Bush as Smaug : is there a place for an arrow to go?

If Gore had used any of his STRENGTHS rather than acting like a dim robot, Florida would have been a non-issue.

There's a crucial difference between being informed about the past and being enslaved to it. One helps people look forward; the other bogs people down and encourages lazy thinking.

The original plan was to film "The Hobbit" starring Warwick Davis. But when Miramax balked at the $75 million dollar price tag Peter Jackson took it to New Line which gave him nearly $300 million to make the [LOTR] trilogy.

and, being from Michigan, i knew that i could safely & happily vote for Nader, as my state went to Gore anyway.

stick, back on topic, it's going to be interesting to see what the lead candidates can do with this, as we're heading into prime campaigning season. to extend/exhaust the metaphor, is Dean/Clark(or combined, hopefully) the ones who can successfully cast the arrow?

I think if Dean and Clark melded together into a baby-eating mutant, I would actively campaign for them. Who doesn't want a four-armed, two-headed baby-eating mutant as President?

I'm not sure how, but somewhere in that mess is a nugget of timeless wisdom.

I think they all thought, "I don't like either of these candidates or the parties they represent. I'm voting for someone who is more in line with what I'm thinking." It wasn't a choice between Nader vs Bush as much as it was between Nader and not voting, something that bitter Democrats still haven't wrapped their heads around.

You cannot gloss over Gore's "shitty campaign" because that is precisely what caused him to lose.

why the name change, lord custos?

• a bizarrely unnatural number of votes coming in for nader in florida (something about his name being too close to gore on the ballot was the explanation i was given)

• votes not getting counted due to suspicion that the voters whom cast them were felons (the numbers of felons voting democrat was, oddly, unproportionately high)

these are not facts i'm stating, just things that were run by me in the past and i was wondering if anyone could shed some light on them

As for "respoind": Is that kinda like how the stereotypical New Yorker pronounces bird as "Boid"?

I guess everyone already knows about the voting machines issues:
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/09/29_harris.html

(Damn, that wasn't witty at all.)

We have often enough disagreed about anti-Bush rhetoric. We have been through such as issues as: the dangers of saying that Bush is stupid; the dangers of dwelling on the past; the dangers of factionalism and fragmentation in the opposition to him; the dangers of saying that Bush & co are 'cowboys'. It is not so difficult to come up with a series of problems with existing opposition to the current administration.

It is perhaps harder to be positive, and to say what would, or might, work. Assuming that it is true that (as I have myself supposed in the past) "Bush = stupid" and "Bush = cowboy" are counterproductive, what line of (verbal / conceptual) attack is NOT counterproductive? Does anyone have any good rhetorical ideas that they are prepared to bet on?

If so, perhaps they should let the world know sooner rather than later.

http://www.counterpunch.org/weather.gif

Every single person who voted for Bush in 2000 could vote for him again and Democrats could still win if they produce more turnout (but this is going to be difficult, especially given the number of evangelicals who did not vote last time and who are being turned into a GOTV machine). Half the eligible population does not vote.

About Gore - what exactly was bad about his campaign (I'm not insisting it wasn't)? If you say running away from Clinton, explain how running with Clinton would have helped. If you say running to the right, explain what positions he could have taken to keep Nader out and how they would have helped him.

- No focus on "home states" (Tennessee, Arkansas)
- Gore is not a soundbyte candidate, yet they tried to present him as one
- Attempts to "loosen his image" fell flat
- Centrist focus alienated too many people on the far left
- Didn't do a credible job of differentiating himself from Bush (hence all of "They're both the same!" rhetoric which is tied into the point about his centrism)
- Lieberman (picking someone that most younger voters know as the guy who wanted to ban GTA as your VP will not encourage them to vote for you)
- Spent far too much energy distancing himself from Clinton and not enough time defining an identity

These are completely off the top of my head and unsupported; more a sense of what I thought was wrong with his campaign.

Agreed, and its not like they can't. With technology advanced as tis, voters will soon be able to vote, via their home computers! However, these will be the first to complain, if/when Bush creeps back in.