Republican Dirty Tricks

This will be my last post before leaving for South Carolina to campaign. I said in a previous post that the shit was going to hit the fan and that it was important to stay cool. I have just discovered that I can’t follow my own advice. My blood pressure is probably off the wall, I’m afraid to check it. I can’t watch the news anymore and I stopped going on line and surfing the blogs. My daughter Amy believes in a vast right-wing conspiracy to control this country (viz. Hiliary Clinton). In the past I have tended to dismiss this idea as hyperbole at best if not outright paranoia. Guess what: she’s right. The Moderate Independent has a good piece of the right wing’s attempt to dictate the Democratic candidate through manipulation of the media. I expected this from Fox and Limbaugh but what I didn’t expect was the mainstream ("unbiased") media would buy into this and spread the lies without doing due diligence and checking the facts themselves (see previous post about the media. It’s very hard to break through this media blitz of lies and innuendoes, but if anybody can see through it it should be New Hampshirites. Let’s hope they do.

Mickey

Crunch Time

It's crunch time. The numbers this morning don't look so good, and the news media are killing us. The former was expected given the Republicans' fear of Clark and their control of a good portion of the media. The latter wasn't; Iowans were very astute in their voting last week, and, until proven otherwise, I will continue to believe that the New Hampshireites will be too. That should mean that electability trumps everything else which should put Clark in second behind favorite son Kerry.

However, you can shout electability all you want, and it won't have any effect unless you can back it up with proof. In the next three days we will find out a lot about Wes's calm under political fire (which I'm not particularly worried about) and even more about the savvy of his political organization. This is where they earn their pay. The Bob Butterworth endorsement is a big step in the right direction. Butterworth is one of the most popular politicians in Florida history right up there with Lawton Chiles and Bob Graham; in Florida, that endorsement will mean a lot. I don't know how well he is known outside Florida however. [I don't know him. But I do like butter. -- Max] But, in any case, because of the significance of Florida in the last election and its importance in 2004, this endorsement should play well. Butterworth should shout from the rooftops that Clark is the only candidate that can win Florida. And that ain't just blowing smoke. I live in Florida and I have been canvassing for Clark for three months and he can carry this state, which means that Bush will be in real trouble if he's nominated.

If the campaign is holding any other endorsements up its sleeve, now is the time to play them. Especially if they are southerners in states that are in play. Bill Richardson would be great, but I don't think that's going to happen. I read somewhere that the theme for this weekend's rallies is electability, which means that the campaign brain trust has got it right. I would spend five minutes on a brief stump speech and then the rest of the time on why Wes is the most electable Democrat. I would use statements from the right-wing media and their blogs detailing how afraid they are of a Clark candidacy and how eagerly they are looking for a Kerry or Dean candidacy. Let's use their own words against them. Their web logs have been full of discussions about who would be the toughest opponent for them to run against and they universally think it is Clark. Let's get that out.

One final thought for Clark supporters: All of this negative media was to be expected once Clark became a threat. Don't let it get you down. Write letters correcting the smears, continue to give money, and continue to work like hell.

Mickey

Random Thoughts on the Debate

OK, maybe I'm being delusional today, but here are my thoughts on the debate and the race in general. One, the media does not like Wes Clark. Virtually all of his questions, with the exception of the one on the PATRIOT Act, were gotcha questions. Were they out to get him? Sure. Did they? No. He handled all the questions reasonably well and never lost his cool. True he never got to talk about jobs or health care or education, but I don't really care. As I've said before this is all about electability, and it was more important for Wes to handle gotcha questions -- which, after all, are coming from the RNC -- than policy questions. This proved to me and, I hope, to the voters that this is all bullshit and it won't rattle Wes in the general election. The RNC is also using and losing their best material in the primaries. It's clearly an attempt to prevent Wes from getting the nomination, but if it doesn't work and at least some of the press debunks it as they are doing (e.g., the way they've jumped on the false Drudge Report stories) then they are in real trouble in the general election. If I'm right, Wes will take at least second in New Hampshire and off we go.

Everybody did reasonably well in the debate, which means it won't shake up the race. Dean sounded like a rational man last night, but it's too late. I don't think he can reinvent himself that fast or that the public will buy it. Dean as a reasonable man doesn't have much to offer. Kerry did fine but I can't detect any difference between this performance and several of the previous except he didn't attack anyone. Obviously he got a big boost from Iowa and resurrected his campaign, but I would much rather be heading south to fight Kerry than heading south after two Dean wins to fight Dean. Edwards continues to be in the fight despite his lack of experience and apparent youth, which is a tribute to his abilities as a candidate to connect with his audience. He reminds me of Clinton in that regard. He will be tough in South Carolina, but I don't see him doing well anywhere else. Lieberman is history.

Now here are my personal observations about Florida where I am a county coordinator. I have been canvassing for Clark for about three months. He has remarkable appeal to the true conservatives in the Republican party those who think that deficits do matter. There is also a significant number of Republicans who aren't happy with the Iraq war and the money it's costing this country. I have been busy helping numerous Republicans change their party affiliation so that they can vote for Clark. Many are also active in the campaign itself; this is especially true of ex-military people. He is the only Democrat that has this crossover appeal. Clark can win Florida both in the primary and the general election. And if that's true Bush is in a lot more trouble than the conventional wisdom would have us believe.

Keep those numbers moving in New Hampshire. I will be leaving in a few days to go help in South Carolina , then it's back to Florida for the big push to the March 9 primary. Go Wes!

Mickey

Mickey's fearless prediction

I'm usually not one to make predictions, but everybody else is, and so just for the hell of it I will. (If it's wrong, I'll just come back and edit my post and make it right.)

Mickey's fearless predictions for New Hampshire and beyond:

Kerry 30
Clark 26
Dean 22
Edw. 17
Lieb. 5


If I'm right about the order, then Dean comes out of New Hampshire as a mortally wounded candidate who will continue for several weeks only because he has a lot of money in the bank. Kerry comes out looking good, but going into a series of primaries he didn't think a month ago he would ever see and where he has little organization and even less support. Edwards is a great campaigner and will be heading south where his message and his style will play very well. But as I said above the overriding consideration this year is electability and in the end after a tough fight and maybe even a brokered convention Clark will be the nominee and Edwards will be his running

And if I'm right I want tickets to the inaugural ball at the White House and an office close to the president. Oh, and throw in season tickets to the Redskins.

Mickey

Polls

A run for the presidency this year is like a roller coaster ride. It starts out with a long, slow ascent to the top of the first hill, and then all hell breaks loose. It’s going to be a wild ride. But Iowa proved one thing: the electorate this year is very volatile, nobody’s support is rock solid, and the polls can change dramatically, sometimes overnight. The key is to stay focused, and calm. (Rich over at the Wesley Clark weblog has the best take on polls that I’ve seen.) Don't let the polls get you down. If Kerry and Edwards had, this would now be a two-man race, and Dean would be the odds-on favorite.

The electorate is shopping wisely this year, and number one on their list of requirements is electability (see previous post). That's what the exit polls from Iowa indicated and that's what my own canvassing in Florida has shown. The way I read the Iowa results and Dean's dismal showing as well as Gephardt's is that ultimately electability trumped everything else including organization. A candidate's stance on the war or taxes, or anything else for that matter, didn’t really affect the outcome. Iowans believed that Kerry and Edwards were the most electable of the candidates they had to choose from and they voted accordingly. But because of logistical considerations, the most electable candidate wasn't in the race. So the people haven’t passed judgment on Wes Clark yet. They will very soon and it will be interesting to see. But try to keep cool during the next several days; the only poll that matters is the one on election day.

Mickey

Okay, what did I miss?

Our 9-month old Ari got sick this week, and sick babies leave precious little time for politics. The blog had been left in my father's ever-more-capable hands (although I would like to acknowledge Max's efforts in his tireless editing of Mickey's posts) but Mickey's computer had an accident due to his sudden need to intervene in a scuffle between a small cat and an even smaller poodle, so it's in the shop right now. So I promised to try to get a post or two in.

Things look pretty different since the last time I came up for air:

Howard Dean -- in need of Haldol?

Word on the street is that Dean is a crazy man, as evidenced by his wild-talking concession speech, which I finally tracked down on C-Span. Maybe it was the low-res video, but he didn't seem any more insane than usual to me. Actually, it reminded me a lot of that mainstay of geek culture, the famed Steve Ballmer "Developers Developers Developers" clip. So, Howard Dean no crazier than Steve Ballmer. Still, I'd rather have a president somewhat less crazy than Steve Ballmer.

What irritated me more about Dean's so-called concession speech was the way he panders to his under-30 supporters. Talks a lot about the passing of the torch to the new generation, youth changing the world, blah blah blah. He's like a freaking tv network, always trying to get that males 18-30 demographic. You'd think over-30 types would feel alienated by his campaign. Hell, I'm under 30 and I feel alienated by his campaign. Let's face it: we youngsters have no sense of history. Our ideals haven't been ground down by crushing reality yet. Many of us don't have any stake in the so-called establishment -- careers, children, mortgages, etc. Our parents aren't even old enough to start being a burden on us yet. Things are black and white, in or out, establishment or anti-establishment. Let's face it, we are young and stupid, and woe unto us all if presidential candidates decide we are their most important 'market'.

As a side note, I think we know where all the people who dropped off the unemployment rolls went. Apparently they went to Iowa. What will the economy look like after November when all the unemployed and underemployed campaign volunteers start looking for work again?

Kerry, Edwards, Clark, Dean
So suddenly it's a four-man race. This gives me hope, since it proves once again that we voters actually do think for ourselves, and don't just do what the media tells us we are likely to. Of course, a caucus is a funny thing:

"What I was going to say," said the Dodo in an offended tone, "was, that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus-race."

"What is a Caucus-race?" said Alice; not that she much wanted to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that somebody ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.

"Why," said the Dodo, "the best way to explain it is to do it." (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)

First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle ("the exact shape doesn't matter," it said), and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there.

There was no "One, two, three, and away!" but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out "The race is over!" and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, "But who has won?"

This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it stood for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence.

At last the Dodo said, "Everybody has won, and all must have prizes."

So we'll have to see what happens in New Hampshire next Tuesday.

State of the State of the Union

I didn't watch the speech, but I still had to hear Bush's voice in my head as I skimmed the transcript this morning. My thoughts:

1) Continued airbrushing of history. Funny how he didn't mention Osama Bin Laden. Talks about leaders of Al Qaeda, but only those we've already caught. Doesn't mention all those nukes and anthrax spores we expected to find in Iraq -- just goes on about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, as though he convinced us all to go to war because Saddam Hussein merely had some programs to produce WMDs. Bush has an 'education program', a 'healthy forests program', a 'clear skies initiative', a 'guest worker' plan, and a whole host of programs; what counts is if they're funded, what they actually do, and how successful they are at doing it. Programs do not an imminent threat make. Yes, yes, the world seems to be a better place without Saddam in power. But who knows what the long-term consequences of this distraction from the war on terror will be? Who knows how long our soldiers will be stationed in Iraq? Well, General Clark talks much more articulately and knowledgeably about this than I can, so I'll leave it to him. But clearly Bush intends to run in 2004 on his leadership as Commander-in-Chief, so we better have a candidate who looks more qualified for the job.

2) Health Care: I am particularly pissed off at Bush's insultingly inadequate 'program' to address the health care crisis. For example, he says "And tonight I propose that individuals who buy catastrophic health care coverage, as part of our new health savings accounts, be allowed to deduct 100 percent of the premiums from their taxes." Okay, so first of all, in order to deduct premiums, you have to have premiums to pay. In order to pay premiums, someone has to sell you a policy. And if insurance companies decide not to sell you a policy, you're screwed. Max got laid off recently, as regular blog readers will recall, and we've discovered that COBRA will cost us $1100/month. We are young and reasonably healthy people, and we'd be happy to pay cash for ordinary medical needs and go with a cheaper catastrophic plan, but no one will sell us one. In any case the amount of money that doctors charge these days is set by some bizarre calculation about what they can expect to get paid by insurance companies, which is always less than what they charge, the result of which is that if you pay cash you're paying something like MSRP for a car, which is to say you're getting cheated. When in reality you should get a discount since you save everyone administrative costs. My point is that our health care system is completely FUBAR, and it is cruel for someone who has got the entire NIH at his disposal to claim otherwise.

3) America's missionary position:

America is a nation with a mission - and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace - a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman. America acts in this cause with friends and allies at our side, yet we understand our special calling: This great republic will lead the cause of freedom.

[And later...]

My fellow citizens, we now move forward, with confidence and faith. Our nation is strong and steadfast. The cause we serve is right, because it is the cause of all mankind. The momentum of freedom in our world is unmistakable - and it is not carried forward by our power alone. We can trust in that greater power who guides the unfolding of the years. And in all that is to come, we can know that his purposes are just and true.

May God continue to bless America.

Call me crazy, but all this missionary talk just creeps me out. That and the talk of more funding for abstinence-only sex education, constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, etc. etc. etc. These are sops to fundamentalist voters. I'm not anti-religion, I'm really not. But we should be wary when a nation's leader is certain that God is on his side. Mr. Bush should look to his Bible, and see what it has to say about Pride, for from what I understand, it's the worst of the Christian's deadly sins, and he has it in spades.

Okay, I think I've hit all the big developments. Will write again when I can, loyal readers.

It's Electability, Stupid

Good morning, fellow spinners. Interesting night, wasn't it? Shaun Dale at Upper Left was sure excited last night. His man carried the day. There wasn't too much happiness in the Dean camp, however, and if we thought he was the last angry man yesterday, just wait till we see the new version today. As I've said before in these pages, I was a doctor in my former life, not a political activist, and, despite my last name, not a political pundit either. So that leaves me free to make it up as I go along. However, since that's what they do I'm not at any great disadvantage, so here goes.

Scroll down and read the title of my post from yesterday morning; read the whole post if you want. It seems that is exactly what the caucuses in Iowa told us last night. For Democratic voters this year the issues are secondary if they matter at all. Electability is numbers one two and three on the voters' list of concerns. It's not a surprise that the anger among Democrats is what made Dean phenomenon possible. But the Iowa caucuses proved to me that this anger is not irrational; otherwise, the result in Iowa would have been different. It is a cold, calculating anger, and the calculation made last night was that Dean can't win. Of the major candidates competing in their state Iowans decided that Kerry was the most likely to beat Bush. I don't happen to agree with that assessment, but it's a whole lot more rational than what’s been coming out of the Dean camp. I personally think that Edwards may have a better shot at beating Bush than Kerry.

So what did Iowa tell us? One, that the Democrats want to win in the worst way and that issues are not terribly important. And two, that they recognize that to accomplish the former, they need a candidate who can stand up to the he-is-a-traitor argument from the Republicans. That is the reason Edwards didn't win this race going away. (He is the most inspirational candidate out on the stump, although Clark is not too far behind.)

So in a year when electability is the only issue who stands out? Kerry still suffers from the fact that he can be labeled a Massachusetts liberal, and, despite what we saw in the last week, he still doesn't connect well with voters. Edwards is great and he comes from the South, which is important, but he suffers from a lack of gravitas primarily because he looks twelve. Dean is still in this if for no other reason than money, but his air of inevitability is gone, and the voters have shown that they want a winner and he's not. The only way he wins now is through the back door and I don't think that’s going to happen.

Let's play a game for second here: let's create our ideal candidate to win the nomination. The electorate has told us that issues aren't important so we don't need to run to the left to get nominated; better to be in the center and be able to attract some independent and moderate Republican votes. Better to be a Southerner because this also makes it easier to compete in the Republican south. And finally, the candidate needs two other things: gravitas and a Teflon® shield on foreign affairs/national security. Okay, we have the profile for our ideal candidate; now who comes closest to matching it? Wes, stand up and take a bow.

Not only is Wes the ideal candidate, but he's running a national campaign and has the money to compete. So my prediction today is a long primary season with Wes Clark prevailing and just for the heck of it with John Edwards as veep.

Mickey

Electability

It's time to get back to basics. None of us know what's going to happen in Iowa today or how the results will affect Wes's campaign. So we shouldn't worry about things we can't control. What can be controlled is the message we try to get out in the next week in New Hampshire. Far be it for me -- a retired doctor and lifelong non-politician -- to give advice to the professionals running this campaign who have done a superb job to this point. But I will anyway. Nothing has changed or will change because of Iowa, and our message is simple: Wes Clark is the candidate best positioned to beat Bush in 2004. Kerry, Gephardt, and Edwards are all good men who would make fine presidents but each has weaknesses that can and will be exploited by the Republicans. Wes stands alone as the candidate most likely to return the White House to Democratic control.

The reasons for this have been discussed in this blog and elsewhere. They are based on two considerations. One: Wes was a four-star general and is thus bulletproof against the national security/ traitor argument. Two: he will appeal to many independents and Republicans whom no other candidate can attract and therefore brings into play several Southern states that otherwise would be beyond our reach. This is especially true in Florida, where I live.

So in this last week of the campaign in New Hampshire I would push Electability, Electability, Electability. Everything else is secondary. Sure, Wes has great policy papers, but so do the others. Sure, Wes would make a great president but so would at least three of the others. The reason Wes stands head and shoulders above the other candidates is that he can win and for me and a lot of other voters this year that is all that counts. The campaign's mantra this week should be that Wes Clark is George Bush's and Karl Rove's worst nightmare.

Mickey

If it looks like a duck

I'm too old for this. The voting hasn’t started yet and already my blood pressure is off the wall. In the last week the race in Iowa has become too close to call, with four candidates within the margin of error of the polls. And, since the polls usually don't mean as much in Iowa because of the caucus system, all bets are off. I can’t take it, and I don’t even have a dog in this fight. Clark is sitting in frozen New Hampshire waiting for the battle to come to him. The outcome in Iowa will of course have an influence on the race in New Hampshire, but just how much remains to be seen. It depends not so much on what happens on the ground as what is perceived by the media to have happened and how they interpret it for the ignorant masses. Which brings me to the main topic of this post.

I have never really appreciated the tremendous power of the media to shape public opinion before. I guess in the past I never was as interested in the outcome of a race enough to perceive the media’s power to shape the public's perceptions. The media made Howard Dean the front runner before a single vote was cast; all we heard for weeks was the inevitability of the Dean juggernaut. Why? Because the media said so. No other candidate could get any air to breathe. The coverage was all Howard Dean. The media completely refused to acknowledge Clark'ss emergence as a contender until it was so obvious that they had to grudgingly mention it usually as a footnote after another inevitability story about Dean.

In addition to having an incredible herd instinct the media is lazy. The Drudge smear is a classic example. Drudge made a deliberate attempt to distort Clark's testimony to a congressional committee about the Iraq war, to change black into white and for a time virtually everybody in the media bought into it. They didn't check it themselves -- after all, that would have required reading the testimony, which might take half an hour. Better to just repeat what was already in print; you could always say, should the article prove to be bullshit, that you didn't do the research, that you just reported what was already in the public record. The fact that Clark was testifying as an opponent of the war and Richard Perle as a proponent didn't seem to bother anyone at all. After all the quotes that Drudge used spoke for themselves, Clark obviously was in favor of the war. A quick Google search revealed nine pages of links about this story, many of them merely a repetition of the Drudge report, including none other than Lou Dobbs of CNN. To be sure, thanks to the Internet and some of the excellent Bloggers on it as well as as one or two in the print media this story was eventually revealed for the garbage it was. Pure propaganda, total bullshit. But the damage had already been done. The seed of "He can't be trusted" had already been planted; all that was needed was several other pieces along the same lines and it would become conventional wisdom: Clark can’t be trusted. Does this sound familiar? "Gore the liar" was built the same way. And the media was either too lazy or maybe even too biased to question the material underlying this assertion or the assertion itself. What is the difference between a lazy free press and a totally controlled press in a totalitarian state? Absolutely nothing! The end result is the same. We get propaganda, not news.

So when the pundits start pontificating about the significance of the Iowa caucuses, remember one thing: if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and the media calls it a duck, then it’s probably an elephant.

Mickey

Temperament and the Presidency

This piece was written some weeks ago as an op-ed. It was submitted to several major newspapers and rejected. Too strong? I'll let you be the judge.


Temperament and the Presidency

You are a member of the search committee looking for a new CEO for a large multinational Corp. The job requires negotiating contracts with unions, overseeing numerous mergers and acquisitions, dealing with government regulators, and doing long rang strategic planning for the corporation to ensure its future profitability. One of the applicants at first glance looks good but under the heading of “my weaknesses” he has listed impetuousness, stubbornness, an inability to admit mistakes and a slowness to correct them as well as some problems with anger management. Would you hire him? Well you might give him an A for honesty, but you certainly wouldn't hire him, especially in light of the fact that there were several other good applicants available to choose from. The voters of Iowa and New Hampshire and other early primary states have a far more important job than choosing the CEO of a major company. They are the search committee responsible for helping the Democrats choose their nominee for president of the United States. The question is are Howard Dean’s self-admitted temperament problems relevant to the issue of his fitness to be president? The answer is clearly yes.


By his own admission as well as those of his friends and relatives Howard Dean has problems with a quick temper, stubbornness, and impetuousness. All of these issues have been addressed before by numerous writers and are summarized quite well in a recent Washington post editorial. (Assessing Mr. Dean 12/28/03) The question is do these have any bearing on his ability to beat Bush in the fall election and more importantly on his ability to be a successful president ?


Though you may hate them, George Bush and Carl Rove are not stupid, especially when it comes to politics. The statements that Dean has already made (the 9/11 comment probably being the most egregious of many) can and will be used against him in the November election. Remember how they successfully shaped the image of Al Gore as a liar or at least a serial exaggerater, with much less material at their disposal than Dean has already provided. It seems clear to me and many others that Dean is already a seriously flawed candidate that has little if any chance of beating Bush.


But what about the larger issue. Could an admittedly stubborn impetuous man with occasionally questionable judgment make a good president? Let’s take another tack for a second. Let’s put this man in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis. Would he have the judgment and calm resolve necessary to stop World War Three? Would he have been able to withstand the temptation to invade or bomb, as virtually all of president Kennedy’s advisors were recommending, or would he have followed the course that Kennedy chose, to negotiate and save the world from nuclear devastation. In this case having experienced advisors or even an experienced vice-president would not have averted war. The buck stops on the president’s desk and there is no substitute for calm reasoned judgment on the part of the president Judgment cannot be absorbed by osmosis from one’s advisors. You either have it or you don’t.


I will argue that personality and temperament are critical issues to address in picking a president. Richard Nixon was bright and had well thought out policies but his presidency ultimately failed because of his personality and temperament. And that failing almost brought down our republic.


We as Democrats have many good candidates this year, some more electable than others, but all of them have shown throughout their careers that they have far better temperaments to be president than Howard Dean. Unfortunately, Gov. Dean has shown himself to be a fatally flawed candidate who although he may get nominated is unlikely to get elected. Or, if by some miracle of fate he is elected, is unlikely to be successful. In this increasingly dangerous world the personality and temperament of our future president should not be viewed, as it is in some quarters, as a side issue, but rather as a central and important qualification for the office of President.

Mickey

A Wild Ride

Oh my. Brace yourselves, folks; we are in for a wild ride. In the last two days the polls have shown so much movement that all the gaming and analysis of the last two months may become moot. Kerry, Edwards and Clark are on fire, and Dean is sinking fast. Who would've thunk it? I truly don't know how to analyze what's going on and what it means for Clark. I will leave that for the professional pundits. But suffice it to say that we are in a position today that we couldn't even dream about two weeks ago, but one thing has been proven and that is that everything can change very quickly so as happy as we are today we still must keep the goal in focus and continue to work hard. And hopefully, for those of you in New Hampshire, not freeze your ass off in the process. And to think I almost went up there (for those of you that don’t know I live in sunny Florida and have a deep aversion to cold)

I have decided to go to South Carolina and campaign. It looks like too much fun not to get into the act. Of course the way things are going, it looks more and more like Florida's primary on March 9th will mean something; and so we have begun organizing down here for that eventuality. The other half of this blog -- my darling daughter and her wonderful husband -- are making plans to come down here and campaign for Clark as well. I’m sure it has nothing to do with our weather vis-à-vis Boston’s this time of year.

Everybody remember to keep your blood pressure medicine close at hand; you'll need it for the next ten days.

Mickey.

Hear, Hear!!

This is a totally gratuitous posting to say how much I agree with my Dad's post about labeling people as Democrats. Does anyone remember those commercials for breakfast cereal (I don't recall which one...) where it was always a kid and a parent not agreeing on anything, but then finally sitting down at the breakfast table and agreeing on their breakfast cereal? Well, that's like me and my father on Wes Clark, except that politics is way more important than breakfast cereal.

My dad and I will never agree about that tattoo I got when I was 19, but we support the same man for President. Pay attention, oh ye of little faith. Wes Clark is an inspirational candidate. Wes Clark brings people together. I am proud to stand with my father and support Wes Clark for President, and I hope to stand with my father at Clark's inauguration. If you're there, look for us. We'll be the people arguing loudly about a tattoo.

It's the Supreme Court Stupid

I would liked to go back and amplify part of my previous post. I said that I have been willing to vote Republican as long as my core social values were not at stake. Affirmative action, abortion rights, separation of church and state, and government lending a hand to those who need it while at the same time the maintaining individual liberty and freedom from undue government intrusion into our personal lives. Well the above, and more, are at stake in this election. Think Supreme Court, think Clarence Thomas and think four more years of Bush and maybe three nominations to the highest court. If that doesn’t scare the hell out of you, then you are reading the wrong blog. I have made this point before both here and elsewhere, but it’s worth repeating. Bush can do tremendous damage to this country in four more years both domestically and globally but three more Clarence Thomases on the Supreme Court can change this country beyond recognition for the next thirty years. So let’s not be so concerned with labels this year, let’s not turn our back on the candidate most likely to defeat Bush because he didn’t always vote Democratic or because he said some good things about Bush early on. I too was impressed with this administration after 9/11 and had high hopes that he would live up to his campaign rhetoric and be a compassionate conservative. He wasn’t and now I oppose him with all my heart and soul; and guess what? I’m a Democrat too.

I don’t want a purist candidate this election, I WANT A WINNER, and if he sometimes voted Republican in the past I couldn’t care less. Wes Clark is a winner -- always has been, always will be -- and he’s a fighter without the chip on his shoulder that Dean has. We need both of these attributes in our candidate this year to beat Bush. So let’s not argue about who's a Democrat and who's not; that argument pales in the face of what's at stake this year. Wes Clark can win and therefore he should be our nominee.

Mickey

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.

Items of interest

As always, Professor Krugman's column is excellent..

Hmm, the Army War College thinks Clark is right about that whole Iraq thing after all.

Kerry campaign attacks Clark; I love Clark's statement in response (from WaPo):

As Kerry focused on Iowa, Shaheen dealt with his problems in New Hampshire, where Clark has overtaken Kerry for second place, behind Dean. She showed a videotape of Clark's appearance before an Arkansas Republican Party fundraising dinner in 2001, in which he praised Bush and members of his Cabinet, then said:

"I welcome Wesley Clark to our party. I just don't think someone who raised money for Republicans, praised George W. Bush after he had begun his systematic reversal of Bill Clinton's policies, and who as recently as this past summer refused to rule out running for president as a Republican should be the Democratic nominee for president."

"When you're attacked like this, it's the sincerest form of flattery in politics," Clark said in response.

Okay, that's all for now, folks.

Salon really starting to piss me off

Yet another article in Salon today that assumes that real Dems can't possibly support someone other than Dean. I am getting more and more irritated with Salon's Dean-biased coverage (see my post last week on Huffington's column there). If one more article in Salon tells me that since I don't support Dean, I must be a spineless, old-school, appeaser from inside the beltway with no vision for the future of the Democratic party, I'm just going to have to stop reading it for the duration.

Today's offender: The Media vs. Howard Dean

My letter to the Editor:

------

I've been a Salon reader since the beginning, and usually very impressed with your coverage of politics. But I'm very disappointed in your coverage of the 2002 Democratic Presidential Nomination race. Salon appears to believe that those who support candidates other than Howard Dean are not real Democrats or have been fed a pack of lies by the right-leaning mass media. Last week's example was Arianna Huffington's column in which she implied that the only people who aren't Dean supporters are "Democratic Honchos" from "inside the beltway". Today's example: The lead sentence on the most recent article "the Media vs. Howard Dean" is "Democrats haven't voted yet, but reporters have got the story: The former Vermont governor is angry, gaffe-prone and unelectable. How do they know? Republicans, and anonymous Democrats, told them so".

I am neither a Republican nor an anonymous Democrat. I do not support Howard Dean for President, and it's not simply because I find him angry, gaffe-prone, and unelectable. I also believe we need a President with strong credentials in the international community, not, as Dean admits he has, a little hole in his resume there. I support Wesley Clark for President, and I think Salon needs to spend a little less time obsessing about Dean, and a little more time researching why perfectly good Democrats might support someone else.

moving on up

It's official: Tucker Carlson has just picked Wes Clark to win the nomination on the Chris Matthews show. He says "even the Democrats aren't crazy enough to nominate Howard Dean." The odds from the pundit's poll also from the Chris Matthews show shows a doubling of the likelihood of a Clark victory (still only 25%). "Meet the Press" with John Kerry as guest still had to devote several minutes of their round table discussion to the Clark surge in New Hampshire. I have not said it publicly but for many weeks I have felt that the decision to skip Iowa was the smartest thing the Clark campaign has done. This was voiced by one blogger several weeks ago; however, as I'm over 50 I can't for the life of me remember who made this case. The conventional wisdom has been that it was a grave mistake to skip Iowa; I don't think that will be true. The opportunity to campaign extensively without the clutter of other candidates has enabled Clark to get his message out, and, based on the polls and the reports on the CCN blogs, he has been successful beyond our wildest dreams. People are paying attention now -- not just the extreme fringes of the party, but the rank and file. And Dean doesn't play well with the mainstream of the Democratic party. Electability and temperament are starting to seriously be considered in choosing a candidate, and Dean doesn't do well on either count.

The Paul O'Neil flap has the possibility of changing the dynamics of the general election significantly. Here we have a Bush insider confirming what Clark has been saying for months: that the Bush administration was after Saddam Hussein from day one and used 9/11 as an excuse to do what he wanted to do from the beginning. This makes the nomination more important than ever. Bush can be beaten. He is not as popular as the recent polls would suggest. For Democrats to nominate Howard Dean under these circumstances would be a crime. This is not a throw away election. Democrats have a real chance of victory and we need to be very pragmatic about who we nominate. We need to nominate Wes Clark who, in the most recent poll I've seen, (I will try to find it and post it) is within 7 points of Bush. Dean is 15 points behind. It is conventional wisdom (I love that term) that Clark is the strongest candidate to run against Bush.

So let's keep working and keep giving. Money got us to this point and Clark will take us the rest of the way. See you all at the inauguration.

The Four Corner Offense

I just learned a new term today and I wish I hadn't. While reading the new ARG poll numbers from New Hampshire, I found a comment about some older undecided voters getting called and told they couldn’t vote in the primary, because they hadn’t registered. But when the voters said they were Dean supporters they were told they could vote. Obviously a dirty trick on somebody's part. The new term I learned was "push polling," used in one of the comments on the blog entry. Being a newcomer to politics, I was unfamiliar with the term; fortunately, one of the other partners in this weblog who happens to be very smart (a chip off the old block, as they say) explained to me what the term meant. It turns out that it’s just a variation of what Donald Segretti use to do for Nixon. For those few of our readers who don't know it is pretending to be a pollster to a voter and then dissing one of the candidates in the guise of doing polling. This appears to be occurring in N.H. in some form, and, based on what was posted on the web site it appears to be accruing to the benefit of Dean.

At this time it is premature to assume that Dean is doing it; another plausible explanation is that the Republicans are responsible, as they stand to gain the most from propping Dean up. It is clear to everyone that Clark is by far the biggest threat to a Bush victory; and Clark is clearly surging. It will be interesting to see where this leads -- if it leads to Dean, then I think it's the beginning of the end for him. If it can be traced to the Republicans, then it's just business as usual, as they have been messing with the Democratic campaign all along. [And the small-d democratic process in general, for years. -- Max] At least some of Dean's early funding came from Republicans trying to push Dean’s candidacy for obvious reasons discussed at length in this blog and elsewhere.

The other thing of interest today is the announcement that Dean may be thinking about a middle-class tax cut after all. Interesting, since he has been relentlessly bashing the other candidates who were in favor of this for the last several months. How are you going to sell this change of heart, Mr. Tell-it-like-it-is, straight-talking, never-flip-flopping Dean? We didn’t hear a word about this until Clark's plan came out and was widely hailed as a winner. It seems his campaign advisors won’t let him talk about taxes anymore until they make up their mind what he should say. If they had stifled him three weeks ago on all the issues they might have been better off. They should of gone into the four corner offense about a month ago. (Only those of you who are ACC basketball fans will know what I'm talking about. Dean Smith, the legendary basketball coach at North Carolina, years ago, used the four corner offense to run out the clock in games where they were ahead. It drove the rest of the ACC crazy but it was effective.) The average Democrats, it seems, are deserting Dean in droves because of his numerous gaffes, lousy temperament, and issues of electability, while the true believers continue to make excuses and threaten to abandon the party if he's not nominated. No votes have been counted, but if Dean loses, it was stolen from him by the establishment. {see Amy’s posting} Enough for today; my two fingers are getting tired.

Update on The Democratic Futures Market

Clark is now trading at $0.20, Dean at about $0.62. We've seen a lot of movement in the last few days.
Mark Kleiman has an interesting analysis of the market as of yesterday.

Arianna Huffington: Blinder by the Day

This is the text of a letter I sent to Salon about Arianna Huffington's latest column. I haven't heard from them whether they're planning to publish it, but I'm posting here anyway. I encourage other readers of Salon to write to them as well.

------

To The Editor:

I'm not a "Democratic Honcho" so it should be safe for me to do so, but I won't argue with Ms. Huffington about Howard Dean's electibility. ["Dean, Bobby and the ghost of landslides past" 1/7/04] I'll just suggest that she make an appointment with her opthamologist, because she seems to have a blind spot.

I'm under 30, I don't live inside the Beltway, and I'm angry. My candidate is not part of the Democratic establishment Ms. Huffington accuses of "spinelessness". My candidate was against the Iraq war, and he's got the experience and international credibility to get us honorably and safely out of it now that we're there. My candidate is running for President because thousands of ordinary citizens in a grassroots campaign urged him to do so. My candidate inspired my father, who's never been politically active before, to sign up to coordinate campaign efforts in his part of Florida, and inspired us both to start a political blog to support the campaign. My candidate said -- on C-SPAN, no less -- that he'd beat the shit out of people who tried to paint him as unpatriotic. He has dared the Republicans to accuse him of class warfare because he plans to raise taxes on the ultra-rich in addition to rolling back important parts of the Bush tax cuts. My candidate has a bright vision for America's future, a future where even intellectuals are allowed to be patriotic.

My candidate is not Howard Dean. He is General Wesley Clark, and now I'll say it: my candidate is more electable than Howard Dean, and he should be, because he's the best man for the job.

Deaniac Idiocy

The following comment from a Dean supporter was spotted on the WesleyClarkWeblog:

The Dean/Gore/Bradley wing is not going to mobilize for anyone but an anti-establishment figure. Any endorsement will be half-hearted at best, and few will contribute. This is about more than beating Bush. We need to change the corrupt forces within the party that sent us into Iraq.

Wow.

Once again I am amazed at the political immaturity of some Dean supporters. Of course, this person is only repeating what Dean's already said: we don't play well with others.

I am happy that Dean has mobilized people who haven't been in politics before to participate. Of course, so has Clark. But does he get any credit for it? No, it's "Clark's just a puppet of the DLC." Screw that. First of all, I like moderates. Moderates get stuff done. Second of all, Clark is clearly no one's puppet. Third of all, "anti-establishment"? What are you, thirteen? Let's just sweep "the establishment" away and start all over, fresh. The establishment is bad. Down with the establishment. Oh, and while we're at it, don't trust anyone over thirty.

Finally, yeah, maybe congressional dems didn't do enough to halt the war in Iraq. But that war is not their fault. Let's all remember whose decision it was to go to war: George W. Bush's. In the end, it is always the President's decision.

I trust Wes Clark to make those decisions.

Do Deaniacs really want to repeat the mistake of Nader voters in 2000? Will they insist on believing that no one but Dean is worth their vote, that giving their vote to someone who isn't quite what they wanted is worse than another four years of GWB? Do they not remember life before GWB?

Comments like that one make me happy we don't have a comments facility for our blog. I read plenty of idiotic things on other peoples' blogs, I don't want to have to read them on mine.

Democratic Family Values: My Vision

Okay, I never thought I'd say this, but Joe Lieberman has some excellent policy proposals.

I admit I never looked at Lieberman's policy papers because I never considered him seriously for the Dem Nomination. I still don't consider him seriously for the Dem Nomination, but The New Republic's editorial endorsement did get me thinking, especially about the whole 'family values' thing:

Liberals resent Lieberman's moralism. But what they see as sanctimony, many ordinary Americans see as overdue concern about the toxic influences that saturate their children's lives. Clinton acknowledged that concern with calculated micro-initiatives like the v-chip. But it is Lieberman, the more sincere New Democrat, who infuriated Hollywood--and thus denied himself a rich vein of campaign funds--by repeatedly insisting that the entertainment industry value the public good as well as the bottom line.

It's true, I do resent Lieberman's moralism. (I also resent TNR's implication that I somehow can't be both a liberal and an 'ordinary American'.) But I'm just as concerned as the next parent about the "toxic influences that saturate their children's lives". I hate the crap that comes out of Hollywood, I hate the crap they put on TV, I hate marketing aimed at children, the commercialization of every single sphere of public life including the public schools, and yeah, the gratuitious sex and violence of much of what passes for entertainment these days. I resent his moralism because it seems to assume that as a liberal agnostic, I'm not concerned about these things.

Nevertheless TNR did make me take a look at Joe's policy proposals, and I have to admit, I liked what I saw. He's covering ground no other candidate is talking about. For example, he has a great proposal to limit junk food marketing to children, especially in the public schools. He wants to offer paid parental leave to families, just like practically every other industrialized nation does. And he has a plan to help families better afford quality childcare. I like these plans because they go beyond just giving tax breaks to working famlies and really address specific areas of concern. I hope all the candidates look closely at Lieberman's proposals and tackle some of these issues themselves.

But there's room to go further. I'd like to see more programs targeted to stay-at-home parents who are doing important work without much recognition. It should be easier for stay-at-home parents to save money for retirement in their own names, so they don't have to rely on the retirement plans of their working partners. In addition, stay-at-home parents should have some way of earning social security credits for the unpaid work they are doing. As things now stand, parents who give up their own income to raise their kids are far more likely to end up in poverty in old age than those who don't. This is unfair. I realize that candidates may want to stay away from policy proposals that can be used against them to accuse them of pushing outdated models of the single-income family, so maybe it's too much to ask. But the reality is that there are plenty of single-income families with an at-home parent, and lots of things can be done to make life easier for them without pretending that all families want, need, or are able to have the same configuration.

In addition to promoting programs, not just tax breaks, for families with children, candidates need to remember that not everyone has kids. A lot of single people and non-reproducing partnered people feel ignored. As I've said before, I love Clark's new "Families First" tax proposal, but there have been some rumblings to the effect that it screws single people and other non-reproducing families. As Calpundit -- otherwise supportive of the plan -- says "My sister will hate it. She's constantly kvetching --� and reasonably so--� that politicians are forever pandering to families but never offer anything to single people. Clark's plan follows in that rich tradition."

True, true. Although I recently crossed the breeder divide (our son is 9 months old), I still remember the perplexity with which I approached the concerns of people with children before I had any myself. I'd argue that people without kids should still care about helping out families, because those other peoples' kids will be the ones who grow up to be their doctors, their home health aides, or their muggers. There's no escaping the consequences of raising kids, even if you're not doing the raising. Childless people are unlikely to find that a convincing argument, however, so candidates should start listening to their needs too. Supporting civil unions is one important way to support families without children. I'm sure there are others.

Finally, a crucial aspect of supporting families is providing people the tools they need so they don't have children before they're ready. This means access to truthful information about reproductive health, providing sex education that is actually proven to work, not just proven to appeal to the religious right, supporting the right to choose abortion, and working to improve access to birth control and emergency contraception so that fewer people confront that choice.

So that's my vision of what democratic family values are all about. Lieberman addresses some, but not all, of my concerns. That doesn't make him my pick for president or anything, but it does make me glad he ran. I'd like to see General Clark adopt some of Senator Lieberman's positions on family stuff. Then, when Lieberman drops out of the race, he can feel good about endorsing Clark, and he can work on getting Palm Beach County for the dems.

Excellent Clark Endorsement from an Editor at The New Republic, and bizarre Lieberman endorsement from "The Editors"

here. Juicy bits below:

But all the talk about how Clark's biography makes him electable has overwhelmed the more important point: It would also make him a good president.

[ ... ]

More than just an asset for Clark's political campaign, this diplomatic and military experience provides the brains and the brawn behind a worldview that prioritizes threats to U.S. security without sacrificing humanitarian imperatives, that seeks to solve problems through negotiation but is bolstered with a proven willingness to use force. Unlike Democratic rivals who try to demonstrate their foreign policy bona fides by showcasing their Senate votes, the retired general has actually waged the "muscular multilateralism" that his opponents use as a catchphrase. For this reason, Clark is the best solution for a Democratic Party struggling to prove it can protect the United States from terrorists and weapons of mass destruction--not only because Americans will sleep better with a general, rather than a politician, in the Oval Office, but because they'll sleep safer.

[...]

Clark may also be able to persuade the antiwar left of the merits of a true muscular multilateralism--not least through his proposal for a New American Patriotism, which aims to restore the pride that Democrats, disaffected by the Bush administration's jingoism, feel toward the flag. In part, he plans to do this by encouraging the dissent on security issues that has been discouraged, implicitly and explicitly, by Republican leaders. On the stump, Clark of ten says, "There's nothing more American--nothing more patriotic--than speaking out, questioning authority, and holding your leaders accountable." Such declarations could ease the fears of an American public that, once bitten by the deception of the Iraq war, may be twice shy about future uses of military force. If the need arose, Americans would follow Wesley Clark into war. They should follow him to the White House first.

Strangly, "The Editors" (that strange multiheaded beast) at TNR have written a Lieberman endorsement. Huh? I thought at first, but then realized they were probably just using Lieberman to make a point. Turns out the good folks at TNR think Lieberman has important lessons for the rest of us Dems. But I'll have to cover that in another post, I have a screaming baby to feed.

IMF criticizes Bush fiscal policy

Today's NYT

With its rising budget deficit and ballooning trade imbalance, the United States is running up a foreign debt of such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy, according to a report released Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund.

Prepared by a team of I.M.F. economists, the report sounded a loud alarm about the shaky fiscal foundation of the United States, questioning the wisdom of the Bush administration's tax cuts and warning that large budget deficits pose "significant risks" not just for the United States but for the rest of the world.

The report warns that the United States' net financial obligations to the rest of the world could be equal to 40 percent of its total economy within a few years — "an unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country," according to the fund, that could play havoc with the value of the dollar and international exchange rates.

'Nuff said.

Arianna Huffington Going Blind

Only explanation for her amazing refusal to address Wes Clark's candidacy in her most recent pro-Dean piece on Salon. Already sent off a letter to the editor about it. You, readers -- write one too.

Election Year Gimmicks and Other Comments From Clark, Via IRC

Our man Clark did an IRC interview with prominent bloggers this afternoon, once again proving that Dean doesn't have a lock on techno-campaigning. Below, I quote the two best parts:

First, maybe I'm not the only one with the "they're saving Osama Bin Laden till just before the election" irrational conspiracy fear:

LiberalOasis: You, and other Democrats, have regularly criticized George Bush for his failure, as of now, to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. However, the possibility exists that bin Laden will be captured or killed before ElectionDay.Should Democrats continue to criticize Bush on this point, because a freebin Laden is the only thing keeping the terrorist threat alive? Or is the threat greater than one man, and in turn, Dems should be making abroader critique on how Bush is waging the war on terror, in part to preventDems from being speechless if bin Laden is caught?
Clark: Agree with the thrust of your thoughts...it's a broader problem than OBL, but we do have to go after him....even if we take hime out, there's still a lot to do to make the world safer...Wes

I don't have any important comments on this. I'm just glad Wes is thinking about it.

And second:

wolff from IRC: Can the general comment on the immigration plan that Bush proposed today?
Clark: Let me tell you about my ideas...my ideas are to enable earned legalization, develop a guest workers program, and control our borders to promote homeland security. and for me it's what I believe in and will do, not an election year gimmick. Wes

We are going to see a lot more of this from the White House in coming months. As I've said before, I'm certainly capable of appreciating GWB's chocolate chip cookies, but that doesn't mean I'm not suspicious about why he chose to bake them now. Bake me some cookies some year you're not up for reelection, Mr. Bush, and maybe they won't seem so much like a bribe.

That said, I think we should loudly applaud all of Mr. Bush's baking efforts, however cynical they appear. First, because doing the right thing for the wrong reason is still better than doing the wrong thing. Second, because If we don't, we'll be accused of ingratitude and partisanship. And third, because I don't care how many cookies the man bakes in 2004, he's never gonna be the leader we need and deserve to have in the White House. Wes Clark is the leader we need and deserve, and he doesn't have to bake any cookies to prove it.

Good News!!

I’m sure most of our readers have seen the new poll numbers from CNN and New Hampshire. I would post the links but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. You can get them from the Wes Clark web log. [Or go here and here -- Amy] The bottom line is that we are moving the numbers up. The CNN poll has Dean at 24% and Clark at 20% within the margin of error of the poll. The tracking poll in N.H. has Clark at 16% and Kerry at 13%. I think that the "tipping point" for the nation's tolerance for Dean has been reached. It took a long time, mostly because the media bought into the proposition fostered by his campaign that Dean’s gaffes were really just honest blunt statements of fact. His supporters certainly think that. In the last two weeks we have seen some in the media question that premise and raise the issue that we at this blog and many others have been pushing for a long time, that Dean because of his personality and temperament is unelectable. (Not to mention the hole in his resume, discussed in a previous post on this site.)

The shit is now going to hit the fan. Clark has been under the radar screen of the other candidates for a while now, and that’s going to change. Dean is already planning to use surrogates to go negative on Clark, and the other candidates will follow. So will the Republicans, who do not want to see a Clark candidacy. Look for dirty tricks to come from the Rove machine such as a move by Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary in states where they can. And those won’t be Clark votes! The Generals also will be trotted out for an encore, as will the old standby "he’s not a real Democrat." And my response to that is: you are damned right he’s not a Democrat, he’s an American with democratic ideas who appeals to a broad spectrum of the electorate. Thirty years ago he could have run as a Rockefeller Republican but, since they are essentially extinct, he is running as a Clintonian Democrat; and, believe me, that still has a lot of appeal in this country.

Our job is just beginning. Our numbers are up, the momentum is ours, but we have to keep working and keep moving in the right direction. Letters to the editor are important, as are volunteers to go to the primary states, We can’t let up. The next three weeks are critical. Let's all get out there and make this happen for the sake of our children and grandchildren, and for the sake of our country.

Mickey

David Brooks: Information Technology At Fault for Rise in Anti-Semitism, Conspiracy Theories

Brooks complains that "Improvements in information technology have not made public debate more realistic. On the contrary, anti-Semitism is resurgent. Conspiracy theories are prevalent. Partisanship has left many people unhinged."

I sent a letter to the editor about it, and I can't post it until they've definitely not published it, so I'll just give the short, less-polite version: maybe if the Bush Administration didn't simultaneously increase government secrecy and promulgate its own conspiracy theories for political reasons (Saddam was involved in 9/11, for example), the atmosphere would be a little less toxic and a little more realistic.

See my previous post on conspiracy theories.

Wes Clark the Centrist

An interesting thing happened to me today that makes a point I have been stressing on this blog. For several weeks now I have been trying to convince an old Republican friend of mine to support Clark. She listened carefully and agreed with a lot of what I had to say about what Bush has done to this country, but wasn't ready to commit to Clark. To be fair, she may in part have been humoring me; but at least she listened. I just got a call from her about another topic; in our conversation, she mentioned that she had run into one of her old friends from back home in West Virginia, who had been a diehard Republican forever, and who was now working on the Wes Clark campaign. She seemed amazed at this. She now had two close friends, one a longstanding Democrat and the other a lifelong Republican, both working for Clark. Clark is not a typical Democrat, I said, he bridges the divide between the two parties. He’s a moderate on social issues and strong on defense, The perfect combination to appeal to mainstream Americans. Not Republicans or Democrats but Americans.

As I have stressed before Wes Clark can be a healing figure in this country. He can bridge the political divide and appeal to all Americans. No more Blue states vs. Red states. That is not to say that the extremes of both parties won’t continue their warfare. but at least I and other Americans won’t have to take part in it. The majority of Americans want to be as safe as possible from terrorism and still have a moderate, truly compassionate president. That man is Wes Clark. The next six weeks will determine whether this is merely a pipe dream or the Democratic party can embrase someone outside the typical mold. I firmly believe that it is possible, that above all else they want to win and will come to the Clark camp on that basis alone. He clearly has the best shot at beating Bush, but in addition he also has the potential to be a great president and a healing figure for the American people.

Mickey

Thoughts on the new Clark "Families First" tax reform plan

Here's the speech he gave. Here's the policy paper.

Three things I love about the plan

1. The name. It's always driven me bonkers that the Republican leadership has trumpeted familiy values while doing nothing at all to help actual families. So I loved the part in Clark's speech where he said "The Republicans are always talking about family values. It's time in America that we started valuing families. It's time we put America's families first again."


2. Eliminating the need for most families to file a tax form at all. Is there a person in the world who is not an accountant for whom the very thought of tax forms does not make their skin crawl? People who have to fill out the forms should be people who can afford to hire accountants to do it for them. Just imagine the additional time in April that families will have together when parents no longer spend evenings anxiously adding line 62a to line 58b and writing the results on line 85e.


3. Increasing the tax rate on income over $1 million/year, and using that money to pay for tax credits for non-wealthy working families.

Anyway, the plan rocks. Now here's my not-very-rigorous and probably offensive explanation about why our tax code should be mildly progressive:

Many people think there is something inherently unfair about the government taking a greater percentage of rich peoples' income than of poor peoples' income. Many of the people who believe this are not themselves rich, but are convinced that any second now, they will be, at which time they won't want to pay a larger percent than those losers who didn't become rich like they did.

You know what? Those people are right. There is something inherently unfair about rich people having to pay a greater percentage than poor people. Just as there is something inherently unfair about being born rich or poor to begin with. But that unfairness is different, you might protest. It's natural, whereas a progressive tax code is government-imposed, and the government has a responsibility to be fair. True enough. But that's not the only responsibility the government has. The government also has a responsibility to perpetuate the conditions that make democracy possible, and massive and increasing financial inequality ain't good for democracy. Wealthier citizens must contribute more than their 'fair share' so that future rioting masses won't snatch more than their 'fair share' from the cold dead fingers of the wealthier citizens' inheritors.

Oh, but unfair taxes stifle peoples' initiative, you say? I don't know. If you make over a million dollars a year, you probably have more ambition than is good for you, and you'll probably keep working your ass off no matter how much additional money you make from it. In fact, you might want to consider chilling out a little, having a little bit less ambition, maybe checking in with your kids to see what they're snorting these days.

Final, tangential point of this post: Americans have to work too hard, for too many hours. This is not beneficial to families. Families thrive when they have time to spend together. Not quality time, just time. Dinner time. Vacation time. Holiday time. Weekend time. Postpartum time. Americans have less vacation time than the residents of most other industrialized nations. Want to strengthen families? Give everyone the month of August off. Hey, if President Bush doesn't have anything important to do during August, all that crap the rest of us do at work can wait too, right?

Apropos of secrecy

See this NYT article today about a terrorism case:

Much of the information available now comes from a series of articles in The Miami Daily Business Review, which learned about the case in March when it was pending before the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta. The clerk's office of the appeals court inadvertently and briefly listed the case on a public docket. Previously, not even the existence of the case had been made public.

A consortium of press agencies is arguing, appropriately, that "Although the right to access is not absolute, the right of the public to litigate its entitlement to access must be absolute if the public is to have means to effect its right of access."

Amen, brother.

Oh, and Clark really was excellent on Meet The Press

Though what was the point of trying to pin him down to a refusal to serve as Vice President. Just to be annoying? It's like all the interviewers are on a quest to be the one who got the candidate to say something they might have to retract later. Have they got a betting pool somewhere keeping track? Is this what their salary increases are based on? "Getting" candidates on their previous statements? Ick. Stop it, stupid interviewers. Ask some real questions for a change.

Some notes on conspiracy theories

I've been meaning to post on conspiracy theories, and then Orcinus brought them up in a recent post in the context of debunking the "Dean said the President was tipped off by the Saudis before 9/11" story. (I know many people will expect me to hew to an anti-Dean party line here, but in this case, Orcinus is right. Anyway, Dean, though not my pick for president, is not the anti-christ.)

Orcinus basically says, look, Dean is saying that when people don't trust the government, conspiracy theories abound, that such conspiracy theories are detrimental to democracy, and that the administration has a responsibility to model transparency so as to short-circuit the proliferation of conspiracy theories.

The current Administration may have nothing to hide, but it does not behave that way. Such behavior makes even the most non-conspiracy-minded observer anxious. Here I will admit to my two most completely unfounded conspiracy fears: Paul Wellstone's plane crash not an accident; Adminstration saving up Osama Bin Laden to capture during week before general election to assure Bush landslide.

Let me point out, though no doubt the point will be lost, that I do not believe these things to be true. They are irrational fears. But they feed on the uncertainty and mistrust that arise when the government appears not to trust citizens with the truth, and not to take finding out the truth seriously itself. (Yes yes, Bill Clinton lied. But my concern is with the current Administration, and two wrongs do not make a right.)

That the Bush Administration is secretive is no secret. U.S. News and World Report recently reported on the problem. Observers from across the political spectrum (see Public Citizen, Phyllis Schafly, Heritage Foundation, Steven Chapman, OMB Watch, Newspaper Association of America) have lamented the Bush administration's secrecy.

Why should we care? Here's another quote from Orcinus's exegesis on fascism:

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

-- from They Thought They Were Free

Again I'd like to emphasize that I am not claiming the Bushies are Nazis.

I do think their secrecy is a big problem. I don't like it, and I don't think we should get used to it. I worry that lots of people in our society are not worried about it because they identify with Bush, they trust him, and his administration cultivates the image of him as a straight-talking, highly moral man, whose authority and leadership derive not from the people but from God. Hence, the administration feels it does not need to answer to the people, but only to God.

Bush is not some King David, to govern by divine right. It is not appropriate for the leader of a democratic republic to behave as though he does not have to answer to citizens of that republic.

I'm not really quite done with this post, as I need to justify my point that Bush governs as though by divine right. But that'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Our candidate shines

I just finished watching Wes Clark on Meet the Press. His growth as a candidate continues to be unbelievable. He is now a polished public speaker who looks like he has been doing this all his life. And he didn't say a single thing that he'll have to retract tomorrow. He didn't raise his voice, he didn't point his finger at anybody, and he didn't insult anybody except Bush. In other words, he looked, talked and acted presidential. He is everything that Dean and Bush are not. The Clark campaign is cleary gaining momentum, but we still have a long way to go; the outcome is not going to be decided quickly, so we all have to keep working.

I used to think that the outrageous things that Dean has been saying would come back to haunt him, but it now seems evident that Dean could do or say anything and most of his supporters wouldn't care. Their devotion is absolute and unshakeable. Dean's misstatements [and they are becomming legendary] have already doomed his candidacy in the general election should he get the nomination. This is another fact that his supporters refuse to acknowledge. Contrary to their opinion there is a significant portion of the American electorate that wants an inclusive president that governs from the middle. We have already seen what governing from the right does to this country and I don't think governing from the far left will be much better. Why someone would disparage one of the most successful presidents of the twentieth century [Clinton] is beyond me. I certainly did not condone Clinton's personal behavior, it made me mad as hell at the time, but Dean was not addressing personal behavior when he called the Democratic Leadership Council the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

I have said this previously but it bears repeating; Dean is the weakest candidate that the Democrats could run. He will get killed in the general election. He does not have the temperament, judgment or experience to be president. He does not have that core of likeability that we demand of our leaders. Nominating Dean means the end of the Democratic party for a generation, and, even worse, the packing of the Supreme Court with right-wing ideologues. The supporters of all the other candidates realize this, so let's hope the field is reduced quickly to Dean and someone else before it is too late. I think that someone else will be Clark, but if it isn't I will support whoever it is.

Mickey

Karl Rove & the Permanent Campaign: Part II of a Response to MIFF

Read Part I

Yesterday I had a revelation that little Ralphie Nader was right about something in 2000. There is some sense in which both major parties are th same: both are, for the most part, too busy trying to win elections to actually have time to govern. Too bad he thought he had an actual solution to this problem.

I came to this revelation after floating an argument to MIFF about why I thought the Bush Adminstration was seeking 'total and permanent control over the government.' My argument was basically, well, it's no big secret that Karl Rove says that's the goal.

It is widely reported, from sources across the political spectrum, that Karl Rove's ambition is, in the words of a Time magazine profile of him, "creating a locked-in Republican majority".
Especially apropos to the general theme of this blog right now is this statement by Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard, which he made in the course of an article attacking Howard Dean:

Dean's false statements included this: "Karl Rove and others have talked about going back to the McKinley era before there was any kind of social safety net in this country." Not true. What Rove has talked about is how the McKinley presidency touched off a Republican era in American politics. Rove would like Bush to begin a new era of Republican dominance--but he never said this should be done by removing the safety net.

MIFF was unimpressed with this argument, and wrote:

If you mean that Rove seeks Republican dominance by some sort of force -- such as by outlawing Democrats and suspending elections -- I would again ask that you present some type of evidence to that effect. If you mean it more figuratively -- such as Rove desires Republicans to win every presidential election from now until eternity -- then I would submit that that is the goal of every political group, e.g., Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Libertarians, etc. Is Terry McAuliffe, or any other Democrat (including yourself), now plotting to win seven out of the next eight elections (roughly a generation) but to lose one of the eight because otherwise it would unpermissably mean "Democratic dominance for at least a generation."

In this post, I'll address MIFF's second objection. I do believe that the Bush Administration is increasingly showing itself willing to ally itself with undemocratic elements and strategies to solidify its dominance, but let's leave that for another post. Assume that Rove just wants to win, forever and ever. If that's the goal of every political group, as MIFF claims, then who am I to use it against the Bush Administration?

Well, I would like to think that the goal of a political group is not simply to win, but to govern. If the focus is on winning, when exactly does the governing part come in? I'm not the only person to have this wild and crazy idea -- I refer you to the year-old Esquire article, again, in which a senior administration official told Suskind "Don't you understand?…We got into the White House and forfeited the game. You're supposed to stand for something . . . to generate sound ideas, support them with real evidence, and present them to Congress and the people. We didn't do any of that. We just danced this way and that on minute political calculations and whatever was needed for a few paragraphs of a speech." Here's another official, talking to Suskind (this quote comes off Google's cache of Suskind's article, as sometime in the last week or two Suskind has made the article unavailable except to users with passwords) right after the midterm elections:

"Maybe the last two years wasn't just a case of benign neglect," says this source, with whom I spoke extensively throughout October. "Maybe it was brilliant neglect."

He went on to explain: From early on, Rove may have been focused on energizing the core, the far Right, for the midterms. An attempt to push centrist policies through a divided Congress would have done anything but that, and it would have violated the prime strategic directive: don't alienate the right wing like the first President Bush. Karl's remedy: co-opt the policy-creation process; put it in a lockbox until after genuine Republican control is established.

"Now the troops are ready to march," the source says. "The question is, What will we do? Will we finally put together a thoughtful policy team to create a coherent plan for America's future, or just push through one political favor after another dressed up like policy? I guess it's really for Karl, Karl and the president, to decide."

Apparently there's a name for this kind of politics dressed up as policy: The Permanent Campaign. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, published a book in 2000 about it. A summary of the book on their website notes:

At least three implications of the permanent campaigning on issues deserve attention. First, organized interests often campaign a lot more on issues than on electoral politics. Second, the infusion of permanent campaign tactics and funding into interest-group politics contributes to the decline of deliberation in Congress. If the stakes are high and interests have "invested" a great deal in both politicians and the framing of issues, why would they encourage deliberation? Finally, the permanent campaign on issues favors those interests that can bring the most resources to bear in a context in which the disparity in resources is usually immense. The very power of constructed narratives allows moneyed interests to make the case that they are acting to benefit citizens and consumers as part of their overall argument on a given policy.

The Permanent Campaign is not the fault of either the Republican or the Democratic parties, and Karl Rove, much as I'd like to blame him for it, did not invent it, though some have argued that the problem has gotten much, much worse in the current administration. So MIFF is right to ask whether the Democrats are any different from Republicans in wanting to win. There appear to be structural problems in society right now, and I certainly wouldn't pretend to know the solution to them (I'm not Nader). But the fact that neither party has the time or inclination to formulate and enact real policies doesn't mean there's no difference between them.

If all I'm going to get out of government is political favors, who would I rather those favors go to? People who are already fabulously wealthy and the corporations they run, plus Jerry Falwell? Or, say, everyone else?

Sure, I wish there were something behind door number three, but there ain't. So, Bob, I guess I'll go with door number two.

Just as I suspected...

The more I've been reading about conservatives and reading the stuff from the conservative think tanks, the more I've been wondering why the hell they would support President Bush anyway. Then here's this article in the Times today about about it:

"At this point, I think that conservatives sold out their small government philosophy and replaced it with a philosophy of whatever will get them re-elected," said Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research organization. "Neither party is committed to smaller government and less spending. Those who are still standing for fiscal conservatism are frustrated."

Further observations on the horse race

Happy New Year to all of our readers. I'm going to sneak this piece in between Amy's missives and thus give your brain a rest for a few minutes. Amy's entries make you think, mine probably make you angry, especially if you are a Dean supporter. My drift has definately been more and more into anti-Dean camp. But a word in my own defense. "It isn't my fault. He made me do it." How could he turn into such a bad candidate so quickly? Was he saying idiotic things all along and nobody was noticing or did the pressure get to him finally? He has come up with a neat trick however to prevent any one of these "gaffes" from killing his campaign; as soon as one looks like it is taking hold and sinking into the public psyche he makes another one, even worse, and we completely forget about the prior one. So far it seems to be working.

There has however, been a subtle but perceptible shift in the race in the last several days. With the 4th quarter fund raising numbers unofficially out many pundits are now seeing this as a two-way race, with Clark clearly having the resources to carry the fight well into the primary season. In addition Clark is continuing to improve as a candidate at the same time that Dean's weaknesses are becoming more obvious to even some of his supporters.

Dean's camp has come up with a unique argument which unfortunately has some merit, about why only he can beat Bush. Not that he's a better candidate with better ideas, but rather that he's the only one that can match the Bush team dollar for dollar and can thus defend themselves better from the Rove smear campaign. The smear campaign will surely come, but if Dean's the nominee there isn't enough money in Fort Knox to counter it. There's just too much on the record already, too many flip flops, too many misstatements, too many retractions, too many half truths and untruths, too many video clips of an angry man shouting at his audience. The Dean candidancy has already been fatally wounded by the candidate himself. All Karl Rove and company will need to do is kick the dirt into its grave and read the eulogy.

Even a candidate as strong as Clark is going to see a withering attack on his character,ideas, gender, patriotism and anything else they can think of. That's after all why they raised 200 million to fight a non-existant primary opponent. This will be very hard to counter without any resources. I have to hope that there is a committee of "sons of bitches" deep in the bowels of the Clark campaign strategizing about how to deal with this problem. I would hate to work like hell to get Clark nominated only to see the Republicans destroy him before the campaign has officially begun. Of course maybe Dean will lend the party his donor's list so we can raise the necessary money to fight a smear. For some reason I don't think that's likely, but we'll see.

Mickey

The Liberal Media Bubble Project (LMBP): Today, The Cato Institute

In a previous post I proposed to research the conservative mind. Today, I report on my initial research for the project, henceforth to be known as the Liberal Media Bubble Project.

So far, I've been reading policy papers at the websites of conservative think tanks. What I find amazing is how there will be policy papers that make perfect sense to me, and that I can heartily agree with, and then right next to them, absolutely ridiculous things. For example, take The Cato Institute. I was ever-so-pleased to see a Cato Institute commentary on why local governments shouldn't waste money on baseball stadiums. I know it seems un-American, but I hate baseball. Meanwhile, I don't see why my tax money should have to subsidize baseball stadiums so that everyone in baseball can make lots of money. So I'm all for someone actually objecting to the practice. But then, take this book on global warming. The author apparently argues "why should we complain about a four- or five-degree increase in temperature when most people prefer to live in warmer climates, and millions have moved and changed jobs in order to do so?" Huh? And another "Huh?!"

More later. Max and I gotta go do something non-politics-related now, like watch an episode of Angel.

Hatred, yes, but not quite mindless : Part I of a Response to Michael the Independent From Fairfax

Several days ago I received an email from someone I will call Michael The Independent From Fairfax (who, as stated in my last post, should not be confused with all the other Michaels, and who will be abbreviated as MIFF). Michael had read parts of The Isikoff Report on Politics, especially my Hanukkah Message, and was writing to complain about my characterization of the Bush administration as 'authoritarian' and as wanting 'permanent and total control over the government.' Michael couldn't understand why someone who obviously recognized the importance of winning Republicans and Independents to my cause would say something that most of those people believed not only to be false but patently false.

I asked Michael's permission to quote his letter in the blog, which he gave, and so I quote:

Do you have any evidence whatsoever suggesting that Bush seeks "permanent and total control over the government?"

[...]

I don't speak for other independents, of course, but I suspect that many of them are equally repulsed by your silly comments about Bush and authoritarianism. You remind me of certain hardcore Republicans in the 1990s who not only disagreed with Clinton's policies, but felt compelled to vilify him and accuse him of every transgression under the sun. They let partisanship blind them to reality, and so it is with you and your ilk. I'll be able to vote Democratic again someday but I think that at the very least it's going to take a lopsided loss next November to show the Democrats that mindless hatred is no substitute for reasoned debate.

This post is the first part of my response to MIFF, who may be repulsed but who I hope has kept on reading anyway.

First of all, MIFF may find it amusing to hear that in the first draft of my Hanukkah message, I said something he'd find even sillier than the stuff I did end up saying. In the first draft, I actually called the Bush government "fascist". I asked my mom to help me edit the message, though:

Mom: You can't call the Bush adminstration fascists.
Me (whiny): They are fascists.
Mom: People will stop reading once they see the word fascist.
Me (even whinier): Paul Krugman called them fascists. [Note: this is not actually, to my knowledge, true. Paul Krugman did call them "a revolutionary power", however.]
Mom: You're not Paul Krugman.
Me(whiniest daughter ever): Are you saying I don't have the credibility to say that the current administration is fascist?
Mom: That's exactly what I am saying.

So out went "fascist" and in went "authoritarian".

Apparently, I don't have the credibility to say that either.

Before everyone gets all up-in-arms about my saying "fascist," please read this fascinating essay by famed blogger Orcinus on fascism and whether or not the Bush adminstration can be called fascist by reasonable people. The short answer is no, and since the essay is some 85 pages long, I quote here the money shot (more prosaically known as the conclusion):

So these essays were written in the hopes of resurrecting a proper understanding of fascism -- what it really is, how it operates, why it is in fact very much alive and with us today. Part of my purpose, of course, was to persuade liberals to drop the inappropriate references to fascism, mostly by coming to grips with its real nature and not its imagined one.

My deeper purpose, though, was to sound a call to arms for Americans of every stripe who believe in democracy, because ultimately those are the institutions that are most endangered by fascism. Until the strands of far-right extremism that have insinuated themselves into the fabric of mainstream conservatism are properly identified and exposed, they will continue to wrap themselves around it and through it until its corruption is complete. And when that befalls us, it will probably be too late to stop it.

As the War on Terror, instead of combating the rise of fascimentalism, transforms itself into a War on Liberals; as conservatives increasingly identify themselves as the only "true" Americans; as Bush continues to depict himself as divinely inspired, and the leader of a great national spiritual renewal; as the political bullying that has sprung up in defense of Bush takes on an increasingly righteous religious and violent cast; and as free speech rights and other democratic institutions that interfere with complete political control by conservatives come increasingly under fire, then the conditions for fascimentalism will almost certainly rise to the surface.

These conditions remain latent for now, but the rising tide of proto-fascist memes and behaviors indicates that the danger is very real, especially as fascimentalist terrorist attacks take their toll on the national sense of well-being and security. It may take fully another generation for it to take root and blossom, but its presence cannot be ignored or dismissed.

European fascism was a terrible thing. An American fascism, though, could very well devastate the world.

Readers should take note, then, that I only called the Bush Administration fascist in a draft, and I have since done the responsible thing and researched the allegation, finding it, so far, groundless, and that my mom is a very smart woman.

Parts II and III, to follow: Bush Administration 'authoritarian'? and Does Bush Administration seek 'permanent and total control over the government,' as alleged?