Seeing Kerry and Nader live in one day...whew!

[zulchzulu]

I saw Kerry speak in Madison today and had a press press, hence was able to videotape the event pretty nicely. It will be online as soon as I can webify the video, which will be a downloadable MPG for all to share. He was very strong, very positive as well as threw some nice jabs at the Bush/Cheney cabal.

I'd talked with many people after the event who said they were surprised how energetic and charasmatic he was. I had seen that for a while, but it was precisely the right message for them to get.

Between the events, I watched MSNBC in a location near the Nader event. After seeing Kerry swinging hard and getting booming cheers and responses, I witness what our media has come to. 60% Martha, 20% Scott Peterson and 10% using the word "forgery" to brand into people's head about the CBS documents.

NOTHING about the campaign... "Geee, why isn't Kerry getting out his message?", blah, blah, blah.... HE IS! It's just NOT being covered on TV.

Tonight, I saw Ralph Nader speak to the Univ of Wisc. students and others. It had been the first time I had seen him live. I videotaped that event too and was met with some suspicious folks who wanted to know who I represented and what I was going to do with the video. After getting one guy to get out of the way and from blocking the view to the stage, I recorded the event.

I can't even tell how odd one of the dudes was that opened the event. The some woman from the Socialist Party introduced Nader (I'm not kiddin'...).

Listening to the paradoxical Nader was a combined mix of appreciation for what he has done in the past with consumer advocacy and rights and utter disgust with misrepresenting Kerry's record.

He did have a great line about how voters get crippled by a candidate if they are single-issue voters to cheers. Then, minutes later, he basically said that Kerry "voted for the war", hence making him not worth voting for.

Corporatist-this and duopoly-that peppered with the same lie he projected that there is no difference between the "Democrat" party and the Republican was mostly the 85 minute speech.

It was like hearing a band that has some nice solos every now and then interpersed with predictable parlor talk for the most burnt-out yippie.

The parts I liked was when he talked about the need to challenge mergers and corporate welfare. I wished that he would focus his energies on that.

But the lies about Kerry and Democrats were yawnfully upsetting.
Nader mentioned at least three times about how far back Kerry was in the polls. Nader! Don't freakin' lie, buddy!

In the Q/A period (after some lawyer friend made some 19-year-olds cough up some trust fund money through what seemed like the biblical story of the merchants selling their wares in the Church), 3 of the 7 people basically asked Ralph to consider dropping out.

The most touching Q/A was a 19-year-old student who said his mom saw Nader back in the '60s. Now here he was seeing Nader. Then he basically asked Nader to explain who would impose the draft if elected...Bush or Kerry.

Nader went into an untruthful tirade about how Kerry "would just stay the course" and that both are going to impose the draft.

Then the guy basically said that Nader should know that Kerry has said there would be no draft and that he trusted Kerry over Bush. Boos and hisses came from the Nader fans. The guy then basically asked Nader to drop out. More hisses and boos and some woman behind me screamed "he's running! he's running!"

The bottom line is that I'm certainly glad I saw Kerry and felt lucky to be in a situation to see Nader the same day.

But I just don't think a lot of Nader supporters really understand the importance of this election. Nice people...but just not getting the reality of it all right. Granted, 89% of the crowd was white, affluent, hippy-tendencied students.

Nader could really bash Bush to a roomful of chuckles, but they don't seem to get that it WILL BE MUCH WORSE if Bush gets another term. I came to the obvious conclusion that he is not going to drop out.

This isn't meant to be a typical Nader bashing session. I respect Nader, but it's like Shakespeare writing all his plays and then playing gazoo while his head is in the toilet as a career change.

Ralph, you know your strengths as a consumer whisle-blower. Stick to that and repair your legacy.

[zulchzulu]

1. Kick. Added photo from Madison

Video soon...

That's right. That's Sheryl Crow next to the podium. She played 4 songs earlier.

[enigmatic]

2. Thanks for this..

It's sad to see how far Nader has fallen..

[cheshire]

3. Nadar has lost his reason for running, he is in it for the glory. Pathetic

[frank frankly]

4. awesome post. awesome. nominated for homepage. and SHERYL CROW

damn, this is a great post.

:party:

i LOVE ms. crow.

yes, my only true celebrity crush. what a woman!!!

:loveya:

[frank frankly]

5. kick

:kick: