Unity

Bull! Obama Bought or Stole Our Primary. Vote "BLANK" for Bennet in Nov.

We will never change politics as usual if we Colorado Democrats keep accepting the power of corporate money to buy our primaries.

Vote "blank" for Bennet in November.
Send a message.
Or don't complain about more of the same.

Obama Stole Dems 2010 Senate Primary Nomination for "appointed" Sen. Michael Bennet but 57,497 "UnderVotes" by angry Romanoff progressives nearly Stopped them

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by: johnhkennedy @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 14:38:55 PM UTC

That's one way of looking at it.

Another is to understand that turning in what you perceive as straight toward where you want to go isn't always the best way to get there.

Let's say you're driving north on I-25, and you want to go west on I-70. You might be tempted to turn left, jump the median, and go against traffic entering the southbound I-25 lanes, going west in the I-70 eastbound lanes. Of course, that wouldn't work out too well.

The more effective way to go west on I-70 is to first turn east onto the entry ramp, going initially in what would seem to be the opposite direction of your destination.

Similarly, rational people who long for world peace and universal disarmament usually don't advocate unilateral disarmament. It doesn't actually lead to world peace and unilateral disarmament, but rather only to the defeat of whoever unilaterally disarmed, at the hands of the more ruthless.

Unfortunately for all of us, television time makes a huge difference in state-wide elections, and television time costs money. While all reasonable people probably agree that we desperately need campaign finance reform, most also agree that unilateral financial disarmament isn't the way to make it happen. All that it achieves is to cause the one so disarming to put him or herself at a competitive disadvantage, and to have less rather than more chance of affecting future legislation.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the right thing for all principled politicians to do is to renounce PAC money, and run without it. But, at the very least, reasonable people of goodwill should be able to recognize that there is room for debate on the matter, that other people sincerely committed to the public good might think as I do, and that none of us in the end is so omniscient that we can say with certainty that "my" position is the one and only correct one.

If you want to boil this settled primary contest down to this issue, then maybe you should do so in this way: There were two competing visions in our party of how to pursue our shared agenda. One of those two visions won in a democratic contest. Now those who didn't agree with it can either stomp their feet and yell "No, no, no; I won't, I won't, I won't; you can't make me!" or, they can say, "look, I don't think this is the right way to do it, but we're all pursuing the same goals of a more just society, and I'm not going to give the general election to a far-right tea-partier just because I didn't get my way in the primary."

Each will have to choose for him or herself which of those approaches best suits his or her priorities and ideals.

If you truly believe that Ken Buck better serves the agenda of the Democratic Party than does Michael Bennet, then don't vote for Bennet, and don't support Bennet. Otherwise, suck it up, let reason and pragmatism take precedence over raging passions and hurt feelings, and help us as a state to move forward in the most productive directions available, to the best of our ability.

We're all in this story together; let's write it well.

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by: Steve Harvey @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 15:24:22 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Wow

That's just sad.

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by: jeffcodemo @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 20:29:43 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The Down Ballot Races Are a Way to Unite

Even if some are just too angry to become involved in the Senate campaign, we have a governor's race, as well as a legislature which will be redistricting next year.  

1. The state treasurer, Cary Kennedy, saved a good deal of our state's shrinking cash by careful fiscal investing, reversing her predecessors' risky money management.  

2. Our Secretary of State improved the office's elections--and business processes--with a lower budget and fewer employees than his Republican predecessors.  Besides, he will see that we have fair elections, something not all Republican hopefuls for SOS will do.  

3. Attorney General John Suthers has spent "only $5000" of the taxpayers' money on the politically-motivated court challenge to Health Care Reform, while only one of his more than 100 lawyers deal with consumer fraud.  There is a lot more to this. Do we want an Attorney General Suthers or Garnett?

   There are five very unpleasant and dangers amendments and propositions up for the vote, including the job killing 60, 61, and 101, another version of embryo rights amendment to the constitution, and a constitutional repeal of Health Care Reform all being proposed.
   

Can we sit on our hands for any of these?  

Not I.  I helped Andrew Romanoff and so many other leaders win control of our state government in 2004, 2006 and 2008; and I am not ready to concede it to this year's Republican crop of anarchists, religiousists and greedy servants of wealth.  Are you?

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by: saindenver @ Thu Aug 12, 2010 at 16:04:19 PM UTC

I will be voting in step with you

on those races and ballot questions that you mentioned.  My vote will be based on the merits of the candidates, not the party, and of ideas, not ideology.  I intend to leave the U.S. Senate line blank, as neither of the candidates adequately represents my values.

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"Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that." --- Britney Spears, September 2003

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by: Mucius Scaevola @ Thu Aug 12, 2010 at 17:37:12 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Amen, Peter.

I may vote for you for Senate!

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by: BGW1964 @ Sat Aug 14, 2010 at 01:28:59 AM UTC

[ Parent ]