In the Democratic primary race, this site endorses Hillary Clinton. That does not mean we will not cover other candidates. We are a site for the left so we're not going to be offering coverage to right-wing independents. On Thursday, C.I. noted that we can't cover what you don't do. That was an issue with the Democratic Party as well when it had a plethora of candidates competing for the party's nomination.
Your campaign website is where you can reach the people and we are more than happy to amplify that by reposting (in full) things of interest to get the word out on your campaign. But for that to happen, you have to run a serious website the same way you have to run a serious campaign.
Your supporters will check out your campaign regularly . . . unless nothing's ever happening there. Think about it, if you find a site you like and you visit it, you make a point to go back and visit again. If you do that repeatedly and find nothing new, you stop visiting. You assume the person's lost interest in posting anything. The same is true of campaign campaign websites. They exist as an online field office, they exist to create interest and excitement about the campaign.
If you're not using as such, you're wasting webspace and you're harming your own campaign. At the start of last week, Ralph Nader had many things worth highlighting but didn't get highlighted because there wasn't anything at Cynthia McKinney's website that hit strong. (She won the Wisconsin Green primary, congratulations to her on that.) This became a concern on the part of Jess and C.I. because Nader had several things that would have otherwise been highlighted. On Thursday, there were multiple posts at McKinney's website. (And they weren't duplicates as with the Wisconsin win.) But we're making clear in this article a position C.I. took on the Democratic Party primary, if you're not doing anything, you're not getting attention.
Your website is your online office. We'll visit it and if there's something worth noting, we'll do so gladly. But we're not going to hold back on offering something worthy (by Nader or McKinney) just because the other didn't have anything worthy.
We believe a candidate gets the votes they earn in a general election. Note the use of "general election." Nader and McKinney offer a different dynamic because Ralph Nader is not running for the Green Party's national nomination; however, some state chapters of the Green Party may elect to make him their candidate and put him on the ballot in their states. That happened in 2004. So there is honestly a competition (a healthy one) between Nader and McKinney (and their supporters).
In terms of what we'll note here, we're not interested in racists or sexists so any post providing praise for a candidate from someone known for either does not interest us. A man who attacked the feminist movement and all feminists of all races may praise one candidate (and did) but we're not interested in anything he has to say. He's garbage in our books and the fact that one thought his endorsement was worthy of posting (McKinney's campaign) didn't have us rushing to repost it here. (Nor would it ever.)
Covering Ralph Nader's campaign or Cynthia McKinney's campaign will be dictated by what the candidates offer. If one gets highlighted more, it has to do with what they offer and what the other didn't.
Mike Gravel endorsed Jesse Johnson for the Green Party and we didn't rush to note that. Why? Mike Gravel isn't a Green. We're really not interested in endorsements from outside the political party. Gravel has left the Democratic Party and joined another political party. It's not a left party so we won't be following his campaign. It's not the Green Party, so we're not overly interested in what he has to say about the Green Party.
The same way we're not interested in the independents and 'independents' (such as the closeted Communists) endorsing Barack Obama. Primary campaigns should be about political parties. The general election allows the crossover and is the election that all Americans (if they choose to) can weigh in on. Those individuals not belonging to a political party in question really have no reason to endorse. As an online magazine, we will cover presidential candidates running from the left. The Green Party's primary is not over. Delegates will make their decision in July at the Green Party convention.
The endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party primary goes along with our endorsement of Cynthia McKinney for the Green Party. Prior to the one debate, we did make clear here that we found it appalling that some candidates running for the party's nomination had no website or, worse, had a website that didn't even mention the Iraq War. On stage at the one debate (which Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and Kat attended and we all listened to), Kat Swift spoke about the Iraq War and might have won our endorsement were it not for the fact that Cynthia McKinney spoke even better about it.
With the exception of McKinney, Swift and Johnson, the other candidates were an embarrassment. How do you declare your intent to run for a party's presidential nomination and be unable, in a debate, to speak even briefly about the Iraq War which was, at that point, nearing the five-year mark?
Cynthia McKinney has the experience and, as Kat noted Friday, has the actual record that Barack Obama tries to pretend he has. We agree with Kat that this needs to be McKinney's pitch. As more and more people learn that Obama's words are hollow (see ), they will be disenchanted and looking for another candidate. McKinney could sweep up many of those because Bambi's primed to want a certain candidate and that candidate is actually Cynthia McKinney.
The speech we'd love to hear from Cynthia McKinney would go something like this:
You keep hearing a lot of talk about 'change.' Guess what? I am the candidate of the change. You keep hearing a lot of talk about 'I was against the war before it started.' Guess what? I am the candidate who voted against the Iraq War and did so before it started. I lost my Congressional seat in the 2002 elections. When I came back to Congress, following the 2004 election, I didn't stick a finger in the air to measure the wind. I was opposed to the Iraq War and I consistently voted against it. Barack Obama's been talking a lot about the ideal candidate and I want to thank him for explaining to America why they should vote for that candidate because -- guess what -- that candidate is me. You want change? Well here it is. You want someone who stood up against the Iraq War before it started and after it was ongoing? Well here it is. I truly am the candidate you've been waiting for.
John Edwards made a big mistake in the Democratic race, he waited too long to confront Barack Obama. He let Obama smear him onstage in debates, he let Obama run off 527s working for him (Edwards) and, as he learned too late, when Obama had 527s working for him, suddenly Obama wasn't concerned about 527s.
Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney are running for president. They're not running as an auxillary fan club for Obama. When Jess noted here that Obama's 'change' talk was empty talk and seemed to be a watered down version of what Nader ran on in 2000, we got many e-mails from people who were college students in 2000 echoing Jess' statements. They were, as they insist, an actual movement. They did, as they insist, get behind a candidate with actual plans and actual critiques. The consensus was that Nader seemed to be running out of fear that Hillary Clinton would get the nomination (call it the Robert Scheer strategy) and not really running to win the presidential campaign. We've followed up with those e-mailers over the last few weeks and one of the things they point to is that Nader is running a campaign. They've very glad he's taken on both Obama and Clinton. Brenda Martin in Illinois wrote at length again last week saying that she'd been talking with alumni (they were college students then) who are getting more and more excited about Nader's run. Both candidates, Nader and McKinney, are going to have to run their campaigns grasping that, come November, they will be running against John McCain and either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. There can be no pulled punches.
Kelly in North Carolina will be voting for Hillary Clinton in her state's primary. John Edwards was her original choice. We asked her, as an Edwards supporter, to name, her opinion, the biggest mistake Edwards made in his campaign?
"He stood on stage with BO repeatedly," she writes, "and indicated through words and actions that he and Obama were asking for the same thing. I would be talking to friends and trying to talk them into supporting John and they'd point to something in the debate and say that John was saying they were the same. They felt if the two were basically the same, John had already had his chance, in 2004, so let's go with the new guy. I would really hope that point gets across but I really hope John will run again. I don't think he should have dropped out. I think there was a big move to pressure him to drop out with all the chatter that he was hurting BO. John was running for the nomination, he should have worried less about BO and more about making his own case. He was a better candidate in 2008 than he was in 2004 so I look forward to him making an even stronger run in 2012."
McKinney and Nader should heed Kelly's points. They're competing for votes. That's how it works in a democracy. They need to win votes and they are not going to win votes by putting any other campaign ahead of their own. We expect that the two will lock horns. That's part of democracy as well. If you're in it to win it, we'll note you.
Community wide, Dennis Kucinich's campaign was covered (more than any other Democratic candidate) and that coverage ceased when he demonstrated he wasn't in it to win it. Kucinich's argument was (as he himself voiced it in 2004), "I'm electable if people vote for me." His argument was that people should vote their beliefs. Then, in Iowa, he told his supporters to vote for Barack Obama. That's when his campaign ended. If it didn't matter in the first state to weigh in, if it didn't matter from the start that people stood up for their beliefs, then it didn't matter in any other state. When he publicly called on his supporters to cave after the first round of voting, his entire campaign collapsed. None of them expected him to win in Iowa. They did expect him to compete for votes. They did expect to stand with his supporters who were willing to stand with him.
A lot of time was wasted at all community sites propping up a campaign for a candidate who would reveal (before the first state weighed in) that he didn't think there was a difference between himself and Barack Obama. We're not going to waste time again. Any indication that a candidate from another party is more concerned with Barack Obama winning the nomination than in running their own race will immediately result in no coverage.
Nader stole no votes in 2000. Nader spoiled no one's election. Nader was running a real campaign and he won votes. Those votes were (and remain) his votes. That's the example for third party and independent candidates to follow. Should the Green Party nationally propose running a 'safe state' strategy, we will not be covering the national party. Should the national party propose that and Cynthia McKinney follow that proposal, we won't be covering Cynthia McKinney.
Every vote counts and every campaign needs to be willing to fight for every vote (and to fight for all votes to be counted). That's what an election in a democracy is supposed to look like.
A suggestion for Nader and McKinney's website. Both need to provide a headshot clearly labeled as public use. We can and do use a headshot of Hillary Clinton because her campaign's provided one online that is clearly marked for public use. Either may assume that it's not important and that any shot can be grabbed. If other shots are available, they needed to be marked as such. We're finding nothing at either site that states a photo is being made available for public use. A further suggestion for McKinney's website, stop listing the January announcement at the top of the page. By having a January announcement at the top of the page, many first-time visitors may assume that nothing's been posted since January and move on to another website without scrolling down.
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*In this article, we're focused on the presidential campaign.
