What should the Democratic candidates be doing better to have a shot at the nomination?

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I would have any of the candidates promise to limit presidential powers that the Bush/Cheney administration has expanded. The candidate should promise to stop using signing statements, to stop wiretapping Americans without a court order, to restore habeas corpus, to end torture, and to respect the other branches of government and comply with the requests of Congress.

And I would have the candidate mention that increased military expenditures does not mean increased security, as security is not achieved by throwing money at the problem. The candidate should start using the slogan "A strong defense is a smart defense, and a smart defense means being prudent rather than wasteful." And in conjunction with that the candidate could provide President Eisenhower's famous quote that "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed."

ONE:Each candidate should sit down with their policy advisors in a public format- video-taped for all to see- and discuss the issues. I want the candidates to educate me, the public! A dining table discussion that is a sustantative dialogue- a mock White House morning briefing on the day after Inaguration. Unlike these pseudo debates, it would give the voters a real insight into the information networks they work with and trust, the inter-relationships each candidate has with their advisors and, most importantly, a preview of the persons who will form the president's cabinet. After 7 years of cheney managing the country behind the scenes and the indifferent inanity of bush in front of the camera, I want intelligent dialogue, not sales talk and bravado.
NO one person, president or not, will be able to re-coup what bush/cheney have destroyed- I need to know who else is going to be in the executive branch. "It takes a cabinet." A new American proverb
Candidates who think they can change the course are underestimating the problem or way over confidant or don't really want to change the imperial White House during their reign! (The silence regarding Impeachment from everyone except Kucinich brings this worry. Condoning crime makes it acceptable.)

TWO: I dearly wish the egos of these candidates would be self-restrained so they talked to each other as if they wanted Democrats to win, not just themselves personally. Oh! and act like they wanted Progressive Democrats to vote for them, not cross-over moderate Republicans. Bi-partisanship from Democrats got No Child Left Behind, 3 Strikes Prisons, war in Iraq, etc.

THREE: Recognize that the American electoral system can not be trusted to register citizen, record their votes or, count them fairly or accurately. Paper Ballots for everyone and open tabulation by non-partisan officials. Or, at the least, call for international observers!

Questions for Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton By Todd Gitlin

1. Richard Holbrooke, one of Hillary's chief foreign policy supporters, wrote in 2005 that the “Global War on Terror” “is not an accurate description of America’s enemy or of what we are engaged in.” But Hillary use's the term “war on terror.” Why?

2. Do you or Hillary propose to preserve American bases in Iraq?

3. Are you or Hillary prepared to renounce the Bush Doctrine, which permits preventive war? If the answer is “yes,” how does Hillary square that with her vote to brand Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a “terrorist organization,” and Hillary's refusal to take military action against Iran “off the table”?

4. In 1999, Bill Clinton withdrew the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty from Senate consideration in the belief that the Senate would not vote to ratify it by the necessary two-thirds vote. Do either of you anticipate being able to work with the Senate to pass such a treaty, or indeed any arms control treaty? How would either of you persuade dissenters?

5. Which of the Bush administration’s privacy-invading and government secrecy measures do either of you reject?

6. To what extent should the money saved by phasing out American combat operations in Iraq be used to reduce the deficit, and to what extent should it be used for creating jobs, environmentally sensible investments, and social programs?

7. One of Hillary's chief economic advisers, Gene Sperling, has written that “there are goals—banning child labor in our factories; preventing racial, religious, and gender discrimination in the workforce—that require direct intervention in the market regardless of their efficiency or economic impact.” Is government support for the organizing of unions among the “direct interventions” you favor?

8. Do either of you believe that the protection of drug company patents is a responsibility of the federal government?

C. Douglas Kouka Allen

Though He's Turned on Democrats & Supports McCain, Hillary Speaks Fondly Of Lieberman --Despite the many obstacles that she has hurdled

Positions such as this make the Clinton brand seem curdled.

Verse-Case Scenario by Tony Peyser
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Sun, 01/20/2008 - 9:26pm. Tony Peyser

C. Douglas Kouka Allen

Historical narratives matter. That’s why conservatives are still writing books denouncing F.D.R. and the New Deal; they understand that the way Americans perceive bygone eras, even eras from the seemingly distant past, affects politics today.

And it’s also why the furor over Barack Obama’s praise for Ronald Reagan is not, as some think, overblown. The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics.

Bill Clinton knew that in 1991, when he began his presidential campaign. “The Reagan-Bush years,” he declared, “have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”

Contrast that with Mr. Obama’s recent statement, in an interview with a Nevada newspaper, that Reagan offered a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

Maybe Mr. Obama was, as his supporters insist, simply praising Reagan’s political skills. (I think he was trying to curry favor with a conservative editorial board, which did in fact endorse him.) But where in his remarks was the clear declaration that Reaganomics failed?

For it did fail. The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before — and the poverty rate had actually risen.

When the inevitable recession arrived, people felt betrayed — a sense of betrayal that Mr. Clinton was able to ride into the White House.

Given that reality, what was Mr. Obama talking about? Some good things did eventually happen to the U.S. economy — but not on Reagan’s watch.

For example, I’m not sure what “dynamism” means, but if it means productivity growth, there wasn’t any resurgence in the Reagan years. Eventually productivity did take off — but even the Bush administration’s own Council of Economic Advisers dates the beginning of that takeoff to 1995.

Similarly, if a sense of entrepreneurship means having confidence in the talents of American business leaders, that didn’t happen in the 1980s, when all the business books seemed to have samurai warriors on their covers. Like productivity, American business prestige didn’t stage a comeback until the mid-1990s, when the U.S. began to reassert its technological and economic leadership.

I understand why conservatives want to rewrite history and pretend that these good things happened while a Republican was in office — or claim, implausibly, that the 1981 Reagan tax cut somehow deserves credit for positive economic developments that didn’t happen until 14 or more years had passed. (Does Richard Nixon get credit for “Morning in America”?)

But why would a self-proclaimed progressive say anything that lends credibility to this rewriting of history — particularly right now, when Reaganomics has just failed all over again?

Like Ronald Reagan, President Bush began his term in office with big tax cuts for the rich and promises that the benefits would trickle down to the middle class. Like Reagan, he also began his term with an economic slump, then claimed that the recovery from that slump proved the success of his policies.

And like Reaganomics — but more quickly — Bushonomics has ended in grief. The public mood today is as grim as it was in 1992. Wages are lagging behind inflation. Employment growth in the Bush years has been pathetic compared with job creation in the Clinton era. Even if we don’t have a formal recession — and the odds now are that we will — the optimism of the 1990s has evaporated.

This is, in short, a time when progressives ought to be driving home the idea that the right’s ideas don’t work, and never have.

It’s not just a matter of what happens in the next election. Mr. Clinton won his elections, but — as Mr. Obama correctly pointed out — he didn’t change America’s trajectory the way Reagan did. Why?

Well, I’d say that the great failure of the Clinton administration — more important even than its failure to achieve health care reform, though the two failures were closely related — was the fact that it didn’t change the narrative, a fact demonstrated by the way Republicans are still claiming to be the next Ronald Reagan.

Now progressives have been granted a second chance to argue that Reaganism is fundamentally wrong: once again, the vast majority of Americans think that the country is on the wrong track. But they won’t be able to make that argument if their political leaders, whatever they meant to convey, seem to be saying that Reagan had it right.

C. Douglas Kouka Allen

This is NOT conspiracy theory! Ronald Reagan's administration is responsible for the Maya Indians' near complete genocide. Ronald Reagan's administration is responsible for the "Deregulation" of our financial markets. Ronald Reagan's administration is reponsible for the "Deregulation" of California's-and others-electricic utilities during the 80's. Remember the Savings' & Loan fiasco during the 80's? Guess which administration assisted in ripping off the taxpayers'.

I don't know as much as you do about running for office. But I do know that if I had as many intelligent people assisting me as you have, I'd be more careful than you when saying anything either supportive or negative about another person whether alive or dead.

C. Douglas Kouka Allen

Susan S. Pastin
Chicago IL

WE ALL HAVE A DREAM - Obama needs to show HOW he will get us to the mountaintop. For example, HOW does he hope to pass his health care plan? (And he could do better on that; so far, he'd cover children to start. I'd like to hear him say that should be expanded to everyone - and how soon he feels that would be accomplished.)

Here's someone who as a state legislator helped pass KidCare in Illinois, improved the Illinois justice system by passing a bill to require videotaping of police interrogations...and has already helped pass ethics legislation as a Senator and worked with Republicans to control the spread of nuclear weapons. He needs to talk about these accomplishments.

They should be backing Kucinich.

As a female baby-boomer north Chicago suburb voter, I assumed I'd be supporting Hillary Clinton until Barack Obama decided to run. Since then, I've been torn.

I'm leaning back toward Senator Clinton now, though, because watching Obama over time has led me to perceive him as running as a separate, special individual against all of Washington's past, especially Democrats (recently he has actually shown admiration for Ronald Reagan while dissing Bill Clinton just a week after showing irritation at Hillary for daring to acknowledge Lyndon Johnson's civil rights role).

Why does Obama seem to place most blame on Democrats for the red-white state divide? Why doesn't he see how Reagan's ideas were in so many ways a cover for underlying racism? Does he not remember the references to "welfare queens"? Does he not know that constant focus on cutting taxes and reducing the size of government is red meat to racists who don't want their precious money ever going to educate, house or provide medical services to people of color?

Finally, Obama talks about being disorganized, needing someone to hand him paper. Well...how is he going to get a staff fast enough to be able to run an administration from day 1? Isn't he going to have to bring in Clintonites, since they're the only Democrats to have run a Presidency in the last 27 years? Isn't he risking that they will be less than enthusiastic working for him if he keeps blaming them for the state of Washington?

Barack, please run as a Democrat, not a special individual against all of Washington.

Mary T