Clark's political skills

It's things like this that highlight my concern about Clark's political smarts:

Wesley Clark, who bypassed Iowa to focus on New Hampshire and other primary states, will skip a Democratic presidential debate in the Granite State next month to attend a fund-raiser in New York.

The debate is slated for Dec. 9 and the eight other candidates have changed their schedules to attend. Clark, however, will be taking part in a previously scheduled fund-raiser in which the campaign hopes to collect $1.5 million.

"I hope the people of New Hampshire will understand," Clark told reporters Friday. "I certainly mean no disrespect. You make obligations. You can't move them. You can't get out of them. People have to respect that."

Clark said he asked the Democratic National Committee to reschedule the debate or hold it at a different time that same day, but the DNC could not. "We have not moved any of the debates and there have been other scheduling conflicts" from other candidates, said Josh Wachs, the DNC's chief operating officer.

Clark thinks attending a fundraiser is more important than attending a debate (recall that he almost skipped out on the first debate after he announced his candidacy)? Clark actually thought the the DNC would consider rescheduling the debate to accommodate him? Did he give any consideration to the fact that eight other candidates have had to coordinate their schedules for this thing? Did he expect them to just change on such short notice?

Clark may be a great guy. He would certainly make a better president than Bush. But actions like this really make me question his basic understanding of what it means to run for president. I'm doubly shocked that his campaign people would do something this stupid.

"George W. Bush. Fine fella. Bad president."

Would you be willing to sport a bumper sticker with that slogan?

Could you swallow your gut-level feeling that Dubya is a monumental turd in order to avoid getting into a distracting debate about whether Bush is or is not a bad man?

Could you actually say something nice about Bush if you knew that by doing so you could get into the good graces with a voter who is sitting on the fence and that by doing so you might be able to better persuade them that Bush is a bad president and that they should vote him out of office?

Would you be willing to kill George with a compliment?

Pride and George W. Bush

Gene also passed along to me this quote from a Molly Ivin's column from the current Mother Jones:

So what manner of monster is behind these outrages? I have known George W. Bush slightly since we were both in high school, and I studied him closely as governor. He is neither mean nor stupid. What we have here is a man shaped by three intertwining strands of Texas culture, combined with huge blinkers of class. The three Texas themes are religiosity, anti-intellectualism, and machismo. They all play well politically with certain constituencies.

Let's assume the religiosity is genuine; no one is in a position to know otherwise. I leave it to more learned commentators to address what "Christian" might actually mean in terms of public policy.

The anti-intellectualism is also authentic. This is a grudge Bush has carried at least since his college days when he felt looked down on as a frat rat by more cerebral types. Despite his pedigree and prep schools, he ran into Eastern stereotypes of Texans at Yale, a common experience at Ivy schools in that time. John F. Kennedy, the consummate, effortlessly graceful, classy Harvard man, had just been assassinated in ugly old Dallas, and Lyndon Johnson's public piety gave many people the creeps. Texans were more or less thought of as yahoo barbarians somewhere between the Beverly Hillbillies and Deliverance. I do not exaggerate by much. To have a Texas accent in the East in those days was to have 20 points automatically deducted from your estimated IQ. And Texans have this habit of playing to the stereotype -- it's irresistible. One proud Texan I know had never owned a pair of cowboy boots in his life until he got a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard. Just didn't want to let anyone down.

For most of us who grow up in the "boonies" and go to school in the East, it's like speaking two languages -- Bill Clinton, for example, is perfectly bilingual. But it's not unusual for a spell in the East to reinforce one's Texanness rather than erode it, and that's what happened to Bush. Bush had always had trouble reading -- we assume it is dyslexia (although Slate's Jacob Weisberg attributes it to aphasia); his mom was still doing flash cards with him when he was in junior high. Feeling intellectually inferior apparently fed into his resentment of Easterners and other known forms of snob.

Bush once said, "There's a West Texas populist streak in me, and it irritates me when these people come out to Midland and look at my friends with just the utmost disdain." In his mind, Midland is the true-blue heartland of the old vox pop. The irony is that Midland along with its twin city, Odessa, is one of the most stratified and narrow places in the country. Both are oil towns with amazingly strict class segregation. Midland is the white-collar, Republican town; Odessa is the blue-collar, Democratic town. The class conflict plays out in an annual football rivalry so intense that H.G. Bissinger featured it in his best-selling book, Friday Night Lights. To mistake Midland for the volk heartland is the West Texas equivalent of assuming that Greenwich, Connecticut, is Levittown.

In George W. Bush we may see the clearest manifestation of the failure of the rest of the nation, particularly the North East, to treat the South as dignified human beings. Bush is responsible for his own reactions to the abusive stereotypes he encountered. But karma is also resulting in payback for those who have heaped on the abuse with glee.

North, South, Transformative Defeat and the War in Iraq

I've been holding an email conversation with Gene Lyons about the Confederate flag flap and how it plays in the South. It is part of a more general conversation we have been having about Dean's prospects in the South. I don't have access to the first part of the conversation, but we got into a discussion about how Southerners are resentful of the way Northerners sometimes lord it over them. It occurred to me that part of Southern Pride might be based on Southern Insecurity. To which Gene replied:

To a degree, yes.

      It's not as if there's no reason for it.
When we lived in academic New England,
my wife was often patronized to her face
by people who would never dream of
insulting a black person or a foreigner
that way. Didn't help that she has very
mixed feelings about the "Southern
heritage" of her own. She mentioned
last night that she likes everything
John Edwards says, but can't stand
his accent. Go figure.

I think he is right that the insecurity is not without foundation. The South has been the butt of jokes for as long as I can remember. What do people think of when they think of Southerners? Boss Hogg and Gomer Pyle. How can northerners take the South seriously when their only exposure to it was Hee Haw? Perhaps what Dean and other Democrats need to do in order to reach out to Southerners is to tell their fellow Northerners to "cut the crap." The stereotyping goes in both directions and doesn't help either side.

Dean might be pretty good at this since he already has a lot of practice in criticizing his party.

I've also been thinking about how this relates to the bigger picture of what is going on in the world today. Specifically, the program of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). One of PNAC's doctrine is something called "transformative defeat". This is the idea that you can't protect yourself from an enemy until you get them to change at a core level. One of the best ways to do that, according to this doctrine is to crush them in as humiliating a fashion as possible and force them to realize that their current course of action will bring them nothing but misery. The defeat will "transform" them into a better people.

They like to cite Japan and Germany as examples of this principle. A full discussion of the flaws in this analogy is beyond the scope of this posting, but I will conced that, to a limited extent, its not entirely wrong, but it is in those limitations that the doctrine exposes its greatest flaws.

Perhaps the best illustration of these flaws is the relationship between the North and South. After all, what was the Civil War but a crushing humiliation of the South by the North? And what did that produce? (1) An insecure South that grasps onto symbols like the Confederate Flag as a way of re-asserting their "pride" and "heritage", and (2) an arrogant North that thinks it can say whatever it wants about the South since, after all, they won!

However, far from bringing about a "transformative defeat", the crushing of the South in the Civil War (and even more so during Reconstruction) just ingrained the prejudices on both sides of the line. We are still dealing with the consequences of this failure today.

And now we are trying to do the same thing in Iraq. As you might guess, I have my doubts that it will meet with any greater success.

Google News Democratic Primary Poll for 11/14/2003

		This Week (11/14)			Last Week (11/7)
1	Howard Dean	7530	22.3%	+3.7	1	6380	18.7%
2	John Kerry	6060	18.0%	+0.8	2	5860	17.2%
3	Wesley Clark	4630	13.6%	+0.9	4	4390	12.9%
4	John Edwards	4310	12.8%	-0.5	3	4540	13.3%
5	Dick Gephardt	3380	10.0%	-0.6	6	3630	10.6%
6	Joe Lieberman	3280	9.7%	-1.1	5	3690	10.8%
7	Al Sharpton	1910	5.7%	-0.4	8	2070	6.1%
8	Dennis Kucinich	1730	5.1%	-1.8	7	2370	6.9%
9	Carol Moseley Braun	878	2.6%	-1.0	9	1220	3.6%

Dean shoots back up with coverage on the confederate flag flap, the announcement that he is opting out of the campaign finance system and the SEIU and AFSCME endorsements. His media share this week (22.3%) is an all time high for any candidate in the Google News Poll. Dean's jump siphoned off coverage from most of the rest of the field, excepting Kerry and Clark, who probably got a lot of their coverage in stories that were talking about Dean's march to the nomination.

As an aside, I find it interesting that Kerry continues to have such a high share level compared to Gephardt. I consider Gephardt to be a much more serious threat to Dean than Kerry (who I think has already passed the point of no return). Gephardt easily has the second best ground operation out there and he is holding his own against Dean in Iowa. Yet the media appears to be ignoring Dick in favor of John. I wonder why?

The following is a chart of the Google News Media Share over the last few months:

(Methodology: All numbers are taken from the hit counts when searching on the Google News Service for news stories containing each candidate's name. Click on each name to rerun the search. You will get different results as the numbers are constantly changing. I make absolutely no claim that these numbers have any real meaning.)

The best defense is a good offense

Some have expressed the concern that Dean would be vulnerable on the issue of civil unions. I have no doubt that the GOP will try to smear Dean as some kind of "fag-loving nancy-boy" in order to once again drive a wedge. But the Dean campaign may just have a magic bullet for killing this as a campaign issue:

REPUBLICAN VICE-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE CHENEY SUPPORTS CIVIL UNIONS

A remarkable event occurred at the vice-presidential debates in Danville, KY on the campus of Centre College. Former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney (R-WY), and Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) were the principals at a live debate ON 2000-oct-5. The moderator asked Senator Lieberman the question: "Should a male who loves a male and a female who loves a female have all -- all the constitutional rights enjoyed by every American citizen?"

Senator Lieberman, a Democrat, mentioned that homosexuals "don't have similar legal rights to inheritance, to visitation when one of the partners is ill, to health care benefits. That's why I'm thinking about it. My mind is open to taking some action that will address those elements of unfairness, while respecting the traditional religious and civil institution of marriage."

Secretary Cheney broke ranks with his party's platform, saying that "people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It's really no one else's business in terms of trying to regulate or prohibit behavior in that regard...The next step then, of course, is the question you ask of whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction, if you will, of the relationship, or if these relationships should be treated the same as a conventional marriage is. That's a tougher problem. That's not a slam dunk. I think the fact of the matter is that matter is regulated by the states. I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that's appropriate. I don't think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area. I try to be open minded about it as much as I can and tolerant of those relationships. And like Joe, I also wrestling with the extent to which there ought to be legal sanction of those relationships. I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into."

Margorie Williams of the Washington Post commented: "Both Cheney and his Democratic counterpart, Joe Lieberman, gave answers strikingly more compassionate, more uncertain and thinking-out-loud, than they had in the past, marking a signal moment--a tipping point--in America's gradual acceptance of homosexuality.... And Cheney's was the more remarkable response, because it represented a far larger break with his party. It took several days for the anger of the Republican right to boil over at his apostasy... But it was already clear, or should have been, that Cheney's answer to that question was the biggest news of the vice presidential debate. George W. Bush's reassertion, during Wednesday's [OCT-11] presidential debate, of his party's hard line on a range of laws affecting gays and lesbians did nothing to change the symbolic importance of his running mate's answer."

If Dean gets criticized for his support of civil unions he just has to ask George Bush to explain how Dean's stance differs from that of Dick Cheney. Dubya will try, of course, but the question will put him on the defensive which is precisely where we need to keep him as long as possible.

Classy Clark

Kudos to Wesley Clark for not jumping on the Dean snipe-fest bandwagon:

Campaigning at a retirement home, Clark passed on an opportunity to criticize Democratic front-runner Howard Dean, who has come under attack from other rivals for his past statements about Medicare.

``I don't care whether 10 years ago Howard Dean supported one position or another on Medicare,'' Clark said. ``Frankly, it's irrelevant, and I wish people wouldn't keep harping on it.''

 

It's the petulance stupid

Now this is the kind of attack politics we need to see from Democrats

Statement by Governor Dean on Republican Filibuster

BURLINGTON-- Howard Dean released the following statement this afternoon:

"At 6:00pm tonight the Republicans are shutting down Congress. Congress has not delivered on countless promises to the American people and yet the Republicans are still preventing any and all business from getting done. The Republicans' reason for shutting down the Senate is that four, yes four of President Bush's extremist right-wing judges are not being confirmed.

"Three million people have lost their jobs and the Republicans are worried about jobs for four right-wing ideologues. Over 400 Americans have been killed in a needless war and the Republicans are worried about the well-being of these four right-wingers. We just sent $87 billion to Iraq that we could have used for healthcare, education and jobs here at home, and the Republicans are worried about these four judgeships.

"There is no better example of the broken system in Washington than this. With all that Congress should be doing, Washington politicians are shutting down Congress to argue over four judicial nominees.

"We need a change in Washington and we have the power to make that change. We can and we must take back Washington and take our country back."

Deans has, for the past several months, been developing the theme of petulant Republicans. I encourage him to continue with this. I think it is a winner.

Speaking his mind

"I'd certainly prefer having a POTUS that speaks his mind, rather than one who has no mind to speak." -- Dick Durata in a comment responding to this post by Hesiod.

Another recommendation

Good Stuff from Jerry Bowles. Read.

Selling the President

More from Nathan Newman (I've haven't been reading his stuff lately for which I am sorry):

As I've said, I believe in organization, and many progressives are operating on the basis of the past when there was no serious organization out in the grassroots to defend their candidate from the Mighty Wurlitzer of rightwing propaganda. Not that the Bush attacks won't be real and sustained, but give me a fanatic organization going door-to-door and community-group-to-community-group to respond over a pleasant personality any day.

Clinton needed triangulation because he was playing to the media. With organization, you actually can make the nuanced arguments to appeal to the "unaffiliated" (Karl Rove's term by the way) who are not in the middle, but just conflicted by mixed political commitments.

Who knows if Dean as a personality is "electable"? We'll never know, since we have Dean, the Campaign Organization, which is a far different beast than Democrats are used to dealing with.

But I will take Dean the Campaign over any Candidate, however pleasant or media focus-grouped their positions.

Nathan hits on something important here that few have noted: the Democrats for several years now have not had a "safety-net" to fall back on when it comes to dealing with the inevitable attacks from their political opponents. He is right that Clinton had to rely on a triangulation strategy because he really couldn't hope for sufficient support from the party and its base in order to overcome the Republican organization. It wasn't until the impeachment that we began to see the needed organizational structures form and then they were self-organizing structures (MoveOn, etc.) that were forced to do it themselves because people were simply tired of waiting for someone to do it for them.

The genius of the Dean campaign is that it figured this out and has taken advantage of it. What the Democrats have been missing for a long time is a strong organization and Dean has that organization in spades. It pisses me off to no end to hear otherwise astute political observers dismiss the importance of this organization. Some of them actually seem to sneer at the idea that it could make any difference. Perhaps it's because they haven't seen one in such a long time that they don't know how to react to it nor do they appreciate its significance.

Nathan is also correct in pointing out that the swing voters are not "moderate" so much as they are "unaffiliated" (I'll give props to Karl Rove if that really is his coinage). I have argued for some time that the "undecided" voters, the ones who swing the election in the final days, are not "undecided" because the candidate hasn't yet found the right message to appeal to what those voters want. They are "undecided" because they don't know what they want!

Politicians win over the undecided voters not by appealing to their interests but by convincing them that the interests of the politician are their interests. The Republicans have gotten very good at this selling process their pre-formulated issues while the Democrats continue to hunt around for just the right combination of issues to win them over. The Democrats sneer at gimmicks like "The Contract With America". But those gimmicks work!

This is why I have always been skeptical of the Clark formulation: get a candidate with a nice shiny resume and that will win over the undecideds. Sorry. No amount of nice words on paper will win these people over without a candidate who can convince them that voting for that candidate is in their best interest. NONE of the other candidates have even come close to making this case.

Dean still may not be able to close the deal. But he is the only one who has a foot in the door.

Leadership is listening

Nathan Newman weighs in on the SEIU and AFSCME endorsement. His opinion: leadership requires the ability to listen and, so far, Dean is the only one who is listening.

Clark and flag burning

Clark has apparently said that he favors a Constitutional amendment to ban flag burning:

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) -- Breaking with most of his Democratic rivals, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark said Tuesday he favors amending the Constitution to ban flag burning.

Lawmakers have debated such an amendment almost annually since 1989, when the Supreme Court ruled that destroying the American flag amounted to protected free speech.

Now, I'm not going to get into an argument about this issue in particular. I oppose the amendment and let's leave it at that.

What I have to wonder is whether this was a smart political move for Clark to make. It may win him a few converts in the "rally around the flag" crowd but it's also possible that it could dissuade a few more liberal supporters from joining his campaign.

But, even more troubling, is how Clark will reconcile this position with his "Dissent is Patriotic" theme.

My greatest admiration for Clark comes from his efforts to push the idea of a "New American Patriotism" that doesn't require people to unflinchingly support the actions of their country in order to be considered patriotic. He is trying to reclaim the flag for the Democratic party (Dean has tried to do this as well, but, being a general, Clark has a better chance of accomplishing it). This is something I have been urging Democrats to do for years and I was heartened to see him do it.

But the flag burning amendment is precisely the wedge issue that the Republicans have tried to use to make Democrats look un-American. Clark looked like he was trying to fight this wedge by making it safe for people to protest their countries actions. But, by supporting the amendment, Clark is joining those who say that certain forms of dissent are UN-patriotic.

I hope he can successfully reconcile these themes. As it is, by bringing it up he may be opening as big a can of worms as Dean did with his confederate flag comment.

Update: Here's a story about Dean's position on this issue:

Dean wouldn't change U.S. Constitution for flag

January 17, 2002

By DAVID MACE Vermont Press Bureau

MONTPELIER — Gov. Howard Dean said he doesn’t support a constitutional amendment banning flag desecration, but is comfortable with suggesting it to Congress as the Vermont Legislature did last week.

“I favor protection of the flag, but I do not favor a constitutional amendment,” Dean said Monday. “A constitutional amendment should be passed only in very rare circumstances.”

He said that he supported the resolution that passed both the House and Senate last week by wide margins. It voiced support for protecting the flag and suggested a constitutional amendment as one possible option, but stopped short of calling on Congress to take that step.

While the language in the resolution allowed both sides to claim victory in the contentious fight, it has also allowed some politicians like Dean to argue both sides of the issue.

“I do believe the flag ought to be protected,” he said. “... I don’t think you should amend the (U.S.) Constitution without a deep purpose. Protecting the flag is certainly a deep purpose, but I don’t believe you can amend the Constitution for that.”

Oh well. I guess we can't expect political courage on every issue.

Using Hillary to draw fire

There's an interesting memo by some Republican pollsters that warns the Republicans not to dismiss Dean. Beside their warnings, there's also this interesting passage:

Ironically, if he does get the nomination, Howard Dean’s biggest problem will be Bill and Hillary’s attempts to subvert his candidacy. They simply cannot afford to have another Democrat in the White House, in short, if Howard Dean is elected President, Hillary never will be. So, the Clinton’s will do whatever they must to make sure that doesn’t happen. So maybe Dean can’t win after all. But that’s another memo.

This demonstrates, once again, the Republican blind spot when it comes to the Clintons. The idea that the Clintons are behind some grand conspiracy to steal back power is a mainstay of their fundraising apparatus (nothing opens the wallets of the loons faster than whispering "President Hillary" in their ears).

Perhaps it is time for us to use this obsession to our advantage?

Think back to the planning of the D-Day invasion. Ike deliberately fed disinformation to the Nazis to make them think the invasion was going to be somewhere it wasn't. He then deliberately planned the invasion where it wasn't expected (Normandy's terrain was much more hostile).

What if during the general election we get Hillary to go out there and draw fire away from the nominee? Deliberately play to the right wing paranoia that she is really the one gunning to be in charge of it all. And then let the nominee sneak up behind them and catch them with their pants down!

It just might work.

Blown away in Burlington

There's a good article in the Post about what went on behind the scenes in the battle for the SEIU and AFSCME endorsements. The short and simple of it is that Dean's people simply worked harder for it. In fact, the pathetic efforts of most of the other candidates is really shocking in hindsight. SEIU President Stern told the candidates that the way to win SEIU endorsement was to first win over the rank and file. Dean was the only one who even tried to do this. Stern said it was "shockingly" not even close.

Since Dean's campaign is primarily organized from the bottom up it is not all that surprising that he managed to snag their endorsement. What is more significant, however, is the AFSCME endorsement. AFSCME is organized in the exact opposite style from SEIU, with their president, Gerald McEntee running a more centralized, top-down operation. Yet Dean still managed to get their endorsement.

McEntee let it be known from the beginning that he was looking for the most "electable" candidate. He first looked at Kerry but was seriously underwhelmed by the Senator's performance in the early days of the race. He then held several talks with Clark but was again shocked to discover how out of touch his campaign was with respect to AFSCME's concerns. This was demonstrated most clearly to McEntee when Clark pulled out of Iowa and didn't even seem to understand how much of an insult that would be.

And it can't be said that McEntee has settled for Dean. He could have endorsed Gephardt. If McEntee really is so concerned about electability and the conventional wisdom is right that Dean hasn't got a chance in hell of beating Bush, then wouldn't Gephardt be the obvious choice? He would be, were it not for the fact that McEntee's people "were blown away in Burlington" when they went to review Dean's operation.

McEntee seems to understand something that most of the rest of the intelligentsia in the Democratic party does not: beating Bush will be impossible without organization and Dean simply "blows away" the competition in that category.

So, are all the doom-and-gloomers going to say that McEntee is a fool?

Recommendation

A good, long profile of Howard Dean in today's Chicago Tribune. Check it out.

Nice Guys, Assholes and Bastards

The current discussion about Dean's temper calls to mind the perennial topic of the old soc.singles newsgroup about Nice Guys vs. Assholes.

I see several people saying they are uncomfortable with Dean because they just don't like his personal style. His gruffness rubs them the wrong way. They wish he could be friendlier. That he would smile more. They are afraid that his "testyness" will turn people off.

Dean is a bastard. But maybe what the Democratic party needs right now is more bastards. They used to have them in spades. But over time the idea that we should all play nice and get along with each other has become so endemic that it has driven the bastards out of the party.

And Democrats have been losing.

Could there be a connection?

Has the Democratic party become the Nice Guy party? Nice to have around in case you need a shoulder to cry on, but not someone you would ever want to go out on a date with.

Of course Assholes are no better than Nice Guys in the long run. They inevitably screw you over just for their own self-satisfaction. George W. Bush is a classic Asshole in that sense.

But isn't it possible to combine the excitement of the Asshole with the compassion (real compassion) of the Nice Guy? I certainly think so. But such a composite probably requires the negative aspects of both personality types as well as their positive (that's God's little joke on us). So the composite requires a little bit of the Bastard as well as the Comforter.

Sometimes having a Bastard in charge can be comforting in and off itself. At least you know the guy will fight.

 

And now for something completely different

It's nice to get away from serious political discussions every now and then. Kevin Drum has a really fascinating thread going right now on the usefulness of the term "meme". Check it out.

Doom-and-gloomers, Kerry and Clark

Liberal Oasis has an intriguing take on the recent problems in the Kerry campaign: it may actually be good news for him. I especially liked this comment:

The media will interpret that as reflecting poorly on Kerry, but more likely, it reflects poorly on this strain of self-defeating Beltway Dem.

The kind that prefers to give blind quotes to the media about how screwed the Dems are, instead of giving private constructive criticism and as much sweat as possible to the party.

The kind that signs up for a campaign because it looks like a meal ticket to the White House, not because they believe in the candidate.

Clearly, too many of them reside in the Kerry campaign. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be so many stories leaked about staff troubles.

There seems to be an over-abundance of "self-defeating Beltway Dems" of late. You can recognize them by their reaction to the prospects of a Dean nomination with predictions of "DOOM! DOOM! DOOM!" I call them the sackcloth-and-ashes crowd.

These types have been the bane of Democrats for quite some time. As LO says, they are the primary source of anonymous quotes about how impossible it is going to be for the Dems to beat Bush. I just wish they would shut the f*ck up.

I agree with LO that Kerry is better off without these types in his campaign. But I'm not so sure that it will help him in the end. The fact that Kerry attracted so many of them to begin with is, I think, a reflection on Kerry. Would they have been working for him if he wasn't a kindred spirit?

This is one of the reasons why I haven't been sold on the Clark candidacy either. I've met quite a few Clark supporters and they also seem to have a large share of doom-and-gloomers. I happen to believe you can tell a lot about a person by the type of people who flock around them.

Against Democratic doom and gloom

Matthew Yglesias:

It's also worth noting that for all of the angst around town about Howard Dean's electability, his supposed weakness as a candidate is not reflected in the head-to-head poll numbers when he goes up against Bush. Plus, Dean will have a fundraising edge that, all else being equal, should make him more electable than the alternatives. That's not to say that Dean is the best choice -- just that folks pushing the "Dean can't win" argument will need to provide more evidence if they're going to convince the rest of the Democratic Party.

Amen Matt. I can't help but feel that some Democrats have been as brainwashed as the electorate by the Republican propaganda machine.

Dean's temperament

USA Today has a generally positive article about questions about his temperament. It raises the usual issues, but it has several surprisingly favorable comments from people who have worked with him over the years and have felt the brunt of his temper. They even have a few positive comments from Republicans.

hint hint

CBS News:

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday he hopes military commanders "are telling the truth" when they assure him no more troops are needed in Iraq, but he is willing to boost U.S. forces if top officers recommended it.

Translation: "We need more troops, but if I admit that than I will look like a fool. So all you commanders in the field, cover my ass by making the requests yourself."

Theory vs. Reality

A brief thought about Josh Marshall's thinking: Josh was a big promoter of Ken Pollack's "The Gathering Storm", the book that provided the intellectual foundation for liberal hawks in their support of Bush's war on Iraq. Josh was an initial supporter of the war, yet soured on it in the final hours as he realized that Bush was simply not up to the task at hand.

Josh has also been a big promoter of Judis and Teixeires' "The Emerging Democratic Majority", the book that proves that, demographically, Democrats should be on top and soon will be. Josh seems really smitten with Judis and Teixeires' thesis and thinks that Clark is a better fit to the model than Dean.

I'm sensing a pattern here. Marshall is wowed by some intellectual dissertation on the way things should be, yet loses sight of the way things actually are. Neither Pollack or Judis/Texeires may have been wrong in their analysis. But they may be wrong in their fundamental assessment of "what it all means". Ideas can be useful forces in shaping policy and politics. But we shouldn't make the mistake of letting the ideas overrule reality in dictating policy and politics. That's the same mistake the PNAC crowd has been making.

(Caveat: I have read neither of these books. I'm relying primarily on the things that Marshall has said about both of them.)

Pobody's Nerfect

Kevin also highlights a few comments from Clark that suggests that he has a Dean-like habit of also engaging his mouth before his brain:

• On reports that many of his military peers dislike him: "How do you think I could have succeeded in the military if everybody didn’t like me? It's impossible. Do you realize I was the first person promoted to full colonel in my entire year group of 2,000 officers? I was the only one selected. Do you realize that?"

• On how the Cold War was won: "The way we won the cold war was not by isolating Eastern Europe, but by engaging it."

• On Howard Dean's "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks" remark: "Well, he shouldn't have said those things. I think all Americans — and this is a joke! — all Americans, even if they're from the South and 'stupid,' should be represented."

I actually have no problem with the 2nd comment. Engagement is as important a component of successful foreign policy as containment. I also find it amusing that one of the leading Anybody-But-Dean candidates can make a comment that could also suggest a stereotyping of southerners (and from a southerner no less!)

The first comment is the most intriguing to me. I have heard similar comments from Clark that suggest he is a tad sensitive about the question of whether people really like him or not. I don't have it handy, but I remember one quote in which he made much the same point and concluded by saying "but people love me!"

None of this is to criticize Clark. It's just my attempt to point out that Dean's alleged "Achille's heel" (Dean's own term for it), his tendency to get defensive when directly attacked, may not be unique amongst the leading Democratic contenders. In fact, I would suggest that this kind of "arrogance" is a standard feature of most successful politicians. It's hard to get to the top without the ability to get in people's faces when you think they are mischaracterizing your opinion. The secret to political success is to be humble without appearing wimpy while also being arrogant without appearing overbearing. Pulling this off successfully is the political equivalent of a triple sowcow.

I'd also remind people that Bush has more than a few times demonstrated the habit of engaging mouth before brain (yes, he has one) in public, yet he managed to "win" as well.

Perhaps its time we stopped expecting perfection from our leaders?

Electability AGAIN!

Kevin Drums weighs in on the electability question:

So while I realize that obsessing about Dean's electability can become a self-fulfilling prophecy — and it's also the fastest way I know to start a comment war — I have to say it: I think Dean is unelectable. Without going into tedious detail, just try to imagine that it's April and the $200 million attack machine has geared up. And think about what the ads are going to look like, especially to moderates who aren't true believers in the Dean phenomenon already. (Go ahead: use your imagination. And try to be brutally realistic.) To me, they look devastating. I know it's not fair, but this election isn't going to have anything to do with fairness.

Here's my beef with the whole "electability" thing: it appears to be based purely on the question of resume rather than actual political ability. Dean may look like an easier target to attack than Clark, on paper. But that only tells part of the story. If you focus on just where the candidates are vulnerable to attack you miss the bigger picture of how they respond when they are attacked!

I've been saying for months that resumes are just pieces of paper, they have no predictive value when it comes to electoral success (otherwise Bush would have been laughed out of the voting booth). Give me a strong campaigner over a strong resume any day.

So far Dean has proven himself to be a strong campaigner. Not perfect, but certainly better than the competition by a long shot. Clark has been iffy on this front (I'd actually rate Gephardt above Clark) and Clark has yet to really tested under fire. Dean has had to deal with multiple hard attacks on him and each and every time he has come out of the attacks stronger than when he went in.

That to me is the surest sign of a winning candidate.

Democrats have got to stop playing defense all the time. It just makes them look like wimps. If Clark's candidacy is based primarily on the "he can't be attacked on this, this, and that" than he won't be able to deal with it when he inevitably is attacked on "this, this, and that". It is naive in the extreme to think that any Democrat can be made immune from those attacks.

I've had this as an open challenge to supporters of other candidates: name an issue that could be used against Dean that their candidate is immune from.

The war? Clark opposes it as well. But at least Dean's opposition was clear and unequivocal from the beginning whereas Clark's has only recently gelled into a consistent "I'm against it".

Homosexuality? All of the Democrats support the idea of civil unions. Clark has publicly argued for a re-evaluation of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". This will be an attack point by the GOP in the 2004 election and none of the current candidates are immune from this attack. Dean at least has the advantage of actually having to deal with the issue through a complete legislative cycle so he knows what to expect when the battle will be joined (remember he had to go around wearing a bullet-proof vest for several months).

Taxes? Yes, Dean has called for more than most of the other leading candidates. But I hate to be the bearer of bad news folks but all Democrats will be tagged with the "wants to raise your taxes" smear regardless of what their actual position is. At least Dean's position has the merit of actually sounding like it is based more on principle than a political calculation that he can get away with asking for just some new taxes. As long as the Democrats continue to run from this issue they will continue to lose over and over and over again.

I am not going to say that Dean will have an easy time of it. Hell, Clark could yet demonstrate that he is up to the challenge. Gephardt has certainly proven better on the campaign trail than I expected (while Kerry and Edwards have proven to be far worse). But, as of now, Dean is still the most promising candidate where it counts: real world results.

I want a winner and Dean is a winner.

 

P.S., I just want to say that I am really glad this debate is happening now. We need to shake these things out now if we are to avoid some serious internecine battles within the Democratic ranks in the months leading up to the nomination. The thing I most want to avoid is the kind of doom-and-gloom talk we are hearing now popping up during the course of the campaign. No matter who wins the nomination in the end it will do none of us any good if the news cycle becomes dominated by stories of Democrats rebelling against their nominee.

Death by analogy

Analogies can be useful for focusing the mind. But there is an unfortunate tendency to treat analogies as if they had predictive value. As has been repeatedly demonstrated, you can draw analogies between Dean and virtually every presidential candidate of the last 30 years. All of these analogies provide useful clues about the Dean phenomena. But they do not predict what will happen next.

You know what annoys me the most about the Anybody-But-Dean movement? The implicit (sometimes explicit) suggestion that Dean's campaign is a bad thing. It's hard not to be discouraged when political pundits and analysts react with horror to the news of increased citizen involvement.

Would it be so hard for Josh Marshall, John Judis, Ruy Teixeira, et al. to simply acknowledge that Dean has done something good for the Democrats? All this doom-and-gloom talking isn't exactly what I would call a persuasive technique for winning people over to your side.

The Republicans embrace their base.

The Democrats are afraid of theirs.

That's why they keep losing.

Kerry beats Dean to the punch

Looks like Kerry managed to get out ahead of Dean on one thing at least:

Six months after President Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which sported a banner declaring "Mission Accomplished," and announced that major combat in Iraq was over, Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign is the first to try to use that photo op against the president.

Two shots, one of Mr. Bush in a Navy flight suit and one showing the banner on the Lincoln, open a new TV ad that begins airing Tuesday in Iowa and New Hampshire. The ad then goes on to tout Kerry’s candidacy.

"Who can take on George Bush and change the direction of the nation? John Kerry," the ad says.

It continues, calling Kerry "a leader on national security" and "a decorated combat veteran," and also mentions his service on the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees.

Back in May, when the president landed on the Lincoln, critics complained that he had just set up the event for future campaign ads. Little did they think that events would later allow the Democrats to use it against him in their own ads.

Mr. Bush last month denied any involvement with the "Mission Accomplished" banner, saying it was the military’s idea. "(It) was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished," he said.

As for the timing of Kerry's ad, it may be due to reports that rival Howard Dean was thinking of using the footage in an ad of his own.

This is why campaigns try to keep their advertising strategies secret.

Bad form

From ABC's The Note:

Shortly after Dean's raucous introduction, Kerry took a seat in the far rear of the room sitting at the last seat on the table. Never once clapping for his opponent's stump, Kerry listened casually in between scribbling notes for his upcoming speech.

When Dean concluded, he headed straight down the center of the crowd, nearing the exit and Kerry. As the anticipated "moment" inched handshake by handshake closer, the cameras gathered and pens poised over paper. Alas, as Dean reached Kerry's table, Kerry turned his back toward Dean and chatted with restaurant workers at the bar.

Shades of Edward Kennedy's refusal to shake Carter's hand at the Democratic convention in 1980. And we all know how much that helped Carter during the general election.

Kerry really needs to get over himself. He's not doing himself or his party any good by acting like a spoiled brat.

Bush losing favor with men

This latest Newsweek poll (from PollingReport.com) is pretty amazing:

"In general, would you like to see George W. Bush reelected to another term as president, or not?"
		Yes	No	Don't Know
		%	%	%
	ALL	44	50	6
	Men	45	51	4
	Women	42	51	7
	Republicans	86	10	4
	Democrats	10	86	4
	Independents	40	53	7

The gender gap on this question is virtually non-existent. Bush appears to be losing favor with men as much as women. I wonder if they still would like to have a beer with the guy?

The head-to-head numbers are also interesting in that Dean, Clark, Kerry, Lieberman and Gephardt all are within 4-5 points of Bush. Some look at these numbers and say that none of the candidates have broken out to challenge Bush. I look at these numbers and I see an electorate that is getting so sick of Bush that they will find any of these alternatives acceptable as a replacement.

Can we please stop harping on the electability question?

Fiscal responsibility in action?

This is pretty amazing (click names to be taken to FEC allocations form for each campaign):

	Spending in Iowa through Q3	Spending in NH and MA through Q3
Edwards	$715,920.31	$535,872.17
Gephardt	$357,881.63	$263,794.56
Kerry	$349,747.27	$694,615.78
Dean	$237,989.17	$241,818.16

Comparing donors

Only Kucinich does better than Dean in the small donor category, but that is before you factor in the scale of total donations. Gephardt, Kerry and Edwards are going to start hitting the ceilings on their donors long before Dean has even begun to tap into his potential. Clark could conceivably reach Dean's levels, but only if the momentum swings in his direction.

Hear the voices

The chorus all in one place (let me know if I missed any):

Krugman: Flags versus Dollars

Civil rights attorney Constance L. Rice: Stand Firm, Howard Dean

William Saletan: The New Bum Rap on Howard Dean

John Nichols: Rebel flag flap shows media failure

Open Source Politics: Playing the Race Card

Joan Walsh: Confederacy of Dunces

Derrick Jackson in the Boston Globe: Dean's appeal to South cuts across race

The American Prospect: Pickup Line

Susanna Rodell in the Charleston Gazette: Dean’s Confederate-flag remarks politically risky, but true

And some stuff as much about Zell Miller as about Howard Dean:

Jay Bookman in the AJC: Miller wears the crown of King Sneer

(Also see the transcript of the online chat Bookman had with AJC readers following his column: Transcript from 11/6/03)

David Worley's open letter to Zellout Miller in the AJC.

Some of these stories require user name/password. Just use "salon" and "tabletalk".

(Thanks to Ox for compiling this list).

Karma is wonderful

To Dean, a Bush image is fodder

Presidential contender Howard Dean plans to air television commercials showing footage of President Bush's landing on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln -- images Bush deployed as a triumphant visual coda to the Iraq conflict but which Dean says are now powerful reminders of a war gone wrong.

I predicted at the time that Bush's stunt may end up being used in an opponents commercial. I'm glad Dean is the first to do it.