Email from Jimmy Carter's son, Jack

[jillan]

Almost 30 years ago, Birch Bayh and Mo Udall were considered the favorites for the Democratic Party nomination for President. With Iowa three months away, I recall many pundits asking which of these two candidates would survive to face Gerald Ford in the general election.

But Iowans went to their caucuses anyway. And come caucus day, the media prognostications of the previous few months were irrelevant. The hyperbole surrounding the campaigns was inconsequential. It was caucus day, and Iowans were not going to be told what to do - they were going to choose for themselves.

They chose a little-known Governor from Georgia, my father, Jimmy Carter. Dad's surprising showing in the caucuses catapulted him from long-shot to the White House. And it was all because of people like you.

Now, I am watching history repeat itself. A couple of candidates for the Democratic Party have raised incredible sums of money. The national media is ready to call the election. The pundits say the front-runners are already running general election campaigns.

Click here to contribute to Joe Biden today and make history repeat itself.

Yet we are still months away from the caucuses. The media doesn't pick the President. The pundits don't get to decide the Democratic Party nominee.

Iowans will make that choice for themselves, just as they did in 1976. And I believe that Iowans will pick Joe Biden for President.

I have known Joe for more than 30 years. He is experienced, knowledgeable, and charming. He projects serious proposals into the debate on the many issues that are critical to the world today.

I am proud to support a candidate who can win in 2008. I am proud to support a candidate who does not suffer from lack of experience or from high negatives. Most of all, I am proud to support a great person, a great supporter of my father's, and a true friend.

You may have noticed that, while Joe has less money on hand than some of the other candidates, the momentum is beginning to turn in Joe's direction. Many Iowans who have met with all the candidates are rushing to endorse Joe Biden. The other candidates are practically falling all over each other to endorse Joe's plan for Iraq.

We can keep the momentum going. Joe needs to raise $500,000 by November 16 so that he can continue his march to Pennsylvania Avenue. Will you join us?

Click here to contribute to Joe Biden today.

With your help, Iowa in 2008 will once again surprise the nation and launch a great man to the White House.

Thank you,

Jack Carter, Nevada

------------------------------------
donate to Joe :)

http://www.joebiden.com/home

[youthere]

1. I just donated! Kick for Joe.

[murbley40]

7. kick

[liberalnurse]

2. I got mine too.

What a nice surprise...Jack Carter. We have to make that cornstock grow!

[jillan]

4. Yes we do!

Biden is counting on the people, not the corporations.

[surfermaw]

3. I think they will pick John Edwards

And he will in turn will select Biden for V.P...then we would be on the way to recovering what has been lost in the last eight years, however no matter who the dem. is on the ticket, I will be there to support him or her.

[gateley]

5. K&R - What a great message! I'm honored to help Joe on his way. We'll all

benefit greatly when he steps into office and begins the healing process.

[Faryn Balyncd]

6. I like Edwards, but could Biden possibly be the one that can STOP HILLARY or Giuliani?

Biden has experience, he's a realist, he's tough enough that he may not have to prove his masculinity by being a uber-hawk (as some have feared Hillary might do). Biden has actually put together the only bipartisan consensus in Congress regarding Iraq that moves in the direction of peace.

He has the demeanor to appeal to all sorts of people, and win in the purple states.

I don't think any Republican candidate would consider him anything other than their worst nightmare (just as they would consider Edwards, or Clark, or someone like Jim Webb - - if only Webb wasn't a first term junior Senator - - He could win all the purple states and even a few red ones).

How is Biden on Iran?

(My reason for not supporting Biden prior to now is that I have viewed him as too much of a hawk, but perhaps we're on the way to getting an even worse Democrat, or, God forbid, Giuliani.)

In Biden politically indebted to those demanding war?

I fear that both of our 2 frontrunners might actually lose the general election, and, even if they won, I wonder if they could withstand the demands of those screaming for war . Will that president have the cajones to stand up the fascists at Fox News, and GOP nuts on the hill? And will he/she have the presence to rally the country and defeat the fearmongers, so we can react to whatever crisis we face like true Americans (not trashing all our values in the process)?

If Biden could be the one to defeat Hillary (and, from there, the Republicans), and if I could be convinced he won't excalate/attack Iran, and continue the neocon quest for permanent bases throughout the world, I could hop on board.

Is Biden the one?

[iverglas]

8. I knew before I clicked

Click here to contribute to Joe Biden today and make history repeat itself.

that this was what I was going to see.

Jimmy Carter was a fundamentally decent human being. So is Joe Biden.

He's also so smart it's a thing of beauty to hear him talk (my first experience of that, as a Canadian, was when I was glued to the tube watching the Clarence Thomas hearings -- the outcome a foregone conclusion, but the work done by Biden and his colleagues just a thing of beauty for this lefty lawyer to see), and so able to convey what he thinks to anybody who listens.

Most Canadians don't know it yet any more than most voters in the US, but we want Joe Biden for your president!

Pierre Trudeau, without the snark, and with a little more genuine commitment to people and what really matters to them.


edited because, eek, "I new before I clicked"??

[PatSeg]

9. It is interesting getting a Canadian perspective

It is a little more objective. Are there a lot of people in Canada that follow U.S. politics closely?

[iverglas]

10. hahahahaha!

Are there a lot of people in Canada that follow U.S. politics closely?

Was it TV Nation where Michael Moore interviewed people on both sides of the border -- somewhere where people live close to the border on both sides -- and the Canadians got more answers about the US right than the people south of the border did?

We get all the US TV you do, except for speciality cable/digital/satellite channels, for which we have our own.

NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, PBS, CNBC (?) are on on our basic cable lineup. We (i.e. my household) pay for digital MSNBC. We don't pay for digital Fox.

It gets boring watching the same news over and over in the morning or on a Saturday or Sunday as we read the papers, so we flick between the US news channels and the Cdn ones (CBC Newsworld and CTV Newsnet), and we also get BBC World on basic or slightly enhanced cable (we used to pay for it on digital until it was switched over). I occasionally watch TV5, the Canadian version of the France channel.

And you must never have heard Pierre Trudeau's otherwise famous quip:

http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/hist/canada9-en.asp

"Living next to you," Trudeau told an American audience in a speech to the National Press Club in 1969, "is like sleeping with an elephant; no matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt."


So ... yes. ;)

Obviously, I and the Canadians at DU do much more so than most others; we also pay more attention to Cdn politics!

I watched the Clarence Thomas hearings back in the day (they must have been broadcast on network TV in the US, I don't remember) because I was a lawyer (and had been a political candidate myself) and so took some interest in US Supreme Court and government goings on. The outcome was obviously a foregone conclusion, so I just watched for the sheer joy of seeing Joe Biden and his Democratic colleagues be the hugely smart guys they are (and the ones on the other side were no dummies either, so the interplay was fascinating). I just remember sitting there saying "Ask them __, Joe, ask them __!" And he would, although he'd lead up to it a little more circuitously than I would have.

I'm a social democrat, which I recently described as being "as socialist as possible in the circumstances" (alluding to the winner of the contest to find a Cdn counterpart for "as American as apple pie": as Canadian as possible under the circumstances).

Socialism will be nice, when it comes to be, long after I'm dead undoubtedly. In the meantime, we make progress.

Public ownership of many things would be lovely -- health insurance being one of them. But public regulation of the private owners' activities is progress, in the meantime. Regulation is the mechanism used in "mixed economies" to ensure that the public interest is protected in activities that have significant public impacts.

Biden is essentially talking about regulating the activities of private insurers much more tightly than at present -- exercising public control to curb the excesses -- while at the same time expanding what public ownership already exists, for those who need it or want to opt in, as the process proceeds.

Of course, this runs contrary to the whole deregulation process that has been going on for a couple of decades. Deregulation of the airwaves in the US, for instance. In the past, the public didn't own the broadcasters, but it did exercise considerable control over their activities. Look at things now.

Re-regulating broadcasting in terms of things like balanced programming would have an enormous effect on public life in the US, without any change of ownership. Regulating the health insurance market in the ways Biden is proposing would also have very significant effects.

I'm sure Biden could hold forth at fascinating length about the whole concept of regulation in a mixed mainly free-market economy. And I'd love to hear him. ;)

Meanwhile, he's pretty much an unknown up here, I'd say. I started a poll in the Canada forum here; I'm the lone Biden vote, but then only about 6 people voted. Three for Kucinich. Obviously Kucinich is closer to my own ideals, and to what my own party here represents, and I think it's tremendous that he's in the race to bring those ideals to the public arena. I just think that Biden is all-round more likely to succeed -- including in the sense of getting the right jobs done right if he's elected.

Also, when asked in that one-on-one interview where he'd like to live if he couldn't live in the US, he answered "Canada" without a moment's hesitation. Joe Biden ist ein Canadian, I think.

[PatSeg]

11. This fascinating!

You have a better understanding of OUR politics than most Americans do, which is really disturbing. It is hard to believe that a country as large and as diversified as the U.S. can be so easily brainwashed.

Kucinich as a "person" is close to a lot of my ideals as well, but he doesn't have the support to accomplish much, even if he were electable. I don't think he is cut out for the White House and his foreign policy ideas are not realistic.

Thank you for the information. I am going to read it again. Glad you guys are our neighbors!