Forget all the other democrats.  Draft Al Gore.  He has the mind, the experience, the conscience and the will to do the right things.  Listen to his speeches for the last 2 years and you’ll see he is the only real statesman now really worthy of a re-count.  Let’s put him into the office he won in 2000.  Draft Al Gore!

Lovely. 

What is the point of “truthdig” if we get Estrich on Democrats when she really DOES belong on FOX and E J Dionne who really does belong at WaPo, writing on Obama. 

That would be Dionne who took up space, an entire column, writing how he is a Catholic.  During Schiavo.  WHO THE HELL CARES THAT HE IS A CATHOLIC?  We had congress supporting ONE [lunatic] FAMILY with legislation and Bush flying back from Texas to help the Schindlers.  And Father Pavone of Priests for Life. And Operation Rescue and so on…

So, yeah, in an inverse way that Dionne was unable to really address, it DID matter he was Catholic.

having them (Dionne and Estrich) around does not bode well for what was a great endeavor a few months ago…

Anyone who thinks that Rudy would be a good preisdent ought to talk to his NYC public. Prior ro 9/11, Rudy was not your favorite pol and even tho he did well in an emergency, it does not make him eligible for the pres. This poll does not mention Al Gore or John Edwards, two dems who should rate high for agenda, intelligence etc. We have 1-1/2 yrs to decide who is best - I hope we can do it intelligently and make our decisions based on platform and ability rather than star power.

We need Molly back, this hack is a fool, a disgusting one. Death to right wingers!

Love the idea of presidential candidates first being able to prove pyschological soundness…but would also like to see them pass some sort of general knowledge tests…and if they don’t score at least X be ineligible to run.

Please no more carefully crafted smiley faced candidates. I want to hear how the problems in this country will be solved and what it’s going to cost us to do it. Since the sixties the presidential election has been nothing but a beauty contest filled with empty rhetoric and we all act surprised when no significant positive change actually happens for the average American. We continue our slide into being a third world country and all people talk about is how cute a particular candidate pairing would be. Choose people with experience, brains and ideas - maybe even a plan for a change that will benefit America and Americans. We don’t have to look outside this country for enemies, between the lobbyists and corporations we have enough to deal with right here. Give me someone willing to stand up to them from either party and they have my vote.

A note on Ms Estrich:

Are you trying to re-ingratiate yourself with the non-DINOs? You’ve been a Fox token fake-Democrat for so many years now, it seems odd to me that all of a sudden we’re starting to see your name pop up all over the left blogosphere. Could it possibly have anything to do with the Democratic victory?? Possibly?? Maybe???

Nobody who’s seen your pathetic bootlicking sessions on Fox can believe that now, all of a sudden, you are a true Democrat (even a moderate one), instead of the Zell Miller clone that your truly are. So please, let the grown ups do the thinking: it must hurt too much for your poor, tiny brain.

If the Democrats expect to be a political party in the future then the need to be serious about what Americans are experiencing.

Disenfranchisement.

We don’t believe that either the Republicans or the Democrats represent us.

So Glibly, parading possible candidates, like playing with over sized dolls, indicates that the issues we are faced with, are not as important as the markings on a thermometer.

I will only vote for someone who understands what is happening to the country, and that is why Kerry, and Hillary are percieved as cold, because they haven’t warmed to the idea that those of us who are not among the 1r;‘s don’t like our government much. Do you have even the slightest clue as to why?

We don’t like the war, we don’t like it’s continuance, despite the recent elections, and
we don’t like the idea the our supposed leaders seem to have their own agenda, and their own political plans unconnected to our votes.

And we don’t like it that once we have been tricked into voteing for them, we are forgotten about.

Margaret Curry…...

Do you think ¨soulless political machine¨ describes a good person?

Do you think someone can actually think one way and act another and maintain any sort of decency?

Was George Wallace an honest, decent man, who just believed differently from the mainstream? Or was he a man who took the low road of espousing the ideas that were attractive to the vicious parts of the population who could be harnessed to serve his ends…....like the fundamentalist Arabs and the fundamentalists Christians have been used by successive governments here and in the Middle East?

Have we not had enough of these self-serving, power hungry jerks like Bill Clinton who did not have the excuse of stupidity, but maybe thought he could ¨PLAY THE GAME¨, GET ELECTED, THEN CHANGE THINGS…........without realizing that if you become like them in order to play their game, there is no going back. YOU ARE THEM.

Would you be so enamored of B.O. if he were dark and unattractive? He is a Colin Powell type, light skinned, un-threatening black guy that can make us libruls feel all warm and fuzzy and un-racist…..you know….some of my best candidates are sort-of black.

That is his chosen roll in life, but do we need to fall for it? It did not ultimately work for Powell, and was a great disappointment to many people when he was finally proven not only a liar but a damn liar in glaring light.

Barack Obama running with John Edwards would be neat but I doubt that the powers that be will let that happen.

Margaret from Vancouver, Washington

Obama would make a good president, but I believe he may run with John Edwards, I believe experience is not as important as brains, after all Bush was governor of Texas, but running the war has been a disaser, maybe because Bush knows nothing about the military, when he did serve in the National Guard one wonders was he really there to complete his service and when he was doing his service what did he learn?  So experience would be good but a good person would be better.

This is the answer I received from Paul Street when I asked him if he thought B. O. actually believed the drivel he spouts, as opposed to, say, George Wallace, who finally said he did not believe all the BS he spouted over the years of his political career, he did it because it was necessary to get power…....
Mariam: My sense is that (beneath his pronounced statements of Christian committment) Obama is a soulless political machine who says what he thinks will get him into the White House some day. What he or other policymakers and politicans truly believe is rarely a simple matter to discern; sometimes it comes out only later. Pretty much by definition they make a big distinction beween private beliefs and public statements.

My sense is that B.O. is more conscious than most politicians of the extent to which he is spewing bullshit. I mean he’s no dummy. Like Clinton and unlike, say, Bush, he is highly intelligent.

B.O. is considered to have strong “man of the people” and related domestic policy credentials (this even while he has been vetted by corporate elite power brokers, who have determined that he is safe for existing homeland hierarchies) but to be presidentially suspect (as far the structurally super-empowered corporate imperial folks who matter are concerned) because of short national experience particularly with regard to grave matters of foreign policy.

That’s why you see him giving these weighty global policy speeches with obvious major input from people in around the foreign policy establishment. He is trying to sound presidential and safe for the Empire. If you look at the chapter called “The World Beyond Our Borders” in his plodding book “The Audacity of Hope,” it’s just loaded with terrible statements showing (1) the significant influence of elite doctrine and education (how much he believes I have no idea…) and (2) a desire to impress the elite that he’s safe and will seek to maintain basic imperial continuties.. a more intelligent and “competent” version of American global dominance than that promised by incompetent morons like Bush II.

Speaking of being smart and Chomsky, I don’t give smart people a lot of points for being smart but for what they do with their brains. What’s so great about Chomsky in my opinion is that he took an obviously super-gifted mind and background—- capacities that could have probably put him into the economic super-elite if that’s what he’d wanted—- and applied it all instead to marvelous morally engaged radical-democratic criticism of social injustice and imperial criminality. I’ve worked for many years (though no longer) in and around academia and must say that it is full of people with all kinds of smarts (no not Chomsky-level smarts, but very clever and knowledgeable people often enough) who just do nothing worthwhile or meaningful (not to mention radical) with their capacities and their privlege. With some noble exceptions, they spend most of their time making excuses for the crimes of concentrated power or just pursuing totally innocuous subject mattters. It’s a very boring and often quietly vicious, back-kniving world where the stultifying stench of irrelevance and wasted energy is thick indeed.

The Buddhists have a point when they say “the path is the goal.” The notion that you have to opportunistically say all these conservative things to get into office and then you can really rock and roll in a true progressive way forgets that (even if Obama were some kind of closeted progressive waiting to get into touch with his inner democratic socialist or whatever) the daily practice of compromising democracy and justice comes to shape and define you. You become your path. The end does not justify the means and the means change the end, if that makes any sense. This is part of why Martin Luther King, Jr. rejected efforts to get him to run for the presidency.

Rudy is warm? Good lord! Whoever thinks that needs to speak to some New Yorkers, or maybe his ex-wife.

Some people will always see Hillary as a school-marm, nag, no matter what she does. She would make a great senate majority leader and would probably do the most good for the country in that job.

I, for one, think the country has had enough of Bushes and Clintons in the White House. Actually, the Bushies should be exiled, if their friends in Saudi Arabia will let them have Idi Amin’s old villa, or maybe the rumors about them buying land in Paraguay are true and they plan on running for their lives.

Does Obama have the experience? I am sick and tired of people voting for someone just because he or she is warm and fuzzy or tough and rude as hell or because they would like to hang out with them.

I vote for someone based on whether or not I believe he or she can really do the job and will surround themselves with smart, savvy, non-ideological people who will tell them the truth.

I have no desire to drink a beer with the person I vote for. As a matter of fact, after the last 6 years, I really want my president to stay sober, while I have a beer. That’s what we are paying him/her to do. Anyone who cannot stay sober for 4 to 8 years ought to seek another job.

As a matter of fact, I think any candidate for president should have to submit to a battery of psychological exams. I don’t think this country can survive another lunatic.