NO JOKE

Last night, David Letterman made fun of the Democrats for not articulating a message or rather having lost to the Bush efforts of articulation. I won’t attempt to retell the joke, but it is sad, if the opinion prevails that the Democrats could not out-articulate Bush.

Looking at the definition of articulate I will probably come up with a joke of my own. There is irony in the definition of articulate. Bush has claimed to be somewhat of a simple man-of-the-people possibly explaining being a man of simple words. Not wanting to re-articulate what the Republican message was, since it was articulate, particularly as in "expressed clearly", I simply counter that the Democrats message was articulated as in "jointed". Some would say disjointed.

Transportation being a big issue locally the metaphor of a bus came to mind. The Republicans may be on a big bus, but the Democrats are on an articulated bus. I really want to be a partisan and suggest a right and wrong but assigning issues to a bus is the problem. The Republican bus may have only one stop so we better want to go there. The Democrat’s bus may have several stops so few want to ride it all the way. Not to forget that even fewer people want to ride a bus. Let alone those that have issues and problems or candidates that differ from state to state. One or two elections that go one way or another do not a mandate or articulate make. Will we make progress in either bus? Maybe sometimes an uphill battle is better than down hill with no brakes.

[Trivium = grammar, logic and rhetoric : 2-10-07]

Progressive Caucus Semantics

The political calculus:
Dennis Kucinich or Obama
or
Ralph Nader or Edwards
Nader / Bloomberg?
[Update or more of a sort: see comments in bottom brackets 1-3-07]
I was originally going to spin off on the first three words, but breaking commentary and news tweaked these lines.
More later. Maybe.

But these tangents are not really so wild, they revolve around the council one takes and that [**] one gives. Kucinich "the principled" or "the calculator". Nader "the idealist" or "the realist".
Standing up or compromising.
All are more than semantics.

Thanks to Brie Walker* and Thom Hartmann.

*Sitting in for Stephanie Miller.
[**] or which

[1-3-07: a straw poll was just distributed by the Democratic Party of Washington State so I will now add LOCAL to the LABELS for this post. I was going to make a comment but unfortunately I am making progress and asked a few preemptive questions which fine-tuned my course. They will do that. Questions that is. My original thought had to do with who the poll was distributed to, but it was broadly distributed and the best comment is on that site. "Congratulations to Kucinich supporters on their great organizing efforts." Not to take anything away from this comment, but Kucinich's comments in Iowa were the kernel of my original post and its Ramble and subsequent flip-flop. But strategy aside(or maybe I just can't or will not articulate it) I may stick my neck out for Edwards. I have too many theories but I will refrain from rationalizing this as one. But my alternate perspective given the latest input, is that Senators Dodd and Biden are pretty good guys or as the latter would say, "I really like" them, but the political calculus is not just from the base.

[UPDATE: 1-7-08 "strategy aside" link added ]