Great Robert Scheer (LA Times) column and Reagan sucks part 2

This column by Scheer details how Reagan and Bush I aided and comforted Saddam Hussein. Recently declassified documents add more evidence. Here are some key paragraphs:

the release of official documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, that detail how the U.S. government under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush nurtured and supported Saddam Hussein despite his repeated use of chemical weapons. The work of the National Security Archive, a dogged organization fighting for government transparency, has cast light on the trove of documents that depict in damning detail how the United States, working with U.S. corporations including Bechtel, cynically and secretly allied itself with Hussein's dictatorship. The evidence undermines the unctuous moral superiority with which the current American president, media and public now judge Hussein, a monster the U.S. actively helped create.

This plays into a point that I've been trying to make to Reagan worshippers everywhere: Ronald Reagan's idiotic policies helped create the situation we're in today. He aided Hussein and funded the radicals in Afghanistan that later turned into the Taliban and parts of Al Qaida. These aren't conspiracy theories about Vince Foster or Sudan offering to turn Bin Laden over to Clinton - they're facts.

I simply don't understand why Right-Wingers worship Reagan the way they do. By all accounts I've seen he hardly even believed in God.

It was Rumsfeld and Shultz who told Hussein and his emissaries that U.S. statements generally condemning the use of chemical weapons would not interfere with relations between secular Iraq and the Reagan administration, which took Iraq off the terrorist-nations list and embraced Hussein as a bulwark against fundamentalist Iran. Ironically, the U.S supported Iraq when it possessed and used weapons of mass destruction and invaded it when it didn't.

WaPost

Read this "Stop-Dean" article in the Washington Post. It details candidates' strategies to stop Dean.

Clark approaching Kerry in New Hampshire

As Mickey Kaus points out today, Clark is approaching Kerry in New Hampshire.

The Goldwater argument

Some Deaniacs contend that even if Dean doesn't win, the army of liberal activists could help the Democrats win in the future. Jonathan Chait puts forward a more likely scenario - that Dean's supporters (many of whom are under the impression that Dean is highly electable and will win) will end up "deeply embittered from the party and mainstream politics" after this election. So instead of a newly energized party, we could end up with a demoralized party that could lose elections for years to come. Just a thought.

Economic recovery?

In my haste to dismiss those who look at today's economy and see the Great Depression, I perhaps went too far. The economy isn't great. And the jobs MIGHT not come back before November 2004. You never know. I'm actually not betting on it - especially if the Fed has to start raising rates again. Read this LA Times piece on underemployment and unreported unemployment(but not if you're an Econ major or have ever been to college - it's somewhat obvious stuff).

My main points still hold true no matter what the economy REALLY does.

1. Democrats spent the past 4 years focusing on the supposed doom and gloom of what was in reality a slightly downtrodden economy.
2. Republicans will spend every waking moment of the next year focusing on the supposed splendor of what is in reality a meager recovery.
The Democrats may have set themselves up for the fall this time.

Village Voice

I'm really having fun with this Deanaphobe Blog...read this one. It makes you feel sorry for the poor Village Voice writer.

Here's another great anti-Dean blog. This guy happens to support Kerry (which I find equally disgusting) but it can be forgiven because I think he's from Massachusetts or something.

The "Stop criticizing Dean. You'll ruin it!" argument addressed

Many Deaniacs (including the biggest one: Howard Dean) think that attacks on Dean during the primary season will hurt his chances during the general election.

Picture the world as they see it: Next June, George Bush's goons can't come up with any attack ads. Their campaign stalls. One day, while surfing the net, Karl Rove happens upon my blog. Bingo! Now he has all of the material he needs to attack Dean - and courtesy of yours truly!

But don't worry: I'll delete all anti-Dean content from my blog after Dean gets the nomination. I'd urge all other Democrats who have criticized Dean to do the same. That way, Rove won't have any material to use in attack ads.

Please...

Deanaphobe blog

For those of you who are too lazy or distrustful to click my links, here are some excerpts from the Dean Hate Blog:

It's not entirely clear to me why I've taken such an intense dislike to Howard Dean. Yes, I find him arrogant and frequently dishonest. Yes, I'm certain his nomination would lead to a political disaster of historic, and possibly biblical, proportions. And, yes, I'm continuously dumbfounded that a number of highly intelligent people I know have convinced themselves that his nomination is a good thing, or at least that it's not an unambiguously bad thing. But somehow the whole of my loathing for Dean is greater than the sum of its parts. So I've decided to start a blog on TNR's website to indulge that loathing.

Biblical proportions? I love the hyperbole! Here's more:

I realize that there is a certain irony here. Earlier this year I wrote a piece for TNR that defended hatred of President Bush. (I argued that hating Bush may lead to irrationality--rooting against the capture of Saddam Hussein, or, say, nominating Howard Dean--but it's not irrational in and of itself.) But recently I'm finding that Dean hatred is crowding out Bush hatred in my mental space. It's not that I think Dean would be a worse president than Bush--he'd probably be better, although that's extremely faint praise given that Bush is the worst president of the last 80 years. Bush is like the next-door neighbor who lets his dog poop on your lawn and his kid shoot bb's at your house and who says something irritating to you every day on his way to work. Dean, on the other hand, is like the ne'er-do-well who's dating your daughter. You realize the neighbor is a worse person than the boyfriend, but the boyfriend (and the frightening prospect that he'll become your son-in-law) consumes more of your attention.

He goes on to claim that the Dean nomination would cause the end of modern liberalism as we know it. Over the top, but great.

The author of this blog is Jonathan Chait (the man who authored the infamous Bush hatred piece a few months ago...you know, the "I hate the way he walks, I hate the way he talks" one.)

Speaking of TNR, Daily Kos (a Dean worship blog) is starting a campaign against them. According to Kos, TNR is a "center-right" magazine.

All of you who have read Daily Kos know that they are simply a "those right-wingers are taking us off a cliff" blog. As true as that is, I try not to be that simplistic (as do TNR, TPM, and Nicholas Kristof for that matter - that's why they are great sources of insight and information). It's not always black and white. George W. Bush - he's a simpleton, there's no doubt about it - but he really believes his policies will "make the pie higher" or defeat the "evil doers" or other such nonsense. He divides the world into good and evil, believes privatization fixes every problem, and America as God's gift to the world. But Dean is just the other side of the same coin. You can't be against anything and everything that George Bush stands for. There is a gray area on some issues. People like Chait, Marshall, and Kristof can see that - and frankly, so can most of this country. As much as I bash the uninformed swing voters (40% of our electorate)...and I do bash them often...at least they realize (or pretend to realize) that the right answer isn't always on one side of the political spectrum.

And once again I've devolved into a rant - and when I read it tomorrow, I might not have any idea what I'm was thinking the night before. But that's what's great about blogging.

Deanaphobes Website

I discovered a Deanaphobes section on TNR...kind of amusing. No wonder sites like Daily Kos are waging war against TNR.

Here are some samples:
Dean insults religious folks.

An explanation of the Deanaphobe blog.

I've found my new favorite website.

Clinton-like Teflon?

It's becoming clear to me that George Bush might be wearing some sort of Clinton-like Teflon armor. Look at what has happened over the last year:

1. The post-war planning has been a miserable failure. Conservative columnists Robert Novak and George Will agree, as does William Kristol. This isn't partisan rhetoric. The "cake walk/roses" scenario didn't play out - in fact, far from it, and we're paying for it in American lives.

2. For whatever reason, it doesn't matter whether Iraq was a threat. When Diane Sawyer interviewed Bush, whenever she asked him about WMD, he just said, "Saddam was a threat," and ignored the question. Clearly they didn't have any weapons. In fact, they tried unsuccessfully to acquire short range missiles (they weren't able to get them). Saddam never wanted to threaten his own stay in power by acquiring WMD.

When will Republican partisan hacks admit that it matters whether our President mislead us about the threat that Saddam posed? When will the public hold him accountable?

I don't think they will. I'm convinced (and always have been) that Thomas Friedman was right - Americans accepted this war simply because they were angry and wanted someone to pay for 9-11. Shortly after Bush issued the 48 hour ultimatum to Saddam and declared war, I heard someone say, "Good. We're going go kill some A-Rabs." Sadly, I think that's the simplicity with which most of our citizens operate. For some people, songs like "Have You Forgotten" contain all the justification for a war that they need. It's emotional simplicity.

There are intellectuals, particularly amongst the neoconservative (and including Liberals like Friedman and Christopher Hitchens), who truly believe that ridding the Middle East of Saddam will transform the region and bring Democracy and peace to a shamed people. Unfortunately, that's not what the war was sold on, and that's not why Americans supported it. Will the Republican Party, whose core base thinks that Arabs are Godless towel wearing maniacs, actually stay the course and improve the Middle East? Only time will tell. Will the American public hold Bush responsible for his outright lies about Saddam's weapons program? From "We've found the weapons of mass destruction," in May to the infamous Yellowcake lie, this administration has proven itself incapable of telling the truth about foreign policy. Remember when the Administration insisted that our troops would be out of Iraq by the end of the Summer? Remember when they assured us that the war would cost less than 100 billion? And yet, Bush looks posed to win reelection. Someone in the Republican Party must have learned something from Bill Clinton.

Clinton/9-11

I had a reader response to my assertion that Clinton wasn't responsible for 9-11. Let me clarify my opinion on this:
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9-11 is certainly a collective intelligence failure of the US Government. That failure encompasses both the Clinton and Bush Administrations - both neglected the growing threat of airplanes being used as weapons, even though both administrations were given evidence that this was possible.

However, it's idiotic to blame either administration for an act perpetrated by men with box cutters. This blindsided everyone and it's just partisan politics trying to throw the blame around. Clinton paid more attention to terrorism than any President in the history of our country - look at the offices he established within FEMA, and the plans hatched to kill Osama (those who attack Clinton for failing to get Osama are not so critical of the Bush Administration's failure to capture him).
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As for supposed "gutting" of the military under Clinton - the Cold War was over and we didn't need to out spend Russia anymore. Would an extra 50 billion spent on the military by Clinton have kept those box cutters out of the hands of terrorists? Probably not.

The same goes for intelligence spending. We had literally armies of spies in all of the former Soviet states and they simply weren't needed anymore. Naturally after the, Cold War, there would be cuts in the intelligence budget. It just makes sense - and like the military cuts, they began late in the Reagan years and continued through the Bush and Clinton years as the Soviet threat diminished. Would extra intelligence spending have helped prevent 9-11? Good god no.

Listen - here's my terrorism rant. If the terrorists want to kill us and sacrifice their lives to do so, then they'll get away with it whenever and where ever. How hard would it be for some maniac to strap a bomb to himself and blow it up in a minor league baseball game where security is low? Or to fire a shoulder launched missile (easily imported through our porous ports) at a Nuclear power plant? A color coded system/a few billion dollars in military/intelligence spending/or a war against a secular dictator in Iraq is not going to prevent future terrorist attacks. We're not doing enough and throwing money at the problem, as always, doesn't fix anything. We have to win the battle for hearts and minds (so said Donald Rumsfeld in his famous leaked memo, and I agree). Rumsfeld admitted that nothing dramatic has been done to do that. Maybe Democracy in Iraq will help, maybe not.

We have to root the terrorists out in the countries where they live. It's a tiresome refrain that you hear from Democrats all of the time - but we have terrorist camps in Pakistan, terrorists hiding in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and terrorists training in Lebanon. By diverting the army to Iraq (Clinton's army, might I add) we wasted an opportunity to root out more terrorists, and we created a situation where we're harvesting more terrorists by clumsily handling the postwar planning. People laud Bush's record on terrorism constantly, but what has he done? Can you tell me anything? He attacked Afghanistan, something any president to the right of Noam Chompski would have done. But are we safer? The CIA says that Al Qaida recruiting is up. Why? Because other countries hate us more now than they ever have, especially in the Middle East. Is it our fault? No - it's Bush's fault. "Bring em' on"? They call that bulletin board material in sports. "Crusade"? More bulletin board material. I just listed two ways that our president being careless with his language undoubtedly caused terrorist recruitment. The LA Times recently sent Uranium through a port on the West Coast. It's terribly easy to do stuff like that, you know why? A tight federal budget has led to cuts in funding for first responders and border and port control. That's a failure in policy. We have too much money being spent on a Medicare bill that everyone on both sides of the isle agrees is horrible. No-bid contracts are being handed out, further bilking the American people. That's a failure in policy. That's real, not some conspiracy theory found on the internet about Bill Clinton systematically weakening our country.

Thinning army

Read the lead-Ed in the New York Times today.

Will(iam) columns

Reason #43 why Howard Dean's insurgence ticks me off: it's caused me to agree with George Will and William Saffire...

update, 11:47pm: What I failed to mention is that Saffire and Will probably have their own motives in promoting Dean as the Democrat's nominee. They aim to scare Democrats into voting for Dean.

DLC trashing Dean

The DLC has been trashing Dean lately, which is no surprise. I agree with many of their points - but that's why I'm posting this. I think that if Dean gets the nomination, the DLC's days may be numbered. PACs like the DLC can't take soft money like non-affiliated PACs like the Coalition for Progressive Values or Moveon.org. Plus, if Lieberman is the DLC's spokesman right now, that also doesn't bode well for them.

Exactly why I don't like Dean

Read this quote by Dean today regarding his supporters:

"I don't know where they're going to go, but they're certainly not going to vote for a conventional Washington politician." Support for my candidacy is "not transferable anymore."

Dean is probably right, but encouraging this sort of all or nothing mentality does two things:

1. It encourages Dean's supporters to simply stay home if he does not receive the nomination.
2. It encourages people like me to think that Dean supporters are in the Green Party (completely incapable of strategic voting).

I've been arguing lately that Dean is antagonizing the moderate wing of the Democratic Party in order to get the nomination, and this is further evidence of that trend. Will they coalesce and form a resistance against him? Probably not - there are too many candidates out there. Hopefully three or more will quit the race after New Hampshire.

Changing my mind on Hillary

My opinion of Hillary Clinton has shifted quite a bit in the last few months. I now see her as very electable. Much of the country does as well.

Conventional Wisdom

Conventional wisdom says that Dean will attract higher Democratic turnout in 2004. I don't think he will. I think many moderate/centrist Democrats (the ones that Dean has been sniping for past 2 years) will simply stay home (especially in Southern states that Dean would probably never step foot in). In fact, I wouldn't rule out the Democrats losing 6-8 Senate seats next year as well as a number of seats in the House because of this trend. Imagine that: Republicans nearly having the power to block a filibuster. A look at the races in the Senate doesn't provide much to be optimistic about:

Possible Democratic pickups:
Alaska: Lisa Murkowski was appointed to the Senate by her father, Frank, after he became Governor in 2002 thereby vacating his seat. That alone should give her probably opponent, former two-term Democratic Governor Tony Knowles, plenty to run on. The problem is: this is a Presidential election year and it will take a split ticket for the Democrats to take Alaska for the first time in a while. Outlook: Leaning towards the Republicans.
Illinois: Peter Fitzgerald decided to retire next year, and former Governor Jim Edgar (R) opted out of the race. So that puts the Democrats at an advantage. The problem: They have about 10 candidates running for the nomination right now. The best bet to win the nomination is businessman Blair Hull. Nevertheless, I expect the Democrats to retake this state in 2004.
Oklahoma: Don Nickles is retiring, and since the Democrats won the governor's race in 2002, there might be hope, right? Think again. Oklahoma usually votes for the Republican nominee for President at a 60-40 clip. Ouch. While a competitive race is possible in Oklahoma, the Republicans will probably keep it. This is the Democrats second strongest chance to take a seat.
Pennsylvania: The Democrats best chance of taking Arlen Spector (R)'s seat is that he is beaten in the primary by the more conservative Congressmen Pat Toomes. That's a long shot, however, as Spector has support from the White House.

Possible Republican pickups:
Florida: You heard it hear last: Mel Martinez (R) will replace Bob Graham as the Senator from Florida.
Georgia: Zell Miller is retiring. He will most certainly be replaced by a Republican, especially since both former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young and Michelle Nunn (former Majority Leader Sam Nunn's daughter) have both declined to run. Right now the Democrats don't even have a candidate. Anything short of George Bush firing missiles at Georgia would probably not be enough for the Democrats to keep this seat, although Start Here wonders if even that would be enough.
Louisiana: John Breaux is out, so the Democrats need to find a strong candidate. Louisiana has bucked the recent Republican trend in the South, so it will be interesting to see what happens. However, with Dean on the ticket and Bush strong in the South, I doubt the Democrats can hold the state.
North Carolina: John Edwards is retiring and even if he's on the ticket in 2004, Democrats have little hope in 2004. First of all, they don't have a strong nominee. Erskine Bowles will probably give it another whirl against popular, well-funded, and well-organized GOP Congressman Richard Burr. Looks like another likely GOP pickup.
South Carolina: With Fritz Hollings (D) retiring, Democrats can kiss South Carolina goodbye. Republicans have a whole crop of strong candidates to run against the potential Democratic nominee, including a former Governor.

So, let's add those up: We have the Democrats probably taking Illinois, and the Republicans taking Florida, Georgia, Louisianan, North Carolina, and South Carolina. That gives the GOP 55 Senators and the Democrats 45 (counting Jeffords). It won't get much worse than that for Democrats, and if Iraq turns drastically worse (which is certainly highly possible), things could change rapidly in their favor. If Dean upgrades himself from a disaster to a total disaster (I'm talking VP nominees turning him down or the Party Establishment turning their backs on him) then it could conceivably get worse. What happens when relatively safe Senators like Tom Daschle publicly support a Presidential nominee who is polling in the lower 30s?

Now 55 Senate seats certainly will not break a filibuster. Plus, two Democrats who usually buck the party and vote against filibusters, Breaux and Miller, are retiring. But make no mistake: despite Republican control of the Senate, it is a relatively liberal place right now. John McCain, Lincoln Chafee, and Olympia Snowe usually vote with the Democrats. A few pickups by the Republicans would change the balance quite a bit. Bush could pass virtually anything he wanted.

Clark/Clinton connection building

Clark has become the first nominee to run an ad featuring a clip of Bill Clinton (Clinton is pinning the Congressional Medal of Honor on Clark's shoulder). Hopefully it will only be a matter of time before Clinton makes public gestures towards Clark.

Iowa Electronic Market update

Check out the new prices for 2004 Presidential vote share. Clark and Kerry are tied with Bush. Lieberman is behind .06 to .04 and Dean is behind .17 to .35. Gephardt is the only candidate ahead with .32 to .27. Check out the charts for yourself.

In the meanwhile, Dean has lost support in the nomination market. He is now worth .63 (he was as high as .81). Clark is second with .13, followed by Kerry with .07 and Gephardt with .05.

Classic Atlantic Monthly

Keep this argument in mind when you rant about how Bush has "lost 3 million jobs" and other nonsense.

Paul Anderson vomit alert

Joe Lieberman thinks we should have more religion in politics. Furthermore, he thinks people want to hear his "snarky" (using Joe Conason's word) condescending scriptural babble. Somebody needs to remind this guy that 80% of Democrats hate him with a passion.

Dean's not going to crash and burn in the general election...

Of course not...