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Originally Posted by Cool Hand
A skeptical Democrat has no intellectual obligation to tear apart everything his candidate says or implies, but a complete lack of critical analysis is disingenuous. Senator Kerry is not an infallible oracle. Neither, of course, is President Bush.
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I have a tremendous amount of respect for your position on this, Cool Hand. However I lean toward agreement with Godless Dave when he said something to the effect of election season not being the time for the moral high ground. If the Bush supporters are willing to lie, cheat and steal (somewhat figuratively) to win the election, then they
will win the election unless the opposition is willing to fight back. If I thought everyone in America might actually vote based on a critical analysis of all the information then my view would be different. But as it is (or so it seems to me) people vote based on soundbites and visceral reactions to a small handful of issues. So it strikes me that there's a war on for the short attention-span of the average voter, and acknowledging any chinks in your candidates armor is just very bad strategy.
I will now qualify this by reminding you and the readers that I have never voted in my life, and with the exception of a very brief interest in politics in the months leading up to the first Gulf War I have been largely apolitical all my life. In my family (who are mostly fundamentalist Christians) the norm seems to be to figure out which candidate opposes abortion most vehemently and vote for them. I never once heard any talk of International affairs, economics, or anything else political in my house as I was growing up. However we were also were on welfare and my parents were uneducated.
All of which I add just to illuminate the fact that my political bias is a strong dislike for the moralizing of the Republicans and a strong appreciation for welfare and other typically Democratic social policies. And to point out that I really don't know what the hell I'm talking about.