Blogger, webcomic author, and personality-test maker SaintGasoline put up his endorsement of Mike Gravel a few days ago:
For anyone participating in the Democratic primaries, I strongly urge you to vote for Mike Gravel (or possibly Dennis Kucinich as an alternative). Gravel is a man who genuinely cares about this country, and I have no doubt that he would be a great, effective, and innovative leader. After researching his stance on the issues, I see that his policies almost perfectly reflect my own political stances. But then again, so do Kucinich’s. The clinching factor for Gravel, though, was the fact that he is a man who knows how to get things done. Unlike the Democratic congress we elected, from whom we expected some sort of pressure put on the President to resolve the mess in Iraq and from whom we actually received complacency and inactivity, Mike Gravel would quickly and decisively put an end to this unjust war
It’s well written and passionate, and I haven’t seen too much from Gravel supporters lately so it’s certainly worth a quick read. I have my policy disagreements with Gravel, and if you haven’t noticed the sidebar I’m cheering for someone else, but I don’t dislike him. I wish that he had stuck with his record instead of doing things like this:
…because seven minutes is a very long time to wait for nothing.
As I’m sure you’ve heard by now 4204 (Simple Majority) has sneaked ahead and now looks like it’s going to be law. That and I67 (Insurance) are the two big wins this time around. There’s been some talk about how I960 (Stupid Nonsense) was narrowing and might wind up in recount land, or even lose, but I think that’s just wishful thinking.
It would have been embarrassing if a whole slate of prominent Democrats stood up and fought for Sherman and he lost anyway, but it’s so much worse to have those same Democrats stay out of it. Now, instead of just a major win for the state R’s in King County, the D’s look like idiots and Gregoire’s spokespeople can’t seem to figure out why she stayed out of it. This was an opportunity to stand up, show herself as a leader of both the party and the state, and get some free press going into next year’s election.
I’m somewhat nervous about the upcoming Gubernatorial election. Gregoire has been a great governor and has the skills and experience to deserve another term, but this is politics and qualifications aren’t enough. I hope that she’s got some great people in her corner, people who know how to play the game, or she might be in trouble.
This is in response to the excellent endorsements of Edwards around the net lately. In addition to the MyDD list I linked to earlier there’s more roundups here and here.
Let me start this off by talking about my second favorite candidate: Dennis Kucinich. I kept up with Talking Points Memo, the Washington Monthly and a few other blogs, but I didn’t know anything about Kucinich for the majority of the 2004 campaign. It wasn’t that the information wasn’t out there, I just didn’t care. After the 2000 mess I was so turned off to politics that I didn’t even really start paying attention until after the primaries.
I still didn’t know anything about Kucinich until early 2005 when I went to an event at the Seattle Labor Temple about the Social Security fight. I was there to see Jim McDermott, another incredible person, but Kucinich spoke also and I was an instant fan. I don’t think there’s a single issue that I disagree with him on.
But some things are more important than issues.
I firmly believe that John Edwards has what it takes to be a great president. More than just pulling the other ‘top-tier’ Democrats to the left with bold and ambitious positions, he’s outlining a vision of a new and greater America. The issues are all fairly straightforward:
Health care and college for everyone
The United States should lead the world and work to solve global issues like poverty and disease
American workers shouldn’t pay the price for higher executive profits
…and so on. What’s more important than the issues, though, is the reasoning. We need to do these things not because they’re a good idea (which they are), but because it’s who we are. This is America dammit, all of this should be a given.
I support the Democratic candidates because they make me feel proud to be a Democrat. I support Dennis Kucinich because he makes me proud to be a liberal.
The Michigan Senate voted Wednesday to move the state’s presidential nomination contests to Jan. 15, further roiling an already turbulent nomination schedule that has raised the possibility of primaries before New Year’s.
Approval of the switch is far from sure. The Michigan House must still approve the measure, and a disagreement among state Democratic leaders over whether to hold a primary or a caucus is complicating final action.
Come on guys, this has gone on far enough. At some point moving the primaries and caucuses earlier and earlier are just going to wind up making them less relevant. With the long gap between the votes and the convention I’m already concerned about partisans for the losing candidates getting involved in bitter sniping and arm twisting instead of using that time to rally around the winner. Some of that will happen anyway (Hi Deaniacs!), but it’s only going to get worse over time.
U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen thinks Congress is getting a bad rap.
In his meeting with our editorial board Monday, Larsen said that he thinks the current Congress deserves more credit than the current low approval-ratings polls indicate. He pointed to several pieces of legislation he thinks show that this Congress is making progress[.]
In discussing Congress’ low approval ratings yesterday, I noted that Bush followers and media pundits simply invent facts about these ratings that are plainly false. In particular, they repeatedly claim that Congress’ low approval ratings are due to its excessive investigations of the administration — which, they never tire of telling us, Americans do not like — as well as Congress’ failure to co-operate with the President in a bi-partisan way. That is a pure expression of conventional Beltway wisdom.
On cue, former Bush official Peter Wehner, writing on the Commentary blog, asserted that these negative Congressional polling numbers reveal that “Democrats are paying a high price for their hyper-partisanship. They appear angry, zealous, and vengeful, far more interested in investigations than legislation.” Right-wing blogger McQ cited as one reason for the unpopularity that Democrats “spent all their time $investigating marginal, and to most Americans, unimportant things while accomplishing nothing of importance.”
There’s some wisdom in this attack, and as usual it’s the exact opposite of what those idiots are saying. The disgust with Congress is based on the fact that they don’t appear “angry, zealous, and vengeful” enough. The rotten FISA “reform” passed, the Military Commissions Act is still on the books, and there doesn’t seem to be any traction on getting out of Iraq. Impeachment proceedings, or even just something as simple as a censure, don’t seem to be taken seriously. Read the rest of this entry »
I missed the debate yesterday, though missed might not be the right word. If you’re especially curious here’s ElectionCentral’s roundup and the highlight reel assembled by TPMtv:
At first I thought this was just another “Ha ha, stupid politician” type moment, the silly gaffs that make the campaigns interesting. Then I read his clarification:
“(W)hat I was trying to say yesterday is that I empathize with them because I feel like I have that same risk. And the way I said it, I probably could have said it better, but what I was trying to say was I was there quite a bit, there are people that were there more than me, people that were [there] less than me. There were people there less than me, people on my staff, who already have had serious health consequences and they weren’t there as often as I was.”…
How is that supposed to make it better? Why can’t these people just say “I’m sorry, that was dumb” and get on with their lives? I can only assume that this is part of some unique fetish that involves blowing up in a dramatic way on national television and losing the election.
I didn’t watch last nights debate forum (or whatever). Mostly out of candidate fatigue, I needed a little break from these folks. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy with the Democratic Field, but I was too burned out last night to really care.
Luckily, there’s plenty of coverage over at Logo Online’s politics page. I’d heard that Richardson didn’t have a good night, and that’s definitely true. Kucinich was again in his element and even Gravel won some points.
I’ll have more on this sometime during the weekend.
The continuing mendacity and stupidity of the administration has cost this country in innumerable ways. When I think of the challenges facing the Democratic administration to follow I just sigh and look at kittens for a while.
