"Bruce J. Richman" wrote in message
...
George M. Mifddius wrote:


Socky bitched:

However, this time your candidate appears to be
Kerry, aka "Mr Special Interests".

Any Democrat is better than Dubya. And that includes Sharpton.

Agreed. And the idea of trying to tie the Democrats in particular to
"special
interests" is a red herring, given the Republicans' well known affinity
for
pandering to various special interests It will be interesting to see how
the
whole "Medicare reform"/health care insurance issue plays out in the
upcoming
election, given the Republicans' shameful concessions to the
pharmaceutical
industry - to mention just one extremely "special" interest.

Agreed, Bruce - and what you mentioned is just the tip of the iceberg that's
going to sink Dubya's ship.

My candidate is still Howard Dean, as only 10% of the country has voted in
the primaries to date. Anything could still happen. OTOH, I lost my
enthusiasm for Dean as a "candidate" months ago, as a result of his own
relatively poor performance in the debates, his poorly put-together TV ads,
his occasionally very poorly worded phrases, his general lack of talent as a
public speaker (as contrasted, especially, with Edwards), etc., etc., etc.
I will support him until he most likely will eventually drop out (he has
totally mismanaged his campaign finances, and has stubbornly refused to
listen to his supporters' advice, and continues to make the same mistakes).
In retrospect, Dean may be compared to Lech Walesa - a great revolutionary
who in Dean's case put some backbone back into the Democratic party by being
the first to really stand up to and call Bush out for all his crapola, and
in the process created a revolution of sorts, bringing in tons of new people
to the political process, and energized the country to wake up from its
Dubya/media-induced slumber. But like Lech Walesa, he has turned out to be
a poor "manager" - Walesa was overwhelmingly voted out of office after years
of mismanagement.

At this point I don't believe Dean will go all the way, but his legacy will
be that he defined the issues and put together a movement that other
candidates copied/plagiarized out of necessity (to survive), and he could
have enough delegates at the Democratic Convention to influence the
platform, and even possibly to be a "kingmaker" - e.g., if Kerry waffles on
enough core issues, Dean may hand all of his delegates over to Edwards,
which could tip the scales and send Kerry packing. Dean's still my
favorite, Edwards is a close second, Clark is third, and Kerry a distant
fourth.

As I said, anything is now possible, but I'll back my man to the bitter end,
out of principle.

Whoever wins will trounce Bush on *every* issue, and given the huge increase
in Democrats going to the polls this year, *no* Republican could win, thanks
to Bush's ****ing off so many Americans.

I'm not contributing any more pre-Convention money to anyone (I met the
federal limit with Dean) but will add another $1,800 to the DNC after the
Convention (which added to my $200 donation in 2003 will meet the federal
limit). And my wife will kick in another $2K at that time.