I am a victim too. I could chalk it up to being a busy law student, working 20 hours a week as a clerk, or just plain being lazy and relying on media hype. They got me…but it didn’t last long.
Ever since the midterms, I have been trying to make a decision regarding which candidate to support. While I do like Clinton, Obama and Edwards…something just wasn’t jiving. I felt like none of them really had the gusto to be a President that could truly right the wrongs of GWB. I was leaning this way, then that way…but just didn’t get that warm fuzzy. I had seen them all on Meet the Press and Hardball…heard their speeches, and seen their bios a hundred times (I could recite to you the story of how Obama got elected as President of Harvard Law Review from memory, and how he owes money on parking tickets in Somerville). And then it hit me.
Bill Richardson is in this race too. (*sound of hand smacking on forehead*)
Harvard Law Review? Nope. Multi-million dollar trial lawyer? Nope. First lady turned Senator of New York? (heh…) Nope. Only a 15+ year Congressman, former UN Ambassador, former Secretary of Energy, two term Governor of New Mexico (did I mention he won by 69% of the vote?), and….ahem, four time Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Also, did I mention he went to Sudan to broker a cease-fire on his own free time?
Forget Democratic nominee for President…how about Supreme Ruler of the Universe…
Here’s what the Portsmouth Herald had to say about his views on Iraq and our standing in the international community:
“We’ve lost ground morally, politically and militarily,” said Richardson, who added that his personal reactions to Bush’s foreign policy have ranged from disbelief to outright anger. He has called for a massive multifaceted diplomatic initiative to “have a chance for stability in Iraq.” Take the risk and throw everything into it, he believes, and you may just create a 1995 Dayton Accords-like scenario that ended the conflict in Bosnia.
Sounds like something a former UN Ambassador might say.
Arguably, next to the Iraq war, and partially derivative from it, GWB’s greatest blunder during his presidency has been the alienation of the United States from the rest of the global community. Thus, our next President has a monumental task on his/her hands. Look at the credentials of the current candidates, and tell me that you don’t see someone who sticks out as the person clearly qualified to successfully undertake that task.
Anyway, as you can tell, I am slightly upset that I overlooked Gov. Richardson’s candidacy early on as a result of my over-reliance on the electronic media. However, I am pleased that I caught myself, and have now found a candidate I can get behind full-force. I feel that since CNN and all the major networks are not giving this highly credentialed individual the attention he deserves, maybe we in the blogosphere should pick up the slack.
banging that drum pretty hard! Welcome aboard.
The trouble with Richardson is that he has joined the ranks of the “it’s ok to discriminate” gang. (note: edited cross-post with Pam’s House Blend).
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Today’s Bay Windows features Bill Richardson who touts himself as an LGBT standard bearer while standing tall over his 1996 vote for federal DOMA and his firm stance against marriage equality.
Gee Bill, thanks for your honesty. Note that I had to add “proposed” in brackets for the DP legislation, which he states as if it is law, when it isn’t. Keep practicing that honesty thing, Bill! The response of Matt Forman from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) was right on target.
So, Richardson supporters, what does it say about a person who works earnestly for a solution to human rights tragedies like Darfur, then slaps human rights in the face (while expecting support) at home? I have numerous terms, non complimentary.
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So – this volunteer’s hands and billfold remain in pocket. Richardson starts treating me like a real citizen, I’ll start treating him like a real candidate. Until then, I’ll support Kucinich and Gravel.
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Final note, if you’re still reading. I know the first response to this will be “but isn’t any Dem better than any Repub?” Here’s my take on that. If we LGBT citizens are so obviously expendible to the dems that they can ignore and even participate in discrimination against us, then they clearly don’t need or want our votes in november. By their very acts they are saying they don’t want or expect our support. In fact, their actions say to me that they think they can win better by f*cking us over. So the answer is “no”.
Maybe he thinks that there is something that people should be allowed to do with someone of the opposite sex that they should not be allowed to do with someone of their same sex. And maybe he recognizes that that thing which only both sex couples should be allowed to do is a central and essential right of all marriages.
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And thanks for hijacking this thread with your personal obsession, Laurel, and talking about marriage and the rights of same-sex couples again. Sometimes, things are so important that you have to make sure they stay on people’s minds.
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As to Richardson, it is fantastic that he is not poisoning his credentials by drinking the gay marriage kool aid. It’s fantasic he’s blunt about it, though he still needs to show some principled explanation (I’ll shoot him an email). Kucinich, of course he would also believe in the fantasy of equal rights for same-sex couples (though even he hides that position five levels deep on his website, and Gravel’s doesn’t seem to mention it at all).
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My question to you Laurel is how much worse could a candidate be and still get your vote. Would a pro-war, pro-troop surge candidate get your vote if he supported gay marriage? I ask because I fully acknowledge that I have supported many candidates that sucked in other respects, and brought bad things to bear, just because it was very important to me to preserve man-woman marriage and prevent a Brave New World. But that stinks, so I am very relieved when there is a good qualified candidate like Richardson. I just need to find out how principled his stand is, and how much it is just being politically smart.
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That’s what we need to do with all the candidates, since they all seem to have the same position (except the space cadets, that is). We need to get them to go deeper and state their positions on an egg and sperm law, genetic engineering, gamete donation, Tom Brady, Mary Cheney, etc. The conversation has begun, but they’re not really saying much.
…what does an “egg and sperm law” have to do with states recognizing relationships of same-sex couples (so-called “gay marriage”) to the same extent and in the same way as it recognizes relationships of opposite-sex couples (so-called “traditional marriage”)? Conjoining human eggs and sperms has nothing to do with marriage, whether it be done by by penile-vaginal sex or IVF, as out-of-wedlock births should make clear.
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I’d vote for Richardson as the lesser of a number of evils–called politicians–based on his resume (except for his vote for DOMA), but I’m not a big fan of him running around trumpeting that vote.
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BTW, as far as I can tell, this is a comment thread. Laurel posted a comment. If you don’t want to read her comments, you are perfectly free to scroll past them.
We all have a right to attempt to conceive, but not with everybody. We should not have a right to conceive with someone of our own sex. I don’t know if Richardson feels that way or not, maybe his opposition to same-sex marriage is simply a bigoted position, and he has no principled reason to believe that same-sex couples should not have all the rights of both-sex couples.
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Once you’ve got a law that prohibits people from conceiving with someone of their own sex, you can’t call a same-sex marriage an equal marriage, unless you prohibited all marriages from conceiving together. I don’t think we should do that, I think marriage’s conception rights are in jeopardy, and we urgently need to make it explicit that all marriages are allowed to attempt to conceive using their own gametes.
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There will still be out-of-wedlock births after the egg and sperm law is passed, but there won’t be any genetic engineering, cloning, or same-sex conception.
…what I believe you’re saying is silly. Marriage does not carry with it the right to conceive. The right to conceive is conveyed by biology, not by marriage. Which is the point I was making about out-of-wedlock births–presumably preceded by out-of-wedlock conception.
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Moreover, my elderly widowed mother-in-law could marry (a man) tomorrow regardless of the fact that she cannot conceive (she has had a hysterectomy), and any eunoch (a neutered male) could marry a female, regardless of the fact that he cannot, with that female, conceive a child.
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So, answer the question that I posed to you above. Why should the state refuse to recognize relationships of same-sex couples (so-called “gay marriage”) in the same manner and to the same extent that it recognizes relationships of opposite-sex couples (so-called “traditional marriage”)? (I phrase the question that way for reasons that should be obvious to lawyers out there.)
People should only have a right to conceive with someone of the other sex. Attempting to conceive with someone of the same sex would be terribly unethical, unsafe, and wasteful.
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Out of wedlock births are like good unlicensed drivers, or expert cat burglars: they get away with it. We don’t have to punish unlicensed drivers, we could treat them like unlicensed fornicators. If we stopped puishing unlicensed drivers, it woudln’t change what a license liceses, licensed drivers would still have a right to drive. To take away somebody’s right to drive, we take away their license.
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We don’t punish people that conceive of wedlock, because, not only was it often the judge’s son, but it usually punished the victims, the child and mother. Also, reliable paternity testing was developed so that men could be forced to support the women they didn’t marry, and abortion ws legalized, so that women (usually the judge’s daughters) wouldn’t have to be stuck with a man’s baby, or the man. But none of the things which made unmarried sex practical made it legal (fornication is still on the books), and none of them changed marriage, which still makes sex and conception legal. That shouldn’t be changed, because marriage is all that protects our individual right to procreate.
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All marriages must be allowed to attempt to conceive together.
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Same-sex couples should not be allowed to conceive together.
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Put two and two together, same-sex couples should not be allowed to marry.
…responding to you on this issue is like responding to the Scarecrow before he met the Wizard of Oz and got his diploma.
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You totally and completely failed to respond my counter-examples to your Weltanschauung indicating that the lack of the possibility of conception by opposite sex couples is not an impediment to their marriage, whereas you insist that same-sex couples should not be able to marry because they cannot conceive.
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At some point, your arguments become ridiculous. You don’t have a response to the issue, so you just repeat what you’ve said before.
Every marriage has the right to conceive, including elderly couples and infertile couples. They are not prohibited from conceiving or attempting to conceive. Same-sex couples should be prohibited from attempting to conceive. It’s not true that they can’t conceive, they certainly can, witness Kaguya. It’s that they shouldn’t be allowed to attempt it. Whereas, every male-female marriage should be allowed to attempt it. (Do you disagree with anything I have said in this paragraph?)
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Male and female DNA are imprinted differently, and it is only ethical to join an unadulterated egg from a woman with an unadulterated sperm from a man. It is possible to use genetic engineering to allow two people of the same sex to produce a child together, but it would be unsafe, unethcial, and wasteful. It should not be allowed.
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However, your counter-examples should be allowed to attempt to conceive together. There should not be any age limits, nor any intrusive tests.
…I guess your high school classes will start up again tomorrow, after the Presidents’ Day vacation week. Maybe you should ask your teachers to teach you a bit about logic, reason and responding to questions and arguments, because you make no sense whatsoever.
In that paragraph above, where I asked you if you disagreed with any sentence, did you?
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I repeat the same points to you because you don’t address them. You bring up infertile marriages and out-of-wedlock births, and I address those points. I show you how they have nothing to do with the isue of stopping genetic engineering. Stopping genetic engineering would mean that people only had a right to conceive with someone of the other sex. That’s a fact, not an opinion. The issue before us is whether or not to allow same-sex couples to conceive together, right now, today. Put more generally, the issue is whether we should enact a federal egg and sperm law (like Missouri did in 2006 and the PCBE recommended in 2004) and prohibit genetic engineering, cloning, and same-sex conception.
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I would be happy to put the question of what that has to do with marriage aside so you can address the issue of same-sex conception and genetic engineering. Remember, leave marriage out of it, because I’m seeking to prohibit all non egg and sperm conception, married or not.
I am not going to copy every one of your sentences into the comment box and say whether or not I agree with them. Quite frankly, I reject your whole notion regarding marriage, as should have been evident from the counter-examples that I presented to you and the question that I asked of you.
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I’ll lay them out one last time.
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(i) Marriage does not give one the right to conceive. That was illustrated by my counter-examples regarding my elderly mother in law, who cannot conceive (and couldn not, even if she had not had the hysterectomy) and the male eunoch.
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(ii) The lack of marriage does not present an impediment to opposite sex couples conceiving.
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And, so, the last issue is
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(iii) What is your proposed rational basis for the state refusing to recognize relationships of same-sex couples (so-called gay marriage) on the same basis that it recognizes relationships of opposite-sex couples (so-called traditional marriage)?
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Quite frankly, unless you can answer that in a rational manner, I’m through wasting time with you.
Marriage certainly does give one the right to conceive. That you apparently believe that elderly people should not have a right to attempt to conceive is troubling. Do you have a specific age in mind? That you want to pry into people’s private medical issues and take away their right to attempt to conceive is also troubling. Those ugly sentiments are exactly why I warn that marriage’s rights are truly at risk.
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An Egg and Sperm law, which is necessary to stop genetic engineering, would not publicly prohibit any male-female couple from conceiving together. It would publicly prohibit every same-sex couple from conceiving together.
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Every male-female couple – if they conceived – would conceive by combining a male-imprinted haploid cell with a female imprinted haploid cell, and that would be ethical (unless they were children, siblings, etc). Every same-sex couple – if they conceived – would combine gametes imprinted with the same imprints, or genetically engineered with experimental changes, and either way, the child would have a huge HUGE risk of birth defects. That is a public fact, it isn’t prying into anyone’s medical records. In principle, publicly, same-sex couples can’t ethically conceive together, but every marriage can.
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Marriage needs to protect people’s right to conceive together, no matter how old they are, no matter what physical impediments they may have. Being of the wrong sex is not a private physical impediment, it’s a public fact, like being siblings. Such couples would not combine an egg and sperm, which is the only ethical way to conceive.
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Same-sex couples should not have the same rights as both sex couples. People should have to conceive with someone of the other sex if they want to reproduce.
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You still haven’t said if you agree with that.
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You’re not really looking very good with your refusals to address my points. I’ve explained why (i) is wrong and (ii) is irrelevant, and (iii), answered “because their rights should be different.” It would be cool if you responded to my points.
If you are the Raj that Dan Kennedy outs as a Herald reporter, well, first of all, thanks for taking some time to explore this issue, but frankly I expect more follow through and investigation into what a reporter would surely recognize as an emerging issue of the highest importance. Or maybe you’re a different raj.
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I suggest again that we leave marriage out of it while we discuss whether someone should have the same right to conceive with a man that they do with a woman. This is where the rubber meets the road. I think that giving same-sex couples – right now, today – the right to attempt to conceive together is crazy. Congress should take control of this question, not leave it in the hands of mad scientists and crazy couples.
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Do you think that same-sex couples should have the same rights as both sex couples? Because that position demands that we spend billions of dollars and divert scientists from work on curing diseases to put children at extreme risk of birth defects.
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That’s the issue to write about raj. I swear there’s a Pulitzer in it for you, buddy. (And I can’t wait to copy your article to my blog, or at least the good parts. I’ll link to it, don’t worry.)
My eyes must have glazed over while trying to read Dan K’s post. Now I actually read it, and understand that you were quoted in Ross’s post. Silly me.
but I must point out that your comment
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demonstrates an incredibly lacking understanding of the complexities surrounding a woman’s decision to abort her fetus.
but you’re right, sometimes it’s not about the man, just about not wanting a baby. But the point remains, out-of-wedlock sex became more practical after abortion was legalized.
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And I’m not one issue, remember I’m passionate about conservation versus your “war effort” to build wind farms and solar panels. And I’m very rarely trying to get a rise out of people. That just happens when you are confronted with your own wrongness. But I’m here to help, really.
And for people with one issue that dominates the other issues, if the candidate isn’t pro your issue, I can appreciate not supporting him.
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I won’t support a candidate who isn’t progressive enough on energy policy. I just won’t — even if he’s got a plan for universal health care, equal rights for gays, and an educational plan that is second to none. It’s my pet issue — and I respect yours.
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But I’ll be honest. Gay rights aren’t my pet issue, and I don’t think that a Democratic POTUS who supports gay rights is going to help much, since even a Dem House and Senate in 2008 won’t pass the legislation in the first place IMO. Sure, there’d be leadership and it would help society move toward acceptance, and that would be good.
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So, I guess my point is that while our “key” issues differ, I understand and respect your decision and position.
…power over registering marriages is one of the powers reserved to the states (reference the 10th amendment) and so the federal government can’t register them. The federal government piggy-backs over state marriage registrations in allocating federal benefits.
Thanks stomv for your respctful comment. i appreciate it.
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denying LGBT people -American citizens- equal protection of the laws is in a totally separate category from such issues as energy policy, better funding for health care, education, etc. why? because we’re talking about a segment of the citizenry being systematically attacked by the law. with richardson, we have a presidential candidate who is actually proud of his roll in depriving some citizens the full exercise of their citizenship. no one is statutorially preventing anyone from taking mass transit. so this is why i elevate the gay rights issue to the top. to me it is fundamentally unamerican to take the postion richardson has.
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regarding the “friendliness” of the congress to LGBT equality under the law, frankly, your position is a big old cop-out. the president can make a lot of things happen if s/he wants to. at the least, the president has the fabled bully pulpet.
Richardson in your view isn’t any worse than Obama, Clinton, or Edwards, is he? His position is the same as theirs, AFAIK, and he’s actually the only one who made a big deal out of LGBT issues at the DNC winter meeting.
because they all have different gov’t service histories. But I;ll give it a whirl.
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Edwards: less than worthless. I’ll just say that, as far as Edwards goes, “I’m just not there yet.”
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Richardson is the only of the top 4 to have been in congress when DOMA was voted on. It’s bad enough that he voted ‘yes’ on federal DOMA. By still standing by that vote he places himself in the “worse than Obama” category becasue he is taking a proud and obvious stand against federal equality. Clinton says she supports DOMA, so for me she rates equal with Richardson on that one. Obama has stated his opposition to DOMA, and interest in voting it away.
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I do give Richardson credit for making a big deal out of LGBT issues at that meeting, but besides the whole DOMA thing, he is currently stating that NM has DPs. They do not exist there as yet. DP legislation is still in the works, and as we know from the painful MA experience, it’s not a done deal until the bastard with the gavel calls adjournment. LGBT people have been lead down the garden path so many times by pols (like WJ Clinton), that signs of exageration before the election raise major red flags for me.
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So I guess this comes down to:
*Edwards – might as well be Willard
*Richardson & Clinton – have made some good noises and done some good deeds, but negate it all with the “some should remain more equal than others” mentality. Both seem slippery.
*Obama – I have no clue. On DOMA he is best, but he is vague and falls back on religious talk. Religius talk in politics has NEVER been code for “LGBT people must be treated like full citizens.”
*Gavel and Kucinich – in full support of equality
I think Richardson just claimed that NM provides them for state workers. Their HB603 will extend them to any two “non-familial” adults, including heterosexual couples, such as elderly widows and divorcees that do not want to marry their partner but would like to be able to have benefits and protections. It was these retired unmarried couples that were featured in the campaign to defeat the Arizona marraige amendment.
Judging by the low hopes of “Equality New Mexico“, New Mexico must be a pretty straight state, so Richardson must have had to be anti-ssm to get himself elected there. He can’t just flip-flop now.
A good rundown.
does this country make it to the next election!
Thanks for your posting caro…I have not chosen a horse in this race yet, I think it’s much too early to be shutting down the choices and your posting echoed a feeling I was having after watching a candidate “forum” on C-Span..we are so focused on who can raise money, who has pizzazz, who can win in 2008, that we forget to consider: who is most qualified to BE President, to serve us in a time when the world is a mess.
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I for one would like the Dems to have a ticket where the Pres. had MORE experience, qualifications, wisdom to offer than the VP, not the other way around…
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I think Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are terrific…any one of which would be light years better leaders than the current Administration…but, I am not convinced yet that any one of these media-annointed “frontrunners” is the best we have to offer to actually BE President… we need to keep the debate going and the Dem. field open long enough to get the leader who can best SERVE as President on the top of our ticket.
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Can the polls, can the beltway pundits, can the spin doctors…it’s Feb. 2007, 2007 I repeat…let’s start listening more carefully to what they are ALL saying…let’s start asking questions that require less rhetoric and more substantive answers…let’s not settle for the circus acts.
“let’s start asking questions that require less rhetoric and more substantive answers”
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I agree, which is why I raised the issue of hypocracy around human rights amongst most of the candidates. You rated my question a 4. Are you ready for serious discussion or not? Why is it ok to ignore this major failing in our major candidates? Or do you believe, as the top candidates apparently do, that some of us are indeed more equal than others?
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And to JohnHoward, I am not hijacking the thread. The thread topic is about Richardson. I have raised questions about statements Richardson recently made on the campaign trail regarding his stance on a campaign issue. I would welcome a direct and reasoned reply by Richardson supporters as to how they can find his stance palatible.
My comments are always related to the thread too.
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I agree he should make a much more substantive and serious response, as should all the other candidates.
Laurel…I am just very turned off by one issue parsing…if a candidate tells me that they agree with me on every issue, I doubt their veracity…I think our candidates should be judged on the whole resume/record, weighing out the positives and negatives…I don’t want to parse candidates into oblivion one issue at a time…I can disagree with a candidate, or be less than satified with a candidate’s position on one given issue, but be supportive over-all.
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We all have our personal “top issue”…it stands to reason, we do not all share the same order on our priority lists…this year my top issue is Iraq…I care strongly about other issues for sure and I will consider them in the decision equation, but, unless there is an earthshattering reason to disqualify a candidate on another issue, Iraq will trump all others for me in choosing a candidate and judging a candidate’s ability/experience to resolve that problem.
I went through pretty much the same process – save law school.
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Although I am not commited to a candidate right now, if I had to vote today it would be for Richardson.
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I hope he sticks it out and doesn’t get lured into becoming a VP candidate.
Richardson’s got a lot of potential to come on – and I’d certailny give him a lot of consideration. Of the four choices in the poll above, I really think he has the most experience and would be a very stable person for the office.
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I also like Obama, for very different reasons – and think that he could become a great President too.
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However, Al Gore is my guy. I desperately hope he’ll decide to run. Not only has he been right on almost all the issues post 2000, but I also think he’s truly learned his lesson and would run as himself this time around. If he ran as himself, I think he’d win by wide margins. Most importantly, only he could make the necessary changes of the environment and truly lead us. He’s turned what was a geeky, unpopular issue that everyone brushed aside into something that everyone recognizes as important… and I really think, in one of those rare moments in life, that he’s become a singular person who truly transcends himself and represents an entire cause and movement. When was the last time that’s happened? Martin Luther King?
…one the likelihood of him running is between slim and none. Two, if he did run, he would be tagged as being a one-issue candidate. I know that the issue (global climate change) should be cosnidered a major one, but that would probably not not be enough to get him into the White House.
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Obama makes excellent speeches, but I’m not sure that he has enough national experience to do well–I could be persuaded otherwise. But that’s why I would hold my nose and cast a vote for Richardson in the primary.
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None of the Republican candidates would make it worthwhile to vote in the Republican primary. I couldn’t imagine a Giuliani presidency, and he is apparently the frontrunner for now.
I doubt it. Yes, the environment would be front and center, but he’s certainly been very vocal about Iraq, civil liberties, and a whole host of other issues.
…Gore will be tagged as (i.e., viewed as) being a one-issue candidate. And it would be fairly easy for the opposition (either in the primaries or the general) to tag him that way, given the fact that that one issue (global climate change) has been pretty much the one thing that has kept him in the news over the last few years.
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Quite frankly, the global climate change issue probably would cut against him with a large portion of the electorate for a number of reasons.
As soon as he shows up a debate and talks about Iraq, and how he spoke out against it from the very beginning very vocally, the media would have a very tough time doing it.
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He’s no more a one issue candidate than Richardson is. I could think of a LOT of things people would attack him with; a one-issue candidate isn’t one of them.
Does anyone out there have any intelligent reason why the media is falling all over Obama, Clinton and Edwards…and not BR? I understand the “unique story” thing behind Obama. But, I fail to truly understand why Bill Richardson is overlooked, not only because of his “resume for the ages”, but also because he has a pretty unique and interesting story himself (he actually grew up in Mexico City, but is eligible for President because he was born in California). I think even he has more of an “American Dream” story than anyone else.
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So, again, that begs the question: why in all creation is the media essentially ignoring his candidacy right now? Think his campaign is purposely trying to stay out of the lime light until the moment is just right? Think he’s waiting for these April 4 and 5 debates when he can essentially blow everyone away because he’s “been there, done that” with every possible issue that could be thrown his way, while his opponents…well…haven’t? Might that be the strategy? I don’t know…
the media is both slow and likes fixed narratives. it took them months and months to recognize that Edwards was a “top tier” candidate. Biden was running for well over a year before the media realized he was an announced candidate. they’ve almost completely ignored the existance of Mike Gravel. they had a narrative: Hillary Clinton will be annointed the nominee and then lose the general in a landslide, despite this being both exaggeration and completely opposite of reality, as I think most people recognize that while Hillary would be a reasonably strong candidate in the general, she will have a lot of trouble getting the Democratic nomination. Then they decided they wanted a horse race to cover, and began to hype up Obama’s campaign: while I think Obama is absolutely the best candidate to be president, I think the excessive hype has been a distraction and damper on the campaign.
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So hopefully they’ll catch on that this is a wide open field and that no candidate has it locked up, or probably even will much before the convention. Richardson is an interesting guy with a great resume, and I think an Obama/Richardson ticket is probably my top choice right now, I still have concerns about him, as I’m a bit wary of anyone who gets an A from the NRA, and I have to doubt his judgment when he still thinks it was a good idea to have supported the invasion of Iraq in 2002 evenif he does recognize it’s gone terribly wrong. That is tempered a lot by his vast positive foreign policy experiences, so I am also optimistic.
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Richardson, along with Biden and (if he runs) Clark, are clearly the top in foreign policy expertise, but I think Obama and (again, if he runs) Gore are in second on that front, and bring a lot of other qualities to the table neccesary for presidential leadership.
BO: He’s a great orator, he’s got lots of backing, he’s black, and Chicago’s a big media market.
HC: She’s got oodles of money, lots of love’er or hate’ers, she’s a Clinton, and NYC’s a big media market.
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JE: He was the Dem candidate for VP four years ago. Not as much money, interest, or market size (and hence, not as much following).
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BR: He’s not a great orator, he doesn’t have lot’s of backing, he doesn’t have oodles of money, he’s relatively unknown, and New Mexico isn’t the California nor Tejas market. He’s got a nice resume, he’s Hispanic, and he’s very popular in New Mexico, which do help… but not on the same order of magnitude as the BO and HC (and less so, the JE) media creds.
Don’t believe the CW – decide for yourself.
There’s lots of quite good orators around politics. Quite good isn’t newsworthy.
that he lacks charisma or is a dull speaker, which is what the CW says. He’s well above average — he is, for example, FAR better than the allegedly “charismatic” Willard Romney.
and I really like Richardson — and expect his polling numbers to slowly creep up over the next x months.
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I was merely trying to explain (IMO) why Richardson hasn’t gotten the coverage. Relative to presidential contenders, his oratory skills aren’t so great as to be newsworthy in themselves. That’s all. We’re agreeing to agree here.
But the CW is out there, and it’s annoying.
…it is easier for the media to do a “one said, the other said” story, than a “one said, another said, and another said, and another said (ad infinitum)” story. The media are lazy, and there aren’t that many of the media people out there any more anyway.
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Have you noticed the horrendous cutbacks at the Globe? It is unlikely that you would get a story of the Catholic priest/child molestation magnitude out of them today. Governor’s drapes, yes–that’s an easy story, child molestation, no–that’s a hard story.
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Currently, election battles are viewed as sporting events. Sporting events in the USofA are between two teams (or people), and currently the two people selected by the media to engage in the SportinLife of Democratic politics are sHillary and Obama. That may change.
Frankly, as long as Richardson has the money to built a campaign infrastructure, I’m okay with 4th place and out of the limelight. What with the ridiculous inspection of Edwards’ hiring of Marcotte, and the silly Hillary/Obama spat over Geffen, being the frontrunner 11 months simply isn’t worth it. Ask Dean or Lieberman.
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As long as this train is picking up speed in December, I’m okay with being here right now (as an aside, I’ve yet to see anything this year to convince me that Edwards is really a top-tier candidate).
Well, just so the record shows…Richardson has completely changed his position on Iraq, has a far weaker record on gun control than I previously thought, and has been committing political gaffe after gaffe. And, still, his poll numbers remain fairly stagnant.
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Needless to say, when it comes to the Democratic primary…I am officially back to the drawing board. How disappointing. I thought this might have been the one too.