What - If Anything - Has Changed Your Mind About A Candidate?

[rucky]

Poll question: What - If Anything - Has Changed Your Mind About A Candidate?

I know it's usually a combination of factors, but there's usually that one final factor that tips the scales. Which of these has had the GREATEST impact on your decision:

[Rebel_with_a_cause]

1. I'm taking a stronger look at Clark since he bashed FOX NEWS to its face

That gave me a thrill. Since then, he's come on strong against Bush and his ludicrous Iraq policy.

http://www.foxnews.com/video2/player.html?4908&FOX_News_Live&Setting%20the%20Record%20Straight&wvx-300

[sangh0]

2. Bad framing of the question

I'm not sure which candidate you're referring to. Do you mean the candidate I prefer, Kerry? My opinion on him has stayed pretty stable over the campaign.

Or are you referring to any of the candidates? My opinions on them have changed as I learned more about them over the course of the campaign

[rucky]

3. I left it open

the factors are more important than any particular candidate - or how they rank on your list.

[Walt Starr]

4. As the person who seems to change his mind the most around here

I could truthfully click on most of your choices.

The one I did vote for is the something s/he said. When they prop up the BFEE, they piss me off more than anything else.

BTW, today's rankings in Walt Starr's mind (as of this moment anyway):

1) Dean (way out in front after calling Bush on LIHOP)
2) Mosley-Braun
3) Kucinich
4) Sharpton
5) Clark
6) Edwards
7) Gephardt
8) Lieberman
9) Kerry (because he would even consider the evil Baker for anything other than prosecution)

[unfrigginreal]

5. Wow Walt, we didn't lose you for long this time!

Welcome back!:bounce: :bounce: :thumbsup: :hi:

[Walt Starr]

16. I'd say the thing that turns me on most to a candidate is when they

go after the BFEE.

[CivilRightsNow]

6. How about, your own research?

My own research into Wesley Clark and his affiliations as well as who he beds down with at NED have made me go from being quite excited and supportive that he was running... he and Kucinich were my two top choices.. To absolutely terrified because I truly, honestly, firmly believe from many many many hours of research-- not tabloid articles, actual research-- that Wesley Clark is the same beast as BFEE, and that ultimately, it could be worse then Bush because the man personifies the military industrial complex.. Yeah, we may have an exit strategy with him.. we may also gear up to fight a hell of alot more wars in a hell of alot more places.

[rucky]

8. Research-based analysis is a choice

[CivilRightsNow]

9. It says "negative to candidate"

How about true information about candidate?

[rucky]

13. I guess your findings would be positive...

for those of us in the Military Industrial Complex.

[MarianJack]

7. I Haven't Changed My Mind...

...but as a realist I have to acknowledge that a Kerry nomination seems at this point a far fetched notion.

I'm looking at Clark. I don't think that Dean is a McGovern or Mondale, but I'm afraid he may be our Bob Dole, with his (justified) anger obscuring his message.

I'll support ANY Democrat over the halliburton administration. That support WILL be active and enthusiastic.

[CivilRightsNow]

10. When you look at Clark

Just take a few minutes to look at NED.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=782666

--Reply 27

Maybe you will see that he is the Halliburton Adminstration.

[CWebster]

20. WOW!!!!!

Thanks for the heads up on this.

How many Americans could identify the National Endowment for Democracy? An organization which often does exactly the opposite of what its name implies. The NED was set up in the early 1980s under President Reagan in the wake of all the negative revelations about the CIA in the second half of the 1970s. The latter was a remarkable period. Spurred by Watergate-the Church Committee of the Senate, the Pike Committee of the House and the Rockefeller Commission, created by the president, were all busy investigating the CIA. Seemingly every other day there was a new headline about the discovery of some awful thing, even criminal conduct, the CIA had been mixed up in for years. The Agency was getting an exceedingly bad name, and it was causing the powers-that-be much embarrassment.
Something had to be done. What was done was not to stop doing these awful things. Of course not. What was done was to shift many of these awful things to a new organization, with a nice sounding name-the National Endowment for Democracy. The idea was that the NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades, and thus, hopefully, eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/TrojanHorse_RS.html

General Wesley Clark sits on the board!

[arwalden]

11. Their Nasty, Smug, Sanctimonious, Vicious Supporters (For One Thing)

... it shouldn't bother me, but it does. The nastier their supporters are, the less interested I am in supporting their candidate.

Hmmm. Funny how that works, ain't it?

-- Allen

[HawkerHurricane]

12. Negative threads on DU, BUT...

not in the way expected.

The followers of certain candidates have turned me off thier candidate by posting slamming assaults that are easily disproven about other candidates.

I would not like to associate with a person who would attract such people as followers. Which is why I declared myself a Democrat 10 years ago in the first place.

[JoePizz]

14. My opinion on most of the candidates has changed in the past few months

I've lost a great deal of respect for most of them. Most of them are to tepid and don't seem to have a spine- They call Bush a miserable failure (very true), but then have no alternative to most of his policies. Some of them (and I will not name names, but most everyone here knows of whom I speak) voted for some of the same policies that they now try to blame Bush for. Having supported him, they are just as culpable as he is for the quagmire we find ourselves in Iraq. Claiming they were simply misled is pure BS- Most of the "evidence" used to mislead them was already publicly known to be false. I think that those who voted to support Bush did so out of politics- and one thing I can't stand is someone who acts as weasely as Bush and co. Replacing one weasel with another won't help, and it certainly won't repair the damage that has been done to the image of the democratic party over the last two decades (most of which, by the way, was done by a series of lies propogated by the extreme right, but now has been in the public concious for so long it hard to fix. A lie told often enough becomes the truth)

I feel that Dean is making a big mistake by even thinking about foregoing public funding- especially after he promised several months back he would never do such a thing. Since a democrat would be hard pressed to raise more money than the Bush machine, trying to outspend him is playing his game by his rules- and destined to lose.

Wesley Clarke has his military credentials to fall back on, but no democract should EVER allow themselves to be put on the defensive about their support of the military by this administration. Supporting our troops does not mean simply waving the flag. Supporting the troops means giving them a living wage for what they do, it means giving our veterans the benefits promised to them, and it means that you don't send them off to get shot in some third world hell hole so Haliburton's stock goes up five points.

I think the democratic party has become confused over the last few years, and has ended up spending far too many resources on trying to convert the so-called "middle". This is a waste of time.

45% of the people who voted in 2000 are staunch republicans and will not change their voting for any reason- even the Almighty himself (herself?whatever) could come down from heaven and call Bush an evil pompous arrogant bastard, and that 45% of the people who voted for Bush would still vote for him.

Another 45% of the people who voted in 2000 are staunch democrats, and will vote Democrat almost regardless of who runs in '04.

The 10% left over are the lazy- those who are to lazy to bother to research the candiates ahead of time. They pick whichever one seems to be the most personable based on sound bytes and campaign slogans. They don't bother to actually research if any of the proposed legislation is BS or not- they just like the sound of it. And 80% or more of the money spent by the democratic party during elections recently is targeted towards this 10%. This is stupid.

Why? Only 50% of eligable voters even bothered to vote last time. This means that any democrat wishing to win an election needs to target the bulk of their money and ideas to helping these people. There are 43 million Americans without health care. The republicans will not help them. Almost all 43 million should therefor vote for someone who will help them. Those 3 million people out of work because of Bush policies should be voting Democrat too, if only someone was trying to get their attention and focus their anger. Get out the Vote drives should be starting NOW, not two weeks before the election.

In my humble opinion, the only way to do that is to run a candidate so different from Bush and the right wing zealots that no one can ever say that there is no difference between the parties. Run someone who is as far left wing as Bush is right wing. And while I think Al Sharpton is one of the most entertaining candidates running, there are enough right wing racist crackpots with guns who really hate him that they might do something drastic if he was nominated.

For me, Kucinich is the only one I have really come to respect more and more as the campaign goes on. He has been truly against Bush and his extremist policies since Bush was installed into office. His record is exemplary. Anyone trying to bring up him bankrupting Cleveland is walking on thin ice, since he ended up saving the citizens a few hundred million dollars by doing that. He also held true to his campaign plegde not to sell the municipal electric company. He is also the only one with a true single payer government controlled health care program for everyone. No private insurance companies. And anyone who says private industry is more efficent than government, just ask them why Medicare spends roughly 3% of its money on administrative overhead, and Blue Cross, United Healthcare, etc average over 15% on overhead.

He wants to get the troops home NOW, not five years down the road. This is not abandoning our responsibility- this is trying to get our people out before resistance really starts organizing.

He wants to get rid of NAFTA and the WTO (It is important to do both, since mucking with NAFTA can't be done under the rules of the WTO.) Both liberals and true conservatives should support this, since the WTO forces us to give up our soverienty to foriegn powers. All NAFTA and the WTO are doing is forcing a race to the bottom. It is sad that many foriegn car manufactures are now finding it cheaper to build their cards in the US rather than in their own countries. It means the US is quickly becoming what Asia was 20 years ago- a source of cheap labor.

I urge the democratic party to PLEASE stop traveling along the same path that has led them to the position it is in now. Not only should the Democratic Presidental candidate stand in stark contrast to Bush, but so should every candidate in every election.

[newyawker99]

17. Hi JoePizz!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[no name no slogan]

18. Excellent post, and WELCOME!

You pretty much said all that I would have said. The more I see Kucinich stand up for important issues (marriage rights for GLBTs, going after Diebold, etc.) the more I respect and admire him. He truly is the gutsiest candidate out there and appeals to a broad spectrum of Americans, despite what the RW trolls and doubting DUers like to trumpet.

It's great to be able to support a candidate wholeheartedly than to settle for the evil of nine lessers. Let's make this party the DEMOCRATIC party again, instead of the "me too, but not as much" party it's turned into over the last decade. KUCINICH 2004!!!

:toast:

[maggrwaggr]

15. Clark on Wolfowitz the other day was a big disappointment

and I'm swinging back to Dean right now

He mentioned Colin Powell as a possible envoy to the middle east.

Ugh. Ugh ugh Ugh.

How can he even admire Colin Powell at this point in time? Colin Powell is a liar and is complicit in all these crimes going on.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

19. I started out as a Kerry supporter..until that vote.

That eliminated him and the other 3 bloody handed cynics from the possibility of getting my vote.

Sharpton and Kucinich have my heart, but Dean will probably get my vote.

[JoePizz]

21. Why?

If everyone who said "Kucinich has my heart, but..." voted for him in the primary, he would have the nomination.

[Cocoa]

22. endorsements

especially Rangel for Clark, and Jackson and Jackson-Lee for Dean, assuages my concerns somewhat.