Edwards wins SC state primary.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...d=536&ncid=536



John Edwards Dem 381 42.4% 0
John Kerry Dem 271 30.1% 0
Wesley Clark Dem 105 11.7% 0
Howard Dean Dem 67 7.5% 0
Al Sharpton Dem 52 5.8% 0
Joe Lieberman Dem 16 1.8% 0
Dennis Kucinich Dem 5 0.6% 0
Dick Gephardt Dem 2 0.2% 0
Carol Moseley Braun Dem 0 0.0% 0

This was a table, but it does not translate well on GC.

kerry is projected to win the arizona primary (or caucus ?)

apparently, if bush loses (and were all hoping he goes down!) then kerry is supposedly the best candidate for the dems. (of course, politicians tell us whats good b4 they get elected. well see where all those tax cuts and gay rights laws go after hes in office :rolleyes:

Lieberman dropped out yesterday.

Kerry won 5 states:

Arizona
Missouri
Delaware
New Mexico
North Dakota


Clark won Oklahoma.

Not sure why this thread is still open since there is one in the AKA forum on the Election and we're supposed to be avoiding duplicate threads...

But anyway...

What are reasons to vote for Kerry besides the fact that voting for Kerry is a vote against G. Bush. I mean I know people hate GWB, but a lot of people don't even know what Kerry stands for. Is that really the basis for voting for the President of the U.S?

I do believe that this thread was started back in July 2003. Thanks.

That's reason enough for me.

I think Kerry is a media fabrication. I think he has integrity issues. I think he's wishy-washy, and I find his stentorian delivery off-putting. I think he flip-flops more than cheap drugstore sandals. The fact that he threw away someone else's medals at that demonstration so long ago shows me that he's all about grand gestures, not about actual convictions.

But you know what? He's not in the back pocket of evangelical Christians who want to set social policy in this country back 100 years. He didn't lie to get us into an unwinnable war just so he could avenge his father's defeat. He's not an intellectual midget -- at least it seems that he got SOMETHING out of Yale other than cocaine connections.

Bush drones on and on about how Saddam was a madman, and how he's a dangerous man. But to me, there's no more dangerous man than someone with a C- brain being in control of the last remaining superpower. There's nothing more dangerous than having someone who is driven by a modern-day Manifest Destiny ideology when it comes to International Relations. Bush and his cronies are colonists and imperialists in every negative sense of the word, and they don't care whose lives are destroyed in the process -- even the lives of those Americans who volunteered to support and defend the Constitution. And while we're on the Constitution, he wants to re-introduce the language of hate and divisiveness in the document that is the cornerstone of our democracy! Granted the language was already there, but America has made great strides in becoming a place where all are protected (at least at the Judicial level), and he wants to set hundreds of years of civil and social progress back just because the Fundies told him to.

So yeah, I'm only voting for Kerry just so GWB is handed his coat and hat come November. But I feel completely justified in making that decision.

Whoever gets the nomination, I hope that he can beat Baby Bush.

SC

Candidate Info
 

Since it looks to be a Bush vs. Kerry election (A Skulls and Bones showdown :D ), here is a quick glance as to where each candidate stands:


http://www.presidentmatch.com/Compare.jsp2?idlist=5|10|


Hmmm...I noticed they BOTH favor NAFTA. Many Americans (across party lines) believe this agreement has contributed GREATLY to our economy's current state (massive job loses, large quantities of work being sent outside the US, etc.).

:)

The intro to your post made is reason enough to vote for NADER! :D

I've voted for him before, so it's not like it would be a stretch. When I voted for him in 2000, it was because I wanted there to be a different voice in the political process. Nader was fighting to introduce a third party into the American system, a very noble goal.

HOWEVER, this time around, Ralph is running out of vanity, not out of any desire to see a third party take shape, and he won't get my vote this time around.

John Kerry Meets With Dean; Edwards Next
42 minutes ago

By MIKE GLOVER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) on Wednesday called for deeper tax cuts for the middle class than proposed by President Bush (news - web sites) and described his Republican critics as "the most crooked ... lying group I've ever seen."

After urging labor leaders to support his campaign to oust the president, Kerry met with onetime rival Howard Dean (news - web sites) to discuss a possible endorsement and what role the former Vermont governor might play in his campaign. Kerry greeted Dean as he arrived at campaign headquarters, and the two joined hands and raised them high for cameras.


Kerry was scheduled to meet with another key rival, John Edwards (news - web sites), on Thursday.


Anticipating their meeting, the Bush campaign issued "Howard Dean's Greatest Hits on John Kerry," a 10-item recounting of Dean criticism of his rival for the nomination. The quotes from news stories include Dean's statement in January that "you're not going to change America by nominating somebody who's a Washington insider whose biggest long suit is talk."


Kerry had 2,001 delegates after sweeping four Southern primaries Tuesday, an Associated Press analysis showed. He wasn't expected to reach 2,162, the number needed to secure the nomination, until next week because of the way the party allocates delegates.


Earlier Wednesday in Chicago, Kerry toughened his comments about his GOP critics after a supporter urged him to take on Bush. "Let me tell you, we've just begun to fight," Kerry said. "We're going to keep pounding. These guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen. It's scary."


Kerry spokesman David Wade said the senator was referring to Republican critics in general. "The Republicans have launched the most personal, crooked, deceitful attacks over the last four years," Wade said. "He's a Democrat who fights back."


The Bush-Cheney campaign answered back, saying, "At every turn, John Kerry has claimed to be the victim of an imaginary smear machine. John Kerry has run a relentlessly negative campaign from the very beginning and this comment is completely consistent with that."


In a speech to top leaders of the AFL-CIO, Kerry said a "Bush Tax" stemming from the president's economic policies has driven up costs for working families. He vowed to reverse that trend while asking those making more than $200,000 a year to pay the same taxes they paid under President Clinton (news - web sites), effectively repealing portions of a tax cut Bush pushed through Congress.


Kerry also proposed creating a $50 billion fund to help states provide relief from state and local taxes for working families that he said have been struggling.


"Under George Bush's policies, middle-class families are paying more," he said. "America's middle class can't afford a tax increase. That's why we're going to give the middle class a tax cut."


In response, the Bush campaign accused Kerry of favoring broad tax increases that would affect all taxpayers.


"John Kerry has voted for higher taxes 350 times and his numbers for new spending don't add up," said Steve Schmidt, a Bush campaign spokesman. "His campaign-trail promises mean he is going to raise taxes by at least $900 billion." It is the first time the Bush campaign has put a number on tax hikes it says Kerry favors.


Kerry, the Democratic nomination well in hand, is moving to engage Bush, and the president is returning the favor. The Massachusetts senator said Bush has resorted to personal attacks at an unprecedented early stage in the campaign.


"George Bush is running on the same old Republican tactics of fear — and they're already getting tired," he said. "But we have something better than attacks, we have the facts and we have the truth."


Kerry said a middle-class tax cut would do far more to spark the economy than what Bush has pushed.


"Our middle-class tax cut will help working people afford college and pay for health care and make ends meet," he said. "If this president wants to make this election about taxes after he's cut billions for billionaires and given middle-class families a larger share to pay, we're ready for that fight."

Kerry spoke via satellite to AFL-CIO leaders at their winter convention in Florida, courting a constituency he's counting on for money and organizational muscle. Facing an unfriendly White House, labor is likely to play an energetic role in the Kerry campaign, even if he wasn't the first choice of most unions.

DiversityInc.com article on Demos and AfAms
 

This isn't in this story, but I was reading something that mentioned that we tend to stick with Demos even if our income goes up because that party basically delivered us our civil rights.

Do Democrats Take African Americans for Granted?
By C. Stone Brown

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* 2004 DiversityInc.com
March 17, 2004

Loyal, devoted and dependable – those are words often used by Democratic Party leaders to describe African Americans, who vote on average 85 percent to 90 percent of the time for Democrats in presidential elections.


In the 2000 presidential election, former Vice President Al Gore received 92 percent of the African-American vote. The percentage of African Americans supporting Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in this November's race is expected to be even higher. This raises a number of questions: Are African Americans loyal to the Democratic Party to a fault? Or do African Americans overwhelmingly support Democrats because they understand and address the issues that most concern them? And do Democrats take African-American voters for granted?


"The one thing I've agreed with (the Rev.) Al Sharpton on was that … black people are the Democratic Party's mistress. You're great for a good time around election time, but I don't know you for the rest of the two or four years," said Dana White, a conservative commentator and public-policy expert, referring to Sharpton's frequent chastisement of his party for its mistreatment of African-American supporters.


"Strategically, it doesn't work in investments and it doesn't work when you vote, to put all your eggs in one basket … you have to diversify your power," said White. "If one party knows they have you, then there is no incentive for them to do anything differently. If one party feels they are never going to attract you, then there is no reason for them to ever appeal to you."


Ever since the 1932 presidential elections pitting Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt against GOP incumbent Herbert Hoover, who presided over the Great Depression, African Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted Republican since the Civil War crossed over to Democrat. That loyalty continues to this day. In return, Roosevelt showed a degree of deference to the aspirations of African Americans, appointing hundreds to federal positions and supporting efforts to desegregate federal jobs. But it was a slow process, including support of civil-rights legislation in 1957, 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.


The Democratic Party obviously benefits from having a base of African-American supporters, but it undermines their leverage to effect change on certain issues, said Mark Martinez, professor of political science, California State University-Bakersfield. "Issues that might be pressed or could be pressed, like affirmative action or economic equality, aren't going to be pushed because Republicans will charge 'class warfare' and rather than push those issues, Democrats tend to back off," he said.


Martinez added that if Democrats really want to demonstrate a reciprocal relationship with African Americans, then they need to develop more targeted strategies that specifically address African-American concerns, such as an urban agenda.


"What you need are programs that are going to be specifically directed toward areas where you have high concentrations of blacks in America," said Martinez. "You need some kind of community reinvestments acts, such as in the late 1970s when banks were forced to fund local entrepreneurs in inner-cities.

The Republican Party has been generally out of step on the issues important to African Americans and that explains the continued strong support among Democrats, said Lorenzo Morris, chair of political science department, Howard University.

"Just because African Americans always vote Democrat doesn't indicate a depth of loyalty -- it indicates experience, or constant reflective observation," he said, adding that he believes African Americans probably are more issue-oriented than most voters.

"Democrats have earned the support they get from African-American voters and I think the votes are being cast for the party that does a better job on the issues," said Tony Welch, Democratic National Committee press secretary.

Welch said it's not in the Democrats' interests to take African-American voters for granted because, although they may not see an alternative with Republicans, staying home on Election Day always is an option.

"Our approach is we can't take a single vote for granted anywhere in the country and one of the things that we know is, if African Americans turn out to vote in large numbers, Republicans have a very difficult time beating us. For us, it's not even a question of 'taking for granted,' it's something [we] can't do and expect to win," said Welch. "To treat the most reliable constituency and take them for granted would spell nothing but trouble for the Democrats, short-term and long-term."

Morris agreed, but wondered why African Americans don't use their power to their advantage. "One of the things that African Americans should recognize and take more advantage of is the fact that Democrats can't win anything without a strong black vote. Not just a favorable vote – but a high turnout," said Morris. "I never tire in saying there hasn't been one Democrat, except Lyndon Johnson, elected to the presidency by white voters since Roosevelt. In other words, without blacks coming out in significant numbers for the Democratic Party, they're not going anywhere."

Congressional Black Caucus Meet with Nader


Black Caucus implores Nader to quit


But group fails to sway independent candidate to end race for presidency

By Kimberly A.C. Wilson
Sun National Staff
Posted June 23 2004

WASHINGTON - The Congressional Black Caucus challenged Ralph Nader yesterday to call off his independent bid for the presidency, warning that his candidacy threatens its most pressing goal - returning a Democrat to the White House.

"We let him know that we consider this to be the most important election of our lifetimes," said the caucus' chairman, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, a Baltimore Democrat. "We said, 'Mr. Nader, you have a right to run, but we have not heard a reason to run.' We said to him, 'If you're really our friend ... you need to move on.'"

Why dont the Dems have confidence in their candidate? First it was GWB stole the election..then it was Nader that affected it...excuses..excuses..excuses...

HOw about the Dems put someone of quality out there...that doesn't just say whats' need to be said to get elected...

SMH that some people really want John Kerry to be Prez..at least when he gets in office and starts lying and changing his stance on positions..no one can say they weren't forewarned.

If Nader won't hear, then the caucus has to go directly to the people. Targeted, pragmatic informational responses to the audiences they feel Nader will impact. ...it's really the same thing both parties do anyway. R's target evangelicals, pro-life, etc... and D's target Af-Am, labor, audiences. Nader's involvement just raises the stakes, IMO, on the D's because they feel he threatens one of their operational base turnout groups.