Chris Dodd declares candidacy for president

[netmouse]

Washington Post article

Thoughts?

I personally hope the democratic party will not select Hilary Clinton as its candidate, because so much of the country doesn't trust or like her and it seems a shame to act as if there are not other strong (even female) candidates in the country, and to further alienate younger democrats who already seem to oppose the idea and are wondering why they can't influence their party. I don't know about Barak Obama's chances of winning, either. He seems like a sharp guy but also relatively young and unproven compared to some.

The Iraq war is clearly going to be a big issue in the next presidential election, as is the general question of how to reduce terrorism. If you could set those two issues aside, what would you want in an American president for 2008?

Comments

[eviljohn.livejournal.com]

I suspect that it'll be some dark horse candidate, like it was in 2004.

It's sad that there's just so much anti-Hilary sentiment out there. I don't understand it.

And Obama has a few (minor IMO, but they're there) skeletons in his closet.

[sraun]

My number one issue is going to be restoring our eroded civil rights. And doing something about DHS and TSA - ideally they should both be dissolved, failing that they need accountability and external oversight with teeth in everything they do. I'd like to get real security instead of security theater - but that's wishing for an awful lot from Washington, D.C.

[nicegeek.livejournal.com]

Aside from third parties, I'd like to see Russ Feingold as President, with a small Republican majority in both houses of Congress. Not because I really like him but because Feingold hates the anti-terror laws with a passion pretty much unmatched on the hill, so he'd clean out the executive branch of all the pro-snooping people, and hopefully get rid of most of the incompetent appointees that Cheney and Rove installed as political favors. He's also likely to push campaign finance reform. The Republican Congress would hopefully keep him from raising taxes too high, or ripping up too many trade treaties, and insure that he'd have to put moderate judges on the courts.

Of course, the odds of the above are slim to nil; he may not even run.

Another dream that would be fun is a bipartisan ticket...something like McCain-Obama, with a split Congress.

Yeah, I don't get what I want very often, on the political scene.

[omnifarious.livejournal.com]

• Take the constitution seriously. Including the 10th and 2nd amendments.
• Be committed to making the federal bureaucracy at least 5% smaller by the end of h(is/er) term. Some of this should come from simplifying and/or eliminating regulatory bodies. Those eliminated bodies would be replaced with a set of rules and balances that were designed to avoid creating centralized places in government for interested parties to exercise their influence. The best place to start would likely be the FCC's regulation of telecom companies, since those regulations mostly serve the telecom company's interests now due to the strong influence they have within the FCC and the blatant conflicts of interest of most high FCC officials.
• Be committed to real government accountability. Must be willing to send government officials who fail in their duties to jail if warranted. Must be willing to assign blame to those actually causing the problem instead of a politically convenient fall-guy.
• Be committed to an honest and above-board foreign policy. Must be willing to reveal what private interests are pressuring us to do at even a micro-level in foreign countries. I'm tired of us doing things for publicly stated reasons that are clearly false and covers for actual reasons that nobody's willing to admit.
• Committed to declassifying as much information as possible so the citizens of the US can make informed decisions regarding their government.

Those are the things I most want. The war on terror and the war in Iraq and all that other stuff are secondary to those fundamental issues that have been plaguing us for many many years. I think many of the evils we're experiencing today can be directly traced to not following those policies.

[tshaile.livejournal.com]

I would want someone who would make it a priority for the US to become more a part of the world community. Instead of making choices that alienate and are probably not in our best interest in the long term, make choices that show some vision, that don't leave us looking like an arrogant bully whose going to get his way one way or the other.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

My father freaked me out last time I saw him. He's my weather vane for "average person". I'm the bleeding heart liberal, he's a weird mix of conservative and worker's rights (UAW family). He said he'd vote for Hillary. He never went into any detail about why, but I gathered it was more that he, like many Americans, are totally disgusted with the Republicans for not reigning in their mad dog president.

It's odd that I have more reservations about Hillary than my father. Like many people, though, I'd pinch my nose and vote for her if she becomes the Dems candidate.