Clark's strategic sweater wearing

I'm not sure I support this...although his poll numbers have gone up, starting with the sweater wearing (apparently designed to appeal Clark to women or possibly to tick me off).

Oh well, I'll support Clark, Cos sweaters or not.

60 minutes Sunday

I strongly urge everyone to watch 60 Minutes Sunday where former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill will be interviewed. He recently called Bush a "blind man in a room full of deaf people".

He also said that Bush began planning the attack on Iraq immediately upon entering office.

Highlights:

"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," he tells Stahl. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do is a really huge leap."

and

[i]O'Neill also is quoted saying in the book that President Bush was so disengaged in cabinet meetings that he "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people."

and

O'Neill is also quoted in the book as saying the administration's decision-making process was so flawed that often top officials had no real sense of what the president wanted them to do, forcing them to act on "little more than hunches about what the president might think."
A lack of dialogue, according to O'Neill, was the norm in cabinet meetings he attended. And it was similar in one-on-one meetings, says O'Neill. Of his first such meeting with the president, O'Neill says, "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage [him] on...I was surprised it turned out me talking and the president just listening...It was mostly a monologue."

Iraq getting worse

Well I've been holding my tongue about this for a while because I have a good record of predicting these things...but I think Iraq has been getting progressively worse over the last couple of weeks. There's:

1. The violent protests
and
2. The suicide bomber
and
3. The blackhawk shot down (scroll down)
and
4. The car bombings at a police station

...all in the last couple of days.

I also noticed a report in the Times where the Bremer tried to take the oil away from the Kurds and the Kurds rebuffed him. The Kurds have been pushing for (and expect) autonomy - the governing council has actually promised it to them. They won't get it - at least not at the level of what the experienced before the war.

Kucinich

Well, apparently vegetable man raised about 1.5 million in the 4th quarter and still has about 1 million on hand. He might just shave some points off of Dean's lead in some crucial states. Maybe.

Virginians

Here is the link to have an absentee ballot sent to you in Virginia.

VP analysis

Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball recently did some analysis of possible VP candidates (assuming Dean wins the nomination). Richardson tops his list (he recently pulled himself out of VP consideration) along with Even Bayh, Tom Harkin, Karl Levin, and some others.

I still think Gephardt would be the strongest VP candidate (besides Richardson of course). The job losses, as paltry as they've been, have been concentrated in manufacturing. Unions have lost alot of jobs, and Gephardt, for whatever reason, has a strong appeal to those people.

Nader

Should Nader run, I doubt he'll take many votes from the Democrat. What he WILL do is attack the nominee from the left and force him to shore up their liberal support (thereby possibly alienating swing voters).

There is NOTHING good about Nader running. Last time he arguably delivered some close Senate races to the Democrats, (Oregon being a key example) but I don't see that happening this time.

NH irregularities

TPM provides some info:

Here's the scoop on the ARG poll and the comments in their daily poll analysis suggesting that someone was telling older independent voters that they weren't eligible to vote in the Democratic primary.

This afternoon I spoke to Dick Bennett, president of ARG. And here's what he told me.

On Wednesday evening, ARG interviewers (i.e., the folks who call you on the phone) started noticing that a number of older independent voters were screening themselves out of the survey because they'd been called by another campaign and told that they wouldn't be eligible to vote because they'd missed the deadline to declare as Democrats.

But that's not how New Hampshire law works. Independents (called undeclared voters in the state) can vote in either primary. And they don't have to decide till they're at the polling station.

ARG's interviewers kept hearing the same thing on Thursday night and Bennett told TPM he found out about it when one of his supervisors asked him whether the voting law in the state had been changed.

Bennett said his interviewers had not compiled a list or numbers of how many people they called who had mentioned this. But his interviewers apparently spoke to quite a few respondents each evening who had gotten these calls.

Based on that information, Bennett decided to mention it in his daily poll analysis.

I'm wondering - who would want to keep old/independent voters from voting in New Hampshire?

Curious.

Clark-Gephardt ticket?

Why not? Gephardt seems destined to lose in Iowa (about 10 days away). What will he do after that? Drop out, of course. Then what? How will he stay relevant?

How best to assure himself a spot on the ticket then to endorse someone. Who will he endorse? Clark or Dean? That's the question. A Clark-Gephardt ticket would be formidable. Something to think about....

Right-wing watch

I'm going to start watching right-wing groups and reporting what they're doing. Why? Because it's amusing.

On this site, some right-wingers aim to reinstate a ban on cursing on the air.

Kurdish problem

Here's a decent Times piece on the possible sellout of the Kurds.

Iowa markets

The Iowa political stock market has Clark up to .21. That's pretty high. Dean has been steadily declining over the last month.

Oops

I implicitly blamed Bush on the woes of the economy in my last post. Oops. It's PROBABLY not his fault (at least not according to my understanding of economics). BUT Bush has been claiming for 4 years that he'd fix the economy, so if he fails to do so, that means something. He promised some asinine amount of jobs would be created with his tax cuts (I don't remember, was it 3.8 million) and so far hardly any have cropped up. So that means something. It is a legitimate point to attack Bush on.

I still contend that the economy will probably get slightly better (enough that Bush can claim victory) and the Democrats who made the SLIGHT downturn of the economy a huge issue will have that blow up in their face. But who knows - maybe I'm horribly wrong. Economists have a tough time predicting what the economy will do, and I'm certainly not an economist.

Latest right-wing fascination

Anyone notice that the latest right-wing fascination the movement of jobs overseas? Well duh...this has been going on for a couple of decades now...Gee, could this be a ploy to shift the blame for the economy from Bush to some darker skinned person in another country? Moneyline with Lou Dobbs (the show that featured a live performance of "Have You Forgotten" shortly before the Iraq War) has been doing a series all week on "Jobs moving overseas".

My conspiracy theories aside, free trade has become a hot button issue again. Gephardt was always AGAINST free trade (or FOR pandering to unions...I forget which), but other Democrats like Howard Dean and John Kerry are opportunistically rallying against it as well.

I've been watching the Dobbs series this week and I've noticed that he often reads letters. None of them in favor of free trade, all of them containing pseudo-racist rants against the proverbial "other" guy getting their jobs.

Trade is one of those weird issues that pops up in both parties and ideologies in odd forms. For example, conservative elites (businessmen, economists, etc.) are for free trade, but conservative non-elites (blue collar workers, umm...people who write letters to Moneyline with Lou Dobbs...) tend to be against free trade. They don't want their jobs going to some one in another country - some jobs are America's god given right, they argue implicitly.

Liberals who don't favor free trade often promote environmental concerns and labor safety/fairness concerns. However, with the rise of Bill Clinton (and in the tradition of JFK) came a group of pro-business Democrats who favored free trade because it opens markets and actually improves foreign countries in the long run by allowing them to compete against American goods (and it provides them with employment, that, while cheap, is better than what they're used to).

Then you have Democrats who pander to labor unions. I guess calling it pandering is probably a bit problematic. They'd describe it as "protecting American jobs". In the long run, of course, America is benefited. We get a healthy consumer base in other countries to sell our products to. And we get rid of low paying manufacturing jobs and continue to transfer our economy into what might eventually become an exclusively white collar economy. That's the hope at least.

Let's go to the moon!

Actually, let's not.

Today Bush "boldly" proposed sending men to the moon and pointlessly colonizing it. Many in the NASA world (as well as the military contractor world) are buzzing about with glee at the President's proposal. One NASA scientist compared colonizing the moon with colonizing the New World (without the millions of Native Americans to slaughter I suppose). When a pundit asked him "What would the benefit of colonizing the moon be?" his answer was two fold:

1. We'd gain geological information about the moon.
2. Our nation's spirits would be lifted.

First of all, the colonists who invaded the Americas were seeking to make a profit by harvesting crops. The only crop we could harvest from the Moon seems to be information for geology textbooks. For some reason, I doubt we could make up the billions in cost by publishing the Moon Geology Textbook, First Edition.

As for number two - my spirits would certainly not be lifted by billions of dollars wasted on a pointless moon colony. You know what would raise my spirits? The gutting of NASA (except for crucial departments that deal with satellites). The money could be spent on something less worthless. Furthermore, I doubt anyone would even pay attention to another moon landing. It's an empty proposal that tries to mimic John Kennedy's truly revolutionary decree in 1961.

Bizarre right-wing pundits

Andrew Sullivan, William Saffire, and now Peggy Noonan all continue to worry about a Republican blowout win. They say it will lead to a tyrannical Republican Party with no credible opposition. I find this curious...more later.

O'Neill confirms what liberals already suspected

George Bush is an "disengaged President" according to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. He pays little attention at cabinet meetings and seems generally uninterested. This is a dynamite allegation in my eyes....O'Neill goes on to call Bush:

"blind man in a roomful of deaf people" during Cabinet meetings.

Liberals have long suspected that both Presidents Bush and Reagan paid little attention to the business of governing and left much of it to their Cabinets. This seems to confirm that notion (at least for Bush).

Labor force numbers poor

Here's the Washington Post story...

But the Bush Administration will still claim victory. Unemployment fell to 5.7% (even though it was simply because of discouraged workers).

Weird footnote to the ARG poll

Over the past 2 days of calling, a number of older respondents registered as undeclared voters have reported that they have received telephone calls from a campaign informing them that they will not be allowed to vote in the Democratic primary because they missed the deadline to switch parties. A respondent discovered, however, that when she told the caller that she was thinking about voting for Howard Dean, the caller told her that she would be eligible to vote.

I'm not sure what to make of this. The New Hampshire primary is an open primary, meaning anyone can vote in it (Democrats, Independents, and Republicans can vote in either race). At first glance, it appears that Dean is push polling New Hampshire independents and trying to make sure they don't show up - but I need more evidence. The ARG people don't cite any sources or names, so this could be what most allegations of voter fraud are: simply rumors.

Clark continues surge in New Hampshire

Check out these poll numbers.

Harkin endorses Dean

Tom Harkin, Senator from Iowa, has endorsed Howard Dean. This is great news for the Dean campaign and great news for the Clark campaign. Clark needs Dean to win in Iowa and crush Clark's potential rivals, setting up a Dean vs Clark two man race. Harkin's endorsement wipes out the mini-controversy earlier today involving some of Dean's past statements regarding the Iowa Caucus.

One more time - middle class taxes

Let me explain one more time why a middle class tax increase is idiotic:

1. It barely raises any revenue. It just doesn't - the real government revenue comes from rich people, and as we all remember, most of the tax cuts went to the rich. But the POLITICAL COST is huge. It far outweights the paltry benefits that any extra revenue would provide.

2. It puts Democratic Senate candidates in more conservatives states (especially in the South) in the precarious position of choosing between their Presidential nominee and what their potential constituents want (In the South, they don't want higher taxes - I promise you). So they either embarass the nominee by not supporting his plan, or they lose their election.

3. It would never pass in Congress. I don't care if we had 65 Democrats in the Senate and the same percentage in the House - it still wouldn't pass. But the fact is, we'll most certainly be dealing with a Republican House and closely divided Senate for at least 2 more years. It certainly wouldn't pass in either of those bodies.

Dean's plan is rather complicated - he wants to 1. repeal ALL of Bush's cuts, and THEN 2. give the middle class relief. Huh? That's right - he wants to raise taxes on everyone then lower them on some. Got it?

Powell delivers another blow to his own credibility

The game is up Colin. It's time to admit that the WMD were never there.

Enough with the pictures...answer this:

Has Howard Dean been reading my blog? I'll give him credit - this was a responsible step towards becoming what he's been attacking for months now: a "Damage Control Democrat" (Or as I like to call it: effectively governing in a two party system).

I'm honestly a bit surprised. What led to this turn of events? I'll tell you what: the media finally starting doing some real reporting on these candidates. They finally told us what the difference between them was (the answer: nothing major except for the tax issues). And of course framing issues (like which candidates frame themselves as strong on foreign policy and which candidates frame themselves as intolerant of religious folks)

Does this help Howard Dean? Yeah, it sure does. If he proposes some middle class tax relief, Bush can't paint him as a tax raiser. Does it matter that he spent the last year calling for a middle class tax increase? Yes, that still matters. In other words, this is probably too little too late for Dean.

On the subject of pictures...

Here's one of Clark in New Hampshire recently.


Sort of embarrassing...

The emperor

My brother came up with a new name for Joseph Lieberman: He's the emperor from Star Wars. Check out this picture:



Frightening.

update: Ok, so my brother didn't come up with this.

The "we need a strong Democrat" argument

Dean's apologists often say "we need a strong Democrat to counter Bush." They add that in "2002, we had wimpy Republcan-lite Democrats that lost."

First of all, the Democrats in 2002 only lost 2 Senate seats. They hardly "lost". Had Paul Wellstone not died, they would probably have the Senate (along with Chafee bolting from the GOP).

Secondly, let's say the Democrats lost in 2002. And let's pretend Democrats had moved to the left in 2002 and run as liberals (and proposed, as Dean does, an increase in taxes on the middle class). Does anyone truly believe that Democrats would have won in 2002 using that strategy? It certainly wouldn't have worked in Arkansas or Louisiana (two close Democrat wins). It MOST certainly couldn't have worked in conservative Georgia or North Carolina. It's hogwash.

I understand the theory - if Democrats run as liberals, their base will come out and support them. If they run as moderates, their base will stay home.

Listen - every poll I've ever seen has the country broken down as follows:

20% liberal
40% moderate
40% conservative

Of those 40% moderates, roughly 10% are Democrats and 10% Republicans. The country is not overwhelmingly liberal. They hate higher taxes. They want to go kill Arabs in far away countries (or, more precisely, they want someone in the army to go do it for them).

What did the Democrats run on in 2002? They ran on Medicare - they warned that Republicans wanted to destroy it (which they did with their Medicare reform package). Did they lose? No - they lost two seats. A year after the American public rallied around George W. Bush to the tune of 90% approval - like mindless sheep - the Democrats only lost two seats in the Senate and a couple in the House. That's not a loss.

What happened was that pundits and pollsters predicted Democratic pickups, and their loss went against conventional wisdom. A shock to conventional wisdom makes for a big story, and the media swarmed around the supposed Republican victory.

Another problem I have with denigrating "2002 Democrats" is that none of the Democrats are behaving in that manner anymore (with the exception of Lieberman). Clark did not hold elective office in 2002. Gephardt's economic policy is so far to the left it's unbelievable. I'll concede Kerry - he was always a liberal's liberal, and his vote for the war in 2002 was cowardly and strategic. John Edwards is running a populist Al Gore style campaign (people vs the powerful).

The Deaniacs would have you believe that it's either Dean or a crop of Republican-lites, and that's not true.

Does Iraq matter?

With all due respect to the families of those fighting in Iraq (and those doing the fighting): No. It doesn't matter as far as 2004 is concerned. Roughly 450 soldiers have died, and I think that's tragic - but most of the American public doesn't agree. Or at least they think 450 soldiers (whose deaths were spread out over a couple hundred days) are worth the cost (whatever the justification for the war is THIS week).

I think people are actually comforted by the fact that our soldiers are fighting Muslim extremists in Iraq (or "the central front in the war on terror", as Bush calls it). It makes them feel like our country is actually doing something to respond to 9-11. Because 9-11 really affected people in a way that most liberals don't understand. I have to admit, it just sort of bounced off of me. I was sad for a week or so, and then I moved on. So it's hard for me to understand the anger and resentment that millions of Americans still feel to this day towards the Middle East. I see the deaths of September 11th as equally tragic as the tens of thousands who die of hunger or treatable diseases across the world each year. Tragic deaths are tragic deaths.

The point of this post is this: Liberals right now don't have any idea what they're up against this year. The country is still angry and Bush will stroke that anger. He'll remind them of 9-11 and his supposedly glorious leadership. And most of them will eat it up. It's an emotional appeal and all attempts to counter it with logic will fail.

My point - we're doomed. The "mess" in Iraq doesn't seem to be fazing anyone. Their Bush love is driven by a strong inner connection between the events of 9-11 that "brought us together" and Bush's presidency. Any candidate who faces Bush (barring a catastrophe in Iraq) will face a tough challenge. You don't beat incumbent Presidents with 60% approval ratings.

In this climate, Howard Dean would not only lose - he could take 5-8 Senate seats out and 40-50 Reps with him. It's time for Democrats to get serious about this election. The rosy red vs blue map from 2000 has been altered by 9-11. In "culturally conservative" states in the midwest, it will be tougher this year.

Pulling out the dumb card

I'm sort of an optimist - at least when it comes to our elected leaders. That's why I got duped into supporting the Iraqi war (I really thought Saddam had his eyes on regional domination and the means to carry it out eventually). It turned out that Saddam was just a bloodthirsty tyrant whose main goal was to stay in power.

Likewise, I've long defended Bush against charges of stupidity. It's plain to everyone that he's anti-intellectual. That's not up for debate. But is he mentally challenged? Is he actually dumber than the average person? After seeing him speak today, I'm starting to believe it. He isn't just anti-intellectual - he's actually quite a moron.

As soon as the Democratic nominee is chosen, Bush will be forced to hit the campaign trail again. And he will make gaffes, and his stupidity will shine through for all to see, once again. The media will pounce on him. I'm looking forward to it.

Joe Gibbs returns

I know it's not political news - but the most earth shaking news today (at least for this Redskins fan) is the return of Joe Gibbs. Hail to the Redskins!

Good night John Kerry

Check out the latest ARG poll in New Hampshire.

Dean's electable!

A recent poll by CNN/Time shows that Bush only beats Dean by 5 points! Forget the fact that Lieberman (an equally unelectable candidate) polls equal to Dean. And forget the fact that scores of other polls present quite the opposite picture with Dean in the low 30s. I'm going to wait until I see something more substantial and until then withhold judgement.

Meanwhile, according to a recent poll in NH, Kerry has slipped into 3rd place. This has been a long time coming and hopefully the trend will continue until Clark is firmly in 2nd, or perhaps 1st.

Clark's tax plan

Wesley Clark has proposed an ambitious tax cut plan. The plan would accompany his plan to roll back the tax cuts for the most wealthy Americans.

For families who make under 50K a year:

Roughly 1,500 dollars in tax cuts.

For families making between 50K and 100K:

A substantial tax cut.

For those who make over 1,000,000 a year, a 5% tax increase. This plan does not cost anything - it pays for itself and in fact increases government revenue. By the way, only .01% of the country makes over 1,000,000 dollars a year.

This tax plan is ingenius because it steals the issue of taxes away from the Republicans. Republicans love to propose huge tax cuts for the wealthy and attach small tax cuts for the middle class and call them "across the board". The Democrats should coopt this strategy - except reverse it.

Needless to say, Howard Dean's plan to raise taxes on everyone from the working class up falls just barely short of meeting the guidelines of the above mentioned blueprint.

Don't buy Dean's book!

Read the humorous summary in Slate instead.