Please debate the one-person campaign-head tradition. It is dead wrong.

[homelandpunk]

It is flawed on so many levels. We nominate a person to be our candidate for president. Then this person gets to choose, not thru votes, but thru his ties with other politician friends someone referred to him to run the campaign. A campaign for a position that changes the entire freaking world. ALL the eggs are put into one basket. A good part (I'll say 50% responsibility) of what will bring our nominee to the white house rests there. Mary Beth Cahill does not have the innate political intuition to understand what they are up against. I believe Kerry can fight, but tradition tells politicians to listen to their campaign head for strategy. Do you see how wrong this is? Why not try fueling a campaign thru a many-headed monster with a wealth of expertise? Is tradition that damn important? Dump the one-person campaign-head model and get several Begala, Carville-types to brainstorm for you.
Caustic, mean, dynamic, nice-only-when-you-have-to-be, mouthy fighters...men or women.
I feel dread that all our eggs are in one basket. For this campaign, I would like all my eggs rotten and in the hands of people (not a single unelected individual) who enjoy throwing them and have good aim.
Kerry should be ahead by 20 points. The thought that they are JUST NOW waking up to the idea of fighting hard (per yesterdays speeches) is mind-boggling, and points to the person who is NOT our candidate.

[robcon]

1. At least by reputation, Kerry's campaign has many heads.

Cahill is not the only one. Lockhart, Shrum, etc. do not report to Cahill - they are consultants.

What's needed is central direction, not layers and layers of consultants giving opposing opinions. That way leads to paralysis, long lead-times for decisions, and missed opportunities.

Quick, decisive actions need central management.

[homelandpunk]

3. But they brought Lockhart on just recently. Wa-a-a-ay too late to start

bringing fighters onto your team. They are still directed by Mary Beth....nice Mary Beth.

[Malva Zebrina]

2. She may have the intuition but you know

I am tired of getting the e-mails -- not that they aren't well written, but what is sense of doing only that? Terry McAulliff the other day bragged that 60 million e-mails are being sent out. I cannot see the value of that in this climate. Some of the ones I get anger me that here it is up on my screem and nothing from the Kerry campaign. Where are all the other Democrats? Is there a prohibition on Senators and Representative taking part and smashin down Bush? I saw Harkin and I saw Teddy, but the rest of them seem to have developed autism. I get tons of e-mails from other sites that are far more willing to fight back with rotten eggs. Most of the stuff in the e-mails from Cahill are repeats of what I already know, and are writtne with a velvet glove and I would guess, are preaching to the choir because you know what-- anyone with a brain is going to vote for Kerry to get Bush out. To not fight back with rotten eggs discourages supporters who know this is the most crucial election ever-it is almost a matter of life and death-they are begging Kerry to show we are not going to take it anymore. This is not done by making a deal with McCain.

I know it is not easy and I know they must be working their asses off, but so are a lot of people who are actually putting themselves at risk to back Kerry, being the target of testosterone laden Republican thugs who approach them as they are handing out fliers, or have bumper stickers on their cars and whose own family are attacking them. And they are not getting paid.

[oscar111]

4. Its"life and death" election: 6,000 more homeless to die

bush budget plan has cut on housing section 8, so 250 000 will be tossed out to live on a piece of sidewalk, where a boston study found they die at 3X the normal rate.

So another 6,000 , an increase over the usual 84,000 that die from homelessness. In broad daylight, downtown.

where is the outrage?

Hitler's killing of homeland civilians was done out of sight, in camps. Ours is done in broad daylight, downtown.

where is the outrage?

[Malva Zebrina]

6. It is no secret that Republicans don't care

Reagan closed up the psychiatric hospitals and all of those people were left to wander the streets. That is when we started seeing homeless, wandering people sleeping in doorways--needing help desperately.

There is no help from the Republicans. They are so jealous of their money, that they are not, godammit, going to give any hand outs to anyone.

It is a class thing, as well as a greed thing.

They do give their money to corporations willingly and to other countries that we support in their ethnic cleansings.

Doesn't matter because what is behind that is racism and class eltitism. There is no compassion at all.

I once spoke to a wealthy woman who took a nice wealthy vacation to Hawaii--and her complaint was that there was a homeless person who had the nerve to sleep on a bench near the beach, ruining her vacation.

People should pull themselves up by the bootstraps and if they can't they deserve to die in doorways.

Sharing or contributing to the well being of all citizens, their health and etc, parses to "hand outs" They are not capable of understanding that a healthy society contributes more to their own welfare-

If you own a business it is to your advantage to have educated, and healthy people working for you-their bigotry is so pronounced that they fail to see the forest for the trees. Imagine if one of those homeless were capable of being another Einstein?

[a new day]

5. Call Carville

I don't know if he'd take the job. But, I'd try to get a winner at the top. Carville knows how to beat a Bush.