I won't believe that we have "lost" the port issue until

[senseandsensibility]

Lou Dobbs backtracks. If he tones down his rhetoric on Monday, I think we're finished.

On the other hand, I see no real reason for the pessism on this board...we have not lost yet. Far from it. Forty five days is a long time, and the facts are on the anti-port side. Don't swallow the "talking points." The American public didn't swallow them on social security, and they may not swallow them on this either.

If we want to win on this issue and/or use it as an election issue in 2006, the defeatism has to stop! Just my two cents.

[blue cat]

1. Get ready for a let down

i think Bush will win this with the help of our complicit corporate media. There is too much money on this deal, and the angle that they let us use their ports for war ships. The media won't even bring up how Kerry was saying we had poor port security and that he was right on the money. The media will do anything to help a president failing in the polls.

[TomInTib]

2. I do not believe there is any stopping this. Consider the alternatives

China or Singapore.

The simple fact is that there are no domestic companies capable of handling the big ports.

Sad, but true.

[SoCalDem]

3. Never underestimate the xenophobia of the masses

If the UAE ends up in charge of the ports,there are MILLIONS of people in the Heartland, the South, the West who HATE "furriners" with a white-hot passion, Lou Dobbs or NO Lou Dobbs, and they will see this as a sellout..

These are the same people who feel in their bones that all their problems are because of the "illegals" ....

These ingrained prejudices do not just evaporate