[I just posted this comment below on Dean's blog.]
Hello Dean supporters and Staff!
I want to ask something of Governor Dean. First, let me say that I’ve donated to the Dean campaign, have a Dean bumper sticker on my car, and a Dean poster in my Apartment window. He is, in my opinion, Democrats’ (and America’s) best hope. But I also like Clark and Kucinich as they oppose(d) the war and have a number of other policies I agree with. Despite my outward appearance of whole-hearted Dean support, I have a couple concerns that might change my vote in my primary.
They are:
1) Dean supports the death penalty. I don’t support it under any circumstance. Intelligent people can disagree about this, so I’d ask Gov. Dean to pledge something like this: “I am a supporter of the death penalty, but since recent evidence has shown a troubling number of death-row inmates able to conclusively prove their innocence, if elected, I promise to immediately enact a moratorium on the Federal Death Penalty so that a full review can be done. Once the results of that are known, I may or may not re-establish a Federal Death penalty, based on what we find.” He could point out he is just following the good example of the Governor from Illinois, here.
2) The NRA loves Dean. I’m not comfortable with the NRA loving the candidate I vote for. I’d like Gov. Dean to take a long hard look at his positions here and see if he can be moved to favor more gun control legislation than he currently does. I’m not opposed to people owning hunting rifles, but semi-automatic weapons, and the glut of handguns in this country are seriously problematic. What the solution is, I don’t know, but I want a President who will commit to changing the status quo on this issue in a meaningful way.
3) Campaign Finance Reform. Perhaps I just haven’t heard what Dean has to say about this, but I believe this may be the most pressing issue facing our country. Yes, worse than terrorism. The terrorists of 9/11 struck once over two years ago, but the corporate terrorists that control our government are terrorizing our country every day. I want radical reform. The government should give the candidates from each party that had at least x% of the vote in the last election the exact same amount of money (and let me tell you it ain’t 100 million) and should mandate the major networks give each of these candidates the exact same amount of air time (free). Remember, they are the people’s airwaves and we just lease them to NBC, CBS, ABC, etc. For an important civic cause like this, we can take the airwaves back. Other than that, absolutely no outside funding should be allowed. (Notice, I didn’t say anything about funding during the primaries. What a candidate wants to spend to beat her fellow party members is her business, I think, but none of that money would carry over to the national race.)
That’s a good start. So, what I ask of Governor Dean is this: Commit to doing the right thing on these three issues. I want you to truly represent the Democratic Wing of the Democratic party. I think you can best do that by taking up the three commitments above.
Brian
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