Why aren't more people supporting Bill Richardson in 2008?

To be honest, I don't know that much about him, but I like what I have read thus far. Does anyone out there have a good reason why he wouldn't make a good president? I just visited his website for the first time, and I'm pretty impressed. Another DU'er mentioned that Richardson promised rebates to reduce energy costs, and he actually did it. Is there something I'm missing? Why wouldn't he make a great candidate?

Here is a link to his website- http://www.governor.state.nm.us/index2.php

stop to the re-count. Too bad for him because up until that point, he was quite popular.

People like Hillary Clinton, Evan Bayh and Mark Warner are showing much more interest in running. If Richardson started doing the things to lay the groundwork for a campaign he would draw more interest. Until he starts running, he won't get a following.

I knew I read it, just didn't remember where.

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/10236.html

http://www.westerndemocrat.com/2005/02/richardson_is_r.html

Richardson has all but announced that he's running. On the other hand, Bayh and Clinton have shown little and no interest respectively.

For my money, I know almost nothing about Richardson other than the fact that if I recall correctly he was Energy Secretary under Clinton.

I'd like to learn more. Thanks for the link. :hi:

:hi:

I know what he's been accused of being here on the DU:

DLC lackey, globalist, corporatist.

I'm sure plenty of folks here can post his record. Other than that, I can't think of any specifics at the moment.

For starters,

Next I see him as being a DLC tool.

But I think he blew it when he had to correct his resume saying that he in fact wasn't drafted by the A's (before they went to Oakland)

by the machines, and works to expose it BEFORE Nov 2008.

in 2004 has something to do with his inability to attract supporters for a run for the White House.

that is my answer. He kowtowed in 04. He should have fought, stood up and delivered.

and is an ambitious man. The pluses I've heard in support of his candidacy are both executive experience as a governor and foreign policy experience in the Clinton administration, and his Hispanic heritage. The minuses I've heard (not saying I agree) are that he has a lovely wife, but no children to appear in photographs, and he's a bit chubby.

On edit -- I'm reminded upthread that he had a serious recent embarrassment, about having indicated that he was drafted by the A's, when it appears he was not.

link <http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/politics/5401618/detail.html>

That was a boneheaded thing to do.

I'll be real candid with you. He's 40 pounds too heavy, and his failure to do something about it means he'll never make the run for president effectively. It's all about TV appearance and voter expectations, that mighty mass of middle that nods off and wakes up at election time to form some hastily made decision for largely superficial reasons.

Dick Durbin's another one that needs to drop 20 if he really wants to run.

And while I'm at, if Biden doesn't lose that LBJ ducktail, he's toast, too.

and Cheney was VP

Clinton in 92. Clinton was up around 240 or more, and had a gut hanging over his belt when he took his jacket off. He won, if I recall, over two much thinner men.

Richardson is fat. He's got a double chin the size of Rhode Island. If my saying so bugs you, sorry, but too bad. That is a major reason he's not getting any money to run for president. No one is going to give a big fat guy money to run for president. Not in these here United States.

with the war criminal, Kissinger.

and the treatment of Dr. Lee.

That's ok, because if he's our nominee, the Republicans will remind the voting public pretty quickly. Gore, who was deciding between attracting the Jewish vote or the Hispanic vote via his choice of VP didn't pass over Richardson for nothing in 2000.

Original Reporting as told back then circa 1999-2000...

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0872860.html
Bill Richardson, energy secretary, lost virtually any chance to become Vice President Al Gore's running mate when two computer drives containing nuclear secrets were reported missing from the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in June. The drives were recovered behind a copy machine in a secure area of the lab. The incident is the second security breach in less than a year. Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee was arrested last year on security violations charges after he allegedly copied top-secret files onto an unsecure computer.

http://slate.msn.com/id/84864 /
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson
He schmoozes. He loses.

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/06/16/losalamos.disks/index.html
Missing nuclear secrets found behind Los Alamos copy machine

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=nd99gusterson
Los Alamos: A summer under siege

http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/light/20000628.htm
Layers to Los Alamos
Firing Richardson won't solve the problem. He would just be replaced by another secretary who would perch 50 layers from the front lines. Moreover, Richardson can hardly be blamed for layers that were created in previous waves of reform.

But Richardson should be held accountable for appointing the same people to hold posts in the new National Nuclear Security Administration and the old undersecretaryship for nuclear security. This "dual-hatting," as Richardson calls it, creates considerable confusion about just who has the authority to act.


http://www.quarterly-report.com/human_interest/wen_ho_lee.html
We ask today, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, have you no sense of decency?
In early March 1999, Bill Richardson was utterly paranoid to save his hide as a potential vice-presidential candidate to Al Gore. He needed a scapegoatHe found his sacrificial lamb in the diminutive, soft-soften Dr. Wen Ho Lee, a nuclear scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. What Richardson and the Clinton Administration subsequently engineered against Dr. Lee is an outrage.

A Summary of the Case

Dr. Lee was born in Taiwan and was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1974. His status as an Asian-American made him a perfect fall guy for alleged Chinese espionage at U.S. nuclear laboratories. In an orgy of self-protective lies, Richardson, aided by other corrupt executive branch officials, inexcusably branded Dr. Lee as a super spy to suppress the media damage arising from Richardson’s maladministration of the Energy Department. They accused the diminutive, soft-spoken Dr. Lee as "the one" who had passed nuclear secrets to the People’s Republic of China, in spite of the fact that Dr. Lee had passed his December 1998 Energy Department polygraph exam. 1/ The following chronology demonstrates how quickly Richardson acted to save his deluded vice-presidential aspirations in early 1999.

March 5: CBS News breaks the story of a soon-to-be-released
congressional report - The Cox Report -- on security
lapses and alleged Chinese spying at U.S. nuclear
facilities.

The FBI interrogates Dr. Lee.

March 6: The New York Times reports that an unnamed
Chinese-American scientist at Los Alamos is a suspect
in the FBI investigation.

March 7: The FBI gives Dr. Lee a polygraph examination.

March 8: Richardson directs the University of California to fire
Dr. Lee.
Aftermath - Richardson's Role in an Executive Branch Conspiracy

Richardson claimed that Dr. Lee was fired for failing to safeguard properly classified material among other charges. After Dr. Lee’s dismissal, Richardson said that the government "will not tolerate the theft of our secrets."

To dupe the American people into believing that the "FBI had got their man," the Clinton Administration upped the ante against Dr. Lee. On Saturday, December 4, 1999, in the White House Situation Room, Attorney General Reno, FBI Director Freeh, Richardson, and other top Clinton advisors decided to pursue criminal charges against Lee for mishandling nuclear secrets under the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. 2/

Six days later, a federal grand jury in Albuquerque returned 59 indictments against the sixty-year-old Dr. Lee, and the FBI arrested him on December 10. Then, Richardson, in concert with the Administration’s Gestapo justice department, levied the full weight of pre-trial sanctions on Dr. Lee.

It was Richardson who ordered that Dr. Lee be kept in solitary confinement. For 279 days, Dr. Lee was denied bail and was held in extraordinary harsh conditions -– leg shackles when outside his cell and solitary when he was there. He was continually monitored 24 hours a day. It took Richardson five months before he allowed Dr. Lee to have reading materials, longer exercise periods, and more frequency visits with his family.

On September 13, 2000, a plea agreement with the government was reached. Dr. Lee pled guilty to one count of downloading nuclear data to an unsecure computer. The remaining 58 charges were dismissed. 3/ Chief U.S. District Court Judge James A. Parker sentenced Dr. Lee to time already served and released him from prison. The government’s abrupt about face caused Judge Parker to react with amazement, incredulity, anger, regret, and sadness. 4/

Edited to fix broken links

Jumped in bed with the repukes and sounded more like Newt Gingrich than a Democrat. Since 1993, I don't believe one damn word the fat fuck says!

that was really, really stupid.

Richardson is not a viable national candidate now. Too bad, but that's the way it is.

Richardson is an antilabor, pro corporate, fatten the rich and screw the working class DLC Democrat.

He ended all hope of an honest count of votes in the 2004 election, meaning 17,000 of us were defrauded of our right to cast a ballot in the national election by those crooked machines with the approval of Bill Richardson.

If you're doing just fine with business as usual, including offshoring, anitunion practices, and declining wages, then Richardson is your guy.

on the bankruptcy bill, too. That puts him on MY shitlist.

Bill Richardson only cares about Bill Richardson.

Unfortunately there are too many "Democrats" like him here in New Mexico (Martin Chavez, anyone?).

it was too screwy. he was involved and i want to know why.

Just a guess...

tell Amy Goodman that the devastating Iraqi sanctions were 'the right policy'. That's all I need to hear from the man.

Hard to describe, but you know it when you see it. And then there's that hokey was/was not drafted for a sports team business. The Swifties are licking their chops.

Another one of these so called "spokesmen" for the party that nobody in the party ever nominated for that role.