Cynical Nation

You are not exactly correct on that. I always vote straight democratic ticket, BUT there are some democrats I would never vote for. For instance Joe Lieberman. I already pledged to support Ned Lamont's campaign although I dont live in CT. Another democrat I did not vote for and I would never vote for is the democratic governor of my state (Blagojevich). Why? He was openly supportive of the Iraq war then. Simple.

Is that the same "conscience of the Senate" Joe Lieberman, who ran for VP on the Gore-Lieberman ticket in '00 that you're talking about here?

I had been given to understand that he was the greatest non-military-veteran Democrat of our time. Now you're telling me he's flawed?

I don't know if can cope with that dichotomy.

Lieberman was the only (very serious) mistake of Gore. He is an embarassment to the democratic party.

WF, apparently Holy Joe lost the "conscience of the Senate" moniker by being the only Senate Democrat who voted for the Iraq war resolution.

Thank God Kerry and the other Senate Dems didn't follow suit and vote for this disastrous war. If they had, people like our friend Blue would have never been able to support Kerry in the 2004 election.

But, but...now I'm all confused! Didn't Kerry vote for the war before he voted against it and doesn't Hillary still support -- Oh, never mind! This is all just way too nuanced for me.

Jack Bauer would know how to deal with these people.

Barry,
Have you ever heard the expression "better late than ever"? At least Kerry (finally) recognized his error. He was by far the best choice for president in 2004.

"Lieberman was the only (very serious) mistake of Gore. He is an embarassment to the democratic party." (Blue Wind)

Oh HARDLY!

I like to recall AlGore's own "Dukakis moment" when he inexplicably strode over behind Bush's podium during the second debated and grimaced, while puffing out his chest (an attempt at intimidation???) and Bush turning around and laughed in Gore's face, while Gore hunched his shoulders and walked dejectedly back to his own podium. It was almost as bad as O'Reilly tearing Paul Krugman a new one on Tim Russert's Show a few years ago.

You can turn the sound off on some events and see the outcome clearly. O'Reilly loomed over Krugman and bellowed, while Krugman hunched his shoulders and withered, while unable to even make eye contact. Those kinds of moments are devastating.

Or how about Gore's ill-fated tome "Earth in the Balance," filled with outright falsehoods, packed with junk-science and chock full of "as told to me bys."

Gore was an umitigated disaster. Think his selling off the U.S. Navy's oil reseves to Occidental Petroleum (a company founded by Armand Hammer, which his father had a huge stake in) at a discount.

The only reason he got nearly as many votes as he did was that MOST of those who voted for him thought they'd be getting a continuation of the pro-Gingrich, Bill Clinton administration, NOT a vanguard of that Party's sickly Left-wing.

Gore, Kerry...if the Democrats truly want to give their Left-wing a real shot, don't put the Party's chances for national office on tepid, half-way Liberal political hacks like Gore & Kerry, go all the way and put them in the hands of someone like Michael Moore or Cindy Sheehan...and find out exactly what the vast majority of Americans think of that ridiculous, venom-filled viewpoint.

Personally, I've always thought that idea was very defeatist. You can't very well change it from the outside, can you? If there were a viable, liberal independent party, fine, but there isn't so...

And again, why do you go there? Why?

Third parties will never become viable so long as we refuse to vote for them because they're unviable. I think that's a self-defeating proposition.

I'd also point out that a third party doesn't have to win to make a difference. If (say) the Libertarians were to take away even 5% of Republicans' votes, that would be more than enough to make the GOP leadership wake up and take notice. Sometimes I think it's easier to change a party from the outside than the inside, honestly. At the end of the day, these people only understand one thing: loss of votes.

At the end of the day, these people only understand one thing: loss of votes.

And the Democrats don't seem to even understand that.

I thought all of the Democrats left for Canada in '04.

I have occasionally read blogs from both the far left and far right.

The one big difference between them is that the left posts are often rife with foul language whereas that seems a rarity on the right.

Anyone else observe that?

There is certainly a huge difference between the level of discourse Left & Right, Mal.

Take for instance, all the furor that Ann Coulter's occasional hyperbolic remarks create...even, and maybe especially among so many non-plussed Conservatives.

Barry even mentioned one of her latest gaffs above.

Still, Coulter pales in comparison in both vitriol and venom to the likes of Ted Rall on the other side.

But there's even more, Quick, what’s the difference between Ann Coulter’s not so funny joke, "We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," even though she quickly made it clear she was kidding by adding, "That's just a joke, for you in the media" and Marianne Malveux’s quip about Clarence Thomas, "I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease?"

Only that Ann Coulter made clear that her’s was a joke. Julianne Malveaux didn’t say what she said about Clarence Thomas in jest.

I suppose the double standard can be explained by Liberals claim that neither extremism nor malice, at least in support of obvious truisms, can be considered wrong."

Unfortunately, their apparent inability to make coherant arguments for their viewpoint, makes it difficult to avoid tirades filled with venom and deleted expletives.

> The one big difference between them is that the left posts are often rife with foul language whereas that seems a rarity on the right.

Anyone else observe that?

Yep.

Now I'm no prude, and I've got off a few obscenities in my blog career myself, so I can't cast too many stones there.

But what I *do* see is that much of the left-hand-side of the blogosphere consists of mindless rage and bitter, profane, anti-Bush vitriol, and little else.

"I'd also point out that a third party doesn't have to win to make a difference. If (say) the Libertarians were to take away even 5% of Republicans' votes, that would be more than enough to make the GOP leadership wake up and take notice. Sometimes I think it's easier to change a party from the outside than the inside, honestly." (Barry)

I agree Barry, though to a point, or with reservations.

I think the GOP certainly WOULD have to respond if Libertarians took even 5% of the vote, BUT what if the extreme Left abandoned the Democrats and allowed something like the Worker's World Party to take 5% of the vote?

Would it move the national discourse to the Left?

Would the Dems really have to woo them back, or could they move toward the center the way Bill Clinton's DLC ("Conservative and Moderate Democratic party leaders founded the DLC in response to the landslide victory of Republican candidate Ronald Reagan over Democratic candidate Walter Mondale during the 1984 Presidential election. The founders believed the U. S. Democratic Party needed to shift to the center to remain viable during the Reagan era." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Leadership_Council) has long advised them to?

Personally, I think the best thing the Democratic Party could do is to alienate and ultimately jetison that cancer.

After all, what would, or could they do about it?

Support the Worker's World Party, or the Socialist Worker's Party?

Good riddance!

As long as the extreme Left has a strong voice in the Democratic Party, they will be a very disabled Party on many, many levels.

Re: third parties. Well, I think that the only real threat on the presidential level has to have been Ross Perot, right? Because I don't think that Ralph Nader really won enough to make a difference in 2000 and forget 2004. If Ross Perot did anything, it was to push the GOP further to the right on social issues. Was that his goal? Seriously. I have no idea, and now I wonder.

Extreme wings of parties have been around about as long as we have have elections in this country.

My personal favorite was the abolitionist wing of the Republican Party which was formed by W.L. Garrison and which had as its three frontpieces John C. Fremont (failed candidate in 1856 to Buchanan), Thaddeus Stevens and Salmon P. Chase, a rather fatuous member of Lincoln's cabinet, whose biggest claim to fame was his beautiful and conniving daughter Kate.

Lincoln was a remarkablly skilled polititian, a fact lost among the romantic image of him as a simple man.

He kept some of the biggest egos in politics in his cabinet, Chase, Seward, Blair among others, just to keep his eye on them and find out what their mindsets were (and hence, that of their supporters).

Let's not forget another major ego, Theodore Roosevelt, whose belief that he was better suited than anyone to serve the country, led to his formation of the Progressive (aka "Bullmoose") Party in 1912, enabling Woodrow Wilson to win the Democrats first victory since 1892.

Robert LaFollette, Henry Wallace, Strom Thurman, George Wallace, John Anderson and, last and least, Ross Perot all have bucked the two party tide.

All of them also lost.

Bring it on, Kos!

I think Ross Perot was largely a single issue candidate ("that giant sucking sound" caused by NAFTA) K. Nothing innately wrong with that, but it makes winning a national election difficult, as voters judge candidates on a number of issues.

Perot certainly got a large percentage of the vote, for a Third Party, (nearly 20%) and may have gotten even more support if not for his last minute bizarro world antics, blaming Bush Sr for setting up an attack on his home, etc, BUT as Barry noted, a Third Party candidate doesn't always have to win a sizable percentage of the vote, or even have any real chance of winning to effect the mainstream political Parties.

In fact, I think here, you've given credit to Perot for what Buchanan actually did. Buchanan's threat to bolt the Party and take a portion of its Conservative base with him, moved that Party to the Right, especially after his winning the New hampshire Primary in 1996.

By comparison, neither Party has opposed GATT or NAFTA in the wake of Perot's campaign.

I'd probably argue that Perot's biggest issue was the budget deficit, and I don't think it's coincidence that we finally started making progress on the deficit in the wake of the two Perot campaigns.

While he did support a balanced budget (Gingrich and many other Libertarians & Conservatives had long supported that), he was one of the very few politicians from either side to oppose an expanded GATT and the signing of NAFTA, which were supported by two Democrat controlled Congresses (1991 & 1994)...Many believe that Perot would have had a shot at actually winning electoral votes, and perhaps the election, had he not dropped out (claiming that Republican operatives were attempting to disrupt his daughter's wedding), and then re-entered the race so soon prior to Election Day in 1992.

Up until August of that year, he looked real good. It's a shame the Reform Party disintegrated so quickly after his second run in 1996.