Which Presidential candidate has your support at the moment?

[Kylere]

Ummmm...I think it speaks more to how skewed this board is to the left with dems and foreign liberals.

Welcome to the overwhelming majority of the first world Kilmoll. Enjoy your stay.

Okay, putting aside the fact that most people are sane and as such not left or right. If this is true nick, then why cannot this great majority find a competent candidate and elect them?

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

I prefer to think a majority are actually moderates.....this board just does not show that. Of course with a majority being socialists and very young in most cases, it certainly would explain why there is a large deviation here from the way the US really does vote.

[Fyndina]

If it was primary right now I would vote for Bill Richardson.

Although I would be very surprised if Clinton or Obama don't get the democrat nomination.


Problem in myview, both from the Democrats and the Republican side is that radicals tend to heavily influence the primary elections.

And I do agree with whoever said that in the real presidential election it is as much a vote against one person as it is for the person you are voting for. (i.e. the "Anyone but Bush" stickers in 2004).

Too bad I can't run!

My platform would be simple, one case: "Nationalize Anheuser Busch, Free beer for everyone!"

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

In all reality, the party system should be completely scrapped right now as it has become an utter and complete joke. The money from both sides ensures that we will never again have a quality candidate running as each party is setting itself up to be polar opposite of the other. We don;t need extremist left or right running anything these days. We should actually have the choice of voting for a candidate (that has a chance at winning) based on their full platform and not just which fucking party's candidate sucks less.

[Kaldaur]

If you look at the US from a historical perspective, this same type of thing happened after Reconstruction for about 30 years. THe US was run by business interests, and Presidencies were bought and traded depending on who had the most money.
Then Theodore Roosevelt came along. Let's just all pray for another glasses-wearing, gun-toting President to come along and save us from corruption.

I would tend to agree with Kilmoll in that most people are moderates, or at least identify themselves as such. That's why the election went to the Dems this time around; more moderates were tired of 'staying the course' and switched sides. Of course, I don't think your other point is valid; the majority of this board is young and socialist? We have a significant population of ex-Republicans and moderates on here. Maybe the vote is skewed because Obama is the only one preaching a change from the status quo? The others all represent politics as usual in Washington. They're all lifetime politicians. Obama is a young, fresh face who might bring some sort of change to a country yearning for it. I think that is more the reason for the votes than the fact that we're "socialists".

[Al]

If you look at the US from a historical perspective, this same type of thing happened after Reconstruction for about 30 years. THe US was run by business interests, and Presidencies were bought and traded depending on who had the most money.
Then Theodore Roosevelt came along. Let's just all pray for another glasses-wearing, gun-toting President to come along and save us from corruption.

Happiness is to speak softly and carry a big stick.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

BTW: President Roosevelt wrote his own speeches, not to dredge up the past or anything...

[Sylvus]

I prefer to think a majority are actually moderates.....this board just does not show that. Of course with a majority being socialists and very young in most cases, it certainly would explain why there is a large deviation here from the way the US really does vote.

I think that's what I was trying to say the other night, when I was a little less than coherent. I think ths poll reflects the fact that many moderates have been disillusioned by the current administration, and are being pushed toward Democratic candidates after all of the scandal and corruption (real and unreal) that has surfaced throughout the RNC in the 2000s. That's not to say that scandal and corruption wouldn't be present in a Democrat administration, just that it currently is not a Democrat administration. You're not going to believe it, but I'm mostly moderate. Had we the archives on this board that went back to before this war in Iraq it would be easier to see, but just about every day since then the current administration has done something to push me farther away from them.

After a democrat wins in 2008, I'm sure I'll be back on the other side by 2011 or so.

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

The point I am trying to make more so than that you are indeed a liberal fag, is that the party system forces candidates out that are more slanted to the extreme left or right than anyone wants.

Eliminating the parties as we know them would bring many more platforms out for people to choose....and I believe would also actually raise voter totals by an enormous margin. The current process truly does mean that the votes of individuals in many areas simply is meaningless. Currently, if you are anyone outside the 2 parties you can't even be invited to participate in any type of debate or discussion. We can all blame Perot for all of this....seeing as how he actually had a good shot at winning if he had never dropped out of the race to begin with.....and never would have had Clinton in office for his first term if he had not re-entered.

[Boogahz]

Eliminating the parties as we know them would bring many more platforms out for people to choose...

So, more like the Bundestag in Germany?

pdf = The Law on Political Parties

[Kylere]

The current system allows for nothing other than polarization and discord. We will not have effective government until we adopt compromise or we no longer vote for the two party system.

When the free money stops (Medicare is 2019, SS is 2041) the ride is over and they will have to work on it, or we get to invade Mexico and Venezuela for their oil fields and become exactly as bad of an Empire as some like to think of us now. But nothing will fix the wasting of our nation under the hands of both parties for the last 50 years. they have failed to invest in our future, they have failed to practice any foresight that exceeded the next election and they have failed the people. You cannot blame either party, because for every Nixon there is a Johnson, and for every Bush Sr. there is a Carter ( not modern Carter, rather the lame fuck he WAS). The democrats killed NASA more effectively than the republicans, and the republicans killed reasonable social programs while both parties robbed from long term money to finance their little games of power. Vietnam was a democratic war and Iraq is a republican one, and both times the soldiers have paid for the incompetence of the politicians.

Both parties like to throw around words like patriot and traitor, I propose that patriots are those willing to look past the headlines and traitors are those still holding to the party lines.

[Nick]

or we get to invade Mexico and Venezuela for their oil fields and become exactly as bad of an Empire as some like to think of us now.

If "exactly as bad" means "even worse" ( Maybe you should brush up on your countries foreign policy in the last few decades.) then I totally agree with pretty much everything you just said.

Except for the fact that over the last 6 yars the only party using the words "patriot and traitor" has been the Republicans. Surely you won't dispute that fact?

I don't imagine there is much difference in Republican or Democrat, not a massive one anyway (except in the case of the Iraq war of course where the difference is huge, thank god) but I still understand entirely your disillusionment over the political set up.

Okay, putting aside the fact that most people are sane and as such not left or right. If this is true nick, then why cannot this great majority find a competent candidate and elect them?

I was referring to the rest of the world in that post, everyone knows the US is full of crackpots and idiots. As for whether anyone can find a competent candidate, well Gore ran in 2000 and Obama is running in 2008, what more do you want?

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

He said competent. If you think Gore or Obama are going to be any better than all the other trash run out for the last 12 years you are incredibly mistaken. The only way those canddates even are put up as the Dem candidate is if they are toeing the party line and are puppets for them.

[Drolgin Steingrinder]

I'd totally vote for Guiliani if I could...clearly he knows what's going on and isn't fearmongering or anything like that.

From The Politico:

MANCHESTER, N.H. —- Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.

But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.

“If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.

The former New York City mayor, currently leading in all national polls for the Republican nomination for president, said Tuesday night that America would ultimately defeat terrorism no matter which party gains the White House.

“But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have?” Giuliani said. “If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer.”

“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”

He added: “The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.”

After his speech to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner, I asked him about his statements and Giuliani said flatly: “America will be safer with a Republican president.”

Giuliani, whose past positions on abortion, gun control and gay rights have made him anathema to some in his party, believes his tough stance on national defense and his post-Sept. 11 reputation as a fighter of terrorism will be his trump card with doubting Republicans.

“This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!” Giuliani said in his speech. “Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for [terrorists] to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!”

Giuliani said terrorists “hate us and not because of anything bad we have done; it has nothing to do with Israel and Palestine. They hate us for the freedoms we have and the freedoms we want to share with the world.”

Giuliani continued: “The freedoms we have are in conflict with the perverted, maniacal interpretation of their religion.” He said Americans would fight for “freedom for women, the freedom of elections, freedom of religion and the freedom of our economy.”

Addressing the terrorists directly, Giuliani said: “We are not giving that up, and you are not going to take it from us!”

The crowd thundered its approval.

Giuliani also said that America had been naive about terrorism in the past and had missed obvious signals.

“They were at war with us before we realized it, going back to ’90s with all the Americans killed by the PLO and Hezbollah and Hamas,” he said. “They came here and killed us in 1993 [with the first attack on New York’s World Trade Center, in which six people died], and we didn’t get it. We didn’t get it that this was a war. Then Sept. 11, 2001, happened, and we got it.”

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

Giuliana is killing himself with some of his retardation lately. I seriously doubt he will get a Republican bid. He is going to get killed by the NRA and the Christian conservatives...and that is a good chunk of the Repubs.

[Xatrei]

Keith Olbermann had a pretty good take on Giuliani's comments during Olberman's Special Comment segment during last night's show.

http://thenewshole.msnbc.msn.com/archiv ... 68878.aspx

[Winnow]

Sleeper Pick:

http://www.votepetrelli.com/

[Kylere]

I define a competent candidate as one who can defeat someone universally recognized as a moron. Gore and Kerry by that standard are not competent.

Nick, both parties throw those terms around, deal with the fact that rep and dem does not mean wrong and right, it means wrong and wrong or the US would be a good deal less fuxxored. Both parties are only out to get elected the next november they face, and neither cares for the future of the US or the world. They are both fractally wrong and neither party represents the majority of Americans. Which is exactly why the elections are becoming so close and bitter, only the fringers are setting standards. I am aware that you do not really know the US so I forgive you your cursory understanding of the country. I would not expect you to get it, you do not live here, anymore than I have a deep understanding of Euro politics, although I did in fact live in Europe for 8 years.

I find it interesting you skipped Kerry, was he not competent by your standards? What actual evidence do you have of Obamas qualifications to be a president? What part of his platform impressed you? His site is very noncommittal when it comes to planks of his campaign, so I imagine you have read his writing? Could you tell me the sources that have convinced you of his capable nature? The fact is that 4 years ago you had no idea who he was. I ask these seriously even though I know you do not have good answers other than he is not Bush. Not being Bush was not good enough in 2000, or 2004, so why assume it is now.

Given that GW is a idiot and the worst president since Johnson there is no excuse for the dems to lose in 2008. But I am seriously worried that they will. Simple fact is that betting on Obama is wrong and it indicates a clear lack of understanding about the people of America, the majority of the US is racist if white and bigoted if a minority. This is uncomfortable but true ( and in light of people still killing each other over religion/tribe/area in Europe, do not get cocky, smug or superior, Euro Anglos set the standards for American racism and imperialism.)


I know it is easy to sit there smug in your ethnocentric bliss but I would ask you to try to move beyond that.

[Siji]

I'd totally vote for Guiliani if I could...clearly he knows what's going on and isn't fearmongering or anything like that.

All Guiliani has going for himself is the propaganda of 9/11. If he can't play off of that, people won't even know who he is.

[Momopi]

I would vote for Aquaman.

[Drinsic Darkwood]

If you want to learn how to build a house, build a house. Don't ask anybody, just build a house.

I know who's got my vote.

[Winnow]

Obama is catching Hillary in nationwide polls.

For the fourth straight week, Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D) has gained ground and he has finally caught New York Senator Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination. It’s now Obama 32% Clinton 32% and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards holding steady at 17%. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is a distant fourth at 3%. Senators Chris Dodd and Joe Biden each attract 1% support. So does General Wesley Clark.

Obama has been steadily gaining ground during April. Last week, Clinton had a two-point lead. Two weeks ago, it was Clinton by five. The week before that, the former First Lady was up by seven. Our last release in March found Clinton enjoying a double digit lead. Clinton now holds a narrow edge among white voters while Obama leads by 16% among African-Americans.

A separate survey showed that Obama has the highest level of core support among all Presidential candidates—33% of voters say they’d definitely vote for him if he’s on the ballot in November 2008.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Politic ... rimary.htm

In this VV forum poll, Obama has dropped from 41% to 36% over the past few days while Hillary has climbed up to 9% from ~3%.

Not good!

[Nick]

Edit: Too much irony, senses overloaded.

[Keverian FireCry]

Jesus Christ Hillary Clinton is a fucking bitch. She is hissing like a snake through this entire debate.

[Canelek]

I can't, in good faith, vote for Hillary Clinton.

She has a snuke in her snizz.

Fo rizzle. (great south park!)