Who is a Democrat

We knew it would come down to this. The shit has truly hit the fan, but I must admit I'm a little surprised where it's coming from. Two days ago John Kerry refused to say anything negative about Wes Clark and yesterday Jean Shaheen of his campaign came out and stated that Clark was not a Democrat. Shaun Dale of UPPER LEFT puts it this way,

" Well, Governor, with all due respect, you aren't the arbiter of who and who isn't a Democrat. Neither am I, or anyone else. Wes Clark says he's a Democrat, has (finally) registered as a Democrat, and is running for office as a Democrat."
He's a Democrat.

I haven’t always voted Democratic. When the Democrats nominated someone I wasn’t comfortable with and the Republicans had someone better I voted Republican. As long as I felt that my core social concerns were not at stake then I voted on issues of Fiscal restraint and national security. It used to drive me crazy that the Republicans had such a hold on those issues and that I couldn’t have it all, but that was the perception for many years even if it wasn’t always the reality.

So two things bother me about the Shaheen attack: one, that Kerry would stoop so low immediately after saying publicly that he wouldn’t attack Clark, and two, that he didn’t even have the guts to do the heavy lifting himself. Six months ago Kerry was my first choice -- it was only after his campaign went nowhere and Dean’s took off that I became a Clark man. My advice to the Clark campaign is: stick to the issues. If I agree with you on the issues you can call yourself a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or libertarian and I’ll still vote for you because we are all Americans. And if we have the same values then labels don’t mean shit. I would have voted for Nelson Rockefeller and I might have voted for McCain, so does that make me a Republican? The American people are tired of labels, they are tired of partisan warfare by the lunatic fringe of both parties. They want a leader, not a demagogue. That’s what Wes Clark is offering and I hope he doesn’t change.

Mickey.