Remember Ambassador Joseph Wilson? He's the man traveled to Niger and refuted the Yellowcake claim a year before the State of the Union address. Shortly after Wilson revealed that the Bush administration lied in June, Robert Novak reported that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative (she was undercover, and leaking her name and status is illegal). Well, according to CBS News, the Justice Department is investigating whether the White House leaked her name in order to intimidate others in the CIA from coming forward and telling the truth about their lies. Wilson's wife's career is effectively over as an undercover agent since being outed by Novak (and whoever leaked the information). This could be the beginning of a scandal, or it could just die off. Either way, Bush will get more negative press in the coming days, and the yellowcake will come back into the news.

Political consequences: Even if Bush or anyone in his administration aren't charged with anything, this will further erode Bush's trustfulness, a key factor that was holding his poll numbers up. I seriously doubted Bush could go any lower than 49 at the current time, but after this, I think he could very well dip down to about 40-43% approval.

How is the war going?

Yesterday Republican Senators patted Rumsfeld on the back for a job well done and expressed dismay at what they see as the media's exaggeration of bad conditions in Iraq. They say that it is going well, and if Americans saw the truth on the news stations, they'd believe it. Following the progression of their argument, there must be something going on in Iraq that we don't know about that cancels out all of the bad news.

That being said, unless money is growing on trees or something grandiose like that, I doubt any positive news could dispel the negative news. Let's look at what's happening:

About 1-2 soldiers are dying every day.
Dozens of civilians are dying every day.
Iraqi policemen are being attacked and killed.
There is a daily bombing of SOMETHING that kills SOMEONE, and a weekly MAJOR terrorist attack.
The electric grid is still down in most places.
There is weekly sabotage of infrastructure.
Terrorists are organizing.
Saddam hasn't been caught.
Tensions between Shiites and Sunnis is building.
Iraqi Governing Council member Akila al-Hashimi was executed.
No Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found.
No connections to Al Qaida have been found.
No evidence of connections to 9-11 have been found.
UN nations are refusing to give us troop or monetary relief.
The streets in many towns are filled with madness after dusk.

In fairness, I'll post what I think is going right later tonight (it's actually quite a bit), but it does not outweigh the negative news. It doesn't even come close.

Spelling and grammar

It's come to my attention that my spelling is awful and my grammar is awful. Actually, I already knew that, but thanks for pointing it out. Anyway, I started using spell check a week ago - so that should help. But I'm afraid the disjointed sentence fragments (like this one) will probably continue for a while.

For some reason I like to start sentences with the word "But" in this blog...it just feels right. Blogs are pretty informal, so I don't think it's that big of a deal. Hopefully I'll get better. Until then, apologies. I hope the content at least makes up for the lack of structure and prevalence of grammatical errors.

One amusing note to add. When spell checking with the Blogger Spell Checker, the word "blog" comes up as a mispelling.

Clinton conspiracies

Various Clinton conspiracies have been circulating on the web and in conservative circles lately relating to Wesley Clark. Apparently, according to conservatives, the Clintons sent Wesley Clark to weaken the field/cause chaos/clear the way for Hillary/force a Democratic loss in 2004 or some other grand scheme.

Please. Wesley Clark made his decision to run for President back in the winter. In fact, one could argue that he has run a defacto candidacy since then (as I have). Clinton may have pushed Clark to run; there is evidence of that, but there is not a shred of evidence or even innuendo that would predict that Clark is running simply to derail Democrats' chances in 2004 and make sure Hillary can run in 2008. Dick Morris has a rather illogical rant about the subject in the New York Post today.

Arnold's past

Several of my friends haven't seen this article in it's entirety and have relied on word of mouth or rumor, so I thought I'd post it.

Smoking Gun's expose on Arnold

Personally, I think that some of the stuff he says is pretty out there and offensive, while some of the stuff is just standard male locker room talk. Unfortunately for Arnold, he's in the midst of trying to court rabid conservatives away from McClintock, and it's not going to happen thanks to this article.

Judicial retirements?

Where are the Supreme Court retirements that we were promised during the summer? This political scientist is disappointed. That fight would have been more than entertaining, and it would have destroyed the Republican's recently realized compassionate conservative image (one that is based largely on his pandering to the middle on many issues like abortion).

Somehow I don't think Bush had the guts to nominate a staunchly anti-abortion Supreme Court Justice. I've always been one to think he'd nominate a staunchly LIBERTARIAN candidate that happened to meekly support abortion rights, but still would uphold all other Republican values (save anything associated with the Patriot Act).

I really don't think there is even a remote chance Bush can alienate his base enough to make a big difference before the 2004 election. They idolize him in the same semi-irrational way that I idolize Bill Clinton. It's just not going to happen. So, despite what I know about this Administration's anti-abortion policy, I wouldn't expect Bush to nominate an anti-abortion judge, at least not during this term. Next term, should there be one, is a different story.

Echoes of Nazi past

I would like to add that this charge resembles the Nazi charge of a "stab in the back" at the end of WWI (by Jews and Communists). It's paranoid and delusional, and it attempts to silence principled critics of the war. Every time Fox segway's from talking about Ann Coulter's book to the war with, "Are Democratic Presidential candidates giving aid and comfort to the enemy?" they are adding fuel to this fire.

Of course, if that's too extreme for you, then let's go with the always helpful Vietnam analogy. America lost that war because the media turned against the troops (just in case you didn't know).

Bad news helping the enemy?

Today's media notes talks of the media's role in the Iraqi conflict. Some conservatives are claiming that when the media reports only bad news, they help the terrorists cause. That's the stupidest thing I've heard recently from the right.

Let's look at what's causing terrorists to attack us -

THE FACT THAT WE ARE OCCUPYING A MUSLIM COUNTRY

That's about it. I seriously doubt they check the latest Gallup poll, and based on Bush's 2 percent drop, decide to attack (somehow I don't think the terrorists care whether Democrats or Republicans occupy the oval office). Nor do I think terrorists somehow watch American television, analyze the content for positive and negative stories, and then, based on those calculations, decide whether to blow themselves up.

New York Times

I'm going to now spend a minute complaining about the New York Times's performance lately. David Brooks is a bizarre choice for an op-ed columnist. His columns are lame attempts at tongue in cheek humor.

Meanwhile, I'd like to echo some comments of a friend of mine, John Monahan, in saying that I dread the days when Bob Herbert writes a column. Herbert knows what he is writing about - mainly poverty and injustice. But it's just not interesting, and I feel like many of his points are just Democrat talking points/rhetoric (which I generally agree with, but still find cliched and annoying). Herbert and Saffire on the same day is quite unsatisfying.

As much as the "liberal media" myth angers me, I have to admit that I find most of the Times' "straight" news coverage biased liberally. At the Post, there is a clear line between commentary pieces and straight news pieces. At the Times there isn't. But hey, someone has to compete against the right wing cable news/radio propaganda machine.

"Bring our troops home" liberals

There might be a time where Iraq is a hopeless quagmire and we just need to withdraw our troops. We are NOWHERE NEAR that point. We aren't even remotely close. It really isn't going that badly right now - sure, we are losing troops every day and things are getting blown up, but it's not THAT bad. If it stays in the state that its in right now for another year (with daily bombings and killings) then THAT would be bad.

That being said, the post war planning has obviously been atrocious. Ad-hoc war planning is obviously taking place. But despite all of Bush's failures in this realm, we can't just say "bring the troops home"!! Liberals are actually saying this right now, and it's infuriating. We now have a moral obligation to rebuild this country whose infrastructure we destroyed and whose government we did away with. I don't care whether you support the war or not, we still must stay there and finish the job. I want to see the troops home just as much as anyone else, but now is not the time (unless we replace them with tens of thousands of UN peace keepers).

Clark numbers unrealistic?

I don't believe that Clark's high numbers are realistic right now. It's true that he is on a honeymoon with the press and has surged due to his masterful announcement strategy, but I feel that his support is real and substantial. Watch Thursday's debate - if Clark does not completely screw up, then I think his support will be solidified.

In the meantime, poor Howard Dean continues his churn towards inevitable defeat. The forces of the DLC (otherwise known as EVIL if you are some of my liberal friends) are lining up against Dean. They'll wait to take their shots until the last possible moment. Believe it or not, the DLC desperately doesn't want to have to dislodge Dean. Doing so could tear the party apart. But, if necessary, they'll do it. Joe Lieberman will jump out of the race and throw his support to either Kerry or Clark, whoever is polling better at the time (my bet is Clark).

These Dean people are getting panicky. As Talking Points Memo pointed out the other day, for many Dean supporters, it's Dean or nothing. This kind of attitude is unacceptable. Democrats must be willing to support their nominee, no matter what (with the exception of Lieberman...I can't quarrel with people who would not support his Republican-lite candidacy).

Appeals court decision was reversed

Well the 9th circuit decision was reversed by a group of 11 judges. I think this was a wise decision simply for practical reasons. Although I see the logic in the 3 judge panel's original decision, I am 1. convinced that the recall will get rejected October 7th, 2. sort of dubious about a three judge panel intervening in such a clearly partisan way, and 3. bored to death with this recall and eager for it to be over. Gray Davis isn't Bill Clinton, but he is definitely the comeback kid of California. It would be quite amusing if he kept his job and put all of this behind him.

Beating an incumbent

Viewpoint 1:
Let's all be realistic here. Even as piece after piece of good news flows in, it is very difficult to unseat an incumbent President. Clinton's numbers were pretty low in the fall of 1995, and as were Reagan's (as a Republican operative points out). The unseating of an incumbent president is an event. It's a political milestone, and it usually signifies a huge change in the electorate. Think Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, or FDR. It will be quite difficult for Democrats to achieve this. Is there really a cultural groundswell building against the incumbent party? I'm not so sure.

Viewpoint 2:
Unlike Clinton and Reagan, whose numbers were on the way up, George Bush's numbers are on the way down, much like Jimmy Carter and his father's. Plus, one could argue that this is a different era: the "red vs blue era". In the "red vs blue" era, a seemingly popular president could lose because there are so few toss up states. The "red" states and the "blue" states are all solidly Republican or Democrat. There are only about 8 - 10 true toss ups, a rare thing. So, the argument goes, even if there isn't a true cultural revolution against President Bush and the Republicans, it might still be possible to win the presidency by running a better campaign with a competent candidate. I say competent because in the Red vs Blue Era, it doesn't really matter much who the party's nominee is, just that they aren't hugely flawed.

Saffire is a loon

Today's NYTimes op-ed by William Saffire sounds like a right-wing fundraising pitch. Read it for your own amusement. I personally doubt anyone with any sense will let Hillary Clinton near the 2004 race.

There has been alot of DLC hatemongering out there on the left recently. So I went to their website and checked it out. Al From posted a "Blueprint for beating Bush" on the website. Honestly, I couldn't agree more. He quotes Clinton's three step plan which includes:

1. Tell the public you'll keep what they like about Bush.
2. Educate them about what's wrong with Bush.
3. Show them what you'll give them that a second Bush administration won't.

Democrats can't just react to EVERYTHING Bush did and reverse it. Tax cuts are popular. Any attempt to rescend tax cuts on the middle class is suicidal. A substantial portion of our deficit can be recovered by simply reversing the tax cuts on the richest 5% of our citizenry, as Wesley Clark proposes. Middle class tax cuts need to be left alone.

As much as people whine and rail against the DLC, they are realists when it comes to the American electorate. Those who propose raising taxes on the middle class (Gephardt, Kucinnich, Dean (sometimes), Bob Graham) really aren't thinking through their position.

Why waiting was smart

The Atlantic Monthly has a great profile of Wesley Clark this month. In it they mention the genius of his decision to essentially create a "shadow candidacy" for the last few months. When asked about his intentions, he would always quip, "I'm not a candidate. I don't even belong to a political party." Saying this established a perception that he was a moderate. He may very well be, we'll all have to find out when he makes major policy speeches in the next few weeks.

Anyway, perceptions, true or untrue, are very important in campaigns. Reality isn't really all that important. The electorate pays very little attention. Things that are hard to measure like momentum and likeability pretty much determine campaigns. If Clark is seen as a moderate, then he would annihilate Bush in the general election campaign. Right now Dean is perceived as a liberal extremist by mainstream America. It's not true, but it's the way people feel. When people see Dean, they think "angry" or "liberal" or "peacenik". When they see Clark, they think "centrist" or "hero" or "dream candidate". Democrats have two options - they can try to change people's minds about Dean, or they can go with Clark or another more moderate candidate. People aren't paying much attention to the campaign right now, so it may still be possible to repair Dean's standing amongst those wishy washy moderate voters that candidates so covet.