Clark and Edwards people are still fightin'!!

There was a 'war' on DU between these two groups during the primaries, and I have been looking at some VP possibility threads and the Clark and Edwards supporters are still going at it! But this time it is about who should be VP.

There must be some bad blood between these two groups. It is funny, because there was just as much conflict if not more between the Kerry and Dean camps way back when, and now these groups (mostly) seem to be working together with no hard feelings, kind of like Kerry and Dean are in the real world.

second choice to Clark. I'd love to see either man in the position. I think most Serious Clark and Edwards supporters feel the same. Very, very, few real Democrats have serious problems with either man.

outside of du things can be very different.

serious problems with either man." We are all just fighting for our candidate as they are still competing. When someone is chosen...we will all get on the band wagon. Until then...let the games continue.
Remember how the Dean and Clark supporters went at it and we are all friends now?

We know it is going to take both Clark and Edwards, along with Carol, Shrapton, Dean, Gep. and Dennis to pull off the win in 2004, I will go with any one but my choice is Edwards. For a long time my choice for President was Edwards or Dean, but one night with bad news on the economy, Iraq and other things, with Kerry behind I looked at the group and thought it is Kerry we need, he is experienced, poised and knows the ends and out of Washington and at this time he is the one needed. So come on don't try to start something were there is nothing, we are democrats and fighting for what we think will work and what is best looking toward the future.

Man, when the Clark people started winning all the DU polls...it was nasty here.

there was the dean vs kerry thing but there weren't many kerry supporters on here then and it seemed the same people would defend kerry on the same things like iwr and skull and bones. kerry also was down in the polls for some time and i think others had written him off mostly.

but i remember the dean vs clark thing and they were both large in numbers and threads would always be going up in response to another which criticized one of the candidates.

But yeah, the current Clark/Edwards infighting is really fucking stupid.

DTH

I rest my case.

Clark/Dean was the worst. Clark/Edwards is stupid, but not as bad as Dean/Kerry back in the day. But the bottom line is that every camp has had its fanatics. The only difference now is that it's silly and irrelevant; arguing over the VP pick is not going to make a whit of difference to who is ultimately chosen.

DTH

Since Deanies bailed and went to Edwards.

In the real world outside DU, most Democrats have no problem with ANY of the Democrats being mentioned for VP. Once the choice is made Democrats will rally to the ticket.

In the real world, most Democrats pretty much like ALL of the folks being talked about.

The only way we win is for us all to enthusiastically embrace the ticket. Rove's guns will come blazing at whomever is the v.p. pick. I just hope that all dems will help defend the ticket.
It will be OUR ticket.
It will be OUR only hope to dump BushCo. Kerry On!

in our intra mural sports will be turned to good advantage attacking Bush and defending Kerry in the main contest. I will always defend Clark because I believe him to be a great American and true gift to the Democratic Party. I attack no Democrats now because, in my opinion, if there ever were a time for that, it is behind us now with November looming (with the exception of turncoat Senator Miller of course).

You might see some shifts in this department, depending on the pick.

My guess is he has attracted people who like to fight.

But I do fight hard for causes and principles lol. Sorry I linked this post accidently to the Subject post, I'm just funning with the idea of near pacifists like me being drawn to a General for the chance to fight lol.

.

If the lies would stop, I would stop. I will support Kerry's ticket in any case. John Kerry's VP choice is his business, but slander and lies about Wes Clark is mine. And I don't care who doesn't like it.

most people know kerry will be the nominee and that what goes on here will not matter much in terms of who is picked as vp. but that doesn't mean supporters of candidates are going to allow people to bash and lie their candidates without response.

I truly almost never see 'lies' about Wes Clark in this forum, now that the primaries are effectively over. If you see one, please hit 'Alert' and let us know about it.

Mostly nowadays there is just needless rehashing of tired old and distorted media "conventional wisdom". Specifically that Clark was a poor campaigner, didn't excite voters, proved to be dull, is not ready for prime time, did poorly in the primaries, and so on and so on. The media rarely raises those issues about Dick Gephardt and Bob Graham (I say rarely, though I have seen it done) who truly DID do poorly in the Primaries. Personally I never denied that Edwards overall did better in the Primaries than Clark, though I have pointed out obvious disadvantages Clark faced, like entering late with low voter recognition etc. Yet, overall the two men fared pretty close to each other in the contests they both ran in. Still the media for the longest time gushed about how "well" Edwards was doing, and lambasted how "poorly" Clark was doing. That is now water under the bridge, except that a few hard core Edwards posters hereabouts keep trying to recycle that slanted version of history.

Most of what you find Clark supporters now writing is in reaction to that.

I largely agree with you, Tom. One major problem I do see is that in some odd manner, the media's shoddy performance vis a vis Clark has been somehow imputed to Edwards, which I think is terribly unfair to Sen. Edwards. As a Dean supporter who became an Edwards supporter after WI, I don't really recall either of the two gentlemen speaking ill of the other, and I'm mystified why a few of their supporters continue to do so.

:shrug:

for people arguing over who's going to make a better VP. (Especially "did poorly in the primaries.") That's not a lie or a "false lie" (as oppose to a "true lie"). That's a fact. The reasons it's a fact are debatable, but it's still a fact.

Incidentally, rarely do people argue anything at all about Dick Gephardt or Bob Graham because so few people at DU care enough about them to get in a debate about them. Clark has lots of DU supporters.

If someone wants to make a list of the "false lies" about Clark that set off WesDem so that Edwards supporters can avoid pissing him off and so that we can have a calm and rational debate about the relative merits of the candidates, then please do.

But if you put things on the list like relative primary performance and charisma and expect those topics to be off limits, then you're fooling your self.

An aside: as an Edwards fan, I don't feel the media paid much attention to him until they were done talking about the scream. When Edwards did well in Iowa, I thought finally the media will pay some attention to him. Nope. We had to hear about the scream for a week, which hurt his chances of doing better in NH. He had to win SC on Feb 3 before anyone really talked about him.

If you think Edwards was adored by the media, you need to check the debates. He was in the bottom three for time for months. I don't think it was until late December that the debates started giving roughly equal time to the candidates. Edwards seemed to be on their pay no mind list (which sucked because that informed voter survey showed that the more people knew about him the more they liked him; denying screen time was really unfortunate).

Your post proved my point. I didn't say those issues were off limits. I said Clark supporters will repeatedly defend Clark IF Edwards supporters or anyone else paints Clark as having done "poorly" in the Primaries. My mention of Gephardt and Graham was referring to media discussion of VP picks, not the talk here at DU. I agree with you that neither has any traction here, but the media up until the last two weeks gave significantly more play to Graham and Gephardt as potentially good VP picks, virtually ignoring their dismal showings in the Primary season, while they virtually ignored Clark as a good VP pick, citing, when they bothered to mention him at all, that he did not do better in the Primaries.

In the spirit of not beating a dead donkey, I will not follow your lead into yet another round of "Clark did poorly/ No he didn't!" The issue is valid, but it has been the topic of many lines of message text to date. Yet after several more incoming rounds of that sort, yes, I can probably be lured back into debating that point for the twenty third umpteenth time.

And yes I know that Edwards repeatedly got the shaft from the media until mid January. Clark got a great week, two lousy months, one good month, and then the shaft through all the critical weeks of actual voting. That's how I see it anyway. Given a choice, I would never want my candidate to get the shaft, but if he had to , I would rather it be early than late.

WesDem says she's only responding to the lies. You listed what you're responding to. WesDem was implying that she was responding to things that weren't legitimate. I'm just saying that your list is of legitimate points to discuss.

I defnintely wasn't trying to open a discusssion of those issues right now. I'm just saying what is probably obvious -- your post can't be read as parallel to WesDems (ie, an elaboration of issues which are wrong to bring up and therefore set you off).

Inicidentally, I do think the media is now ignoring the candidates who will help the ticket (and that includes both Clark and Edwards). The still pretend that Hillary has a chance of getting picked, and they love talking about totally charsima-less Democrats like they have a chance. But you can't get mad at Edwards supporters for that. Furthermore, since the voters aren't picking the VP, it doesn't really matter how the media spins this stage. I don't think you see Edwards people getting upset because Dick Morris doesn't mention Edwards's name as a potential VP pick. Unlike the primaries, it really doesn't matter.

As for getting attention late, it looks like the media waited long enough so that it didn't matter.

Again, I don't know why Clark supporters take it out on Edwards, but it was clear that there were three candidates that were going to match up well against Bush, and they were Edwards, Clark and Kerry. The media tried to destroy Kerry in the fall and it didn't work. They built up Clark to bring him way down, which worked. And they ingored Edwards for a long time (which was the right strategy, as the informed voter survey showed, becuase to know Edwards was to vote for him). So the media did what they needed to do with all three.

And they picked the one candidate who would have matched up the worst with Bush to promote for a whole year until it became perfectly obvious that he wasn't going to do well in Iowa (at which point they tried to tar the whole party by destroying the poster boy they created).

The media doesn't want Democrats to win. They want Bush to win. We're all in the same boat. So it's wierd to see so many Democrats taking out their anxieties about their own candidates on other Democrats who are suffering from the same attacks and subtle manipulations.

but overall I am in full agreement with your post. I do wish you had said instead, "I don't know why some Clark supporters take it out on Edwards, and vice versa", but you and I both agree that either Edwards or Clark would be good on the Dem ticket, we just disagree on who would be better.

You can bet that people in the Kerry camp are having it. And you can be sure they're not saying things like "Edwards channeled a dead baby!!!" and "{insert the equivalent crazy insult about Clark}."

It's ridiculous that we at DU can't mirror the debate they're having at campaign HQs.

However, we shouldn't shy away from having that debate either. I don't agree with people who say, 'let them make a decision and let's trust it.' Even though we don't get to vote for the VP, this is still a democracy, and the Democrats should know what people on the ground think about this decision.

John Edward's,is going to be the factor in carrying North Carolina into the Democrat list come November.Something no other V.P. considered can do. With hungry people without jobs, and without gas to put into their cars to find jobs, South Carolina might make the list also because of John Edwards and South Carolina home grown son.

already that list the false lies, what good would another do?

WesDem is definitely a lady of the highest caliber BTW. :)

Would you 'Alert' on a couple, please, because we'd really like to put a stop to that sort of thing. Thanks!

:hi:

who criticized Clark, and also the one about Wes's comment about Kerry's nascent (non-)scandal.

Were either of those even raised by an Edwards supporter? If an Edwards supporter used either of those rumors to argue for Edwards on the ticket, I'd be very surprised.

Which raises the question: why attack Edwards on anything at all related to his trial lawyering, or, his class origins, or his "hicky-ness" as a response to the perception of having lies being told about Clark? Not only were those things not raised by Edwards supporters, they are barely relevant to a debate over who would make the better VP.

I just tend to use the gender implied from the name. If you got the "Wes" in your name, I go with M.