IvanKaramazov

Hillary Clinton has long lost any claim to her early progressive positions as childrens' rights advocate or health care champion. She is a consummate machiavellian politician, who carefully choses her statements to appeal to selected blocs of voters, whether she believes in what she's saying or not. Her recent statement that "abortion is tragic", is a transparent pitch to the right, just as was her long-standing support for troop deployment. As the war grows untenably unpopular, her position adjusts. Hillary Clinton, like her husband, has no core principles and plays to whatever constituencies will get her closer to the nomination. Regretably, her strategy seems to be working, with help from her husband's coat-tails.

As one who believes the next president will have to effect a transformational reawakening in America, to undo the errors of the last incumbent, I am clinging to hope that Al Gore will relent on his demureness to accept the Democratic nomination and enter the race sometime early this fall. Gore is a uniquely qualified leader who is steeped in all the matters that will confront the next president and is not driven by sheer ambition but a devotion to country. Environmental issues are just one of his expertises and he is the one electable leader who can be relied on to repair America's damaged reputation overseas and bring reason back to the formulation of domestic policy and statecraft.

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Both stupidity and the greatest genius equally guide the destiny of humankind. (Dostoyevsky, "The Possessed")

expatincebu

The only two candidates who really even begin to get it are Ron Paul for the Republicans and Dennis Kucinich for the Democrats. The MSM and corporate oligarchy will not allow either to be taken seriously.

America is doomed, a collapsing empire. Your best bet is to get out or hunker down and wait for the dust to settle. The collapse of the US could lead to a good moral socialist awakening, but more likely will lead to 1984 style fascism.

donsutherland1

Expatincebu,

Both Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich have received national exposure during the debates. In spite of such exposure, neither candidate has made a big move on account of their positions on the issues. Either their positions are outside the mainstream so as to make it unlikely that they can galvanize a broad consensus behind them or they have not articulated them to the satisfaction of the general public.

One has to bear in mind that Mr. Kucinich is not the only Democrat who opposes the Iraq war. Therefore, he needs to articulate positions that can distinguish himself from the field on the broad range of issues and, at the same time, take positions and offer initiatives on which a large number of Americans can agree. To date, he hasn't done that. Mr. Paul is the only Republican backing a neo-isolationist foreign policy. While there is a nascent neo-isolationist movement on account of public discontent with the situation in Iraq, the vast majority of Americans do not appear inclined to turn to neo-isolationism.

IvanKaramazov

Hillary Clinton stages phoney charades. One transparent example was her statement that young people should work harder and take more initiative. She contrived with her daughter, Chelsea that Chelsea protest that young people were in fact taking iniatives and weren't lazy, upon which Clinton apologized to young voters in a scripted statement. A cynical ploy contrived to play to a bloc of voters.

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Both stupidity and the greatest genius equally guide the destiny of humankind. (Dostoyevsky, "The Possessed")