Why are our candidates comfortable leaving Bush's policies in place?

[Fire Walk With Me]

[mtnsnake]

1. Because the best candidate, Kucinich, gets treated like a kook for doing otherwise

Let's face it. The only candidate who really would have made a difference, Dennis Kucinich, is the one who the Democratic Party SHOULD nominate, but the one that our Party will never have the courage to back.

Anyone who thinks Obama isn't going to be just as corporate as the rest or that he's going to bring the troops home as soon as he's telling us is about as fucking naive as it gets.

[Fire Walk With Me]

2. Indeed. Let my OP become a talking point, to drive the candidates into doing something Democratic.

[mtnsnake]

3. You can see by the action this is getting that nobody really gives a shit

other than making sure that their favorite candidate beats the one they hate.

Obama is full of himself when he calls Hillary the candidate of status quo. If he gets into the WH, he'll be just as much status quo as Hillary or anyone else. All these idealists who actually think Obama is going to change anything are dreaming and living an illusion.

If Democrats really wanted change and if they really wanted to approach the important issues, they'd support Dennis Kucinich. Instead, they support the person who, in their view, is the most "electable". At least in Hillary's case, she's actually competent.

If you're talking real change and really fixing what's wrong, then give me Dennis Kucinich who is the only one that lays it all on the line as what we really need to do. His problem is that he is way to gutsy and honest.

[Fire Walk With Me]

6. You tell the truth. Thanks for your posts.

I'm just hoping to plant a seed that will cause folks to loudly question their candidates into action. Imagine a Democratic President and the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and the Iraq invasion/Treasury theft/failing economy continuing into 2010 and beyond. All that I'll be able to see is Bush's smirk.

Don't let them get away with it.

[Midlodemocrat]

9. Yup.

What he said.

[Libface]

42. Yup. n/t

[Seeking Serenity]

4. 'Cause doing nothing is easier than doing something. (n/t)

[Bake]

5. Why do you hate America?

Just askin' ...

:rofl:

Excellent point though, in the OP.

Bake

[flvegan]

7. Ditto what mtnsnake said above.

Kucinich was our best hope for change. Naturally, he wasn't chosen because that's not what the DNC wants.

[puerco-bellies]

8. Nice post Obama

:yoiks:

[baldguy]

10. The first order of business of the Democratic Congress & the Democratic President in Feb 2009

should be to rescind every law & decree enacted by the Bush Regime.

[Fire Walk With Me]

14. Absolutely!

Law by law, point by point...

[lutefisk]

17. I wish that could happen.

The more likely scenario is that even more executive orders and legislation will be piled on top of the pile of crap left by the Cheney-Bush Regime. I don't think DHS or the ODNI or any of the countless secret agencies and groups will be touched.

imho

[lutefisk]

11. Maybe the idea of ruling with the power of a dictator is seductive?

Without someone like Kucinich (unlikely this will ever happen) or Gore (could happen, but hasn't), we're screwed. The Cheney-Bush Regime has purged and restructured the federal government into something very "un-American." I don't see any evidence that Clinton, McCain, or Obama will do a damn thing to get back anything we've lost over the past 7 years. More Republican rule would be a complete disaster, but I don't see a whole lot of "hope" with my Democratic choices, either.
:hi:

[Common Sense Party]

12. Ahem. There's still a true change agent in the race.

Go, Gravel!

[MrCoffee]

15. of course, by "Go, Gravel!" you mean Mercer

[FlyingSquirrel]

29. No, seriously I think he meant Gravel (all three)

:)

[Common Sense Party]

34. Lee Mercer would be a fine VP for President Gravel. nt

[Iggo]

13. Oh, that's it!

I am DONE with, um...what was the question again?
Come on, people. Keep your blog bites simple!
I'm not sure which Dem I'm supposed to hate here!

GAH!

[Fire Walk With Me]

19. Sorry for not following the rules..

:rofl: :toast:

[cali]

16. what policies are they comfortable leaving in place?

Interesting that you omitted that rather important information.

[Fire Walk With Me]

18. ???

Patriot Act, Iraq Invasion (resulting in Treasury theft, dead US soldiers, manipulation of oil prices, and a teetering US economy), wiretapping, corporate personhood, union busting, should I go on? How can these items from the last seven years not be in your mind as problems, much less the fact that our candidates are doing nothing about them, now while in office, or in their campaign debates and promises? Sorry if I'm being a little rough here, but these are the reasons that I'm on DU, and that we try to elect Democrats. Who will hopefully change the incredibly selfish, smirking Republican policies that threaten to destroy our nation.

[LSK]

20. they both say they will end the war

They both support Unions and the Congress put a stop to the wiretapping.

Not sure what this post is here for because it shows you are not really up to speed or severely jaded because DK is not the candidate.

[Fire Walk With Me]

21. Please link me to where they both say that they'll stop the Patriot Act, immediately end the Iraq

invasion, stop wiretapping, etc. Especially where they say that they'll immediately impeach Bush and friends (the lack of outrage regarding the proportion involved in Republicans demanding Clinton be impeached and our own inaction in the face of being wiretapped, lied into a war for oil, etc. are extremely telling of their current positions, and their future positions.)

Dennis told the truth. Nader is telling the truth. I'm attempting to get Obama and Clinton to tell the truth.

We are outraged at the smirking chimp and how he and his friends have fucked us over for seven years running. I'd like to see anything similar to this in either Clinton or Obama. My needs are simple. Democracy as it is written.

[LSK]

24. ok

Ok, you have a point with the Patriot Act, however for the Iraq war:

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/iraq

Also go back and watch the last dozen or so debates.

As far as wiretapping goes, heres the roll call for the protect America Act in August, both "Nay"

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00309

[Fire Walk With Me]

27. Thank you. I'm glad that this is the case but...

...why have they been willing to allow it to continue all of this time? What are they doing about stopping it now? Wexler and Kucinich have introduced impeachment proceedings and more in order to stop these problems now before more money is stolen and more lives lost, but I don't hear much support for such revolutionary ideas.

Perhaps I should change my OP to why are they willing to allow it to continue now, as people die and the country is ransacked? They are hens against the foxes in a very small henhouse, as far as I'm concerned. If they want change, do it NOW. Others have shown the way; where is their will?

I'll have to check the links thoroughly. Last I'd heard, they favored gradual withdrawls from Iraq, not an immediate end and a UN contingency plan.

Edit: Obama: "Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq."
Okay, there's a good start, it's an improvement to the "phased withdrawal" that I'd been hearing previously. Let's hope that the message also gets through to immediately impeach and imprison the disaster capitalists as well.

[LSK]

28. you might see this as an excuse, but that 60 vote cloture rule is the problem

If you are Senator Obama or Clinton, please tell me what you would do within the context of the existing rules of the Senate and how our system of Govt works?

I am sure you will not deny that Russ Feingold is as passionate as anyone is with regards to all of the Bush crimes of the past 8 years but even he cannot do much right now.

[Fire Walk With Me]

33. The problem is that as in the film "No Country For Old Men", the system is now ineffective

against those who choose to abuse it at every turn.

I can't believe that the 2006 Democratic Congress have turned a blind eye regarding impeachment, when they could have stopped these monsters nearly two years ago. How much suffering could they have abated? Why won't they set the imperative precedent that this sort of high criminal behaviour has clear and immediate consequences so that it won't happen again?

A better question, since I'm learning something here... If a Democratic President proposes an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and an end to the corporate contracts and monies, would the Democratic Congress be able to actually make it happen?

[LSK]

36. yes because the President is Commander in Chief

So the President can withdraw troops from Iraq without Congress's consent, however, the President needs to the Congress to continue to provide the funding. Now I have seen the argument that Congress should just spend no more spending bills to the Bush. However, (nobody has confirmed this one way or another) it is a popular belief that Bush would just steal money from Defense, VA, CIA, FBI and other areas to continue his war.

Now if we have a Dem President, it is incredibly unlikely that Congress will pass a law saying the President cannot withdraw troops from Iraq. I also have no reason to think that Obama or Clinton will keep the war going. I really believe both will work to get us out of there.

Now all these claims and bickering in here about who voted for the war, who continues to vote for the war, etc etc are incredibly simplistic. As far as I know Obama and Clinton voted for the war because they voted for bills that had timetables and before 2006 the GOP would combine Iraq spending bills with bills such as Katrina relief. So they were forced to vote for the war if they wanted to also fund Katrina relief. I really hate these arguments in this forum because so many are newbies and I do not recall seeing most of these people when a few of us diehards were staying up late at night watching the GOP pass these huge spending bills that were 1000 pages long and only introduced the night before. Many seemed to have been oblivious to what happened before 2005 in the Congress or they seemed to have forgotten how bad it was.

Having said all of that, I think Harry Reid has done a horrible job as Senate majority leader and Pelosi and Hoyer are truly maddening in their stonewalling of the impeachment movement.

[Fire Walk With Me]

37. Thanks for the insight. I wonder what tactics the Repubs will come up with

in order to continue some sort of power base...

[LSK]

38. Barack "Hussein" Osama and the terrorists will kill us all

And its not working anymore. They have nothing else.

[FlyingSquirrel]

31. I have to say something here...

And I really hope it's true. I think they are saying what it takes to get elected, and that the policies we'll see once they're elected is probably to the left of what they're saying. Probably not RADICALLY left, but certainly further left than we're hearing.

After all, what was GWB saying in 2000? "I'm a uniter, not a divider." Running as middle of the road.

We can only hope.

[Fire Walk With Me]

32. I fully agree; I simply wish that they had the punch and tenacity of a Kucinich or Wexler

to carry the issues to a conclusion even before the elections!

[cali]

22. lol. do you think they can go back in time and undo the Iraq invasion

how utterly ridiculous. Obama says he'll end the wire tapping and he's voted that way consistently. No president can undo corporate personhood. Please study up on the three branches of government. Obama supports unions and does not support union busting.

Obama has a solid plan to end the occupation. He's got a brilliant plan for a more transparent government. He's promised to restore Habeas Corpus, shut Gitmo, end DOMA and DADT. That's a start.

Sorry to be so rough here, but your post is absurd.

[Fire Walk With Me]

23. No problem. I find the Iraq invasion to be absurd, as well as the fact that only a couple of

Democrats have been trying to actually do anything about ending it now (not when someone else becomes President, as that would be insulting to the Americans who are paying as much as they are for heating oil and gasoline, as well as inflated food prices etc. and for continuing to fund the Iraq invasion out of our tax dollars, and putting money into Cheney and friend's pockets via no-bid contracts to companies they own stock in, as well as letting Bush get away with New Orleans/Katrina and no one managing to force him to actually help those people, the some 100,000 to 1,000,000 dead Iraqi civilians, nearly 4,000 dead US troops and thousands more homeless, suiciding, and SOL due to cuts in veteran programs, etc., immediately impeaching those who have lied us into all of this and are lining their pockets on a daily basis, in order to set the precedent that you cannot do this to America in any form whatsoever...).

I wouldn't want it to seem that nothing is being accomplished along these lines...but nothing is. Those currently in government are fully accountable for allowing these high crimes to continue, much less to go unpunished.

[superkia]

39. I was also behind DK for these same basic reasons. Without...

our basic rights, no other issue means shit because we have lost our voice. Its truly sad that this is the country that we all think is so much better than everyone else. Many say that its still better but thats because they aren't looking outside the box to what this country will be in the future. Things are only getting worse and at a faster rate than Ive ever seen because Americans have been beaten down and are just riding along submissively. I am like Michelle Obama and so happy to see Americans waking up and at least getting out and voting, even if the electronic voting machines and corrupt officials will decide the outcome.

[laconicsax]

25. Cowardice.

Obama's a coward, Clinton's a coward. Neither is getting my vote in the primaries.

[GreenPartyVoter]

26. I also wonder about this

[reggie the dog]

30. because the two parties are really 2 wings of one party

The corporate empire party.

[achtung_circus]

35. It's your 2 party system.

With only 2 serious parties and no real chance for other parties to play a role, as they do in Parliamentary minority governments, or even by pulling voters from other parties.

It therefore becomes easy for inertia to set in. Changes are minor and often cosmetic. There is no impetus for major change.

[BuelahWitch]

40. If the candidates started talking about holding the crooks accountable

they would be marginalized in the media. Our media is complicit in the crimes, and would drown out any true message with ridiculous accusations, like they did with Dennis and the UFOs. Most people still get their news from TV only, and don't have the knowledge, skills or patience to sift through the crap.
I'm not saying it's right, it's just the way things are.

[Crabby Appleton]

41. Lee Mercer, Jr. will straighten the whole thing out

when he is sworn in a Prez

(All Three)