I agree!

Edwards is the ideal reformer for our times right now.

Racism may yet undermine Obama in the primary. He is still trailing Hillary in national Polls.
Edwards is getting the Hillary voters who jump ship. This means that a majority of Americans have not signed on to experiment with trying to elect a black president.

Still more uncertain would be e general election, wherein republicans would use every sort of INDIRECT racism at their disposal.

Do not underestimate the degree to which racism can doom Obama.

I decided years ago on Edwards, and he has just improved for me as a choice.

I don't want Obama to fade, and Hillary be the one to get the nomination. Despite the hype, Obama has not secured a majority of democrats, who have agreed to this.

The media is presenting him as a God. Fallen idols fall fast and far.

Sorry he has NOT secured the Democrats. He has been securing Independents with Republican tendencies and Republicans. It appeared in the McLaughlin Report several months ago that one strategy the Republicans were looking at was to support Obama in his campaign. The real threat is Edwards. Karl Rove said that himself. And that is enough of endorsement as far as I am concerned. The new voters Obama is bringing are the Republicans. They caucused for him in Iowa, that's why Huckleby won on such a large margin. He is the Republican's choice Democractic candidate. After all Obama himself said Lieberman was his mentor. Need I say more. Read the following aticles:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2008/01/03/nbc-highlights-life-long-republican-caucusing-obama

http://time-blog.com/real_clear_politics/2007/06/republicans_for_obama_cont.html

As I said, Edwards remains my first choice, but to argue that Obama is some kind of Republican pawn is simply wrong,
He has been securing the support of independents and even some Republicans, but that's not a bad thing--it makes him more electable.

I just read the links at the articles above, and they had to do with things like Republicans jumping ship to Obama because they didn't like all the Republican enthusiasm for torture, or because they'd turned against Bush, not because they were taking marching orders from Karl Rove.

Paul Loeb-

I disagree with you. Did you watch the debate? On the question about attacking to get Osama Binladen, Obama had the same approach on attacking on foreign soil as the Bush agenda which the commentator brought to everyone's attention. I beg to differ with you, I do believe he is a Republican pawn, it may be innocent on his part, but the Republicans will use it, and I believe you will see that if Edwards stays in the Democratic campaign as he states he will, Obama's numbers will fall because Republicans will start to concentrate on their own candidate. You have to remember Karl Rove resigned from the White House (many have suggested) in order to concentrate on this next election. Obama's view on health care is not universal and frankly I see his general agenda as pretty conservative. As I understand it Jesse Jackson is thinking about revoking his endorsement for him, too.

Obama is way ahead in the latest NH polls, guess many want another Bush type, whether they realize that is the question.

"It's no coincidence that the parents of the young woman who died when CIGNA refused to cover her liver transplant are now joining Edwards on the campaign trail."

Actually, I had a much more favorable view of Edwards until I saw the above. This is just another example of politicians and bloggers/journalists who manipulate the news to support their point of view rather than providing balanced information. We have to have a more involved discussion about health care and our expectations. What is going to be considered futile care? Is it something that we can afford as a nation to provide every possible health care treatment even when it isn't evidence based? Is it fair to provide a liver to someone who is in a vegatative state and at best has a prognosis of 6 mos if her body doesn't reject the organ completely because of the medication required for leukemia treatment when other people on the waiting list have a life expectancy of 10-15 years?

You had to scour news coverage to find that actually, Leukemia and a failed bone marrow transplant put this person in a vegative state for weeks BEFORE HER FAMILY TERMINATED LIFE SUPPORT. That's right. Her family terminated life support and then had a news conference blaming an insurance company.

Doctors best outlook IF the transplant was successful was 6 months. And the fact that the bone marrow transplant failed and leukemia was still ravaging this patient INDEED makes this an experimental treatment.

EVEN if we do move to universal health care (which I support whole heartedly- NO ONE should make a profit on providing health and well being for people) we still have to have these discussions and come to some type of decision about rationing health care fairly. All proposed plans still rely on evidence based treatment and anyone who works for a non profit will attest to the importance of the bottom line.

It is disingenuous to trumpet this case and imply that with universal health care we wouldn't see situations like this. We would still be rationing health care-- if health care wasn't provided according to evidence based guidelines, we would not be spending our collective resources wisely and would be broke almost immediately. Unless those nurses who picketed Cigna are willing to give their services for no pay. Of course, nurses are almost always ready to strike to get better pay for themselves- interesting that they expect other people in the health care industry to be more altruistic than they are.

Give me a candidate who is able to have real discussions about the issues instead of an oversimplified identification of the problem and that they will somehow magically fix it. Any grown up knows that this type of black and white thinking is flawed and contributes to the problem.

This thread is the most sensible I have seen on the Democratic nomination.

I called Paul Loeb once and talked to him about the late Walter Karp, whose analysis of party politics applies perfectly here.

In "Indispensable Enemies", Karp says politics divides into hacks and reformers. The hacks of both parties have more in common with the hacks of the other party than with the reformers in their own party.

The hacks will work in collusion to keep reformers out of power, ie keeping Perot, Nader, Kucinich, Paul, out of the debates.

Democratic Party reformers include Clintons, Kennedy, Kerry, Lieberman, the DLC, and I think Obama.

Democratic reformers include Wellstone, Jimmy Carter, Bill Bradley, Jesse Jackson, Howard Dean and John Edwards.

For hacks, the ideal primary is two Democratic Party hacks vieing for the nomination. Hillary/Obama.

The ideal hack general election is two hacks, such as Bill vs GHW Bush or Bill vs Bob Dole.

Karp gets most interesting when he introduces new concepts such as dummy candidates and thrown elections.

Dummy candidates would include Dole, Dukakis, Mondale.

I have seen localy thrown elections when an enviro runs for office and the labor union guys offer to help and signs don't get printed, the candidate gets double booked and so on. Labor union guys' bread and butter is heavy construction and they figure enviros are a threat to their privilged worker status so the labor union guys support their employers best interest politically. The labor union guys whack the enviro.

This is a very Karpian election and I sure like Edwards a lot better than any of the alternatives. And in general I am not a fan of white southern males.

For all the edwards fans.....Google fortress group investments and John Edwards. He's IN their pocket. Go Kucinich! Thanks Tex

John Edwards needs your support now. Obama and Clinton have more money than God. Even if John doesn't get the nomination, we need to get his message of corporate greed and corruption out to the sheeple, and he is the only one actually speaking the truth.

Paul, please, stop supporting the Obama money machine.

That guy is a master triangulator. He can get plenty of cash from nuclear power companies, bankers and real estate investors.

He doesn't need your hard earned support...JRE does.

The polished candidates are pretty aren't they. Scratch the surface and discover they're fronts. Kucinich or bust!

And I keep on sending what little I can to Dennis Kucinich because he is telling us all the truth, without caring what the MSM says about him or how hard they try to make him invisible, and no one else dares to do that.

Kucinich is a great guy and has the right ideas, but does not have a snowballs chance in hell of getting the nomination or the presidency. Edwards-Obama is the ticket.

This is true theology being debated here.

You have to be a perfect idiot to give money to either Obama or Edwards, like making a direct deposit to Dick Cheney's personal account. Democrats and Republicans are Tweedledee and Tweedledum, but idiots choose to remain blind. Of course they look different, they sound different, one has a R in front of their name and the other has a D, but just a quick look at the 'accomplishments' of Democrats after winning congress in 2006 should be enough for a 15 yo to realize that they are as corrupt, conning and dishonest as their Republican counterparts.

QUOTE: "Oscar January 7th, 2008 12:47 pm

I agree!

Edwards is the ideal reformer for our times right now."

CHOKING.

"Racism may yet undermine Obama in the primary. ...
... This means that a majority of Americans have not signed on to experiment with trying to elect a black president."

IS THAT REALLY TRUE though? Or is it more like "it depends on what constituncies are polled?", or the fact that voting abstainers often outnumber of the voters who voted for whoever's elected; while only not yet outnumbering the whole total of votes cast?

It was reported that G. W. Bush supposedly won with around 31% of the vote in 2004, while Kerry got around 29%, leaving around 40% of eligible U.S. voters either didn't vote, abstained, or voted for third-party candidates, of which we know there was what, two, and the total of the votes they garnered amounted to what, single digit percentage, or maybe as high as a combined total of 15%, perhaps? But I seem to recall that around 40% of eligible voters in the U.S. abstained; for some reason. I'm not sure at all about how this could be reasonably quickly found with Web searches and am not now going to try to perform this search; but am pretty sure that this was the percentage reported for abstainers.

Either way, Bush did NOT get a majority, even if he got the real numbers he was claimed to have received, while really being [appointed], instead of elected. And Kerry also wouldn't have gotten the support of the majority of eligible U.S. voters; only of those who did vote, and only if the popular vote really did put him ahead of Bush, which I don't have difficulty believing that it did, and that Bush's vote count was fraudulently, criminally exaggerated or inflated.

BUT U.S. politics and elections are GAME of the ruling elites keeping or trying to keep the electorate fooled into believing that they vote in a real democracy when they really don't; although some pro-elites voters certainly don't care and love their cushy lives.

Race is probably or surely an issue in the U.S. in terms of electoral candidates, employment hiring, etc.; but I wonder about whether race is prejudically a majority matter, in terms of the citizens' and other residents' support.

Sort of like with the H-1B visa program, through which many hi-tech U.S. professionals were SCREWED and totally so, sent to bankruptcy, including totally; a lot or a serious enough number of LOUD fools among us replaced professionals blamed racism, loudly, yet it had nothing to do with race. It was all about economic "RAT RACE", racketeering, corporatism, globalisation, etc., and the racketeering wasn't only by the big hi-tech corporations aiming to offshore their business a lot, but also by hiring recruiters, firms, and the AILA, American Immigration Lawyers Association. All these then ruling parties, and influences, were $$$-eyed; not based on racism. Some were, but if the problem had been only those people, then it would've dwarfed what was going on and has been maintained to this present day, today.

And besides for the above, might Edwards, and maybe still Clinton, displacing or outpacing Obama in terms of gaining supporters, not [deserves], for they all deserve to be OUTED from public office altogether, imo; well, what about the hellishly treasonous media's "contributions", reporting, etc?

Most Americans know drip about other countries, and many, if not most, Americans know little about different parts of their own country; instead relying on what for information, the corp. elites' msm news media that loves to brainwash, dumb DOWN (very), ... the masses? Some Americans perhaps still think that Canadians are all Eskimos, which is the prejudical term, the right one being Inuits; having learned that concretely back in the 1970s, and I would be a little but not very surprised if even many Americans are still this ignorant.

QUOTE: "PaulLoeb January 7th, 2008 1:22 pm

...

I just read the links at the articles above, and they had to do with things like Republicans jumping ship to Obama because they didn't like all the Republican enthusiasm for torture, or because they'd turned against Bush, not because they were taking marching orders from Karl Rove."

THAT SOUNDS LIKE very much the same thing I previously found when people referred to articles saying ... and then reading them [proved] to be not the same thing at all; instead being much like Paul Loeb says above. I didn't read these articles linked here, but given that what Paul describes is what I've found myself a number of times, and it's [awfully] usual occurence among Americans, I'm not going to bother [wasting] my time AGAIN, and take Paul's world on his verification.

QUOTE: " atruepatriot January 7th, 2008 1:45 pm

Paul Loeb-

I disagree with you. Did you watch the debate? On the question about attacking to get Osama Binladen, Obama had the same approach on attacking on foreign soil as the Bush agenda which the commentator brought to everyone's attention. I beg to differ with you, I do believe he is a Republican pawn, .... ...

..."

'Pawn' is evidently the wrong term, for it it's like 'puppet', and what atruepatriot said and I snipped out illustrates that he or she is not really thinking of Obama as being a 'puppet' of Republicans, or rather the ruling elites, who not all Republicans support, btw, and there's awfully little difference between the Dems and the Repubs anyway, so atruepatriot is wrong again in blaming only Republicans, instead of the real ruling elites, and corrupted both Repubs and Dems, while the ruling elites don't really care which party is in power, as long as it does the bidding of the elites; ....

Well, atruepatriot and others illustrate that they don't know to communicate [clearly]; instead of wishy-washy ambiguity that is distorted from the rest of reality; or misrepresented wording for what's otherwise meant.

It's important to be CLEAR, so not screwing up communication! Want your message or view to get across? Then communicate it CLEARLY! Don't do that, and then don't expect others to understand when you did not make yourself understandable.

With that said, yes, Obama supported so-called anti-Osama (BL) bs politics, which is full of hypocrisy and lies; and again yes, he strongly supported war on Iran, including with the use of nuclear weapons, bombs, apocalypsism, although he might not have realised that it was apocalyptic warmongering that he was actually committing. But this doesn't mean that he was 'pawn', so 'puppet' of Republicans or the ruling elites. It might mean that he's working, wittingly or not, for the real ruling elites; while unwittingly is easy enough to see.

Does it work out that way? Well, and again, the unwittingly part seems certain enough ... to some degree; the ruling elites might be split on whether or not Iran can or "should" be struck, ..., or perhaps all against it, f.e. (hence 'to some degree'). But the wittingly possibility or probability? I don't know about that; would definitely need more information than I've gathered so far to be able to be [more] sure one way or another about this aspect of the overall question.

The unwittingly part is easy to understand for or with any candidates receiving a lot of financial campaign backing from major "donors". They may very likely not be just donating, but really bribing, and when candidates resist against criminal bribery, then it can be modified by the bribers to appear to be non-criminal, by funneling the funds through intermediate parties, organisations, foundations, ... that criminality is not "popularly" associated with.

"Politics is full of hypocrisy"; a major game played against People[s]. It's been this way for thousands of years and isn't about to cease anytime soon; unless someone like Kucinich is miraculously elected and then performs additional political miracles. And we evidently cannot count on that being even remotely feasible in the U.S.A.

Edwards, Clinton, Obama, ..., their Republican counterparts, I don't trust any of them; only one of the Rep. Party and two of the Dem. Party, and Cynthia McKinney (if indeed now running), and Nader (if indeed running) would be people I'd consider voting for. The rest? Abstinence is my electoral principle! To vote for jerks and lesser evils as opposed to greater evils to represent me, MOI? NEVER! Give them brooms and janitorial jobs; safe ones.

But Americans are going to still persist in electing corrupt politicians; whether it be trying to get Edwards, Clinton, Obama, ..., their corrupt Repub. counterparts, doesn't matter. Americans love voting for evil and less evils that are still evil; they can't cease loving to screw themselves and the world; and love refusing to realise that "politics if full of hypocrisy", and there is NO real democracy in the U.S. Etc.

It's a ho-hum sickening and "wanna fall asleep and never wake up world" for many of the rest of us. Yawn.

Now that I've read the article, I find Paul Loeb's reasoning interesting and sometimes uplifting, but momentarily.

There's track record neglect, and I don't neglect that.

Only someone with the mind of a child would think that it is possible to elect a progressive candidate for US president in 2008. The best we can do is support someone who will not turn the US into a completely fascist country in the next four years or start WWIII. That pretty much eliminates any Republican from consideration and Hillary as well.

Sure, Kucinich is infinitely better than any of the leading candidates, but, as an agnostic socialist myself, I find agnostic/atheistic socialist candidates to be infinitely superior to Kucinich. So, what do I do, vote for a socialist who is polling (nationally) at under one-tenth of one percent, or compromise up to Kucinich who is polling at two percent (among Democrats), or compromise further up to Edwards (who talks a good game, and may have evolved into a progressive intellectually or politically or both, though his record is troubling) who is polling at 20 percent, or compromise further up to Obama (who is borderline DLC but not quite as despicable as Hillary, and who has had some progressive moments in the past) who is polling in the 30s?

The choices are not nearly as clear as some would have it.

I'm going to go make another donation to JRE and hope that he can continue to flesh out Obama and pull him away from some of his centrist votes/positions. However liberal and fresh his rhetoric some of Obama's votes (and non-votes) "sucked oranges." [Does anyone remember Anita Byrant??]

You know, I give credit to the mind of a child, who has hope, vision and a sense of imagination, who has not given up on the dream of this democracy - childlike, not childish, and certainly not naive.

I support Dennis Kucinich. I believe he has a chance to win, if WE vote for him in the primaries and caucuses, where we get to vote our conscience, our values and our highest vision. I believe he would defeat any republican running now. As a presidential candidate in the national election, he would finally have the opportunity to make the nation fully aware of his policies and his voting record.

His polling numbers are outstanding in progressive polls. He came in FIRST in polls by The Nation, The Progressive, Democracy for America, Progressive Democrats of America, AND he got 76% of the votes for Democrats in the www.IndependentPrimary.com poll in which 110,000 Independents in New Hampshire voted, 80,000 of them for Democrats. He certainly has captured SOME of America's imagination, with but a little help from the mainstream and the progressive media.

Doesn't that tell us something - something that is out of synch with what the mainstream media is telling us?

Why are we letting the media tell us who the viable candidates are? It's up to people who have a voice in the progressive media to let people know Kucinich IS electable. Instead, those people have been brainwashed by the mainstream media as well.

Kucinich has defeated Republicans and he has the respect of a number of Republicans as well. If he ran against a Republican for president, he would win.

But he's being shut out from the media and even in debates with the okay of the Democratic Party. We who consider ourselves 'progressives' (and I'm beginning to wonder if that word has any meaning at all) should be asking - loudly and in the progressive media - why that is. It's important to the future of our democracy, if we have one at all.

In my opinion, it is because Kucinich is challenging the corporate domination of our entire government. I don't see Obama doing that and I am not convinced with Edwards it's anything more than lip service.

As progressive thinkers, it is so imporant that we realize that we are living in a time like never before. Suddenly 'green' is cool. Things have shifted. We should be taking advantage of that shift. We're not, and I find it very disheartening.

I have read and recommended Mr. Loeb's books in the past. But I'm afraid that with opinion pieces like this one popping up on Common Dreams, etc. these days, the impossible will take a whole lot longer.

I will continue to support Dennis Kucinich, as the only democratic candidate who actually respects democracy party values and truly stands for peace and an end to war as an instrument of policy, the only one who has plans for not-for-profit national health care, for fair trade, and for sustainable energy.

Sharon Abreu

Sharmuse, you just wrote something about Dennis Kucinich that was an eye-opener to me: "I believe he would defeat any republican running now. As a presidential candidate in the national election, he would finally have the opportunity to make the nation fully aware of his policies and his voting record."

Prior to your statement I'd been thinking solely along the lines of how to get Kucinich the Democratic nod, wanting it badly but knowing how difficult, if not impossible, it's going to be, but hadn't really been thinking about what would happen when and if he got there.

But you are perfectly correct. IF Kucinich could win the Democratic nomination, he most certainly would beat any Republican out there, for one simple reason: as the Democratic candidate for President the MSM wouldn't be able to deny him air time during debates, and if the poor and middle class voters got a real chance to hear what his ideas are they'd vote for him in a heartbeat. In a two-man race he wouldn't be invisible anymore, not by a long-shot, and he would be unbeatable as a result.

No wonder the MSM works so hard to keep him out of debates now!

And you know something? I bet the Democratic Party, as a whole, knows this perfectly well. They must know that if taking over the Presidency from the Republicans is their real goal, Kucinich is the guy they should be promoting.

Thanks for the insight, sharmuse, even if it is scary.

Nice on Sharmuse.

Only option for any thinking person is to vote for Dennis when they can, write him in when they can't & get violent if he gets killed.

Sharmuse, I just realized that there's one Republican that Kucinich might not be able to beat in a one-on-one situation, and that's Ron Paul. So, if the primary concern of the Republicans is keeping control of the Presidency, they'd be pushing him.

So both parties are perfectly willing to lose control of the Presidency if it means that they can retain control of the American people (and Iraqi oil). Which, I suppose, should have been perfectly obvious to me before. Oh well.

God, that's brilliant. Kucinich vs. Paul; Paul vs. Kucinich. The ratings for the MSM would blow off the roof.