Reply #59: I don't think it's "always" about having the greatest principles, but

[JoshK]

I do think that in this particular election, a war of utter criminality was being waged, & that if the Democratic Party was unable to stand up to courageously oppose it, it forfeits all claim to integrity. As the saying goes, "If not now, when?"

Tell me: where in the logic you've laid out here, is there room for an opposition party standing up to oppose a criminal war, by denouncing the lies on which it was based? You've laid out a scheme in which this is flatly & always impossible. The consequence can only be a submissive subordinate party that hangs its head docilely and accepts the role of helping the ruling party lie to the public. Nominating Kerry made the Democratic Party fully complicit in the crimes of the Iraq War.

I told you earlier that I believe Dennis Kucinich's ideas inside Kerry or Clark's body probably could have won. This is mere conjecture, & can be neither proven nor disproven.

Your description of the backdrop of the election is not adequately drawn. You can't just say "4% growth," because A) the average over Bush's 4 years is nothing close to that; and B) most other important economic measures are deteriorating. For example, there is net job loss, and the twin deficits are both exploding, with ominous implications well-recognized even by the conservative types who write for the Financial Times. Furthermore, growth itself does not necessarily benefit everyone in a society. It's an overall figure, and in our society the distribution of income is so skewed, that basically all the economic growth accrues to the top few percent of the population. {This kind of argument could have been potent for someone with the guts to use it -- ie, someone who thinks like Kucinich, and not like Kerry. (Even Gephardt, who was just as bad on the war as Kerry, might have made this kind of economic-populist point.)}

The fact that Kerry won a lot of votes is more a measure of how many Americans hate & fear Bush, than it is a credit to Kerry. It was widely said among Democrats before the election that even a ham sandwich could beat Bush. Well, as it turned out, they nominated a ham sandwich. And he did come within a few million votes of winning, despite the inadequacies Soros accurately describes.

Your last para is a real knee-slapper! You are basically saying that a presidential campaign is no time to be bringing up ultra-serious matters. The Iraq war is not just a matter of "principle" (in some ivory tower sense). It's a terribly practical matter -- large numbers of people being killed, an entire society (ours) being corrupted, and the very real risk of financial disaster (as even rightwing partisans like Baker & Scowcroft recognize). If the Dem Party can't tell the hard truth about a grotesque war like this during a presidential campaign, it simply means the party is a corrupt pack of submissive cowards & liars. Which with a few honorable exceptions, it is.