You're Killing Us

(source)

Pop Quiz

Time to play a game. Here's a quote. Who said it?

"Be assured. Baghdad is safe, protected"

"The number of people involved in those battles is relatively small."

"I blame Al-Jazeera."

"It's not a Shiite uprising. Sadr has a very small following."

"We are in control. They are in a state of hysteria."

"I know if you just report on those few places, it does look chaotic."

"We are winning!"

For the answers...click here.

(Thanks to the Island of Balta)

Kerry 4, Bush 2

Smackdown, week 6

• John McCain attacks his own party, "I believe my party has gone astray" (Boston Herald)
• CBS poll shows Bush credibility taking a hit (CBS)
• John Kerry's blog de-links the DailyKOS (John Kerry Blog)
• 7 U.S. soldiers killed in clashes with Iraqis (Washington Post)
• Leaders of 9/11 panel say attacks were probably preventable (NY Times)
• U.S. may send more troops to Iraq (AP)
• Ralph Nader may fail to qualify for Oregon ballot (The Oregonian)
• Najaf falls to supporters of Al-Sadr (CNN)
• Kerry surging in Rasmussen tracking poll, nine point gain since Friday (Political Wire)

I'm going out of town until Sunday so this weeks smackdown results are a bit early.

As things stand, this has clearly been a bad week for Bush and a (comparatively) good week for Kerry. The latter, however, is only because Bush's problems are resulting in a de-facto shift of the polls in Kerry's direction. Kerry himself hasn't done much to benefit from the shift other then simply not being Bush.

The old political maxim is that when your opponent is falling down, get out of the way. So the fact that Kerry really hasn't done all that much in the last couple of weeks is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. I just hope that they don't get into a coasting mode and think that all they have to do is wait for the bad news to bring Bush down and for Kerry to win the election by default.

Kerry, unfortunately, has a bad history of letting the race get away from him when he thinks it should be his to win. It's only when his back is to the wall that he really starts to act like a serious politician. He did well in that respect in the nomination battle, but I'd rather not depend on that kind of performance in the general. The Kerry team has to be ready to go with a proactive campaign against Bush when the news-du-jour doesn't do the work for them.

Note: it is still possible that Condi could ace her performance in front of the 9/11 panel tomorrow and the insurgency in Iraq could collapse over night and Sistani could come out and proclaim Bush the Hidden Imam (okay, the last is a bit of a stretch). I'll factor that into next weeks smackdown (the extended edition).

(Last week's smackdown)

The Bush Doctrine

• If it doesn't fit, force it
• If it still doesn't fit, get a bigger hammer
• If it breaks, it wasn't worth it anyway

Like father, like son (we hope)

From the they-never-learn files:

DALLAS - Former President Bush said Tuesday that John Kerry's Democratic presidential campaign is using the same rhetoric about the state of the economy against his son that Bill Clinton used against him in 1992.

But the elder Bush said President George W. Bush has a stronger case to take to the voters this time around because the economy has begun to show signs of recovery.

"I was out telling people things were getting better, but the Clinton campaign ... portrayed me as being out of touch," the former president recalled at a business luncheon for 1,500 people.

The elder Bush said he was optimistic about the economy and cited statistics showing growth in job creation and home ownership as examples of the current president's leadership.

But he warned that "in politics, you have to remember it isn't what's actually happening. It's the perception that's out there."

I remember that campaign. I remember how Bush Sr. kept trying to portray everything as hunky-dory when it was obvious to most everyone outside his inner-circle that the hunky was not so dory. It wasn't the fact that Clinton called him on this that made Bush lose. It was the fact that Bush refused to admit that things were as bad as they were and thus cemented in people's minds the idea that he was out-of-touch.

If his son is going to take the same approach in this election (happy talk, smile, happy talk, everything's great, happy talk, smile) then he will go down to defeat as well. People can sense when they are being sold a line of bull that big and they don't react well to it. That old 41 still doesn't get this just proves that he and his son share the same clueless gene.

Kerry spokesman Bill Burton said it probably was easy for Bush to talk up the economy at the $100-per-plate luncheon "but if you talk the three million who've lost their jobs since George Bush became president I think they'd probably have a different view. President Bush and his son are both good people who did a bad job with the American economy," he said.

Ah! Now that's the way to go after these guys. Don't question them on their character. Just keep hammering away at their incompetence.

Lord knows they've given us a pretty big hammer to use against them.

Premature insurgencies

Matthew Yglessias seems to be thinking along the same lines as I that it is a bit premature to talk about what is going on in Iraq today as meltdown and a sign of imminent American defeat. The truth is that insurgencies succeed best when they don't have to defend territory. By seizing control of both Falujah and Najif the Sunnis and Shiites have created convenient targets for traditional military operations.

But, as in the Tet offensive so many years back, the loser of this kind of fight is not the one who controls the ground after the fighting is over but who controls the spin. Even if the American coalition forces regain control of the situation and things quiet down and the June 30th hand-off happens, the illusion that things are getting better in Iraq has been dealt a serious blow by the events of the last two weeks.

It is that which could hurt the most.

Maybe we should re-elect Bush

At this rate, by 2008, he'll have the Israelis and Palestinians declaring universal brotherhood with each other.

Former Iraqi enemies unite to fight U.S.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 6 (UPI) -- The American dream to bridge ancient Iraqi sectarian rivalries turned nightmarish Tuesday as Shiite and Sunni religious and tribal figures put aside their differences and publicly aligned against the occupation, vowing to rid Iraq of the American-led invaders.

Who to trust?

Just how large a following does Muqtada Al-Sadr have? Anti-war.com makes the valid point that most of the reports coming from the administration appear to be low-balling his supporters in the hundreds and low thousands while some people from within Iraq and other experts are saying he may have a following that could number in the millions. Apparently many in the establishment media (namely TV) are following the administration line and reporting Al-Sadr's uprising as just an isolated band of hotheads.

But could a group of only 2-3000 followers seize control of a city of 200,000 (Najif)?

Is it just wishful thinking on the Bushies part that Al-Sadr's support is smaller than some think it is?

Remember that these guys don't exactly have a great track record when it comes to assessing the size of potential threats.

ARGH!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senior U.S. officials told CNN on Tuesday that they now believe fugitive terrorism suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi did not have a leg amputated in Iraq, as the Bush administration had previously said.

Although the administration pointed to Iraq's medical assistance to al-Zarqawi as evidence of a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime, it's now believed that al-Zarqawi still has both legs.

My God! How do you fuck up THAT badly?!

Can I get an Amen?

Hesiod makes one last attempt at an intervention with the war-floggers.

Ralph Nader may not qualify for the Oregon ballot

In 2000 Nader managed to draw crowds in excess of 10,000 during an appearance here in Portland. Yesterday, he couldn't even draw 1,000 to a rally trying to qualify him for the 2004 Oregon ballot. This is a very positive sign since Oregon is a battleground state in this election and probably the most sympathetic state to Naderism. If Nader can't even get 1,000 people to come out here then his prospects in the rest of the country must be even worse.

But why, then, is he drawing 5-7% in some national polls? I suspect that's more of a protest opinion than a reflection of real voting attitude. There are some who hate the fact that they might have to vote for Kerry but will do so anyway in order to get rid of Bush. But they don't want Kerry to think it will be easy to win so they say yes to Nader in the polls in order to make him sweat (and possibly swing more to the left in order to get their vote).

Don't count your civil wars before they are hatched

I would agree with many that the last few days have not been good ones for America in Iraq. But I think some may be jumping the gun if they conclude that the recent violence is evidence of a complete meltdown of American control of the situation. Yes, there is an uprising. But what evidence is there that that uprising is not limited to the few thousand followers of Sadr and the Sunni stronghold of Fulluja? No doubt there is a lot of ill feeling towards America among the Iraqi populous. But are those feelings bad enough to result in a general uprising? Or is it possible that Sadr is no more liked by Iraqi's than is George W. Bush and most would rather just sit back and let them bang heads against each other and see what happens.

Which brings up an important point about what is happening right now: the worse thing the U.S. could do would be to engage in a "hit ten of theirs for every one of ours" strategy. Doing so could quickly turn a small uprising into the country-wide meltdown that everyone is afraid of. Yet there has to be a strong temptation on the part of commanders in the field and the leadership of the Bush administration to do just that if for no other reason the visceral (and political) appeal of such a reaction.

Cool heads are required at hot moments like this. Cool heads that are willing to risk the screams and derision of those thirsting for revenge.

Unfortunately, our "president" is George W. Bush, a world class hot head if there ever was one.

Motes and Planks

Julia has a good run-down of Kos-Falujah moments (i.e., gross comments made about dead Americans of differening political stripes) from the right side of the blogosphere.

Taking the bad with the good

Atrios lays down the gauntlet. Read it. Now!

It's really quite simple: if the Democrats are going to accept the benefits that come from the blogosphere and a more activated base then they are going to have to learn to live with the risks associated with that relationship. Republicans have learned to live with their more intemperate supporters. Democrats need to learn to do the same.

Claiming responsibility

Thinking more about the Kos controversy and the de-linking of his web site by the Kerry campaign I am reminded of the concept of the "common carrier".

(warning: arm-chair lawyer talk)

The "common carrier" was a legal principle developed to protect the telephone company form legal liability in the case where someone used a telephone to defame someone. The idea behind the principle is that a "common carrier" provides a service to useful to be derailed by the requirement that they monitor all the traffic on their system in order to watch for questionable activities. Now, in order to protect a providers "common carrier" status, they have to be very careful when it comes to stepping in and blocking the use of the service. For, if they block said use for one purpose, it could set the precedent that would result in them losing their "common carrier' status. In other words, if the phone company president doesn't like the fact that some people may be using his service to participate in phone sex and takes steps to block that, then he is essentially claiming responsibility for the content on his service and can therefore be held liable for other content which he personally does not object to.

In a way, this principle applies to political campaigns as well. The question comes down to this: are politicians responsible for all the actions of all of their supporters? There is no doubt that the Kerry campaign is benefiting from the open-ended structure of the blogosphere with its ability to inspire political activism and raising money. But with that comes the risk of being associated with amateurism and some real ugliness. Are the benefits to both the candidates and politics in general (along with the occasional ugliness comes a lot of good stuff from ordinary citizens and increased voter involvement (supposedly a good thing)) worth the occasional risks of someone letting lose with a wet-smelly one in public?

By de-linking Kos, the Kerry campaign has claimed a certain measure of responsibility over the behavior of their online supporters. They have set the precedent and they will be required to deal with the issue even more now that they have. Every time one of their online supporters does something questionable will they be required to de-link them as well lest they be accused of hypocrisy?

These are the kind of hoops that you are forced to jump through if you decide to take on the job of policing any portion of your base.

Democrats have it worse than Republicans in this respect because few people seriously hold the Republican leadership to account for the worst acts of their followers. Yet Democratic leaders are expected to grovel in submission any time some minor functionary is caught on tape saying something "out there". By their actions, the Kerry campaign has validated this mode of operation and they will have to pay the price for it in the future.

Not good.

Kos

(Update: Matt Stoller fills in the background on this story for those of you who don't know what I am talking about)

After reading blog comments of various stripes about the recent comments by Kos about the four American contractors/mercenaries, I find myself having several different thoughts, some in conflict with each other. In no particular order, here they are:

1. This incident and the reporting on it obviously struck hard at a hot-button issue for Kos. Who amongst us does not have some particularly sensitive issue in our past that, when pressed, causes us to do and/or say something really stupid? I generally try to avoid psychoanalyzing anyone because I'm not a psychiatrist, I don't know Kos personally and he hasn't asked me to do so and I consider it wrong to engage in non-consensual psychoanalyzing. But I find myself sympathetic to his feelings on this matter since he obviously does have a history that leads him to view these contractors/mercenaries in a less than stellar light.
2. Kos' comment was incredibly insensitive. He doesn't know very much about the people who were killed or their situation. He shouldn't let his prejudices about those kind of people get in the way of his judgment of what these particular people went through. If not them then think about their families having to live with the image of their loved ones charred remains hanging from a bridge.
3. The reaction of the right side of the blogosphere appears to be as much about payback as it is shock over Kos' comment. Spare me the righteous indignation folks. I'm sure you have had moments where you said or did something foolish that you wish wouldn't become the defining moment of your public life.
4. John Kerry's decision to de-link Kos from his web page also gives me conflicting thoughts. I don't believe it was done out of a desire to appease right-wing outrage and thus I don't agree with those who see it as an example of backbone transplant rejection. However, I think by taking this action the Kerry campaign has given the impression that it can be cowed into shunning one of its more powerful backers (think divide-and-conquer folks). But then maybe Kerry felt that the only way to express his real outrage at the comment in a meaningful way was to de-link Kos. In the end I don't consider it very smart politics, but it may have been a very human decision.

Also, in the end, I think to much can be read into this incident. As I said, people sometimes have bad days and end up saying something inappropriate that they later regret. I believe firmly that, in order to have a vibrant and open dialog about the future, it is necessary to let down some of our barriers and give people the luxury of doing something boneheaded. If there is one thing I agree with the right on it is the complaints about political correctness stifling discourse because sensitivity to offending people's feelings causes people to self-censor themselves. It would be a true tragedy if this situation were to result in Kos stifling his valuable insights.