How a democrat could get into office:

If Bush does win it will destroy the conservative movement and Republican Party for many years to come. This isn't a good thing! I do want universal health care. I do think it is ok for people to receive aid but only temporally not forever, but that is the extent of my socialist feelings. If the conservative movement was totally destroyed we might find ourselves again paying for useless eaters.

I completely agree DD, that's why it's pretty much elect a Clintonesque moderate now, or a post Bush 2008 race will be a fundamental shift in everything far left.

Like BT has been posting, the media is full of it. Dean is not that far left, but his angry core of support is...and they will only get angrier and bigger after 4 more years of Bush.

Originally posted by DiRtYDeViL
If Bush does win it will destroy the conservative movement and Republican Party for many years to come. This isn't a good thing! I do want universal health care. I do think it is ok for people to receive aid but only temporally not forever, but that is the extent of my socialist feelings. If the conservative movement was totally destroyed we might find ourselves again paying for useless eaters.

The Republicans are saying the same thing about Dean. I don't agree with you on the universal health care, but hey, it's your opinion. I agree with the aide, we can't have people on it forever, they sap the system. I think the same about what would happen if the dems were to collapse. It would cause large unstability in the system, and mess everything up. Balance must be preserved.

Like I said though, we need a president who slashes taxes, slashes spending, and concentrates on something else. That's how the economy rebounds. I'm not against the spending we have been doing for the last decade, but most of the things tax payers pay for is administration costs.(which we could do without much of) It happens in education all the time. And that damn 27th amendment has got to go. Standard of living raise my ass!

....and C-SPAN for my own reporting.
Last night, after a Dean speech, the cameras followed him greeting the crowd ( which he did for a hell of alot longer than I've seen any presidential politician do before).
He engaged people, asked questions, directed them as to where to find the answer if it was too drill down to handle on the spot (on his website), and had several folks who came from other states to meet him. He blew no one off, condescended to no one, cited some of his own faux pas, and signed every souvenir given to him.
The interesting part of what I'm getting to is that more than a few folks started with " I'm a life long Republican" or " I voted for Bush last time", before lauding him.
I am not sold on any candidate yet, but that was a damn impressive sampling of the type of person who could be running the country, even culling the "party faithful" +/- factor.

Originally posted by astrocreep
The only hope we have to get someone in office is if we choose a candidate who relates to the people. The dem base will vote in the candidate and will vote in the wrong person because they're so far left, they will choose someone who is too far left to win nationally. You (democrats) keep yelling that things are grey instead of black and white and thats all well and good, but you must also apply this theory to your electorial process. If you could turn loose of your hate for Jews for a second and realize that Lieberman is the right choice, we might have a chance nationally but you won't and we'll send another extremist loser into the national election. Look, just because they look good to a bunch of yuppies sipping lattes at starbucks or promise welfare queens 50 grand per year annual income doesn't mean they're going to appeal to most Americans. Also, until someone steps up like Lieberman and Gephardt and says that we must put security of this nation first or nothing else matters, they aren't going to get the vote. Not only should we admit that the war on terror , removal of Saddam Hussein, and tax cuts were a good idea but we should also begin to take credit for backing these initiatives (which we did) and for helping to bring more of the tax cut to lower income families. Its time we stopped knocking programs that worked and started taking credit for our roles in them. Hell, most of Bush's actions have been taken play by play from great democratic administrations. Are we so pissed about the 2000 election that we're going to blow this one on principle? Why won't we embrace our core beliefs anymore? Just because we feel the enemy has them now we have to come up with something good on the opposite side of the fence? This is stupid, our parties message is riddled with contradiction and sounds too flighty for anyone but the most radical left to support. We can worry about what the rest of the world thinks later, we better worry about what your average American thinks NOW! Until we realize that, we'll have to enjoy the view from the backseat.

Ahh...So you want me to run on the democratic ticket?

Originally posted by junglejake
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Ahh...So you want me to run on the democratic ticket?

All I can say is that you'de have to be an improvement. Where do we get these guys? Is this whol thing scripted by Vince McMahan? Is someone going to throw a chair in the ring?

I don't understand why it's so impossible for a Democrat to get elected. I can see the potential for the unelectability of Dean (too liberal/inconsistent), Clark (a Republican in disguise), Lieberman (also a Republican), or Kucinich (waaay too liberal), but why completely discount the candidacies of Edwards, Kerry, or especially Gephardt? It seems to me that a Democratic campaign built on a) jobs, b) INTELLIGENT foreign policy, and especially c) emphasizing Bush's lies and deceit, would have an excellent chance of toppling the Rove (oops, I mean Bush) Administration.

Originally posted by astrocreep

Originally posted by junglejake
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Ahh...So you want me to run on the democratic ticket?

All I can say is that you'de have to be an improvement. Where do we get these guys? Is this whol thing scripted by Vince McMahan? Is someone going to throw a chair in the ring?

no, it's scripted by Bush!