Um, that’s the problem right there. We have a Democrat here who doesn’t even recognize the third (or fourth) candidates in the race for the party nomination who would actually fight for them.

As a Green Party member who swings Dem when they have a non-DLC candidate, I am more and more disgusted with the national party. It is completely controlled by Bob Shrum-Terry McCauliffe-James Carville types with ties to corporate donors who pull the strings — and NOTHING changes! Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are pawns.

[I dare Clinton supporters to watch "Our Brand Is Crisis" where the James Carville, et. al. consultant group goes down to Bolivia to run the "status quo" candidate's campaign based completely on marketing and focus groups. Democracy is an afterthought. While their candidate just barely won, he screwed up the country so bad that he had to resign and a populist, worker took over and is now righting the ship along with Chavez in Venezuela and Lula in Brazil.]

No one is held in contempt, no one is going to jail, no one is being impeached, no one has to face any, ANY responsibility for driving the rig known as the United States of America into the ditch. Now, granted this has been going on since the Carter administration (the Trilateral Commission? Anybody?), but I keep thinking that people will wake up to what’s going on. Right?

Wrong.

Read “The Long Emergency” and the rest of Kunstler’s writings for a taste of grim reality. Watch “What a way to go, life at the end of Empire” for a frightening wake up call. I’m not optimistic that any candidate from either party will be able to stem the inevitable. As Chuck replied above, the “Ice 9” is loose already and unless we, as a society, really start to understand that, I fear we’re doomed.

Clinton & Obama are, essentially, two sides of the same coin. They are old-school D.C. politics as usual and their willingness to indulge in old-school political mud-slinging as usual confirms it. They, neither of them, made the effort to attend the global warming debate or make it a central issue in their public campaigns… too likely to off-put the middle of the road to right-wing voters who still feel ‘the science isn’t in on global warming’ whom they hope to co-opt. Similarly, they’ve been less than straightforward regarding their commitment to end U.S. involvement in Iraq and there’s been no talk from them regarding the need to disconnect the military-industrial-congressional complex from the business of running our country. Much the same can be said of Edwards but with less emphasis.

There’s no question that, in usual times - such as the 80’s & 90’s - the differences between Democratic candidates and Repug candidates were such that the differences between them amounted to highly significant issues (especially on the issues of civil rights and entitlements).

We are faced with the issue of continuing to fund a disastrous war (both for the Iraqis, the American dead, wounded, and their families, and for the American economy as well) we can no longer afford and the issue of making the radical changes in our economy, living standards, and energy policy needed to make as timely as humanly possible approach to the threats of global warming.

I submit that business as usual, politics as usual, candidates regardless of their differences on other, lesser (but in other times truly consequential) issues, will be inadequate to deal with the overriding challenges facing us and, consequently, they are all essentially the same. Their needs to make political allies, accept corporate funds, and the compromises necessary to ‘achieve consensus’ will prevent any effective address to the issues at hand.

Thus, the only candidate willing to do those necessary things and take his issue to the people for their endorsement in the face of unwilling, unyielding, congresspeople, corporations, and the defense establishment is Dennis Kucinich. Although he’s been utterly marginalized by the press, the DLC, and the rest of the mainstream, he is the only candidate who is able to pursue the needed policies with the necessary vigor.

We no longer have time for “politics as usual”.