New Jersey Primary Tomorrow: K or K?

[barking_iguana]

For President, only Kerry Kucinich, LaRouche, and somebody named Ballard are on the ballot. The only meaning my vote can have, obviously, is as some sort of message to whomever chooses to try to interpret it.

So what message can I send? If I vote for Kerry, that's a show of strength, which could help the bandwagon. If I vote for Kucinich, I may be encouraging future local candidates whom I'd want to support, but I'd be sending a message of disunity on the Left to the Kerry campaign.

That last is a drawback, as far as I'm concerned. As Barney Frank says, "if I thought all my positions were right for a Presidential candidate, I'd run myself." I don't want Kerry to be as far to the left as I; I want him to win. That doesn't mean refusing to stand for anything, as he was doing a couple of years ago, but it does mean picking his battles. I think he'll already take lefty positions into account as much as appropriate during the campaign; I don't want the campaign to believe exaggerated estimates of the number of voters withholding support from the left.

I'll probably vote for Kucinich, anyway, because the Central Jersey left needs all the encouragement it can get. But I'd appreciate any strategic thinking anyone cares to offer.

Comments

[tactisle.livejournal.com]

Here's how I see it, which may have nothing to do with how any Democratic campaign machinery might parse anything...

Showing up to the primary at all is basically a gesture of unity. It says, "Here's another lefty voter who may be idealistic enough to raise his hand for Kucinich in a lame-duck primary, but pragmatic enough to admit that steering our society back from our swerve toward ubiquitous law enforcement takes time. I'd rather it were already a world where Kucinich had a chance, but I'm still on the Democrat bus. I'm not gonna go vote for Nader or something."

Then again, with Eugene McCarthy's name showing up on Salon headlines today, you may be right.

On the third hand, a gesture of "left wing disunity" coming from NJ might convince Kerry to spend more time & money campaigning here. That could be a good thing (help assure that he'll carry the state) or a bad thing (draw resources away from PA/OH/CA/FL, force Kerry's tone further right as his campaign feels the need to pick up swing votes).

Sigh. Sorry, I'm undecided too.

I voted for both

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

In the beauty contest, which is what will get the very limited covereage the primary will get in the media, I voted for Kucinich. But in my distric, only Kerry and LaRouche were running delegates. So of course I voted for the Kerry slate.

Count your blessings

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Just be happy you were not one of the Edwards supporters at my (Minnesota) caucus, who had to endure the news that Edwards was withdrawing, before we'd even counted the ballots. There was such groaning.

If they'd come to me beforehand, I could have told them Edwards was going to withdraw. It wasn't hard to see. I had been for Clark, but had dumped him just before he dumped himself. The writing was on the wall, and I was wearing my bifocals. Moreover, Clark had already made his major contribution to the race, which was to cast a spotlight on Bush's misreprentation of his military background; that done, Clark could withdraw honorably. I cast my ballot for Kerry, which wasn't a difficult decision. I was making the same calculation as Michael Moore, that a four-star general beats Lieutenant Crackhead, and was simply trading in my general for a politically experienced Navy lieutenant.

I think Kucinich is a brilliant man, and of all the presidential candidates he was the one whose foresight was the best. I can appreciate that because he did a better job of it than I did. A window dressing vote for Kucinich does not bother me. Also he is the only person I can remember seeing on TV say that he had lived in a car, with the exception of some old Jerry Springer shows. :)

Now I'm just concerned that Kerry will ask Dick Gephardt to be his running mate. I'm not the only one like that. I'll bet our set is roughly co-extensive with those of us who were biting our fingernails until Dean got knocked out of the race.

(BTW the experience of the last year has also taught me to pay attention to Jonathan Schell in The Nation, whom I had previously not taken seriously enough. Pay attention to him.)

Re: Count your blessings

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Well, I liked Dean a lot. Supported him from November through shortly before he dropped out. But he really did prove unable to handle the toxic political environment we live in. The criticism of him may have been unfair in its genesis, but so what? He should have known the score going in.

So I liked Dean. OTHO, I think Gephardt would have been an awful Presidential candidate and would be the worst VP candidate of any Democrat being talked about. One ran a state and has never been a Washington insider, the other is the epitome of insiderness. Though they both have 'down-home' roots, one has about the most cosmopolitan sensibility I've seen while the other all but talked about the Yellow Horde while arguing for tariffs in the 1980s. One got people to pay attention to politics, the other could be prescribed as a soporific. One, I believe, things in terms of policy and then sees how he can build a constituency around those policies, the other thinks in terms of constituencies and then decides what policies he needs to keep the constituencies behind him.

I supported Dukakis early in the 1988 season precisely to stop Gephardt. What makes you think that those opposed to Gephardt would be largely the same as those opposed to Dean?

Re: Count your blessings

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

On the last matter, upon further reflection I have changed my mind.

Gephardt is not just less electable at this point than a corndog, he's also dangerous to human health, by way of linguistic abuse. Not as dangerous as Bush's clever insinuations and pre-Hellenic ethical formulations, but bad enough, compared to other possible choices.

Dean I did not like at first because of the difficulty he had with his flushing reflex. He turned red too easily, when challenged at the debates -- and I think Chris Matthews said it best by observing that Dean always looks like he's ticked off. I judged that this was not just looks. Also I researched Dean's positions a little and saw, for instance, that Dean had stated a "plan" for Iraq that was basically Paul Wolfowitz's "the oil will pay for it", except administered by the U.N. instead of DoD. To me this was worse than unoriginal and naive. To me it amounted to pillaging, us taking Iraq's oil to pay reparations for our unprovoked attack.

I was not opposed to this invasion, you know. To me it was plain that Bush was going to invade, period. I mean no matter what -- you'd have to pry him out of the White House with a crowbar to stop him. So I wanted to get it over with, and "of course" there were going to be all these nerve gases and whatnot. My opinion of Scott Ritter has shot up tremendously in the last year, of course. There were no nerve gases. But to me it is clear, now, that we owe reparations for our unprovoked invasion. It never seemed to me that Howard Dean understood that kind of consideration. Wes Clark seemed a little more understanding -- I read his Iraq book, it was poorly edited but very enlightening. Clark at the time was not dictating the use of the Iraqi oil fields, and called for them to be put in the control of Iraqis. That seemed better than what Dean had offered (months earlier, but not noticeably updated since).

Whether Kerry understands I do not know. At this point Clark would be in over his head, I think. Maybe Clark could have handled it if Bush's tyranny hadn't so degraded Iraq, but now Clark's military "mindset" probably would require too much readjustment. We should completely withdraw our armed forces from Iraq, and pay reparations. Contracts awarded by Paul Bremer should be ruled illegal and dissolved. George W. Bush and others should be tried for violation of the War Crimes Act (as well as for the Wilsongate conspiracy and other misdeeds), and if no one will try them here they should be taken to the ICC or an ad hoc international court and tried there. But some approximation to the above will suffice if it must; whether Kerry is ready to undertake that job, I don't know, but Dean I am pretty sure is not the guy to do it.

Plus, of course, the Republicans wanted Dean too badly.