[Jane of Arc]

New Yorkers! Support the candidacy of John Tasini against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate.

If you live in New York, get out and vote on primary day, September 12th. (New York has some of the most reliable voting machines.)

If you live outside of New York, contact someone you know in New York and spread the word and urge, urge, urge.

All of us should send money. Even if it's a little bit. This will be an enormous primary! Let's send another message to the conservative DLC like Conn. did ... let's tell them they're a bunch of pro-war NeoCons lites and we can't afford them any more!

http://www.tasinifornewyork.org/

[FDRfollower]

All of us should send money. Even if it's a little bit. This will be an enormous primary! Let's send another message to the conservative DLC like Conn. did ... let's tell them they're a bunch of pro-war NeoCons lites and we can't afford them any more!


:laughing:

[Jane of Arc]

FDRfollower ... why the laughing icon? Please explain. Thanks. :)

[Jane of Arc]

NY1 stands by decision not to host Democratic Senate debate
Under rules set by NY1, candidates must meet three criteria to be invited to debate: They must have qualified for the ballot, have at least 5 percent support in the polls and have raised or spent at least $500,000 in their campaigns.

Tasini has met the first two criteria. He gathered 40,000 signatures to appear on the ballot, far more than the 15,000 required, and recent polls show him winning about 13 percent support among Democratic voters.

But he's raised only about $132,000 and spent $120,000 in the race.

Calls for NY1 to reconsider its fundraising criteria have grown louder since last week, when another anti-war candidate, Ned Lamont, knocked off Sen. Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary. Lamont, a multimillionaire businessman, spent at least $4 million for his race, mostly on ads criticizing Lieberman for his support for the Iraq war.

On Tuesday, the New York Post editorial page weighed in, saying NY1 should "cut Tasini a little slack."

Whole Newsday story:

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--senate-debate0815aug15%2C0%2C1491415%2Cprint.story?coll=n y-region-apnewyork

[-V-]

the laughing icon could mean that it would be funny to see Hillary get the Joe Leiberman treatment or it is too much of a long shot that an ex First Lady, probable Presidential front runner would not be realected to her Senate post.

Either would be valid, but I would get far more gratification out of the first outcome. Unfortunately, though, it will be the Presidential Primary where Hillary will feel more of the wrath of disgruntled Dems rather than from her local constituents.

[FDRfollower]

The Conn. upset, is a wonderful pin-prick to the bubble of DLC whorishness that dominates too many incumbants.

Even here in the Democrat dominated bay area, the anger of voters toward elected officials is very visible. Town meetings they've been holding have been attended by angry citizens who are tired of the DLC line, according to friends who have been at a few.

A clean sweep, like that which came in with FDR in '33 would be much needed to deal with the executive lunatic.

[MAGI]

I'm in agreement with All of you..........

A blow to Hillary would really open some eyes in ALL the democratic committees! We know she'll win this primary but I hope N.Y. dems will stir things up. I really like this article:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_randolph_060816_hillary_clinton_3a_is_.htm

August 16, 2006 at 11:12:27
HILLARY CLINTON: IS SHE THE NEXT PRO-WAR DEMOCRAT TO FALL
by Randolph T. Holhut

DUMMERSTON, Vt. - Joe Lieberman's sorry hide has been nailed to the wall, and there is rejoicing in the land (except from the lobbyists, pundits and political hacks who make up the permanent occupation force of Washington).

And while I am pleased to see a discredited, humiliated Lieberman forced to cast his lot in with his friends in the Republican Party, I won't be completely convinced that the revolution is here until Hillary Clinton's hide is nailed to the wall beside Joe's.

skip

Clinton, Joe Biden, John Edwards and John Kerry - to name four prominent Democratic Senators with presidential aspirations - all voted in October 2002 to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq.

Of the four, only Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004, has publicly apologized for his vote. He is no longer a senator and he supports a withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Kerry, who ran for president in 2004, co-sponsored a Senate resolution with Russ Feingold, D-Wis., to set a timetable for a withdrawal. Kerry and Biden are both up for reelection to the Senate in 2008.

Biden and Clinton, who are on the short list to run for president for the Democrats in 2008, are more circumspect in their opposition to the war. They both rail against the incompetence of the Bush administration in its execution and hope no one remembers that they supported the war in the first place.

The only one of those four who is up for reelection this year is Clinton. On the surface, she doesn't seem to have to worry. She's raised $45 million for her reelection campaign and has a strong organization.

Clinton voted for the war, like the rest of the Democrats who wanted to run for president, because she was afraid looking like a wimp if she opposed it. Until recently, she was only slightly less strident than Lieberman in her support of the war. But even she has noticed that 60 percent of Americans now oppose the war, according to a recent CNN poll. It's no longer "the wackadoo wing of the party," as Michael Goodwin of the New York Daily News inelegantly put it, that opposes the war. It's now mainstream political thought.

But as was the case with Lieberman, it's not just support for the Iraq war that makes progressives hate Clinton. It's her pro-corporate, Republican-lite stand on the issues. She opposes universal health care, as you might expect from someone who is the second leading recipient of campaign donations from the health care industry. She's been cozying up to media baron Rupert Murdoch. She thinks free trade agreements such as NAFTA are great. She opposes gay marriage, supports more restrictions on immigration and voted for a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning.

skip.

Hillary Clinton has her own outsider challenging her in the primary, labor activist Jonathan Tasini. Unlike Lamont, he's not a millionaire businessman from a old-money family. He's the former president of the National Writers Union who won a Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the right of media companies to republish writers' work on the Internet without compensation.

Tasini has only raised $150,000 to Clinton's $45 million. He's way behind in the polls, at 13 percent as of last week. He has received virtually no media attention. But six months ago, Ned Lamont had similar polling numbers and was also seen as a hopeless longshot.

The real test as to whether there is a shift in the Democratic Party is how Clinton fares in the New York primary on Sept. 12. Will she too be punished by voters for trying to have it both ways on Iraq, or will she get a free ride to a second term in the Senate?

Again, the conventional wisdom says Clinton has to act tough to convince voters that Democrats aren't wimps when it comes to national security issues. But before the White House is allowed to get away with the "vote for Democrats and you will die" meme, let's look at the record.

The Bush administration's response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was to launch a war against a country, Iraq, that had no involvement in 9/11. It has spent the last five years promoting the notion that the rule of law and constitutional protections are legal niceties that thwart the war on terror. We've seen kidnappings, torture and illegal detentions abroad and an unprecedented spy program at home. And after almost five years, there appears to still be absolutely no understanding at all about even the most basic elements of the Middle East political situation.

A majority of Americans are tired of seeing their young people come home in flag-draped coffins from a war that didn't need to happen. They are fed up with a reckless foreign policy that has increased the threat of terrorism worldwide. Most of all, they are sick of politicians who won't listen to them and are still pretending that everything is fine.

Given all this, Democrats don't need to posture, as Hillary Clinton has, to prove their toughness. All they have to do is point out where Bush has failed and show they have an alternative plan that might work better. That's why Ned Lamont beat Joe Lieberman and why Democrats and Republicans alike who support the Bush administration's policies are in deep political trouble.