Friday, December 03, 2004

Here come the Guvs

The Democratic Governor's Association is weighing in on the whole question of the who should head up the DNC. It looks like they are diagnosing the problem correctly (to much focus on D.C. centric matters and the Presidential election, not enough on the grassroots). But their solution to the problem just sounds like more of the same establishment nonsense:

Yesterday the Democratic Governors met in Washington to nominate a new chair of their club, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. But they also went public with the claim that they wanted more control over the Democratic Party, and insinuated that the Democrats in Washington had lost sight of the way to win. This is a symptom of how weak the national party apparatus in Washington is, something the grassroots should take note of -- forget the rest of what they said... but here's some of the other stuff they did talk about.

The governors also indicated that they want major control over the new head of the DNC, and to split the job into two, with one a spokesperson, the other a manager of the party apparatus. Having been wooed by Howard Dean -- a former Dem. Gov. chair himself -- earlier in the day, it seems they want a "safer" candidate to run the party, one who feels "comfortable" in the heartland.

"safer" is a codeword for the same business-as-usual type leaders we have had in the past. We've been lead by "safe" people for years now. We need leadership that is willing to risk losing some battles in order to win the larger war.

The "comfortable in the heartland" comment is just another way of saying they want someone from a red state. But I don't think the DNC needs a leader who necessarily comes from the areas we need the most help with. Instead, we need a leader who recognizes that the people best suited to solve the problems of those regions are the people who come from those regions. The DNC chair has represent the whole party, not just the heartland.

A good chair would give out more power and more largesse to the organizations at the ground level in the red states. Doing so does not require that the chair actually BE from one of those states. He or she just needs to appreciate the importance of not giving them the cold shoulder.

It will be interesting to see if governors will conflict with the state party leaders group or whether they can find a common ground in their desire to move the party center outside of the beltway.

(Aside: I wonder if anyone besides Dean has been "wooing" the governors?)

Experiments in perversity

Over on the DailyKOS, diarist Jeffrey Feldman has been running a series he calls "Frameshop". Each post in the series is an attempt to deconstruct right wing framing and give advice to liberals and progressives on how they can avoid the pitfalls of those frames. I would highly recommend that everyone register at dKOS and subscribe to Feldman's diary so they can follow his work.

The most recent Frameshop is a discussion of the term "Gay Marriage" (link). It reminded me of a point I have tried to make to friends on more than one occasion. The occasion arises when one of them says something along these lines:

"They say that homosexuals choose their lifestyle, but why would anyone choose a lifestyle that is guaranteed to leave them ostracized, abused and possibly killed because it is viewed with such hostility by the rest of society? Only a madman would make that kind of 'choice'."

This argument makes the assumption that people can, by their own natural reasoning, choose to live a healthy lifestyle. The mistake is in thinking that the other side agrees with that assumption. But the conservative frame assumes that mankind is naturally sinful. It assumes that, left to his own devices, man will fall into an "experimentation with perversity" as Jerry Falwell puts it in the post linked above. It is only through the intervention of a loving God and his surrogates, the loving parents, that man can avoid that fate.

The argument for homosexual rights, to someone who adopts this frame, is an argument for a culture that shirks its responsibility to teach people to avoid "experimentation with perversity." Society has to stop the homosexual from engaging in their lifestyle for their own good because the homosexual has given into their naturally sinful self.

Within the conservative frame there is no allowance for mankind to, of his own reason, live a life that is well-meaning and beneficial to themselves and others. It just simply isn't possible and any argument to the contrary is either deluded or, even worse, deliberate in its attempt to corrupt our culture (i.e., the work of the devil).

This frame has, at its heart, the fundamental belief that man can take no security in his own capacities and must ultimately surrender his will to that of a higher power (parents, country, God).

And consider this: what we are fighting against here isn't simply a delusionary model of absolute insecurity. It is possible that, for those who advocate this line of thought, their surrender of their will to that higher power is the only way they can control their tendencies towards perversion. That would explain why so many right-wing preachers seem to get caught in shameful sex scandals. They really are weak when it comes to controlling their own tendencies towards perversion. When we argue that they should trust more in themselves it is the metaphorical equivalent of asking a drowning man to let of go of their life preserver.

No wonder they are so scared of what we are asking them to do.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Oh Canada!

If only this were true (store behind it here).

No redemption

Ken Starr now says he shouldn't have been involved in the Lewinsky investigation (link):

Starr said his role in a yearslong investigation of Clinton should have focused instead on Clinton's role in the failed Arkansas land deal known as Whitewater.

"There was a sense on the part of the country that my (Lewinsky) effort was an effort somehow to expand the (Whitewater) investigation, when it was separate," he told the Santa Barbara News-Press following a speech on Wednesday.

Gee, ya think?

Say, Ken, do you think the country might have gotten that impression from the fact that your original request to Janet Reno to take on the investigation specifically cited a connection between it and the Whitewater investigation (namely, the involvement of Vernon Jordon in both the Lewinsky matter and the allegation of possible witness tampering with respect to Whitewater witness Webster Hubell)?

Idiot.

TNR: Anti-Dean Central

The New Republic has come down harshly against any suggestion of Dean being the DNC chair. They as much as suggest that the very idea is the height of lunacy.

Not Geniuses has the full text of the (subscription only) editorial (link).

The problems with this editorial are multitude, but the most telling is the persistent misrepresentation of who Dean was and is and what he stood for. The TNR editors continue in the mistaken belief that Dean is advocating that Democrats swing left. They are also under the bizarre impression that Dean's position on Iraq was merely "catering" to anti-war activists.

Maybe it's just a case of a bunch of panderers assuming that everyone else is as equally pandering as they are.

The most laughable assertion, of course, is that Dean is flawed because he has no foreign policy credentials. They totally miss the obvious point that Dean did a better job of recognizing the folly of the Iraq campaign than did the "foreign policy credentialed" candidates (Sen. Graham being a notable exception).

Remember while reading this that the TNR editors endorsed Joe Lieberman during the primaries. And they think they are good judges of who is a winner?

Shaheen Out?

The following report comes via The Kentucky Democrat (link):

Shaheen out of DNC chair contention...
CBS News's Political Unit reports that former NH Gov. Jeanne Shaheen says she is not interested in being the next chair of the Democratic National Committee.
(12/2/04)

I haven't found any other online link for this news yet.

Shaheen is the second DNC potential who was closely tied to John Kerry (Vilsack was the first). Kerry isn't having much luck influencing this selection so far if he can't get his choices to even throw their hats in the ring.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Who will be the Iraq conflict's equivalent to Walter Cronkite?

There is a story oft told that Nixon said that he lost America on the issue of Vietnam the day Walter Cronkite turned against the war.

Which brings up an interesting question: is there any public figure in America today, of equivalent stature to "the most trusted man in America", who, if he/she were to turn against Dubya's little adventure in Iraq, would effectively spell the end of American support for said adventure?

I can't think of any. There just isn't anyone around today that is as trusted as Cronkite was. Such is the cynical nature of our society.

Update: I am informed by DaveH in the comments that it was LBJ, not Nixon, who made the comment about losing Cronkite. Thanks for the correction.

Democrats 04 = Republicans 92; Democrats 06 = Republicans 94?

That's the take from Arianna Huffington (link):

In 1992, the Republican Party found itself in very much the same position as Democrats do today: out of power (with the opposition controlling the White House and both houses of Congress), lacking a compelling core message, and facing the prospect of becoming what any number of pundits at the time deemed � all together now � �a permanent minority party.�

Indeed, reading the post-mortems of the 1992 election is like coming across the original template for the post-mortems of the 2004 election. If you take away the names, you would swear that the Republican quotes from back then were being delivered by the Democrats from right now.

Take this Bill Bennett quote from November 1992 placing the blame for the Republican drubbing on �the lack of a clear, coherent, compelling core message.� Doesn�t it sound like any number of Democrats complaining about 2004?

Or how about this �92 analysis from John Ashcroft, then governor of Missouri, writing in the Washington Post: �The Republican Party needs to shake itself loose from top-down management, undergo a grassroots renewal and adopt a vigorous, positive agenda that flows from the priorities, views and values of citizens who involve themselves in that process. . . . Our party needs to frame its priorities more in terms of what we�re for rather than what we are against.�

These are precisely the sentiments now being echoed throughout Democratic circles.

And then, just as now, a sense of long-term gloom and doom hovered over the losing side. �All that is clear about the GOP�s future,� forecast the Los Angeles Times in November �92, �is that its comeback trail will be long and rigorous.�

It turned out to be short and sweet. Just two years after being given their political last rites, Republicans rose from their deathbed and seized control of both chambers of Congress, picking up 52 seats in the House and nine in the Senate. The shift was so dramatic that President Clinton, in the wake of the GOP victory, felt the need to insist at a press conference that he was still �relevant.�

She goes on to give some advice:

  • Go after the issue of paper-trails and voter suppression
  • Kill all the consultants
  • Build a well-funded message machine
  • Nationalize the '06 Congressional races
  • Train better candidates

To all of which I say amen. The real work ahead of us is to fill in the details of these (and other) steps. Can it be done in time to turn things around dramatically in 2006? I don't know, but history says it can be done.

More DNC rumblings

From The Hill (link) comes further word on the race for the DNC chair. This article discusses two key power blocks in the upcoming decision: the congressional members and the state party leaders. Both of these groups, according to this article, are pushing for a DNC that will de-emphasize the race for the White House in 2008 and concentrate more resources on congressional and local races.

Congressional leaders and state party officials are insisting that the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) radically redirect the committee�s resources toward congressional races and other local contests and away from the presidential enchilada.

In behind-the-scenes positioning, key congressional lawmakers are seeking to prevent the national party from lapsing into another four-year presidential gestation cycle, where the DNC serves as nothing more than an incubator for the party�s ambitions to capture the White House, say leadership aides.

That congressional strategy to deemphasize the presidential race is being paralleled at the state level, where party chairmen are withholding their endorsements and plan to swing their 112 votes in one bloc for a single candidate.

Those party leaders will seek to extract concrete assurances from the eight potential candidates for DNC chairperson who have been invited to address the Association of State Democratic Chairmen (ASDC) on Dec. 11 in Orlando.

This answer the question in my previous post on this topic: the potentials have been invited to the confab down in Orlando. And it does sound like Brewer is attempting to forge a unified block out of the state party leaders in a bid to become a kingmaker in the upcoming choice.

The invitees are:

  • Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean
  • New Democrat Network president Simon Rosenberg
  • Strategist Donnie Fowler
  • Telecom executive Leo Hindery
  • Former Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas)
  • Former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen
  • Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb
  • Former White House Chief of Staff Harold Ickes
  • Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk.

The first four have already accepted and will give statements and participate in a Q&A session.

My gut feeling is that Dean will have the inside track with the state party leaders. He has already proven himself on the local level (Democracy For America's charter is almost a perfect match for the kind of things Brewer is asking for) and he has proven himself to be a persuasive individual when it comes to building coalitions.

I don't know how well Dean will play with the congressional bloc, nor do I know how much cohesion that group will have in the final vote. They are probably a mixture of old-line, establishment party types and activist, grassroots types so they could split without strong leadership to hold them together (Nancy Pelosi is, as I understand it, remaining mum on the whole matter for now).

Word on the blog street is that Frost may have inherited the Anybody-But-Dean crown from Vilsack, but I have also heard that he didn't win a lot of friends in the congressional bloc when he ran against Pelosi for the Leadership.

Here's my assessment: if Brewer can keep the state leaders together in a unified bloc and he can get them to endorse one candidate than I think that candidate will most likely be Dean and, with that endorsement, Dean will be 90% of his way to winning the position. Assuming Dean wants it of course. And assuming that the old-line leadership manages to demonstrate some lasting strength after the beating it has taken in the last few years.

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

States feel the power (part 2)

Mark Brewer, the President of the Association of State Democratic Chairs is telling his fellow state Democratic leaders to hold off on endorsing any particular candidate for the DNC chairmanship (link). Brewer seems to recognize, as I pointed out in a previous post (link), that the state parties could wield and extraordinary amount of influence over the national party leadership. But they won't do so if they start, independently, throwing their weight behind particular candidates.

Brewer wants them to wait at least until the state party leaders meet Dec. 9-11 in Orlando. I wouldn't be surprised if he wants to lobby the Association reach a consensus among themselves about who should be leader (or at least what type of leader they want, if they can't agree on a particular individual).

The linked article doesn't specifically mention if any of the leading prospects will actually be in attendance at this meeting.

As goes Maryland...

I'm not sure if the parallel will hold, but the race for the head of the Maryland State Democratic Party has some interesting similarities to the race for the national chair (link):

The race for Maryland Democratic Party Chair has proven surprisingly competitive, with three announced candidates taking each other to the mat over the future of the state party. Party Treasurer Gary Gensler, former Howard Dean state political director and congressional candidate Terry Lierman, and former Glendening staffer Dan Ruppley are vying for the office, whose current holder, Ike Leggett, is stepping down most likely to run for Montgomery County Executive.

Gensler maintains a home in Baltimore County, though his main residence is Montgomery County. He has been the treasurer of the national Democratic Party and has a proven record as a fundraiser. Gensler appears to have been the initial frontrunner but is facing a staunch challenge from Lierman, a resident of Maryland's Eighth Congressional District, whose fundraising skills are also considerable -- he was the national finance co-chair for the Dean campaign. It is expected that a Lierman chairmanship would result in more grassroots Democratic activism, as his work with Dean demonstrates; Gensler seems to be the choice of the older, more entrenched party bosses.

The two candidates are waging an extremely low-profile pitched battle for votes inside the several-hundred-member Democratic State Central Committee, which decides the next party chair. A third candidate, Dan Ruppley of Frederick, has a record of experience in former Gov. Parris Glendening's political campaigns. However, a party insider and Lierman supporter who asked not to be named told me that Lierman has been endorsed by Frederick Mayor Jennifer Dougherty, which would seem to put quite a damper on Ruppley's hopes.

The divisive race highlights the many divisions among a party still smarting from its 2002 gubernatorial defeat at the hands of then-Rep. Bob Ehrlich. One high-profile Democrat, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, has already announced he is challenging Ehrlich in 2006; another Democrat, Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan, also is gearing up for a run. The party is also split along urban/rural lines, with Eastern Shore and Western and Southern Maryland residents feeling passed over in favor of heavy Baltimore and D.C.-area representation.

The similarities:

1) One candidate (Gensler) represent the "more entrenched party bosses" and another (Lierman) represents upstart "grassroots Democratic activism". Not sure how Ruppley fits into this, but this report suggests he may not have much impact.

2) The battle lines appear to be drawn over the direction the party will go (status quo vs. reform)

3) The party is still reeling over a significant electoral loss (the governor's race in 2002) which could seriously influence the final result.

4) There is a growing sense of frustration on the part of non-urban residents over a lack of representation within the party apparatus.

Sounds familiar doesn't it?

Sunday, November 28, 2004

From many, one

Maryland Governor Says He Intended Ban on Reporters to Have 'chilling Effect'

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) - Maryland's governor says his order that state officials stop speaking with two reporters for The (Baltimore) Sun was "meant to have a chilling effect" on two writers he believes "have no credibility."
The ban was intended to set a benchmark for the minimum level of accuracy expected of newspaper coverage of his administration, Gov. Robert Ehrlich said in an interview on WBAL radio.

"At what point does a monopoly newspaper abuse its privilege, its First Amendment privilege, in making things up, making quotes up, making context up?" the first-term Republican governor said Friday. "I just said this is our minimum benchmark."

Rob Douglas, a WBAL radio host, questioned whether Ehrlich should direct all state government officials not to speak to reporters.

Ehrlich responded, "That's my government. That's my government. I'm the chief executive."

Dear Mr. Ehrlich,

It's not "your government". It's the people's government.

And we want it back.

Yours Truly,
E Pluribus Unum

Support Democratic Corporations

Want to express your political partisanship with your purchasing power. "Choose The Blue" (link) has the answer: only spend your money on those companies that donated predominantly to Democrats. It provides a handy guide to several companies out there to help you decide where to spend your hard earned lucre.

Democrats dysfunctional relationship with Republicans

I recommend the following blog post over on Mathew Gross' blog Deride and Conquer (link):

Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality. Watch them awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the new language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, �Why did they beat me?�

And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before.

They will tell you, every single day.

I think many of us in the Dean movement understand completely what this person is talking about. Democrats have gotten so used to being abused that many of them don't know how to live any other way. Like an abused spouse, they are so afraid of what it might mean to break the cycle of abuse that they are unwilling to risk doing so.

I've often felt over the last few years that the Democrats needed a good intervention.