It was a uniquely awful lineup.
Kerry, Howard Dean and John Edwards were the three main candidates. Joe Lieberman also ran.
None of them other than Dean, who got a ton of unfairly negative media coverage, made any attempt to present an affirmative case for their candidacy.
Dems didn’t push back at all on the fact that W lied his way into a completely useless war. Instead they went with this “REPORTING FOR DUTY!” garbage.
Dems were so absolutely terrified that they would be accused of hating the troops that they co-signed all of W’s shenanigans and didn’t push back at all on the bullshit war. And they still got accused of hating the troops! Kerry spent half the campaign defending his war record from the Swiftboaters.
The candidates were:
John Kerry
Dennis Kucinich
Al Sharpton
John Edwards
Howard Dean
Wesley Clark (how could I forget?)
Joe Loserman
Dick Gephardt
Carol Moseley Braun
These were listed as ‘declined to run’:
Joe Biden
Bill Bradley
Hillary Clinton
Tom Daschle
Al Gore
Gary Hart
Jesse Jackson
Of the ‘ran’ list, yeah, Kerry probably had the shot. It was really fun being a Democrat in 2000 and 2004.
The Blowback podcast on the Iraq war is pretty decent. I’m on episode 5 I think.
Marc Thiessen continues to justify my refusal to subscribe to the Washington Post. His latest:
Maybe Trump shouldn’t save the Democrat-run cities besieged by violence
“Protesters say”
“Legal scholars are questioning”
How about you actually report what is fucking happening: “Federal officers in unmarked vans are unconstitutionally detaining Portland protesters”
Seems very questionable imo.
https://mobile.twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1285342364106661890
https://mobile.twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1285335354715799561
Huh, I wonder why SDNY would mysteriously drop an investigation into Fox News. There’s probably a non-corrupt explanation for that.
When the history of Donald Trump’s tumultuous time in the White House is written—and that may be sooner than later—it will show one thing for certain: His most influential adviser, by far, was Jared Kushner. Now 39, Kushner has been a de facto chief of staff, influencing the hiring and firing senior White House aides; an important architect of Trump’s foreign policy, including the map of the Mideast and the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement; he became a key member of the coronavirus task force; the prime force behind initiatives like criminal justice reform; and now, increasingly, a critical adviser to a struggling re-election campaign. He is, in fact, the most influential presidential relative—first ladies aside—since Robert F. Kennedy served as attorney general for his brother, President John F. Kennedy.
Kushner differs far more from Trump than the intense RFK did from his elder brother, known more for his cool reserve. Trump and Kushner are in many ways an odd pairing. He is reserved, thoughtful and disciplined (traits no one associates with Trump). Trump is bombastically bumptious. Kushner is quietly sure of himself. He does his homework. He reaches out for different points of view—including to Democrats.
The RFK analogy is not a reach.
It’s true that Kushner had no government or political experience before coming to Washington (though he did run his family’s large real estate company). […] The view that his power and influence in the Trump White House is the product of nepotism is accurate—as far as it goes. RFK got precisely the same heat nearly six decades ago.
Unlike his father-in-law, though, Kushner seems a pragmatist more than a political animal, proud of being someone who simply gets things done.
And on and on through all of his great successes, including the response to the coronavirus and our relationship with Saudi Arabia following the Jamal Khashoggi assassination. For example:
If Team Trump had to bear some unpleasantness in the pursuit of broader goals with the Saudis, so be it. “There have been a couple of missteps,” he says, “but they’ve been a very good ally.”
Just an absolute embarrassment by Newsweek.
First reply I saw knocks it out of the park:
My pony is 4 minutes late
