Reply #49: No, I meant the meat behind the platitudes [View All]

Hey - I know that it isn't too popular around here to not support Kerry. Well, sorry - I'm a progressive, a lib - and I don't take kindly to the New Democrat/DLC types that have embraced neo-liberal economics.

I don't trust them. They follow the same basic socioeconomic ideology as the GOP, albeit with a few token (and unimportant from the corporate perspective) progressive stances.

I've had many discussions about Kerry, the DLC and the rest on public boards. It seems to me that it is quite common amongst Kerry supporters to see things that just aren't there - such as a real plan for alternative energy R&D projects. What you provided is the usual rhetoric - lots of ideals, no concrete proposals, no idea or expression of costs or mechanisms, nothing that couldn't be written off at the first opportunity.

Given the democratic (not the party but the system) propensity to rely on rhetoric and demagoguery in order to attain power - and a similar propensity to forget the promises once power is attained - Kerry's messages are indeed noteworthy. They are noteworthy in that they promise very few concrete proposals and plenty of pablum. If he were indeed serious about his stance(s) he could have done well to actually express the campaign promises with SOME detail. He never did - which failed to convince either progressives, swing voters or moderates.

If Kerry did well it was because of ABB and because the other candidates didn't have the support of the DLC-driven machine.

BTW, someone posted something about Kerry and "corporate campaign financing". Yet: http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/indus.asp?id=N00000245&cycle=2004 and http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/leadpac_sect.asp?id=N00000245&cycle=2004

If Dubya hadn't been such a pliabe corporate whore for oil, do you doubt that Kerry wouldn't have elicited oil corp support- or that his rhetoric would be significantly less "aggressive" (which isn't saying much)?

I voted for Kerry, but I voted ABB. I will never again vote AGAINST someone by supporting someone that doesn't share my values in the two most important aspects of governance - socioeconomic policies and foreign policy.