Hullabaloo

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

 
Honor, Dignity and Civility

Mr. Daschle is the first Senate party leader in more than half a century to lose a re-election campaign. His emotional talk, in which he also urged his colleagues to find "common ground," was attended by nearly all of the Senate's Democrats, who gathered him in their arms and hugged him afterward.

But only a few Republicans showed up, and Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, who broke with Senate tradition to campaign against Mr. Daschle in his home state, South Dakota, did not appear until after Mr. Daschle finished speaking.

Has there ever been a group of more graceless winners in history?

The scant Republican showing provoked Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, to speak out. "I don't know why, why in the closing days, some element of comity, some element of grace, some element of respect for a human being, could not have gotten some of our friends out of their offices," Mr. Lautenberg said.

Because they are assholes, all of them.

The Real American people have spoken. These fuckers represent them. They are going to lecture me about values and I'm supposed to respect them and believe them when they tell me they are concerned about their children. God help this misbegotten country.




digby 11/23/2004 01:19:00 PM |

Monday, November 22, 2004

 
Pandering To Hypocrisy

There seems to be something of a scold mentality emerging about those of us who question the sincerity of those who are up in arms about the libertine ways of the liberal elite. I had perceived this as saying that the Red States are just as "immoral" as the Blue States. But some, like Bob Sommerby, see it as a case of liberals claiming moral superiority. To the extent that honesty is more moral than hypocrisy, then I suppose he may be right.

We could argue this all day, but the crux of this is Sommerby's assertion that Democrats would win if we used Bill Clinton's formula and respected the views of these citizens with whom we disagree. Well, yes. As a general rule we should always be respectful of others. But, that does not necessarily mean that those who disagree with us are sincere or that we will win by being respectful of them.

The problem is that the evidence suggests that those who are sincerely shocked by what they saw on MNF are not representative of the vast majority of the so-called Real American voter. How can we explain, for instance, how those NFL fans who complained about the "Desperate Housewives" skit on MNF were shocked by the brazen sexuality of it but have never before raised hell about the tittilating beer commercials that have been shown on that same broadcast for years? And, we can pretend that the sexy show the skit was was advertising isn't hugely popular in the states that voted en masse for George Bush, but that doesn't change the fact that it is:

Many Who Voted for 'Values' Still Like Their Television Sin

The results of the presidential election are still being parsed for what they say about the electorate's supposed closer embrace of traditional cultural values, but for the network television executives charged with finding programs that speak to tastes across the nation, one lesson is clear.

The supposed cultural divide is more like a cultural mind meld.

In interviews, representatives of the four big broadcast networks as well as Hollywood production studios said the nightly television ratings bore little relation to the message apparently sent by a significant percentage of voters.

The choices of viewers, whether in Los Angeles or Salt Lake City, New York or Birmingham, Ala., are remarkably similar. And that means the election will have little impact on which shows they decide to put on television, these executives say.

[...]

"Desperate Housewives" on ABC is the big new hit of the television season, ranked second over all in the country, behind only "C.S.I." on CBS. This satire of suburbia and modern relationships features, among other morally challenged characters, a married woman in her 30's having an affair with a high-school-age gardener, and has prompted several advertisers, including Lowe's, to pull their advertisements.

In the greater Atlanta market, reaching more than two million households, "Desperate Housewives" is the top-rated show. Nearly 58 percent of the voters in those counties voted for President Bush.

And in the Salt Lake City market, which takes in the whole state of Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Wyoming, "Desperate Housewives" is fourth, after two editions of "C.S.I." and NBC's "E.R."; Mr. Bush rolled up 72.6 percent of the vote there.

This doesn't mean, of course, that those fans who complained about the MNF sketch watch "Desperate Housewives." (It's that the blatantly sexy beer commercials and close-up crotch shots and cleavage of the cheerleaders on MNF for years have not provoked a similar outcry from fans that speaks to their hypocrisy.) But these ratings do suggest that contrary to the emerging myth about Bush voter outrage at libertine Blue State immorality, somebody isn't being entirely truthful about their attitudes toward popular culture. After all, according to E&P the
"top three states for readership of Playboy magazine are Iowa, Wyoming, North Dakota ... and they all top heathen New York by 2-1 margins." Of course, they read it for the same reasons. The articles on stereo equipment.

Sommerby complains about Jeff Greenfield saying that the NFL fans who complained were the same ones who lied to their wives and went to strip clubs. A correspondent wrote in:

And to make sure the shocked fathers and mothers associate the descent of sexual morality with liberal Democrats, you tell me that Jeff Greenfield thinks that we fathers who complain about TV trash are hypocrites who "lie to their wives and drive to a topless bar". He's been watching The Sopranos too much; most of us family men don't do that. Chances are, those who do that would agree with Jeff that everyone complaining about Hollywood and TV immorality is a lying hypocrite.

By the way, I'm a long-time Democrat living in the Philadelphia suburbs, and I was shocked by that sexual introduction to a football game. And we wonder why more middle class Catholic and Evangelical voters keep shifting from Democratic to Republican.

I'm not going to defend Greenfield's comment because I have no way of knowing who is going to strip clubs and neither does this guy. It's possible that married football fans are not primary among those who frequent these places. There are an awful lot of them, however, all through the country, many in the heartland. Somebody's going to them.

But, what is relevant in his comment isn't family men going to strip clubs, anyway. It's family men who obviously watch the Sopranos complaining about the so-called immorality coming from Hollywood and implying that the Democratic party is responsible for it.

Does that guy in the Philly suburbs use the V-Chip? I don't know. But I do know that Democrat Bill Clinton championed them and pushed through legislation that mandated them but only 7% or so of family men who have them use them. Evidently, he watches the NFL with all those sexy beer commercials and big pom pom waving babes. Does he shoo his kids away from the TV when they come on? Maybe. Does he keep his kids from watching "The Sopranos?" I certainly hope so. But hewatches it, that's clear. (He sure seems to know about the Bada-Bing.) So, it's a complicated situation, isn't it? Lots and lots of things for parents to be concerned with. I understand that. But, considering what we can surmise about his viewing habits, you'll have to excuse me if I'm not entirely moved by his Claude Raines act.

Yes, we may be in different tribes. But vast numbers of people from both tribes are watching the same "trash" on television and getting divorced and having children out of wedlock and all the other horrible outgrowths of a society that is evidently in horrible decline. The difference is that one of the tribes seems to like to consume this crap and then pretend not only that they don't, but that the other tribe is forcing it on them.

Perhaps pandering to this is the way to win votes. Our politicians have certainly made an effort to do it now for years. But as I have discussed elsewhere, it doesn't seem to be working. But sure, we can keep pretending that that swathe of red America is really offended by the popular culture that we blues evidently represent, even though most Americans are the same consumerist purple from sea to shining sea.

It just seems to me that if you incorrectly diagnose the problem, you probably won't prescribe the right cure. But, hey, words are cheap. Phony moralists have proved that from time immemorial. Except for the non-stop character assasination, Monica's big mouth and impeachment, being respectful of conservative values (and Ross Perot)worked like a charm for Bill Clinton.

So, by all means let's pander till we can't stand up. We'll all pretend to be duly chastised by our libertine ways and pay obeisance to those good heartland values that neither they nor we actually live by. Whatever. But, don't expect me to actually believe that George W. Bush's majority represents those things any more than we depraved liberals do. Politicians and preachers lie. Neilson ratings and product sales don't.




digby 11/22/2004 05:30:00 PM |

Sunday, November 21, 2004

 
Pop Goes The Populism

David Niewert has written a very important post about Democrats and rural America that is worth reading and thinking about as we work out how we need to go forward. Ezra homes in on the point that young Democrats tend to leave rural America because there aren't many opportunities for those who are interested in progressive politics because the national party is concentrated in the urban areas. This is an important point and one that I hope party activists and organizers are thinking long and hard about. It isn't just the lack of direct political opportunity it's the lack of local opinion leaders in the media as well. Everybody listens better to their neighbors than to strangers. They have the better hand.

But, I think that Niewert has hit upon the essence of the problem when he says:

People listen to their radios a lot in rural America. Maybe it has something to do with the silence of the vast landscapes where many of them live; radios break that silence, and provide the succor of human voices.

If you drive through these landscapes, getting radio reception can sometimes be iffy at best, especially in the rural West. Often the best you can find on the dial are only one or two stations.

And the chances are that what you'll hear, at nearly any hour, in nearly any locale, is Rush Limbaugh. Or Michael Savage. Or maybe some Sean Hannity. Or maybe some more Limbaugh. Or, if you're really desperate, you can catch one of the many local mini-Limbaughs who populate what remains of the rural dial. In between, of course, there will be a country music station or two.

That's what people in rural areas have been listening to for the past 10 years and more. And nothing has been countering it.

[...]


It has to be understood that rural America is hurting, and has been for a couple of decades now. Visit any rural community now and it's palpable: The schools are run down, the roads are falling apart, the former downtowns have been gutted by the destruction of the local economies and their displacement by the new Wal-Mart economy.

People living in rural areas increasingly feel that they have become mere colonies of urban society, treated dismissively and ignored at best, the victims of an evil plot by wealthy liberal elites at worst.

Liberals, largely due to their increasing urban-centric approach to politics, have mostly ignored the problem. And conservatives have been busy exploiting it.

It's important to understand that they have been doing so not by offering any actual solutions. Indeed, Republican "solutions" like the 1995 "Freedom to Farm Act" have actually turned out to be real disasters for the nation's family farmers; the only people who have benefited from it have been in the boardrooms of corporate agribusiness, which of course bellied up first to the big federal trough offered by the law. Even conservatives admit it has been a disaster.

No, conservatives have instead employed a strategy of scapegoating. It isn't bad policy or the conservative captivity to agribusiness interests that has made life miserable in rural America -- it's liberals. Their lack of morals (especially embodied by Bill Clinton), their contempt for real, hard-working Americans, their selfish arrogance -- those are the reasons things are so bad.

These audiences are feeding on a steady diet of hate. And as with all such feedings, they never are sated, but only have their appetites whetted for more. So each day, people come back to get a fresh fill-up of hate.

People are hurting and they are told relentlessly day in and day out that liberals from big cities are the ones inflicting the pain. This would be funny if it weren't so tragic. This is the new American nativism. Minorities and immigrants have been joined by a blurry, indistinct non-American urbanite. (I suppose this is progress of a sort.)

I hear a lot about how Democrats need to stop with the so-called identity and rights based politics in favor of a populist message. It would certainly seem that that would be the way to reach these folks. They are getting the shaft from the very people for whom they are voting with a classic misdirection. It may be true that the liberal elites in the big cities don't care much about rural America, but it's the conservative elites who are actively and vigorously screwing them. But the Republicans have a way of dealing with that.

Via temple of democracy here's a classic dodge from Haley Barbour, good ole boy gazillionare lobbyist:

One of the most extensive national reports has been a New York Times Magazine piece headlined, "Mr. Washington goes to Mississippi." The story opens with Barbour getting kicked out of a cow auction, and quotes people who portray him as race-baiter, an expert schmoozer and a shrewd fund-raiser with "despicable clients."

Barbour, a Washington, D.C. lobbyist, quickly denounced the story.

"I am certainly never surprised when The New York Times attacks a Southern, conservative, pro-life, Christian Republican. Ask Charles Pickering," he said, referring to the Mississippi judge whose nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was held up by Democrats who questioned the judge's record on civil rights.

"It's what I expected from The New York Times because they don't like guys like me."

And, therefore, they don't like guys like you.

Democrats will say that we need to let the red state voters know who the enemy really is. We need to stop talking about guns, god and gays (and race) and get to the meat of the matter. As Max Sawicky wrote in his article "Why a Right Winger can't be a populist,"

Culture and values, among other things, are highly contested. For the sake of this essay I put them aside to focus on Money.

The problem is that we can't put them aside and concentrate on money because culture and values dictate what people think about money. And the culture and values of a large part of this country says that when it comes to money the government always gives it to the wrong people. We have a much more complicated problem on our hands than just moral values vs economics. And it goes all the way back to the beginning.

I wrote some things before (in response to the Dean campaign's insistence that you could appeal to guys with confederate flags on their pick-ups because they need health care too) about studies that show that Americans rejected the European style welfare state largely because a fair portion of our people have always believed that the government only helps the undeserving. This stems from the fact that most social programs were traditionally handled through churches and immigrant organizations which meant that the government mostly funded African American welfare programs because they didn't have the institutions or the money to do it for themselves. This led to a widely held belief in rural America that the government doesn't help the white working man and woman, it instead takes their tax dollars and gives it to blacks.

It is from this basis that modern Republicans have built their case against the liberal elites who allegedly hold Real Americans in contempt. It is the essence of the Southern Strategy and it's been highly successful for decades.

It's worth repeating that despite what Dean said in the primaries about putting the FDR coalition back together, there has never been a time when a majority of southern whites and blacks in the south voted for the same party. Blacks were not allowed to vote in the south in the 1930's. Indeed, it was only during the recent party realignment process that they overlapped at all. Let's not kid ourselves about why this is.

We cannot make a populist case to rural America as long as rural America continues to believe, as it has for centuries, that the government only takes their money and gives it to people they don't like. This belief is why people who should naturally support our programs instead vote for tax cuts. In the past, populists often shrewdly coupled their argument with nativist causes and were able to scapegoat either immigrants or blacks as part of their argument, thus partially nullifying this cultural resistence. Even FDR agreed to set aside the issue of civil rights for the duration. Needless to say, we aren't going to go down that path.

So, Democrats are left with a difficult problem of how to deal with a region that is in economic distress but whose culture traditionally believes that government only helps people unlike themselves.

Now, we could, of course, make a fetish of pointing out the awful truth --- that most federal transfers come from the blue states to the red states. But, that doesn't really address the problem, which comes down to attitudes about the big city poor (blacks) vs the rural poor (whites.) And all that is tied up with the monumental social changes of the last fifty years, which mostly benefit them but which Rush and Sean tell them is the cause of all their problems. Every day, all day, with relentless precision. The message is that liberals are taking their money, giving it to people they don't like and then forcing their decadent culture on them to the point where they ... cannot ... resist.

Yes, if people were rational about these things you could sit down and have a nice discussion with spreadsheets and diagrams showing that the rural red states benefit far more from federal redistributon of wealth than the metropolitan blue states. You could explain that many of the social changes that have happened have benefitted them in their own lives while acknowledging that there has been a cost and that changes of this magnitude can be frightening and destabilizing. You could show that the massive New Deal programs and the post war expansion benefitted primarily the middle class, not the poor. You could rally the people to the side of their own class instead of the corporations who benefit from the policies currently in place.

But, as we've seen, people are not rational. In fact, when it comes to modern American politics there seems to be a conscious embrace of the irrational, an epistomological relativism that renders such reasoned arguments completely inneffectual. People who listen to Rush or absorb his message through osmosis in their social group are operating on the basis of some very long standing tribal hueristics that have been very sophisticatedly manipulated by the real elites in this country. It will take more than fiery speeeches about sticking it to the man to penetrate this mindset.

Certainly, a populist message should work for the Democratic party. But, our populist message cannot obscure the fact that we represent blacks, urban dwellers and those who appear to be agents of rapid social change. And even if it could, the Republicans are hardly going to sit back and be quiet about it.

This problem needs some fresh thinking and I think that the article I posted about earlier about undecided voters provides us with some clues. The first is that we have to stop thinking in terms of issues or a combination of issues. People think in terms of worldview and tribal identity.

The next thing we need to recognise is that we are living in a post modern environment in which straight appeals to reason are not very effective. We have to begin to use symbols and semiotics more effectively. This means that we have to be more stylistic and sophisticated in our presentation. TV with the sound turned off.

But that won't be enough. We need to consider the American character and use it to shape our message. There is tremendous complexity in our national character and racial or social resentment is only a part of it. And there is a lot of tension, for instance between Equality/freedom --- Community/individualism. This tension has always been present and the line isn't drawn by region --- it's drawn within each person. We have to use some of these commonly understood and believed American values to illustrate our wordview in ways that people can understand hueristically instead of intellectually. We do this with a certain kind of candidate, a certain message and a certain kind of presentation. But we have to embrace this way of communicating before we can possible hope to use it to relate to Americans who are conditioned to buy and consume on the basis of their feelings not on the basis of their reason.

This is the world in which we live whether we like it or not. The Republicans are selling a vision and a sense of belonging to a certain tribe. We are selling an argument and a program. They are using 21st century tools to manipulate primal human needs and simplify the world. We are using 20th century methods to appeal to reason in a complicated way. They have the better hand.



Note: Over the past couple of weeks, I've written a few posts on this subject and others sort of tangentially related. A couple of readers asked me to put them all together in one place. Here they are.

TV With the Sound Turned Off

Heartland Values

A Very Old Story

It Won't Work

More Culture War




digby 11/21/2004 01:16:00 PM |

 
Ohferchristsake

It's a Small Story...but it illustrates why so many of us not only support President Bush as a politician with whom we agree most of the time, but love and respect him as a man:

President Bush stepped into the middle of a confrontation and pulled his lead Secret Service agent away from Chilean security officials who barred his bodyguards from entering an elegant dinner for 21 world leaders Saturday night."

That's why everybody loves and respects him. He's a natural born hero. If the Democrats could find one of those, maybe they'd get some respect too.

On July 12, 1988, Hecht was attending a weekly Republican luncheon when a piece of apple lodged firmly in his throat.

Hecht stumbled out of the room, thinking he might vomit but not wanting to do it in front of his colleagues. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., thumped his back, but Hecht quickly passed out in the hallway.

Just then, Kerry stepped off an elevator, rushed to Hecht's side and gave him the Heimlich maneuver -- four times.

The lifesaving incident made international news, and Dr. Henry Heimlich, who invented the maneuver in 1974, called Hecht to say that had Kerry intervened just 30 seconds later Hecht might have been in a vegetative state for life.

"This man gave me my life," the 75-year-old Hecht said Thursday.

Yeah. A man who grabs his secret service guy's arm in a melee is worthy of your love and respect. A man who won the silver and bronze stars in combat and later saved a man's life with quick thinking while all around him were quaking with indecision is worthy of nothing but the most vile, personal contempt.

Oh, but I understand that Junior once said he felt bad for calling Al Hunt a fucking son of a bitch in front of his four year old. He is worthy of love and respect as a man in so many ways.





digby 11/21/2004 11:45:00 AM |

 
The Captain Of The Ship

"I'm very proud of the fact that we held the line and made Congress make choices and set priorities, because it follows our philosophy," Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said in House debate.

[...]

Also enacted during the postelection session was an $800 billion increase in the government's borrowing limit. The measure was yet another testament to record annual deficits, which reached $413 billion last year and are expected to climb indefinitely.

While the spending bill was one of the most austere in years, it had something for everybody...[including] a potential boon for Bush himself, $2 million for the government to try buying back the presidential yacht Sequoia. The boat was sold three decades ago, though its current owners say the yacht is not for sale.

Well, Junior is the true heir to Nixon and proud of it. Why shouldn't he asssociate himself with Nixon's iconic imperial toys. It's only fitting.




digby 11/21/2004 01:06:00 AM |

Saturday, November 20, 2004

 
Brazen

Via The Daou Report, I see that those wacky Republicans are boldly trying to stick their noses into people's private business again. According to kd4dean over on Kos the Republicans tried to slip in another provision into the spending bill that would have allowed acouple of committee chairmen or their henchmen access to any American's tax returns for any reason. Somebody noticed.

"This is a serious situation," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. "Neither of us were aware that this had been inserted in this bill," he said, referring to himself and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Florida.

Questioned sharply by fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, Stevens pleaded with the Senate to approve the overall spending bill despite the tax returns language.

But Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, said that wasn't good enough. "It becomes the law of the land on the signature of the president of the United States. That's wrong."

Conrad said the measure's presence in the spending bill was symptomatic of a broader problem -- Congress writing legislation hundreds of pages long and then giving lawmakers only a few hours to review it before having to vote on it.

Stevens, who repeatedly apologized for what he characterized as an error, took offense at Conrad's statement. "It's contrary to anything that I have seen happen in more than 30 years on this committee," he said.

Pounding on his desk, Stevens said he had given his word and so had Young that neither would use the authority to require the IRS to turn over individual or corporate tax returns to them. "I would hope that the Senate would take my word. I don't think I have ever broken my word to any member of the Senate."

"... Do I have to get down on my knees and beg," he said.

Both Young and Stevens will cede their chairmanships when the new Congress elected earlier this month takes office in January.

Some Democrats didn't accept the assertion that the provision was a mistake and demanded an investigation.

"We weren't born yesterday, we didn't come down with the first snow," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. "This isn't poorly thought out, this was very deliberately thought out and it was done in the dead of night."

Members of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee now have limited access to tax returns, but there are severe criminal and civil penalties if the information is disclosed or misused.

Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the measure will "bring us back to the doorstep to the days of President Nixon, President Truman and other dark days in our history when taxpayer information was used against political enemies."

We crossed that threshold some time ago, I'm afraid.

I do enjoy the fact that the guy who made the "error" was offended that nobody would take his word. That's what happens when your leadership tells people to go fuck themselves over and over again, Ted. It tends to erode trust.




digby 11/20/2004 11:25:00 PM |

 
Liberals

Here's a nice personal piece about what it means to be a moderate liberal on ThatColoredFellasweblog. At the end of his post, he links to a number of online political quizzes, one of which defined my philosophy quite succinctly, and correctly I thought, the following way:

LIBERALS usually embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but tend to support significant government control of the economy. They generally support a government-funded "safety net" to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation of business. Liberals tend to favor environmental regulations,defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.

Got a problem with that?




digby 11/20/2004 08:02:00 PM |

 
Huh?

At the Republican governors' conference in New Orleans, Ken Mehlman, the Bush campaign manager, answered the question, Who's your daddy party? "If you drive a Volvo and you do yoga, you are pretty much a Democrat," he said. "If you drive a Lincoln or a BMW and you own a gun, you're voting for George Bush."

Those BMW driving gun owners are just fabulous.




digby 11/20/2004 07:26:00 PM |

 
Semper Falafel

O'Reilly understands that war is hell:

Having survived a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands War, I know that life-and-death decisions are made in a flash. If that wounded insurgent had a grenade or other explosive device, the entire marine squad and the photographer could be dead right now. In a killing zone, one cannot afford the luxury of knowing what is certain.

As with all literary greats like Mailer, Jones and Heller, O'Reilly has memorialized his scorching experiences in his novel, "Those Who Trespass" a murder mystery set in Argentina during the hell on earth that was the Falklands war:

The policemen were clearly frightened. Their fascist powers were being brazenly challenged. Standing directly in front of the police were nearly ten thousand very angry Argentine citizens screaming curses and revolutionary slogans:

ALa gente unida venceramos!

AMuera la Junta!

AMuera Galtieri!


GNN News Correspondent Shannon Michaels translated the chant and wrote it into his notebook: "The people, united, will never be defeated! Death to the Junta! Death to the dictator Galtieri!" Shannon and his video crew stood behind the police, five hundred strong crowded together in a massive show of force. Their assignment was to guard the presidential palace, called the Casa Rosada--the Pink House--and to protect President General Leopoldo Galtieri. But the crowd was getting more and more aggressive, pushing toward the large metal gate that provided access to the palatial grounds. Shannon saw that The Plaza de Mayo, the huge square in front of the Casa Rosada, was now filled to capacity. Something very ugly was going to happen, Shannon thought, and happen soon.

The sky was clear, but clouds were assembling in the west. Shannon ran his fingers through his thick mane of wavy brown hair. His teal blue eyes were locked on the agitated crowd. It was his eyes that most people noticed first--a very unusual color that some thought materialized from a contact lens case. But Shannon, the product of two Celtic parents, didn't go in for cosmetic enhancements. His 6' 4 frame was well toned by constant athletics, and his pale white skin was flawless--another genetic gift. Shannon's looks, which he thoroughly capitalized on, made him a natural for television.

As the mob continued its boisterous serenade, Shannon slowly shook his head. Most wars were foolish, he thought, but this one was unusually idiotic. The Argentine Junta, a group of military thugs led by General Galtieri, had ordered an invasion of the British-administered Falkland Islands on April Fool's Day, 1982. The government claim was that the islands, which the Argentines called the Malvinas, became a part of Argentina through a Papal declaration in 1493. The British disagreed. So, nearly five hundred years after the grant of land, the Argentine Army swarmed ashore, startling eighteen hundred British subjects and tens of thousands of bewildered sheep.

[...]


During his seven-year career as a TV news correspondent, Michaels had seen rank stupidity, but this moronic government strategy boggled the mind. Anyone who read a newspaper knew that the British Parliament, and especially Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, would never allow British honor to be besmirched. It took the Brits just three months to thoroughly humiliate the Junta, further angering the Argentine citizenry. No wonder they were now filling the streets in passionate demonstration against the Galtieri government.

Sends chills down your spine, doesn't it? Has anyone matched this kind of searing prose in the Falklands chronicles? I don't want to ruin the story by revealing the fiery hell that our blue eyed Celtic hero had to endure. Let's just say that that marine in Fallouja won't know what hell is until he's had to film a news story with his flawless white skin covered in dust and dirt. It just makes you sick to even think about it. The horror...




Via: BCF




digby 11/20/2004 05:46:00 PM |

 
Frame Up

Here's a re-frame for you, from a passionate young Deaniac in a libertarian Red State, Matthew Whitmyre:

Abolish the FCC

Why do we need a government censorship and moral regulation department? Sounds like those pointy-headed Washington types are trying to force their values on me. Damn conservative intelligentisia, living in their ivory towers, trying to impose their twisted values on a hard working Amurican like me. Shut those Washington Bureaucrats down!

Two can play at this game, you know.

Update: Jeff Jarvis has the same idea. And James Wolcott endorses it.

Damn Guvmint bureaucRATS.


digby 11/20/2004 02:22:00 PM |

 


Oliver Willis is a genius.

This is what I'm talking about. And here's why.

I don't know how many of you elitist limousine liberals listen to country music, but if you do, you know that all this disgust with blue state morality is something of a crock. Popular culture is much more indicative of what people do than what they say they do.

Check out this ditty by the king of country music, Bush supporter extraordinaire, Toby Keith:

His name was Steve, her name was Gina (You've never been here before have you?)
They met at a bar called the Cabo Wabo Cantina
He was an insurance salesman, from South Dakota
She was a 1st grade school teacher, Phoenix, Arizona
(No, my first time here)
They started dancin' and it got real hot, then it spilled over to the parkin' lot
One more tequilla, they were fallin' in love
One more's never enough

Don't bite off, more than you can chew
There's things down here the Devil himself wouldn't do
Just remember when you let it all go
What happens down in Mexico, stays in Mexico

He woke up in the mornin' and he made a little telephone call
To check on his wife and his kids back at home in Souix Falls (Hey babe, everything ok?)
She hopped right in the shower with a heavy, heavy mind (What am i doing?)
He knew it was the first time Gina'd ever crossed that line
They walked down to the beach and started drinkin' again
Jumped into the ocean for a dirty swim
One more margarita, they were fallin' in love
One more's never enough

Don't bite off, more than you can chew
There's things down here the Devil himself wouldn't do
Just remember when you let it all go
What happens down in Mexico, stays in Mexico
Oh, Mexico

Waitin' at the bar at the terminal gate
She said Steve i gotta go, i'm gonna miss my plane
He said one more tequilla 'fore you climb on up
She said one more's never enough

Don't bite off, more than you can chew
There's things down here the Devil himself wouldn't do
Just remember when you let it all go
What happens down in Mexico, stays in Mexico
Stays in Mexico, Stays in Mexico
Oh, Mexico

Whatever will we tell the children?

That song has been in the top five of the Country Billboard charts for 12 weeks. It's at number 5 right now.

Or how about this one:

Well I'm an eight ball shooting double fisted drinking son of a gun
I wear My jeans a little tight
Just to watch the little boys come undone
Im here for the beer and the ball busting band
Gonna get a little crazy just because I can

You know im here for the party
And I aint leavin til they throw me out
Gonna have a little fun
gonna get me some


I may not be a ten but the boys say I clean up good
And if I gave em half a chance for some rowdy romance you know they would

I've been waiting all week just to have a good time
So bring on them cowboys and their pick up lines

Dont want no purple hooter shooter just some jack on the rocks
Dont mind me if i start that trashy talk

You know im here for the party
And I aint leavin til they throw me out
Gonna have a little fun
gonna get me some

You know I'm here, I'm here for the party

That song by Gretchen Wilson's been on the top 100 country radio playlist for 17 weeks. It's been in the top 10 Billboard country charts for the same amount of time, spending several weeks at number 1. It's at number 5 this week.

The last I heard, the country music capital of the United States isn't Hollywierd or New York City. It's Nashville, Tennessee. And a vast number of country radio stations that play this stuff are owned by Clear Channel. Are they getting complaints from the same distraught parents whose children saw the opening credits of Monday Night Football? I don't think so.

Country music dominates rural America. This stuff is everywhere and everybody is listening and singing along. You cannot tell me that Americans, both Real and Unreal don't share modern sexual attitudes because it's obvious that they do. (Gay rights is another thing and it's going to take some time. But, we're getting there too. Garth Brooks stood up for his gay sister and it didn't cost him any record sales.)

What we are dealing with is hypocrisy on the one hand and deft exploitation on the part of the Republicans to cast differences in style as differences of "values." It's not true and we should try to make that argument.

Democrats are known as the party of tolerance. And that has become a pejorative term. But, it's just a small step from tolerance to freedom. We are tolerant because we believe in freedom.

Let them have their crusade against freedom. They are swimming against the tide even amongst their own. Maybe we should suggest that they begin their crusade a little closer to home, though. Maybe they need to start by telling Toby Keith and Gretchen Wilson and Clear Channel that they don't want any more of their music on the public airwaves. Let's see how that works out in Real America, shall we?




digby 11/20/2004 11:49:00 AM |

 
Falwell's Chattel


Negotiators Add Abortion Clause to Spending Bill

"It's something we've had a longstanding interest in," said Douglas Johnson, a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee. He added, "This is in response to an orchestrated campaign by pro-abortion groups across the country to use government agencies to coerce health care providers to participate in abortions."

This clause sounds like something the GOP would tell us Real Americans would all be thrilled with. So, why are negotiators tucking it in a spending bill in the dead of night? Why not pass it separately and bask in the glow of Real American approval?

This bill, of course, is going to pass. But, an opposition party might vote against it en masse in order to bring the issue to the attention of the American people. "They are hiding anti-choice legislation in spending bills at the last minute in order to secretly enact their radical agenda."

I'm sure Joe Lieberman will use this as an excuse to show that he is bi-partisan. Reid should corral everyone else to hang tough. Every other word coming out of Democrats' mouths should be "extremist", "radical", "secretive" and the like as Kerry did yesterday in his video.

Regardless of the merits of "moving to the middle" on abortion, this particular action should be opposed by Democrats because of the way in which it was done. They should raise holy hell that these contentious issues are being slipped in under the radar without debate. You want to frame these things in the public's mind as something the Republicans are ashamed of or afraid of and force them to explain why they are not.

This should be done over and over again so that Americans get the message that these guys are trying to hide their radical agenda. This serves to wake up the somnambulent middle who didn't vote for extremism and piss off the social conservatives who are itching to take credit.

And speaking of this, I want to take a moment to commend Josh Marshall for his "Shays handful" work. It's very important that Republicans be forced to account for their cowardice. If Josh hadn't done this, I'm not sure that we would have these wimps on record. As it is, challengers throughout the country now have a potent weapon if the Democrats can get it up to make use of it.




digby 11/20/2004 09:27:00 AM |

Friday, November 19, 2004

 
Correction

Remember the post I wrote a month or so ago about the romance novelist who was rousted by the Patriot Act police? It turns out that it was A Convenient Smoke Screen.

She was actually busted for collecting disability while making money writing, using her husbands social security number. Or at least that's what the government says.




digby 11/19/2004 05:00:00 PM |

 
Kerry Speaks

John Kerry is asking for our help to Protect Every Child in America. Sign the petition.

People have been talking a great deal about behaving as a real opposition party, presenting alternate plans, boldly defining ourselves as a government in exile. This is a smart politics. There is a leadership vacuum in the Party and if John Kerry wants to step in, I say more power to him. But for a few thousand votes in Ohio, we'd be calling him President-elect Kerry today.

This is a classy move from a classy guy. Perhaps that's not in fashion at the moment but it means a lot to me.




digby 11/19/2004 01:30:00 PM |

 
I'm Officially Depressed

I hate puritanism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism. I can't stand the idea that free adults aren't allowed to make their own choices about what to read, watch and think.

A while back, I wrote about Academy Award-winning writer and director Bill Condon who has produced a brilliant film on the life and work of sex-researcher Alfred Kinsey. Here are the first and second links to my posts about this important film and director.

I saw this film as one that depicted the ongoing battle in our society between rationality and science on one hand versus dogma and a strain of empirically-hostile religious extremism on the other.

Well, a cold current of censorship has now just hit even New York's flagship PBS station, WNET Channel 13.

I expect this crap from corporate media outlets who don't want to offend their advertisers and so try to play both sides as much as possible. But, PBS was begun for the very reason that they would be above such parochial concerns. Now, even in New York, the home of blue state elitism, they are opting for pedestrian conformism. If I were a New Yorker I might just have to decline to support them during the next pledge drive.

I do have a couple of questions for Real America on this. If vast numbers of middle Americans are upset about the loose morals on television, how can we explain this:

Parents who own a TV set manufactured after January 1, 2000 have a blocking technology called a V-chip that can be programmed to screen out shows with TV ratings they deem inappropriate.

By 2001, 2 out of 5 parents (40%) owned a V-Chip TV set and 7% had used it to monitor their children’s TV viewing. Of all parents who have a V-Chip TV set, more than half (53%) don’t know it. Of all parents who know they have a V-Chip TV set, two-thirds know(64%) have chosen not to use it and one-third (36%) have used it.

The two most common reasons parents give for not using the V-Chip are that an adult is usually nearby when their children watch TV, and that they trust their children to make their own decisions.

Approximately one-third of parents with home Internet connections have installed blocking technology such as filtering software or Internet Service Provider (ISP) controls to prevent children from accessing objectionable material.

It sure sounds to me as if somebody's not taking personal responsibility for what their children are watching.

Unless, of course, this isn't about children at all. In which case this is really about a bunch of tightassed, busybodies sticking their noses where they don't belong because they want to control everybody's lives.

Welcome to Massachusetts, Red States. Massachusetts circa 1692, that is.




digby 11/19/2004 01:28:00 PM |

 
MYOB

Atrios and Yglesias make an argument for the Democratic Party to position itself on the side of personal freedom. Those who read this blog know I believe that this is a fertile field for us in this political environment.

Individual freedom is as All-American as apple pie and Let The Eagle Soar. The corporate police state theocracy is hostile to that All-American "value" and it is going to begin to encroach on people in ways that they will feel in their personal lives. There are at least three million votes there. Possibly many millions more. Plenty of Americans don't like being told how to live their lives by a bunch of priests, politicians or bureaucrats. And it ain't all about taxes.




digby 11/19/2004 09:12:00 AM |

Thursday, November 18, 2004

 
The Stupidest People On The Planet:


France
Favorable 25%
Unfavorable 57%


United Nations
Favorable 44%
Unfavorable 42%



France
Ally 22%
Enemy 31%
In Between 43%



United Nations
Ally 33%
Enemy 17%
In Between 47%


Golly Monsieur DeLay, you sure do have a purdy name. I hope one of your dipshit constituents doesn't get it in his head that you are the enemy.




digby 11/18/2004 10:16:00 PM |

 
I Know You Are But What Am I

Kevin Drum discusses the new wingnut political correctness about calling people who support right wing Israeli policy, "Likudniks" --- which is like calling people who believe in affirmative action "Democrats." It may be slightly imprecise, but it's not racist.

But this is becoming common on the right and you can tell even they know it's a stupid bully taunt. When wingnut freaks like Ann Coulter pull this stuff out of her strappy little thong, she can hardly keep a straight face.

From the November 17 edition of FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes:

COULTER: I don't know why you [Beckel] keep talking about [the unfair treatment received by] Bill Clinton when your party -- I mean, I understand why you'd like to change the subject, but your party is being biased and condescending about a black woman.

[...]

COULTER: I understand why you are so terrified of letting us point out what racists the Democrats are and how they have a big problem with black women.

BECKEL: You better be damn careful about using that word. I'll tell you something, I worked in the civil rights movement.

COULTER: Sean, stop him!

SEAN HANNITY (co-host): Bob -- Bob --

BECKEL: When you were sitting in your little schools up in New England.

HANNITY: Bob --

COULTER: I keep trying to get to this.

BECKEL: Don't start with me about that. Ann, you just crossed the line.

HANNITY: Bob -- Bob --

COULTER: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[...]

COULTER: It goes beyond the cartoons. It goes to the fact that...

ALAN COLMES (co-host): Bob Beckel.

COULTER: ... it is Condoleezza Rice who keeps being attacked for not being the most qualified person for the job, as I know Clarence Thomas was. No one ever said that about Warren Christopher. What were his qualifications for the job?

[...]

COULTER: You're [Beckel] racist. You do the same thing with Clarence Thomas.

[...]

COULTER: You keep talking about these cartoons. I'd only seen one of them before this program tonight. And I said I think liberals have a problem with blacks. They have a little race issue going on here.

You know, it's often said that blacks feel like they have to be twice as good as whites for the same position. Well, when it comes to blacks working for a Republican administration, that's true. They have to be 10 times as good or they have their credentials questioned [by liberals]. That really is...

COLMES: You think liberals have a problem with blacks?

COULTER: ... the puppet Bush.

COLMES: Do you think liberals have a problem with blacks? You want to make that statement in a vacuum?

COULTER: Yes. No, I think I've given a few examples, and I'll give more. There's Clarence Thomas, who was constantly made fun of, is he the most qualified one of the job. I don't remember anybody ever asking that of Justice William Brennan or [David] Souter.

[...]

COULTER: Dick Clarke, the flamboyant opponent of the Bush administration, came out with a book earlier this year, claiming that Condoleezza Rice, when he talked to her about Al Qaeda, her face showed that she was perplexed, that she had never heard of Al Qaeda before.

Can you imagine somebody saying that about, you know, Wolfowitz? No. That's my fourth example now of liberals having a problem with blacks.

[...]

BECKEL: I have no problem with her [Rice] because she's black. I have a problem with her because I don't think she's up to the job [of secretary of state]. Do not begin to say that people like me are racist when I spent a lot of time out in the vineyards on the civil rights movement.

I don't think you can type one credential where you've had -- You've got to be careful here, Ann.

COULTER: And you listen to jazz

She is amazing. Notice how she characterized "Dick" Clarke as "flamboyant" while she's admonishing Beckel for being a bigot. People should not argue with her, they should laugh at her. She's a clown.

This notion that if you criticize minority Republicans, you are a racist is not confined to the lunatic fringe, however. It is one of their talking points and we are going to be hearing a lot more of it. They are using the language of liberalism to beat liberals over the head. But two can play at that game.

In our new Dadaesque politics we should expect this absurd stuff and be prepared to counter. Beckel should have immediately accused Coulter of being unpatriotic for criticizing President Clinton.




digby 11/18/2004 09:15:00 PM |

 
PoMo Puffery

In his post Rodeo Bloodbath, James Wolcott brings up something that's been making my gorge rise for the last few days --- this fetishization of the "Marlboro Man" GI photo. Apparently it's making bunches of Real Americans all moist and quivery.

It is, however, nothing more than warmed over WWII movie iconography which even news editors are eager to admit:

One cited the ``strong emotional pull, close and intimate.'' Another noted the intensity in his eyes, calling the Marine ``a modern-day Robert Mitchum.'' Another said, ``You can almost feel what he feels. This is war. This is real life.''

What exactly are they teaching in J-School these days? "He's a modern-day Robert Mitchum." "It's real."

As a reader reminded me the other day, it isn't reality, it's hyperreality. Robert Mitchum played the role of GI Joe in the movies. Now we have real GI's being iconized for looking like Robert Mitchum.

What a sad confused culture we have become.




digby 11/18/2004 01:57:00 PM |

 
The Ownership Society

Atrios notes the happy news that the AEI administration is thinking of dropping the business tax deduction for empoyer-provided health insurance in order to pay for making interest, dividends and capitals gains tax free.

I don't know what he's so unhappy about, though. George W. Bush is just trying to empower the working man here. With those fancy new medical savings accounts, the guy who works at Pep Boys and his wife who works in the hospital gift shop will be able to save the 10k a year (tax free!) to pay for his wife and 2 kids' health insurance. Then he'll be a member of the ownership society because he'll own his own health insurance policy. Isn't that great?

I'm assuming, of course, that if employers drop health insurance they will then be required to give their employees a raise in the amount of what they were paying for their health care, less the tax break. They will do that, won't they? Of course they will. Otherwise, these working people will be forced to "save" money that they don't have. That wouldn't be right.

But if that happens let's face it, if you can't afford to make ends meet that's what churches are for. Be good and maybe you'll be allowed some charity. (Or you'll be allowed to pray for some, anyway.) Meanwhile, just work harder. Like our good ole boy, Real American president who knows the meaning of hard earned dollar. He's tough, tough, tough and we have to be tough just like him. Why, a real man would rather gnaw off his leg or put his wife out of her misery than have his boss pay for his health insurance. This whole issue is an excuse for lazy Democrat losers looking for a handout.




digby 11/18/2004 08:05:00 AM |

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

 
Decidedly Different

Christopher Hayes spent time with undecided voters in Wisconsin and lived to tell the tale. His experience confirms my impression that these people were pretty stupid, but they are stupid in interesting and unusual ways I didn't expect.

Undecided voters aren't as rational as you think. Members of the political class may disparage undecided voters, but we at least tend to impute to them a basic rationality. We're giving them too much credit. I met voters who told me they were voting for Bush, but who named their most important issue as the environment. One man told me he voted for Bush in 2000 because he thought that with Cheney, an oilman, on the ticket, the administration would finally be able to make us independent from foreign oil. A colleague spoke to a voter who had been a big Howard Dean fan, but had switched to supporting Bush after Dean lost the nomination. After half an hour in the man's house, she still couldn't make sense of his decision.

[...]

Undecided voters do care about politics; they just don't enjoy politics...The mere fact that you're reading this article right now suggests that you not only think politics is important, but you actually like it. You read the paper and listen to political radio and talk about politics at parties. In other words, you view politics the way a lot of people view cooking or sports or opera: as a hobby. Most undecided voters, by contrast, seem to view politics the way I view laundry. While I understand that to be a functioning member of society I have to do my laundry, and I always eventually get it done, I'll never do it before every last piece of clean clothing is dirty, as I find the entire business to be a chore. A significant number of undecided voters, I think, view politics in exactly this way: as a chore, a duty, something that must be done but is altogether unpleasant, and therefore something best put off for as long as possible.

A disturbing number of undecided voters are crypto-racist isolationists. In the age of the war on terror and the war in Iraq, pundits agreed that this would be the most foreign policy-oriented election in a generation--and polling throughout the summer seemed to bear that out...But just because voters were unusually concerned about foreign policy didn't mean they had fundamentally shifted their outlook on world affairs. In fact, among undecided voters, I encountered a consistent and surprising isolationism--an isolationism that September 11 was supposed to have made obsolete everywhere but the left and right fringes of the political spectrum.

[...]

In fact, there was a disturbing trend among undecided voters--as well as some Kerry supporters--towards an opposition to the Iraq war based largely on the ugliest of rationales. I had one conversation with an undecided, sixtyish, white voter whose wife was voting for Kerry. When I mentioned the "mess in Iraq" he lit up. "We should have gone through Iraq like shit through tinfoil," he said, leaning hard on the railing of his porch. As I tried to make sense of the mental image this evoked, he continued: "I mean we should have dominated the place; that's the only thing these people understand. ... Teaching democracy to Arabs is like teaching the alphabet to rats."

That may have been the most explicit articulation I heard of this mindset--but it wasn't an isolated incident. A few days later, someone told me that he wished we could put Saddam back in power because he "knew how to rule these people." While Bush's rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy played well with blue-state liberal hawks and red-state Christian conservatives who are inclined towards a missionary view of world affairs, it seemed to fall flat among the undecided voters I spoke with. This was not merely the view of the odd kook; it was a common theme I heard from all different kinds of undecided voters.

[...]

The worse things got in Iraq, the better things got for Bush. Liberal commentators, and even many conservative ones, assumed, not unreasonably, that the awful situation in Iraq would prove to be the president's undoing. But I found that the very severity and intractability of the Iraq disaster helped Bush because it induced a kind of fatalism about the possibility of progress.

[...]

To be sure, maybe they simply thought Kerry's promise to bring in allies was a lame idea--after all, many well-informed observers did. But I became convinced that there was something else at play here, because undecided voters extended the same logic to other seemingly intractable problems, like the deficit or health care. On these issues, too, undecideds recognized the severity of the situation--but precisely because they understood the severity, they were inclined to be skeptical of Kerry's ability to fix things. Undecided voters, as everyone knows, have a deep skepticism about the ability of politicians to keep their promises and solve problems. So the staggering incompetence and irresponsibility of the Bush administration and the demonstrably poor state of world affairs seemed to serve not as indictments of Bush in particular, but rather of politicians in general.

[...]

undecideds seemed oddly unwilling to hold the president accountable for his previous actions, focusing instead on the practical issue of who would have a better chance of success in the future. Because undecideds seemed uninterested in assessing responsibility for the past, Bush suffered no penalty for having made things so bad; and because undecideds were focused on, but cynical about, the future, the worse things appeared, the less inclined they were to believe that problems could be fixed--thereby nullifying the backbone of Kerry's case. Needless to say, I found this logic maddening.

Undecided voters don't think in terms of issues. Perhaps the greatest myth about undecided voters is that they are undecided because of the "issues." That is, while they might favor Kerry on the economy, they favor Bush on terrorism; or while they are anti-gay marriage, they also support social welfare programs. Occasionally I did encounter undecided voters who were genuinely cross-pressured--a couple who was fiercely pro-life, antiwar, and pro-environment for example--but such cases were exceedingly rare. More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I'd just asked them to name their favorite prime number.

[...]

But the very concept of the issue seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to... So I tried other ways of asking the same question: "Anything of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything? Are you excited about what's been happening in the country in the last four years?"

These questions, too, more often than not yielded bewilderment. As far as I could tell, the problem wasn't the word "issue"; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the "political." The undecideds I spoke to didn't seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief--not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.

[...]

In this context, Bush's victory, particularly on the strength of those voters who listed "values" as their number one issue, makes perfect sense. Kerry ran a campaign that was about politics: He parsed the world into political categories and offered political solutions. Bush did this too, but it wasn't the main thrust of his campaign. Instead, the president ran on broad themes, like "character" and "morals." Everyone feels an immediate and intuitive expertise on morals and values--we all know what's right and wrong. But how can undecided voters evaluate a candidate on issues if they don't even grasp what issues are?

Liberals like to point out that majorities of Americans agree with the Democratic Party on the issues, so Republicans are forced to run on character and values in order to win. (This cuts both ways: I met a large number of Bush/Feingold voters whose politics were more in line with the Republican president, but who admired the backbone and gutsiness of their Democratic senator.) But polls that ask people about issues presuppose a basic familiarity with the concept of issues--a familiarity that may not exist.

As far as I can tell, this leaves Democrats with two options: either abandon "issues" as the lynchpin of political campaigns and adopt the language of values, morals, and character as many have suggested; or begin the long-term and arduous task of rebuilding a popular, accessible political vocabulary--of convincing undecided voters to believe once again in the importance of issues. The former strategy could help the Democrats stop the bleeding in time for 2008. But the latter strategy might be necessary for the Democrats to become a majority party again.

I suspect that there are more than a few of these types of voters out there and they unfortunately gain in significance hugely with the electorate so evenly split. These are the people you reach through showbiz values. Logic, self interest, philosophy are useless. Gotta put on a better show. It's not that hard to do.







digby 11/17/2004 01:29:00 PM |

 
Unconventional Wisdom

Read this from Jonathan Rausch in National Journal.

Quick post-post-election exit poll: Which of the following two statements more accurately describes what happened on November 2?

A) The election was a stunning triumph for the president, the Republicans, and (especially) social conservatives. Because the country turned to the right, President Bush received a mandate, the Republicans consolidated their dominance, and the Democrats lost touch with the country.

B) Bush and the Republicans are on thin ice. Bush barely eked out a majority, the country is still divided 50-50, and the electoral landscape has hardly changed, except in one respect: The Republican Party has shifted precariously to the right of the country, and the world, that it leads.

Usual answer: A. Correct answer: B.

For the record, only time will tell, the truth is somewhere in the middle, and all that. Still, level-headed analysis -- which is not what this year's post-election commentary produced -- shows that every element of Statement A is suspect or plain wrong.

Begin with that stunning triumph. "Stunning" implies surprising. Any observers who were stunned this year lived in a cave (or on Manhattan's Upper West Side). All year long, month after month, opinion polls averaged to give Bush a lead in the low-to-mid-single digits, depending on when the poll was taken and who took it. Only toward the end, after the debates, did the gap narrow to that now proverbial "statistical dead heat." Even then, the statistically insignificant margin generally favored Bush. Another indicator was the University of Iowa's electronic election market, which lets traders bet on election outcomes; it consistently showed Bush winning with a percentage in the low 50s. Rarely has an election been so unsurprising.

A triumph? Only by the anomalous standards of 2000. By any other standard, 2004 was a squeaker, given that an incumbent was on the ticket. The last conservative, polarizing Republican incumbent who slashed taxes and campaigned on resolve against a foreign enemy won 49 states and received 59 percent of the popular vote. That, of course, was Ronald Reagan, who did not need to scrounge for votes to keep his job.

Most incumbent presidents win in a walk. The prestige and visibility of the White House gives them a powerful natural advantage. Bush enjoyed the further advantage of running against a Northeastern liberal who had trouble defining himself and didn't find the battlefield until September. By historical standards, Bush in 2004 was notably weak.

The boast that Bush is the first candidate to win a popular majority since 1988 is just pathetic. Bush is the first presidential candidate since 1988 to run without effective third-party competition, and he still barely won. No one doubts that Bill Clinton would have won a majority in his re-election bid in 1996 if not for the candidacy of Ross Perot.

A new political era? A gale-force mandate for change? More like the breezeless, stagnant air of a Washington summer. Despite much higher turnouts than in 2000, only three states switched sides -- a startling stasis. Despite Bush's win, the House of Representatives barely budged. In fact, the Republicans might have lost seats in the House had they not gerrymandered Texas. The allocation of state legislative seats between Republicans and Democrats also barely budged, maintaining close parity. The balance of governorships will change by at most one (at this writing, Washington state's race was undecided). If that's not stability, what would be?

In the Senate, the Democrats were routed in the South and their leader was evicted. Those were bruising blows, to be sure; but it was no secret that the Democrats had more Senate seats to defend, that most of those seats were in Republican states, and that five were open. "Early predictions were that the Republicans would pick up three to five seats overall," notes my colleague Charlie Cook. (See NJ, 11/6/04) In the end, the Republicans picked up four.

Here is the abiding reality, confirmed rather than upset by the election returns: America is a 50-50 nation. According to the National Election Pool exit poll (the largest and probably most reliable such poll), voters identified themselves this year as 37 percent Republicans, 37 percent Democrats, and 26 percent independents. That represents a shift in Republicans' favor, from 35-39-27 in 2000 -- but it is, of course, a shift to parity, not to dominance.

The political realignment that Republicans wish for is real, but it has already happened.


[...]

...the electorate's center did move, but only about 3 percentage points. That was about how much Bush improved his showing over 2000 in the average state he won twice, and it is also about the size of his margin of victory this year. It was enough to win him a close election, but hardly a breakthrough.

If anything structurally important happened in 2004, it was that the country moved to the right a little, but the Republican Party moved to the right a lot. John Kerry's Democrats aimed for the center and nearly got there, whereas Bush pulled right. He won, of course, but in doing so he painted his party a brighter shade of red -- especially on Capitol Hill, and above all in the Senate, some of whose new Republican members seem nothing short of extreme.

Read it all. I've written some of this same myself, so I'm partial, but really all is not lost. With all they had to work with to come down to a few votes in Ohio, gerrymandering Texas and picking off Red State Senate seats doesn't exactly speak to great electoral strength.

Via Donkey Rising




digby 11/17/2004 11:05:00 AM |

 
Real Men Don't Like Sex

This Is Rich:

It was the most disgraceful thing I've ever seen," Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney said in a telephone interview yesterday. "It's on at 9 o'clock. Kids are watching, and everyone starts to think this is the NFL. I've written a letter to the commissioner [Paul Tagliabue], and I don't think he can be very happy about it, either. We can't allow that kind of thing to happen."

In a prepared statement, ABC, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, said, "We have heard from many of our viewers about last night's 'Monday Night Football' opening segment and we agree that the placement was inappropriate. We apologize."

The segment opened with actress Nicollette Sheridan, clad in only a towel, standing near Owens in the Eagles' locker room. On ABC's new hit series, Sheridan plays a character named Edie Britt, a multiple divorcee who has had a number of sexual conquests in her fictional neighborhood.

Sheridan: "My house burned down and I need to take a long, hot shower. . . . So where are you off to looking so pretty?"

Owens: "Baby, it's 'Monday Night Football.' Game starts in 10 minutes."

Sheridan: "Oh, you and your little games. . . . I've got a game we can play."

Later, with her back to the camera, Sheridan dropped the towel and Owens said, "Aw, hell, the team's going to have to win one without me."

At that point, she jumped into his arms, and the scene cuts to two other "Desperate Housewives" actresses, Felicity Huffman and Teri Hatcher, who uttered MNF's signature slogan: "Are you ready for some football?"

My Gawd, those NFL fans must have felt so dirty.

Here's another example of all those Hollywood elites forcing this awful deviant culture on Real America. Still, it is kind of interesting that Neilson reports that while 12 million people tuned in to Monday Night football last week, 24 million watched "Desperate Housewives" the night before.

Needless to say, all the people watching "Housewives" in Real America were gay tourists from San Francisco.

pdate: Reader jjt mentions something that I missed but that is probably significant:

I wonder if what has gotten some people upset on Monday night is not Nicollette Sheridan's naked back but that she ends up in the arms of a black athlete.

Never underestimate the ability of racists to rationalize their bigotry with calls to morality. It's an old dodge. A hostile reaction to a scene like that is part of the lizard brain of too many Americans.

I'm also enjoying the moralizing on Fox News today about this story. They are very concerned about this terrible association between sex and sports. Which is why they hire experts like this (warning at work) on Fox Sports. Another of these professional sportscasters appeared earlier and showed one of her modeling sessions for Maxim as an example of what she wouldn't do on Monday Night Football. It was very instructive, I'm sure.



Also a correction: The "Desperate Housewives" numbers were from the previous week. It was pre-empted last Sunday.




digby 11/17/2004 10:31:00 AM |

 
Bad Medicine

Reader Joseph Musco sent me a copy of a letter he wrote to Ron Hayes of the Palm Beach Post and Candy Crowley of CNN about the Green Tea Incident. He points out something very interesting:

The Prostate Cancer Research Institute notes that some chemicals in green tea (and not black tea) are useful in fighting parts of cancer and may aid in keeping some cancers in remission. The American Cancer Society lists prostate cancer is the second deadliest cancer among men. John Kerry lost his father to prostate cancer. John Kerry himself was diagnosed with prostate cancer sometime in early 2003 and underwent successful surgery just weeks after the breakfast Ms.Crowley mentions. Couldn't John Kerry's preference for green tea be a small way maintain his health, coping with an illness as best he can to ensure a long life as a father and husband? Is it uncommon for people to have an illness in their family history and alter their diet so they can lead longer healthier lives? Isn't that a quality to be admired and not scorned?

Candy Crowley was interviewing him at the time so asking John Kerry why he liked green tea would have been easy. She might have found out that his doctor recommended it rather than that he was a sensitive new age bi-coastal liberal elite freakshow who she could make a tidy profit trashing after the election with stories like this. But, that would make her a reporter instead of a tabloid entertainer and that isn't her job.








digby 11/17/2004 01:06:00 AM |

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

 
Liberal Conspiracy

Blogs For Bush via The Daou Report:

Real Clear Politics also has an excellent look at the real issues driving the election - and it wasn't just 'moral values' as the MSM and the leftwing apologists would have us believe

So this is an MSM and leftwing apologist narrative, hmmm?

I wonder if anyone's told James Dobson, Richard Viguerie and the Concerned Women of America? The last I heard they weren't the MSM or leftwing apologists but maybe that's what they want to be called these days. It's so hard to keep up.

Why are the Republicans running from their most loyal constituents?




digby 11/16/2004 10:50:00 PM |

 
American Anthropology

Here's a must read by Rick Perlstein on the subject of American tribes.

I've been doing a lot of ruminating on this blog lately about that topic so this article about a writer named Paul Cowan who did some very interesting journalism for the Village Voice back in the 70's is a timely addition to my thinking on the subject. It's a fascinating look at a writer of the left who delved into tribal America and came away with a complex and insightful view of the longstanding culture war during a period of liberal dominance. (One of the more jarring things about the article is the realization of the extent to which the "liberal reform" impulse that so offends the Real Americans is in retreat today.)

Perlstein finds some intriguing parallels with a radical apostate of the period, Norman Podhoretz one of the godfathers of neoconservatism. Podhoretz, unsurprisingly, does not come out so well by comparison. But then radicals are often full of shit.

It's a very interesting read and worth thinking about as we launch ourselves into what looks to be an all out cold civil war for the next little while.

Correction: John Podhoretz changed to Norman Podhoretz.


digby 11/16/2004 10:12:00 PM |

 
Think Big

I'm so relieved that we are having the discussion about which Democratic values we can safely shed early instead of waiting until closer to the next election like we usually do. I think we should get out ahead on these issues and put the Republicans off their game. I'm already on record as being in favor of scrapping our pesky insistence on teaching evolution. Clearly, it's disrespectful to those who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible to insist that it is true. That elitist fealty to reason and fact is why they hate us so.

Matt Yglesias and others think that Roe vs Wade is probably a goner and may even be a good thing because if we expend a bunch of energy defending it, more important things will be sacrificed. If some women have to take one for the team, well, nobody ever promised them a rose garden. Everybody knows that an adult's inalienable right to make a unique and difficult moral choice for herself is a leu-seur. (Check here for a list of countries around the globe that we'll be joining in the 19th century.) I think the sooner we dump that albatross the sooner everyone will relax and support our superior economic philosophy. Besides, it will still be legal in certain expensive blue states so it's not like anybody whose father was governor of a red state and went on to become president couldn't catch a flight and take care of business, if you know what I mean. Big whoop.

Chris Bowers thinks we might want to adios gun control and get with the faith based program. I'm pretty sure that gun control was the issue we ditched after 2000, so I don't think we can use it again. The rules for proving your bona fides as a Real American require that once you discard a liberal issue you can't Sistah Soljah it again.

And you know, we already embraced faith based initiatives but with the requirement that they adhere to federal non-discrimination statutes. If we want to wring out a Real America forelock tug from this one, we're need to insist that the government use federal money to discriminate against women or minorities or people who don't practice a specific religion. If we couple that with the creationism move and actively work to dismantle public schools, we might just be getting somewhere. Perhaps we could really shake things up by proposing to reverse Brown vs Board of Education, the damned case that lost us Real America in the first place. "Separate but Equal" has some real resonance these days, don't you think? It fits so nicely on a bumper sticker.

But, will any of this really be enough? I have to wonder. It seems that we just aren't getting there with these baby steps toward rejoining Real America. I think we need to think big. Really big.

When you look at it, our whole problem can be laid at the foot of the Bill of Rights. Maybe it's time to take a good hard look at how much good defending that puppy has really done the Democratic Party, eh?

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I've already pointed out the damage that the separation of Church and State has done to us. Besides, it says an establishment of religion, not religions. If we make laws that establish more than one religion then we don't even have to feel bad about it! If a few Buddhists, Muslims, pagans and atheists don't like it, well that's getting just a little too fine. They let in the Catholics, fergawdsake. Even the Jews. That's enough "religions" for anybody.

Free speech forces us to defend the right of people to say things that Real Americans don't like and it's costing us. We end up getting associated with all those liberal TV stars from Friends that Real Americans hate, but we get no love for defending the right of Rush Limbaugh to call us traitors every day. I can't see how it helps us to stick with this one.

Right of Assembly? That is so September 10th. Fuggedaboudit.

Redress of grievances? Petitioning of the government? Hello? Can we say, "I vote yea on the confirmation of Alberto Gonzalez for Attorney general?" Enthusiastically? Thank you.

What is this free press you speak of?

Amendment II

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Now we're talking some sense.

Amendment III

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

whatever

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Hey, a little sneak 'n peak never hurt anybody. It is long past time for this to go.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The founders were a little naive, weren't they? This is all well and good, but all it does is empower a bunch of bleeding hearts. "Due process" is just an excuse for judicial activism. It's gone.

Well, except for the takings clause. That's a keeper. Some principles we just can't toss and still be able to look ourselves in the mirror.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Yeah right, Messrs. Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and the rest. I'd like to introduce you to a couple of guys names Hamdi and Moussaoui. And some guys down in Gitmo who might have known some guys who killed people on September 11th. Maybe if you knew them you wouldn't have HAMSTRUNG decent Americans from doing what they need to do to keep this country safe. (They obviously didn't have a clue about what it takes to defend liberty. Sad.)

Amendment VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Getting rid of this would be the ultimate tort reform. And gawd knows Real Americans want tort reform almost as much as they want the flag burning amendment and prayer in schools. This is a big winner, folks.

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

A little waterboarding is good enough to determine who is and isn't a witch or a terrorist and there's no reason we shouldn't be able to inflict a little pain on those actually convicted of crimes either.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Well, that's a bunch of crap. Any rights not explicitly enumerated in the constitution are "special rights" and should be denied without a second thought.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

This would be fine as long as we attach the addendum that says, "unless Republicans control the federal government." I think they'll go along with that.

Repeal The Bill Of Rights: Vote Democratic!

It's got a real ring to it, don't you think?






digby 11/16/2004 07:07:00 PM |

 
Press Corpse Zombies

Kevin Drum says what I was going to say about the completely inexplicable decision of the LA Times to publish an editorial by the discredited John Lott. If he is considered credible then there is absolutely no reason why Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair have been drummed out of the business. When you make stuff up our of whole cloth, it should have some effect on your credibility.

Oh wait...I forgot. IOKIYAR

Which leads me to this unbelievably tendentious piece of garbage by Patrick Goldstein in today's LA Times calendar section. Apparently, Michael Moore and Jennifer Anniston offended some Republicans with their criticism of George W. Bush and that is why we lost the election.

"The Democrats really paid a price for their association with strident Hollywood activists and their palpable contempt for regular people," says Mike Murphy, the Republican political consultant who ran John McCain's 2000 presidential bid and now works with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Yeah. Arnold and Maria are jes reglar folk, watchin' NASCAR, drankin' Dr Pepper and listenin' to some Toby, I guess.

This construction about "regular" people comes up throughout this article in varying forms. It would appear that the 55 million of us who voted for John Kerry are not regular people. If we were we would have rejected him because he was supported by those who hold Regular People in contempt. Therefore, we are held in contempt. Interesting.

Take the case of newly minted Real American Ron Silver who evidently was raised on a potato farm in Idaho and rides the bull down at Gillies whenever he gets the chance. He says in the article, "There's an incredibly unhealthy uniformity of opinion in Hollywood. When you're at a dinner party and the subject of the president comes up, it's just assumed that all 20 people are thinking, 'how are we going to get rid of this [jerk].' I can't think of any colleague in the entertainment community having a serious conversation with someone who's pro-life or a born-again Christian. There's just a real disconnect from the rest of the country."

Haha. Yes, darling, it's so true that at dinner parties in Real America all twenty people engage in lively erudite political discourse in which all sides are viewed with equal interest. That's what makes Real America so special, after all. It's the fact that it isn't closed minded like those disconnected Hollywood liberals. In real American, pro-choice and pro-life, black and white, Christian and Jew all break bread together. (And, they serve the tastiest little crab cake hors d'ouevres, too. Yum.)

To be fair, there were a few artists who displayed a touch of class, most notably the Bruce Springsteen-led coalition of rock stars who did Kerry concerts around the country, all without engaging in incendiary political rhetoric. If only their movie star brethren could've shown such discretion...Instead Jennifer Anniston called Bush "an idiot," along with an expletive we can't print here, while Cher dubbed the president "stupid and lazy."

The low point of self defeating activism came at a Radio City Music Hall fundraiser at which Chevy Chase said the president had the intellect of an "egg timer" John Mellencamp called Bush a "cheap thug" and Meryl Streep, in a performance that brings new meaning to the word sanctimonious, belittled the president's faith.

Is it any wonder that the Bush campaign tried in vain to get the Democratic National Committee to release a tape of the event? If there was one thing everyday Americans didn't want to hear, it was self-involved celebrities trashing the president.

[...]

If the showbiz world is every going to connect with voters, it has to learn to respect them first. Just ask Kirk Wagar, a Miami trial lawyer who served as the Democrat's Florida finance chairman. Upset over the party's inability to speak to real Americans, he's launching an organization devoted to helping Democratic candidates communicate a values-driven message to lower and middle income voters who have a natural affinity for the party's economic message.

If today's Hollywood activists want to learn how to communicate with real people, maybe they should try the [Preston] Sturges approach --- go out an meet them. No preaching, just lend an ear. When you actually shut up and listen, it's amazing what you can learn.

No preaching. What a fine idea for limousine liberals, Christian proselytizers and big city show business reporters alike. But, perhaps I shouldn't say anything being that I'm so irregular, unreal and unusual. We odd Americans who agreed that the president is an idiot and said it out loud to anyone who'd listen at our soirees and dinner parties thought, strangely, that there was a presidential campaign going on, not a coronation. We thought our passionate opinions, and those of the hated "limousine liberals" were as valid as any other. But, we were wrong. We are not everyday Americans. All 55 million of us are not quite right, not quite real.

No one's saying the industry should temper its views or stop funneling money to the democrats. After all, the GOP rakes in tons of cash from ardent conservatives, but most of its far-right supporters are shrewd enough to avoid the limelight.

That's going to come as a helluva surprise to Rush Limbaugh's bosses, who gave him a 250 million dollar contract to say things like this every single day to millions and millions of those wonderful Real Americans:

The left is scared to death of God. They think Bush is a believer, and they got quotes from people that say Bush doesn't think, he just follows his instincts based on how he feels after he prays. He's just -- "this is horrible." They're out there and they're scared to death because they don't understand God. They don't understand a personal relationship with God. They can only think it's trouble.

The -- the Kerry campaign has finally gotten a chocolate chip. The Kerry campaign has announced that civil rights activist, the Reverend Jackson, has joined the campaign on Wednesday

[O]ne of the things we've learned is that [Senator John] Kerry has two elements of his base. And that's why, no matter what he says, he angers half the base.
Half the base is so-called old reasonable Democrats, and they don't hate the military. The other half of the base hates the military, hates America, hates Bush, hates the world except for France and Germany.

Well, try to figure, just imagine Lurch from The Addams Family hanging out a bus window underneath his face is "JohnKerry.com." He's got this sort of weird looking grin on his face with Evita hanging over his left shoulder.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is reporting that the new Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi has executed six insurgents in front of witnesses, wanting to send a clear message to these people. Good. Hubba-hubba.

And before anyone suggests that he is a fringe dweller of the Right, let's not forget:

"[I]t's always an opportunity and a thrill for someone like me to be able to talk to somebody like you, the vice president of the United States, and so some of these questions may appear to be leading, and I really don't mean to do that.

This entire critique of the liberal elites who allegedly don't understand Real America, and the 55 million of us Unreal Americans who agree with them is another example of this frustrating epistemological relativism to which the press corpse seems consciously oblivious. Up is down and black is white. Entertainers shouldn't get political unless they agree with Republicans, in which case they can have radio shows that are beamed to more than 25 million people a day in which they can viciously insult Democrats all day long. The contempt with which Rush Limbaugh holds the entire Democratic party day after day after day is down to earth and real. The contempt with which Hollywood Democrats held George Bush at a fundraiser is unamerican.

Rush Limbaugh is the voice of the Republican Party --- the allegedly "Real" Americans we liberal elitists don't understand. His swill is endorsed by the highest reaches of the GOP. If Patrick Goldstein and Ron Silver don't believe me, maybe they'll listen to Mary Matlin:

MATALIN: This is a -- this is another reason you're my hero, of all the reasons. I have to read these papers every day because I have to do the defense to them?

RUSH: Yeah.

MATALIN: And it's not until I listen to you that I actually can crack a smile for the first time in the day. And the reason that they're -- I know most of the country doesn't read them ["these papers"], but they do drive a lot of the coverage. As a for instance -- not -- not to pick on The New York Times, but they are particularly egregious when it comes to the Bush administration.

[...]

MATALIN: [Y]ou inspired me this morning. There's no reason that I have to do that. I'm -- and at least I think I do, but when I listen to you, I get all the information I need, and I -- and I -- it is -- I have a confidence in the President, in the policies, in the goals. I have -- I know his conviction. I know he's right and I know he has the leadership to do it. What I don't have, and what I can only get from you, is the cheerfulness of your confidence --

I think the picture is pretty clear here about Real America, don't you?

There are 55 million of us freakish, irregular, unReal Americans who refuse to accept that it is a-ok for this asshole (and all of his clones) to infect this country with his hateful bile uncontested and unrebutted anymore. If that means we have to use harsh language, then fine. Real Americans are just going to have to get used to it coming from our side.

Patrick Goldstein may have been born yesterday, but some of us have been watching the Right disseminate it's eliminationist propaganda for a long, long time. The Left isn't shutting up because a bunch of effete "journalists" are too stupid to know when they're being played.. Again.

Gawd, has there ever been a less insightful, less informed, more gullible press corps in history? I can hardly wait for the conservative prom this year. Patrick Goldstein will undoubtedly get the "Richard Cohen Useful Idiot" award, although it's going to be a very competitive category.




digby 11/16/2004 04:26:00 PM |

 
Bloggerrific

For your one stop blog shopping, check out The Daou Report.

It highlights the right thinking Left (a fine service in itself) but, it also gives you the lowdown on the wrong thinking Right, thus saving you from having to wade through the wingnut hell-broth yourself.



digby 11/16/2004 01:22:00 PM |

Monday, November 15, 2004

 
CAKEWALK


Fallujah in Pictures



An Iraqi nurse treats 2-year-old child Mustafa Adnan, at a Baghdad hospital, who lost a leg when his house in Falluja's Jolan district was shelled during fighting between U.S. forces and insurgents in the war-torn city November 14, 2004. U.S. tanks shelled and machine-gunned rebels still holding out in Falluja in heavy fighting that was preventing an Iraqi Red Crescent convoy from getting aid to civilians trapped in the city for six days. (Ali Jasim/Reuters)


Eliana Aponte / Reuters







digby 11/15/2004 05:36:00 PM |

Sunday, November 14, 2004

 
Liberation

"Destruction was everywhere. I saw people lying dead in the streets, wounded were bleeding and there was no one to come and help them. Even the civilians who stayed in Fallujah were too afraid to go out," he said.

"There was no medicine, water, no electricity nor food for days."

By Tuesday afternoon, as U.S. forces and Iraqi rebels engaged in fierce clashes in the heart of his neighborhood, Hussein snapped.

"U.S. soldiers began to open fire on the houses, so I decided that it was very dangerous to stay in my house," he said.

Hussein said he panicked, seizing on a plan to escape across the Euphrates River, which flows on the western side of the city

"I wasn't really thinking," he said. "Suddenly, I just had to get out. I didn't think there was any other choice."

In the rush, Hussein left behind his camera lens and a satellite telephone for transmitting his images. His lens, marked with the distinctive AP logo, was discovered two days later by U.S. Marines next to a dead man's body in a house in Jolan.

AP colleagues in the Baghdad bureau, who by then had not heard from Hussein in 48 hours, became even more worried.

Hussein moved from house to house dodging gunfire and reached the river.

"I decided to swim … but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river."

He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. Then, he "helped bury a man by the river bank, with my own hands."

digby 11/14/2004 08:14:00 PM |

 
Walking To Church

I want to make one little addition to my post about hypocrisy in the values laden swath of Republican Red. I think that it's important to point out that this notion of hyperactive church attendance in the US is largely a crock.

The Gallup organization has pegged regular weekly church attendance at around 40% of the population for decades. This is a self-reported statistic, usually arrived at by asking the question "have you attended church in the last seven days" or something like it. It was largely unremarked upon until the 90's when some sociologists decided to follow up. What they found is that people vastly "overreport" their church attendance.

This was tested in a number of ways, through actual headcounts followed up by telephone polls to checking a long term study of driving habits (PDF) that showed that people somehow "neglected" to mention driving back and forth to church every week but reported that they attended when asked directly.Religious writers have looked at these numbers and found them to be overstated, as well.

I don't write this to indict the fine churchgoing people in this country who obviously number in the tens of millions. But, before the Democrats go off half cocked and move too far in the direction of the social conservatives, they need to insure that they are dealing with reality and not Republican hype.

I have lived in states both blue and red and towns both small and large. And it is certainly true that people tend to talk about religion more openly in the smaller, redder areas. But, this is likely because they are more homogenous than big cities where there is a lot more religious diversity and therefore a bigger chance of getting into an argument or having an uncomfortable social interaction. It's not surprising that people in rural America are more likely to lie about their church attendance because there is more social pressure to conform to what is perceived to be required as an upstanding citizen. (It's also possible that people in big cities lie to pollsters about their opinions about contentious issues because of the social pressure to be tolerant in places where there is a lot of diversity.) The point is that if people are actually lying about their religious fervor to pollsters there is every liklihood that acceding to a religiously based political agenda is counterproductive. For reasons outlined in my previous posts of these past couple of weeks, I don't believe it will work in any case. It isn't about values with "values" voters.

As I look at the situation as it's likely to play out over the next four years, I think that with the theocratic, authoritarian Right in ascendance, an old fashioned freedom cry of "Mind Your Own Business" might have some salience in the libertarian southwest and mountain states. Everything from the Patriot Act atrocities to corporations selling your personal information to compelling you to adhere to specific religious teachings goes against the western grain. The key to this would be to continuously highlight the corporate and extremist religious right's stranglehold on a Republican Party that seems to believe that the president is the public's boss instead of its servant. This does not sit well with the individualistic strain of the west. Combine it with a critique of their trashing of the environment without consideration of local concerns and their overwhelming fiscal irresponsibility and you've got the beginning of a helluva wedge. (This oft cited article about the Montana governor's race is instructive. This blog post from Left In The West is even more so.)

Here's the hook. Democrats believe in freedom. The Republicans believe in forced conformity and injecting themselves into every aspect of their citizens' lives. Turn their own libertarian message against them. Clearly, they were full of shit about everything but the tax cuts. If there are any libertarian types out there who value their personal freedom as much as their money (and I think there are more than few) our message might just speak to them. Nobody likes the IRS, but unelected preachers and businessmen using the power of the state to tell you how to live is against all first principles of what it means to be a free American.

I am a left libertarian by philosophy and temperament. I'm big on civil liberties and the Bill Of Rights. I don't think that reasonable taxation comes anywhere close to being as coercive to the individual as unregulated business, theocratic political factions or an unfettered police state. I think there are some people in the current Republican coalition who might hear that message and I think they are far more likely to be open to it than the (largely hypocritical) "values" voters who are fighting a tribal war for dominance. The west isn't about dominance or submission. It's about live and let live. They consider themselves true independents. We can do business with these people.




digby 11/14/2004 04:13:00 PM |

 
The Pageant

Atrios is full of 'tude these days and rightly so. This nonsense about finding leaders who are immune from GOP criticism is just ridiculous. I thought we all understood that the attack machine has no relationship to the truth. There is no such thing as an acceptable Democrat anymore. There isn't even such a thing as an acceptable moderat republican anymore. Look what they are doing to Specter.

I simply cannot believe that after the last twelve years any Democrat still believes that there are limits to what the Republicans will say to assassinate someone's character or how far the SCLM will go to promulgate it if the story is juicy enough. Perhaps Mr Nelson needs to make a run for the presidency and see if all that Red state love sees him through.

And ditto what Josh said, too. Loyalty is a principle, guys. Not blind loyalty, but that good old fashioned notion that you don't trash your friends for personal gain. If there is one thing I admire about the Republicans is that they treat their candidates with respect. As far as I'm concerned, any Dem who goes out there against the Republican attack machine and puts himself or herself on the line for us deserves at least that.

Marshall also makes some good points here.

...Democrats don't do anywhere near as good a job at telling a story with their politics.

If you want an example think of a movie with great acting and set-design but no discernible plot.

Yes, you're for this and that policy and you have this, that and the other plan. But what story or picture does it all amount to? What things does it say are important and which things less important? What does it all amount to in terms of who we are as Americans and who we want to be?

I think I can tell you what the Republicans are for and without referencing hardly any policy specifics. They're for lowering taxes in exchange for giving up whatever it is the government pretends to do for us, (at a minimum) riding the brakes on the on-going transformation of American culture, and kicking ass abroad.

That’s a clear message and a fairly coherent one, whatever you think of the content --- it’s about self-reliance and suspicion of change. And Democrats have a hard time competing at that level of message clarity.

I think it's true that our movie just isn't as good as theirs. But rather than being a great production without a plot, I think we are one of those disjointed, arty films with lots of great moments, but afterwards you really can't explain what it means to someone who hasn't seen it.

The Republicans do big technicolor blockbusters with a big predictable plot. It's called "They're Comin' Ta Git Ya!" (Parts I through XX.) It's a franchise in which the government or the blacks or the gays or the liberals or the terrorists are trying to tear apart your way of life and the Republican party is all that's standing between you and them. It's not about self-sufficiency, it's the opposite. It's about being a perpetual victim.

Democrats can make a wonderful, big budget picture for the whole family, called "America." It's about freedom and courage. It would be an uplifting tale starring ordinary individuals working together for common goals and achieving success through equal opportunity and hard work. Our heroes insist that the community should help the less fortunate because it is the right thing to do. Period. They are Americans who live by the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights --- individual liberty, inalienable human rights and an equal playing field. When those ideals are attacked from without or within they fight like hell. In the end, we all live together peacefully because our freedom, rights and responsibilities as Americans to live as we see fit are what make us strong. Our democratic government becomes a force for good because it reflects those values. It reflects us.

It's true that we have lost sight of how to tell our story. Indeed, we are still consumed with the idea that if only we adjusted our positions on the issues, then we would win --- even though we already poll higher on most issues that people say they care about. But this has gone way beyond issues. It's about what people think we stand for vs what we actually stand for. We have not recognized that we are living in brand America and we have to sell people on the "idea" of our brand. Civics isn't even taught anymore and nobody knows jack about history. What they know is story and we have to tell them ours.

And one thing simply cannot be overlooked again, by those of us on the left who tend to blame our party and those in the middle who ..... also blame our party. This is the fact that we are competing with an organization and a movement that has no limits. If we tell our story perfectly with total clarity and beauty and we present it with the finest production values and the best candidates in the world to embody our national character, we still have to contend with a professional character assassination machine that is not hindered by any if the so-called morals and values they pretend to revere. This is a formidable obstacle and one that we will have to learn how to deal with before we can hope to break through this morass.

Therefore, we take this on from both angles if we expect to win this war. We must disable their noise machine and we must put on a bigger, better pageant. Both of things will be required to break through the static and get the attention of those people in the country who are part of OUR story but have been subsumed in propaganda and programmatic rhetoric for so long that they think that we don't have one.

One of these requires a willingness to go for the jugular and another requires a big creative vision. They aren't mutually exclusive but this might be a case for some division of labor. Any ideas?




digby 11/14/2004 01:56:00 PM |

Saturday, November 13, 2004

 
Mediawhores, Heal Thyself

Robert Parry is absolutely right about this. These snotty articles in the SCLM tut-tutting blog conspiracy theories are a bit rich coming from the very papers that slavered and drooled over the most massive conspiracy theory perpetrated on the American Public in recent memory --- Ahmad Chalabi's Tales of the WMD. Talk about chutzpah.




digby 11/13/2004 10:32:00 AM |

Friday, November 12, 2004

 
Expressing Ambivalence

NewDonkey says that Democrats get it wrong when they say that economic populist approaches will work but that changing our position on social issues is right. He's right about the first part (more on that later) and, as anyone who's been reading this blog the last few days knows, I believe he is wrong about the second.

He quotes Tom Coburn Senate Nominee from Oklahoma who says:

For the vast majority of Oklahomans--and, I would suspect, voters in other red states--these transcendent cultural concerns are more important than universal health care or raising the minimum wage or preserving farm subsidies. Pace Thomas Frank, the voters aren't deluded or uneducated. They simply reject the notion that material concerns are more real than spiritual or cultural ones. The political left has always had a hard time understanding this, preferring to believe that the masses are enthralled by a "false consciousness" or Fox News or whatever today's excuse might be. But the truth is quite simple: Most voters in a state like Oklahoma--and I venture to say most other Southern and Midwestern states--reject the general direction of American culture and celebrate the political party that promises to reform or revise it.

New Donkey says:

We're the "wrong track" party when it comes to the cultural direction of the country, and we have to decide whether to bravely swim upstream out of loyalty to hip-hop and Michael Moore and Grand Theft Auto IV and Hollywood campaign contributions, or do something else, like at least expressing a little ambivalence about it all. Changing the subject is cowardly and insulting no matter how you look at it.

I agree with Carson that these so-called cultural issues transcend economics for a bunch of reasons that I'll go into over the week-end hopefully. However, that does not mean that the Democrats will ever gain anything by denouncing popular culture. Carson doesn't believe it is a false consciousness and maybe it isn't. Perhaps it is just sheer hypocrisy, I don't know. But, the fact is that somebody in the red states is watching Will and Grace and somebody is watching Girls Gone Wild and a whole bunch of somebodies are downloading pornography. I'm sure they tut-tut those terrible liberals while they pass the popcorn and laugh over The Bachelor's latest catfight.The biggest hit of the TV season is the sexually adventurous Desperate Housewives and it ain't just because people in new York and LA are watching it. The National Enquirer and the Globe are hugely popular in Middle America with their fascination with Hollywood dirt.

This is mass consumer culture and it plays very successfully all across that great swathe of red. Somebody's watching all this stuff and buying all this stuff and consuming all this stuff. I'm sure that many believe it's a problem, but I'm just not sure it's our problem. After all, these are the salt of the earth individuals who believe in taking personal responsibility, unlike us Hollywood and east coast elites. And let's not forget who's making the profits selling all this decadent culture to these innocent, God fearing folk who are evidently hypnotised into buying it. Republican Big Business.

I agree that economic populism isn't going to work. But, we have proven that adopting socially conservative positions doesn't work either. These people pretend to be morally superior even as they indulge in all the dirty hanky panky they hypocritically pray over in church. It's not about what they actually do, it's what they say they do -- not the same thing at all. If they were so concerned about moral values they wouldn't be chuckling along while the drug addicted Rush Limbaugh makes jokes about pornographic images with a knowing nod and wink. They wouldn't so easily forgive their leaders who are divorced two and three times in ugly and cruel circumstances. They wouldn't stand for media personalities who call female employees on the phone and regale them with sexual fantasies. These are the icons of their Republican party and media elite. Yet, they are held to a much lower standard than Michael Moore, who may have said inflammatory things but never to my knowledge actually did anything blatently immoral or illegal.

If these people were truly concerned about moral values you'd think they'd start at home.

Nope. This is a marketing ploy set forth by the Republican party to exploit the tribal differences between the red and the blue the urban and the rural by creating a very convenient illusion of middle American (read: Republican) moral superiority. It's a crock. They consume just as much of this allegedly toxic culture as anybody else in this country. They just lie about it.

Pandering to hypocrites is a fools game --- as Brad Carson found out when he was beaten by the crazed wingnut doctor, Tom Coburn, who had hallucinations about lesbians in elementary schools. Obviously, "expressing ambivalence" about Hollywood values will never be able to compete with something like that.

Correction: I made a huge mistake and thought that the above quote was by the democrat Brad Carson. It has been corrected to reflect it was Tom Coburn, the very wingnut doctor who won with his fantasies about grade school lesbians.

This makes Kilgore's point even less salient. If we are "listening" to guys like Coburn explain why they won then we are bigger fools than I thought. They have absolutely no reason to be sincere about this.

Correction II: Yes, I realize that I screwed up. The quote is Carsons after all. Sorry for the confusion. Mea maxima Culpa. Posting and running is never a good idea.

digby 11/12/2004 08:56:00 AM |

Thursday, November 11, 2004

 
Wingnut Kool-Aid Acid Test

If anyone wants to see a mere shell of a formerly asute cultural observer, check out this video of Tom Wolfe on The Daily Show.

He's noticed that boys and girls cohabitate outside the sanctity of marriage nowadays. The parents don't know what to do when the boys and girls come to visit. It didn't used to be this way in his day. Who knew?



digby 11/11/2004 07:41:00 PM |

 
Wedge Issue

James Wolcott learns that whenever a liberal bi-coastal elite makes fun of Lil' Andy he is branded a homophobe by the Alan Simpson Man Boy Association.

A racist-t-shirt wearing professor of Creationism at Wayback University who goes by the handle of Instapundit claims that if a Republican had written what I did about Andrew Sullivan's phantom creeper on Real Life on Bill Maher, it would have been considered "homophobic."

I found this out myself when I once pointed out on the late lamented mediawhores online that the swaggering George W. Bush gave Lil' Andy and Leslie Stahl a fit of the maidenly vapors. Andy himself called me a "leftist homophobe." (It was the first I'd heard any rumors about Stahl but I guess Andy would know.)

Anyway, it was one of my proudest online moments. I still think of it fondly. Back then, Howard Fineman and Lil' Andy and Jay Nordlinger could rhapsodize for days about Junior's macho swagger, his fabulous chin, his equally perfect comfort in ermine or epaulets. It was a lot like like listening to people talk on the bus when I lived in San Francisco in the late 70's. It made me feel young again...

What's interesting is that Instapundit seems to have joined the chorus about leftist homophobes. With all this PC sensitivity towards gays in the wingnut set these days, you'd think it was the liberals who just won an election with the help of a bunch of mouthbreathers who seem to think that if gay people are allowed to marry then Real American heterosexuals will be required to perform fellatio. (This is, needless to say, what the Concerned Women For America are most concerned about.)




digby 11/11/2004 05:18:00 PM |

 
The Big Show

I'm not buying this good cop bad cop routine. Specter flexes a very tiny little muscle, the Reconstructionists howl at the top of their lungs, the Senate traditionalists tell everyone to settle down, Specter gives a public blow job and everybody sees that the Republicans aren't really in the hands of the Christian Right because Specter still has his chairmanship.

Now we have Bush's chief consigliere, Gonzalez, supposedly coming under fire for not being enough of a pro-lifer yet Junior the Moderate boldly defies the Christian Right again and nominates the reasonable, middle of the road Gonzalez.

Right. This is what Bush calls reaching across the aisle.




digby 11/11/2004 02:56:00 PM |

 
Exit, Stage Right

GOP Wants to End Exit Polls

Ok. I have not yet seen the proof that Bush stole Ohio, but I certainly have my suspicions. And I can't help but wonder about Florida either. There is ample evidence that our voting systems are in very sad shape and the addition of touch screen voting is only making it worse.

And now here comes the Republican party agitating to get rid of the exit polls --- exit polls which have shown the Democrat winning in the last two presidential elections with the Republican coming out barely ahead in the actual vote count each time. And nobody has come up with anything close to a reasonable explanation for this. (Hoardes of giddy Democrats racing to the pollsters to tell their story is ridiculous.)

Unless we can get a federal law demanding a paper audit trail for all elections and keep the exit polls, we will never have a clue when they try to steal it in the future. The arrogant bastards.

This reminds me of a brief flirtation I had with writing a screenplay in which the election was decided by two sets of hackers --- one set determined to change the results, the other determined to stop them. (I'd had a few beers.) Considering what a stupid idea it was, it's hard to believe it's looking as if my slightly inebriated little fantasy could actually come to pass. Maybe instead of legions of lawyers we'd better think of getting a few good computer nerds.




digby 11/11/2004 01:52:00 PM |

 
Crusade

I am not a religious person. I cannot speak from a Biblical frame of reference. According to the polls, however, I am a member of an exceedingly small minority in this country. Therefore, I wonder if some of the religious people, particularly Christians who voted for John Kerry would care to engage some of these people in a dialog.

I cannot do it. They will not listen to someone like me. They see politics as theology, not philosophy. Perhaps they will listen to you.

But, then again, perhaps not. Sectarian wars were, after all, the reason why the founders were so adamant about not having a state religion. It always leads to religious power stuggles. But, it appears that this is where we are. The idea of secular government is no longer operative.

I'm sorry I can't help, but I do not have the tools to fight a religious war. This is your fight now.




digby 11/11/2004 09:00:00 AM |

 
"You Owe The Liberals Nothing"

November 3, 2004

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

The media tells us that you have received the largest number of popular votes of any president in America's history. Congratulations!

In your re-election, God has graciously granted America—though she doesn't deserve it—a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly.

Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. Honor the Lord, and He will honor you.

Had your opponent won, I would have still given thanks, because the Bible says I must (I Thessalonians 5:18). It would have been hard, but because the Lord lifts up whom He will and pulls down whom He will, I would have done it. It is easy to rejoice today, because Christ has allowed you to be His servant in this nation for another presidential term. Undoubtedly, you will have opportunity to appoint many conservative judges and exercise forceful leadership with the Congress in passing legislation that is defined by biblical norm regarding the family, sexuality, sanctity of life, religious freedom, freedom of speech, and limited government. You have four years—a brief time only—to leave an imprint for righteousness upon this nation that brings with it the blessings of Almighty God.

Christ said, “If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my father honour” (John 12:26).

The student body, faculty, and staff at Bob Jones University commit ourselves to pray for you—that you would do right and honor the Savior. Pull out all the stops and make a difference. If you have weaklings around you who do not share your biblical values, shed yourself of them. Conservative Americans would love to see one president who doesn't care whether he is liked, but cares infinitely that he does right.

Best wishes.

Sincerely your friend,

Bob Jones III
President

PS: A few moments ago I read this letter to the students in Chapel. They applauded loudly their approval.

When I told them that Tom Daschle was no longer the minority leader of the Senate, they cheered again.

On occasion, Christians have not agreed with things you said during your first term. Nonetheless, we could not be more thankful that God has given you four more years to serve Him in the White House, never taking off your Christian faith and laying it aside as a man takes off a jacket, but living, speaking, and making decisions as one who knows the Bible to be eternally true.

© 2004 Bob Jones Universitywebsite


Via: Talk Left





digby 11/11/2004 08:28:00 AM |

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

 
More Culture War

Let me make one thing perfectly clear with respect to my post below. The south is not a monolith and "middle America" is not only the south. The south votes more than 40% consistently with the Democrats, many of whom are white progressives and african American.

I am talking about a cultural attitude, much of which has metastisized to other parts of the country, in which liberals are demonized as "the other" and eliminationist rhetoric is commonly cloaked in appeals to religion and "values." This, I believe, is an outgrowth of a long standing, grievance mind-set with its roots in the south. However, it is being exploited by a bunch of rich, greedy opportunists who have spent billions creating a media infrastructire -- particularly talk radio --- to pound these attitudes into people's heads. This dichotomy in our country has been with us from the beginning, but this is the first time it's been marketed successfully by the immoral oligarchs who, in a sweet bit of irony, are making a tidy profit at it.

For those who are criticising me for not providing solutions but simply whining about the situation, I plead guilty. I wish I had the answer. What I have learned, after years of believing in the DLC experiment, is that this problem isn't a matter of compromising on issues. The issues are weapons and each time we capitulate they pull another one out of their sleeve. I no longer believe it is really about these issues, it's about something else.

After the cultural upheavals of the 1960's and 1970's and our subsequent losses in presidential politics, we had to retool. We were saddled with the image of tax and spend, weak on defense and immorality and there had been a backlash. The Party set about trying to reclaim the center by taking down some of the cultural shibboleths that we thought were holding us back and trying some innovative economic ideas to persuade Americans that we could be trusted with their tax dollars. The end of the cold war gave us some breathing room on national security.

With the help of Ross Perot, we managed to elect what would have been a moderate Republican not 15 years earlier. And the Republicans went mad. They immediately started moving the goalposts. It did not matter how far to the right Bill Clinton moved they moved farther. There was no meeting in the middle on common ground. They would not allow there to be any common ground.

Still, Clinton successfully managed the economy and had the good luck to preside over a once in a lifetime technological revolution and he succeeded in ending the decades long assumptions about Democrats and the economy. It's his highest achievement. (It was my hope that Kerry could do the same on national security.)

But, I have come to realize that the main problem isn't our competence in those areas and indeed, it never was. They were just another "issue" with which to beat us over the head. The problem is the same as it ever was. It's the culture war and it didn't begin in the 1960's.

It grew out of America's original sin (or perhaps it's original hypocrisy) about slavery. And it's colored our vision of ourselves ever since. It's roots are in the north south divide, but it also cuts across rural and urban, modern and traditional. It's a problem of identity,grievance and intractability. It's centered in religion and race.

Today, I think the rhetoric coming from the right wing media is the toxic poison that is spreading this culture war into our body politic so quickly. Most liberals don't hear what is said about them to millions upon millions of "middle Americans," in which every grievance, every problem is laid at the foot of the "liberal elite." The message here is of tribal warfare. Rush and Sean and Bill are not shining examples of moral rectitude and everyone knows it. They are warriors. Down the dial and in the pulpits this battle is explained as fight for moral values, in which the liberal elite is forcing it's decadence into their workplaces and their homes. Again, the fight is one of life and death. Even for those who don't listen to the talkers on the radio and in the pews, the message seeps out. Us and them.

Until recently I believed that this culture war was on its way out. But the sophisticated use of modern media to exploit this long standing undercurrent of grievance has changed all that. It may be hundreds of years old but it has new life and it's not going to go away by ekeing out a win in the electoral college.

I don't have the answer. But, I do think it's important that we recognise when things aren't working. Making a show of compromising on social issues isn't working. And I say that as somone who always, until now, thought it would.




digby 11/10/2004 09:00:00 AM |

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

 
It Won't Work

This is more of the same, but I think it's important so I'm going to keep writing about it. The Democratic party has tried valiantly to move to the center in an attempt to convince "middle America" that they are not hostile to their values. After the electoral debacle of the 80's it seemed like a good idea and it gave Clinton the opportunity to slip in under the wire in 1992 under very opportune circumstances. But, this was all contingent upon the idea of a "new South" born of modern ideas and a dynamic economy. Those conditions seem to have manifested themselves differently than forecasted (mostly, in my view, because of the rise of talk radio) and I think it's time that we made some adjustments.

We are beginning to look like Charlie Brown with the football. We need to recognise what these people really want from us.


Kevin Drum wonders why we don't tweak the abortion and porn issues to peel away some of the values voters from the Republicans. Linking to Matt Yglesias's piece today in which he elaborates on his red state "chump" thesis in which he points out that the Republicans never deliver much to the conservative Christians, Kevin says:

There's a germ of an idea here, but it needs to be teased out. The abortion point is a good one, for example. Liberals are in favor of choice, not in favor of abortion per se, so why shouldn't we talk more often about policies that reduce the need for abortions while continuing to defend the right of choice itself? This won't impress the hardcore evangelicals, of course, but it might appeal to some of their more moderate neighbors. Ditto for porn.

Gay rights and feminisim are another thing entirely. Liberals are just fundamentally in favor of this stuff, and we shouldn't even think about trying to talk our way around it. If we lose votes for it, we lose votes for it.

Basically, then, I think Matt has a point worth thinking about, but we have to figure out which issues it applies to. Abortion and porn are good examples, and that's why master politician Bill Clinton talked about making abortion "safe, legal, and rare" and supported anti-porn measures like the V-chip. Neither of these things infringed on any liberal principles, but they did address some of the real-world concerns of those ordinary heartland voters we hear so much about.

The fundamental problem is that the super Christians won't compromise on principle and the rest of these "values voters" are hypocrites. Nobody bought the v-chip in red state America or anywhere else. They don't want to take responsibility for what comes into their TV's, they want to hector people for "forcing" them to watch these horrible things while they pass the popcorn. These same people listen to Rush refer to Abu Ghraib as "blowing off steam" and think that Bill O'Reilly is a salt of the earth regular guy despite his little obsession with porn stars. There's your heartland values for you and they look surprisingly like the values you see on your television set. That's because they are.

"Heartland values" is just another world for tribal identity. And this division is about crying Uncle.

Here's a passage from Lincoln's speech at the Cooper Union (thanks CRL) in 1860. Tell me if this doesn't strike a chord:

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

So what else is new? We are dealing with an absolutist culture that demands total capitulation or nothing. Compromise will not work and it certainly will not work on these "values" issues. (Indeed, I think it's part of what makes us look weak to some other factions who might be willing to vote for us.) This is the same old shit over and over and over again. We backed off on the death penalty, gun control, welfare, affirmative action and here we are with a new slate of issues about gays. Tomorrow it will be creationism. Until we realize that their condition is that we FULLY EMBRACE their cultural dominance in both word and deed, they will not be satisfied.

It is not enough that they be left alone to do what they choose. We must join them and do it thoroughly and with fervor. No amount of tweaking will work. Their real beef is psychological and tribal. Issues are fungible.




digby 11/09/2004 02:48:00 PM |

 
Another Winning Issue For The Future

As you know, now that the real Americans have spoken, I think it's important that we take on the moral issue head on if we hope to win in Real America. Creationism will be our flagship, but there are many other topics we explore, like making sure that all textbooks reflect the fact that marriage is between a man and a woman as Texas just did. The books had used the words "marriage partners" but the school board luckily saw through it:

Terri Leo, a Republican, said she was pleased with the publishers' changes. She had led the effort to get the publishers to change the texts, objecting to what she called "asexual stealth phrases" like "individuals who marry."

It's those stealth phrases that we have to fight against if we want to get the respect of the fine salt of the earth Real Americans. It's not so much the positions we take, it's the sneakiness they can't abide.

Neither publisher made all the changes that Ms. Leo initially sought. For instance, one passage that was proposed to be added to the teacher's editions read: "Opinions vary on why homosexuals, lesbians and bisexuals as a group are more prone to self-destructive behaviors like depression, illegal drug use and suicide."

digby 11/09/2004 01:59:00 PM |

 
Watch What You Say

Via Avedon Carol, here's a creepy story of a blogger who got turned into the FBI by a reader and was visited by the Secret Service.

A WRITER on popular blog-site LiveJournal has posted of her nightmare ordeal with the US Secret Service, an event spurred by a posting she made to her blog criticising George Bush prior to the Presidential Election earlier this week.
Whilst the offending post has been removed - to spare other users further Federal interference, according to author 'anniesj' - you can see her account of events in full, which has been left as a word to the wise.

The post in question is gone, so I have no way of evaluating what it said. However, this combined with the fun story we heard the other day about the romance novelist who got her computer and books confiscated because she was researching terrorism in Cambodia, I think it's safe to say that four more years with a Justice Department that considers torture justified is not exactly comforting to those of us who write mean things about Republicans or use red flagged research terms on the internet.




digby 11/09/2004 11:16:00 AM |

 
Our New Issue

This could be the one, folks, where we prove our bona fides to the red states:

A suburban American school board found itself in court Monday after it tried to placate Christian fundamentalist parents by placing a sticker on its science textbooks saying evolution was "a theory, not a fact."

Atlanta's Cobb County School Board, the second largest board in Georgia, added the sticker two years ago after a 2,300-strong petition attacked the presentation of "Darwinism unchallenged." Some parents wanted creationism -- the theory that God created humans as related in the Bible -- to be taught alongside evolution.

[...]

The board says the stickers were motivated by a desire to establish a greater understanding of different viewpoints. "They improve the curriculum, while also promoting an attitude of tolerance for those with different religious beliefs," said Linwood Gunn, a lawyer for Cobb County schools.

The controversy began when the school board's textbook selection committee ordered $8 million worth of the science books in March 2002. Marjorie Rogers, a parent who does not believe in evolution, protested and petitioned the board to add a sticker and an insert setting out other explanations for the origins of life. "It is unconstitutional to teach only evolution," she said. "The school board must allow the teaching of both theories of origin."

Her efforts galvanized the fundamentalist community. "God created earth and man in his image," another parent, Patricia Fuller, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Leave this garbage out of the textbooks. I don't want anybody taking care of me in a nursing home some day to think I came from a monkey."

Wendi Hill, one of the parents who signed the petition, said: "We believe the Bible is correct in that God created man. I don't expect the public school system to teach only creationism, but I think it should be given its fair share."

Liberals bi-coastal elites once again show that they don't have proper respect for middle America by insisting that science and religion are two different subjects. Until we learn to stop condescending and quit showing this kind of contempt for heartland beliefs we will lose.

Again, I say this should be OUR issue. Let's run on a national pro-creationism ticket in 2006. Then maybe they will let us back into America.




digby 11/09/2004 09:16:00 AM |

 
Illegitimacy

Atrios has written a post about our new obsession with the voting irregularities and as a member of the reality based community he is rightly concerned that we not make assumptions without actual proof.

I've been grappling with how to handle this story as well. I've not been flogging it mostly because I think that the electoral college is a crock and that the popular vote should determine who wins elections. Since Bush won by three million or so, it's hard for me not to see him as legitimate. I haven't seen any voting anomolies on that kind of scale. If I'm judging by whether the will of the people was observed, then I think it's likely that more people truly wanted Bush than wanted Kerry. To me, that is the spirit of Democracy and I can't discount that reality.

On the other hand, the exit poll question is a real one. The explanations by Mitofsky and company are simply not adequate --- that Kerry voters were so much more anxious to talk to the pollsters that they actively sought them out. Nonsense. Something else happened here and they need to figure out what it was. If vote fraud on a scale large enough to encompass millions and millions of votes took place then we are deep, deep shit. Unfortunately, I've seen nothing that could account for that except an extremely broad conspiracy in many states with different kinds of voting machines and there is no proof of that. (Yes, I know about the states with paper ballot vs electronic machines study, but it doesn't prove anything, either.)

Do I think the vote in Ohio might have been manipulated? Sure. But as Atrios says, we haven't yet seen any evidence of large scale fraud, although there is a lot of evidence that our voting systems are terribly fucked up. I have no doubt that the vote could have been fixed in the state with a partisan in charge who wanted to disallow registrations because of the paper stock they were printed on and a vote machine mamufacturer who promised to deliver the state for Republicans. But proof of a conspiracy has not emerged, nor have the numbers in any way added up to the numbers that might have changed the election. There could have been fraud, the lines were absurdly long, intimidation and vote suppression certainly took place on some level. And until we fix these problems with our voting system we will always wonder from now on if elections are rigged.

This is where the real problem is and why I've been reluctant to push this story. Many Democrats are coming close to believing that our elections are broadly illegitimate. Except for Florida in 2000 I have not yet seen proof of that although I'm certainly suspicious. What I fear is that if we continue down this path of doubting election results --- as opposed to mounting a serious effort to revamp voting procedures in order to ensure fairness --- then I think we will begin to lose voters. People have to believe their vote counts in order to participate. If we push this illegitimacy issue beyond situations like Florida in 2000, where the machinations are proven and observable, I think it will hurt us in the long run.

I am absolutely in favor of insisting on an audit trail for vote counts. (And it seems to me that as with any accounting procedure we should audit some portion of the vote on a regular basis to make sure that hanky panky isn't happening.) If we don't, then stealing millions of votes really will no longer require a vast right wing conspiracy but merely Roger Stone and a laptop. But, I think we need to be careful to frame this issue in a way that doesn't give people the excuse to drop out because they "know" the vote is rigged. Once that happens, it might as well be.


Update: I don't mean in any way to demean those who are pursuing this story. I think it's vital to find out what happened and pursue remedies. I hope the Democratic party makes it a top priority. It's clear that our voting system is unreliable. But, I haven't yet seen evidence that would overturn these election results, so I'm not prepared at this point to say it was stolen. I'm worried that doing that might just make it harder for us in the future.

Update II: A commenter makes the good point that the blogs are the very vehicle by which this story should be flogged, just as talk radio flogged Vince Foster and the like. To be clear, I have no real moral or ethical problem with pushing this story. Idon't see much evidence that Bush didn't win the popular vote, but after watching the GOP operate these last dozen years, I have absolutely no loyalty to those sort of lofty ideals anymore. If the vote was stolen in Ohio or Florida, then the election was stolen, period.

But, as I said, my problem with flogging the idea that the election was stolen on the basis of what we know now is that I think it might end up lowering voter participation on our side if people feel the system is rigged and we can't prove it. I just don't think it works in our favor to push this kind of electoral impotence two elections in a row. If we keep our powder dry proof may emerge and maybe we can make a serious case to the public. Otherwise, I think it's best to frame this not as a stolen election but rather as a hideously run election system that must be fixed or we may be cutting off our nose to spite our face.

For the best round-up of these election stories, I would recommend the Sideshow and Bradblog. They have the most comprehensive overviews of all the stories and analysis that I've seen.




digby 11/09/2004 07:57:00 AM |

Monday, November 08, 2004

 
So, Whaddo We Do Now

The Progress Report asked readers to tell them what they thought the Party should do now in light of this loss. They had thousands of responses and picked forty of them to post.

It's quite and interesting array of ideas. Sadly, nobody sent in my idea that we desperately need to put on a better "campaign show" with solid gold dancers, sky divers and lion tamers (metaphrically speaking) in order to get people's attention in this raucous, disjointed post modern world. We are such an earnest bunch. Oh well. Maybe somebody will at least think to hire away Bush's sound guy. The sound compression on the cheers at his rallies was masterful.

And, nobody recognized that negative, ugly, hateful campaigning was what worked. It seems that we all feel that if we had just reached out and touched people we could have made a difference. We don't "connect," which may be true, but let's face facts --- Bush doesn't "connect" with people's better natures, he "connects" directly to their id. And, I'm afraid that the id trumps finer feelings in many, many people. Yet a large number of these suggestions have to do with sincere appeals to try harder to empathise and relate to those who didn't vote for us. Hey, maybe it'll work. We are the "nurturant parent," after all.

On a practical level, I have no problem with voting for southerners or westerners, never have. Contrary to the new myth emerging about the godless heathens on the coasts, we elitists have quite happily voted for Texans and southern, gospel preaching Democrats quite often in the last 40 years. The fact that we voted in huge numbers for Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Gore would seem to put the lie to this belief that we hold southerners in contempt, but what do I know? It certainly does appear that we heathen blue staters quite willingly vote for people outside of our alleged latte-liberal bicoastal culture, yet those heartland middle American red states who are complaining about our condescension refuse to ever vote for someone outside their own region. (Except, of course, those rock-ribbed Hollywood movie stars.) Just who holds who in contempt again?

Anyway, read all the suggestions. They are all good hearted and sincere and many contain good ideas. Only cynics like me subscribe to the dazzle 'em with bullshit school and that's probably a good thing.

Ronnie, Junior and Arnie tell me that it's not about anything more than a certain macho style that gets these people. None of those guys have the remotest relationship to salt of the earth middle America, but they play the archetypal leadership role of All American manly man very well.




digby 11/08/2004 03:49:00 PM |

 
Whose Coalition Is It Anyway?

Xan over at corrente has a very interesting post up about "The Prosperity Project." I wrote a long piece about it last year and blogger ate it (before I learned to save my posts.) I didn't have the heart to re-write it and the moment passed.

But, Xan has researched this very interesting and (so far) underreported story of a soft intimidation project on the part of Republican businessmen.This is a very sophisticated operation under the auspices of BIPAC, a long time Republican business organization. I don't know how many of you have had a boss who was a vociferous Republican, but I have. They couldn't tell me for whom to vote, but they sure made it clear that if I spoke out it wouldn't be looked upon kindly. And plenty of others, who normally wouldn't care a bit about politics, suddenly found that they were favored employees by going out of their way to push the bosses political agenda. This Prosperity Project works on the assumption that managers will perform to their bosses orders and recommended Prosperity Project materials (particularly its marvelously misleading web site) to "educate" workers on issues of concern to them. It looks like they pulled out the stops in this election:

Managers at more than 50,000 companies in Ohio urged employees to vote, while trying to coax them in e-mails to look at customized internal Web sites rating politicians' votes on business issues, a project leader said. One rating gave Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry a zero last year on votes affecting manufacturers.

Greg Casey, a former U.S. Senate sergeant-at-arms who headed what he calls business' "below-the-radar" national effort, said it resulted in 30 million electronic contacts with workers, about 700,000 the day before the election.

Casey believes that the "Prosperity Project" had a big impact in Ohio, citing research suggesting that for every 10 employees who scanned company Web sites, one was motivated to vote. He said Ohio companies made 1.3 million employee contacts, more than nine times Bush's 136,483-vote victory margin in the state.

Prosperity Project officials, however, say they are "respectful" to employees and merely offer them access to information affecting their companies' prospects in a tough global economy.

I think that we are beginning to get the outlines of an election that had a number of under the radar GOP "grassroots" campaigns with little overt national direction. The Republicans seem to have been successful by presenting a candidate who wasn't specific, but rather presented an image of leadership that people felt comfortable with. Various groups then ran a series of campaigns aimed at specific constituencies that applied their particular policy preference to this vague agenda.

But the untold story of the 2004 election, according to national religious leaders and grass-roots activists, is that evangelical Christian groups were often more aggressive and sometimes better organized on the ground than the Bush campaign. The White House struggled to stay abreast of the Christian right and consulted with the movement's leaders in weekly conference calls. But in many respects, Christian activists led the charge that GOP operatives followed and capitalized upon.

This was particularly true of the same-sex marriage issue. One of the most successful tactics of social conservatives -- the ballot referendums against same-sex marriage in 13 states -- bubbled up from below and initially met resistance from White House aides, Christian leaders said.

In dozens of interviews since the election, grass-roots activists in Ohio, Michigan and Florida credited President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, with setting a clear goal that became a mantra among conservatives: To win, Bush had to draw 4 million more evangelicals to the polls than he did in 2000. But they also described a mobilization of evangelical Protestants and conservative Roman Catholics that took off under its own power.

This is interesting because it's exactly what the Democrats have been criticized for all these years --- being a coalition of single issue consituencies developing their own agendas, not working well with others and creating havoc on the ability to govern when the party is in power. When each group thinks they are the single reason the party won an election, they tend to think they have priority and it's a big headache. The Republicans have been pretty good at keeping their coalition together with appeals to patriotism and fear of the other. We'll see how long that works for them. Trying to keep the New Deal coalition together was very difficult --- and that was with a very impressive record of achievement that materially changed peoples lives and brought the country through a depression and WWII to a period of unprecedented prosperity.

Meanwhile, for the first time in memory, the Democrats put away their differences and worked together. And much to my surprise and delight, I'm not seeing the circular firing squad nearly as vicious as it usually is after a loss. Perhaps we can hang tough long enough for the Republicans to get a taste of governing with single issue constituencies for a while. Good luck with that.




digby 11/08/2004 02:05:00 PM |

 
Tribal Confusion

May I just point out that if you are not reading James Wolcott every day you are missing out on life. Today, he takes Lil' Andy to task for his strange appearance on Bill Maher in which he seemed terribly confused about who he is now that he's voted for a losing Democrat in a time of right wing ascendancy. It's not easy being a conservative gay catholic in this big old Red State monolith.

Wolcott says:

Like an infant banging his spoon on the high-chair tray, Sullivan threw quite a tantrum last night after Maher had the GALL to interview Noam Chomsky. Sullivan sputtered that Chomsky made "millions" going around the world telling audiences America was "evil." Now I don't pretend to have read or heard all of the millions of words Chomsky has written and spoken, but "evil" doesn't seem to be a prominent word in his vocabulary, being so theological; he tends to talk in terms of brutal realpolitick and self-interest. And it's highly unlikely he's raking in "millions"--if he is, he isn't splurging on wardrobe and pimpmobiles.

Since every war criminal in the current Bush administration will be able to command huge honoraria on the lecture circuit and lucrative positions on corporate boards once they leave the bloodshed behind, working up ire over a professor's speaking fees seems a bit much.

Unable to impart the red depths of Chomsky's villainy to host and panel, Sullivan attacked Chomsky for being symptomatic of an America-hating elitist left. "That's why you lost this week!" Sullivan said.*

"You said you voted for Kerry!" Maher shot back. "You lost too!"

As Wolcott says, Maher was particularly good this show. (Last week's freakish appearance by what seemed to be a brain damaged Kevin Costner still hasn't quite worked its way through my system yet.) Andrew Sullivan's outburst about Chomsky was uncomfortably out of sync with what Chomsky had said. I'm no particular fan (or student) of Chomsky, but his actual influence on lives here and around the world is somewhat less real and palpable than that of the people who just voted to enshrine Sullivan's second class citizen status into their state constitutions. I can't help but feel that this enraged reaction may have been just a bit of desperate psychological misdirection --- not a pretty thing to watch on a Friday night with a couple of glasses of wine in you. Ugh.

Wolcott also noted the strange fact that Sullivan turned his back to the audience and gave himself a thorough butt massage right on camera at the end of the show. I noticed it, but I chalked it up to the wine and the long sleepless week I'd just had. Now I'm really freaked out.

Update: It was no drunken hallucination. Here's the video courtesy of One Good Move




digby 11/08/2004 11:03:00 AM |

 
The Casio

Atrios mentioned last week that interesting things are going to happen here in the blogosphere and I have heard some of the same rumblings. I don't know how it will shake out, but it's clear that the nascent media infrastructure that we see is not going to fold tent but rather be expanded and grow, both from individual effort and institutional support.

This election was a heartbreaker, and the country is in for a very bumpy four years I'm afraid. But I don't get the sense that Democrats are seriously thinking of dropping out or folding up tent. Indeed, I see the opposite.

One of the great lessons of history is that magnanimity in victory is a much wiser path to peace than rubbing the losers nose in their defeat. From what I'm seeing and hearing, some people haven't learned that lesson very well. I suspect they will come to regret it.




digby 11/08/2004 07:32:00 AM |

Sunday, November 07, 2004

 
A Very Old Story

I think support for Bush is about not wanting to be led by East-coast pretensions. It is about not wanting to be led by people who are forever trying to force their twisted sense of morality onto us, which is a non-morality. That is constantly done, and there is real resentment. Support for Bush is about resentment in the so-called 'red states' — a confusing term to Guardian readers, I agree — which here means, literally, middle America. Tom Wolfe

This is certainly true. But, that resentment wasn't created by Michael Moore or Hillary Clinton or Tom DeLay and Pat Robertson.

I was being facetious in the post below, but I do think that it's important to recognise something about the phony debate that's taking place right now about the liberal bi-coastal elites and how they allegedly force their lack of morality on the heartland.

Before I get into it, this map, which I'm sure you have all seen by now, is a good place to start this discussion.

Why do I bring this up? Because it's important to remember that one of the main reasons for the civil war was that the southerners believed that the north was trying to impose their "values" upon them and they deeply resented it.

From the earliest days of the republic this was a problem. A different culture grew up around slavery in the south as did the tension surrounding the issue. The mere act of rejecting it was cause for insult and the south withdrew into a cultural identity based largely upon its difference from the north. Indeed, this was one of the defining rationales for slavery --- the exceptionalism of the southern culture.

The north did condescend. Many believed that slavery was a barbaric and primitive institution and that those who condoned it were, therefore, primitive and barbaric. They did not keep their opinions to themselves. From the very beginning this tension created a huge amount of resentment among southerners.

The resentment didn't come from political powerlessness or disenfranchisement. During the first 70 years of the country, the south dominated the national government. It didn't help.

From a speech given at the centennial of the civil war by historian Stephen Z. Starr

...it is tragic to think that for two generations, the mental energies of the South were devoted to elaborating justifications of slavery - perhaps to appease its own feelings of guilt - to the exclusion of every other form of cultural activity.

[...]

The second basic issue between the sections lay in the area of politics; necessarily so, for it was in the political arena that the problems between the sections were fought out until the South decided that political solutions, reached by a process of give and take, were no longer adequate to protect its "honor and self-respect.”

Bear in mind that middle and upper class Southerners were politicians by birthright. Active participation in politics was, in the South, a way of life. One would expect, therefore, to find a much greater degree of political skill and acumen there than in the North. What one finds there instead is demagogy, bombast, irresponsibility, incompetence, a childish refusal to come to grips with realities, and a habitual substitution of slogans, symbols and bogeymen for facts. These are strong statements, but hardly strong enough to fit the situation.

The South had an almost unbroken control of the Federal Government from 1789 until secession. The presidents were either Southerners., or Northerners like Pierce and Buchanan, who were mere puppets in the hands of Southern senators and cabinet members. For seventy years, the Supreme Court had a majority of Southern justices. With the aid of its Northern allies and the three-fifths rule, the South controlled one or both houses of Congress. The fifteen Slave States, with a white population of not quite eight million, had 30 senators, 90 representatives, and 120 electoral votes, whereas the State of New York, with a population of four million had two senators, 33 representatives, and 35 electoral votes. Even the election of 1860 left the South in control of both houses of Congress, and until at least 1863, Lincoln and the Republicans would have been powerless to pass legislation hostile to the South, and through its control of the Senate, the South could have blocked the confirmation of every Lincoln appointee whom it considered unfriendly. In spite of this, and notwithstanding Lincoln's repeated assurances that he would not, directly or indirectly, interfere with slavery where it already existed, the South chose to secede.

Starr goes on to show that this irrational behavior was not due to the south not getting most of the the legislation it wanted, because it did. But it became an emotional issue in which it was important to "crack the whip over the heads of the northern men" and they began to make enemies of their allies in the territories. As Starr says, "this tale of political ineptitude, the habitual misreading of the minds of opponents, the misjudging of the practical possibilities of a given situation, the purposeless striving for effect, the substitution of arrogance and threats for rational discussion, could be expanded many fold."

Oh my.


Starr's view is that the south behaved irrationally prior to the civil war because of it's defensiveness about its culture of slavery. He grants that there other differences, some exaggerated and some quite real, but notes that most people of both regions were farmers and had more in common than not. The record suggests one very important difference, however, and that was that the south had a much inferior educational system,

...in 1850, 20.3% of white Southerners over the age of twenty were illiterate, as against less than one-half of one percent of New Englanders.

But it is important to point out that lack of educational opportunities was a significant factor in preventing the rise of a class of intelligent, educated farmers and artisans in the South. Only two Southern states, North Carolina and Kentucky, had respectable public school systems before 1860, and this had much to do with the failure of Southern whites to understand that their "peculiar institution" was out of tune with the moral, social, and even economic sentiment of the times, and with their readiness to follow the Pied Pipers who thought that a nation and a state could be founded on the enslavement of four million human beings. These are among the dangers of a closed society and of an iron curtain.

Granting the existence of cultural differences between the North and South, can we assume that they would necessarily lead to a Civil War? Obviously not. Such differences lead to animosity and war only if one side develops a national inferiority complex, begins to blame all its shortcomings on the other side, enforces a rigid conformity on its own people, and tries to make up for its own sins of omission and commission by name-calling, by nursing an exaggerated pride and sensitiveness, and by cultivating a reckless aggressiveness as a substitute for reason. And this was the refuge of the South. For ten years before secession, Northerners were commonly referred to as “mongrels and hirelings." The North was described as "a conglomeration of greasy mechanics filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moonstruck theorists ... hardly fit for association with a southern gentleman's body servant." And, most fatal delusion of all, Southerners began to credit themselves with fighting ability equal to that of nine, five, or more conservatively, three Northerners. Once a nation or a section begins to speak and think in such terms, reason has gone out the window and emotion has taken over. This is precisely what happened in the South, and this is why the Cotton States seceded before Lincoln was even inaugurated and before his administration had committed, or had a chance to commit, any act of egression against them. Such behavior is fundamentally irrational, and cannot be explained in rational terms.

Interesting, yes?

The civil war, of course, made everything worse. Reconstruction was a nightmare and the north never had even the slightest idea what to do about the race problem once they dealt with the slavery problem. (Indeed, when it comes to racism, the north shared most of the same beliefs. They just didn't live among many blacks so they didn't have to deal with those problems until much later.) But, the ignominy of reconstruction gave birth to the Lost Cause mythology and that only reinforced the already outsized sense of wounded pride.

The south today has forty percent that votes with the blue states in national elections. They are white progressive modern people who share the southern cultural identity but have avoided the 200 year old baggage that makes it impossible to identify with people not of their own tribe and african-americans who were excluded except as scapegoats and second class citizens. (I'm sure nonetheless that some of what I've written sticks in the craw of many of you and you may feel that old resentment. It appears to me as if this is an ingrained reaction to discussions of this sort. It certainly has been around forever.)

I'm not going to take a stand against "heartland values" or "southern culture" whatever it's defined as this week. It seems to me that it would be worthless, because this battle is obviously tribal, not specific to any particular issue. Slavery and Jim Crow are long gone. Now it's religion and gays. The lines are drawn as they've always been and there will be no reconciliation through politics. Even a bloody civil war couldn't do that.

History suggests that the southern culture has always been as defined by it's resentment toward the rest of the country as much as anything else. The so-called bi-coastal liberal elites certainly don't think of themselves as having a lot in common with each other, other than being Americans. People from Los Angeles and Vermont call themselves Californians and New Englanders, respectively. I don't think they believe they share a "culture." People in Seattle call themselves pacific northwesterners. People in New York call themselves New Yorkers --- Chicagoans midwesterners. They identify themselves by their specific region and a broader identity as Americans, not by this alleged Bi-coastal cultural alliance. This notion of two easily identifiable cultures is only held by the people who used to call themselves the confederacy and now call themselves "the heartland." That alone should be reason to stop and question what is really going on here.

One thing this little historical trip should show everyone is that it is nonsense to think that this cultural resentment and cultural contempt was created by Hollywood movie stars and limosine liberals from New York City. Indeed, this has been a problem since the dawn of the republic. And it isn't a problem that will be solved by the Red States gaining and maintaining power. They have held power many times throughout our history and they were still filled with resentment toward "the north" (now "the liberal elites.") And, it won't be solved by adopting different stances on "moral issues," or telling the current Democratic southern constituencies to suck it up. Maybe it's time we looked a little bit deeper and realized that this tribal problem isn't going to be solved by politics at all.

The "liberal elites" will no doubt be making more compromises in the direction of heartland values for pragmatic reasons. But, judging by history, it won't change a thing. Neither will Republican political dominance. So, maybe it's time for the heartland to take a good hard look at itself and ask when they are going to adopt the culture of responsibility they profess with such fervor. It sure looks to me as if they've been nursing a case of historical pique for more than 200 years and that resentment no longer has any more meaning than a somewhat self-destructive insistence on maintaining a cultural identity that's really defined by it's anger toward the rest of the country. They are talking themselves into a theocratic police state in order to "crack the whip over the heads of the northern men" and it's not likely to work out for them any better this time than it did the first time. The real elites in the church, the government and the corporations will take them down right along with us when that comes to pass.


Note: Of you don't believe me, check out this excerpt from Michael Graham's strange Redneck Nation. According to him, everything's changed. The south is more cultured, the north is more coarse, the south is smarter, the north is stupider. The stereotypes have been turned on their head. At the end of the day, however, the grievance is always there no matter the circumstances. The south still gets no respect.




digby 11/07/2004 03:51:00 PM |

 
Who's Your Daddy?

Nicolas Kristof's column is exactly right.

As moderates from the heartland, like Tom Daschle, are picked off by the Republicans, the party's image risks being defined even more by bicoastal, tree-hugging, gun-banning, French-speaking, Bordeaux-sipping, Times-toting liberals, whose solution is to veer left and galvanize the base. But firing up the base means turning off swing voters. Gov. Mike Johanns, a Nebraska Republican, told me that each time Michael Moore spoke up for John Kerry, Mr. Kerry's support in Nebraska took a dive.

Mobilizing the base would mean nominating Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008 and losing yet again.

The last thing we want is the support of the base. They, after all, are the problem. We need Americans, my friends. Rock ribbed, Real Americans, not a bunch of latte swilling bicoastals (even the ones in San Antonio and Minneapolis.) Thankfully, I hear they are all moving to Canada or France where they belong.

He says that we need to support faith based programs, tell blacks in the south that the confederate flag is their problem, forget guns (I thought we had) and help George W. Bush advance his agenda as much as possible.

He's right, but it's not enough. After all, we've already capitulated entirely on the death penalty, welfare and gun control issues and we put thousands of cops on the street, balanced the budget and told both blacks and gays in the military to zip their lips since '92, but those were obviously not adequate to prove that we are Real Americans. (How could we have thought that killing one retarded black man or a whole passle of Vietnamese would compete with George W. Bush's 158 confirmed kills?) There is much more "compromising" to do before anyone will believe that we mean it.

Some Democrats are way behind the curve by inching to the conclusion that ditching Roe vs. Wade is the way to go. That's a big duh. Of course we will. And everyone agrees that it's ixnay on the gay arriagemay. We won't be making that mistake again.

Public money for religious education is obviously on the agenda and we can easily embrace it with everything we've got. I don't think that endorsing faith based programs is enough. All secular social programs should immediately be outsourced to Charles Colson and Jerry Falwell with Dianne Feinstein and Hillary Clinton's blessing. But, even with all that I just have a sneaking suspicion that it might not be enough to persuade Real Americans to let us back into the country in 2008. It's going to take something much bolder than that --- and rightly so because they did, after all, win 51% of the vote.

Therefore, I propose that after we outlaw abortion, turn over huge amounts of public money to evangelical churches and enshrine discrimination against gays into the US Constitution, we fully and publicly endorse creationism. This is an issue that hasn't worked its way up to the forefront of a national election yet and we could actually outflank the Republicans if we get on the bandwagon right now. This could be our issue in 2008.

First though, we have to put a muzzle on people who write things likethis. Michael Kinsley strikes exactly the right apologetic tone, but still fails to realize that the very point of his article is exactly the kind of liberal elitism that is oppressing the heartland:

So yes, OK, fine. I'm a terrible person — barely a person at all, really, and certainly not a real American — because I voted for the losing candidate on Tuesday. If you insist — and you do — I will rethink my fundamental beliefs from scratch because they are shared by only 47% of the electorate.

And please let me, or any other liberal, know if there is anything else we can do to abase ourselves. Abandon our core values? Pander to yours? Not a problem. Happy to do it. Anything, anything at all, to stop this shower of helpful advice.

There's just one little request I have. If it's not too much trouble, of course. Call me profoundly misguided if you want. Call me immoral if you must. But could you please stop calling me arrogant and elitist?

I mean, look at it this way. (If you don't mind, that is.) It's true that people on my side of the divide want to live in a society where women are free to choose and where gay relationships have civil equality with straight ones. And you want to live in a society where the opposite is true. These are some of those conflicting values everyone is talking about. But at least my values — as deplorable as I'm sure they are — don't involve any direct imposition on you. We don't want to force you to have an abortion or to marry someone of the same sex, whereas you do want to close out those possibilities for us. Which is more arrogant?

We on my side of the great divide don't, for the most part, believe that our values are direct orders from God. We don't claim that they are immutable and beyond argument. We are, if anything, crippled by reason and open-mindedness, by a desire to persuade rather than insist. Which philosophy is more elitist? Which is more contemptuous of people who disagree?

As many conservative voices have noted, American society suffers from a cult of grievance. To put it crudely, everyone wants some of the things blacks got from the civil rights movement: sympathy, publicity, occasional preferential treatment and a general ability to put everybody else on the defensive. No doubt liberals are responsible for this deplorable situation, and I apologize. Again. As a softheaded liberal, I even like the idea that our competitive culture has a built-in consolation prize.

But be fair! (A liberal whine, I know. Sorry.) Conservatives shouldn't assert the prerogatives of victory and then claim the compensations of defeat as well. You can't oppress us and simultaneously complain that we are oppressing you.

Well, of course you can do this, if you want. Who's to stop you? I just kinda wish you wouldn't. If you don't mind my asking. Thanks. Sorry.

Sorry. There is no reason for Real Americans to listen to this until we have proved to them and to the wholesome heartland media voices of Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh that we are worthy of making such a request.

Getting out in front on the creationism issue is the perfect way to make these people see that we understand them. And jettisoning our outmoded fealty to reason and science will have the salutory effect of freeing us from all sorts of other inconvenient moral issues like tolerance, fairness and equality. This is how we will convince Real Americans that we are the kind of principled people they can respect.

Update: I see that the "New"James Wolcott agrees with me.

Wolcott says:

Democrats could campaign to rescind the Martin Luther King holiday, but I fear this would backfire, since everyone likes an excuse to take a day off from work and would resent having to drag themselves that particularly Monday.

No, something ballsier is needed for a turnaround in perception. A taboo or two needs to be smashed.

Therefore I am proposing that the official Democratic slogan for 2008 be "Shoot a Fag for Jesus."

It's a simple, catchy slogan that will look good on a bumperstickers, yet carry a multilateral strike: pro-guns, anti-gay, and unashamedly Christian.

Since abortion is so problematic for Democrats, "Shoot a Babykiller for Jesus" might do the trick in some of the battleground states as a supplemental bumpersticker.

Obviously this is all still in the brainstorming stage, and will need to be focus-grouped, but I believe it nudges us further along the path to success gently lit by Kristof's lamp of wisdom.

I like it. With a pro-creationism candidate, I think we might just pull it off. Maybe. If not, there's always mandatory church attendance and rolling back the right to vote for women and blacks. We've got plenty of cards left to play. We'll get there.





digby 11/07/2004 10:19:00 AM |

Friday, November 05, 2004

 
Wait A Minute

This is interesting and if it's true then we are all barking up the wrong tree with this discussion of "values." The Gay Marriage Myth - Terrorism, not values, drove Bush's re-election.

Much has been made of the fact that "moral values" topped the list of voters' concerns, mentioned by more than a fifth (22 percent) of all exit-poll respondents as the "most important issue" of the election. It's true that by four percentage points, people in states where gay marriage was on the ballot were more likely than people elsewhere to mention moral issues as a top priority (25.0 vs. 20.9 percent). But again, the causality is unclear. Did people in these states mention moral issues because gay marriage was on the ballot? Or was it on the ballot in places where people were already more likely to be concerned about morality?

More to the point, the morality gap didn't decide the election. Voters who cited moral issues as most important did give their votes overwhelmingly to Bush (80 percent to 18 percent), and states where voters saw moral issues as important were more likely to be red ones. But these differences were no greater in 2004 than in 2000. If you're trying to explain why the president's vote share in 2004 is bigger than his vote share in 2000, values don't help.

If the morality gap doesn't explain Bush's re-election, what does? A good part of the answer lies in the terrorism gap. Nationally, 49 percent of voters said they trusted Bush but not Kerry to handle terrorism; only 31 percent trusted Kerry but not Bush. This 18-point gap is particularly significant in that terrorism is strongly tied to vote choice: 99 percent of those who trusted only Kerry on the issue voted for him, and 97 percent of those who trusted only Bush voted for him. Terrorism was cited by 19 percent of voters as the most important issue, and these citizens gave their votes to the president by an even larger margin than morality voters: 86 percent for Bush, 14 percent for Kerry.

These differences hold up at the state level even when each state's past Bush vote is taken into account. When you control for that variable, a 10-point increase in the percentage of voters citing terrorism as the most important problem translates into a 3-point Bush gain. A 10-point increase in morality voters, on the other hand, has no effect. Nor does putting an anti-gay-marriage measure on the ballot. So, if you want to understand why Bush was re-elected, stop obsessing about the morality gap and start looking at the terrorism gap.

I had always had my suspicions that the real problem for us was the terrorism issue. Kerry's anti-war past and the mere fact that he was a Democrat fit into an image of weakness that is almost impossible to break. That's why he rightly emphasized his war hero status and why Rove called in the swift boat liars to tear it down. What they wanted to do was get that image of Kerry the hero out of people's minds and the image of Kerry the effete liberal planted firmly in its place.

Kerry did a better job of overcoming that obstacle, and the more intractable obstacle of being a Democrat during a national security crisis, than anyone had a right to expect. He almost pulled it off. If he had he would have been able to banish the image of the Democratic weakling as effectively as Clinton banished the fiscal irresponsibility label. Too bad.

On the other hand, as Tom Schaller points out in this post on Daily Kos, there is a silver lining:

[Ralph]Reed, you see, wanted to not merely deliver the social conservatives' "values" votes this year, but to ensure that their pivotal role be made noted and respected -- broadcast and trumpeted, loudly and quite publicly. They didn't want to just win; they want credit and plaudits for scoring the decisive touchdown.

Awesome. The fact that this election - the first post-9/11 election, with a war in Iraq abroad and a changing economic situation at home - will be remembered by the we-need-it-simplified media as the "values" election, is Reed's great gift to us.

Why? Because I suspect that right now that the Wall Street wing, and the small business wing, and the defense industry wing, and the tax reform wings of the party are shuddering at the thought that Americans are being told that Bush got to 51 percent based on "values" voting. Would not the better "take-away" storyline from this election be that Bush won because the nation believes in Republicans' fiscal and defense policies, their steadfastness and leadership abilities? I'm meeting a lot Republicans (both conservatives and moderates) who do not want this election to be framed as the Ralph Reed Rout.

[...]

And thus, the biggest silver lining of this election is how the GOP's victory is thus far being claimed, framed and explained. To that I say, "Let us join that chorus." And we should do so now, because there is immediacy in the post-election window of opportunity.

I think this may be right. We should spread it far and wide that this election was won by fringe fundamentalist first time voters who now feel empowered to force their views on everyone else, including mainstream Christians. It looks like Bush owes this small bloc of religious extremists big time. Gay marriage is just the beginning. Abortion, birth control, women's rights the whole enchilada is now up for grabs.

That has to freak out the money and military types who are the real backbone of the party. After all, Bush didn't run on "values," he ran on being Commander Codpiece. This thing could be a boogeyman around their neck.

Divide and conquer. It's tried and true.




digby 11/05/2004 06:05:00 PM |

 
Goalposts

Kevin Drum thinks that if Democrats dial back the liberal hectoring, we will get more votes from Middle Americans who aren't extremists but who feel that we are too extreme:

They're the ones who are uncomfortable with homosexuality, but understand that a steadily increasing acceptance of gay rights is probably inevitable. They don't want to ban abortion, but feel like it's common sense to require parental notification. And they're ready to agree that we need to do something about global warming, but that doesn't mean they take kindly to thinly veiled accusations that they're personally responsible for it just because they drive an SUV or eat a Big Mac.

I can't help but point out that the president just ran an entire campaign portraying Massachusetts as being some kind of foreign country so perhaps this cultural discomfort might be laid at the feet of the Republicans as much as the Democrats. I'm not exactly feeling the love from people who insist that Democrats aren't Americans or that we are all traitors or that we are now "neutered" by this election and should be a lot more docile, like farm animals. That stuff isn't coming from religious extremists, it's coming from the mainstream leadership of the Republican party.

I'm not sure who these hectoring liberals are who get under the heartland's skin with accusations about Big Macs, but I don't think it was John Kerry. John Kerry didn't run on disallowing parental notification laws or gay marriage. In fact, he specifically endorsed the former and ruled out the latter. He jettisoned gun control from the debate altogether. He went to church, talked about faith, and from all acounts he really is a sincere Catholic. The party had long since abandoned prison rehabilitation, the death penalty and welfare. Partial birth abortion has been outlawed. I'm not sure where we can go with this global warming issue if people aren't willing to hear that driving an SUV is contributing to the problem unless we can talk about international agreements, which seems to be out also. Maybe the Dems should just let that one go too.

Be that as it may, the Republicans just won 51% and they say it's because they don't like our values, so we have no choice but to recognise that and talk about it. It's not the first time. This is what the DLC acknowledged back in the 1980's and changing position on the death penalty and welfare is what helped get Clinton elected (with a big assist from Ross Perot and a painful recession.)

Unfortunately, Clinton never got 50% in either election. And once in office he was tortured endlessly by the GOP, and lost the congress long before Monica bared her thong. He was an effective president anyway and I don't quarrel with his legacy. His political skills, however, didn't have as much to do with his ability to attract a majority, which he never did, but rather his ability to survive a constant political assault once in office.

This values debate has shown itself to be extremely useful to the GOP for decades and they are very adept at moving the goalposts when it's necessary. (Remember, they were the ones who kept saying "you can't legislate morality" during the civil rights era.) No matter how much we move to the right or adapt our positions on things like parental notification and gay marriage and the rest, there will always be another wedge issue there to exploit and convince the heartland that we liberals are trying to shove our immorality into their lives against their will. And that's because it isn't about values at all. It's about politics. The Republicans have identified themselves as the party of the heartland tribe very effectively by pitting themselves against the enemy tribe ---the Democratic liberal elite, as they define it. And they have a very effective machine that spreads that word.

Last time Gore allegedly lost because he was in the pocket of the liberal elites in the cities who want to ban guns. This time Kerry spent half the campaign toting a shotgun and allegedly lost because the liberal elite wants to legalize gay marriage. In years gone by it was gays in the millitary or welfare queens or draft dodgers or bra burners or whatever. It's always something. Always.

The reason the heartland rejected John Kerry has absolutely nothing to do with what he actually believed or said. He could have adopted George W. Bush's platform in its entirety and he would have been portrayed and believed to be some kind of an alien being descending upon the heartland like an invader from an enemy land. This has been one of the great successes of a 30 year political realignment that is settling into what can only be seen as a cold civil war. We won't resolve it by continually trying to adjust piecemeal on values issues. We aren't winning by doing that any more than we were winning by running on social issues or the nuclear freeze in the 1980's.

That has been tried. We need a new, more modern approach altogether.

I might suggest that one of the things we begin to do is expose the hypocrisies of the Republican party. These decent, reasonable heartlanders might not be able to see liberals as being decent and reasonable but perhaps they could have their eyes opened by the cosmopolitan decadence of their own political leaders. Sometimes people have to be shaken out of their secure assumptions about their own tribe before they can see the merits of another.

Instead of running lukewarm values campaigns within their frame of social conservatism, perhaps we could run competing values campaigns on all-American libertarian beliefs like "mind your own business" and aim it at government, corporations and religious fanatics alike. Maybe we could shake free some of those western states from their coalition. Talk up the environment as stewardship of the land for hunting and fishing as well as conservation for the future.

But, frankly I believe that the problem will be solved through something much different. The world has changed even if the political bludgeon of values hasn't. I really think politics has morphed into a post modern epistomological relativism that can only be dealt with through sensation and spectacle, not reason --- the subject of many future posts, I imagine.

Update: Here's an interesting article from the Texas Observer about Lakoff and Luntz that touches on what I wrote in the last paragraph:

As long as liberals and progressives insist that having the facts on their side is all that matters, they are doomed to impotence. The next move for the left in the frame war is to accept that it’s okay to cherry-pick reality as long as it conforms to a frame that’s morally acceptable. According to Lakoff, we already do it every day.

digby 11/05/2004 03:26:00 PM |

 
Guest Post

Blog commenter Thumb has decided to make the switch to the Republican Party and he'd like to share with you his reasons. I find them very convincing and I will be joining him. My life's about to become a whole lot easier:

If you can't beat ‘em, join ‘em.

So the people voting for Bush told exit pollers that moral values are their #1 issue.

Because the Republicans are obviously superior in both numbers and cause, and their values oriented agenda should no doubt be a boon to human kind, there's obviously only one thing left to do at this point. Convert. Therefor, in an act of supreme solidarity to our new national conservative alliance and their emphasis on values, I would just like to say, they’re right. I’m ready to sign up.

But first I need to declare that I too no longer care about losing millions of American jobs. I too no longer care about health care. Or social security. I also no longer care about education. I no longer care what happens to the poor, the elderly or the millions of American children growing up in poverty, despair and hopelessness. I no longer care that the US ranks a lowly 41st in infant mortality. I no longer care that the gap between rich and poor is approaching third world levels. I no longer care that Fortune 500 corporations can avoid paying taxes by opening an offshore mailbox and I no longer care that the working class will be forced pick up the difference. I no longer care that we've taken a record fiscal surplus and in three years turned it into the largest debt in the history of our country or that it will be our children, and their children, that will have to pay it back. I also no longer care how many Americans die at the hands of terrorists (as long as they're dying over there and not here at home) or how many thousands of foreign civilians die in the course of our projecting American global hegemony. I no longer care what the rest of the world thinks of America, as long as they know to fear us. I no longer care about the science of potential medical breakthroughs nor do I care about slowing the spread of AIDS nor whether we have sufficient supplies of safe vaccines. I no longer care that the number of abortions is on the rise (though I’ll pound my chest and pretend that I do) because I no longer care about birth control, sex education or family planning. I no longer care about our environment and whether we're allowing industries to poison our water, our air and ultimately our food supply, and I no longer care about the consequences of releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and its likelihood of accelerating global warming. I no longer care that our Bill of Rights, once enshrined to protect our personal freedoms and liberty, is being stripped down or that our 200 year old Constitutional protections are being traded for a false sense of security.

So what do I share with our new majority as my #1 concern? Values. I care about moral values.

Now that I’ve completed the switch to the other side moral values is all that matters to me. Moral values. Yes sir, I care enough that sufficient numbers of people share these moral values to make sure that we elect politicians that will put these moral values into law (even if it takes rigging the new electronic voting machines) and that those politicians in turn appoint judges guaranteed to ensure that everyone else is forced to live by these same moral values. Now some of you remaining Unbelievers may ask, "But if everything you no longer care about isn’t a moral value, what are your moral values?" Easy. The single most important moral value, overriding all other concerns, is that two people of the same sex are blocked from achieving secular legal recognitions that could in any way be similar to that enjoyed by heterosexual couples. Health and survivor benefits? Forget it. Employment protection? Come on. Inheritance rights? No way. Hospital visitation? Get real. Adoption? GOD FORBID!

You few, final remaining Democrats, moderates, greens and libertarians really need to get onboard the bandwagon. This new stripped down moral value is so easy I don’t know why I didn’t think of this myself earlier. Effortless morality. That’s the ticket. It’s like a gift from God. Now let’s jam it down everyone’s throat.

And God bless the New American Morality.




digby 11/05/2004 03:18:00 PM |

 
Schmucks

Matt Yglesias hits the nail on the head:

"I've got some serious disagreements with Thomas Frank's take on this whole phenomenon, but he's very right to argue in his book and elsewhere that the politics of cultural populism depends crucially on the Republicans never delivering the goods on any of the really big issues. Meanwhile, social conservatives have gotten treated this way for years -- decades, really -- and while they always complain about it, they always show up when it's time to vote. I would suggest that insofar as liberals sometimes condescend to these people (which we do) the issue is less a condescending attitude toward religion, than a condescending attitude toward a voting bloc that doesn't seem capable of figuring out that it's being scammed no matter how many times it happens"

I'm fine with people's religion as long as they don't force me to practice it. Live and let live, I say. I like freedom and that includes freedom of religion. My problem with these people is that they are fools to continually be taken in by a group of rich plutocrats who've been running things for quite some time now and who have never substantially delivered anything they've promised to the social conservatives. They put on a good show, with lots of razzle dazzle, but they are not sincere. The social conservatives are like greyhounds chasing the mechanical rabbit. And the big money boyz are laughing all the way to the bank. Take pornography, for instance:

What companies are involved? Spencer's investigators and reports from market research firms indicate that pornography is a $10 billion industry in the US alone, according to Forrester Research of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The largest company is not even known for pornography, but for selling cars. General Motors Corp.'s DirecTV subsidiary sells nearly $200 million a year of pay-per-view sex films, according to industry estimates not disputed by GM.

Other companies involved, including EchoStar Communications, the No.2 satellite provider, AT&T Corp., by offering the HotNetwork service through its cable service, Liberty Media, Marriott International, the Hilton, On Command, LodgeNet Entertainment and News Corp., all have major stakes in pornography, but these stakes are not mentioned in annual reports, except in the vaguest ways. An AT&T executive explains, "How can we? It's the crazy aunt in the attic. Everyone knows she's there, but you can't say anything about it."

Do the social conservatives know that George W. Bush himself served on the board of a Hollywood production company, run by his best friend Roland Betts? They weren't making Bambi, they were making movies like The Hitcher, which featured a woman being ripped in two. He made quite a nice little profit from that work (1983 to 1994.) Yet he forgot to mention his connection to the decadent world of Hollywood when he said:

"There needs to be a kind of sense of urgency in our society about the pervasiveness of violence"

It's hard to respect people who are willing dupes year after year and deliver power to a party that is merely using them for electoral gains and has absolutely no intention of delivering on its promises. There's just too much money involved in selling the culture that these people find so objectionable. And the ones who are selling it own the Republican party lock stock and falafel.

Like I said. Schmucks.



digby 11/05/2004 01:11:00 PM |

 
The New Untermenschen

I'm really enjoying this dialog over at Slate called "Why America Hates Democrats."

The question answers itself, though, doesn't it? Democrats obviously aren't Americans. We are enemies of the state.

You won, Rush, Ann, Sean, Grover, Karl. Congratulations. Democrats are now officially expelled from the body politic. And with a bare 51% majority, too. Wow. That's a hell of an achievement. Even the liberal Slate agrees with you now. (I'll be looking forward to the articles that endorse teaching creationism in the schools because it's a "value" that Americans hold dear .)

The good news is that Rush always said he wanted to keep one of us alive and put us in a museum someplace so that Americans would never forget what we looked like. Maybe we could have an election among ourselves and nominate the best representation of the hated Democrat. I'm pretty sure that they aren't going to accept 99.9 % of us. In fact, the only one they are likely to accept would be someone who looks like Michael Jackson. Otherwise the person might just be mistaken for a relative or a neighbor and then everyone would get confused.

The question as to why we are hated by Americans is an interesting one that cannot be answered by a bunch of liberals trying to distance themselves from this hated subgroup. if you want the real answer, you'll ask an real American why he hates democrats. Luckily, right in the LA Times it's not hard to find the answer:

Christians, in politics as in evangelism, are not against people or the world. But we are against false ideas that hold good people captive. On Tuesday, this nation rejected liberalism, primarily because liberalism has been taken captive by the left. Since 1968, the left has taken millions captive, and we must help those Democrats who truly want to be free to actually break free of this evil ideology.

In the weeks and months to come, we will hear the voices of well-meaning people beseeching the victor to compromise with the vanquished. This would be a mistake. Conservatives must not compromise with the left. Good people holding false ideas are won over only if we defeat what is false with the truth.

The left must be defeated in the realm of ideas, just as it was on Tuesday at the ballot box. The left hates the ballot box and loves its courtrooms, which is why it hopes to continue to advance its agenda through the courts. This must end.

The left bewitches with its potions and elixirs, served daily in its strongholds of academe, Hollywood and old media. It vomits upon the morals, values and traditions we hold sacred: God, family and country. As we learned Tuesday, it is clear the left holds the majority of Americans, the majority of us, in contempt.

Simply, a majority of Americans have rejected John Kerry and John Edwards and the left because they are wrong. They are wrong because there are not two Americas. We are one nation under a God they reject. We remain indivisible despite their attempts to divide Americans through their relentless warfare against class, ethnic and religious unity.

We still believe that liberty and justice is for all. In 1946, there were those on the left who believed the Germans and the Japanese were incapable of democracy and liberty. Today, many doubt democracy can be birthed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Like their forebears, they too will be proved wrong.

The nation has now resoundingly rejected the left and its agenda. We do not want to become European. We do not want to become socialist. We do not want to become secular. We are exceptional. We are unique. And we are the greatest force for good in the world, despite what the left, the terrorists or the United Nations may claim. It is for these reasons that we remain the last great hope in the world for freedom.

We continue to be that shining city set on a hill. And we fully accept the responsibility; we are proud to be the envy of the world.

Die Liberale sind unserer Unglück




digby 11/05/2004 12:15:00 PM |

Thursday, November 04, 2004

 
Electoral Arithmetic For Dummies

Kevin Drum is sick of this exceedingly STUPID mantra about how the Democrats face terrible arithmetic in the electoral college because of our inability to carry the south. He says:

No kidding. But try this on for size instead:

"Republicans face this terrible arithmetic in the Electoral College where if they don't carry any of the 13 Northeastern states they need to win two-thirds of everything else," says Kevin Drum, an expert on simplistic arithmetic at the Washington Monthly.

Note to the media: it was a close election, just like it was four years ago. There were only a dozen swing states, and Republicans had no more chance of winning in California, New York, and Illinois than Democrats did in Georgia, Alabama, and Wyoming. A trivial swing of a hundred thousand votes in half a dozen states and you'd be writing pretentious thumbsuckers about how cultural issues were losing their ability to attract votes for Republicans. So knock it off, OK?

I agree. I think that this arithmetic epitaph is perhaps the most annoying post election spin of all. You can argue about whether "moral values" as a top reason for voting this election means that the country is awash in religious fervor, but you simply cannot spin these numbers as a huge sea change. This was a squeaker only marginally more comfortable for Bush than 2000, not a blow out. Somebody has to win and the GOP machine has pulled it out the last two elections, but it could very easily have gone the other way. Red is redder and blue is bluer, that's all.




digby 11/04/2004 05:35:00 PM |

 
Media Meltdown

I'm starting to get a little bit punchy from lack of sleep these last few days so I don't have the energy tonight to write anything about this very interesting PressThink post by Jay Rosen about where the press is headed after this election.

I urge you all to read it. This may be where the real action is these next couple of years. It's likely to be as fundamental to our future as the carnage that Bush is going to wreak.




digby 11/04/2004 05:29:00 PM |

 
Ashcroft Likely to Leave AG Post

I heard some woman on ABC saying that this is not what it seems. According to her, the president never wanted Ashcroft but he was forced on him by the religious right. This rumor is being pushed by those in the bush administration who want him out right away before some shit hits the fan (Plame? Kenny Boy?)

Whatever. It occurred to me that if we had a good message machine we would immediately seize upon this to sow divisions between Bush and his newly empowered evangelical base. They love Johnny. Isn't it a slap in the face that their beloved Bush is pushing him out of office the day after the election?

Divide and conquer, baby. It's just one of many hardball tactics we must begin to use to break the stranglehold in advance of the 2006 elections. It could be our '94.




digby 11/04/2004 02:37:00 PM |

 
Who Are We?

I noticed that there seems to be a lot of discussion around the left blogosphere about the Democratic party not knowing what it stands for. This has been picked up by Howard Fineman who is busy telling everyone who'll listen that we stand for nothing. I'm a little bit stunned by this and so is The Poor Man.

Obviously, I have no objection to people coming up with new ideas, but I hardly think this is really a problem of the Democratic Party. It is absolutely clear what the Democrats stood for in this election - a generally conservative set of principles based on sixty-plus years of Democratic and bipartisan American thought and action. Respect for the importance of time-tested international alliances, and for the system for resolving global issues through the UN and other international bodies which has evolved over the last century. A measured approach to dealing with foreign relations, a recognition that there are always many crises to be juggled at once, and a disinclination to overextend or rely on 'magic bullet' or utopian solutions. Striking a balance between business and labor which benefits both, and judicious use of the state to resolve problems for which the private sector is poorly suited. Fiscal responsibility. A tolerence of difference, a respect for ability and expertise, and a dedication to the ideals of the woman's rights, civil rights, and labor movements. An America like the America we grew up in and believed in, only maybe a bit better, which stands for and gains its strengths from these common values which are our heritage.

There you go. In a piece from the primaries some months back, I wrote that any Democrat would run basically on the following platform:

To protect and defend the citizens of the United States.

To preserve the separation of church and state

To safeguard the right to choose.

To provide a decent safety net

To preserve progressive taxation

To protect the environment

To advance civil liberties and civil rights

To govern transparently

To provide opportunity

To promote equality

To advance progress

To preserve the American way of life

I don't think there is all that much question about what we stand for. However, as The Poor Man points out, that has almost nothing to do with how we are perceived by millions of Americans who tune in the Mighty Wurlitzer for their "news." There has been a decades long attack on liberalism that has demonized us into a party of stoned slackers and caffeinated porno consumers. (More projection. They don't call Delay "Hot Tub Tom" for nothing.) This character assasination made it possible for a president to be elected with a totally incoherent set of "values" that could only have been designed by someone cobbling together a governing coalition of deaf, dumb and blind people who cannot read.

They didn't win the campaign because they have a coherent ideology and we didn't. Rupert Murdock and Jerry Falwell are not pursuing the same goals. "Democracy" and Ilyiad Allawi do not belong in the same sentence. Radical tax cutting and running wars to the tune of a billion a day is not fiscal responsibility. Bigotry is not compassionate and destroying the safety net we've depended on for more than half a century is not conservative.

These people aren't united by a common ideology or set of values. They are united by a common hatred of Democrats, fueled by a massive propaganda machine. They won this campaign by putting on a trash talking spectacle starring George W. Bush as Commander Codpiece. (Those who wanted to ban gay marriage got in two for the price of one.) The problem is that show biz conservatism has become the default channel for more Americans. It's about identity, not ideology.




digby 11/04/2004 01:51:00 PM |

 
Heartland Values

In the grand tradition of knee jerk analysis, I am hearing all over the television and the blogosphere that we need to reach out to the religious people who voted for George W. Bush in order to win in the future. We must reject our "Hollywood values" and learn to embrace the real, American heartland values that George W. Bush personifies and which won him the election. One Democrat named Dave Strother just said that the Democrats have to purge themselves of the coasts or risk oblivion.

I wish that just once we would recognise when we are being played. The reason Bush won is because he eked out a victory in Ohio, period. That is the only number that matters in this presidential election and it doesn't represent a gigantic sea change in America. Bush won that small victory in Ohio because an unprecedented number of conservative evangelicals came out to vote. And, the "American Heartland value" that energized them was an amendment to the state constitution that not only defined marriage as between a man and a woman but also barred public institutions, such as universities, from providing health insurance and other benefits to domestic partners.

"This was the issue that delivered Ohio for President Bush,'' said Phil Burress, who spearheaded the Issue 1 campaign. ``We mailed out 2.5 million bulletins to 17,000 churches. We called 2.9 million homes and identified 850,000 supporters. We called every one of those supporters on Monday and urged them to vote Yes on 1."

(I guess we now know why they panicked about Mary Cheney, don't we? )

My question is this. Is there any combination of issues upon which we Democrats could accomodate these people that doesn't include backing anti-gay measures like that? In other words, as long as the Democratic party believes in equal rights for gay people is there a snowball's chance in hell that we will be able to tear the religious vote away from the party that doesn't with outreach to "heartland values?"

I doubt it. In fact, I think that we are talking about a wedge issue that is insurmountable. Civil rights are a fundamental matter of principle, not a position on specific programs or tax cut legislation. And I don't see any possibility that we will be able to make inroads with people who believe that homosexuality is a sin as a matter of bedrock religious belief. We can field a candidate who runs a campaign like a tent revival, but this is one of those issues that can't be finessed. As long as we believe in the separation of church and state and back civil rights for gays we are not going to get the conservative Christian vote. We just aren't.

If gay rights is the deciding factor for the forseeable future, then I think we may lose for a while. But, it won't be. It's really not a matter of law as much a matter of society getting used to the idea and it is happening very quickly. Gay marriage wasn't even on the radar screen ten years ago --- until the last couple of years, everybody had been growing used to the idea of civil unions, which even Junior has endorsed. My guess is that they won't be able to find an anti-gay measure to put on the ballot every election and as a result they won't be able to repeat this turn-out in the crucial states where they need it. This was a unique combination of Junior's phony born again image and the gay rights issue converging.

Pinning this election defeat on an alleged lack of "moral values" is short sighted and it plays right into Republican hands. The Republicans consistently use that club to beat us over the head again and again while they fervently watch the Falafel Factor and listen to Rush as he pops little blue babies between attacks on the Democratic party's hedonism. They only believe in strict moral values when it's somebody they don't like. This is political posturing and we are fools to let them use it to marginalize our 50% of the population.

There are competing values in this world and you can't be all things to all people. The election was won with 130,000 or so conservative evangelical votes in one state. That is decisive enough to declare victory in the election, but it is far too slim a margin to make the sweeping decision that the Democratic party needs to shelve its values of tolerance and civil rights to accomodate certain religious beliefs that are incompatible with them. The religious people are welcome to their beliefs, of course, but it's something on which we cannot compromise and have any of our own values left. (Oddly, I think that the truly religious people, as opposed to the poseur majority of republicans, might just understand that.)

I maintain that many people simply want a president whose image fits the role of president. Most of them vote on the basis of how the person makes them feel. They may like a little religion talk because it's code for a certain cultural ID and leadership archetype they feel comfortable with. And they want some personality in their leader, professionally presented as if it's authentic. Many of them are religious, (and they may have voted to ban gay marriage) but they are not driven to the polls on the conservative values agenda. Their motivation is not issues, although they tend to assign their preferred issues and solutions to their preferred candidate regardless of the reality. What they care about is style. Some of these people voted happily for Reagan, Clinton, Perot and Junior and see nothing remotely inconsistent in that. Those people we can reach with message, presentation and the right candidate.

The truly committed religious right,however, said to be 22 percent of this last electorate, is simply not obtainable. To even contemplate jettisoning our deeply held values to pander to them is useless and immoral.

But, get ready. The media are lazy and love the storyline of the wicked, hedonistic liberals being ignominiously defeated by the righteous salt of the earth Republicans. They are going to flog this until we are all convinced that the entire country is made up of conservative Christian Republicans and the rest of us are a bunch of freaks --- even the moderate and liberal Christians. Everyone will agree that the hope of the party is to abandon the coasts (with all their electoral votes, presumably.) But, just because they like a narrative it doesn't make it true. If we have learned anything over the years I would hope that at least we have learned that.




digby 11/04/2004 10:55:00 AM |

 
Reaching Out

Grover Norquist:

Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such.

I was listening to Sean Hannity gloat yesterday as we were driving back from Nevada. His guest was Zell Miller. They both agreed that Democrats were completely out of step with nation and that's why Bush was given this huge mandate. Dems refused to see that you cannot raise taxes, that you must fight evil abroad where ever you see it and that people have the right to practice their religion anywhere and everywhere they see fit. Perhaps, most egregiously, Democrats didn't understand that you cannot be vicious and angry and expect the real Americans to sit back and take it.

They were both very hopeful that Democrats would learn civility (or was that servility, I couldn't tell) and reach across the aisle and behave in a bipartisan manner by adopting the Republican agenda.

I screamed, "fuck you,assholes" into the vast emptiness of the high desert. I don't think anyone heard me.




digby 11/04/2004 08:48:00 AM |

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

 
TV With The Sound Turned Off

Like so many things in life, huge disappointment doesn't come as such a shock when you stop and think about it. There are always signs.

First, let me make one small point. Bush's large margin in the popular vote is probably too big. They are still counting absentee ballots in the west and there are tons of them. In California there were almost five million mailed out. Al Gore, if you recall, was not secure as the winner of the popular vote for several days when all of these far west absentee votes started to trickle in from California, Oregon and washington.

Here's a little trip down memory lane from november 9th of 2000, two days after the election:

There are 1.1 million outstanding in California, absentees that haven't been counted, (and) 900,000 that haven't been counted in Washington," said Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. Gans added that another 400,000 remain untallied in New York.

In addition, because Oregon attempted an all-mail voting system, about 300,000 votes remained out Thursday, Gans said.

"And then there are scatterings of votes in other places, including Alaska, whose votes are highly incomplete," he said. "There are more than enough votes to close a 200,000 vote gap."

Gore does lead in the unofficial tally of the popular vote -- but by a narrow and changing margin. On Election Night, he was running behind by half a million votes. By the next day, he led by about 250,000 votes.

By Thursday afternoon his lead over Bush had shrunk to less than 200,000 votes -- out of more than a 100 million counted for all candidates.

To be sure, Bush will maintain his lead in the popular vote, but it may not be by the large margin that has all the gasbags breathlessly proclaiming his glorious mandate. A lot more people voted absentee this year than in the past. The fact is that Bush's popular vote lead mostly comes from a higher turnout in red states. That does not exactly make for a broad mandate. Not that it makes any difference in how Bush will govern. We already learned that the hard way.

This nation is essentially where we were four years ago, the people frozen in position like those horrible scenes from Pompeii. It was deja vu all over again, only this time Florida was Ohio and Bush got a bigger turn-out in the south. Other than the shift of New Hampshire and New Mexico, the red and blue map remains as it has been. The coasts, the midwest and the northeast are one America. The rest of the country is another. More precisely, we now have Democratic city states in the midst of a Republican nation state, each equal in population and diametrically opposed politically. It's very interesting and highly unusual.

This was always going to be very close because it was always going to be very hard in wartime to prevail against the CW that Republicans are stronger on national security. We were right to believe fervently in the cause and put everything we had into it. It was clearly possible for us to win. But, the reality is that we were scaling a very high wall.

Bush has one of the most effective political machines in history behind him and, more importantly, the full power and majesty of the presidency to help him win. In the last days of the campaign he was landing in football stadiums on the Marine 1 helicopter with fireworks exploding to the tune of "Danger Zone." That's a wartime image that's hard to beat --- particularly if your adoring audience is predisposed to love that kind of faux military spectacle.

It's never easy to unseat an incumbent president and it usually only happens when the country is in palpable economic distress. This was a partisan election and we simply didn't have quite enough votes (whether to overcome his authetic lead or his rigged machines, either one) despite a valiant effort and plenty of money.

I'm too weary and dispirited right now to get into the inevitable fight that's gearing up within the party, but suffice to say I don't agree that we lost because we weren't liberal enough. But, neither was it because we weren't culturally conservative enough or populist enough.

I believe it was simply because we weren't entertaining enough and that's the sad truth. I think that Democrats are serious, earnest and substantive people. We are the reality-based community. And I think we top out at about forty eight percent of the population.

For everybody else politics is show business, whether in religious, political or media terms. Image trumps substance,charisma and personality trump everything. I don't find George W. Bush appealing in any way because my vision of an attractive politician is that he be smart, competent and rhetorically talented. But, to many people, politics is interesting because of the spectacle and the tribal competition and they just aren't interested in any other aspects of it. (See the PEW poll.) Oh, they mouth all the right platitudes about values and all, but this is not about governing for them because they have been taught that government is only relevant to their lives in that it houses their enemies --- liberals who want to take things from them and force things on them. This is a reality TV show and they want to vote someone off the island.

It's clear that a small majority of the country buy Junior's "Top-Gun" act. His youthful failures are seen as acts of anti-hero rebelliousness. His smart ass attitude is the sign of a macho rogue. He isn't the smartest guy in the class and he's often in trouble, but he's a fearless warrior when it counts. His image is of a fun loving rascal who found himself in an extraordinary position and rose to the occasion. I know it's bullshit, but that's the archetype that his handlers have laid upon him and it's a role he plays with relish.

We have always chosen leaders for superficial as well as substantive reasons. It's not fair to say that Democrats aren't seduced by their own archetypal dreamboats. But, Bush is a new paradigm and we need to study him and recognize its power. He is a character created out of whole cloth by marketing and political people for the single purpose of appealing to a specific portion of the population that can guarantee a small political majority without having to compromise in any way with the opposition to enact an agenda. He's the first gerrymandered president.

Will Saletan gets to the nub of one of the qualities that seem to be required to make this work:

Bush is a very simple man. You may think that makes him a bad president, as I do, but lots of people don't - and there are more of them than there are of us. If you don't believe me, take a look at those numbers on your TV screen.

Think about the simplicity of everything Bush says and does. He gives the same speech every time. His sentences are short and clear. "Government must do a few things and do them well," he says. True to his word, he has spent his political capital on a few big ideas: tax cuts, terrorism, Iraq. Even his electoral strategy tonight was powerfully simple: Win Florida, win Ohio, and nothing else matters. All those lesser states- Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire- don't matter if Bush reels in the big ones.

This is what so many people like about Bush's approach to terrorism. They forgive his marginal and not-so-marginal screw-ups, because they can see that fundamentally, he "gets it." They forgive his mismanagement of Iraq, because they see that his heart and will are in the right place. And while they may be unhappy about their economic circumstances, they don't hold that against him. What you and I see as unreflectiveness, they see as transparency. They trust him.

Schwarzenneger is another example. He comes with the movie star appeal, of course, but his political talent is to speak like a cartoon character and entertain the audience as if he is at a film junket in Cannes. It doesn't matter one iota what he actually does as long as he says things like this:

This is what I love about election day, because when the people flex their muscles, then the state gets much stronger.

Tha-tha-tha-tha-that's entertainment folks. The Republicans have clearly figured out that they can get a thin majority by fielding charismatic candidates who speak like children. They don't even have to make sense.

We know from the polling that most of Bush's supporters are misinformed about his positions on the issues, so it's not a matter of backing his agenda. They don't know what it really is. And his religious base may believe that moral values are their highest priority, but since they are so very forgiving of their right wing brethren (Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Bennet,Gingrich, Swaggert, Bakker) when they stray from the straight and narrow, it's pretty clear that their high moral standards are extremely selective. I heard over and over again this election, people who said, "he looks you in the eye," as a reason for voting for him. That's not character. That's performance.

If, as the gasbags pontificating about all day, the Democrats decide that our "problem" is that we aren't appealing to the heartland conservative values, they need to think again. It's not about the substance of Republican appeals to values, it's about the style with which they do it and the level of pure, primitive tribal identification they provide. It would be a grave mistake to misunderstand this slim electoral majority as a comment on real values. It's a comment on production values. The Republicans have 'em and we don't.

I've bever been a big believer in the ground game as the be all and end all of politics even in close races. I certainly think it is essential, but I don't think knocking on doors and talking to earnest neighbors is the way people make political decisions in this day and age. I think people pretty much live in a media constructed reality and that's where the votes are gathered.

We have a nascent infrastructure in place with a bunch of smart and dedicated people who must be called upon to sustain the momentum and make it grow. We didn't lose by very much. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.

The battle begins anew today. Our agenda is more popular. The substance of our message is what people say they want, (except they credit the republicans with giving it to them.) It's our politicians' image and style that aren't making the grade in the new post modern politics. It's not because they wouldn't be terrific at actually doing the job. But that is substantially different and apart from special effects campaigning, image management and public relations, all of which supercede all other necessary qualities to get elected today.

John Kerry is the most qualified man to be president in my lifetime. And he might have won except for one thing. He couldn't fill the role that certain voters require in a president in this era --- he just wasn't enough of an archetypal TV hero. That's no knock on him, it's a knock on America. I know it's not politic to say it, but a majority of this country are obviously dumb as posts. Still, it's the only country we've got and we are going to have to come to terms with this.

Whatever the reasons, I'm devastated about this outcome, of course. But there is a silver lining. We here in the reality based community know full well that Bush and his minions have been dancing as fast as they can to get through this election. They have been desperate to avoid setting off an array of landmines with hair triggers. I am going to enjoy watching him try to deal with them as they begin to blow up in his face one by one. In many ways it is poetic justice that he is going to have to attempt to clean up the huge fetid, stinking mess he's foisted on this country.

Too bad about the human carnage though.

And I take heart in remembering Richard Nixon. Junior is his true heir and I suspect he will have the same fate. This much corruption cannot be contained. Keep your eyes on purged members of the CIA and the State department. He may have won, but I have a feeling that Commander Codpiece may come to regret it.

There us much to recommend being the angry opposition. Watching our hated enemy squirm is one them.




digby 11/03/2004 04:23:00 PM |

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

 
Dumbasses

Quick note. This nonsense with the robocalls is just another example of the Republicans drowning in their own kool-aid. They apparently think that minorities are as deluded and dumb as their own idiot base is so they think they can fool them like children.

Fat chance. This isn't rural georgia in 1950. The urban minorities in this country have more political sophistication in their little fingers than the entire rural red state vote. They value the franchise and they pay attention. It is a testament to the GOP's continued racism that they play these games, but it is also a testament to how little they understand this country in 2004. They can continue with this insulting crap and lose as this country becomes more and more diverse or they can wise up and stop the Jim Crow games.

This bullshit will not deter minority voters. They are way too smart to fall for it.




digby 11/02/2004 11:23:00 AM |

 
Boots On The Ground

Hello, everyone. I'm out here in Sin City helping do the earnest work of getting people out to vote. Ok,ok. I may have done a teeny tiny bit of gambling when I arrived late last night, but that's just because I was feeling lucky. Very lucky.

Blogger is bloggered as usual, so I don't know how much I'll be able to post. I'll try to check in several times today.

Las Vegas is Kerry country, that's for sure. There is a much bigger presence of signs and buttons in the environs around here than Bush signs. There's lots of public talk among strangers and it's intense but doesn't seem to be particularly acrimonious.

Yesterday ACT had some star power in --- Sean Penn and others were walking the precincts. I'm not sure anybody gives a damn, but all citizens have a right to participate so I'm for it.

As you know, Nevada has been a hotbed of voter suppression activity. The Sproul lawsuit was denied by the Nevada Supreme Court yesterday so the people who's votes were thrown in the trash are out of luck:

The Nevada Supreme Court refused Monday to grant an order to allow a Sparks couple that suspects their registrations were discarded by a company hired by the Republican Party to vote in today's election.

The court ruled 5-0 that Eric Amberson and Traci Amberson should have first taken their case to a District Court. The justices ruled against the couple, although the Ambersons had copies of receipts for the voter registration forms they filled out last month. The Ambersons are Democrats, according to their lawyers.

"This court is ill-equipped to resolve factual issues, such as whether petitioners are qualified electors and whether they submitted properly completed voter registration forms," the court stated in a brief decision.

The Ambersons registered on Oct. 2 with a canvasser outside a Reno Wal-Mart, according to court documents. When they didn't get sample ballots by mail they became alarmed and contacted the Washoe County registrar's office. They learned they were not registered.

The couple has receipts for the registrations that indicate their forms were among the batch given to Voter Outreach of America, a firm operated by Sproul & Associates of Chandler, Ariz. Sproul was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters..

The company is under investigation in Nevada and Oregon over allegations that workers destroyed Democrats' voter registration forms.

Former state Supreme Court Justice Charles Springer, who represented the Ambersons, said he asked the court late Monday to rehear its decision. He said there is still a remote chance the court could reconsider and allow the couple to vote today.

"There are no questions of fact," Springer said. "They got receipts. No one has ever denied that. They should be entitled to vote. But it may be futile now."

Springer said it would be irresponsible to deny the couple the right to vote unless it can be shown they are lying.

According to Springer, Voter Outreach was given 4,000 voter registration forms in Clark County and 1,500 in Washoe County.

There are recent reports of bogus phone calls telling people their polling places have ben changed, for instance. Jim Crow crap in Nevada in 2004.

However, the observations of most people here is that it hasn't deterred turn-out one iota. Most of the poeple I've talked to are on to this bullshit and it's just made them more inclined to do whatever it takes to cast their vote. I'm not seing a lot of shrinking violet Democrats. The voters here are extremely well informed and they are very motivated. I'd like to see the flaccid GOP doughboy who tried to prevent these people from voting.

Wearing my Kerry button in the hotel last night (where the employees are obviously discouraged from talking politics with the paying customers) I got winks, high fives and whispers in my ears from several people --- a bellman, a cocktail waitress and the desk clerk who just pointed at my button and winked. One guy just gave me a hard look and said "I feel it." These are working people and they are engaged.

So, far I haven't heard of any serious delays, but my knowledge is extremely limited. However, even if there are, these voters will stand in line as long as it takes. Las Vegas in the fall is just grea --- clear, cool and sunny. It's not a hardship to wait in line. Indeed, the ones I've observed so far seem downright jovial. There's a bit of a party atmosphere --- not surprising in the party capital of the world.

My coffee is cold and it's time to get back out there. I'll try to catch up on the national scene in detail later today. But, from what I'm hearing, it's looking good. Let's just say you couldn't feel a lot of magic watching FOX News this morning.

They know.




digby 11/02/2004 09:21:00 AM |

Monday, November 01, 2004

 
Into The Purple Haze

We're about to head out to Nevada to try to help those fine union, ACT and DNC people get those four electoral votes in our column. After all, Sin City will do much better under an economically successful Democratic administration when the rubes and the rich alike have enough disposable income that they can afford to throw large amounts of it away.

I'll be blogging, documenting the massive Democratic turnout and monitoring the media atrocities. Check back frequently.




digby 11/01/2004 11:18:00 AM |

 
The Man

Ezra Klein has written a beautiful piece making the affirmative case for John Kerry. There is much in it that is original and thought-provoking, but I particularly like the following reflection on the merits of flexibility in a good leader:

Righteousness, as a habit, rejects certainty; in fact, the angels have a troubling predisposition to wander around issues, which makes sticking in their camp a matter of ideological flexibility as much as judgment. There's no chasm greater than the one Kerry bridged to go from Vietnam war hero to the war's most prominent opponent, but he was right to serve his country and right to fight for an end to the misguided slaughter. It's a lesson he's refused to unlearn, and one he's spent a lifetime applying. And we need it.

I also am enthusiastic about Kerry. It's not an ABB thing for me and never has been. Kerry is the right man at the right historical moment. He's uniquely equipped by temperament and experience to lead in this world at this time.

Back when he won the primaries and I was still smarting from the defeat of my chosen candidate, I spent on evening reflecting and reading about John Kerry, trying to see what it was that so many of my fellow Democrats seemed to get about this guy that I hadn't seen until he was already half way there. After all, I'd once voted for the man and had plenty of respect for him. Indeed, by the time his nomination was clinched, I thought he was a gift in many ways. A liberal in the White House seemed almost too good to be true in this day and age.

I discovered that what the Democrats in places like Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina saw was a man who was tough enough to win and tough enough to take the slings and arrows of what was going to happen to him afterwards. That flinty, Yankee determination is an all-American trait more authentic than all the faux folksiness and phony posturing that two-faced cowpoke from Kennebunkport could ever hope to conjure. And it's a trait that people understood was vital as we deal with threats to our democracy from abroad and from within.

That night I wrote an affirmative case for Kerry, more prosaic certainly than Ezra's fine piece, but from the heart nonetheless.

Obviously, there are many reasons any person runs for president having to do with ego and accident. After observing him for a while, I think John Kerry is responding to the call in the 30 year political civil war with the Republicans. He understands that they have become dangerously radical and that it's time to break their hold on power. He knows this territory.

In that sense, I confess I'm surprised that liberals aren't taking more heart in the fact that John Kerry is a card carrying fighting Massachusetts liberal. We should be thrilled that somebody as liberal as Kerry has got a chance to be president. Because let's not kid ourselves, anybody more liberal than John Kerry is unelectable...

He's not a crook, he's not lazy, he's not stupid. He's very accomplished, he's highly experienced and he's got good instincts. But, I'm convinced that the most important character traits in a successful President at this point in history are resiliance and cunning; even if we win the election, politics are going to remain a bloodsport. The Republicans aren't going to fade away. This battle is ongoing and we must have someone who can withstand a punch and come back. It is going to be very, very difficult to govern. I think Kerry is running not because he's "electable," but because he's one of the few Democrats of his generation who has spent his life preparing to govern in the face of a radical political opposition. The job is not for the fainthearted...

I believe that right now the Democrats are essentially the conservative party, which means as great an emphasis on preservation as progress. This comes as a result of the two party system that places us in contrast to the radical Republican party which seeks to overturn the New Deal and dissolve the international order of the last 50 years. By necessity, our candidates are not going to be able to run on as progressive a platform as many of us might wish. One has to take into consideration the nature of the opposition and the character of the body politic when framing a case.

Kerry is not a reformer as Dean was perceived to be, nor is he a champion of a particular constituency as Gephardt was. But, perhaps at a time like this it is more helpful to judge the candidate by the quality of his enemies than his friends. His career has been about fighting bad guys, from Vietnam to Dick Nixon to BCCI.

In light of that, I believe Kerry is running for the simple reason that this time and place requires somebody who has the experience and character to keep the country secure while fighting back a rabid political opposition at home and a series of difficult threats overseas. His life has uniquely prepared him for this political moment.

He is the man called by history to bring America from the brink of radicalism from within and without. I'm grateful that he's willing to take on this thankless task. That's real patriotism.




digby 11/01/2004 10:23:00 AM |

 


E-mail your friends and family this link so they can watch the video, too:

http://www.johnkerry.com/video/110104_your_stories.html
digby 11/01/2004 09:18:00 AM |

 
Notes on Turn-Out

George Stephanopoulos said earlier this morning that he had two veteran political operative sources, one from each party, who he trusts. He claimed that each were "eerily calm" about their candidates' prospects tomorrow but each had entirely different beliefs about what would win it for them.

The Democrat believed that there was going to be a record turn-out that would sweep Kerry to victory. The Republican believed that there wouldn't be a record turn out and that Bush's base would win it for him.

The Democrat is right.

On NBC, Tom Brokaw just said that he'd talked to Rove who told him that he didn't think that more than 110 million would vote and repeated his oft-repeated CYA trope about how two million evangelicals stayed home in 2000 because they were shocked that Junior the reformed drunk had once been caught driving while under the influence. He feels confident that they are back in the fold.

It ain't gonna be enough. If Rove and the boyz are "eerily calm" it's because they are either delusional, they are good actors or they feel confident that Diebold can steal it with voting machines because it's already clear that the turnout is going to be phenomenal.

I also heard Tucker Carlson on the Chris Matthews week-end show say that he thought Kerry would win because people don't stand in line for hours in the Florida sun to vote because they like a politician. People are willing to stand in line for hours because they are angry.

Tucker's right, too.

There is a lot of handwringing among the gasbags about the fact that people allegedly aren't voting "for " Kerry but against Bush, as if the underlying reason for voter intensity matters. It doesn't. If the Democrats come out in droves tomorrow because they loathe and despise President asterisk more than they love Kerry it doesn't matter one iota. The result is the same.

The underlying fact that cannot be ignored by Democrats and moderates of all stripes is that they stole the goddam election last time and then governed like they'd won in a landslide. They rubbed our noses in it for four long years with a far right agenda, treating us like shit every single step of the way. Apparently, they believed their own ridiculous hype and convinced themselves that we would just roll over and take it. They were wrong.

It didn't have to be this way. 9/11 could have wiped the whole thing out if Junior had behaved even slightly as the president of the entire country instead of just his base. They made their bed.

And, despite all the polarization and bad feelings I don't actually think there is going to be a lot of disruption at the polls because there are just too many of us and we are organized and working together. For instance, in this story of predictably shameless (and ineffectual) GOP agit-prop (Via Atrios) we see the signs of an energetic, cooperative progressive movement at work to help people exercize their right to vote:

We followed the congregants of the Mt. Hermon AME to vote after their Sunday service. The Pastor gave a rousing speech that shook the walls about exercising one’s “God given right to vote.” Outside, there were vans waiting to take people over to an early voting station in Ft. Lauderdale at the African American Research Library, where many thousands of people have already voted in the past two weeks. This day was no different; the line stretched across the parking lot and off the grounds on the sidewalk on Sistrunk. It was 1pm, and as hot as the day was gonna get, which was burning. 85 degrees, a slight breeze but not enough to overcome the moisture — typical fall in Florida. People carried umbrellas, and fanned themselves with Kerry/Edwards paddles.

At first glance, it looked like the scene outside a stadium before an AC/DC show: too many cars trying to park; confusion in the line; people handing out water; everyone clutching their ID’s.

But the place was stamped with politics. Distributing the cold bottles of Zephyrhills were about dozen NAACP Voter Fund volunteers in yellow shirts. Others distributed folding chairs for people who wanted to sit in the line. An Election Protection corps in black uniforms passed out flyers printed with voting rights. A couple of Kerry/Edwards people handed out candy from plastic pumpkins.

As Harold Myerson wrote in this wonderful piece from the LA Weekly this week:

I have spent the past week observing the official Democratic Party and unofficial 527 field operations in the battleground states of Ohio and Florida. And I have found something I’ve never before seen in my 36 or so years as a progressive activist and later as a journalist: an effective, fully functioning American left.

If it is fear and loathing of George W. Bush that made that happen, so be it. The modern Republican Party will rue the day they pushed us to our limit. Their hubristic dreams of a permanent majority are dead. We are going to crush them with our numbers.




digby 11/01/2004 08:46:00 AM |

 
Here's Johnnie!

Reason number 5,769,438 not to vote for George W. Bush:

They have already used the Justice Department in the pre-election legal challenges for partisan purposes.

CINCINNATI — As two federal judges in Ohio prepared to rule on lawsuits contending that the state's procedure for challenging an individual's right to vote is unconstitutional, the Justice Department weighed in with an unusual letter brief supporting the statute.

Assistant Atty. Gen. R. Alexander Acosta sent a brief during the weekend to U.S. District Judge Susan J. Dlott, who held a rare Sunday night hearing in one of the cases, a lawsuit filed late last week by Donald and Marian Spencer. The Spencers, an elderly African American couple, are longtime civil rights activists in Cincinnati.

The Spencers' lawsuit contends that the Ohio procedure, which was enacted in 1886 and permits individuals to challenge the legitimacy of a voter at the polling place, is a vestige of "Jim Crow" laws and creates the possibility of disenfranchising a voter without due process of law.

[...]

Acosta's letter urged the judge to heed the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, which was passed in 2002 to help remedy some of the problems in the 2000 presidential election. In particular, the letter said HAVA permitted a voter whose "eligibility to vote is called into question" to cast a provisional ballot.

"We bring this provision to the court's attention because HAVA's provisional ballot requirement is relevant to the balance between ballot access and ballot integrity," Acosta wrote.

"Challenge statutes, such as those at issue in Ohio, are part of this balance," he added. "They are intended to allow citizens and election officials, who have information pertinent to the crucial determination of whether an individual possesses all of the necessary qualifiers to being able to vote, to place that information before the officials charged with making such determinations."

Acosta's letter also stated that "nothing" in the Voting Rights Act barred challenge statutes. Consequently, Acosta concluded, "a challenge statute permitting objections based on United States citizenship, residency, precinct residency, and legal voting age like those at issue here are not subject" to a challenge based on the language of the law alone, because those criteria are "not tied to race."

Alphonse A. Gerhardstein, a veteran civil rights lawyer who represents the plaintiffs in the Cincinnati case, said he thought "the letter was highly irregular."

"The Justice Department is not a party to the case. They have not filed a motion to intervene in the case or filed an amicus brief," Gerhardstein said.

"They volunteered information that goes beyond any federal interest. It's startling to say that challengers can bring information to [the official] poll watchers. That presumes they will bring in outside information. If you are a poll watcher, how are you going to evaluate that information on the spot?" Gerhardstein wondered.

Nice. John Ashcroft's Justice Department inappropriately injects itself into a case on the side of the Republican Party.

They don't even slightly care about appearances anymore. Here's the good news:

A federal judge issued an order about 1:30 a.m. today barring political party challengers from polling places throughout Ohio during Tuesday's election.

U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott found that the application of Ohio's statute allowing challengers at polling places is unconstitutional. She said the presence of challengers inexperienced in the electoral process questioning voters about their eligibility would impede voting.

What you and I call common sense, the Republicans are calling a ruling by an "activist liberal judge." Fuck 'em.




digby 11/01/2004 07:54:00 AM |

Sunday, October 31, 2004

 
Loose Lips

From Salon.com:

Secretary of State Colin Powell has privately confided to friends in recent weeks that the Iraqi insurgents are winning the war, according to Newsweek. The insurgents have succeeded in infiltrating Iraqi forces "from top to bottom," a senior Iraqi official tells Newsweek in tomorrow’s issue of the magazine, "from decision making to the lower levels."

This is a particularly troubling development for the U.S. military, as it prepares to launch an all-out assault on the insurgent strongholds of Fallujah and Ramadi, since U.S. Marines were counting on the newly trained Iraqi forces to assist in the assault. Newsweek reports that "American military trainers have been frantically trying to assemble sufficient Iraqi troops" to fight alongside them and that they are "praying that the soldiers perform better than last April, when two battalions of poorly trained Iraqi Army soldiers refused to fight."

If the Fallujah offensive fails, Newsweek grimly predicts, "then the American president will find himself in a deepening quagmire on Inauguration Day."

It's too late for Powell to redeem his reputation and it's pathetic to watch him try. But, he's probably right. When insurgents and terrorists are executing Iraqi soldiers fifty at a time it's hard to expect the army to be loyal to an occupying force. I'll be very surprised if they are able to maintain even a slightly cohesive force.




digby 10/31/2004 10:01:00 AM |

 
Baby It's Cold Outside

For those of you who found my post from yesterday about Bush's failure to understand the terrorist threat interesting, check out the transcript of the BBC show The Power Of Nightmares over on Silt:

In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this. But their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered to their people. Those dreams failed. And today, people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life. But now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand. And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism. A powerful and sinister network, with sleeper cells in countries across the world. A threat that needs to be fought via a war on terror. But much of this threat is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It’s a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media.

This is a series of films about how and why that fantasy was created, and who it benefits. At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neoconservatives, and the radical Islamists. Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today’s nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.

Wow.




digby 10/31/2004 09:33:00 AM |

 
Ground Game The Day After

At a prayer meeting here Wednesday night, Mr. Kulp led a dozen parishioners in thinly veiled prayers for President Bush's re-election. He prayed that God might do "whatever it takes on Election Day," including keeping some voters away while "bringing certain people to the polls."

The Lord helps those who help themselves, doesn't he?

An Observer investigation in the United States has uncovered widespread allegations of electoral abuse, many of them going uninvestigated despite complaints of what would appear to be criminal attempts to manipulate voter lists.

[...]

Although allegations of misconduct have been levelled at both parties recently, the majority of complaints that have been identified in The Observer' s investigation involved claims against local Republicans.

The claims, made by the BBC's Newsnight, follow alleged attempts by Republicans to illegally suppress the votes in key states. Republican spokesmen deny these allegations.

Check out eripost's Vote Watch 2004 for dozens and dozens of stories that show the pattern all over the battleground states. There has been a campaign to send election literature to people's homes and if it is returned it is used as a reason to remove the person from the rolls. In at least one case, the literature was consciously returned by Democrats in protest and in others it appears that merely failing to retrive an RNC registered letter from the post-office lands a Democrat in the fraudulent voter column.

It is now crystal clear that we are seeing a nationally coordinated vote suppression effort by the GOP. In many cases they have waited until the last possible moment to mount challenges such as trying to get voters removed from the lists for spurious reasons like not having an apartment number listed on their address. Much of this is designed to throw the electoral process into chaos in the days just before the election. Mostly, they are trying to set the stage to make voting so difficult that busy working people will not be able to stand in long tedious lines to vote.

The stories are all very similar. This is obviously coordinated at the national level.

So, ok, what do we do about it? The press is covering it in the local papers. And, if we win decisively, this whole thing may be moot.

However, if this election is as close as 2000 and legal challenges become necessary, we are going to have to be prepared with a coordinated media response. You can bet they've already got theirs planned out. And they have a problem, just like they had in 2000:

Baker spoke to the press loudly and often, and his message was Bush had won on November 7. Any further inspection would result only in "mischief." Privately, however, he knew that at the start he was on shaky political ground. "We're getting killed on "count all the votes," he told his team. "Who the hell could be against that?"

They got around that when Gore was forced to follow Florida law and show cause in specific counties to request a recount. Then they were able to reframe that argument to "he wants to count only some of the votes."

I think that the key for the Democrats is to find legitimate voters ready to go on camera on Wednesday and tell their stories of denial, intimidation, and waiting. I sincerely hope that they have a list of those who've had to defend their voting rights already and that they are prepared to line up all the voters who will be forced to stand in lines for hours because some RNC operative is holding up the line with challenges. And then there are the voters who have been challenged because of ridiculous technicalities. (This college professor is a good start.)

I hope they are prepared to write the same narrative in all the swing states where this coordinated attack occurs and will stick with their charges no matter how many times the other side dredges up Mary Poppins and Mickey Mouse. Indeed, we should point out that neither "Mary" or "Mickey" showed up to vote, since anybody can see that it was a joke, not an attempt at voter fraud.

Hopefully, none of this will be necessary. But, if we find ourselves in legal limbo, the key will be to show over and over again that legitimate voters were illegally denied the right to vote and many, many others had ridiculous roadblocks put in their way as part of a coordinated plan to slow down the voting process in highly populated areas.

Our response must be aggressive and coordinated and ready to go on Wednesday morning. You know the Republicans will be.




digby 10/31/2004 09:11:00 AM |

Saturday, October 30, 2004

 
Poll Dancers

I just heard a world weary journalist ask whether it is reasonable to think that Kerry can win when all the polls show Bush with a slight lead. If anybody seriously believes that, they really need to go have a talk with ace reporter Wolf Blitzer. Via Kos here's Wolfie on the day before the 2000 election:

BLITZER: And now, let's take a look at the latest poll numbers. The new CNN/"USA Today" Gallup Tracking Poll results are being released at this hour. It shows George W. Bush with 48 percent, Al Gore 43 percent, Ralph Nader with 4 percent, Pat Buchanan with 1 percent.

And those numbers are similar to other tracking polls. Take a look: ABC's poll has Bush at 49 percent, Gore at 45 percent; The Washington Post, Bush at 48 percent, Gore at 46 percent; the NBC-Wall Street Journal tracking poll, Bush at 47 percent, Gore 44 percent. And both the CBS and MSNBC-Reuters-Zogby tracking polls have Bush at 46, Gore at 44 percent.

It's clear that when a race is this close you cannot precisely poll the election. The press corpse should understand this but apparently they don't. Either that or they are listening to RNC spin which I'm sure they would never do. Right?




digby 10/30/2004 02:41:00 PM |

 
Bush's Big Endorsement

This is getting ridiculous. The wing-nuts are going crazy with the idea that this tape means that bin Laden wants Bush to lose when it is obvious to any sentient being that the opposite is true.

Look, bin Laden is obviously very well connected to the American zeitgeist. He may be a nihilistic monster but he isn't stupid. His little speech made it clear that he is quite aware of the various rhetorical tentacles in the election and even quoted some of them. He knows that he is a feared and hated figure in America and he knows that anything he says will be taken with a grain of salt.

But, he also knows that the conventional wisdom of the American media is that his mere appearance on the scene accrues to Junior's benefit. There is nary a wingnut or gasbag who hasn't said in the last few months that any kind of terrorist attack would automatically benefit Bush in the election. Only those who are comotose have failed to notice that his approval rating rises at least a couple of points with a heightened terror warning. Bin Laden knows nothing has to blow up. All he has to do is show up.

It is obvious that if bin Laden was trying to influence the election --- and it's hard to see by the timing that he wasn't --- then it is also obvious that his intent is to help elect Crusader Codpiece, the most hated man in the world.

George W. Bush is the single best recruiting tool that Islamic terrorism has ever had. The American media may be too dumb or too insular to know this, but he certainly does.

Don't take my word for it though. Here's a guy with a few years of expertise on the subject under his belt, Richard Clarke. He agrees with me:

AHMED: If president bush is re-elected, it helps osama bin laden. It helps president musharraf, the two enemies in that. It helps both of them. Because it secures musharraf in pakistan it secures osama bin laden, his base. He needs an america that is on the war path against him, to be able to say america's attacking islam, in fact, so he's twisting what is happening from america.

KOPPEL: Do you agree, Richard?

CLARKE: I do. I think it's obvious he's trying to affect the u.S. Election. This is the second audio/visual tape we've received in the last week from al qaeda, addressed to the american people. And he attacked the president in the way that, i think, is designed to get the american people to move to bush's side. He's a smart guy, osama bin laden, and he knows if he attacks bush that will strengthen bush. Why does he want bush as president? Because Bush, as president, gives him the symbol that gets all these people joining al qaeda. Bush is the symbol that has increased recruitment for al qaeda, and has increased money flow for al qaeda. Bush is the symbol for all of the jihadists throughout the muslim world who hate america.

Uncle Osama Wants You, Junior.


Update: Atrios is skeptical that bin Laden's intention can be divined. I'm with Richard Clarke. I think it's clear that he knows Bush is better for the terrorist business. And he's right.




digby 10/30/2004 01:23:00 PM |

 
Bush Is Completely Wrong On Terrorism

There are so many reasons not to elect George W. Bush that it's difficult to catalog them all. From the encroaching authoritarianism of its Justice department to the fiscal madness that has taken us from a record surplus to a record deficit in three short years due to immense tax cuts for the rich. But surely, the single most important reason to fire George W. Bush is his abject failure to properly comprehend the nature of the islamic fundamentalist threat. The re-emergence of Osama bin Laden is a stark reminder of why this is so.

Many people have been writing recently, and some of us quite some time ago, about the fact that the Bush administration, instead of seeing the assymetrical threat of terrorism for what it was, simply applied their cold war tenets of nation state rollback to the new threat. It is an intellectual failure of huge magnitude and it will haunt us for many years to come.

If you look back at the PNAC manifestos of the late 90's that served as the guiding documents of Bush's policy you will see that terrorism per se was not perceived as a threat. Indeed, it was hardly mentioned. Richard Clarke and others have verified that the Bush administration did not take it seriously. But, what is most distressing is that they refused to let go of their erroneous notions of state sponsored terrorism even after 9/11 which led to the mistaken belief that the key to defeating al Qaeda was to overthrow the Taliban, (thus freeing them to go after what they perceived to be a real threat, the totalitarian dictator Saddam Hussein.)

There has been a lot of discussion about the "faith based" nature of this presidency, drawing parallels to unquestioning fundamentalist religion and cults of personality. There are obviously elements of all of this in explaining why the Bush administration has made so many huge strategic errors that were entirely predictable before any action was taken. However, it's more than that. You cannot explain neocon intellectuals like Wolfowitz away with fundamentalist religion and there is no reason to believe that men like Rumsfeld and Cheney are subject to any Bush cult of personality. But, they all have one thing in common that is demostrable throughout their public careers --- their relentless adherence to their beliefs, no matter what the facts may seem to show. Going all the way back to TEAM B and the Committee for the Present Danger, these people have been proven wrong --- proven, mind you --- again and again and yet they maintain their bedrock belief that the threat of totalitarian nations is the singular overwhelming threat to our country and they must be defeated militarily wherever they occur. These people are stuck in a fringe cold war mindset that nothing can shake. 9/11, it seems, did not change anything.

For instance, their beliefs about Iraq sponsored terrorism were not solely fometed by Laurie Mylroie. She neatly piggybacked her theory that Saddam the Stalinist was the root of all mid-east terrorism onto an earlier theory promoted by Claire Sterling which posited that all terrorism was sponsored by the Soviet Union. Her book, The Terror Network from back in 1980 made the case that terrorism could not exist without the support of a state sponsor and that idea has guided the Republican foreign policy establishment even until this day. Just as it is said that Wolfowitz and Feith encouraged everyone in the DOD to read Mylroie's book, William Casey responded to his analysts assertion that there was no Soviet terrorist conspiracy by saying,"Read Claire Sterling's book and forget this mush. I paid $13.95 for this and it told me more than you bastards whom I pay $50,000 a year." This is, then, an old story.

This is why we didn't take out bin Laden. This is why we didn't take out Al-Zarqawi. In the administration's view, they were simple actors on behalf of totalitarian governments. Their idea of draining the swamp was to invade and occupy the source of their funding, which many of them convinced themselves had to be Saddam Hussein. Richard Clarke, in Against All Enemies quotes Wolfowitz as saying: "You give Bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don't exist."

The Bush policy on terrorism is based upon a false premise and nothing that has happened throughout this crisis has led them to reevaluate that premise and change direction. This is what they call "resolute" and "strong." What it is, in fact, is a dangerous delusion born of outmoded cold war thinking that was wrong when it was conceived and remains wrong today.

This is really what this election is about. The administration made the wrong choices on 9/11. That is why bin Laden still runs free, able to make propaganda videos showing him healthy and robust three years after the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center. This is why Al Zarqahi is killing vast numbers of Iraqis and Americans even today. (That this enormous error is seen as George W. Bush's primary strength is such a depressing comment on our media and my countrymen that I can't even contemplate it.)They fit their threat assessment into the mold of anti-communism, fatally misunderstanding the nature of what we are facing. If they are given the chance to continue on this deluded path (and they have never changed course in more than 40 years, no matter what the facts present) then we can expect this situation to hurtle ever more out of control.




digby 10/30/2004 01:03:00 PM |

Friday, October 29, 2004

 
Bring On The Smelling Salts

This is interesting. The State Department Tried to Stop Airing of Bin Laden Tape.

Bush knew about this tape for a while and they obviously were not sure quite how to deal with it. They know that it can break either way for them.

It appears that they have decided on a modified "Mary Cheney" --- shock and outrage that Kerry allegedly politicized the issue, when he actually didn't. They are claiming that he brought up Tora Bora when he was talking to a Wisconsin repoter and that this is a crude and reprehensible act of opportunism. There's only one problem. When he spoke to the Wisconsin reporter he had only been told that a tape existed and had no idea what it said or whether it was even real. It was only after the interview that he was briefed about it, at which point he made his statesmanlike comment.

The Bush campaign is going to try to wrap Kerry in a straightjacket with one of their phony, sanctimonious coordinated fits of the vapors. Kerry is a bad, bad man. They will hide behind their dainty white hankies and shake their heads in sadness at Democratic vulgarity.

Frankly, I think there is so much white noise that nothing is going to penetrate this week-end. I'm having trouble keeping everything straight and I think that most voters at this point are a little bit befuddled and a little bit weary of all of this. If anything, this bin Laden tape just looks like another Bush fuck-up to those who are paying attention and those who aren't probably aren't really computing the relevance either way.

The country has been polarized for four years. This race has been tighter than tight for months and nothing's going to change that in these next few days. It is as it's always been. We have to get our vote out. That's what it's all about.




digby 10/29/2004 08:26:00 PM |

 
From The You Can't Make This Shit Up Files

Raw Story has the story of the Republicans filing a complaint against a radio show for urging voters to defeat David Drier.

The General Counsel to the National Republican Congressional Committee has filed a complaint against a California radio show for advocating the defeat of Republican Rep. David Dreier, saying the show’s advocacy is illegal and goes beyond their first amendment rights.

RushSeanMichealLauraNeiletc., however, are perfectly within their rights in trashing John Kerry and every other Democrat --- and making a tidy profit at it.






digby 10/29/2004 07:34:00 PM |

 
Mediawhorgy

The media narrative is gelling that this bin Laden tape totally benefits Bush. Chris Matthews and the bunch have that glassy eyed, pre-orgasmic, reach-for-the-codpiece look and they are very excited about the prospect of Bush doing another metaphorical landing on the carrier. The security moms are panting with barely leashed desire. My gorge rises with every minute of this.

Chris Jansen quoted Karl Rove saying that John Kerry "trashing" Bush about Tora-Bora made this issue fair game. Jansen inexplicably claimed this means that Bush won't politicize it, but that makes no sense. Indeed, Bush just brought up the Tora Bora issue in Columbus as I write.

Bush just threw down the gauntlet. I say throw it right back in his face.

Bin Laden isn't stupid. He knows who the media will say this tape benefits. Perhaps Americans need to ask themselves why he would help the man he supposedly fears?

Update: Ask and ye shall receive.

Kerry Campaign Response to Bush in Columbus

Washington, DC – Kerry-Edwards spokesperson Phil Singer issued the following statement tonight in response to George Bush’s remarks in Columbus, OH:

“This is a serious issue, and it’s disturbing that the White House seems intent on making it a political issue. The president was briefed on the tape before he delivered one of his most negative and divisive attacks of this campaign.

“America deserves a national security debate on the merits rather, than a president who desperately resorts to distortions, falsehoods and untruths on a regular basis.

“John Kerry was very clear tonight that we will stop at nothing to hunt down and kill the terrorists and that all Americans - Republicans and Democrats - are united in the war on terror. George Bush wasted no time in dividing us again.”

digby 10/29/2004 04:49:00 PM |

 
Dickie Fills The Void

Atrios and Josh are amazed that Danielle Pletka accused Michael Moore of giving aid and comfort to bin Laden with fahrenheit 9/11 (presumably because of the My Pet Goat reference.)

FYI, this is a Dick Morris talking point. I watched him spew it extemporaneously to John Gibson and Gibson even commented that he was surprised that the "operatives" (Racicot and Devine) who appeared previous to Dickie had been so non-committal by comparison. Dickie said they hadn't received their talking points yet.

Pletka came on shortly thereafter evidently after feverishly taking notes in the green room. I agree with Atrios that we should hope these talking points really gain currency. If Morris is behind it, it will guarantee Kerry's win.

Pletka, btw, is one of the leading neocon Iraq "intellectuals" over at AEI. It says a lot, doesn't it?




digby 10/29/2004 03:56:00 PM |

 
PAX Americana

I'm a little bit surprised there hasn't been an outcry about this. It seems that PAX TV is pulling a Sinclair in the swing states this week-end. They are showing a propaganda hit piece "Unfit For Command" starring Scumbag For Truth John O'Neill at five in the afternoon and 11:30 at night on Saturday and Sunday in various battleground markets, particularly Florida:

“Unfit for Command”: hosted by John E. O’Neill

Hosted by Unfit for Command’s best-selling author, John E. O’Neill, this program picks up where the book leaves off and brings to the screen the faces and real stories of the eyewitnesses that served with John Kerry in Viet Nam, and as a result, strongly oppose him.

Far from the “war hero” image of his carefully crafted public campaign, these men consider him a fraud, a liar, and a coward in battle. In fact, most Americans do not know that three of John Kerry’s fellow officers asked him to leave Viet Nam because they considered him a liability.

Never before has a former member of the Armed Forces been so adamantly opposed by his fellow sailors and officers – Why?

As you probably know, PAX is that nice wholesome Christian network (partly owned by GE/NBC) that set out to counter the hedonistic, immoral mainstream media:

"Sure there are skeptics out of Hollywood and the TV industry: no sex, no violence, no ratings," Paxson says. "But I have no doubt that mainstream media will recognize that talking about God is a good thing and can make you money."

And allowing lying scumbags to spew unrebutted character assassination on your network the week-end before an election is sending you straight to hell, "Bud."

It's too late to preempt this, but it sure wouldn't hurt to make these guys pay after the fact. This is another example of a wingnut media mogul using public airwaves to help the Republican party. We are very foolish to let this pass in any instance. They will only take it as encouragement.

Republicans very smartly fight every single time, even if they know they are going to lose. They do it to make us have to fight for everything too. We need to do some of that. These media guys especially have to be schooled hard or by the time anybody really notices, it will be too late.

Update: FYI, with the exception of Pennsylvania, these are all broadcast stations. This isn't cable.


digby 10/29/2004 02:54:00 PM |

 
Morris's Law

Dick Morris just told John Gibson that bin Laden can't actually explode a bomb so he's reduced to sending a tape. This is because Junior has made America safe.

And bin Laden was much harder on Bush than Kerry which means that he favors Kerry. He used the My Pet Goat anecdote which proves that the far left is helping terrorists. Therefore, bin Laden just won the election for Bush.

Morris' Law states that whatever he says means the opposite is surely true. Therefore, the tape is a scathing indictment of Bush and will help Kerry.




digby 10/29/2004 02:32:00 PM |

 
We've Heard From Him Now

Q (March 13, 2002): Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? . . .

Bush: So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him , Kelly, to be honest with you. . . .

Q: But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

Bush: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

Maybe if he'd been a little bit more concerned about bin Laden and a little less obsessed with "takin' out" Saddam, he might not be threatening us still today.

Is there any better reason to fire this asshole than this?




digby 10/29/2004 01:32:00 PM |

 
Codpiece Dysfunction

As Bush introduced the mother of a New York Port Authority police officer killed at the World Trade Center, a machine that was to blast confetti into the air at the end of the event went off prematurely with a loud, startling bang.


Bush flinched and paused, then resumed his speech as the confetti fell around him.


Bush had planned to campaign here with Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, a World Series hero with Kerry's hometown team. Schilling's presence was canceled at the last minute for what was described as an ankle problem.

Looking like a Loserman more and more each day.


digby 10/29/2004 01:15:00 PM |

 
Busted

again

Salon.com interviews a physicist who is an expert on imaging. It's not good news for the Codpiece.

George W. Bush tried to laugh off the bulge. "I don't know what that is," he said on "Good Morning America" on Wednesday, referring to the infamous protrusion beneath his jacket during the presidential debates. "I'm embarrassed to say it's a poorly tailored shirt."

Dr. Robert M. Nelson, however, was not laughing. He knew the president was not telling the truth. And Nelson is neither conspiracy theorist nor midnight blogger. He's a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis. Currently he's engrossed in analyzing digital photos of Saturn's moon Titan, determining its shape, whether it contains craters or canyons.

For the past week, while at home, using his own computers, and off the clock at Caltech and NASA, Nelson has been analyzing images of the president's back during the debates. A professional physicist and photo analyst for more than 30 years, he speaks earnestly and thoughtfully about his subject. "I am willing to stake my scientific reputation to the statement that Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate," he says. "This is not about a bad suit. And there's no way the bulge can be described as a wrinkled shirt."

digby 10/29/2004 11:47:00 AM |

 
Being A Republican Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry

Atrios is mighty angry about this story and so should we all be. As I read it I got more and more enraged and I had toask myself why it was. After all, we've been hearing about this nationwide scheme to suppress the vote through dirty tricks and intimidation for the last month. What is it about this particular story that is so inflammatory?

After taking a few deep breaths I think I have figured it out. It's that the Republican Party's corruption has extended far into the grassroots. It's not longer just the Nixonian Roger Stones or the Rovian Nathan Sproul's, it's average, everyday, pillars of the community who have joined in doing the sickening dirty work of a party that cannot win a majority legitimately. These weren't operative sharpies. They were older Republicans willing to do the bidding of their corrupt party and they didn't seem to care even when confronted with proof that their scheme was entirely unethical.

Of course, this little drama was really republican vs republican. There were decent republicans on the board who were disgusted by this underhanded plot and they did the right thing. But, they were few and far between. The state GOP was only sorry that they hadn't sent in better lawyers to defend the miscreants.

I suppose that I thought that most average Republican voters were honest citizens with whom I disagree. I've always blamed the leadership for the modern party's Nixonian reliance on dirty tricks and corrupt election practices. Once again I've been proven wrong. The sickness has flowed all the way down to the grassroots.

How long can the decent people like those two on the board hold out against a machine like this? I doubt they will. They will either go over to the dark side or leave the party. When average citizens are willing to be fronts for a dirty tricks operation there is no room left for decency.




digby 10/29/2004 09:48:00 AM |

 
Oh Ahmad!

We should have known:

Al Qaqaa was on a classified list of Iraqi weapons facilities that the CIA provided to Pentagon and military officials before the invasion, said the U.S. intelligence official.

But when the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command produced their own list of sites that a limited number of U.S. "exploitation teams" should search, priority was given to those identified by exiled Iraqi opposition groups, he said. Al Qaqaa wasn't one of them.

All roads lead to Chalabi.


digby 10/29/2004 09:17:00 AM |

Thursday, October 28, 2004

 
Update: Haha. According to Atrios, Fox jumped the gun and aired the video already. And for some bizarre reason the freepers think the scary Halloween terrorist is gay. WTF?


Halloween Terror

How likely is it do you suppose, that FOX will run with the American Al Qaeda boogeyman tape before the week-end is out?

Ross and other ABC staffers say they believe that a Bush administration official leaked the story to Internet gossip Matt Drudge as a way of pressuring the network into airing the tape, which would heighten concerns about terrorism in the final week of the president's reelection campaign. They note that whoever gave the information to Drudge had a transcript of the tape.

[...]

The debate may not be over. The officials say a source with access to the tape, apparently impatient with ABC, has offered it to another broadcast news organization, which has called the government for guidance.

Drudge said yesterday that a political motivation behind the leak was "possible," but put the onus on ABC. "They haven't authenticated previous al Qaeda tapes before airing them," he said. "Why are they waiting to authenticate this? It's election week."

But Isham noted that previous videotapes featured Osama bin Laden or other al Qaeda leaders who could be verified by sight.

"It's either a well-done hoax or a tremendous news story," Ross said. "We're not going to get stampeded."

I love the fact that Drudge is lecturing the network on journalistic practices.

And, there's only one network that would "call the government for guidance."

I'm thinking Sunday morning.




digby 10/28/2004 04:23:00 PM |

 
Are They All Corporate Lawyers?

I've mentioned this before, but I am still hungering for an explanation. Why is it that when Bush utters the words "tort reform" and "frivolous lawsuits" that the crowd reacts with an orgasmic roar that eclipses even the speaking in tongues they do over "tax cuts." I'm assuming that this is just some kind of reflexive conditioning, but it consistently seems to get the biggest responses at Bush's rallies.

Can someone explain to me why average citizens surge to their feet screaming and frothing at the mouth at the words "tort reform?" Is this really a code word for some underground fascist movement? It kind of freaks me out.






digby 10/28/2004 03:59:00 PM |

 
Interplanetary Reality

According to Carl Cameron, Kerry is on the run because the Al qaqaa story is hurting him badly. They even found a picture of a truck in the desert that is supposed to prove something, I'm not sure what.

But, back here on planet Earth, MYDD has the full compendium of Bush fuck-ups and nasty surprises --- from just this week:

• The doctored photo in the Bush ad is getting press, and will probably get more.

  
  

• Republicans are on the defensive when it comes to explosion gate.

  
  

• Eminem's "Mosh" is the hottest video on MTV.

  
  

• FBI opens an investigation into Haliburton contracts.

  
  

• Guliani and others blame troops for failures in Iraq.

  
  

• The Big Dog rises to fight, draws largest campaign crowd in decades.

  
  

• Civilian death toll in Iraq is revealed to be over 100,000.

  
  

• Endorsements up the yin-yang, bucking all historical patterns.

  
  

• Bush blunders again and again and again.

  
  

• Red Sox win World Series (OK, I don't know if this one counts)

It counts.

In other news, FOX is flogging a story about preparation for a "major offensive" in Fallujah. I'm sure the boys are happy to give up their lives (and the lives of many Iraqis) to help their Codpiece in Chief change the story line.








digby 10/28/2004 03:14:00 PM |

 
Oh Sure, Now When It's Safe To Be Shrill

It seems that my favorite bucket of lukewarm spit has finally received the memo saying that supporting Commander Codpiece's manly manliness is no longer de riguer in DC salons. How refreshing.

Check out this post by Yglesias to see what a long strange trip it's been.




digby 10/28/2004 02:28:00 PM |

 
Playing The Game Of Risk

Via Atrios I see that Wes Clark is a little bit miffed with everybody's favorite GOPHo, Rudy Giuliani:

For President Bush to send Rudolph Giuliani out on television to say that the 'actual responsibility' for the failure to secure explosives lies with the troops is insulting and cowardly.

The President approved the mission and the priorities. Civilian leaders tell military leaders what to do. The military follows those orders and gets the job done. This was a failure of civilian leadership, first in not telling the troops to secure explosives and other dangerous materials, and second for not providing sufficient troops and sufficient equipment for troops to do the job.

President Bush sent our troops to war without sufficient body armor, without a sound plan and without sufficient forces to accomplish the mission. Our troops are performing a difficult mission with skill, bravery and determination. They deserve a commander in chief who supports them and understands that the buck stops in the Oval Office, not one who gets weak knees and shifts blame for his mistakes.

Dana Bash on CNN just said that the Bush campaign told her that Giuliani may not have used the most "elegant" or "eloquent" terms but he just meant to say that it's not the president fault. That doesn't really pass the smell test since William Kristol on FOX News Live and Laura Ingraham all echoed this reprehensible line: They seem to be implying that this was a call by the officers on the ground and therefore, out of the hands of the civilian leadership.

KRISTOL: ... [President] George [W.] Bush didn't decide, you know, "skip that dump" [the Al Qaqaa military installation, where the missing explosives were supposedly housed]. That was 101st [Airborne Division] or the 3rd ID [Infantry Division], "skip that arms dump." That's not a decision made by the president, that's made on the ground...

AND

STEVE MURPHY (FORMER MANAGER OF REP. DICK GEPHARDT'S (D-MO) PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN): Laura, Laura, John Kerry did not question the troops. John Kerry questioned the leadership of --

INGRAHAM: Oh, really? Who was looking for those weapons, Steve?

MURPHY: He questioned the leadership of George [W.] Bush. George Bush did not send enough soldiers.

[CROSSTALK]

INGRAHAM: Was George Bush on the ground there? The military commanders were on the ground there, Steve.

Man, we've sure come a long way from "the buck stops here." Indeed, we've come a long way from the "responsibility era" that Junior has been hectoring us about for the last four years.

This Al Qaqaa disaster is 100% the fault of the civilian leadership of the Bush administration. One thing that has to be remembered about these early days was the insistence that the army push through to Baghdad at record speed, stopping not even for rest or refueling. Do you remember the embeds hanging on to the back of jeeps and humvees by their fingernails, looking like hell, as they raced through the desert to get to Baghdad (and then found that Baghdad was wide open?)

These lethal explosives are missing because Rumsfeld was using Iraq as an experiment for certain aspects of his Revolution in Military Affairs wet dream. He managed an impressive dash across the desert with a relatively small force but because he was trying to prove a theory rather than deal with a very real situation on the ground, his refusal to commit enough troops to the operation as a whole meant that they could not spare the manpower or the time to secure these weapons dumps.

I wrote about this crazy stuff back in March of 2003, when it was revealed that none other than Newtie Gingrich was advising the Pentagon, and had been doing so for a long time, with some very questionable new-age theories that his soul mate Rumsfeld was more than happy to put into practice. It's not that there aren't some aspects of this RMA that are very useful, it's that like everything else in this administration they let their faith and their ideology overrule reality. Talking about Afghanistan, Newtie told the Hoover institute:

…their [old] answer has been to design campaign plans that are so massive - I mean the standard plan in Afghanistan was either Tomahawks or 5 divisions, and that's why Rumsfeld was so important. Cause Rumsfeld sat down and said, "Well what if we do this other thing? You know, 3 guys on horseback, a B-2 overhead." And it was a huge shock to the army. I mean, because it worked. Now I'll tell you one guy who does agree and that's Chuck Horner who ran the air campaign.

We now know that this "high tech horseback" plan was the one that let bin Laden escape. And it unfortunately informed the choices that were made in Iraq. The International Herald Tribune wrote this in the fall of 2002 about the Iraq invasion:

Gingrich, who also is a member of the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory panel, said he was confident that General Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, would not be swayed by suggestions that he include more reinforcements and plan a more cautious attack. He said that Franks, an army general, "will probably have a more integrated, more aggressive and more risk-taking plan."

"If the chiefs wanted to be extremely cautious, extremely conservative and design a risk-avoiding strategy, that would be nothing new," he said in an interview.

This was the mind-set that sent the troops barreling across the desert. It was a macho show of hi-tech modern strength designed to "send a message" not actually accomplish the task of securing the nation of Iraq. Relying on rose colored cakewalks, the civilian policy makers simply didn't look any further than the images they wanted to see --- the statue falling, Bush in his flyboy costume. And, that is actually the crux of Gingrich and Rumsfeld's "third wave information warfare" scheme --- you don't have to actually fight wars, you just have to be seen to be winning them.

Clearly, this little experiment in faith-based warfare has been a disaster. The looting of Al Qaqaa is just the most recent example of reality raising its ugly head and biting these starry eyed, ivory tower neocons right in the ass.

And, let's not forget that not one single member of that civilian leadership has been called to account for the disaster in Iraq. Since the boss won't do his job, the only thing Americans can do is fire the boss.


Great minds and all that update: I see that Josh marshall makes much the same point here. And, Yglesias has some other thoughts along this line as well.

It's always interesting trying to unravel the reasoning behind Bush's decisions. Every single time you find that it is opaque and unknowable because there are so many compting and complimentary philosophies that led to the same catastrophic result. Historians are going to have a field day with this administration.




digby 10/28/2004 01:27:00 PM |

 
Time Machine

I had a very spirited conversation this morning in which I had to convince a number of Kerry supporters that polls this close don't mean shit. They were feeling frustrated that the horserace consistently shows Bush slightly ahead and their gut says that it must mean he is going to win. I wish I had had the following post from DonkeyRising handy, which is pointed at those same nervous Democrats. I'm printing it out for future reference:

It's time to revisit the thrilling polls of yesteryear to get a sense of just how much the polls in 2000 tended to overestimate Bush's strength and underestimate Gore's. I believe, for reasons I have discussed at length, the polls are likely overestimating Bush's strength this year as well. But this year, Kerry is doing better in the polls than Gore did at the equivalent point in the 2000 race. Therefore, if current polls are overestimating Bush's strength by the same amount as in 2000, Kerry should wind up doing better than Gore on election day--and Gore won the popular vote by half a point. And that's not even factoring in the likelihood that, with Bush as the incumbent, Kerry will receive the bulk of undecided voters' support on election day.

So let's take that stroll down memory lane.

Start with this nugget from Alan Abramowitz:

During the final week of the 2000 campaign, 43 national polls were released, including multiple releases by several polling organizations such as Gallup. George Bush led in 39 polls, Al Gore in 2. Bush's average lead in the polls was 3.6 percent. Something to keep in mind when people complain that so far (two days) in this final week Kerry has "only" had small leads in the DCorps poll, the Harris Poll and the WP/ABC tracking poll twice (LVs and RVs)!

And here are some readings from specific 2000 polls:

1. The ABC tracking poll averaged a 4 point Bush lead in the last week and its final poll had a 3 point Bush lead.

2. Bloomberg News final poll (October 29) had a 3 point Bush lead.

3. Final Time poll (October 26) had a 6 point Bush lead.

4. Gallup's tracking poll had Bush ahead by an average of 4 points in the final week and by 2 points in its final poll.

5. Marist College's final poll (November 2) gave Bush a 5 point lead.

6. Final NBC/WSJ poll (November 5) had Bush up by 3 and their mid-October poll had him up by 6.

7. Final Newsweek poll (November 2) had Bush up by 2 and their October 27 poll had him up by 8.

8. Final Pew Research poll had Bush up by 2.

9. A November 4 CBS/NYT poll had Bush up by 5 (though the final CBS poll was dead-on, with a 1 point Gore lead).

10. Final ICR poll had Bush up by 2.

11. Voter.com Battleground survey (this year called GWU Battleground) averaged an 8 point Bush lead in the final week and its final poll gave Bush a 5 point lead.

12. TIPP tracking poll gave Bush a average 6 point lead in the final week and a final poll lead of 2 points.

13. Prior to its well-known final reading of a 2 point Gore lead, Zogby's tracking poll gave Bush an average 3 point lead in the final week.

14. Final Hotline poll (November 5) gave Bush a 3 point lead.

If anyone thinks that Democrats are less enthusiastic and motivated than they were in 2000, they are kidding themselves. As 2000 showed, polling is an imprecise science. When they're this close you just put your head down and get out the vote.




digby 10/28/2004 11:28:00 AM |

 
No Surrender

I don't know how many of you have ABC News Now, but if you do, tune it in. They are showing the entire Kerry rally in Madison. Springsteen is singing No Surrender as we speak. Kerry's about to come on. It's one of those rare hair on the back of your neck political moments.

It's happening.




digby 10/28/2004 11:04:00 AM |

 
Spin On This

I just saw Marc Racicot babble like a two year old on ABC News Now when confronted with Rudy Giuliani's footage blaming the troops for the looting of munitions on Good Morning America. They really need to work on those talking points. This didn't look good.

Sam Donaldson wryly noted that nobody is really blaming the troops. As it was in Vietnam, the blame lies with the policy makers. hah.




digby 10/28/2004 10:37:00 AM |

 
Who's Your Daddy

Finally we have an explanation for Dick Morris.

On an isolated Indonesian island, scientists have discovered skeletons of a previously unknown human species — tiny, Hobbit-sized figures who lived among dwarf elephants and giant lizards as recently as 12,000 years ago.

digby 10/28/2004 08:34:00 AM |

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

 
The Mojo

There must be something in the water this year in Beantown. The Yankee machine had the Sox down and they battled their way back and back and back to get into the series. And then they won with authority, dammit!

That righteous Boston mojo took them all the way and it's going to take John Kerry right through next Tuesday. And he's going to win with the same decisiveness that the Red Sox won the series. No bullshit and no question about who won.

And a certain faux Texan is going to get a chance to run for the office he always wanted --- baseball commissioner.




digby 10/27/2004 08:51:00 PM |

 
I'm Joining The Republic Party

With an appeal like this, who can resist?

Listen, before I want to say something, I'm traveling with a guest and a friend who represents thousands of people all across this country who are affiliated with the Democrat Party.

In fact, I believe my opponent is running away from some of the great traditions of the Democrat Party.

The Democrat Party has also a great tradition of defending the defenseless.

If you're a Democrat, and your dreams and goals are not found in the far left wing of the Democrat Party, I'd be honored to have your vote.

Those Republics sure know how to reach across the aisle.




digby 10/27/2004 05:06:00 PM |

 
Because One Must

Today, I would like to join my online brethren over at Slate in endorsing John Kerry, as distasteful as that particular chore is. Sadly, one doesn't have much choice considering what we have to deal with. I only wish that the nominees could be more like, well... me. But that would be too much to ask so I will hold my aristocratic nose and vote for the lesser of two losers. Again.

You see, I am a beltway "independent" which allows me to criticize everyone and take responsibility for nothing at all. I would never actually vote for a Republican mind you --- how could I align myself with all that tacky Nascar and gay bashing business? But, neither can I associate myself with the Democratic party what with its stubborn insistence on not being exactly like me in every way.

As a beltway independent, then, I can safely vote against the Republicans without ever having to compromise even one of my pet issues in order that anything actually gets accomplished. And, there's no need to sully my clean hands with those tawdry fights against the opposition. Whatever I don't like I blame on Democratic weakness and perfidy, thereby proving to the Republicans that I am independent enough to agree with them on a least that one issue if nothing else.

John Kerry, sadly, does certain things with which I disagree and I find that unacceptable in a politician. And even worse, instead of being as dazzlingly exciting as say...me, he is serious and plodding as are so many of these lowly politicians who cater to the unwashed hoi polloi. Frankly, it's just a bit stomach churning to see a brahmin behaving as if he cares about what they want and need when we know that he couldn't possibly.

Still, what choice to we really have? George W. Bush has made a hash out everything so even someone uninspiring and thick will just have to do.

Vote for John Kerry. He's slightly better than that cretin George W. Bush but not nearly as perfect as I am.




digby 10/27/2004 02:15:00 PM |

 
FYI: Blogger is very bloggered so posting is by the grace of the goddess

Trick Or Treat

FAUX News is having a baby over Drudge's screaming headline:

ABCNEWS HOLDS TERROR WARNING VIDEO

The terrorist claims on tape the next attack will dwarf 9/11... 'The streets will run with blood,' and 'America will mourn in silence'... America has brought this on itself for electing George Bush... ABCNEWS strongly denies holding back from broadcast over political concerns during last days of election...."We have been working 24 hours a day trying to authenticate'... Developing...

Run for your lives!!!

I love this part, though:

The terrorist's face is concealed by a headdress, and he speaks in an American accent, making it difficult to identify the individual.

Golly, I don't know why ABC might be skeptical of such a tape. It's clear that this alleged terrorist is simply a member of the Kerry campaign who's joined al Qaeda.




digby 10/27/2004 02:10:00 PM |

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

 
Setting Up The Fall

James Wolcott documents some more FAUX news atrocities. "Liberal bias" definitely made it into Moody's memo this morning since virtually every anchor has opined on it today. This is definitely a preview of the new and improved wingnut whine and pout. It's almost sweetly nostalgic, like a gauzy trip back ten or twelve years in time. I remember it well...

As Wolcott says:

I'm not saying Fox News is anticipating a Bush loss, only that they seem to be laying the ground work for the blame game should he cough it up on November 2nd. They are taking the first baby steps to denying the legitimacy of a Kerry win, preparing the first batch of sour grapes.

It's all of a piece with the preemptive screeching about voter fraud and Democratic dirty tricks. They are cataloging reasons to explain why the asterisk couldn't pull it off. They will whine and fret and stomp their tiny little feet in a frenzy, earnestly claiming that Kerry didn't legitimately win. And they will do it without even the slightest trace of irony.

Try to imagine how little I care.





digby 10/26/2004 06:43:00 PM |

 
Stench Of Panic

Amy Sullivan at The Washington Monthly post a very disconcerting piece about the Junta making a recess appointment to the Supreme Court.

Just when you thought the various post-election legal nightmare scenarios couldn't get worse. U.S. News & World Report is emailing around some reporting that indicates the Bush White House may be considering a recess appointment (requiring no Senate approval, remember) to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist if he steps down for health reasons:

"Even though the U.S. Supreme Court has said Chief Justice William Rehnquist will return to the bench following cancer surgery, administration officials are quietly considering candidates to replace him and even the possibility of making a recess appointment. The officials said that they do not want to talk about the process publicly in the last week of the presidential campaign. However, one insider said that the West Wing is considering what would happen if the judge left the bench soon and if a close election next Tuesday meant an evenly split 4-4 court was to decide the winner. Such a situation would likely mean that a lower court's ruling on an outcome would be final and officials are worried that it would go against the President."

I have serious doubts that they could get away with this, but it doesn't surprise me that they would consider it. They circumvent the letter of the law at every opportunity. To think they would observe the spirit of the law and our democratic system is laughable.




digby 10/26/2004 05:47:00 PM |

 
Family Fetish

Dear gawd. Via Media Matters I see that Dick Morris's wife is making a pathetic living hanging on to Lil' Dickie's coattails:

McGANN: People have heart surgery all the time. They don't have to go into hiding. He has been in hiding for the last six weeks.

And I think that it's part of their plan to build up and hype him -- at the end of the election, and for the opening of his [presidential] library. So, we have once again for -- I don't know what time, the 10th, 15th, 20th time -- the new Bill Clinton. And I think it's also what Dick [Morris] likes to call his ADD [attention deficit disorder] problem. That when he doesn't get attention he's disordered. And on the one hand, he I don't think really wants to help the Kerry campaign because if Kerry wins, Hillary has less of a shot, if any, at ever running for president and becoming president. [...] You know, there was no reason for him to be holed up. My uncle had the same operation two weeks before he did. And he [McGann's uncle] called me yesterday as he and his wife were driving to Florida. And he's 71 years old. People recover from this surgery and they can do other things. You don't have to just sit in a chair. They have created this. This is -- you know -- just like the sensation he created when he walked into the [Democratic National] Convention, with the camera showing him in 2000. They have to do something -- he has to do something dramatic or he's not happy.

Jayzuz. A man spends six weeks recovering from quadruple bypass surgery and he's "in hiding." (There seems to be a lot of speculation about all this on the wingnutladies lunch bunch circuit because I heard Mrs. Alan Greenspan say that there was word that Clinton's recovery wasn't going well.)

The next time some GOP harpy brings up the fact that Hillary is a big lesbian or a self hating feminist because she didn't drop Bill like a hot potato after he got a few furtive blow jobs, ask them how Eileen McCann can respect herself after having her dachshound-like husband splashed all over The Star as a connoisseur of prostitute toe-sucking.

From Howie Kurtz in 1998:

"He is deeply angry and resentful of the Clintons," says one Clinton supporter who knows Morris well. "He feels they basically walked away from him at a time he was in need and in trouble." Yet friends say Morris retains a psychological attachment to Clinton – a need to be needed by him – while reserving his strongest fury for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Two and a half years ago, Morris was a national punch line. While serving as chief strategist for Clinton's 1996 campaign, Morris was fired after the Star tabloid revealed his longtime relationship with prostitute Sherry Rowlands. His marriage to attorney Eileen McGann broke up, and his $2.5 million book on policy-making in the White House was a commercial flop.

But the suddenly famous Morris refused to go into hiding. Determined to launch a punditry career, he explored different venues – trying out for a New York radio show, for example – before landing high-profile gigs with Rupert Murdoch's Fox TV network and Post newspaper. Now Morris is back with his wife – the most important thing in his life, he says – and gaining new prominence as an expert on Clinton and sex.

Eileen apparently took the (pedi) cure and voted with her feet.

They sure have some kinky family values on FAUX News --- you'd think the falafels and foot fetishes alone would make it distinctly spicy for the Gary Bauer set. Has anybody asked the fundies about this...uh...inconsistency?




digby 10/26/2004 04:21:00 PM |

 
Dancing As fast As They Can

On FAUX News, Hume just tried to make the argument that the missing explosives proves that Saddam had WMD. Kondrake and Liasson politely point out that while this is undoubtedly true, these weapons actually don't fit the traditional definition of WMD. Hume appears to roll his eyes derisively. Krauthamer adds that it's all the IAEA's fault for not destroying the stuff as they were required to do in 1991. (They weren't.)

Everyone agrees that it's all a dirty trick by the New York Times, and they should have had "all the facts" before they put this on the front page. If only they'd sourced it to Ahmad Chalabi as they usually do, the Beltway Boyz would have had no room to complain.

Update: I missed the first part of the broadcast so I didn't know what had made the panel look so sour and unhappy:

Fox News' "Special Report" with Brit Hume

Brit Hume: As you saw earlier, when the 101st airborne division stopped overnight at that weapons facility south of Baghdad, there was an NBC news embedded reporting team with them, including correspondent Dana Lewis, who is now with fox news in Moscow, where he joins me now. Dana, tell me what happened. Now, this was the day after Baghdad had fallen. You were with the 101st. You were making your way up the spine of Iraq toward Baghdad. How did you come to stop there, and what happened?

Dana Lewis: Well, Britt, I mean, you know, put it into context of what was going on at that moment. The fighting wasn't over. There was chaos everywhere on the roads, and we were with the 101st as it was pushing north to take the southern suburbs of Baghdad. And as we were driving up the road I can remember seeing this amazing wall that just seemed to go on forever. This thing was about 10 feet tall and it went on for at least a mile or two. I've never seen such a big compound in Iraq since I've been there for two years now. It was a tremendous compound. The 101st was ordered to go into the compound and spend the night there. They were not ordered to search that compound there. They simply used it as a pit stop so that they could then continue their mission on to Baghdad. In fact, I can tell you I was with the colonel of the strike brigade, the second brigade, Colonel Joe Anderson. He was frustrated they had to spend the night there because they wanted to get on to their mission in Baghdad.

BH: So you got inside this facility. I suppose some members of the unit might have heard of the place. What did you see when you got in there?

DL: Sure, they may have had information on what may have been in there, because they generally had that kind of information. It was a tremendously large facility. You got in and saw all sorts of bunkers inside. And, Britt, because we spent 24 hours there, I had the chance to walk that facility and I took it. It was a long walk as we went from bunker to bunker with me and my camera man. Most of the bunkers were locked at that point. You could not get inside. Some of them, though, appeared to have been hit by air strikes and we were told by some of the soldiers on the ground that they had been hit by bombs. So some of the concrete was split open and you could see munitions in a few of the bunkers. And then at one end of the facility I can remember seeing hangars full of rockets. I've never seen so many rockets in one place. It looked like that facility had also been bombed from the air and most of those rockets were bent out of shape and inoperable.

BH: Right. Now, we have seen pictures of these seals that the international atomic energy agency and the weapons inspectors used to
identify and to close off the bunkers where some of these heavy explosives were believed to have been kept. Did you see any of those seals on any of the facilities as you were walking through there?

DL: I've had those seals described to me, and I can tell you that as we went from the bunkers, certainly there were wires and there were locks. But I don't recall ever seeing an IAEA stamp on any of them. It doesn't mean that there weren't any of them.

BH: I got you. Now, in addition to -- you saw evidence of bombing, obviously. Was there any sign that this facility had been looted that
you could see?

DL: I would say at that point, no, Brit. I mean, as we went north, you could certainly see looting in Baghdad. And I know what looting looks like. Hundreds of kids and hundreds of people everywhere. This facility was basically abandoned at that point. There were lots of Russian tanks that had abandoned on the road around it. But it looked like it had been well guarded right up until the point that the army got in there. But I don't know what happened between the point that the Iraqi army left that facility and then the US Army came in there. There would have been a gap. And who knows what would have gone on in there? But when I was there, we didn't see any looting. And that's not to say there couldn't have been looting after we left, either.


BH: Right. Well, after you left, describe if you can - I mean obviously, we're talking about a fairly large amount of explosives. The IAEA says it was 380 tons, that would be, we estimate, about 38 truckloads. That's quite a lot. Was the situation that you witnessed around the facility such that it would have been easy for somebody to spirit 38 tons of explosives, or 38 tons of anything else out there, undetected by US Forces in the area?

DL: I think it would have been pretty tough. I mean, the roads for the most part were closed down. Not very many people were driving those roads, because there was still some shooting going on and people were worried about getting caught in the crossfire. It would have been hard to move trucks in there right under the army's nose. But at the same time certainly there were vehicles moving on the roads as we got closer to Baghdad. But at that moment I certainly didn't see any lines of trucks heading for that facility. And remember, who would have been ordering those trucks down there? For all intents and purposes, the regime had fled.

BH: So it would have taken an operation of some size, if the stuff was still there, to get it out of there. And you didn't see, at least any
indications at the time you were there, that such a thing could easily have been done.

DL: We didn't see any sign of that when we were there, no.

BH: Dana Lewis, glad to have you. Thanks very much for staying up late in Moscow to be with me. Thank you very much.

Oooops.

Here's the video






digby 10/26/2004 04:04:00 PM |

 
Marshalling The Youth Vote

Kevin at Catch has all the info on Eminem's new video (and a bunch of links if you want to see it.) It would appear that Marshall has pulled no punches and it also appears that MTV is airing it this afternoon. That in itself is amazing.

From Salon's review:

...the just-released video for his new anti-Bush song "Mosh," makes "Fahrenheit 9/11" look like a GOP campaign spot, and it will almost certainly reach an audience that wouldn't think of shelling out for a documentary.

The beautifully animated video, which is directed by Ian Inaba, opens with a classroom. At the front is a man in a blue suit, his face buried in an upside down children's book that says "My Pet," with a picture of a bush. Just as the man is revealed to be Eminem, the scene changes, and we see the singer taping up newspaper stories to a wall -- "Sick Wounded Troops Held in Squalor," says one. "Civil Liberties at Stake," says another. "Bush Knew," says a third.

In five minutes, Eminem manages a furious indictment of the administration that will likely resonate among many troops in Iraq as well as disaffected kids here at home. In one scene, a smiling soldier returns home from Baghdad, only to be handed a notice announcing that he has to go back. As Eminem sings, "fuck Bush," the soldier mouths the words.

Then we see a woman walking home in the rain, carrying groceries and an envelope. Inside is an eviction notice. As she reads it, we hear Eminem saying, "Maybe this is God just saying we're responsible for this monster, this coward that we have empowered." The woman looks at her TV, where Bush is speaking over a banner that says "Tax Cuts." She looks at her terrified children, then back at the screen, which says, "Breaking News…Terror Alert."

It all ends amazingly earnestly, with Eminem leading a black-clad army to the voting booth. Once again, Bush proves he really does have wonder working powers -- by behaving even more callously and irresponsibly than the most outrageous rapper, he's turned music's foremost enfant terrible into a role model of civic engagement.

I don't know how much impact something like this has, but it's a big mistake to underestimate the pull of popular culture. Eminem is an icon for a large swathe of young disaffected men, some of whom, as the review mentions, are in Iraq getting shot at as we speak.

One of the reasons that we may expect a nice uptick in voters this year, particularly young voters, is the extent to which the election has found its way into the cultural zeitgeist. It's not confined to its usual little corner of the media universe --- it's everywhere. It is culturally significant to people who are usually uninterested (meaning non-fundies) and it has insinuated itself into the media in such a way as to take on Big Event proportions.

We've had high hopes before in this regard and were sorely disappointed. 1972 is a compelling example. However, the media did not have the kind of pervasive influence it now has and people were not connected the way they are now. It was a political time, to be sure, but the strongest energy among young people went to cultural and lifestyle revolution. Politics was as much a matter of style as substance. Indeed, one of the stongest strains in American youth culture encouraged people to drop out entirely. There is nothing like that happening now.

The current culture war is not generational, it's mostly urban vs rural. And popular culture is omnipresent and dominating --- the internet bringing an entirely unprecedented new wrinkle. The conditions for a high turnout among people who don't usually tune in to politics but who've been drawn by the buzz into the conversation has never been higher. This could be the election that merges the general "audience" with the electorate and makes it one.

From the way it looks a week out, we may actually have the culture warriors a little bit on the run for the first time in many years. I may have my problems with Eminem, but I've got to be honest. I consider him to be far less dangerous than the leadership of the modern Republican Party. If he can help get out new voters, I welcome his help.




digby 10/26/2004 03:00:00 PM |

 
A Votre Sante!

Dr. Vino has compiled the all important electoral guide for wine lovers.

Not exactly a surprise --- Kerry wins.

Reading about the politics of wine reminded me of a legendary appearance on Crossfire by Justin Vaisse, during the pathetic "freedom-fries" era:

CARLSON: But just, honestly, just correct the misperception here. This is not simply an effort by the administration to beat up on France. This is coming -- there's a deep wellspring of anti-French feeling in this country, and it's going to have consequences. This is a bottle of French wine. This is a bottom [sic] of American wine.

(SCORNFUL SILENCE)

VAISSE: It is bigger.

CARLSON: And it's bigger. That's exactly right. More forceful. There will be Americans who boycott French products. This in the end is really going to hurt France, isn't it?

VAISSE: No, I think it is going hurt wine lovers.

Wine lovers have long memories. We will vote en masse for a fromage and pate-loving, Chardonnay-swilling liberal. Fuck that PB&J 'n milk bullshit. Voting, like so many good things in life, is for adults.




digby 10/26/2004 02:12:00 PM |

 
Forgive Us, World

Via TBOGG I see that the amount of lead in our environment has finally reached critical mass.

Kimberly Parmer, 33, who works as a human resources manager in western Michigan, said the emphasis on national security issues had distorted the campaign.

"I don't think terrorism is as big a threat as everyone is making it out to be," Ms. Parmer said. "Yes, we have had a couple of incidents, but other countries have hundreds every year. Iraq is important, but so are things like Social Security and Medicare. Neither one has really touched on those subjects because no one is going to be happy, no matter what you do."

Ms. Parmer, who said she is firmly planted in "the very low middle class," also saw the Bush tax cut as poorly timed. She normally votes for Democrats, she said, but is not sure this time.

"One is too polished; the other one, I think to be honest, I don't know how he ever got to be president," Ms. Parmer said. "I am really surprised he has gotten as far as he has in life. I do think he's honest."

Even so, Ms. Parmer said, she thought she might vote for Mr. Bush. "If you actually look at him, and he stands up next to Kerry, you just kind of feel sorry for him," she said. "I feel he's more of an underdog, he's had a hard go of it in the last four years."

As we all sit here pondering how it can possibly be that Commander Codpiece is even in the running, this explains it. I think that what gets me the most about people like this is that they obviously pay a certain amount of attention, they know what the issues are yet they see the world as if it's a TV soap opera.

I'll bet this woman will vote for Bush. Here's why. According to the LA Times Poll today:

In its final days, the race is blurring some of the electorate's familiar divides but emphatically deepening others, according to the poll.

Much smaller than in recent presidential elections is the gender gap, in which the majority of men usually vote Republican, and women usually lean Democratic.

Bush's message, which stresses his national security record and his commitment to conservative cultural values, is helping him gain ground among lower middle-income and less-educated voters ambivalent about his economic record. Conversely, the message is costing him with more affluent and better-educated families that have historically supported Republicans.

Strikingly, Bush leads Kerry in the poll among lower- and middle-income white voters, but trails his rival among whites earning at least $100,000 per year.

Bush also runs best among voters without college degrees, whereas Kerry leads not only among college-educated women (a traditional Democratic constituency), but among college-educated men — usually one of the electorate's most reliably Republican groups in the electorate.

This tracks with the PIPA Survey which said:

As the nation prepares to watch the presidential candidates debate foreign policy issues, a new PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll finds that Americans who plan to vote for President Bush have many incorrect assumptions about his foreign policy positions. Kerry supporters, on the other hand, are largely accurate in their assessments. The uncommitted also tend to misperceive Bush’s positions, though to a smaller extent than Bush supporters, and to perceive Kerry’s positions correctly. Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments: “What is striking is that even after nearly four years President Bush’s foreign policy positions are so widely misread, while Senator Kerry, who is relatively new to the public and reputed to be unclear about his positions, is read correctly.”

When the inevitable forums and roundtables of beltway "intellectuals" chewing over the election coverage and results take place over the next few months, I would very much like to see somebody ask William Kristol and his buds over at the Weakly Standard and AEI how they square their grand global vision with the fact that the vast number of their followers are total morons. Indeed, the country seems to have divided up rather neatly into the dumbshits vs. everybody else and they represent the dumbshits. Do the cosmopolitan neocon elite believe that a country run on behalf of people like this can actually run the world? If they do, then all the hoo-hah about their Straussian allegiance was true.




digby 10/26/2004 01:14:00 PM |

 
Explosive Mistake

Ok, folks. Here's what Jim Miklaszewski said yesterday:

"April 10, 2003, only three weeks into the war, NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army's 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al Qaqaa weapons installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing."

"The U.S. troops did find large stockpiles of more conventional weapons, but no HMX or RDX, so powerful less than a pound brought down Pan Am 103 in 1988, and can be used to trigger a nuclear weapon."

He has now been contradicted by the NBC embed herself:

Here's the video. And, here's the relevant transcript:

Amy Robach: And it's still unclear exactly when those explosives disappeared. Here to help shed some light on that question is Lai Ling. She was part of an NBC news crew that traveled to that facility with the 101st Airborne Division back in April of 2003. Lai Ling, can you set the stage for us? What was the situation like when you went into the area?

Lai Ling Jew: When we went into the area, we were actually leaving Karbala and we were initially heading to Baghdad with the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. The situation in Baghdad, the Third Infantry Division had taken over Baghdad and so they were trying to carve up the area that the 101st Airborne Division would be in charge of. As a result, they had trouble figuring out who was going to take up what piece of Baghdad. They sent us over to this area in Iskanderia. We didn't know it as the Qaqaa facility at that point but when they did bring us over there we stayed there for quite a while. We stayed overnight, almost 24 hours. And we walked around, we saw the bunkers that had been bombed, and that exposed all of the ordinances that just lied dormant on the desert.

AR: Was there a search at all underway or did a search ensue for explosives once you got there during that 24-hour period?

LLJ: No. There wasn't a search. The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away. But there was -- at that point the roads were shut off. So it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there.

AR: And there was no talk of securing the area after you left. There was no discussion of that?

LLJ: Not for the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. They were -- once they were in Baghdad, it was all about Baghdad, you know, and then they ended up moving north to Mosul. Once we left the area, that was the last that the brigade had anything to do with the area.

AR: Well, Lai Ling Jew, thank you so much for shedding some light into that situation. We appreciate it.

LLJ: Thank you.

NBC has cleared up this little "misunderstanding" but we need to ensure that they emphasize their clarification on the evening news and on all the gasbag shows on MSNBC.

Once again, I think that the Rove machine has lost a ball bearing or two. It is not in their interest to be fighting this story with such fervor in the waning days of the campaign, particularly relying on a news organization's preliminary reporting to justify its position. They would have been far better off using one of those infuriating Codpiece tautologies and called it a day --- "of course we didn't know anything about this because if we had we would have done something about it. Since we didn't do anything about it, we couldn't have known." Instead they've called in the full force of the mighty Wurlitzer which gets the mainstream press all quivering with excitement --- and forces NBC to work the story even harder since they are now part of it.

Still, it might just be helpful to ensure that NBC knows that you are aware of the Lai Ling Jew clarification and also that you are aware that Drudge and the wing-nuts are using their story to pass on bad information to the voters. Karl Rove is said to have thought so highly of the NBC story that he planned to use it in a mass e-mail.

If NBC and MSNBC have any journalistic integrity they might want to take extra measures to ensure that they don't get used as Karl's love slave this close to an election.

MSNBC

www.msnbc.com
world@msnbc.com

One MSNBC Plaza
Secaucus, NJ 07094
Phone: (201) 583-5000
Fax: (201) 583-5453

NBC News

www.nbc.com

30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112
Phone: (212) 664-5900
Fax: (212) 664-2914

Nightly@NBC.com
viewerservices@msnbc.com
hardball@msnbc.com
countdown@msnbc.com
abramsreport@msnbc.com
norville@msnbc.com
Lesterholt@msnbc.com
joe@msnbc.com
MTP@NBC.com

JMiklaszewski @NBC.com
DShuster@msnbc.com
JTrippi@msnbc.com
DBellone@msnbc.com (Hardball producer)
AMitchell@msnbc.com

For the full backround on this story, Josh Marshall is the resident blogospheric expert.

Update: Marshall has posted a subsequent clarification by Miklaszewski. I just heard even CNN finally drop the earlier NBC version of events and also reveal that the wing-nuts have been inundating them with e-mail flogging the NBC story.





digby 10/26/2004 11:37:00 AM |

 
The Dinner Guest From Hell

Apparently, David Brooks just went to a family gathering somewhere on his home planet where he bored the living shit out of every single person in the room. In fact, there is little doubt in my mind that there was at least one suicide, right there at the dinner table.

I used to think that at least he was an interesting guy, but it's clear that even his imaginary friends are pompous bores.




digby 10/26/2004 10:32:00 AM |

Monday, October 25, 2004

 
This Land Is Your Land

Ezra pointed me to this Paul Waldman piece in The Gadflyer that hits on something that's been getting me angrier and angrier during the last few years --- the constant refrain by Republicans (and accepted without comment by the mediawhores) that blue state America is somehow unamerican. It's offensive and I'm tired of it:

Fantasyland, October 25, 2004 – Today John Kerry opened up a new line of attack on President Bush, charging that his policies and positions are a product of Texas, a state whose political culture lies far outside the American mainstream. "The former governor of Texas has governed like, well, like a former governor of Texas," said Kerry to the laughs and hoots of the crowd. "He's so far out on the right wing, he fell off the plane."

Kerry also brought up Tom DeLay, the ultra-conservative congressman from the Lone Star state. "George Bush makes Tom DeLay look like a Texas moderate!"

The new line of attack came as an independent liberal group began airing a new ad in which an elderly couple says, "George Bush should take his NASCAR-loving, tobacco-chewing, trailer-park-living, redneck freak show back to Texas, where it belongs."

Of course, we've never seen a story like this one – like all Democrats, John Kerry knows that if he criticized one state or one region of the country, the press and the Republicans would come down on him like a ton of bricks, charging him with being a Northeastern elitist who doesn't want to be the president of all Americans.

But the rules are different on the other side of the aisle. In today's politics, it is acceptable for Republicans to traffic in ugly stereotypes and assert outright that people who come from some areas of America are not really American. Some might remember the ad to which I referred, aired by the conservative Club for Growth, which said, "Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs."

[...]

Bush is hardly the first Republican to use this attack; when the DNC decided to hold its convention in Boston, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey said, "If I were a Democrat, I suspect I'd feel a heck of a lot more comfortable in Boston than, say, America."


[...]

Why does Bush get away with this? Because the press corps buys the Republican argument that the areas of the country where there are lots of Republicans are "really" American, and the areas of the country where there are lots of Democrats aren't. So they never asked whether the fact that Bush was a "Texas conservative" would hurt him, while they constantly wonder about how damaging it is that Kerry is a "Massachusetts liberal." Disparage Texas – or Alabama, or Mississippi, or Kansas – and you're in for a heap of trouble. Throw insults at Massachusetts or California or New York, and the press will laugh right along.

If Kerry wins this election, it is highly likely it will be without the South. And maybe then people are going to realize that catering entirely to one regional culture and insulting the others may not be the way to build a permanent majority. If that happens it's not going to be us blue-staters from Taxachusetts or Hollywood who have the problem.




digby 10/25/2004 08:18:00 PM |

 
Great News!

Dick Morris just said on FAUX that Bush is "surging in the polls" and it's because of the puppies ad. In fact, he believes that ad is going to go down as one of the greatest political ads in history.

The rule of thumb for everything in life is that if Dick Morris says it, the opposite must be true. Therefore, Bush is slipping and the puppies ad is going down as the biggest political joke in history.

I feel good!




digby 10/25/2004 07:01:00 PM |

Sunday, October 24, 2004

 
What Is News?

Here's a little quiz for everyone. Which of these two stories will dominate the news tomorrow?:

To review the essential facts, prior to the war, Iraq's Al Qa Qaa bunker and weapons complex had roughly 350 tons of high explosives under IAEA seal. After the war, for whatever reason, the complex was either not guarded at all or inadequately guarded. And all those explosives (primarily RDX and HMX) were carted away.

What we're talking about here isn't just a bunch of dynamite. This encyclopedia entry says RDX "is considered the most powerful and brisant of the military high explosives." And not 350 pounds, 350 tons.

It is apparently widely believed within the US government that those looted explosives are what in many, perhaps most, cases is being used in car bombs and suicide attacks against US troops. That is, according to TPM sources and sources quoted in this evening's Nelson Report, where the story first broke.

One administration official told Nelson, "This is the stuff the bad guys have been using to kill our troops, so you can’t ignore the political implications of this, and you would be correct to suspect that politics, or the fear of politics, played a major role in delaying the release of this information."

or this one:

U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that while the candidate did talk for an unspecified period to at least a few members of the panel, no such meeting, as described by Mr. Kerry on a number of occasions over the past year, ever occurred.

FAUX News will be flogging the latter like crazy. But, the former is above the fold on the front page of the NY Times.

Anybody want to lay down a bet?




digby 10/24/2004 08:46:00 PM |

 
Now's The Time

Memo to the press corpse: In light of this new information about Junior's lies regarding Project P.U.L.L., it's now perfectly legitimate to ask that One Simple Question.

In fact, it's your job. Consider the bounty your bonus.






digby 10/24/2004 08:04:00 PM |

 
Another Pratfall

Junior isn't the most coordinated fellow in the world and he has a lot of trouble staying upright in the best of circumstances. It's probably not a good idea to put him in platform shoes. He falls down. Again:



President Bush is helped after tripping on a step after speaking at the Canton Palace Theatre about medical liability reform Friday, Oct. 22, 2004 in Canton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)




digby 10/24/2004 06:00:00 PM |

 
Haven't They Seen Enough Horror?

Wayne Newton Entertains Troops in Iraq

Newton, along with special guests that included actor Rob Schneider and country singer Neal McCoy, spent nearly three hours at a 1st Cavalry division camp in the capital on Tuesday.

Wasn't the mutiny in the 1st Cavalry? I'm just saying...


Via tristero




digby 10/24/2004 05:11:00 PM |

 
Up In The Air

HANNITY: “Do you or when you think of, for example, what happened in Spain prior to their last election there was an article recently that showed that you were presented with the possibility by your CIA director and others that -- I think September 15th they presented this to you - it was written up recently - that this is a potential threat here but we still have area vulnerabilities so we -- is that always going to be the case? Is that something we are always going to have to live with?

BUSH: Yes because we have to be right 100 percent of the time in disrupting any plot and they have to be right once. We’re better. Much better. As a matter of fact the 9/11 commission reports that America is safer under the course of action we’ve taken but not yet safe. Whether or not we can be ever fully safe is up -- you know, is up in the air.”

Whoopsie. I think Junior's faith based reality may have slipped a little bit there. I'd call it a gaffe except that he's also said that he doesn't care about bin laden and he doesn't think America can win the GWOT. If this guy is so iffy about our ability to deal with the terrorist threat, I'm not sure he has a rationale for his presidency. If he isn't the codpiece cowboy then what's the point?

I think it's only fair to wrap these comments around his neck so tight that he can hardly breathe. It would be downright disrespectful to treat him any differently than he would treat us --- ruthlessly and without mercy.




digby 10/24/2004 03:15:00 PM |

 
Premeditated Theft

Can someone explain to me why, when crap like this is going on, that all I'm hearing about today is alleged Democratic intimidation of Republican voters?

Republican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.

Party officials say their effort is necessary to guard against fraud arising from aggressive moves by the Democrats to register tens of thousands of new voters in Ohio, seen as one of the most pivotal battlegrounds in the Nov. 2 elections.

Election officials in other swing states, from Arizona to Wisconsin and Florida, say they are bracing for similar efforts by Republicans to challenge new voters at polling places, reflecting months of disputes over voting procedures and the anticipation of an election as close as the one in 2000.

Ohio election officials said they had never seen so large a drive to prepare for Election Day challenges. They said they were scrambling yesterday to be ready for disruptions in the voting process as well as alarm and complaints among voters. Some officials said they worried that the challenges could discourage or even frighten others waiting to vote.

Ohio Democrats were struggling to match the Republicans' move, which had been rumored for weeks. Both parties had until 4 p.m. to register people they had recruited to monitor the election. Republicans said they had enlisted 3,600 by the deadline, many in heavily Democratic urban neighborhoods of Cleveland, Dayton and other cities. Each recruit was to be paid $100.

The Democrats, who tend to benefit more than Republicans from large turnouts, said they had registered more than 2,000 recruits to try to protect legitimate voters rather than weed out ineligible ones.

Republican officials said they had no intention of disrupting voting but were concerned about the possibility of fraud involving thousands of newly registered Democrats.

"The organized left's efforts to, quote unquote, register voters - I call them ringers - have created these problems," said James P. Trakas, a Republican co-chairman in Cuyahoga County.

Both parties have waged huge campaigns in the battleground states to register millions of new voters, and the developments in Ohio provided an early glimpse of how those efforts may play out on Election Day.

Ohio election officials said that by state law, the parties' challengers would have to show "reasonable" justification for doubting the qualifications of a voter before asking a poll worker to question that person. And, the officials said, challenges could be made on four main grounds: whether the voter is a citizen, is at least 18, is a resident of the county and has lived in Ohio for the previous 30 days.

Elections officials in Ohio said they hoped the criteria would minimize the potential for disruption. But Democrats worry that the challenges will inevitably delay the process and frustrate the voters.

"Our concern is Republicans will be challenging in large numbers for the purpose of slowing down voting, because challenging takes a long time,'' said David Sullivan, the voter protection coordinator for the national Democratic Party in Ohio. "And creating long lines causes our people to leave without voting.''

[...]

Among the main swing states, only Ohio, Florida and Missouri require the parties to register poll watchers before Election Day; elsewhere, party observers can register on the day itself. In several states officials have alerted poll workers to expect a heightened interest by the parties in challenging voters. In some cases, poll workers, many of them elderly, have been given training to deal with any abusive challenging.

If anyone wonders why the Bush campaign doesn't feel the need to do much campaigning in the essential state of Ohio, you don't need to look any further than this. They haveplans in place to ensure he wins no matter what.

This tactic is based upon the same one by which they "won" the election in 2000. They are using it not so much to intimidate voters, although I'm sure they will do that also. The main purpose, as it was when the Republican "challengers" in the recount questioned many more ballots than necessary, is simply to run out the clock. And if anyone tries to hold the polls open longer to accomodate long lines as they did in St Louis last time, they will scream bloody murder about the Democrats "changing the rules" after the game has been played.

This is a big deal. If anyone can get to the swing states for election day, they should do it. Check out ACT for Victory for instructions on how you can help. The Republicans have put together an organized effort to suppress the vote. The only thing that will stop it a huge turn-out and people willing to help at the polling places and report the atrocities.


Update: Check out ISOU for some coming attractions.


digby 10/24/2004 02:17:00 PM |

 
Where To Go

Here's a very helpful service:

My Polling Place.com

It got mine and a couple of friends' right so I assume this data base is correct. On election day, if anyone you know or hear of says they don't know where they are supposed to vote, this site not only gives them an address, you can even get a map.

Pass the word.
digby 10/24/2004 11:59:00 AM |

 
Writers Are Terrorists

Talk about misdirection. I know some of the love scenes get pretty steamy, but I didn't think even John Ashcroft would conclude that a romance novelist doing research on the internet was a potential terrorist. (Via Talk Left.)

This is some scary stuff for people like bloggers who spend a lot of time poking their noses into issues that might be considered sensitive:

If you think that as women’s fiction writers, we’re immune from scrutiny under the Patriot Act, think again. Last fall, the home of a multi-published author for an RWA-recognized publisher was raided and her writing in materials confiscated. The writer, an RWA and PAN member who asked to be referred to as Dilyn, agreed to he interviewed for this column to alert RWA members of potential risks when conducting research.

SB: What type of story were you researching?

Dilyn: Mainstream women’s fiction adventure. It was set in Cambodia, all about the theft of antiquities. In my research I learned, about the atrocities that still go on there even today, much of it coming from one of the Al Qaeda-linked groups. I actually went back though my book and deleted those specific terrorist references after 9/11 and changed the ter­rorists to a rogue band of thieves because of 9/11 and terrorist sensitivity.

SB: What types of books did you buy/check out of the library?

Dilyn: I bought and checked out books on Cambodia-- its history, its present struggles, its antiquities and anything I could get my hands on concerning the terrorism going on there...landmines, in particular. And those were the kinds of Web sites I surfed too.

SB: Did you share your reasons for checking out the books with your librarian?


Dilyn: No. My library is huge and highly impersonal. I did the library book search on-line and simply went there to check them out. I also kept those books checked out for well over a year during the writing of my book. Plus, I purchased all my research books online--about six. As far as my Web surfing, I went dozens of places.

Many were for non-terrorist aspects of my book, but a few were for gathering specific terrorist information. To be honest, I was surprised to find the Al Qaeda linked to Cambodia. I was only going after the landmine atrocities because they played a huge part in my story.


SB: Did you have any reason to suspect you were being targeted for a raid, any advance notice?

Dilyn: No. Not a clue. Although, for a while prior to the raid, I thought I was being stalked. Mail was missing from my box, I caught someone searching my trash, I saw a prowler in nit yard and actually called the police. One of my neighbors saw someone watching from across the street--she wasn’t sure if it was my house or hers. She called the police, too--turns out they taking surveillance photos.


SB: When did the raid take place, how long did it last, and what items were con­fiscated? What agency conducted the raid?


Dilyn: The raid took place last fall, pre-dawn, and it lasted three hours. They banged at my front door first, damaged it coming in, displayed weapons and threat­ened to kill my dogs. After that, imagine everything you’ve seen on TV, only worse. There were six male agents. One was in the "bad cop" mode the entire time, trying to intimidate me, yelling at me, threatening me. When I had to go to the restroom, he sent an agent along to the bathroom with me. It was a multi-agency raid: Postal Inspectors (for the Web site/email end of it), FBI, and three officers who would only identify themselves as Federal Police. They took so much--com­puters, photocopier, files, books, discs, computer programs, CDs of the music by which I write, contracts, absolutely everything I had connected to the writing world. They took pictures off my walls, my office television, pens, a case of paper, postage stamps -- even now, after all these months, 1 still so to get something only to discover it missing.

SB: Have you had any success in retrieving items that were taken?

Dilvn: They brought my computers back within a couple of months--bugged. I have this great computer guy who couldn’t wait to get inside to take a look, sure enough, they had a program in there to monitor me. I got my discs back, too, all ruined. They still have everything else.

Does anyone else get the sneaking suspicion that the Justice department under John Ashcroft is completely nuts? This is a Hollywood script, notlaw enforcement. In fact, I think they got this idea from a movie called "Romancing The Stone" in which a Romance writer unwittingly gets involved in Latin American smuggling and drug running. It was a comedy.

I can understand why they might have had a conversation with the woman based upon her web surfing. A little investigation was probably warranted to find out that she was a FICTION WRITER who often researches unusual practices. But a raid of her house and seizure of her property is the mark of an out of control incipient police state.

It is the lack of common sense that has me so scared for this country --- this underreaction to real threats and the overreaction to non-threats. We can't seem to strike any balance anywhere and it's getting us further and further into trouble.

I am very curiuus as to who President Kerry will appoint as AG. It's going to be a hell of a job trying to straighten out the unholy mess that Ashcroft has made of the place.




digby 10/24/2004 10:50:00 AM |

 
Useless Eggheads

My favorite new Republican talking point is the appalled outrage that a member of Kerry's staff referred to the War on Terror as a...gasp...metaphor. Can you believe these sissified Democrats living in their pre 9/11 dreamworlds? A metaphor?

Obviously, this is just another example of the reality based community clinging to outmoded notions of the literal meaning of words. And America is weaker for it.

We will defeat terror. It shall not stand. Terror will be vanquished from the earth. Anyone who doesn't agree is a loser. Let freedom rain. And I mean that literally.




digby 10/24/2004 09:59:00 AM |

 
He Takes My Breath Away

He's strutting, he's swaggering, he's building up to a full-on Village People extravaganza during these last few days:

President Bush turned his Marine One chopper into a campaign prop Saturday and used it to drop in on huge crowds at three stadiums around Florida, at a time of concern in his campaign about his failure to gain a decisive lead in the most crucial battlegrounds.

[...]

The commander in chief landed at the ballparks to the strains of the "Top Gun" theme, his most dramatic use of a military asset since he rode a fighter jet onto an aircraft carrier 17 months ago to declare the end of major combat operations in Iraq.

[...]

During Bush's chopper swing, a huge banner in the outfield of City of Palms Park, in Fort Myers, showed an image of the military helicopter with the slogan "Soaring to Victory." His departing chopper flew over the crowd of 11,000, so close that the president and Laura Bush could be seen waving.

[...]

The other chopper rallies were in Lakeland and Melbourne. Bush's finale was a rally for 25,000 or more at Alltel Stadium, home of the National Football League's Jacksonville Jaguars and site of next February's Super Bowl. Bush spoke from a lectern on the 50-yard line. He arrived amid rock-concert-style smoke and departed to fireworks.

Here's why they seem to have called in Bruckheimer to stage the campaign stops (in an apparent homage to Coppolla's seminal Playboy bunny scene in Apocalypse Now):

GOP officials who talked to Bush-Cheney campaign leaders said the leaders have grown more worried about Ohio, Florida and other key states where Bush lacks a lead with just 10 days until the election. A poll by Ohio University's Scripps Survey Research Center, completed Thursday night, found Kerry leading 49 percent to 43 percent among registered voters, with a margin of error of five percentage points.

[...]

The Republican official said polling for Bush showed him in a weaker position than some published polls have indicated, both nationally and in battlegrounds. In many of the key states, the official said, Bush is below 50 percent, and he is ahead or behind within the margin of sampling error -- a statistical tie.

"There's just no place where they're polling outside the margin of error so they can say, 'We have this state,' " the official said. "And they know that an incumbent needs to be outside the margin of error."

Look for leather chaps, tight sailor bells, maybe even a great big tool belt these next two days. He's in the Danger Zone, allright.

Update: Check out The Talent Show for Bush's Halloween Surprise.




digby 10/24/2004 09:23:00 AM |