the problem is that the kyl-lieberman amendment (which was the vote designated the IRG as a terrorist group) gives the president authority to attack iran. at least if he does launch an attack before he leaves office, that is the authorization he will cite. in 2001, congress authorized the president to attack terrorist groups wherever they may be in the world. that’s why his administration pushed to have the iranian military designated a terrorist group. it essentially was an AUMF against iran. that’s why clinton’s vote is so damning. the fact that she would again give the president that kind of authority for political reasons just last fall shows that she has not learned a thing from her 2002 vote authorizing war in iraq.

this was not “letting the perfect become the enemy of the good,” largely because we have an alternative. there was no point at all to that kyl-lieberman vote unless she wanted to send a hawkish message. the message politicians choose and who they pander to is important. it tells us who she thinks she has to represent.

If you can’t understand that votes like this don’t always mean what you think they mean, you will never find a politician you can support with a clear conscience. But then, Democrats are famous for letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.

why is he unelectable?

he certainly is getting the votes from all blocks - winning states where the black population is <5%…facts how he is bringing tens of thousands or more of new voters to the polls…

is it because we “believe” the GOP racists will come out enmass? the white trash racists of the democratic middle states? fear of the GOP machine that will “destroy” the dem nominee in the GE? Is he too angry?

Is it because he gives a great speech? too telegenic, plastic, fake? little experience in politics, for. affairs, economy, military exp??

Is it naive of me to hope that John Edwards can announce his intention to run either as the Democratic candidate or as an Independant, and that by some point this summer people will be ready to hear his message of hope for the downtrodden middle class (and those even less fortunate)? His record is about as progressive as either of the remaining candidates, which is not nearly far enough left in my mind. On the other hand, he has admitted the error of his ways and spoken out against the corporate piracy of our laws and institutions.

He has not returned campaign contributions that were earmarked for the general election. Nor has he refunded the unspent contributions designated for the primaries. Was his standing aside part of a more complicated strategy?

No. If this goes to a second ballot, I’d all but guarantee that it’s probably not going to be either of these two we nominate. It’ll be a white a man, because either a woman or a black man would be seen as radioactive. Probably for generations. Maybe it wouldn’t make anyone happy, but even so it’s easier to get over something when everyone loses, as opposes to when one side wins and one sidee loses. That’s an uncomfortable truth almost nobody is saying.

maybe. sometimes i think we all had our fears that he couldn’t pull it off. i remember being quite worried about it. but it is true that most of us didn’t want to utter that fact out loud.

When Chris Bowers, Lambert and Taylor Marsh suggest it’s Hillary or the highway they abandon every criticism they ever uttered about Sen. Clinton….

Huh? Check my sig:

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

I don’t know where this “my way or the highway” thing is coming from. Or how I’ve “abandoned every criticism of Clinton”. I confess I do have a hard time getting my head round the idea that Hillary, that bitch, should quit the race and STFU because Bill’s a racist and what about Vince Foster, but I’m not sure that bears a direct relationship to what you wrote. Clarification?
Suzie, thanks for the link. There’s a bunch of wonk-type material in the comments, too.

At this point, ANY Democrat will be an improvement. ANY Democrat will address global warming. ANY Democrat will try to help the working and middle class.

Keep in mind, though - I was the only blogger I know who didn’t think Kerry was a shoo-in. As Obama likes to say, I was the one with the sound judgment.

well, mrs. noz happens to be in a very functional department, rather unusual for academia. but yeah, i know what you mean. it is human nature, but it still saddens me to see people, intelligent people, who all basically want the same thing, tear each other apart like this. especially when you consider that john “endless war” mccain and his lunatic followers are out there waiting to give us bush III.

in other words, i’m not convinced it is a useful process. it has helped us learn about the candidates. but it has also hardened the hearts of democrats against the other candidates. 20% of clinton supporters and 19% of obama supporters now say they will vote for mccain if their candidate doesn’t get the democratic nomination. some of that is just an empty threat, really just a way of telling the other side “you better vote for my person or else we’ll lose!”, in an effort to convince people that only their person is electable. but the more people say stuff like that, the more they start actually believing it. so while we may learn more about the candidates during this process, it also messes with the minds of the candidates’ supporters, and makes it harder for us to all come together later on.

Just because it’s stressful doesn’t mean it’s not a useful process.

really the problem is that the primary/caucus system is not itself democratic at all. it was developed to replace the brokered convention, where the floor fight was really the puppet show to cover for the backroom deal that really decided who the nominee would be. people wanted something that looked more democratic, and so we got our current fucked-up system. neither primaries nor caucuses are real elections. delegates in both systems are awarded on the basis of democratic turnout in past elections, not population. people justifiably complain about how caucuses are not democratic elections, but neither are primaries. primaries count votes more in some precincts than others. in a real election that would violate the constitutional principle of one-person-one-vote. none of this really meets democratic standards.

that’s because the system isn’t about measuring the popularity of the candidates. it’s about awarding party insiders while giving the public the feeling that they are choosing the candidates. and so, districts that did better at turning out the vote in the last election, get to count more. they get to send more local party insiders called “delegates” to a junket called a “convention”

and i haven’t even mentioned the superdelegates yet.

probably the only good thing about this primary season is that it has finally revealed just how fucked up the system is. probably nothing will actually change, but at least now there is a chance that it could. i mean, there really is no reason that we can’t have a single nation-wide popular vote of all the candidates on a single day to find the nominee, with maybe a runoff to pick the winner the top two. no delegates, no monkeying around with apportioning them, no 6 month long state-by-state slog where the candidates’ supporters all go crazy and tear each other to shreds. why can’t we do that?

i don’t need to read it to guess that is going on. i mean, that’s part of the madness of the blogosphere these days. any site that has taken a side gets accused of going off the deep end by the other side. i’ve heard complaints about taylor marsh and booman, talkleft and kos. it really is a sad spectacle to watch left blogostan tear itself apart like this. a lot of people are being petty. i can’t say i completely understand it.

as i’ve said before, it’s not fair to count a vote when only one candidate was on the ballot. it’s also not fair to count a vote when the voters are told beforehand that the vote probably won’t count. which is why i think they should be done over. unfortunately, at this late stage in the game both campaigns have vetoed one kind of do-over or another because both are thinking of how to get the best electoral advantage from the process. thus, clinton vetoed a firehouse caucus because she does badly in caucuses, and obama vetoed a primary because he does badly in them. blaming obama only for “gaming the system” when both campaigns are clearly and shamelessly gaming the system is yet another example of the intellectual dishonesty i regularly see at places like talkleft and corrente since edwards dropped out.

and finally, i keep seeing susie and other clintonistas keep saying stuff like: “Psst, John - there’s a reason your traffic is down, the Hillary hate rants are driving readers away…” first, it’s a real assholish comment for one blogger to make to another. i mean, i’m not a fan of americablog. i never read it. i don’t think john is a very good blogger or political analyst. but saying “your hit number sucks” even to a bad blogger is gratuitously mean on the level of jr. high school. seriously, this stuff is beneath you. why are you stooping to such a low level?

and second, it’s actually not true at all. after seeing the anti-john snark for a couple of weeks, i actually got curious and checked john’s hit numbers. americablog’s hits fell each month during the course of 2007, until the primary battle heated up around new year. january shows a big hit jump over there over december, and there has been an increase in hits each month after that. so if you’re going to make a petty comment like that, maybe you should check to see if it’s accurate?