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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

How to Fix a Sinking Political Party (or how to save the Democrat Party)

Discussion in 'Archive: The Senate Floor' started by TripleB, Nov 4, 2004.

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  1. Vezner

    Vezner Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 29, 2001
    The denial from the Democrats is overwhelming.
    I have been listening to it for days now. They all want BUSH to reach across the table to build the bridge. Wrong. The Democrats lost the Presedential election, the Senate and the House. This says VOLUMES. It is the Democrats who need to first actually COME to the table and second be the ones to reach. Bush's job is to be as moderate as possible while maintaining his foundation...a foundation that every American can actually recognize.

    The Senator of Il. Obama? HE reflects the Democrats of long ago.,..the JFK's and the FDR's. He has class, dignity, and charisma...which is what is lacking in todays Democratic Party. If the Party can begin to follow his lead and become more moderate as a whole then they may be a viable Party for this nation. Until that? What you see is what you get. Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Dean, Michael Moore, Kerry, Edwards...

    Oh, for that "person" who referred to Bubba as trailer Park trash? I'd watch you say...not only will untrue insults not be tolerated but Bubba could run circles around your apparent "intellect".


    EDIT:

    I almost forgot the most important thing the Democratic Party needs! A backbone. The strength and resolve to be able to face evil and tyranny head on. Without appeasement. Without waffling. I have made this case for months.


    Well said.
     
  2. BenduHopkins

    BenduHopkins Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Apr 7, 2004
    to KK
    Well, the problem could happen after the votes are reported from the precincts, so your system would only verify that their vote was initially counted properly. Using the same system as anonymous exam results in college, a voter could use a unique number and password to enter online and see who they voted for.

    This would not prevent extra votes from being cast, but it would at least prevent votes from being changed or dismissed.

    To prevent extra votes from being cast, I suppose that should be up to the local officials to verify on-line bassed on their paper records of who voted. Local officals should be a mix of both parties.
     
  3. BenduHopkins

    BenduHopkins Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Apr 7, 2004
    I almost forgot the most important thing the Democratic Party needs! A backbone. The strength and resolve to be able to face evil and tyranny head on. Without appeasement. Without waffling. I have made this case for months.

    Actually, you have no idea how Gore would have responded to 9/11. Historically, Dems and Republicans have both attacked threats. Republicans, however, have the bad habit of attacking unnecesarily, or for the purpose of control, conquest, and money.

    I'm positive that Gore would have not only gone after Al Qaeda, but also would not have rushed into Iraq. This is exactly what most Republicans think Bush should have done. So I don't see your point.

    And how exactly is Bush doing this without appeasement? He's paid insurgents for giving up their weapons, and has offered insurgents places in the Iraq army. He's spending billions on the Iraq infrastructure. He's even gone soft on the Sauds, who were the suicide bombers of 9/11. How is this not appeasment? The only way Bush can survive the next 4 years is by making deals, and I will bring them up as they come up, since you seem to ignore his negotiations completely. He claims to never negotiate, but in fact, this whole war is one big negotiation with his extremist pals in the rest of the Middle East.
     
  4. Vezner

    Vezner Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 29, 2001
    Republicans, however, have the bad habit of attacking unnecesarily, or for the purpose of control, conquest, and money.

    Please PPOR this statement.
     
  5. Kimball_Kinnison

    Kimball_Kinnison Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Oct 28, 2001
    Bendu,

    You forget my initial point: such a system would also lead to fraud and intimidation.

    For example, right now, it is difficult to "buy"votes. If someone offered me (say) $100 to vote for their candidate, they have no way to verify whether I did or not. This is a disincentive to them to even make the offer, since they could essentially be throwing money away. If (under your system) I could then prove who I voted for, it would make it far easier to buy those votes, and could even encourage it. How many apathetic voters would go to the polls if someone would pay them $$$ to do it?

    Similarly, thugs could threaten people that unless they brought back a receipt showing that they voted for a certain candidate, they would be hurt, killed, etc.

    Your system would practically encourage such actions. That's the whole reason why we have a secret ballot in the first place.

    Kimball Kinnison
     
  6. Undomiel

    Undomiel Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    May 17, 2002
    The frustrating thing for many military members who are in or have been in, the Iraq war, is the fact the Democrats have used them to bolster their image, but could care less that in their efforts to do so, they are leaving out half the story, telling half truths and trying to demonize the military members by associating them with the same image they erected to demonize the Vietnam vets. Many of our guys and gals over there were, were quite dismayed with Kerry's tactics. They didn't want to be the next Vietnam Vets, but it sure started heading in that direction in the press and from the Kerry people.

    For example, after the Gulf War, Saddam never stopped attacking our troops who were stationed in the area. We had intel on him and lots of it. We had information on him that clearly indicated he was a legitimate target in the war on terrorism. When Bush said "war on terror," he didn't mean a war on terror in one place, but whereever the hotbeds of terror were, and Baghdad was brimming over with it.
     
  7. Kimball_Kinnison

    Kimball_Kinnison Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Oct 28, 2001
    I like your idea for the voting machines, KK.

    Really, I don't understand why it is so hard to get some verifiablity into the system.


    I left out a few details, but it is actually a system that is being developed right now by a group of Open Source programmers.

    That is the other key criteria for such a system. The source code has to be 100% open and available for anyone to look at and verify, and it should run on commodity hardware, so any jurisdiction or company could build the machines, if needed. One other thing to add would be to have it run completely from LiveCD distributions of Linux (which boot up and run completely from a pressed CD without a hard drive, keeping people from altering the software after it is certified).

    The big problem is that people have lost sight of the fact that computers are just tools, and that they do not, in and of themselves, make the process more secure or better.

    Kimball Kinnison
     
  8. BenduHopkins

    BenduHopkins Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Apr 7, 2004
    For example, right now, it is difficult to "buy"votes. If someone offered me (say) $100 to vote for their candidate, they have no way to verify whether I did or not. This is a disincentive to them to even make the offer, since they could essentially be throwing money away. If (under your system) I could then prove who I voted for, it would make it far easier to buy those votes, and could even encourage it. How many apathetic voters would go to the polls if someone would pay them $$$ to do it?

    That would be very risky, because if they were doing it substantially, it would get out very quickly. All they would have to do is ask someone with integrity and there would be a whistle blower.

    I also don't know if people would bother doing it without getting the cash up front. If they would wait for verification for payment, then they wouldn't get many people to do it.

    "I'll pay you 100 dollars in 10 days if you wait in a line for an hour!"

    Not really a problem in my opinion. I think you're grasping at straws here. People can do that sort of thing if they want now. It's up to Law enforcement to stop that from happening. I think it is a bigger sacrifice for nobody to know what happened to their vote in the end. Because the possibility for cheating now is astronomical. It is easier to catch people bribing individuals, because if they say no, they're reported. It is harder to catch a secluded company from just typing in different results because they were appointed by the cheaters.

    If my individual verification method is unrealistic, then what do you think about verification by local bi-partisan officials? I might be wrong, but I don't think they can even compare what they report to what is being reported to Americans.
     
  9. Vezner

    Vezner Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 29, 2001
    The big problem is that people have lost sight of the fact that computers are just tools, and that they do not, in and of themselves, make the process more secure or better.

    I actually think that computer systems will be less secure. I wish I had a dime for every time I have seen a news story about a computer system being hacked by a teenager. [face_plain]

    It may be best to just leave the system exactly as it is.
     
  10. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    You have it wrong, Udomiel. It was the Bush administration that attempted to pin the blame for Abu Graib on the troops instead of serious policy mistakes. It was Republican Rudolf Gulliani who blamed the disappearance of those high explosives on the failures of the troops as opposed to the Bush administration's disregard and disdain for the important work of the international arms inspectors who were in there ahead of the invasion.

    Since the Bush administration continues to claim it has enough troops on the ground in Iraq to get the job done of making the country safe and secure, I guess the Bush administration must be blaming the troops for being lazy and incompetent.
     
  11. Undomiel

    Undomiel Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    May 17, 2002
    You have it wrong, Udomiel. It was the Bush administration that attempted to pin the blame for Abu Graib on the troops instead of serious policy mistakes. It was Republican Rudolf Gulliani who blamed the disappearance of those high explosives on the failures of the troops as opposed to the Bush administration's disregard and disdain for the important work of the international arms inspectors who were in there ahead of the invasion.

    Since the Bush administration continues to claim it has enough troops on the ground in Iraq to get the job done of making the country safe and secure, I guess the Bush administration must be blaming the troops for being lazy and incompetent.


    Pardon me, but the people who tortured and killed those folks were not Bush, they were soldiers with psychological problems. Anybody with an ounce of common sense knows only a small percentage of any given population is a nutjob, and this includes the military. I also don't see how it could be the fault of a politician if the people who are supposed to keep track of the materials, don't do their job correctly. That's why the military has quality control inspections every year, because military members are just human beings like the rest of us. They make mistakes.

    As far as that last paragraph, I think you're just grasping for straws. Hasn't the press done enough damage to the military as it is? They have been straining over every little detail that comes out of there. They watch it under a microscope, looking for anything that might be slantable to attack the Bush administration or if that fails, the troops. Nothing else has been so carefully investigated because it was the one thing Kerry knew he would be able to use to make the war in Iraq look bad, and by association, the military and the Bush administration. It's politics. Nothing more.
     
  12. Kimball_Kinnison

    Kimball_Kinnison Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Oct 28, 2001
    Not really a problem in my opinion. I think you're grasping at straws here. People can do that sort of thing if they want now. It's up to Law enforcement to stop that from happening. I think it is a bigger sacrifice for nobody to know what happened to their vote in the end. Because the possibility for cheating now is astronomical. It is easier to catch people bribing individuals, because if they say no, they're reported. It is harder to catch a secluded company from just typing in different results because they were appointed by the cheaters.

    before the move to secret ballots across the country, such things were a problem. That's why we started using secret ballots in the first place. "Machine politics" was a very real thing, and it was usually perpetuated by those in power.

    And you make a very critical mistake in your analysis of my proposal, that of assuming all of this would be handled by any single company. It wouldn't.

    The current effort is already underway, and it is not run by any company. It is built on the principles of Open Source Software. The software will be freely available to anyone who wants it (with the only real cost being distribution), local areas can modify it if they need to, and it runs on older, commodity hardware (such as computers that businesses are eliminating for being only 3 years old). The system is specifically set up so that the work of building or maintaining the machines can be handled either in-house (by the government IT department itself) or on a contract basis from multiple competitors. The process would be open from beginning to end, but no one would be able to tie any one vote to any one person (the whole idea of a secret ballot).

    Kimball Kinnison
     
  13. Undomiel

    Undomiel Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    May 17, 2002
    One way the Democrats could fix the party is to quit using the same tactics they've used in the past, to demonize their opponents or perceived opponents. They shot themselves in the foot when the demonized christians, referring to them in such broad terminology that suddenly christians of all stripes were backwoods yokels with not a brain cell between them. At which point, they alienated a huge portion of their own constitutents who had been typically democrats before that. If being told for years that their religion was false, their concepts on abortion were false, their desire to believe in God was stupid, to top it off, they were told they were uneducated hicks. No wonder they are losing their own voters. The only other possibility is the vote was fixed in some fashion.
     
  14. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    I disagree. Now that we can remove the discussion of the war from its implications for the presidential campaign, I think it's time that we start being honest with ourselves: the status quo in Iraq is not working. What is Bush going to do about it? What are the Democrats (and Republicans) in Congress going to do about it?

    The potentially imminent Marine attack on Fallujah is going to be costly in American and in particular Muslim civilian lives. The one thing we know for sure is that more civilians than insurgents are going to be killed. There was an article yesterday about insurgent mortar attacks on our troop positions. These happen on a daily basis all around Iraq. The insurgents fire off a mortar round, then drive off (usually) before the Americans can bombard their position. What do they bombard the insurgent position with: Paladin howitzers, the 90 lb shell of which kills everything within a 50 yard radius when it detonates. That's the kind of "surgical" attack that the U.S. military is trained for - we win on the basis of our ability to wreak disproportionate destruction on our enemy.

    But that ability quickly becomes a political liability in urban guerilla warfare among a people for whom we are working to bring democracy and stability.
     
  15. Undomiel

    Undomiel Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    May 17, 2002
    Jabba,

    Where are you getting your information?
     
  16. BenduHopkins

    BenduHopkins Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Apr 7, 2004
    And you make a very critical mistake in your analysis of my proposal, that of assuming all of this would be handled by any single company. It wouldn't.

    Then it sounds like a pretty good solution. I might add a few things to it at the back end, but it is a good start.
     
  17. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    NYT, Reuters, AP.
     
  18. Undomiel

    Undomiel Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    May 17, 2002
    Is the New York Times a liberal paper?
     
  19. Mr44

    Mr44 VIP star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 21, 2002
    Except what you keep forgetting is that the phenomenon you are describing is not Iraqi-specific.

    For example, when the US initially started Allied Force in Kosovo, the "flex plan" resulted in overwelming firepower being directed against the FRY forces.

    In the period starting on March 27 1999, the optempo of the air campaign, which was directed at specific FRY targets, rivaled the tempo of Desert Storm.

    However, at the same time, a policy of providing aid was begun, which was parallel to the use of force.

    And so on.. What's the point?

    For some reason, you keep trying to define the overall situation in Iraq by specifically using Fallujah as a guide. It's an important piece, but not the defining piece of the puzzle.



     
  20. Undomiel

    Undomiel Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    May 17, 2002
    Jabba,

    Well my husband was there. I'll ask him how much of that is accurate. I'm willing to bet he tells me the marines will have air support, and you can't get more accurate than air support to my knowledge.
     
  21. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    No, the NYT is not liberal. Mother Jones is liberal. The Utne Reader is liberal. The NYT has a moderate progressive stance staked out editorially.

    The NYT I believe has an obvious agenda of scrutinizing the Iraq war, something this country badly needs.

    But the professionalism of its journalism has become unimpeachable as the result of recent scandals. It has perhaps the highest journalistic standards now of any paper in the country.

    MR44 wrote:

    For some reason, you keep trying to define the overall situation in Iraq by specifically using Fallujah as a guide. It's an important piece, but not the defining piece of the puzzle.

    I don't think at all that I "keep trying" to define Iraq through Fallujah. I'll be happy to provide examples from other parts of the country. We can talk about the isolation of American policymakers in Iraq, holed up and hunkered down in the Green Zone, which, right in the middle of Baghdad, is also receiving mortar fire regularly. Or we can talk about how the reconstruction effort around the country remains ground to a halt, how murky the situation has become from the point of view of the press because journalists no longer feel free to travel around the country.

    Bush has a chance now to come clean with the country about how bad the situation is, and invite Democrats in Congress to share responsibility for coming up with a real plan. Despite all the talk of Kerry's lack of a plan, it's not clear that Bush has one either. "Hold elections in January" is not a plan - it was a campaign promise.
     
  22. Jediflyer

    Jediflyer Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 5, 2001
    Undomiel, airstrikes are accurate as hell.

    However, bombs make and missles make big explosions and many times innocent people are inside the explosion radius (this is all taking place in a very populated city after all).

     
  23. Undomiel

    Undomiel Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    May 17, 2002
    Progressive? Wasn't that a Kerry by-word? "I'm a progressive." Those conservaties, well they just stick their heads in the sand like the ostrich (kerry campaign ad on tv). How many times do they have to insult people before they get the messsage, that their insults don't work? Conservatives are not cowed by it. It doesn't embarrass them. They don't change their minds based on how many times they are told they are not forward thinking or intelligent.

    Anyway, we've all seen what progressive thinkers did to our Vietnam Vets.
     
  24. Undomiel

    Undomiel Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    May 17, 2002
    Jediflyer,

    Why would the civilians stay there when they know a war is about to break loose in the city? (Probably because half of them are not civilians but terrorist cells who the opposition can then report as civilian casualities and make those mean "imperialist" americans look bad. )
     
  25. Jedi_Xen

    Jedi_Xen Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 26, 2001
    One way the Democrats could fix the party is to quit using the same tactics they've used in the past, to demonize their opponents or perceived opponents.

    Oh like Bush ran a clean campaign, and dont hand me any of this but Kerry started it non-sense. Bush has demonized his opponents before often because he was criticized by them, McCain in 2000, Cleeland, & Kerry all were targets.

    Republicans have also viciously attacked their opponents. Calling those who felt the war in Iraq wasn't right as unpatriotic, anti-soldier, unAmerican, etc. Democrats were portrayed as communists laying in bed with the terrorists. Look at Sean Hannity's book he lumps terrorism, despotism and liberalism all together and claims they are evils that must be defeated. Now Hannity is only an individual, so we cant hold this against all Republicans but it happens on both sides

    They shot themselves in the foot when the demonized christians, referring to them in such broad terminology that suddenly christians of all stripes were backwoods yokels with not a brain cell between them. At which point, they alienated a huge portion of their own constitutents who had been typically democrats before that. If being told for years that their religion was false, their concepts on abortion were false, their desire to believe in God was stupid, to top it off, they were told they were uneducated hicks. No wonder they are losing their own voters. The only other possibility is the vote was fixed in some fashion.

    Other than the most bitter Democrats on the fringe of the party very few have suggested the vote was fixed in 2004. 2000 gave every and anyone need to suspect something, the media caused alot of confusion that year.

    And when did the Democratic Party attack people for being Christian? This sounds like the Republican smear campaign that said the Democrats wanted to ban the Bible, it was of course absurd. Only those who wants to believe it or the gullible think its true, and neither are in a position to be taken seriously.
     
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