TOP Reason Gephardt would be disaster as VP Choice

[jackstraw45]

He was the CO AUTHOR of the Iraq resolution giving Bush power to invade. Voting for it was a mistake for Kerry but picking the guy who authored the bill?!?!?!?


WOULD BE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE!

[bloom]

1. you're right

:puke:

[Cocoa]

2. that just expresses your dislike of him

and his Iraq decision.

I think he'd be a great VP pick, and a great VP.

[jackstraw45]

4. Yes

And in case we all missed it, 5 more soldiers were killed in Iraq today.

Bodies of contractors were dragged through the streets and hung from bridges.

600 American families alone have lost loved ones.

I KNOW we at DU realized, in the fall of 2002, that Bush would go to war.

Gephardt authored the bill that gave him permission.

I think that, in 2004, it's enough of a disqualifier for VP IMO.

I think he'd improve the Dem odds in Missouri but cause a LOT of Dean voters to stay home in other swing states or vote for...*gulp* Nader.

JMO.

[JI7]

12. agree

he can help bring in the anti globalization but social conservatives. the reagan democrats, the perot voters.

[pippin]

3. see previous thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1315008

Gephardt is a republican lackey. Kerry must be soft in the head for even thinking this. I bet the majority of Democrats would strongly oppose this. I will post a poll to test this.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

5. for the 1,948,957,678th time...

THEY DID NOT HAVE A CHOICE! If you voted it down, you were fucked, plain and simple. You were unpatriotic, you were an asshole, you were the scum of the earth. Don't you remember this at all? A vote against would have effectively killed any reasonable shot at the Presidency, and if WMDs WERE ever found... forget the rest of your political career, period, unless you're from the safest district on earth. Not to mention, the whole thing was based on lies put out by the Bush Regime. If you want to vent your anger about the vote, vent it towards 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But for the love of god, cut these guys some slack. It was one friggin vote and it wasn't much of a choice to begin with.

[jackstraw45]

6. Did Gephardt have a gun to his head

when his staff authored the bill?

Please....

:eyes:

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

7. For all intents and purposes

YES! Were you asleep in 2002??

[Leilani]

16. The Senate was working on a compromise

& had Repubs with them.

Gephardt went behind their back & made a separate deal with Bush.

The Senate is more liberal & reasonable than the House; they had a chance at compromise & gep screwed them.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

17. You're only kidding yourself here

Here's what would've happened under your scenario:

Gephardt "holds out" like you want him to. The Senate passes their version of the bill which is more liberal because they have a little thing called a filibuster there. The House, on the other hand, ramrods a MUCH WORSE bill than the one that is actually signed because they don't need to compromise at all there. The chances of a compromise between the House and the Senate? NONE. Why? Because somewhere near 65-70% of the U.S. was brainwashed into believing that war with Iraq was necessary, and ergo, neither the House nor Bush had a good reason to compromise. If the bill doesn't go through at all, guess what happens to ALL Democrats? Let's just say that if you think it was bad being called "obstructionists" and "terrorists" as things actually happened, you have no idea what kind of shit storm would have befallen our party. And then if WMDs were eventually found, we'd be looking at many, MANY years of being in the minority. Public sentiment was NOT on our side at the time. We would have never recovered from looking "weak" on national security.

Hindsight is clearly 20/20 in this matter. If Kerry and Gephardt knew for a fact that WMDs would not be found, I guarantee their actions would have been far different. But there was no such definite knowledge. Just an angry mob. Even without 20/20, I guarantee you that the ire of a few people here on DU is a hell of a lot better, as far as worst case scenarios go, than having an entire country's worth of pissed off people had things gone the other way, which they very easily could have. Gephardt most DEFINITELY did the right thing.

[FloridaPat]

11. They could have put the discussion off until after the elections.

The Democrats have not shown any guts against the republicans in 20 years. Gephart jumped every time Bush wanted something.

And they could have reframed the discussion. They could have fought back. They could have had a 100 investigations into everything Bush has ever done illegally like the repubs did to Clinton. With the repubs in charge of the senate, all opportunity was lost.

The Democrats are suppose to be the opposition party, not the enabling party.

[Journeyman]

13. In 1847, Abraham Lincoln was one of the few Congressmen. . .

who took a principled stand against a very popular but quite illegal war against Mexico. His action was met with ridicule and derision. He was not returned to his Congressional seat the next term (not entirely for this stand, but it contributed to the backlash).

Of course, taking a principled stand is a rarity in politics. Calling a liar a liar is difficult indeed, whether it be Dumbya Bush in 2002 or James Polk in 1847, but sometimes the principled course is the course that some men are called to follow. And who knows, those men sometimes pay a political price for it. But then, they prove their worth manyfold over later in life.

[Tactical Progressive]

20. Teaching left-wingers about politics

is roughly equivalent to teaching right-wingers about character, integrity or compassion. I'm sure my fellow Progressives were admonished well more than 1.949 billion times not to vote for Nader in swing states. And look.

The people in this country still support this war by like 60/40, and that's with both a much more difficult than anticipated occupation and with all of the lies used to start it now unambiguously exposed. Inotherwords even in a near worst-case context, people cling to support of the phony war as something they were noble in originally supporting for the right reasons.

Imagine what it would be like with WMDs found and happy Iraqi's running elections now at a cost of only a few American lives lost.

Think of what kind of position a non-supportive Democratic party would be in now under those circumstances. That was not an unlikely expectation. As you state, we were going regardless, so those are the two possible situations we would be in now and again, even in this bad-case scenario people still support the war.

I think Gephardt came out to forestall Democrats hurtling themselves into an extended and failed effort to stop BushCo and a complicit Congress from driving down that road regardless.

And it probably worked.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

23. Thank you

I was beginning to think I was nuts here.

[Gman]

8. Absolutely Irrelevant

That's an issue that really only a very tiny part of the electorate cares about. This is not about pacifying the far left. This is about the future of the free world. This is about beating Bush, in case you haven't caught up on your reading. Kerry/Gephardt would be a great ticket.

[jackstraw45]

10. They would put audiences asleep....

Just my opinion.

We need a personality on the ticket.

Contrast 1992 with Clinton/Gore. That ticket, I must say, had more charisma in their shins than a Kerry/Gephardt ticket would/will.

Politics is not always about the BEST candidates, obviously. It's about WINNING.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

18. i agree here

But I don't think we're gonna find someone with Clinton's charisma here.

[orwell]

9. Win One for the Gepper

I would prefer someone other than Gep for VP choice. That being said what he does offer is:

Someone who obviously has the experience to be President.
A openly religous man.
Support from the unions, a key Dem voting block.
The ability to make the midwest competitive.
A clean background.

He is a safe choice, but not an imaginative "sexy" one.

O

[Walt Starr]

14. I'd consider a Gephardt Veep spot as a deal breaker

and would move over to Nader.

I'll have a hard enough time seeing through the projectile vomit in order to vote for Kerry. If Gephardt's name is there with him, there is no way I'll vote for the Democratic ticket.

[orwell]

15. Priority

I don't see what Gephardt has to do with the goal of removing Bush from office.

In the word's of Ralph himself:

"If you want to see Bush out of office, vote for Kerry."

What are your priorities?

O

[Walt Starr]

24. My priority is change. A Kerry/Gephardt administration means no change

because Bush will win against that ticket hands down.

Nope, Kerry/Gephardt means I go Nader, and I despise Nader, too.

[orwell]

25. Change

I try not to despise anyone. It's not good for the health, mental or physical.

I don't see how a vote for Nader would be a vote for change.

Logic matrix:

If I vote for Bush, I vote for business as usual.
If I vote for Nader, I may be putting Bush in the WH or may not. In any case the vote becomes ineffectual. (No change affected by vote)
If I vote for Kerry/Gep, it may be business as usual, it may be worse than business as usual, it may be better. But it is the only vote that is a vote for change as it is the only vote that can effect the outcome with a possibility of change.

But, your vote is your vote. Nobody ever said voting was logical. Good luck.

O

[fob]

19. It's called floating a trial balloon folks. And it should happen every

week for the next few months with a different name each week. That will keep shrubco* guessing and keep Kerry Momentum with the constant speculation. It also means that someone will "connect" along the way and give a boost to the ticket.

My personal favorite is Ann Richards, REAL TEXAN, fighter, smart and qualified.

[StlMo]

21. Contrary to popular opinion, the resolution DID NOT

Contrary to popular opinion, Dick Gephardt did not give Bush what Bush wanted in Iraq. When one goes past the right wing mainstream Media spin, one discovers that Bush entered office (thanks to five idiotic and immoral Supreme Court judges) with the authority to invade Iraq - and to order the U.S. military to remove Saddam Hussein. The constitution also specifies that the authority to conduct more than limited action in Iraq or elsewhere requires an official war declaration. The alleged war resolution signed by George Bush jr. had only symbolic conditional approval for Iraq and the conditions where things NeoCons despise - International support and a requirement for a real threat. It also blocked NeoCon plans to invade Syria, Iran, Lebanon, etc. Gephardt forced Bush to sign a document that Bush did not want.

[info being]

22. Top reason: we'd lose in November. eom