Among his many many annoyances and sellouts, that guy created the RAVE act.

Which cracks down on "illegal" raves and parties in the name of drug prevention, but in reality just is an excuse to quash free speech and freedom of assembly in the name of the war on drugs.

Biden is, among other things, an enabler of big government crackdown on free speech.

-C.

is there any overall average of the ratings that the different candidates got?  Specifically interested in the bottom of the list, like did clinton, biden, whoever also get a ton of next-to-last votes?

I don't know how reliable this data is. I don't rank my ballot that deep because I know one of my first, second or third place choices is going to win (i.e. Edwards, Feingold, and Clark). The people I hate and even the ones I don't care about I just don't bother ranking. I think there are probably enough people like me to make this data suspect, if not entirely meaningless.

Chris, I think you're reading to much into the lack of last place votes for Richardson. People are going to fill out these ballots from the 2 ends - who do I put at the top, and who do I put at the bottom. All the rest, the "don't have much of an opinion", will go in the middle. As a 2nd tier candidate, and without any obvious negatives, Richardson's just "not worth" putting in the last spot.
On the other hand, for someone like Warner with high visibility, I agree, this number is important.

It might also be interesting to sum up the votes for the last 3 positions. You might see some differences show up between the bottom 5 candidates (Feingold-Warner).

Richardson's not my first choice, but there's a lot to like about him.  Not only does he have a ton of governing experience, which is definitely a positive in terms of governing, if not necessarily politically, he's done a lot of good in New Mexico.  The "spaceport" idea in particular may be pretty silly, but it's going to create a hell of a lot of jobs, which New Mexico certainly needs.

Basically, Richardson seems a lot to me like what the DLC should be.  I don't agree with him on everything, but he has a lot of good ideas that make sense from a centrist and liberal perspective, instead of just mealy-mouthed weak conservatism which Vilsack and co. seem to like.  Anyhow, bottom line is, Richardson seems like a great VP candidate, if not necessarily a top of the ticket stud.

Chris, this poll will never be obsolete.  I think its becoming evident that while MyDD and dKos have some overlap in terms of readership, they also have largely exclusive readers as well.  There may be elements represented here not represented at dKos.

Plus, the more polls, the more fun.  SUSA doesn't go out of business whenever Gallup expands its operations.

please forgive me, I am new to the site, so go easy.  I saw Biden on "Real Time with Bill Maher" and I thought he did great - he even had Bill Sammon nodding in agreement to a lot of the points he made.

Why don't people like him?  I haven't done any research on him yet to see how he votes, important issues, etc.  Any insight to why he isn't popular among this crowd would be helpful.

It seems that if MyDD could pick the ticket today, it would be Feingold- Richarson in a second, which I agree with totally.  You have a northern, Jewish, civil libertarian liberal senator balanced by a centrist, Hispanic, southwestern governor with strong foreign policy credentials.

It's great to see the appreciateve numbers for the five guys who have demonstrated early that they are the most deserving of consideration from liberal/progressive Democrats.(Feingold: 3.4% - Clark: 1.9% - Edwards: 1.9% - Richardson: 1.7% - Warner: 1.5%)

Any one of these five will be both an election winner and someone whom I can liberally support. The point is, none of these guys deserves to be brushed off. They are all working hard to spread the good message.

For better polling, however, I'd really like to see a positive/negative instant run-off poll.  It would go like this, ballots have six votes -- three positive and three negative. Therefore you can rank your top three with a 1st, 2d and 3rd choice and then rank the three you think are the worst choice for the ticket with a -1 vote, -2 vote & a -3 vote.

This type of poll would demonstrate a broader picture of the most preferred top contenders while simultaneously showing those (Biden etc.) whom we know are shipwrecks waiting to happen.  

Imagine seeing a poll like this, which is something closer to what I think is the mood of the core democratic party.

Edwards:   23%
Feingold:   22%
Clark:        19%
Warner:    16%
Richardson: 7%
Clinton:      6%
Kerry:         5%
Daschle:    2%
             *  0% *
Vilsack:  -  0.4%
Bayh:     - 27.5%
Biden:    - 72.1%

I would like an outlet to express better a sense of how our strongest and weakest stack up relative to each other.  With this type of poll, everybody starts at 0% and some will end up in the positive range and some will end up well below.  

That would be a much more helpful and illustrative type of poll. This is truly a way to show support for strong candidates, ambivalence toward the unknowns and express "no" votes for those we think will hurt the ticket.

Is/has anyone done a poll this way?

sláinte
cl

CL

I look at the Kerry hating crowd as consisting of two particular types, firstly, the same neo-con and neo-leftist fascists who hated him anyway, and are just continuing to triangulate to continue with their divide and conquer campaign. Secondly, those weak-minded enough to allow themselves to be spoonfed neo-con and neo-leftists memes..

Every time I've read an anti-Kerry screed online, it's always seemed to be aping the latest right wing anti-Kerry propaganda.. ie.. "no one takes Kerry seriously any more."

I see all the spewing and attempts to discredit Kerry even today as springing from the fact that the republicans recognize Kerry as a serious competitor to any republican candidate come '08.

Kerry has been correct about absolutely everything, more people are remembering Kerry's plans for Iraq, the economic problems we're mired in.. he was and still is the real deal. The neo-left are just as determined to sink him because they fear him for the same reason.. he's one more reminder that the majority of Americans will never recognize the far left as a base of anything other than insanity... that democrats do embody the activism that the neo-left can only fake.. and that's from a traditional leftist democrat.

I've done my own analysis of the voting here:

http://two.bolson.org/mydd0603.html

Note that I've inverted rankings (1st, 2nd, 3rd) into ratings where higher numbers are better. 1st became a rating of 13, 2nd = 12, etc.

Also, I've built a web tool that in my fabulous opinion is better than demochoice in every way. So, check out betterpolls.com and get the above sort of feedback automatically.

Second, there are no major "anyone but" campaigns for the online favorites: Clark, Edwards, Feingold and Warner. Combined, they make up less than 9% of all last-place choices. I find this a tremendous relief. Perhaps supporters of these candidates will be able to act in a civil and productive fashion to one another online during 2007. It also seems like people are supporting those four right now because they like those four, nto because they despise someone else.

Richardson has a shockingly low number of last-place votes. In fact, outside of Clark, Warner, Feingold and Edwards, he is the only candidate with fewer last place votes than first place votes. This guy is the anti-Biden. I don't know what Richardson's 2008 chances are, but clearly people would not be upset to see him on the ticket. If only he were as good looking as Matt Santos

Kerry hating is definitely subsiding online. There was a Dailykos "last place" poll a while back that had Kerry tied with Biden and Clinton for the top spot. Perhaps Kerry hasn't won too many new supporters online with his recent actions, but he has lost a lot of haters. That is a type of progress.

Just tell folks you mean Anybody But Biden.

Let's face it: Biden loses because he is a douchebag.  The guy is a stereotype of a political climber.  

Ditto for Hillary.

Bayh is the "Why even be a Democrat?" candidate.

And Feingold is the "OMG, we'd be called commies!" candidate.

Only Biden can be scrapped on the face of things, and that's because he is obviously a disinterested political climber.

Even Hillary, on her very worst day, has some punch.

I am glad that Joseph Biden is winning.  He is the most practical LD out there and he comes from a state that is in the north but has cross over voters out there southerners as well as northerners.  So, he can win both northerners and southernes.  I am supporting him.  Even though he supported Iraq, he has been even more critical than Clinton and sometimes Kerry.  He will not get tagged like Hillary or John Kerry did as a northeast liberal, because his voting record isn't that liberal.  He comes from the Senate, so he can be attacted, but everyone has weaknesses: Mark Warner doesn't have national security experience, Biden is on the foreign relations cmtee.  So, for the people that say he will be attacked by the right for his voting record, everyone can.

here  I linked it kind of late in the first post; re-linking here in case anyone missed it.