Saturday, January 17, 2004

Get out the NEW voters?

I'm with Atrios on this one. Those who argue that the "get out new or disaffected voters" strategy is a loser seem to think that it means getting out the extremists (left or right) who have given up on the political process because it doesn't get them what they want. The real problem, though, are the huge mass of people in the middle who really have no strong ideological leanings, are still concerned about where the country is going but are just sick and tired of having to deal with the usual bullshit of politics as it is practiced in America today. Those people can be brought out to vote and, again agreeing with Atrios, I think they would tend to favor Democrats over Republicans (if for no other reason that middle-of-the-roaders-who-lean-Republican are more likely to be voting already since the Republicans hold all the cards today).

Friday, January 16, 2004

Atrios is right

No one really knows who the Republicans want to run against. All this talk about how the release of this or that particular smear against a particular candidate is evidence of who Rove wants or does not want to run against is ridiculous.

You know what Rove wants? He wants us to run around like chickens with our heads cut off and that is precisely what we are doing!

Last summer after reports came out that Karl Rove was seen cheering on a group of Dean supporters at a 4th of July parade, several people started using this as evidence that either (1) Rove really wanted Dean as the nominee or (2) Rove was afraid of Dean as the nominee but just wanted Dems to think that he wanted him in a clever bit of reverse psychology. Joe Trippi responded to these speculations on the o-blog by specifically telling people to just stop worrying about what Rove does or does not want.

Trippi understood something that we all need to understand: It's not about what Karl Rove wants! It's about what WE want!

Fuck Karl Rove!

It comes down to this...

The Dean campaign is a theory. On Monday we will get the first test of whether that theory has any viability. Until then the rest is just hot air.

The Clark team proves they can slime with the best of them

So now three lawyers, including a Clark supporter and organizer, are trying to make an issue out of Dean's selling of bank stock after he became Governor.

One of the three attorneys filing the complaints, Michael Spadea, donated $50 to Clark's campaign and is a county coordinator is Connecticut for Clark's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"This is the worst kind of 11th-hour dirty tricks by Wesley Clark's campaign," said Dean spokesman Jay Carson.

Clark's press secretary, Bill Buck, responded: "It's time for Dean to come clean and stop seeing shadows on the wall."

How exactly, Mr. Buck, is Dean supposed to "come clean" if he already is clean to begin with? This is the worst sort of "do you still beat your wife" type comment. Buck, by his statement, is asserting as a given that Dean is guilty of something (otherwise he wouldn't need to come clean) and that, if he complains about this, its just an example of paranoid delusion ("seeing shadows on the wall").

It's a statement worthy of Karl Rove. 'A' for effort Mr. Buck. 'F-' for humanity.

Everyone's getting in on the act

Salon has opened its own political War Room as a one-stop location for coverage of the 2004 race.

Confession time

I'm burned out. I'm discouraged. I'm just feeling over-all blah about the whole damn thing.

First of all is my feeling that Dean has not handled the last couple of weeks of media assaults as well as I would have liked. Yes, he hasn't gone into a total meltdown. But he hasn't turned the attacks to his advantage in the ways that I would have hoped or as I had come to expect from his past performance. His public airing of complaints about the attacks comes dangerously close to looking like whining and that is not an attractive quality in a candidate. I would have much preferred that he just shrugged off the attacks as par for the course and just kept on arguing his points as he has in the past. I don't think he handled the whole brou-ha-ha about his caucus comments very well and I think that has hurt him in Iowa. His statement that he has changed his mind about the caucuses just struck me as pandering to the voters feelings when what he should have done was point out that the media was distorting his comments. He retreated instead of attacking and again that is not an attractive quality and not what I had come to expect.

Secondly, he has failed to enunciate a message of optimism about the future and has instead fallen back on the old standard strategy of attacking those who are nipping at his heels. Dean's message up until now has been about empowering people to take back the party and the country and he has done a lot with that message. But he has not done enough to convince those who were not already convinced that the party and the country were going in the wrong direction and that he offers a viable alternative.

Finally, the rest of the party has acted in a reprehensible manner in reaction to the whole Dean movement. Instead of celebrating the extraordinary level of enthusiasm that Dean has generated, they have reacted, for the most part, with fear and apprehension. Yes, there are things to be concerned about in the Dean movement (see what I wrote above). But the Democratic party is in desperate need of the kind of enthusiasm that Dean brings. But rather than embrace that enthusiasm, the party has tried to squelch it. I hate to say it, but I can't avoid thinking that there are some in the party who have become comfortable with losing.

There is something beautiful happening here and the idiots in charge are working over time to make sure it dies before it reaches its full potential.

How can one not be depressed when considering that?

Google News Democratic Primary Poll for 1/16/2004

  This Week (1/16) Last Week (1/9)
1 Howard Dean 11000 22.5% -3.8 1 9700 25.9%
2 John Kerry 7440 15.2% +1.0 2 5270 14.1%
4 John Edwards 6990 14.3% +3.0 4 3940 10.5%
3 Wesley Clark 6370 13.0% -0.3 3 5070 13.5%
6 Dick Gephardt 5880 12.0% +1.2 6 4040 10.8%
5 Joe Lieberman 4860 9.9% -1.2 5 4580 12.2%
7 Dennis Kucinich 3280 6.7% +1.4 7 1910 5.1%
8 Al Sharpton 3030 6.2% +1.9 8 1910 5.1%

This week sees several major shifts in the poll. First of all, Carol Mosley Braun is out so everyone's shares received a boost. Second, the increased media attention on Iowa appears to have impacted the shares of those candidates who are not participating in that contest (Clark and Lieberman). Clark may be coming on like gangbusters in the New Hampshire polls, but, so far, that has not translated into increased media attention.

Finally, Dean's commanding lead has dropped. This appears to be more because of an increased media focus on the other candidates since Dean's overall story numbers have not dropped. It may just be that, in the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses, the media just spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the Dean phenom and are only now switching back to talking about the race as a whole. In other words, the race has finally begun (what have we been doing for the last year?)

Next week we will learn how the results of the caucus impact media coverage.

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.)

Thursday, January 15, 2004

Compare and contrast

This Jan. 8th People magazine interview of Howard and Judith Dean:

Howard: Judy sort of functions as my Person-in-the-Street. The best kind of advice she gives me is, 'You look like an idiot on television.' She wouldn't say it that way, but, 'You didn't do very well on television.' I'll never forget the first time we went to a speech that I was giving on a subject I knew not much about. And on the way home, I said, 'Well, how did you think I did?' and she said, 'Fair to poor, with the emphasis on poor,' which, I had to admit, was probably exactly right.

With this 2000 USA Today story about Laura Bush:

Things were not always so smooth. For much of her life, Laura Welch was ''so uninterested in politics.'' Even though they lived for a time at different ends of the same apartment complex, she turned down a couple of suggested dates with George W. Bush. Finally, she attended a back-yard barbecue thrown by mutual friends. He made her laugh. He was a great talker. She was a great listener. Both in their 30s, they married three months after their first date. There was no honeymoon. They hit his congressional campaign trail the day after the wedding.

After a few speeches, he asked her - coming up the driveway on the way home from one - how his delivery was going over. Terrible, said the forthright wife. George W. drove his Pontiac Bonneville right into the garage wall.

And they talk about Dean being the angry one?

(Thanks to Phoenix Woman for the idea)

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Works well with others

Joshua Marshal does a little educating to those who don't understand how Dean could support the "unilateral" action in Kosovo while opposing the "unilateral" action in Iraq.

The tenor of the whole Iraq debate has tended to make a fetish out of the narrow meaning of unilateral and multilateral. Both have their place. And I don't think it's a contradiction on Dean's part at all to say we should not have waited for NATO to conduct air operations in Bosnia and yet also mount a critique of the president's approach on Iraq.

Short and simple: the basic problem with Bush's "unilateralism" is that it is premised on the idea of going into every conflict as if we have the god-given right to attack whoever we damn well please. It's a policy that presumes America's moral superiority instead of proving it. Dean believes that no matter how strong we become we still have the responsibility to be "good neighbors" with the rest of the world (indeed, it could be argued that our military and economic superiority gives us a special responsibility to behave respectfully towards others).

I agree

WTF?

Sunday, January 11, 2004

Rebuilding vs. Winning: the tough choice

Check out this diary entry by kid oakland over at the dailyKos. I think he does the best job yet of clearly laying out what is going on with the Dean vs. Clark dynamics in this race. Dean is primarily the candidate for rebuilding the party while Clark may very well be the best candidate to win in 2004. But, the problem, of course, is that neither of them alone provides the best prospects for doing both. Dean can rebuild the Democrats to a party that can demonstrate national strength again, but he may not have the winning quality necessary to put he himself over the top. Clark, on the other hand, may have that quality, but may be another Clinton-type candidate whose electoral success does not translate into long term success for his party.

I've recently been doing some deep thinking about this very topic. It comes down to two choices: (1) rebuild the party so that its long-term prospects can improve yet risk losing the Presidential election in 2004 or (2) win in 2004, but put off the desperately needed rebuilding for several more years. Now there are those who would argue that either Dean or Clark could do both, but lets remain with the question of which would be the better choice if neither of them can do just that.

It may shock some people, but I would probably have to come down on the side of rebuilding over winning. Because, as bad as another four years of Bush would be, I can't help but feel that failing to rebuild the party now might actually prolong the period of Republican domination of this country. After all, Bush is just one man. Getting rid of him would not get rid of that domination. If anything, it would just become even more deeply entrenched as they would once again feel that they had been unfairly deprived of their entitlement to lead.

But, if the Democratic party were to be rebuilt and revitalized, it might be able to challenge the long-term assumption that Republicans should be the ones in charge. Dean might be able to confront that assumption head on while a Clark would, at least to me, be just another four year delay of the inevitable confrontation.

It's a difficult choice to make, but a part of me has to believe that even another four years of Bush might be less of a disaster than another four years of ineffective Democratic leadership.