The Snarky High Ground

The Teenager just linked to a NYT piece by David Brooks explaining that voters are silly to vote on the basis of "electability", because if they all do that, then voter A will vote for a candidate because he thinks that the candidate is electable, thus making the candidate look stronger and causing voter B to vote for him for the same reason, and so on -- with positive feedback loops leading to a sort of bubble craze which, however, will collapse instantaneously in the same way if the candidate suddenly starts to seem less electable for any reason.

This doesn't seem like much of a point. By now we're dealing with candidates who are all pretty much the same. Gephardt is out, Lieberman soon will be, and support for Kucinich and Sharpton is stable at 1% or 2%. So what we're looking at is really Coke versus Pepsi, and consumer choices of that type are famous for being volatile.

What's really happening is that the core Democratic voters, even the simple Iowa folk, have learned to play the meta-politics game of "electability". So now the pundits have had to try to regain their edge by playing meta-meta-politics: "Aren't those people out there fools, thinking about electability like that?" By doing this, they hope to maintain control of the all-important High Snarky Ground.

As is his wont, Brooks is just throwing a little monkey-wrench into the Democratic works -- no surprise there. Yglesias' case is a bit more complicated. Doesn't he belong to the moderate branch of the party, which has been promoting the swing-voter "electability" strategy and slagging on the odious Democratic Core Constituency ever since Matt was in diapers?

Since approximately 1965 I've had to live with the fact that most Americans don't agree with me about politics, and whatever changes there have been in my own opinions during that period have not changed the situation much. Between you and me (PC aside), the famous White Southern Male the Democrats are supposed to be trying to appeal to seems to be quite the jerk (as do his many Northern brothers). But if I choose to think about his response to a candidate when I vote in a primary -- as people have been nagging me to do for twenty years or more -- couldn't I be cut a little slack?

Of course, my real gripe against the New Dem types (the ones who've been pushing the swing voter strategy the hardest) is that I doubt that they would support an Old Democrat even if he were electable. (Consider Matt's insane drivellings about the ethanol subsidy and Gephardt, for example, or the way many of them turned on Gore because they thought he had gone populist on them.) The big difference between the people who helped Dukakis lose and the ones who helped Gore lose -- I don't mean Matt here -- is that Susan Estrich is "out", whereas Martin Peretz still isn't.

More here.
Revisions for style

Blog Hero Award

The cherished STF Blog Hero Award goes to Cup O' Joe for his post They Brought It On Themselves! about Southern Whites.

"Nothing I can say will convince them that their outlook on life is harmful to them, or that the people they are trusting to protect and to guide them are more than likely just using them to further their own causes, whatever they may be. To them, I'm just an interfering Yankee (never mind that I've lived in Atlanta for a decade) who doesn't know anything about life (despite the fact that I have lived in more places than some of these people have even heard of). Things are the way they are and that's the way it will always be. It's an argument you would expect to hear from a slave or a feudal peasant, not a citizen of a free nation."

Go read, it's good. Other good stuff there, too. Scroll around.

Repost

Repost of something from two weeks ago:

"But the most sacred duty civilians have to their armed forces is to ensure they are never called to sacrifice their lives unless this nation faces a real threat."

Kerry Guy Getting Creamed

I'm watching Crossfire, and a Kerry "Senior Advisor" is on, and is just getting creamed about the Iraq war and the WMD question. I mean eaten alive. Begala is stepping in to try to help him. The right-winter guys are bringing up old Kerry quotes about how Iraq had WMD and how we must act... the Kerry guy is being nice, doesn't know the issues, isn't prepared to argue the points, seems surprised that the right-wingers would say the things they are saying... Reminds me of Kerry before his makeover. "Pathetic" is the word coming to mind.

In a way it reminds me of Leiberman saying the Bush people should go ahead and count absentee ballots, even if they are not properly postmarked -- which might be the one event that stands out for me as exemplifying the problems of the old-style "Washington" Democrats.

I've been thinking that if Kerry can continue to be the tough, focused, fighting guy he has been for the last few weeks -- since he took on the Dean persona -- maybe he can win. It didn't occur to me that a campaign is more than just the guy at the top. It's also all the old-style Democrats that we have been so tired of. They're still there.

Voting Machines

Test of Electronic Balloting System Finds Major Security Flaws:

"Electronic voting machines from Diebold Inc. have computer security and physical security problems that might allow corrupt insiders or determined outsiders to disrupt or even steal an election, according to a report presented yesterday to Maryland state legislators."

Amen, Brother

Krugman, Where's the Apology?:

"Still, the big story isn't about Mr. Bush; it's about what's happening to America. Other presidents would have liked to bully the C.I.A., stonewall investigations and give huge contracts to their friends without oversight. They knew, however, that they couldn't. What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to get away with such things?"

Political Blog Ads

One of the topics on the blogs today is inexpensive blog advertising vs. expensive TV advertising. I think there is no question that inexpensive POLITICAL blog ads reach the informed person most likely to get involved and/or contribute. Compared to the cost of TV advertising there shouldn't be any question that a campaign should be putting part of its money - particularly early money - into weblog ads.

I've accepted an ad for Chandler for Congress, over there on the right. Let me know what you think. And click on the ad to visit the site, see what you think about it, and send a message that politicians would do well to pay attention to us blogers and blog readers.

The South

Erskine Blogs: Stop treating the South like a foreign land:

"I am not an oracle on Southern politics. But I know one thing. Pundits and Democrats need to stop treating the South like it is some sort of uncouth uncle who is easier to ignore than confront.

Certainly there are more differences between New York and Newfound Gap than weather. But as a world traveler, I feel confident enough in my understanding of American politics to say that they have more in common than they have differences. "

Coulter Fails to Slime Kerry

Despite my lifelong interest in slimy creatures, I don't normally do Ann Coulter. However, a line I saw in Diana Moon's fisking of Coulter caught my eye.

Coulter writes: ""Kerry's life experience consists of living off other men's money by marrying their wives and daughters".

To begin with, that's pretty misleading. Like George Washington, Kerry is a war hero who married a rich widow with a taste for classy guys-- and not someone else's wife, the way Neil Bush just did. (Apparently Coulter thinks that Theresa Heinz should have remained alone forever, the way Coulter probably will).

But here's my main point: what's this shit about "marrying other men's daughters?"

What other options are there? By law he can't marry other men's sons, nor can he marry his own daughters. Marrying other men's daughters is where the action is in the marriage biz. Does Coulter think Kerry should have remained single forever too?

It sort of seems that Coulter, at her age, is still not completely comfortable with what Mommy and Daddy do in bed and where babies come from. Isn't it about time for someone to take her aside and give her The Talk?

Edit: Neil Bush, I mean, not Jeb. Can't tell the felons without a scorecard.

Dean

Sometimes it is a good idea to wait a bit before saying anything. I think I'm glad that I had decided this week is one of those times. And the news today that his campaign is flat out of money make today another one of those times... I think I'll wait a bit longer to decide what I think about all of this.

Don't you wish the professional pundits would keep their mouths shut when they don't really have anything worth saying? Blogging is great -- you don't live and die by deadlines. Of course, you also don't get paid.

"A Certain Amount of Baldness"

Recently the New York Times posted a story with the too-tactful headline "Less Certainty in White House on Iraq's Arms". Brad Delong objected that the White House is not "less certain" now; it is now certain that it had earlier been wrong.

"Mecki" commented (slightly revised):

"I was reminded of a story by Ephraim Kishon, in which he describes his loss of hair. When he's down to 3 hairs (and two have fallen out) he writes 'I guess I have to own up to having a certain amount of baldness' .

This is the Bush White House: When every one else has realised that there are no WMDs and there were no WMDs, they say 'Well, maybe not QUITE as many as we thought.'"

This sounds like a brand name for the whole Bush administration: "A Certain Amount of Baldness". It describes the economic plan pretty well too.

Edited for style

Blowback

Wire story from Moon's UPI, printed in Moon's Washington Times, Iraqi govt. papers: Saddam bribed Chirac - (United Press International):

Documents from Saddam Hussein's oil ministry reveal he used oil to bribe top French officials into opposing the imminent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

This is almost certainly right-wing propaganda against France, planted in an Iraqi paper for the purpose of being picked up by US media.

And this,

A senior Bush administration official said Washington was aware of the reports but refused further comment.

This is White House assistance in this smear job.

Here is some background on the right-wing's campaign against France. These wingnuts REALLY ARE talking with increasing hostility toward France, with some discussion of military action! FRANCE!

Lyons: "Attack on Scrooge McDuck"

Here's Gene Lyons' column for the week!

Attack on Scrooge McDuck
Posted on Wednesday, January 28, 2004

According to the seers and soothsayers of the right, a terrible new
threat confronts America and its inspired leader George W. Bush. Like
Shakespeare’s Calpurnia, they warn their mighty Caesar of lionesses
whelping in the streets, strange omens and portents in the night sky,
and they do fear them. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has waxed
apoplectic; James K. Glassman of the American Enterprise Institute
forsees "a great threat not just to the re-election of George Bush, but
to our truly open society." Even the Washington Post has expressed
alarm. And what’s the cause of all this hubbub? Simple: the Democrats
have found a Scrooge McDuck of their own. International financier George
Soros, among the richest men in the world, plans to devote a small
fraction of his estimated $7 billion to defeating President Bush. The
Hungarian-born tycoon, who emigrated from England to the U.S. in 1956,
has pledged a reported $18 million to three liberal organizations: $5
million to internet advocacy group MoveOn. org, $3 million to former
Clinton aide John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, and another
$10 million toward a Democratic voter registration drive.

Sounds ominous, right? By taking advantage of an obscure constitutional
loophole permitting even billionaires to oppose Bush, Soros bids to
overturn the natural order. As if that weren’t enough, he’s taken to
writing books and articles and granting interviews explaining why he
believes that Bush’s re-election would have terrible consequences for
America and the world.

Writers in the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times have expressed
consternation that a foreign-born citizen would be so cheeky. A website
called GOPUSA.com has described the Jewish financier as a "descendant of
Shylock." The Postasks Democrats to compare the consequences of
"conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife opening his bank account
on behalf of Mr. Bush."

It’s worth wondering what’s in Washington Post water coolers these days.
The reclusive Mr. Scaife, who unlike Soros inherited his pile, has
bankrolled right-wing causes for decades. Had editors read their own
newspaper’s fine reporting back in 1999, they might realize that without
Scaife’s largesse, we might not have such ornaments to democracy as the
Federalist Society, the American Enterprise Institute, News-Max.com or
the American Spectator magazine.

Scaife’s funding of the Spectator’s secretive, $2.6 million "Arkansas
Project" during the Clinton years contributed to the care and feeding of
Whitewater witness David Hale, a convicted felon making absurd
allegations against the president. It also financed articles describing
the president of the United States as a drug smuggler and murderer.
Operatives hired by the Spectator even probed the private lives of
journalists deemed unfriendly to Kenneth Starr. Unlike Clinton’s sexual
antics, Starr placed his office’s investigation of the "Arkansas
Project" under seal. Grand Jury secrets, you see.

The estimable Mr. Soros, in contrast, works in broad daylight. He even
writes his own books. His latest, entitled "The Bubble of American
Supremacy" argues that the Bush administration has responded to the 9/11
terror attacks exactly as Osama bin Laden wanted it to: by implementing
"a radical foreign policy agenda" in which might makes right. An excerpt
appeared in the December 2003 Atlantic Monthly. "The Bush doctrine,"
Soros wrote "... is built on two pillars: the United States will do
everything in its power to maintain its unquestioned military supremacy;
and the United States arrogates the right to pre-emptive action. In
effect, the doctrine establishes two classes of sovereignty: the
sovereignty of the United States, which takes precedence over
international treaties and obligations; and the sovereignty of all other
states, which is subject to the will of the United States. This is
reminiscent of George Orwell’s ‘ Animal Farm’: all animals are equal,
but some animals are more equal than others."

The Bush doctrine, Soros recently told Josh Marshall, "is unacceptable
cannot possibly be accepted—by the rest of the world." By invading Iraq
under false pretenses, he thinks, the U.S. rid the world of a despicable
tyrant at the expense of its fundamental credibility. When President
Bush uses farcically Orwellian doublespeak like "weapons of mass
destruction-related program activities" to describe Saddam’s
non-existent military threat, he doesn’t even expect to be believed by
any but the dullest voters. And when Bush boasts, as he did in his State
of the Union speech, that "no one can now doubt the word of America,"
and that he "will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of
our country," he doesn’t mean that Iraq’s imaginary links to 9/11 have
been proven. He means that any nation he threatens had better back down.
Having lived under Nazi and communist occupation, Soros insists that
people who call Bush a "fascist" are both wrong and counter-productive.
He also insists, however, that an ideology of pure power is profoundly
un-American and doomed to fail. How that makes the man a danger to
democracy, I cannot imagine.

• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient
of the National Magazine Award.

Link

What I Think Happened

I think that a lot of last minute deciders, who had not been paying particular attention to the race, voted for Kerry based on his resume, assuming that he can win because he is a veteran and Dean isn't. I suspect that none of them have had to sit through an entire Kerry speech.

Anyone who HAS tried to sit through an entire Kerry speech knows he can't beat Bush.

Somehting in the Air

I don't know why, but lots of bloggers who seem usually to have full-time proofreaders are posting things loaded with typos, elided words, repeated words, etc. Or maybe it's just me.

Alterman and Springsteen: Problems?

Eric Alterman doesn't like Deanies:

"Moreover, it’s kind of pathetic that so many people on the left become so tied into hero worship—Nader, Dean, Chomsky, (and dare I say it, Stalin)—that they feel a need to abuse anyone who does not share their wide-eyed admiration."

Well, yeah, you did dare say that, Eric. You be scary when you be mad.

He explained himself the next day, though:

"Did I smear all or even a majority of Dean supporters? Did I compare Dean to Stalin? You get an “F” in reading comprehension for even asking either question."

OK, fine, I'm probably not a Stalinist, but since I found the gratuitous Stalin reference highly annoying, I get an F in reading comprehension. I think I'll take what's behind the third door, Eric.

Eric needs to find another outlet. He doesn't let on, but the restraining order Bruce Springsteen slapped on his sorry ass must have really hurt him.

Edit: I WAS JOKING! There was no restraining order!

(Edited for style.)

Sharpton Working For Bush?!

The Left Coaster: Al Sharpton Has Left Our Building.

Go read. Looks like a GOP "dirty trick" designed to erode black support for the Democrats, especially Dean! A high-level GOP campaign operative working with the Sharpton campaign -- for free! From the nature of this relationship I suspect that any investigative follow-up of this story will also show some kind of campaign or personal funding coming to Sharpton from the GOP, whether publicly disclosed or not (as in Swiss bank account).

Ten Patriots

Digby at the american street: Ten Patriots.

The Runup

I'm watching Bush taking questions on TV. He calls the pre-war period, "the runup to the war." Is this related to the "marketing campaign" that his Chief of Staff referred to? Runup?

He also says that Saddam was a man with bad intentions, who could have gotten weapons, so the US is safer with him gone.

Is the US safer from stopping the war on those who attacked us on 9/11 to instead go to Iraq? Either we are in a desperate war against the terrorists, or not. If we are, then how can we pause that war to start a different war?

It took a while...

but apparently the majority of Americans now hold the beliefs about IraqWar Part II that I did before the war took place.

Most Americans (51 percent to 43 percent) believe the result of the war with Iraq was not worth the loss of American life and other costs of attacking Iraq. (CBS News/New York Times poll, January 12-15, 2004)

Americans overwhelmingly (70 percent) disagree with the statement that “the threat of terrorism has been significantly reduced by the [Iraq] war.” (Program on International Policy Attitudes poll, November 21-30, 2003)

By a wide margin (61 percent to 24 percent), Americans say that U.S. priorities should be to focus on finding Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda members, rather than focus on dealing with Saddam and Iraq (CBS News/New York Times poll, December 21-22, 2003)

Americans strongly believe (62 percent to 34 percent) that, given the goals versus the costs of the war, the number of US military casualties so far has been unacceptable (ABC News/Washington Post poll, January 15-18, 2004)

Three-fifths of the public (60 percent) say that the Bush administration was either hiding elements of (39 percent) or mostly lying about (21 percent) their knowledge of Iraq’s WMD (CBS News/New York Times poll, January 12-15, 2004)

Most Americans (53 percent) still think either that the Iraq threat could have been contained (39 percent) or that it wasn’t a threat at all (14 percent), compared to 44 percent who believe Iraq’s threat merited immediate military action (CBS News/New York Times poll, December 21-22, 2003)

Twice as many Americans (31 percent to 15 percent) believe the capture of Saddam will increase the threat of terrorism against the US than believe it will decrease that threat (CBS News/New York Times poll, December 21-22, 2003)

More Americans (25 percent to 20 percent) believe the capture of Saddam will increase attacks on US troops in Iraq than believe the capture will decrease these attacks (CBS News/New York Times poll, December 21-22, 2003)

Most Americans (53 percent to 43 percent) say we are not safer and more secure now that Saddam has been captured (Newsweek poll, January 8-9, 2004)

Thanks for playing folks.

Sigh.

Better late than never I guess.

Too bad all those people had to die, huh?

Virus Warning

Suddenly I'm getting lots of e-mail with attachments. Obviously viruses. Don't open any e-mails with attachments for a while.

At the street

New Post, Guarding the Prize, over at the american street.

Keep This Going -- We Need A Horse Race

I think it would be great if the nomination race goes right up to the convention! The press LOVES a horse race and will cover this as a major story, every day. And every day the media will be reporting what each candidate said about how terrible Bush is for the country!

For example, With Race Near Fever Pitch, Candidates Zero In on Bush:

"Throughout the day, the candidates denounced Mr. Bush's economic and foreign policy: in one typical remark, Mr. Kerry described the foreign policy as 'arrogant and inept.' But mainly, it was a day for the candidates to avoid conflict with one another and set out the themes that have defined this campaign since the beginning. From here in southern New Hampshire to Hanover, in the western part of the state, and from the seacoast to the hills of Keene in the southwest, the candidates called for a sharp expansion of health care coverage and an end to tax cuts that benefit the wealthy. More than anything else, each presented himself as the Democrat who could beat Mr. Bush. "

So here's to Dean, Kerry, Edwards and Clark - may the best man not emerge until August!

Today's Google Experiment: "I trust Hamas more than my own government."

Does anyone remember when Republicans were blocking anti-terrorism bills following the Oklahoma City and Atlanta Olympics bombings?:

"However, some law enforcement provisions were dropped at the insistence of House [Republicans] lawmakers fearful that federal law enforcement would become too powerful and intrude on individual liberties [of right-wing terrorists].

[. . .] Complaining that many new tools that would have helped detect and prevent terrorism had been stripped from the bill, Rep. Frank blamed what he called the 'Hamas wing of the Republican Party.' Hamas is an Islamic terrorist group.

Rep. Frank was referring to a remark made by Rep. Hyde during last month's House debate on the bill. At that time, Rep. Hyde, R-Ill., said he had just heard 'a dear friend of mine, a great Republican, say, 'I trust Hamas more than I trust my own government.''

[. . .] Congressional leaders initially promised to complete the bill six weeks after the Oklahoma City federal building bombing that killed 168 last April 19."

In contrast, here's part of a Clinton radio address on the subject:

"And law enforcement has also asked that explosives used to make a bomb be marked with a taggant -- a trace chemical or a microscopic plastic chip scattered throughout the explosives. This way sophisticated machines can find bombs before they explode, and when they do explode police scientists can trace a bomb back to the people who actually sold the explosive materials that led to the bomb.

Now, tagging works. In Switzerland over the past decade it's helped to identify who made bombs and explosives in over 500 cases. When it was being tested in our country several years ago, it helped police to find a murderer in Maryland.

In the last two weeks since the Olympic bombing, our law enforcement officers have been working around the clock, but they have been denied a scientific tool that might help to solve investigations like this one.

Our anti-terrorism bill would have given us the ability to require tagging gunpowder often used in making pipe bombs. The Republicans in Congress could give law enforcement this anti-terrorism tool, but once again they're listening to the gun lobby over law enforcement. It may be good politics, but it's not good for the American people. "

And do you remember when the Republicans refused to investigate the militias following the Oklahoma City bombing, choosing instead of investigate the government's actions at Waco -- justifying and further inflaming the domestic terrorists?

Dean Goes Nuts

Dean Goes Nuts.com.

"I scream! You scream! We all scream for Howard Dean!"

Their favorite is my favorite, too! (Warning - broadband recommended, no screams.)

Why Can't Democrats Add?

Over at Fight for the Future - Blog for the Future, "Why Can't Democrats Add?":

"It takes 18 years to grow more African American voters, the same for Latinos (unless you let immigrants who are already working here become citizens). Growing more single women is a pretty hard campaign to message.

But growing more union members? The Democrats could do that almost overnight. Polls show that about 47 million Americans want a union but don't have one. The main reason is that corporations tell workers that life will be hell if they vote union.

In Florida, just 2000 more union members, registering and voting for Gore in the same percentage as other union members - and the Supreme Court never would have gotten the case. But most Dems haven't helped a single worker in Florida join a union.

Bush's main man, Karl Rove, told the New Yorker magazine that it is 'absolutely' the president's goal to lower the number of union members.

They outlawed unions for 60,000 airport screeners and 170,000 civilian workers in the Department of Homeland Security. Next comes 750,000 Defense workers. Plus contracting out 850,000 federal jobs to nonunion companies.

So my question is, why do we live in a country where the Republicans know how to subtract but the Democrats don't know how to add?"

Good question: why aren't Demcorats doing more -- much more -- to GROW THE BASE? They're not doing enough to protect and hold on to the base they have.

The So-Called Dean "Scream"

Go see it and hear it the way it sounded in the room - before filtering out the crowd noise and pumping up the volume at the scream, which is what you heard on TV all week.

(Thanks to Body and Soul)

Blog Hero Award

The coveted, much sought-after blog hero award goes to Body and Soul: Attacking a general (or any other Democrat):

"The natural tendency, when you see your opponent get trashed, even when you know it's unfair, is to sit back and watch it happen. But under the circumstances, I think the Democrats have more to gain from standing up for each other than from standing by and letting it happen. In other words, all of the candidates should make it clear that they object to the press putting the Dean Scream on endless repeat. When they go after Dean for mentioning Diebold, all of them should back him up. After Clark was attacked unfairly, all of them should make clear that while they may not want to dwell on Bush's military record, it's disingenuous of the press to completely ignore it.

My gooey, naive, and certainly odd advice to the candidates: Point out your differences with the other candidates, but stand up and be counted when they attack your opponents unfairly, because if you rise to that position, they'll go after you in the same way. It's a battle you can't fight alone."

Republicans Eat Their Own

Vicious tactics are to be expected from Republicans, but here in Oregon they're using them on each other.

Goli Ameri (a woman) and Tim Phillips are contending for the Republican nomination in Oregon's First Congressional District. Both are generic business Republicans who make no mention of social issues on their websites. Phillips is the establishment candidate with many significant endorsements.

Ameri is an immigrant from Iran who has had a successful business career here, while Phillips' mother is an immigrant from India. Both support the Bush administration's new strictness toward foreign visitors, but in 1998 Ameri protested rather similiar policies by the Clinton administration.

After 9/11 her change of position is hardly surprising, and it's not at all unusual for a Republican to respond differently to similiar policies coming from Clinton and from Bush. But Phillips has charged that Ameri "put the people of Iran's interests before those of the American people", and has succeeded in posting his disloyalty smear on The National Journal's "House Race Hotline" (subscription, no link; it may have been taken down by now).

So that's how they treat each other. It gives us a pretty good idea what kind of civility we can expect from them in the general election. Phillips is getting some Republican flak for his stand right now (look here) but in the fall we can expect the gloves to be off.


Ameri Site

Phillips site

Phillips' link to "House Race Hotline" at Jan 25., 10 a.m.

My copy of "House Race Hotline" story

(Edited to add "House Race Hotline" links).

From The Roots

From The Roots :: Pulling the Bush Out

The Comeback Bat

Note, over on the right, the Dean "Comeback Bat."

Yes, the Dean campaign has "the Bat" up again. This time it's the Comeback Bat.

Even if you can only give $5, click the Bat and donate something!

yeeaarrgghh!

Brandnaming the Heathers

Howard Dean has had pretty good success making a joke of the groupthink media response to his "scream" in Iowa. This got me to thinking about how to make the media an issue in the upcoming election.

We need to turn the tables by brand-naming the various media stupidities and using a rogues' gallery or Hall of Shame to turn the big offenders into objects of nationwide ridicule.

We have to publicize this and make it funny. Political wonks already understand what's going on, but we need to get the word out to everyone. Many Americans -- and not just the wingnuts -- still believe that the media are liberal. Most people don't even know who Bob Somerby and WMO are.

Some brandnames (subject to revision):

1. Heathers: This covers most of the rest, and perhaps it's the only brand name we need. The media's shallow pack mentality is one of the main causes of the whole problem.

2. Shoes and sweaters: Paul Krugman has already written about this, and here's a great example from Slate found by Bob Somerby. Some coverage is really too shallow to be tolerated in a functioning democracy.

3. Wellstoning: Sometimes so many people pick up a cheap theme that you know it's a coordinated effort. The Wellstone Memorial was the perfect example: Noonan, Novak, and the talk-show hosts got their smear out there within 24 hours, just barely in time for the election and too soon for there to be a response.

4. Inventing the Internet (or Goring): media people are still repeating a story about Gore which has been refuted in detail many times. This smear was stupid when people thought it was true, but it's unforgivable now that we know it's not.

5. Burying the Story: This isn't too zippy, but putting fluff stories on Page One and meaty stories on Page Three (or Section B, Page Seventeen) is one of the main ways newspapers mislead the average voter.

6. Slanted Playing Field: This is a hard one to make stick, but sometimes it's just plain obvious that the two sides are playing by two different sets of rules. (Between being dull, sort of wonkish, and hard to prove, this item and the one before should be used sparingly.)

The media really are the enemy. We should avoid broad-brush attacks on everyone out there, but we should embarass the worst of them badly enough for it to be a lesson to the others.

We have to make it funny, and we have to get the word out. I hope someone sharper than I am picks up this ball and runs with it. (Other ideas are solicited.) We need to produce a tight funny little package which makes its point in an instant.

P.S. Not everyone knows that Bob Somerby's Daily Howler has a search function. Punch in "Novak Gore", for example, and you'll get 38 Novak stories (or TV appearances) involving Gore. ("Ceci Gore" for Ceci Connoly gets 138). Somerby isn't just a great media critic -- he's given us a five-year archive to work with.

War in Syria?

Probably the election distraction event will be an attack on Syria. (Unless the piece of information I'm linking to is a feint, and the election distraction war will really be somewhere else.) Over at Matt Yglesias the nice moderates there, some of whom who call themselves liberals, are being open-minded about this.

Janes is a mainstream source specializing in military and strategic questions.

Story


Janes homepage (subscription).

Scream

Randi Rhodes says whenever you get in an argument with a Republican, just stop talking and do the Dean Scream.

Al-Qaida Endorsing Bush

Al-Qaida will do Whatever it Takes to Assure Bush is Re-elected:

"Yet the Islamist radicals have always been completely open about their goals. They want to take power in the Muslim countries (phase one of the project), and then unite the entire Muslim world in a final struggle to overthrow the power of the West (phase two). They are still stuck in phase one, with little to show for it despite 30 years of trying, so in the early 1990s Osama bin Laden and his colleagues switched from head-on assaults on the regimes in Muslim countries to direct attacks on Western targets. Yet their first-phase goal remains seizing power in the Muslim world, not some fantasy about "bringing the West to its knees."

Terrorists generally rant about their goals but stay silent about their strategies, so now we have to do a little work for ourselves. If the real goal is still revolutions that bring Islamist radicals to power, then how does attacking the West help? Well, the U.S. in particular may be goaded into retaliating by bombing or even invading various Muslim countries -- and in doing so, may drive enough aggrieved Muslims into the arms of the Islamist radicals that their long-stalled revolutions against local regimes finally get off the ground.

Most analysts outside the United States long ago concluded that that was the principal motive for the 9-11 attack. They would add that by giving the Bush administration a reason to attack Afghanistan, and at least a flimsy pretext for invading Iraq, al-Qaida's attacks have paid off handsomely. U.S. troops are now the unwelcome military rulers of more than 50 million Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, and people there and elsewhere are turning to the Islamist radicals as the only force in the Muslim world that is willing and able to defy American power.

It is astonishing how little this is understood in the United States. I know of no American analyst who has even made the obvious point that al-Qaida wants Bush to win next November's presidential election and continue his interventionist policies in the Middle East for another four years, and will act to save Bush from defeat if necessary.

It probably would not do so unless Bush's number were slipping badly, for any terrorist attack on U.S. soil carries the risk of stimulating resentment against the current administration for failing to prevent it.

Certainly another attack on the scale of 9-11 would risk producing that result, even if al-Qaida had the resources for it. But a simple truck bomb in some U.S. city center a few months before the election, killing just a couple of dozen Americans, could drive voters back into Bush's arms and turn a tight election around. Al-Qaida is clever enough for that."

Bush and Al-Qaida's interests coincide. An attack before the election.

Dirty tricks in Majority Leader Frist's office

If nothing comes of this story, I think that we might as well give up.

"From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password....With the help of forensic computer experts from General Dynamics and the US Secret Service, [the Senate Sergeant-of-Arms'] office has interviewed about 120 people to date and seized more than half a dozen computers -- including four Judiciary servers, one server from the office of Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, and several desktop hard drives."

Nothing came of Enron. Nothing came of the Plame case. Nothing came of the Republican Party Communist spy Katrina Leung's case. (But at least the Democratic candidates footwear and sweaters have been thoroughly covered).

The Democrats are jellified and the press, the Republicans, most of the media, and much of the electorate are too cynical and corrupt to care. Both Josh Michah Marshall and Calpundit seem to think that something will come of this one.

I doubt it, but I'd be willing to pay good money to be proven wrong. Right now I'm waiting for a parade of the usual suspects to explain that this is no big deal and that it's really Clinton's fault -- or maybe the story will just die quietly. The next month should be enough to tell.

If the story dies, it will prove that the Republicans are able to get away with anything. And between now and November, presumably they will.

Budget

I'm trying to sign up for Budget Rental Car's "Fast Break" program. In the enrollment process, they say to "Review the Budget Fastbreak Global Master Rental Agreement Terms & Conditions. Right. Just go there and hold down your "Page Down" button a while. Don't even try to read.

I have a fast computer, with fast screen drawing. When the Page Down button held down, and the legal document whizzing by at full speed page by page, it took almost 25 SECONDS to reach the end.

Right. Read it. Sure. Guess I'll try Avis.

I Meant It

I meant it. You gotta go read We Are the Majority. Really.

We Are the Majority

Every single person, please go read this entire piece. Please We Are the Majority:

"Sometimes progressives say, well, you know, we're right, but we're really kind of fringe. Our views are not reflective of a vast majority of the people. After all, Bush, well, was almost elected, and there is rightwing control of the House of Representatives, led by a gentleman named Tom DeLay. There is rightwing control of the United States Senate. Very few people in the media reflect our point of view. So they must be representing the majority of the people, and we're just a smart minority of the people.

I want you to disabuse yourselves of that notion. You represent mainstream America. We are the majority.

Go out on Main Street, stand at the corner, and ask people a simple question. Tell them you're doing an informal poll, and ask them if they want 40 percent of the tax breaks, hundreds of billions of dollars, to go to the top 1 percent, or whether those breaks should be spread around more fairly and be used for education or lowering the deficit. Then tell me who is "fringe." Ask them if we should maintain our disintegrating health care nonsystem or establish a universal health care system that guarantees health care for all. Then tell me who is "fringe." Ask them if we should continue to let polluters destroy our environment, or move to safe, sustainable energy. Then tell me who is "fringe."

So how do the rightwingers get elected if they have nothing to say about the most important issues facing the American people? That is the central question of modern American politics. And the answer is that they work day and night to divide the American people against each other so that they end up voting against their own best interests. That is what the Republican Party is all about.

They tell white workers their jobs are being lost not because corporate America is downsizing and moving to China, but because black workers are taking their jobs--because of affirmative action. White against black.

If you turn on talk radio, what you will hear, in an almost compulsive way, is a hatred of women. And they're telling working class guys, you used to have some power. You used to be the breadwinner. But now there are women running companies, women in politics, women making more money than you. Men against women.

And they're turning straight people against gay people. The homosexuals are taking over the schools! Gay marriage is destroying the country! Straights against gays.

And if you're not for a war in Iraq waged on the dubious and illegal doctrine of "preemptive war," you're somehow unpatriotic. And those of us who were born in America are supposed to hate immigrants. And those of us who practice religion in one way, or believe in the separation of church and state, are supposed to be anti-religious, and trying to destroy Christianity in America--and we get divided up on that. And on and on it goes.

The Republican leadership does all of this in an incredibly cynical, poll-driven way, because they know when you lay out their program about the most important economic issues facing America, it ends up that they are representing the interests of 2 percent of the population. You can't win an election with the support of 2 percent. So they divide us, and the result is that tens of millions of working people vote against their own interests. "

Oh you gotta just go read the whole thing. It starts better, it gets better.

Not Just Dean

In This Is How They Campaign For Office I wrote:

"This is not just an accidental, glib, throw-away wingnut hit piece. This is part of a coordinated, researched, tested, professional character assassination campaign that will phase in and ramp up between now and the election. This is the modern Republican Party. This is Norquist's Wednesday Meeting, and Karl Rove and the Wurlitzer, and cigarette company marketing people, and former CIA destabilization specialists all working together to do their job ON YOU! This is George Bush 'staying above the fray' while his subordinates engage in the nastiest kind of character assassination and voter manipulation -- spreading lying, humiliating, ridiculing smear after lying, humiliating, ridiculing smear until even YOU hate Dean!"

It seems that we're nearly there already. People are disappointed in Dean. OK, and I'll get into that later. But think about this -- if the nominee is Kerry, or Clark, or Edwards, it's going to be the same story. They are going to find the weakness, and pound on it, and repeat their smears over and over, and, as I wrote previously, "engage in the nastiest kind of character assassination and voter manipulation -- spreading lying, humiliating, ridiculing smear after lying, humiliating, ridiculing smear" until even YOU hate your nominee. BE READY FOR IT.

Rush Who?

I was driving, listening to Limbaugh, who was saying stuff about Clark, and replaying the doctored tapes again and again... and I stopped at a liquor store to buy a couple of retirement tickets. In the store the radio was playing The Creator Has A Master Plan, by Pharoah Sanders. (and here.) One of the most perfect pieces of music ever recorded. (Another is Space is the Place by Sun Ra.) So when I got in the car I found it on the radio, and when I got home I tuned it in, and now I'm on a MUCH higher spiritual plane and probably will be for the rest of the day.

Rush Who?

Ipdate - How could I leave out My Favorite Things by Coltrane!? How could I? (And a beautiful website, as well!)

I know who I'd like to send to Mars...

From bold idea to dud in less than a week:

The man who told Congress a year ago he was headed to war arrived this year with a proposal for halfway houses for released inmates, and an appeal to athletes to stop popping steroids. The big plan floated a week ago -- to settle the moon and strike out for Mars -- never came up, having bombed in the polls and on both sides of the congressional aisle.

They're floundering folks.

Enjoy it.

Parallels

Parallels, at uggabugga.

Use Of Language

On privatizing Social Security, Bush said, "We must make Social Security financially stable and allow personal retirement accounts for younger workers who choose them."

ALLOW personal retirement accounts? We're not ALLOWED to set up personal retirement accounts NOW? Is my IRA ILLEGAL? Am I going to JAIL because I have a 401K?

This use of language is similar to the school privatization language. They say we need "school choice" because public schools are a "monopoly."

I'm not ALLOWED to send my kids to a private school NOW?

And they say that because some local schools aren't good enough, the government should give kids vouchers to go to expensive private schools. Well, I don't think MY LOCAL BUS SYSTEM is good enough, so I'd like a voucher for a new LEXUS, please!

Lyons: "For once, press acts just as it should"

As most of you who read my (now on hiatus) blog know, I like Gene Lyons.

So here's Gene's column for the week:

For once, press acts just as it should

Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, January 21, 2004

To me, the single most significant event of the 2004 election campaign
hasn’t been the Iowa caucuses or President Bush’s State of the Union
address. Rather, it was the quick debunking of an attempted smear of
retired Gen. Wesley Clark by a half-dozen or so news organizations
functioning exactly as a free press should. Basically, the Republican
National Committee got caught doctoring Clark’s words in a vain attempt
to manufacture a "flip-flop" on the Iraq war. Given the dreadful
standard set during the 2000 campaign, when the Washington insiders who
set the tone of political coverage at the nation’s major newspapers,
magazines and TV networks conducted themselves like a high school clique
trying to fix a prom queen election, the Clark incident came as a
welcome surprise. Has war sobered them, or has American journalism begun
to recover from Ted Baxter Syndrome?

Ted Baxter, for the uninitiated, was the comically pompous anchorman on
"The Mary Tyler Moore Show." Like many celebrity pundits of the cable TV
era, he thought the news was about him.

But hold the sociology. First, a quick outline of the ill-fated effort
to portray Clark as a two-faced opportunist. Whether or not the incident
shows GOP fear of facing the former four-star general in the November
election, as Clark insisted, it definitely indicates that turning the
Democratic nominee into a caricature won’t be as easy as lampooning Al
Gore with phony stories like "inventing the Internet," " earth-tone
clothing, "etc.

What happened was that on the same day RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie had a
speech scheduled in Little Rock, Clark’s hometown, the infamous" Drudge
Report" just happened to produce one of its "worldwide exclusives"
claiming to show that, contrary to his campaign rhetoric in New
Hampshire, Clark supported Bush’s rush to war with Iraq during
congressional testimony in 2002.

In his speech, Gillespie portrayed Clark as a hypocrite and turncoat.
"There was no stronger case made than that expert testimony, the
testimony of Gen. Wesley Clark," Gillespie claimed.

Drudge "reported" a passage from Clark’s testimony that was suspiciously
like to that in an RNC fax. "There’s no question that Saddam Hussein is
a threat," Clark supposedly said. "... Yes, he has chemical and
biological weapons. He’s had those for a long time. But the United
States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we
were before September 11 th of 2001.... He is, as far as we know,
actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn’t have nuclear
warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends
in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we."

But the quote turned out to be problematic, as Knight-Ridder reporters
Dana Hull and Drew Brown determined in an article headlined: "GOP chair
claims Clark supported war; transcripts show otherwise."

Clark’s words had been taken completely out of context. In fact, he had
pointedly argued that Iraq was a manageable problem and no imminent
threat existed. He’d urged that Bush form "the broadest possible
coalition including our NATO allies.... [Force] should be used as the
last resort after all diplomatic means have been exhausted."

The reporters also noticed that the Drudge/RNC quote "further distorted
Clark’s testimony" by adding sentences they were unable to find in the
transcript. Dogged research by the estimable Josh Marshall on his
Talking Points Memo Web site subsequently determined that the first and
last sentences appeared on Page 6, the bit about post-9/11 defensive
posture on Pages 25-26. Indeed, Clark argued that the U.S. was actually
in a better strategic position vs. Iraq, leaving ample time for
diplomacy.

In short, Clark’s words had been yanked out context and their order
jumbled to alter their meaning. The ellipses concealed gaps of 11,500
words, roughly a dozen times the length of this column. I’d argue they
were essentially manufactured quotes, a firing offense at any
self-respecting journalistic organization—not a phrase which describes
"The Drudge Report."

The heartening part was that it wasn’t only Knight-Ridder and Josh
Marshall and liberal watchdog sites like mediawhoresonline. com that
blew the whistle. While some of the usual suspects such as The
Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal Editorial page got taken
(or pretended to get taken) for a ride, many others did not.

According to the Columbia Journalism Review’s brand-new Web site, The
Campaign Desk, "most of the major newspapers including the Washington
Post, the New York Times and the Boston Globe ran pieces reflecting the
whole story." (The Democrat-Gazette also got it right.)

The brainchild of the renowned journalism school’s new dean, Nicholas
Lemman, CJR’s new enterprise means to provide "real-time" media
criticism putting the Paula Zahns of the world on notice. (On her CNN
broadcast, Zahn treated the Drudge quotes as factual.) Next time,
sweetheart, do your homework and get the facts. Your professional
reputation may once again depend upon it.

Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of
the National Magazine Award.

Message and Branding and Dean

In marketing message is everything. If you want a message to sink in it can't be complicated. Short and simple, repeat it over and over again. The basics. Think about the most successful brand marketing and you'll realize that it is about a very short message that you hear over and over, and pretty soon that message is what the product/company/candidate/whatever IS. You "brand" a product with an emotional image that you want the customer to feel whenever your product is thought of. That message becomes identified with the product. Lexus = luxury. WalMart = cheap. Jetta = youth. Scope = get kissed. Campbell's Soup = mmm good. Marlboro = manly. Virginia Slims = feminine. Chevy = Apple Pie/America. Sony = quality. Hot Sauce=Tobasco. (For some reason I'm having trouble thinking of these tonite...)

Often the branding is the ONLY difference, yet it causes customers to make a clear distinction or to pay a premium. For an example look at the ingredients in the cold remedies or pain relievers at the drug store. You take a product, maybe soap flakes, put it into two different boxes, repeat over and over again a different message about each of the boxes, and that is what the product IS -- regardless of what it really is. One of the boxes contains "BOB'S JEAN WASH" a basic soap for washing blue jeans, and costs $4.99. The other is "LEXO SHORT PREMIUM" a high-end soap, used only for expensive cotton shirts, and a box costs $7.99. If this message is repeated often enough I bet you that every house in America will have one box of each, and the BOB'S is only used to wash blue jeans, and the LEXO is only used to wash expensive cotton shirts, and the customer won't have it any other way! Marketing WORKS!

It works with candidates, as well. Republicans know how to do this. You decide the message of the candidate, and repeat it over and over, and IT DOES NOT MATTER if it is a truth, or consistent, it becomes what the person IS. Bush said, over and over, that he was going to bring "honor and integrity back to the White House" and said it again, and then again, and pretty soon he was the guy who was going to bring honor and integrity back to the White House. It DID NOT MATTER that Bush had no honor or integrity, because he had a clear message and repeated over and over that he had honor and integrity SO THAT BECAME WHAT HE WAS. And he was able to repeat over and over that Gore was a liar. This is how marketing and repetition works.

If this sounds simplistic, in marketing and mass communication you CAN'T oversimplify. The shorter the message the more effective it is. It is a basic rule of hi-tech marketing that you have to have what is known as your "Elevator speech." This is the description of your entire product strategy/company/whatever, that you can say in the amount of time it takes to ride a couple of floors in an elevator. Because for an interested person that is all the time you get to convey everything to either win the person over or lose the person forever.

I think the Iowa caucuses were all about beating Bush. The only question was, "How is he going to beat Bush?" I think a candidate's positions on jobs, national security, and other issues were relevant only so far as Iowans imagined most American voters responding to the positions, not their OWN response. (And probably mostly in terms of imagining those other voters seeing Bush as = security after 9/11.)

Here are the simple messages, or "brands," that I think people went to the caucuses with:

Kerry = War hero
Edwards = From the South/Nice
Dean = Money & supporters/Fighter
Gephardt = Unions

But Dean allowed himself to be defined/branded by others as "angry," and that, of course, scared Iowa voters. (Previously they tried defining him as "extremist/McGovern," but that didn't stick, so along came "angry.")

Sun Tzu's Art of War says to beat a powerful enemy you must "find the weakness in his strength." If Dean's strength is being a fighter who is ready to get in Bush's face, then "angry" is the weakness in that strength. So Dean got branded as the "angry" candidate and this is Dean's fault. The reason it is Dean's fault is that if Dean is going to go up against Bush, and is ready to fight back, that means that he shouldn't be so easily defined by opponents -- because that is what Republicans DO. He should already have a team in place ready to counter that basic tactic -- defining your opponent!

To me, this is about getting some things done, not about marrying a candidate. It isn't about "loyalty" whatever Joe Lieberman says. Yes, it's about changing the Democratic Party, but mostly it is about going into a fight to save the country, maybe the world, and finding the best candidate to do that. That is why I turned away from Kerry and supported Dean.

Dean has a few days to turn this around. And it is up to HIM to do this. He can blame the press or "negative campaigning" but that's the playing field he is on. If he can turn it around, then maybe he does deserve to be the nominee. If he can't, than maybe we would do better sending someone else up against Bush -- IF we can find someone who is better. I think he's a smart guy, and I expect he will do a good job of this.

Now it is time for Dean to show us he can win.

Thoughts

So today I'm rethinking everything I thought I knew... wondering about the viability of Dean's door-to-door, new-voter strategy -- having enough people go door-to-door, the old fashioned way. If this isn't going to work, it means that the strategy of America Coming Together is also questionable. They are planning a "massive voter contact campaign" and are well-funded. So does this mean that all those funding eggs are in one broken basket?

Also, if voters in Iowa felt that Kerry's military record and Edwards' southern accent are the best ways to go up against Bush -- if that is what the results mean -- then I suspect this will lead to Clark as the nominee.

And then there's "the sound." I was listening to right-wing talk radio earlier, and it is almost the ONLY thing on.

Anyway, it's early, it's going to take some time for this to settle in. More later.

Update - I just wrote to someone, "Dean is WAY ahead in NH. And well-organized. AND if Dean is smart, he'll make adjustments to his ads and to his message now. AND if he is not smart he shouldn't be our nominee against Bush. This is too important."

New Voters and the Democrats' Passivity

(This would be New Voters vs. Swing Voters V.)

In my previous post, "New Voters vs. Swing Voters IV", I commented on the passivity and defeatism of the Democrats regarding proposals to recruit among the non-voting 50% of the voting age population. What are the reasons for this passivity?

One reason is probably the left/right question which has been in the background of this discussion all along. I suspect that moderate and conservative Democrats also believe, as I do, that the working poor in fact are a big chunk of the non-voters, and that the issues most likely to rouse their interest are the old-fashioned lunch-bucket issues such as an increased minimum wage, decreases in payroll rather than in income taxes, and government provision of medical insurance.

Democrats, including New Democrats, have never openly renounced those goals, but in emphasis these issues have tended to take a back seat to middle-class issues, free trade, and social liberalism. This slant is usually justified on pragmatic grounds based on what the voters think. In reality, though, I think that it's not the voters but the donors who are calling the shots. With exceptions, Hollyood liberals and other liberals with money are militant about free speech, choice, diversity, and the environment, but notably silent about the lunchbucket issues. (And the same is true of the media we've been afflicted with).

A second reason for the Democrats' lack of interest in the non-voters is that the working poor are often sort of tacky. The populism of millionaire Republicans is an enormous fraud, but there is a germ of truth in the idea that Democrats tend to be collegiate -- perhaps professionals, perhaps government workers, maybe a little artsy, and so on. A white guy working for $8.00 / hr. in an assembly plant in Kentucky is very likely uneducated, unstylish, religious, and not too pretty to look at. For whatever reason, Democratic outreach to a guy like that is almost certain to be much weaker than Democratic outreach to a black or Hispanic worker who is similiar to him in every way except race.

Here's a first suggestion on what to do. The Democratic Party's move from reliance on volunteers, neighborhood groups, etc., to the use of paid staff was probably inevitable. In my experience, however, low-level paid staff seem overwhelmingly to be college students and recent college graduates who have nothing better to do at the moment. For recruiting the working poor, however, it would make infinitely more sense to recruit staff from among the working poor themselves. (Not to be cynical, but one advantage of this is that, by definition, the working poor are willing to work very cheaply.) So what you'd want to do would be to find a sharp individual who's trapped in a crappy job, convince him that the Democrats can help him and his friends, and then give him a job spreading the word.

A final reason for Democratic passivity in this respect is slavery to social science. I've been told many times that "the trend toward declining participation has continued for for many years and is a fact of life we have to live with". But everybody admits that Democrats benefit from high participation and suffer when participation is low, so that statement might just as well be translated "the trend toward Republican victory has continued for for many years and is a fact of life we have to deal with". Should we just lie down and die?

Social science facts are not like science facts. Water is always going to be water, and gravity is always going to be gravity, but "trends" can be changed. A trend is not something to live with, but something to deal with -- in this case, something to fight against. Republicans who come from an entrepreneurial, gambler background are much better equipped than sociology students to find the weak spots in the opponent's armor and the turning-points of political history. Polls are fine, but in the last analysis the best way to see if an approach will work is to try it, rather than run a poll.

The Republicans do their polling, but they win mostly bacause they've tried all kinds of approaches and some of them worked. Over a lot of trials, the guy who says "Let's give this a shot" will whip the guy who always says "How can we be sure this will work?"

Over At the american street

Over at the american street I have posted two pieces: Win With the Base or the Mythical Middle? and Growing the Base.

4ew Voters vs. Swing Voters IV

Below Dave has collected the links so far which discuss this issue.

I have some new ideas to add, but right now I'd just like to summarize what I think now. First, long-term strategy is the real question, here, not the 2004 election. Not much energy has been put into strategy since the New Dems took over in 1984. The New Dem strategy has been OK but not great, and in any case it's twenty years old.

Partly because the party is usually financially strapped, the long-term party-building efforts have tended to be cannibalized in favor of each year's election. (That's what the "soft money" controversy was all about way back then). We shouldn't let this continue to happen.

The question of whether to put effort into "growing the base" is independent of the left vs. right / new voter vs. swing voter controversies. Active efforts to get moderate independents to identify as Democrats count as "growing the base" too.

The Democrats have been too passive, lazy, and defeatist about recruiting new voters and non-voters. My hypothesis is that a lot of non-voters are working poor and that they are natural Democrats if the Democrats can convince them that they can deliver medical care, an increase in the minimum wage, lower payroll deductions for social security, etc.

I have never heard anything whatsoever from Democratic wonks and pros about the 50% of Americans who don't vote except "No one really knows why non-voters don't vote; they have all kind of different reasons for not voting and don't form a coherent group of any kind; they're impossible to organize and probably aren't Democrats either; and besides, non-voters don't vote so they're not going to help us at all".


Those things may all have some truth in them, but they're all reasons for quitting. Much as I hate Robertson, Norquist, and Rove, I'll give them 100 points for enterprise. And I'll give their nameless Democratic counterparts zero. The bad guys have tried dozens of things, some of which worked. They didn't just take polls and then say "That's not going to work" and sit down and chill. (Right now they're going after the Dem base: at the moment, Jewish voters.)

(Edited: changed 2000 to 2004)

Horay!

Hooray for Digby!:

"We simply cannot compromise on policy anymore. No more 'pilot programs' on privatization, no quarter on 'faith based' initiatives, no bipartisan cover on anything. It only hurts us. Any experimental ideas can be tested in the states. As a national party, and particularly as congressional delegation, we have moved as far to the right as we can go and it is time to hold the line.

Just as important, we must counter their obfuscatory rhetoric and never, ever adopt it as our own. Any Democrat who uses terms such as 'tax relief,' 'tort reform' or 'partial birth' abortion should be fined 1000 dollars per instance."

The Base Or New Voters Discussion

This is part of a something I posted over at the american street.

In the last few days several weblogs have written about, and many, many readers have left comments about whether it is better for the Democrats to “move left” and appeal to “the base,” to “move right” and appeal to the “middle,” or to try to get “new voters.”

Here are some of the weblog posts, hopefully in this order (if I have missed any weblogs writing about this issue, please point to them in the comments here AND at the american street!):

John Emerson at Zizka: Why do we Lose? Five Ways the New Dems Hurt the Democrats
Nick Confessore at TAPPED: WHAT NEW VOTERS?
Kevin Drum at Calpundit: New Voters
John Emerson at Seeing the Forest: New Voters and Swing Voters
Kevin Drum at Calpundit: THE BASE vs. THE MIDDLE....
Mathew Yglasias: SWING, SWING
John Emerson at Seeing the Forest: New Voters vs. Swing voters II
South Know Bubba: Swing voters
The Mysterious Atrios: Swing Voters and Nonvoters
The ever-amazing Digby, with The Base, The Base Part II and Swingers
John Emerson again at Seeing the Forest: New Voters vs. Swing Voters III
And a while back, Simon Rosenberg at the New Democrat Network Blog: WE CAN DO BETTER II - THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES

Suppose

Suppose our government learned that North Korea was planning an invasion of South Korea. Suppose our government learned that the Serbians were planning to invade Albaina, possibly triggering a wider conflict. Suppose they learned that Venezuela was planning an action against its neighbor, triggering a conflict that threatened to destabilize Mexico, maybe bring enemies of the U.S. to power, and in any event sending millions of refugees rushing north to our borders.

What actions would be available to them? Could they go to the UN to make a case? Could they go to the country to ask for support for military action to protect our interests?

After Iraq, the government could not realistically go to the UN to ask for action. They have no credibility -- they have been caught lying. They could not go to the country to make a case for military action because they have been caught lying AND because have intentionally divided the country, using "wedge issues" and using national security for political purposes.

And, with our military completely tied down in Iraq, they couldn't even take action on their own.

Look at the mess we are in should a REAL national security threat emerge. THIS is a practical example of why what Bush has done is so bad. He has left us vulnerable. He has destroyed our credibility with the world. He has destroyed the credibility of our government with US. By using terror alerts politically, we can't even trust if Bush comes to us to say there is a new threat. What is he going to say, "This time I mean it, this time it's for real"?

New Voters vs. Swing Voters III

Adapted from a Calpundit comment thread:

What I especially argued for in my piece (here below) was a long-term strategy of party-building. The registration shift toward the Republicans Godless speaks of didn't just happen. It was the result of about four decades of effort and investment. It's my understanding that the Democrats have not made that effort, and that their only long-term strategy is continued courtship of the swing voters. Since the Republicans are building their base and we aren't, the rightward shift really is inevitable.

To me the Dem strategy is comparable to a weak basketball team playing a slowdown game and hoping for the last shot. A strong party could certainly play more aggressively.

For the last couple of years, anyway, I have not asked the Democrats so much to move to the left on the issues, as to play a tougher, more aggressive game. It's hard to win when you've forbidden yourself to take the game to the enemy. And this plays to the main weak spot in the Dem's image -- the wimp factor. A party that campaigns wimpy will be perceived as wimpy on everything. As the infamous (though moderate on most issues) Bartcop asks, how can the Dems fight for the American people when they can't even fight for themselves? (This is why the Lieberman candidacy is such a joke. Conservative Southern Dem policy wonks like him on the issues, but to the average Southern voter he projects about as much macho as my mother would, and for the Dems losing the wimp image is probably at least as important as the issues.)

So, as I keep saying, I'm Clark/Dean neutral, and I don't especially propose a leftward shift right at the moment. I just think that, win or lose, after the election the Democrats should rethink their long-term strategy. (If we win, it will only be the Presidency. Congress will still be solidly theirs).

Here's something I wrote in the past on how DLC caution has materially hurt the Democrats (i.e., has been a loser strategy):

How the New Democrats have Hurt the Party

New Voters vs. Swing voters II

Confessore's Tapped article (which I discuss below) is now the subject of a thread on Calpundit.

This has unfortunately become a left-right Dean-Clark debate. One point I was trying to make, though, in addition to advocating the "increase the base" strategy, was that the Democratic party should be taking some initiatives and setting some long-term goals, rather than merely starting to talk about strategies right before each election.

And one of my premises, denied by some, is that we haven't been doing too well recently. I'm thinking mostly of the loss of Congress here, but partly also of some of the things Clinton and Gore had to do in order to get elected. (And in that sense this is indeed a left-right disagreement).

And so my conclusion is that the swing-voter strategy, which has been dominant for almost two decades, isn't enough. I'm not saying we should forget the swing voters.

So it seems to me that the Democrats should be looking here, there, and everywhere for the votes we need. The Republican core is pretty solid, so we have a choice between looking for votes among the 20% of the voting-age population who are swing voters, and among the 50% of the voting-age population who are non-voters. Shouldn't we be looking in both places? Should the rejection of the very idea of trying to find new voters be as unanimous as it is? Isn't that lazy, fatalistic, and defeatist?

Confessore mentions a number of unsuccessful Democratic attempts to find new voters, but they were all flash-in-the-pan one-time efforts organized by one man's campaign. He does not mention all the work that the Republicans have been doing since 1964 or so to develop new constituencies.

ReBuilding Iraq 2

Naomi Klein in the Guardian describes December's crony imperialism trade show.

The reconstruction of Iraq has emerged as a vast protectionist racket, a neo-con New Deal that transfers limitless public funds - in contracts, loans and insurance - to private firms, and even gets rid of the foreign competition to boot, under the guise of "national security". Ironically, these firms are being handed this corporate welfare so they can take full advantage of CPA-imposed laws that systematically strip Iraqi industry of all its protections, from import tariffs to limits on foreign ownership. Michael Fleisher, head of private-sector development for the CPA, recently explained to a group of Iraqi businesspeople why these protections had to be removed. "Protected businesses never, never become competitive," he said. Quick, somebody tell Opic and US deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz.

The issue of US double standards comes up again at the conference when a CPA representative takes the podium. A legal adviser to Bremer, Carole Basri has a simple message: reconstruction is being sabotaged by Iraqi corruption. "My fear is that corruption will be the downfall," she says ominously, blaming the problem on "a 35-year gap in knowledge" in Iraq that has made Iraqis "not aware of current accounting standards and ideas on anti-corruption". Foreign investors, she adds, must engage in "education, bring people up to world-class standards". It's hard to imagine what world-class standards she's referring to, or who, exactly, will be doing this educating. Halliburton, with its accounting scandals back home and its outrageous overbilling for gasoline in Iraq? The CPA, with its two officers under investigation for bribe-taking and nonexistent fiscal oversight?

UggaBugga Must Be Stopped!

Before he kills me.

New Voters and Swing Voters: Letter to Nick Confessore (TAPPED)

I sent the letter below to Nick Confessore of Tapped in response to this piece.

One thing I neglected to say in the letter is that the "new-voter"/"swing-voter" strategies are not mutually exclusive. It should be possible to do some of both, and what we're really talking about here is the mix. The reason that Dean's "new-voter" strategy seems extreme is that during the period during which we've lost control of Congress. the Democratic emphasis has been almost entirely on swing voters.

Nick:

One reason talking about getting new voters has never brought forth any results is that since 1984 or so (DLC takeover) this strategy has not actually been tried. "Party-building" soft money was deliberately diverted into big media buys with only immediate effects and no long-term gain, and the swing-voter strategy has been the only one in effect.

Per voter won, the swing-voter strategy is more effective, but there are more non-voters (~50%) than swing voters (<20%) to work on. Furthermore, by now swing voters have to be either pretty conservative, or dumb as stumps. There's scarcely an issue on which the Bush-DeLay adfministration has not taken a strongly conservative initiative.

From my point of view but not yours, the rightward pull of this strategy is bad. However, if it is true (as I suspect) that the lame Dem pros and the right-wing New Republic types (Sullivan and Krauthammer still work there, right?) would actually prefer to lose with a right-center swing-voter strategy than to win with a left-center new-voter strategy, then I think that even the mad-dog-moderate Matt Yglesias might come around to my point of view.

Some of the bad advice Gore got in 2000, in my paranoid opinion, came from people who would rather lose than win the wrong way. I think that Gore might agree with me by now.

The working poor are one group which tends not to vote, and they're a natural Dem constituency. Yeah, they're hard to organize, but they said that about labor in the old days too (ethnically fragmented, semiliterate, poor, embattled, unstable, etc.) Young, poor, alternative-culture cynics are another such difficult group, and in fact the groups tend to merge in later years (e.g. restaurant workers). I don't think that failure can be declared before the strategy is tried. It would indeed be a big job, but we've been losing with the other strategy. I doubt that it's ever possible to tell in advance whether something genuinely new will work; my guess is that poll-driven caution will normally tie you to an unventuresome policy leading to continuous gradual decline.

jje/ ex-zizka

Hilarious

Let me just say in ADVANCE this time that this is a spoof: Tom Burka at the american street: GOP To Reshuffle Swing States; Plan To Redistrict America:

"The boundaries of New York State now include only the relatively conservative upstate area and Staten Island, which is solidly Republican. Democratic New York City is now part of Rhode Island, which will have four electoral votes in November.

[. . .] Republicans were aghast at charges by Democrats that redistricting American states in this way was unconstitutional. "It is amazing to me," said Republican Senator Zell Miller (D - Ga.). "These Democrats whine at the drop of a hat whenever they don't get their way."

BloggerStorm! From Iowa

Blog for America: BloggerStorm!So far: annatopia, DailyKos, Howard Dean 2004, Seth-Tech, Southpaw, Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, Robert Baren for Delegate, Pacific Views, yin, Wanderlust and Jim Moore's Iowa blog aggregator

Divide And Conquer

Leaked letters reveal plot to split US church:

"A letter, written within the past fortnight by a senior American dissident pastor to like-minded parishes, details how the dismantling of the US Episcopal church can be achieved. Marked 'confidential, share it in hard copy only with people you fully trust, do not pass it on electronically to anyone under any circumstances', the document was passed - electronically - to this newspaper.
Written by Geoff Chapman, rector of St Stephen's church, Sewickley, Pennsylvania, one of the leaders of the breakaway movement, it openly boasts that while the current tactic is to seek oversight by conservative bishops for parishes that cannot accept the authority of the two-thirds of American bishops who supported the consecration of the gay bishop Gene Robinson last November, the ultimate goal is much more radical.

It is nothing less than a realignment of the US and Canadian churches for 'biblical faith and values' - code for a much more conservative, even fundamentalist, church to replace the liberal Episcopal church. Traditionalists have threatened a break-up before, over the ordination of women in the 70s, over the consecration of the first woman bishop in the 80s and over gay clergy in the 90s, but Bishop Robinson's ordination has given the movement new momentum.
[. . .]
Its break-up would be enormously welcome to the religious right, including wealthy and fundamentalist supporters of the Republican party who would like to see a more militant Bible-based Christianity spreading across all areas of public life. "

Those pesky Republicans -- everywhere there's trouble and divisiveness, there they are.

Al Gore

From Al Gore's MoveOn.org speech on the natural environment:

These and other activities make it abundantly clear that the Bush White House represents a new departure in the history of the Presidency. He is so eager to accommodate his supporters and contributors that there seems to be very little that he is not willing to do for them at the expense of the public interest. To mention only one example, we’ve seen him work tirelessly to allow his friends to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Indeed, it seems at times as if the Bush-Cheney Administration is wholly owned by the coal, oil, utility and mining companies.

While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors he is a moral coward – so weak that he seldom if ever says “No” to them on anything – no matter what the public interest might mandate.

Read it or watch it.

Lies Lies Lies Yeah

Atrios points us to this excellent column by James O. Goldsborough that demonstrates, once again, that W and the boys were lying about their intentions for Iraq:

Richard Haass, Powell's head of policy planning, resigned when it became clear that Bush demands for Iraqi disarmament were only a pretext for war.

Haass, now head of the Council on Foreign Relations, calls Iraq a war of "choice," not "necessity." He recounts a meeting with NSC director Condoleezza Rice in July 2002, two months before Iraq hit the headlines and three months before Bush went to the U.N. Security Council putatively to seek a resolution on Iraqi disarmament.

As head of State's policy planning, Haass' mission to the NSC was, he says, to discuss "the pros and cons" of escalating toward war with Iraq. Says Haass: "Basically, she (Rice) cut me off and said, 'Save your breath – the president has already decided what he's going to do on this.' "

So when Condi said two months later in September of 2002 (and for many months afterward) that Bush hadn't made up his mind about Iraq, we now know she was lying. Impressive.

Anyway, this column also mentions another of the mounting multitude of lies and exaggerations by this administration, the desperate (and hilarious) attempt to claim that the situation in Iraq was like that of post-war Nazi Germany. (Here's what I had to say about it here.)

But this reminded me of my favorite moment of historical illiteracy on the part of this administration. That would be the even more desperate attempt of Rummy to claim that the post-war Iraq situation was just like that faced in the wake of the American Revolution. More specifically, he claimed it was just like Shays' Rebellion.

All three of these instances bring up a couple of rather obvious questions: Is there anything they won't say? Is there any lie they won't tell?

I'm sorry folks. I just couldn't resist this little trip down memory lane.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Me too

Announcing CJR Campaign Desk

The new Columbia Journalism Review Campaign Desk will provide, "Critique and analysis of 2004 campaign coverage from Columbia Journalism Review."

Weekly Unemployment Insurance Claims Report

This week's ETA Press Release: Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report:

In the week ending Jan. 10, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 343,000, a decrease of 11,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 354,000. The 4-week moving average was 347,500, a decrease of 3,000 from the previous week's revised average of 350,500.

And the UNadjusted numbers?

"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 677,883 in the week ending Jan. 10, an increase of 128,233 from the previous week. There were 724,111 initial claims in the comparable week in 2003."

I report, you decide.

Dead Armadillos

Adapted from a comment thread:

If you decide in advance that the truth is always in the middle, it makes your life easier, but it cripples you with a jellified inability to respond effectively whenever one side or the other happens to be right.

Likewise, if you decide that they're all crooks, you become incapable of spotting crooks.

The Republicans have learned to game the moderate voters by noisily claiming that liberals are really dangerous radicals, that moderates are really liberals, and that the conservatives are the real moderates.

Since one category of moderate voter is dumb as a stump, this strategy works far too often. I know that you can't win by running against the voters, but -- bless their little hearts -- some of them are really hard to talk to.

Dean Article

There's an article on Dean here: U.S. News: Is Dean the one? Campaign heats up as wary Democrats look for a winner(1/19/04).

Though Dean did not enter the race with the expectations of winning, he did see a way to win. "Karl Rove [President Bush's political guru] discovered it, too, but I discovered it independently," Dean says and adds that the theory is embodied in the writings of George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley. "What you do is crank the heck out of your base, get them really excited and crank up the base turnout and you'll win the middle-of-the-roaders," Dean says. The reason, according to the theory, is that swing voters share the characteristics of both parties and eventually go with whatever party excites them the most. "Democrats appeal to them on their softer side--the safety net--but the Republicans appeal to them on the harder side--the discipline, the responsibility, and so forth," Dean says. "So the question is which side appears to be energetic, deeply believing in its message, deeply committed to bringing a vision of hope to America. That side is the side that gets the swing voters and wins."

Since it's dated the 19th, it might tell us who wins in Iowa.

Bush Imposes ISLAMIC LAW On Iraq!

Think I'm kidding? From Juan Cole * Informed Comment *:

"But the American-appointed Interim Governing Council has suddenly taken Iraq in a theocratic direction that has important implications for women's rights. As reported here earlier, the IGC took a decision recently to abolish Iraq's civil personal status law, which was uniform for all Iraqis under the Baath. In its place, the IGC called for religious law to govern personal status, to be administered by the clerics of each of Iraq's major religious communities for members of their religion. Thus, Shiites would be under Shiite law and Chaldeans under Catholic canon law for these purposes."

Of course, read the entire story. And yes, this means what you think it does for women in Iraq:

For the vast majority of women who are Muslim, the implementation of `iddah or the obligation of a man to support a woman for 3 months after he divorces her (a term long enough to see whether she is pregnant with his child) has the effect of abolishing the divorced woman's right to alimony. This abrogation of alimony was effected for Muslims in India in the mid-1980s with the Shah Banou case, as the Congress Party's sop to Indian Muslim fundamentalists. The particular form of Islamic law that the IGC seems to envisage operating would also give men the right of unilateral divorce over their wives, gives men the right to take second, third and fourth wives, and gives girls half as much inheritance from the father's estate as boys.

Priceless

Josh Marshall gets it just about right:

Number of days between Novak column outing Valerie Plame and announcement of investigation: 74 days.

Number of days between O'Neill 60 Minutes interview and announcement of investigation: 1 day.

Having the administration reveal itself as a gaggle of hypocritical goons ... priceless.

BuzzFlash Interviews Lakoff

We'll Grant This to the Republicans: They Know How to Frame Issues and Keep the Democrats on the Defensive. A BuzzFlash Interview with "Framing" Expert, UC Berkeley Professor George Lakoff - A BuzzFlash Interview

the american street Today

Digby has a post up over at the american street.

O'Neill Poll

Did O'Neill retract his Iraq charges faster than you thought he would?
	Yes - I thought he would know to hide his grandkids
	No - I figured they located his grandkids as soon as they knew he had a book coming
Free polls from Pollhost.com

THAT Didn't Take Long

From this:

"These people are nasty and they have a long memory," he tells Suskind. But he also believes that by speaking out even in the face of inevitable White House wrath, he can demonstrate loyalty to something he prizes: the truth. [. . .] That goal is worth the price of retribution, O'Neill says. Plus, as he told Suskind, "I'm an old guy, and I'm rich. And there's nothing they can do to hurt me."

to this: CNN.com - O'Neill says war plans account distorted - Jan. 13, 2004

"Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said Tuesday his account of the Bush administration's early discussions about a possible invasion of Iraq has been distorted.

"People are trying to make a case that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration," O'Neill told NBC's "Today" show. "Actually, there was a continuation of work that had been going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that there needed to be regime change in Iraq."

THAT didn't take long. This was a guy who SAID he knew what they were capable of, but was going to stand up to them.

Well, I guess he DIDN'T know what they were capable of. But I bet he does now.

Angry, Angry Dean

Angry Dean.