Viewing the tapes of the Democratic National Committee's Winter Meeting where many of the potential 2008 Democratic candidates took the stage, I was once again impressed with the fact that Governor Howard Dean is a truly great leader. When he ran for president in 2004, he told us we had the power to take our country back. He has led that effort, not as U.S. president, but as president of Democratic Party. He's done wonders.
We have Dean -- and his fifty state strategy -- to thank for regaining control of Congress. The DNC has been wonderfully re-energized and, amusingly, even Hillary Clinton is now repeating the Dean mantra "We are going to take our country back"!
General Wes Clark was the one candidate with the graciousness to thank Dean and the DNC for their great work in transforming the composition of Congress. Clark's campaign work for Democratic candidates over the past 3 years has made him into an authentic Democrat and he'd make a very acceptable president.
The DNC provided a wonderful forum for comparing the potential Democratic candidates, for which Dean should be thanked. There is a very strong roster
In my book, John Edwards took the lead in articulating deeply Democratic values and demonstrating a refusal to pander to the Bush-Cheney right wing. Edwards clearly understands the needs of the poor, dispossessed and underemployed in this country and is not afraid to take on the big corporations to address them. He comes from the southern, white working class, folks who we urgently need to have with us if we are going to transform America. I see from reports in today's D.U. that Edwards' seemingly pro-militaristic response to the Iran problem was a product of media mis-information. Knowing that he does not support nuking Iran puts him back up there as a top candidate in my book.
I was disappointed in O'Bama, who seems to want to replace the War on Terror by a War on Cynicism, which he says is the number one danger facing our country. I was reminded of the Daily Show's Jon Stewart, who remarked that after Bush wins the War on Terror, he can take on that other awful enemy, Ennui.
O'Bama has great rhetorical skills, but seemed to use them to spout platitudes about togetherness and abstractions rather than addressing the real dangers created by the Bush-Cheney administration. If Americans are cynical these days, it's because we've watched the Bush-Cheney administration lie to us about every action they've taken, from an illegal invasion of Iraq to maliciously exposing an undercover CIA operative and her whole non-proliferation network while handing billions in subsidized profits to its donors from the pharmaceutical industry under the misnomer of helping seniors pay for drugs. Cynical? We watched Bush-Cheney steal two presidential elections, the first with the help of the U.S. Supreme Court. Damn right we're cynical. Cynicism is a needed defensive weapon when we must be alert to ever more destructive Bush-Cheney lies.
Ultimately, the only way to end that cynicism is for our political leadership to truthfully address the real needs and aspirations of our citizens. And that, my dear Senator O'Bama, may very well require a very partisan war against the corporate powers who are strangling the 99 per cent of our population who are not billionaires.
Americans are rightfully scared shitless that Bush is intent on starting a nuclear war on Iran and completely jettisoning our tri-partite form of democratic government. O'Bama didn't say a word about those real dangers while using his impressive delivery skills to scold Democrats for not being sufficiently committed to "togetherness" with our non-Democratic Party brethren. His scolding tone was damned irritating. I felt he was lecturing the Democratic Party like an arrogant TV Evangelist, not addressing us as a fellow Democrat. If O'Bama would extricate himself from the gold-plated arms of the corporatist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and put his enormous intellectual and rhetorical skills to work on the real problems we face, he would make a very formidable candidate and an impressive president.
Hillary showed that she's smart, organized and knowledgeable about political horse-trading. She's right, it does take 60 votes in the Senate to over-ride a veto, but 60 bi-partisan votes for a meaningless non-binding anti-escalation resolution is a waste of energy. Her speaking presentation has improved, although her artificial hand gestures looked to be the result of incompletely absorbed acting lessons. If only she would allow her intelligence and real convictions to guide her instead of following the money and the James Cargills, she might win the support of Democratic activists and become an electable candidate. Running on a "elect the first woman president" platform just doesn't hack it. With due respect to Senator O'Bama, we are all much to cynical these days for that.
As it is, Hillary is the carefully scripted candidate of half measures, but even half measures would put the world far, far ahead of where we are with the Bush-Cheney administration. And it sure would be great to elect a woman president. I only wish I could wholeheartedly support her. She has a long way to go on withdrawing the troops from Iraq, universal single-payer, government funded health care and disassembling NAFTA before I can do that.
Dennis Kucinich presented a solid platform for rescuing the poor, underemployed and bombed out victims of the Bush-Cheney wars. He knows those problems intimately as the eldest of a family of seven children whose parents never owned a house and sometimes lived in their car. Dennis is hard working, thoughtful and would make a solid president, though the media steadfastly ignores his efforts to get there. His defining characteristic is compassion, and lord knows we need that after the horrendous things that Bush-Cheney has done against Americans and the victims of their Mid East oil wars. We need to establish a truly humane government in this country. Dennis concluded his speech with a fuzzy biblical quotation, which lost me completely, but looking strictly at platform, Kucinich should take the Democratic nomination.
Of course, the very best Democratic candidate for president wasn't a speaker in the DNC's Candidates' Forum, Governor Dean was chairing it.
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