The Official US President Election Thread

[Ben]

Originally Posted by Rian

Did anyone else besides me hear about how homosexual advocates were not allowed to bring signs into the Democratic convention because of "security reasons"? Do we have some hypocrisy going on here? I doubt that homosexual issues play well in some of those swing states.

It's not hypocritical in the least; it's smart politics that takes away a weapon that the right-wing media would use against him to distort his positions. Kerry is against gay marriage, and signs promoting it could've been used, as you said, in some swing states. It would have been easy to give an erroneous impression of Kerry's views just by showing such footage. They avoided that by keeping everyone, speakers and delegates, on-message to a remarkable degree, especially for Democrats. Kerry's position, as you may know, is that the Constitution should not be amended for such partisan issues. He believes that the states should deal with gay marriage, as they do under current law. He even alluded to this in his convention speech, so I don't see that he's really hiding from it.

Take a look at who the Republicans are featuring: Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, Arnold Schwarzenegger. They are liberal, pro-choice, pro-gay Republicans. As you know, these positions are more associated with the Democratic Party. The Democrats didn't hide Ted Kennedy or Hillary Clinton from prime time. I suspect, however, that Republicans will be hiding Tom DeLay from prime-time. Remember the 2000 GOP convention, when there were more blacks and Hispanics in front of the podium than in the audience? They paraded every GOP official of color, from dogcatcher on up. The Democrats aren't afraid to put their real face forward - why are the Republicans?

I'd like to compare the keynote speakers from each party with regard to their position on gay marriage. The Democratic platform and presidential candidate position: personally against gay marriage, against federal constitutional amendment: 4 out of 4 (100%) major speakers (Clinton, Obama, Edwards, and Kerry) were in agreement with that. The Republican platform and presidential candidate position: personally against gay marriage, for federal constitutional amendment. 1 out of 5 (20%) major speakers (Giuliani, McCain, Schwarzenegger, Cheney, Bush) agree with with that.*

Gay marriage is a wedge issue. The Republicans are hiding from their own wedge issue. Only one of their headlining speakers (the president himself) supports the party platform on this issue. I find it hypocritical to make the amendment such a key issue and then ignore it at the convention.

Originally Posted by Snowdog

Seriously, the Dems sold out the Greens, so Nader is the right choice for you, otherwise you're just going to vote for another rich corporate guy.

Well, I hope the Green Party members realize that their own nominee is David Cobb, not Ralph Nader. Cobb, incidentally, is running a "safe-states" campaign because the Green Party knows that their first priority is ousting Bush. Nader is another wealthy man who accepts corporate money. Bush, Nader, what's the difference?

*I'm not sure if Giuliani or McCain is considered the "keynote speaker" for the night, so I just included 'em both. If this disturbs you, change my figure to 1 out of 4 instead of 1 out of 5. Same difference.