Reply #89: Yes. Can't you read? He's a candidacy is mostly based on speculation.

[PurityOfEssence]

Look at the sub-thread above.

He, like Dean and Clark, sell us on "what he would have done", even when that is far from clear, and in the instances of the latter two, quite open to doubt.

His policies are founded on our trust and faith in him changing his risk-averse, all-things-to-all-people habits and suddenly turn on the corporatists he's so obediently enabled. He ducked the Sense of the Senate on Iran, but then has the chutzpah to attack Hillary for her vote for it. He repeatedly voted "present" on abortion votes to curry favor, and now is very public in making sure the right-to-lifers know that he supports certain restrictions. He promises championing the little guy, then votes against capping credit card interest at 30%.

The people who seem to think he voted against the war are his supporters, not me. He wasn't there at the time and he was studiously silent on the subject at the time except when it was to his advantage to speak. He's been quite dependable in his voting to keep the incursions funded, hasn't he?

He's against handguns when it suits him and for them when that changes.

It's a faith-based candidacy: we have to TRUST him that all this shilly-shallying and accommodation will change when elected. Suddenly, he'll change his habits of 12 years and be a champion for the little guy. Suddenly he'll make us all happy in all our heartfelt dreams.

Fine. We're stuck with him and we need to rally around the party's choice, but one of the true evocations of such support is to stop him from continuing with his mealy-mouthed, two-faced appeasement; he's going to be called out on it and he's going to be painted as precisely what he's claimed he's against: a slippery "old-style" politician bent on nothing more than personal advancement.

Enough's enough; he's got a RESPONSIBILITY to us to behave himself and stand for something beyond deliberately vague emotional and wistful yearnings. We don't owe HIM, he owes US.

This is ridiculous, and people are starting to see this--which some of us have been warning about for a year now--in a big way. We owe it to ourselves to influence this reckless and sloppy campaign to get its act together post haste. Those of us who don't have the entire rest of the world on sanctimonious and blissful "ignore" aren't the least bit surprised that he's effectively dead even with a true stiff of a candidate. That's appalling.

With so very much of his candidacy based on our faith in his integrity, he will crash and burn in a Spitzeresque curtain-call at some not-so-remote incident where he can't dodge a question. We deserve better.

He's been so lucky with his Hillaryish dance of double-dealing for so very long that he thinks he can continue with the same schtick and get away with it. Now he's under the magnifying glass and it's time to see if this pony has more than the one trick.