Reply #11: Because we don't have the luxury of being able to throw away good people

[JVS]

By that logic I could say I don't want to vote for Democrats in 2004 because we've lost before. Also to make Gephardt the scapegoat for a failure of the party in 2002 is an incorrect placement of blame on two grounds. I don't think that being minority leader of the house makes him responsible for the success of other representatives in the house. They all ran for re-election, Gephardt won his, several Democrats didn't. The other reason that that is wrong is that I see no indicator that he was in charge of setting party strategy, so why should he be held accountable for the failure of others. Furthermore, 2002 was an extremely bad situation for Democrats.