and Russ Feingold, for being willing to be on the (morally) right end of everyone versus one votes.

How about you?

[John Q. Citizen]

1. Paul Wellstone, hands down. Honest, couragous, forthright, and

came up through the grassroots.

[upi402]

4. same

[SammyWinstonJack]

5. Yes that was going to be my answer.

Thank you!

[senseandsensibility]

2. Gotta go with Paul

Still can't believe he's gone.:cry:

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

3. Passed On? Paul Wellstone. Living? Barbara Boxer.

Barbara is one of the ONLY politicians that each and every time she speaks she gives me reason for applause. She's as consistent with integrity as any politician I've ever seen.

[FreedomAngel82]

6. Mine are

John Kerry and Ted Kennedy. You can always count on them. They've had amazing stories and battles.

[HockeyMom]

7. Kerry and Kennedy

I wrote to them ONCE a year ago and they regularly send me emails on what is happening in Congress on important issues.

I don't even live in their State.

[gator_in_Ontario]

8. Alcee Hastings,

my representaive from Florida, because he voted against the war from jump-start, although I voted for him before that.

[tnlefty]

9. It must be Russ Feingold at the moment 'cause I dreamed about him

last night. In the dream we were talking and I was in a crowd of people lining the streets. He said 'I have to go now' and he was walking toward the White House. He turned and waved and the crowd erupted in cheers, and he walked into the White House.

[More Than A Feeling]

13. Wow, that's a lot more sane than the only political dream I have had

I once dreamed that John Edwards and I were detectives in Chicago trying to solve a murder.

[tnlefty]

20. I hope that mine is prophetic, I suppose. Your dream seems much more

adventuresome, of course if I can continue my dream tonight and get him out of that black suit...

[Idioteque]

33. I dreamed that my mom divorced my stepdad and married Lincoln Chafee!

...and I wasn't doing any drugs or anything!

[FreedomAngel82]

39. Ooo that sounds good!

I had a dream once where Kerry was in the White House going in various rooms looking for someone.

[Nitrogenica]

10. Paul Wellstone. Such energy and passion for politics.

We need more people like him elected in 2006!

"I am a 100% improvement on Paul Wellstone" (Norm Coleman)

That says a mouthful

[CrazyOrangeCat]

12. 9 out of 10 ferrets agree . . .

. . . the guy with the Hitler 'stache sucks. :thumbsdown:

[ellenfl]

25. coleman replaced wellstone? what were you people

thinking!

ellen fl

[Nitrogenica]

27. Remember they smeared Wellstone's funeral, led by Oxycotin

Rush. That was a few days before the election. Same deal as the Coretta funeral, that turned the sheeples against the Democrats. He's toast in 2008 I guarantee you that!! What a scumbag!

[ellenfl]

28. kick the bum out! for all of us . . . eom

[FreedomAngel82]

40. I read about that whole deal in

Franken's "Lies" book and that made me so pissed off! I couldn't stand it and wanted to scream while reading the book. :mad:

[CrazyOrangeCat]

11. Jimmy Carter and MLK Jr.

Peaceful men who lived what they believed. They tried, and in the case of Carter--still trying, to inject the radical notion of peace, equality, and love into politics.

[spuddonna]

14. Wellstone, Carter, Martin Luther King Jr, Kennedy, Kerry

Because they never gave up fighting the big fights worth fighting, even when they were hopelessly outnumbered and knew there was a high chance of losing.

They inspire me...

ETA I forgot Barbara Boxer! D'oh! :)

[radio4progressives]

15. Well, I'm not an Idol Worshipper, but Your Avatar is my hero today

and Boxer (who is one of my Senators) just slipped on that peg when she didn't back Feingold in this fight for our Rights in this Un-Patriot Act Crime that is going on Washington right now.

Oh, and Feingold is the only person in the country today even WORTHY of being President of the United States of America.

[bigwillq]

16. Howard Dean

He's the first politician that I can honestly say----Speaks for me.
I am sorta of a newbie to following politics as closely as I have been since Dean announced he would run for president.

[PVK]

19. Ditto. Dean. Because he is honest and has integrity.

And honestly CARES about this country and democracy.

[bigwillq]

26. I agree.

Welcome to DU! :hi:

[MannyGoldstein]

17. FDR, Lincoln, and...

Ike, because he was a flaming liberal

[oldlady]

18. Fighting Bob LaFollette --father of the Progressive Era

Russ Feingold, Bill Moyers, Dennis Kucinich, Jimmy Carter

[cosmik debris]

21. LBJ

Civil Rights Act of 1964
Voting Rights Act of 1965
If you weren't alive before those two acts, you might not realize how profoundly important they were.

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

22. Boxer, Mckinney, Feingold, Ron Paul, Stupak, Byrd, Frank,

and Trafficant, even behind bars. All of them, for the most part, speak their minds, even if it's not politically correct. Genuine Integrity is rare nowadays in Politics. I love how Byrd is always flapping around his pocket Constitution, I miss Trafficants Beam me up Scotty comments, and Boxers courage humbles me. She is simply The Best.
Mckinney teaches me much. Feingold is the state next door to me, just 5 miles to cheaper smokes! Paul for what the republican party should have been. Frank for his straight stock market talk and dressings down on Greenspan. Stupak because he is my rep and voted against pre-emptive on Iraq.
Well, I got 8 favorities here, guess thats more than asked?
:dilemma: hard to choose!

[ellenfl]

23. hm-m-m, tough one . . .

passed and/or moved on . . . claude pepper, bob graham and lawton chiles (all of florida), lbj, barbara jordan, ann richards (texas), pat schroeder, shirley chisholm and paul wellstone

still making a difference for the human constituency . . . russ feingold, bernie sanders, barney frank, ted kennedy, barbara boxer . . . too few, imo.

my favorite ex-politican . . . hands down, jimmy carter. he was run over while in office but he is the best man ever to hold the office.

ellen fl

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

24. Gandhi, Mandela, MLK, Emma Goldman, Rosa Parks.

With the exception of Mandela, none of them "political leaders".

[saltpoint]

29. self-delete... corrected version below....forgot Lincoln for god's sake.

[saltpoint]

30. I like this post, H&E. You mention Boxer & Feingold, & I'll gladly

include them on my political valentine list. Mario Cuomo is high up there, too. Very high.

I like some past and some present. Robert Kennedy. Ramsey Clark. Bill Moyers. Dennis Kucinich. General Clark. Sheila Jackson Lee. Birch Bayh.

Howard Metzenbaum. Jerry Brown. Mo Udall. Bella Abzug. George McGovern.

Julian Bond. John Kerry. John Edwards. Kerry-Edwards. Al Gore. Lowell Weicker. Pete McCloskey.

Joe Hoggsett. Tammy Baldwin. Ted Kennedy. Gary Hart. Paul Wellstone. Dick Durbin.

Lincoln for his psychic stamina. Geronimo. The young cadets who threw themselves off the Castillo wrapped in the Mexican flag rather than surrender to the oncoming soldiers.

These have been folks with their sleeves rolled up, who showed me what it meant to be a public servant, who used language to elevate and inspire rather than to deceive and tear up.

[Nikki Stone 1]

31. Paul Wellstone,Cynthia McKinney,Paul Krugman (not a politico,but my idol)

:)

[welshTerrier2]

32. Allard Lowenstein

source: http://www.commondreams.org/views/032100-106.htm

Activist Allard Lowenstein Changed Many Lives
by John Nichols


America has come a long way since the political revolution of 1968, when Madison's Midge Miller and New York's Allard Lowenstein hatched a scheme that would depose a sitting president, reshape the Democratic Party and bring a generation of young activists into an electoral process that had until then seemed too closed and corrupt to bother with.

Miller and Lowenstein were part of a small band of anti-Vietnam War activists who believed it was possible to challenge President Lyndon Johnson on the issue in that year's Democratic primaries. They convinced then U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy, D-Minn., to make the run and by the end of March, just a few days before the Wisconsin primary, Johnson was out. <skip>

Everyone in the room, it seemed, had a story about how Lowenstein, a man who literally demanded that young people commit themselves to a life of activism, had fundamentally changed their life. <skip>

Former U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, D-Colo., got to know Lowenstein when she served as a member of the Student Senate at the University of Minnesota in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Lowenstein, who was passionate about ending colonialism in Africa, drew her into the anti-apartheid movement in the days before®MD-IT¯ Nelson Mandela was jailed. "He had a knack for focusing in on issues that no one else was paying attention to and getting people to understand that these were vital struggles,'' Schroeder said. "That just shows you the energy and the passion of the man.'' <skip>

One after another, people testified to the impact that Lowenstein had on their lives, and to the activist path his memory commands them to follow even now. U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., reflected about how he worked on Lowenstein's first congressional campaign. Washington lawyer Abbe Lowell -- the man who grilled Ken Starr during the House impeachment hearings -- recalled organizing an anti-war rally on Long Island in 1967 and inviting Lowenstein to speak.

"I remember his voice to this day -- calling us to do more with our lives, to do better,'' Lowell said. "For me -- as it was for a lot of people in my generation -- Al Lowenstein represented the reason I left a little place called Westbury on Long Island and ended up in a place called the Rayburn Building.''

As she listened to the testaments to her fallen comrade, Pat Schroeder noted that, in a time when Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates is considered a role model: "We don't need another Bill Gates, we need more Al Lowensteins. We really need to remember that this civilization needs a lot more Al Lowensteins.''

[genie_weenie]

34. John Adams, Ben Franklin, George W. Bush

What the f*ck? Did somebody hack my post? Seriously, Adams and Franklin.

[ellenfl]

35. CORRECTION!!! MY HERO IS JOHN CONYERS. eom

[Earth_First]

36. Wellstone, Feingold, Conyers, Kucinich...

THESE people speak for ME!

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

37. I'm not that comfortable with the whole idolatry thing. Shrubco makes

heavy use of it, and it hasn't been such a great thing for the world, and promises to become worse yet.

[More Than A Feeling]

38. I don't think its wrong to have political people you admire

no matter who else does it. Honoring the people who have gone before you, and set the standard is very inspiring to me. They proved it was possible, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel, I just have to take strength and knowledge from their stories.

However, I respect your perspective as well.

[graywarrior]

41. None of them.

Sorry.

[mmonk]

42. My political idols are the ones I don't have to keep an eye on.

[unkachuck]

43. you may not agree....

....it's Pat Paulsen....he had the greatest combination of charm, pose, style and substance of any Presidential candidate I've ever seen....

....Pat would have made a fantastic President if he had only connected better with mainstream America....he would have changed the direction of this country for the better....I'd still vote for Pat today, if he were running....

[earth mom]

44. I don't think any politician should be idolized or made into a hero

All Politicians should be closely and critically monitored.

Otherwise what you get is akin to *s "base" which worships him to the extreme where they excuse him for his very un-Christian like behavior. :puke:

WWJD?

[Ladyhawk]

45. I have no idols. I have no heroes.

People are human and they'll all fuck up at some point. It took me almost 38 years to learn not to idolize anyone. Ever.

[maine_raptor]

46. Lincoln

For one quote:

"Labor is Independent of, and Superior to, Capital. For without Labor, there would be no Capital."

[OneBlueSky]

47. my friend Pete Seeger . . .

because he has ALWAYS fought on the side of the people and against the powers that be, regardless of the odds and often at great personal risk . . . later in life, virtually every concert he performed was a benefit for one cause or another, and he was the one who first educated me (many years ago) about the environment and our responsibility to cherish and protect it . . . he's devoted his entire life to using music to educate and help others, and is an prime example of what it means to be a true patriot . . .

a reporter once asked Pete (in my presence) if he was optimistic (about the state of the environment, the nation, and the planet) . . .

"No," he replied (followed by a pregnant pause) . . . "But I'm hopeful" . . .

[XemaSab]

48. Howard Dean

He has a very forthright style of speaking. He's not afraid to state the obvious, and he's not afraid to step on toes. There's too little common sense in political dialogue these days, and there are too many special interests. Many situations are so complex that politicians are afraid of really taking a stand because they know that no matter what they do, someone will get mad. But Howard's not afraid to take a stand.

[DetroitProle]

49. Bobby Kennedy

A man who seemed to have a real change of heart. Who became the advocate of all the unhappy people of the world. If only more people nowadays had such compassion.