http://web.archive.org/web/20010726030451/http://www.indymedia.org/print.php3?article_id=3159 < I found that article very informative. It reminded me a lot of Baudrillard’s concept of the “hyper-real” simulacra; and 1984. In a world where nothing is knowable, facts are mutable, and the truth can mean whatever it is spun to mean, there can be no power to challenge existing oligarchies. Cognitive dissonance is a modern tool of oppression.

He was an honest man, a family man, and a man of faith. We have lost one of the greats.

Perhaps it should have been Clinton who gave the nod –to Elizabeth Dole, who did this before her, although she didn’t get nearly as far down the trail.

Oh, that’s right –Dole was a Republican, and Clinton’s not big on history if it doesn’t make her look better than she is. Nevermind.

It is never an asset to me, vs. McCain or anyone else. If she will do this to McCain, she’ll do it to the American people if she gets elected. If the people can’t have even the most basic amount of trust in a candidate, that candidate shouldn’t be President. Seems pretty simple to me.

I find it sad that one of the principles I value in a candidate the most is the least likely to be the one I’ll get on the campaign trail. That principle is: honesty. Even when it hurts or isn’t what the people want to hear, it’s what we ought to have. Too many people would rather have sunshine blown up their *** these days, but who started that? Politicians –telling us what we wanted to hear, even when they knew reality was different, and that has perpetuated the cycle. Promising us the moon, even when we knew it couldn’t happen (though deluding ourselves sometimes seems to be a national pastime).

I guess that there are two solutions to this problem: One –we need politicians that will tell us the truth. But to get that, we need solution number two: We need to stop “drinking the sand” we’re told is water, and demand honesty from them.

I think the bigger issue at stake is who should be punished and how in the future. Who suffered in this case? The people of Michigan, who had little to no say in what the state Democratic Party decided to do, and yet they are the ones being punished, their votes being made worthless. The State party is the one that should pay this price if it is ever tried again, not the voters. This was further compounded by the national Democratic Party’s way of punishment: unlike the smart move the Republicans made (cutting the delegate slice in half, reducing the state’s power, but not changing the outcome of the primary in the process), the national party pulled a stupid that puts them between a rock and a hard place. Don’t count the delgates = punish the voters and possibly alienate them. Count the delegates = proving that your punishments have no teeth, and the states can try pulling off this garbage again, plus, your primaries are already flawed.

What if I’d have wanted to vote for Obama, or Chris Dodd, or Bill Richardson in Michigan? Oh, that’s right –I couldn’t, because unlike Hillary, they did the right thing and pulled their names from the ballot, leaving me with Clinton, a rambling, doddering former senator (Gravel), or Undecided. We’ll never know what the vote would have truly been, and so we can never discern the true will of the people.

The solution to the current problem is simple: Stick to your guns, Democratic Party, and don’t seat Florida or Michigan. The long-term solution, however, should be more thought out, in case this happens again.

P.S. Off-topic, but I think all primaries should be held nationally on the same day, after several months of campaigning. Then we truly have no influence where the votes of one state influence the votes of another, and the playing field is TRULY level. None of this super-delegate garbage either.

I think the problem is that his original message is not one today’s Republican Party wants to hear. They’ve lost sight of the original party, based heavily on principles of Federalism, personal responsibility, and fiscal conservatism to the point where the thing that differentiates them most from the Democratic Party is their partisan words against them; their actions however, don’t speak to it. As such, the 2000 McCain was a great choice for the American people, and a lousy choice for the people in power –and we know how that ends up. It’s why I supported Ron Paul this year, whose message was the closest to what I’d really like to hear.

McCain has had to make an awful lot of compromises leading up to the 2008 campaign; even then, staunch Party members are made nervous by him, and his watered-down message doesn’t help him with voters. Right now, I only know I don’t want Clinton in the race –after that, I’ve still got to decide, but I really miss the old McCain, and could only hope that if elected, his toning-down ceases, and he reverts to what he was in 2000.

She hasn’t formally given up yet.

I don’t call that “kicking her when she’s down”…rather, I call it “calling a spade a spade”. And doing so highlights something we desperately need to in this country –how close someone can still get to being Presidential nominee despite the fact that they have outright lied to the faces of American voters, ran a campaign completely bereft of principle (how can you say she’s “sacrificed every principle”, when her campaign has made it pretty clear she had no principles to begin with?), attempted to tell the American people what she thought they wanted to hear without espousing any beliefs of her own or taking theirs to heart, changing her message to suit whenever she felt it might gett votes, and pandered to everyone from superdelegates to special interests.

The fact that a person like this could come this close should be a horribly frightening thought for all of us, whether we be Democrats, Republicans, or (like myself) Independents, anyone who has a vote and values it dearlye. Bush was a bad enough choice; we all know that once in office, he stopped listening to the American people. And yet, someone who has plainly proved they have the exact same problem came within inches of their party’s nomination for the 2008 election. We should be scared, and that fear ought to lead us to enough anger to say “Enough is enough. We won’t let this happen ever again.”