Tag: primary

How to get “change from below”, but on STEROIDS – 435 primary challenges at a time

(This is a slightly edited copy of a comment I just made. It regards a very important proposal, so I thought it merited it’s own diary. I will try to get the author to cross-post here.)

If you want to be a part of the solution, I think a better way forward is to focus on an electoral revolution. There were two very important diaries on OpenLeft in the past 2-3 days, in particular the one by jeffroby  (which was front-paged for a while, then removed; read the comments and you’ll find out why).

The diaries are for a Full Court Press (by jeffroby) and How to start your own netroots organization (by Chris Bowers). I will ask jeffroby to join here, and cross post.

It’s my impression that blogs tend to be self-limiting for most of the participants. I.e., discussion and argumentation, while potentially important, for the most part don’t seem to lead to activism that reaches outside the blog’s community. At best, you tend to just get online activism of the blog community directed to elected officials – send an email to Senator X, sign a petition at this URL, maybe call your Congress critter.

So, we get “blogging to the choir”. (the blogosphere equivalent of “preaching to the choir”)

Thus, even joining battle with Obamabots will likely only reach a small proportion of them – and not lead to serious change in Washington, D.C. I suggest considering challenging them with supporting jeffroby’s plan to have progressive candidates challenge incumbents in all 435 districts who don’t measure up to a COMMON agenda, instead of basically putting up with the run-of-the-mill type Democrats who are there now.

A true Obamabot, after all, has to take as Gospel Obama’s words that “CHANGE COMES FROM THE BOTTOM UP”.

Well, that would be jeffroby’s full court press…. change from the bottom up, but ON STEROIDS.

A Few Thoughts On Orwell, Kipling, Hillary, and Gore

(crossposted from Daily Kos)

George Orwell once referred to Rudyard Kipling as the “prophet of British imperialism.”  That he unquestionably was.  

Which is not to suggest that Kipling wasn’t a great writer.  He was that too.  

As Orwell wrote in this brilliant essay

Kipling is the only English writer of our time who has added phrases to the language.  The phrases and neologisms which we take over and use without remembering their origin do not always come from writers we admire.

One of Kipling’s most famous poems offers lessons to Hillary Clinton on how she ought to conduct herself as this marathon, bruising fight for the 2008 Democratic nomination draws to a close.  And the need for party unity becomes paramount to coalesce behind a once-in-a-generation candidate who is poised to succeed in the General Election in November.

The choice is obvious: either we succeed collectively or fail individually — only to see a continuation of the most destructive domestic and foreign policies in the post-WW II era.

That is simply what is at stake in this election.

The Roots of Wright: Segregation and the Unfamiliar

This is a diary I posted on dkos yesterday.  I am pleased enough with it that I want to make it my first post here on docudharma.  Looking around the site and seeing who is posting here, I recognize a lot of names as people I respect from dkos and have seen a lot less of recently.  So I expect to be here more as a haven from the relentless Obama diaries.  Although this is technically an Obama essay concerning an absurd media “issue,” the point of this diary is to take a look at race, and to make explicit the racism behind the Rev. Wright controversy.  

(But one thing first:  because I can, I want to say right off the top that you have to be an idiot to blithely assume there is no chance that 9/11 was a conspiracy.  Ahhhh!  The smell of freedom.)  

Oh yeah, and thanks to pfiore8 for inviting me here.

So here goes nothing.  Please be kind.

Help Shirley Golub unseat Nancy Pelosi!

Shirley Golub is running against Nancy Pelosi in the California-8th June primary.  She has produced a radio ad calling the Speaker of the House of Representatives what she is: a coward.

Let’s help her get this ad on the air.  Go to the following web site:

http://www.shirley08.com/donat…

And donate what you can.  Pelosi has been a disaster as Speaker.  She has been among the biggest obstacles to impeachment, has allowed funding for the occupation of Iraq to continue unfettered, and failed to enforce Congressional subpoena power.  The coward needs to go, lest her cowardice and complicity in the crimes of the Bush regime further drag down the Democratic Party.

And while we’re at it, let’s help Cindy Sheehan as she seeks to unseat Pelosi.

http://www.cindyforcongress.org

The only way we can get Democrats (and every other representative) in Congress to listen, to do as they’re told, is to put the fear of something greater than the shrub and his gargoyle into them: electoral defeat.  This is a proven tactic; Iowa’s Leonard Boswell, one of the most shameless Bush dogs in the House, signed onto Robert Wexler’s impeachment efforts after fellow bootlicker Al Wynn lost his primary race in Maryland to challenger Donna Edwards.

So let’s give Shirley Golub a hand up, and send a message to Nancy Pelosi that cowardice and complicity shall be punished at the ballot box.

Obama convinced me today

sort of cross posting from the GOS ..

Barack’s statement today about the anger of the people who are not even in his base of support, and more importantly his response to the fawning McCain and Clinton campaigns as they spun to the PA electorate convinced me.

Obama’s ready to stand and fight for what he believes in.

I might not always agree with exactly what it is, that which Barack Obama believes in, but I am sick to death of leaders who will not stand up for what they believe, especially Democrats. What I saw today shows me without a doubt this man has the self determination and pride to stand for what he thinks is right.

I’ve seen enough of the guy to realize he does offer a set of viewpoints that are closer to mine than John McCain’s, easily and he has eclipsed Hillary Clinton because he has cut through the BS, and has let truth speak.

I may not always agree with his viewpoints, it would be too much to ask. But as time has progressed, I have seen the candidate take on challenges and do so directly, and honestly. That’s a mark of a leader, a person who can be trusted to stay true to himself. There’s some sort of personal integrity aspect to Barack Obama I am beginning to like, more and more.

As I told our fellow rabble rousers over in Orangeville, that doesn’t mean I’m hopping on the Bash Hillary and Bill bus.  

Prediction: If Obama Nominee, Hillary Under The Bus

Over at Talk Left, BTD is arguing that if, as his supporters and surrogates say, Obama has locked this thing up, he should attempt to unify the party–that it is not Hillary who should do this (as Kos and Meteor Blades argue).  http://www.talkleft.com/story/…

I argue the opposite.  I believe if Obama gets the nomination, not only does he not try to gain the consent of Hillary supporters, and not only does he not request Hillary to help in his campaign (much less ask her to be his v-p), he throws Hillary under the bus.  

My prediction is that Hillary will become the token of what is characterized as “old school” politics, divisiveness, and the belt way.  I think Obama determines that Hillary supporters, in the end, will not vote for McSame no matter what he does and that he will run to the right (to the extent he cannot simply run on hope, change and unity) in the general election.

What do you think?

Common sense and logic .. from who else, except Al Gore?

Gore expects the situation to “resolve itself” by the time the convention comes around.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2…

MURFREESBORO – Former Vice President Al Gore said Thursday that he expects the Democratic nomination fight will “resolve itself” before the party’s convention in late August.

Gore told The Associated Press that he sees no urgency in endorsing a presidential candidate.

“What have we got, five months left?” he said in a brief interview after a speech at Middle Tennessee State University.

When pressed that several prominent Democrats, including Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, have expressed hope for an earlier decision on the nomination, Gore said: “I think it’s going to resolve itself. But we’ll see.”

Sort of disappointed to see Howard Dean doing something a little different ..

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03…

“If we have an ugly, divided convention, we will lose. John McCain is not a strong candidate for president. The only way we lose is if we are divided.”

I think Gore’s got the right frame here, the correct vision to adopt. Dean should be backing away from even giving the appearance that Democrats will be anything but united, come August.  

My vote in Ohio’s primary.

I just returned from voting in Ohio’s primary.  I cast my ballot for Dennis Kucinich, as my choice for both the presidency and the 10th Congressional District’s representative.  And thus my conscience is clean.

I know, I know.  “You just wasted your vote,” many of you shall say.  To that I give you this simple response:  Horse shit.  The only votes wasted, dear readers, are those not cast and those cast for a candidate who doesn’t represent you.  Anyone who tells you differently is either lying to you, or doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

These are not things I write lightly.  I know quite well that what I’ve just typed shall piss off a number of people.  The truth, however, was never designed to make people happy.

Primaries are precisely the time when we as voters are supposed to stand up and vote our beliefs.  Why in God’s name would anyone vote for someone who doesn’t represent him?  “Pragmatism”?  That’s a bullshit excuse, one designed to justify keeping the status quo intact.  And for far too long, far too many Democrats have succumbed to that argument.  We voted “pragmatically” in 2004, cast our ballots for a candidate who wasn’t worth the toilet bowl he shat into, and what did it get us?  Nothing, except four more years of crap raining down upon our country.  Four more years of craven capitulation — two of them under a Democratic Congress — to a boy tyrant who in a sane world would have been removed from office and convicted of treason during the first year of his reign.

Neither Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama have earned so much as a single Democratic vote.  But for the desperation of Americans to elect anyone other than a Republican, the adulation and scorn of the corporate media, and the humongous egos of the two prima donnas themselves, they are the candidates we have been saddled with in this primary season.

There is an admonition against allowing the “perfect” to be the enemy of the “good”.  But really, how many people do you know who ask for or expect perfect?  I and everyone I know is fully aware that nothing and no one is perfect.  All we want are good policy and good representatives.  Yet each and every election cycle, we’re forced to accept the mediocre and the downright bad.

It doesn’t, and shouldn’t, have to be that way.  However you intend to vote in the general election, is this or is it not the time to vote your beliefs — to cast your ballot for the presidential candidate who represents you?  Not Big Business, not the DLC, but you.  Mr. and Ms. Average American.  To hand your ballot to someone who doesn’t represent you is to surrender it to the status quo, to send a message that, no matter how much you may complain about the way things are, you’re perfectly content to leave it as is.

That isn’t democracy, ladies and gentlemen.  It’s a monarchical system, one in which the will of the public is subjected to the greed and ambition of a political minority whose interests are to keep you beaten down and in service to the economic elite.  And I don’t know about you ladies and gentlemen, but I refuse to give in to that bullshit.  Politicians are supposed to work for us, to be our voices in the halls of power.  We are not supposed to subject our interests and political beliefs to those we employ.

Maybe your state’s primary or caucus has already been held.  Maybe it’s today, or has yet to be held.  For those of you who fall into the latter categories,ask yourselves if it isn’t worth it to challenge this fucked up system by voting for the candidate who represents you, just to see what would happen.

New Hampshire Recount: Already worth it! w/poll

The New Hampshire Primary recount started yesterday.  Paid for by the Dennis Kucinich campaign, the recount may or may not show a change of the winner of the event.  Even so, after one day, we’ve found enough out to be able to say that the recount is worth every penny!

Kucinich asks for New Hampshire recount in the interest of election integrity

Dennis Kucinich is asking for a recount of the New Hampshire primary!  Due to the discrepencies which exist, such as hand ballots running by 4 points for Obama and scanned ballots running for Hillary by the same amount.

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