Democratic candidates

Quit running yourself down! ("as if anyone cared about my opinion around here ")

There's a reason peole check in here.


Anyhoo. You: "We had several terrorist attacks by right-wingers during the Clinton presidency..."

Actually, I can think of one: the Murrah Bulding, and those guys were loons, not right-wingers. By your rationale, the Unabomber represented YOUR side of the debate.

Fair is fair.

I agree with your appraisal of Clinton in general, though of course I dislike her for many OTHER reasons, too.

I think Obamarama is an inexperienced boob, WAY out of his league, and is running a novelty candidacy: the first Black man considered a "serious" candidate. Yikes! Homer Simpson for President!

Agree on Edwards, and again, many more reasons, too.

He's a slimy ambulance-chasing malpractice lawyer who almost single-handedly destroyed OB-GYN medicine in N. Carolina. "Channeling" the "voices" of dead pre-borns. He gets to go to the 9th Circle in the Inferno, if there's any justice at all.

"Two Americas"! What a joke, coming from him. I hate rich people like him and Drunkenneddeddy the Swimmer, who run around getting all sanctimonious about how bad the poor have it, but don't spend one dime of their own money on the "problem" while promoting all kinds of ways of taxing away the hard-earned money of others to force philanthropy at the point of the government gun.

It must be nice to be so unprincipled and conscience-free.

LOSERS!

I just always feel a bit silly opining at length on politics. I have no special qualifications, besides a knack for fact-checking and an unhealthy obsession with politics.

As far as terrorist attacks by right-wingers, you forgot Eric Robert Rudolph, who committed three terrorist attacks--two in my hometown, and which are especially seared in my memory (I had good friends at the park that night). He did seriously injure more than 150 people in the one attack, and murdered three people total and blinded one in his whole little rampage. And he did it because of the government's support for abortion and homosexual rights.

He's a little more in line with the Republican Party platform that the Unabomber was with the Democrats. However, I think it is dishonest to deny that the left-wing rhetoric partly fueled the Unabomber. We all need to be vigilant to the ideological excesses of our side.

But besides Timothy McVeigh and Eric Robert Rudolph, you also had a surge of murders of abortion doctors, perpetrated by folk like Paul Jennings Hill and James Kopp. The nineties also saw a large number of arsons, bombings and anthrax hoaxes.

If Clinton was in the White House, I would expect a prompt uptick in anti-abortion terrorism.

How can you call Obama unexperienced but support Thompson? He has much more political experience than Thompson, and has been a more accomplished senator.

Also, while is experience in politics all that matter? Does being a Constitutional Law professor count for anything? Does creating and running community organizations in Chicago mean nothing?

I think it should count more than B-acting experience.

Well, apart from what I hear on the news, what do I know about your candidates. More than most Brits that's true.

Anyway, I dreamed about Hillary Clinton last night. No seriously, I did!

Last night, I dreamed the Clarence Thomas was running for president, and we were doing all the Anita Hill stuff all over again, and for some reason I was being subpoenaed to testify about the items Thomas had checked out from our corporate library.

I guess I was mixing in Robert Bork, since during HIS hearings they brought up the fact that he liked to rent nudey videos--and a anxious Congress soon afterward wrote very strict privacy protections covering video rentals. These privacy protections, however, do NOT extend to what you check out from the library, to the great consternation of my fellow librarians.

Having an opinion is enough of a qualification for writing a blog. It helps to also have writing and communication skills, and you do. That's enough.

Again, your coupling of any terrorist whacko with any party is simply wrong, and if you want to stick conservatives with responsibility for the acts of nutjobs, then you get to keep Ted Kazinsky in your column, among others, including the Weathermen Underground and others from the Vietnam Era.

Frankly, it's an absurd posit from either side. In any country of almost 300 million people you're going to have a certain number of lunatics. How about serial killers? We going to start looking at their voting record, then assign them to a party column?

Please. Stop. That's pretty foolish.

No, he's infinitely less experienced than Thompson, who's been active in politics going back to Watergate, where he served as Senate counsel, in addition to his experience as a Senator.

Further, Obamarama keeps making rookie mistakes and gaffes. The guy's definitely not ready for prime time.

Please understand my tone (hard to do online), I don't want to back-and-forth snipe, but I am genuinely interested in comparing these two guys. I find it interesting that we, as two reasonable people, dislike each others favored candidates for essentially the exact same reason--lack of real experience.

I don't think being an attorney for a Senate Committee counts as political experience--at all. Neither does being a lobbyist. Lobbyists and lawyers work for the people that pay them. That is utterly and completely different than working for the people that elect you.

All he was dealing with in Watergate was political gamesmanship, his work had zero to do with real policy. That experience might have taught him how to present issues and himself (as did his acting experience), but it taught him exactly nothing about policy OR principle.

I haven't really seen Obama's gaffes. The one that got Republicans all hot and bothered was when he said if Osama was in Pakistan, and Pakistan wouldn't help us go after him, we would. And for some bizarre reason, Republicans said that was a horrible policy.

So they basically communicated to the terrorists that all they have to do is base themselves in a country that is our 'ally', and then they are untouchable. Great strategy, that one.

We should go after Osama; we shouldn't let Saudi Arabia or Turkey or Pakistan or anywhere else be a safe haven for him.

Thompson's gaffes seems worse. When asked about his own work on McCain-Feingold, he seems to have no memory of his own actions from just a few years ago. He goes to speak in places like Florida with no background on the major state issues at all.

We don't need this kind of bored, lazy person as president!! If he doesn't want to bother to figure out what people care about, and just wants to parrot a standard policy script aimed at a certain demographic, why do we want him?

And there's merit in what you wrote. Hell, the other day Thompson said something about drilling for oil in the Everglades (?????????).

NONE of them are perfect. Frankly, my first choice would be Hunter, followed by Tancredo, THEN Thompson. To me, the ideology is important, obviously, and the ability to "sell" it to the electorate; I think all these guys have that ability.

Needless to say, I don't pay nearly as much attention to the Dem offerings as the GOP's, and as a true conservative I've got plenty of issues with THEM, particularly Giuliani and McCain. But I seem to recall that a few months ago Obamarama made some statements that were truly rookie quality, and POed the whole Dem establishment.

Further, he's a KID. Hard to take him seriously. He doesn't even look the part. I still maintain his is a novelty candidacy, and if he weren't Black, he'd be getting nowhere in a hurry, already a footnote and long gone from the scene. You guys have some real serious guys who'd make good candidates -- Lieberman comes to mind -- and are absolutely blowing a great opportunity.

Hillary has huge personal negatives, and as I wrote is virtually self-defeating, unless the GOP puts up even WORSE candidates, which is a distinct possibility. For instance, no way would I vote for Giuliani or McCain, even if that DOES mean a Dem victory, and I take a lot of heat for that. It's okay; I've got big shoulders.

Actually, I consider Hillary the least harmful of the two, because she is canny, and aside from a couple of really huge policy differences (health care and guns) she's actually fairly mainstream. I didn't like the hubby, but he was fairly harmless.

I also wouldn't worry much, because I have a fairly high level of confidence that the electorate will split the power: the Prez of one party and at least one chamber in the other party. I LIKE divided government, and gridlock is my dream come true.

I'm with Will Rogers: “The country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer”

I agree that Hillary is authoritarian. She has never been remotely liberal, even though she is accused of it regularly here at TH. I wish she were - but the reality is that she is a capitalist, and if her recent vote in the Senate is any indication, she's also giving Bush another excuse to invade Iran. Yikes.

Obama is nearly Clinton's twin on issues.

And I totally disagree with your assessment on Edwards. He is the only one in the top tier of the race who scares the bejeezus out of the GOP, and rightly so. His healthcare proposal is good, his stance on the war is clearcut - unlike the senators - and his focus on poverty is the only one I'm seeing from anybody.

By the way, wasn't Hillary a lawyer?