craigcline

DCCC @Stake - Putting Poison Pills Before National Security

@STAKE: Brought to You by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

Yes, this comes from the Dems, but please read it. This is the sort of shit that the republicans are pulling all the time these days./ Power and winning elections is far more important to them than national security. the radicals among them would be happy to have a one-part state if they thought they could get away with it.

'Middle Management' from The New Republic

Middle Management: It's easy to see why GOP partisans think Cheney won: His performance was meant for them. But in the battle for the middle ground, Edwards prevailed--decisively. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=ppnzqRwsRU9v3DnZPtRDLx%3D%3D

Andrew sullivan nails it.

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'Battle Ground' from The New Republic

Battle Ground: Have Democrats or Republicans won the battle to register new voters? TNR Online presents a state-by-state guide. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=%2BcQ1uJ%2B28JA2qZ0o6eQy6a%3D%3D

This is why the Dems may well surprise everyone on Nov 2nd.

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'Second Look' from The New Republic

Second Look: How Kerry won the debate by being himself.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=xOjV%2BQtZUSIsqCl4C6g6zx%3D%3D

kerry wins on more than points. Bush is shown to be the emporer with no clothes

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Interesting political insights on the election

THE GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT

The U.S. Presidential Election: On Its Own Terms September 23, 2004

By George Friedman

Last week, we analyzed the U.S. presidential elections in terms of foreign expectations, merely touching on the internal dynamics of the election. This week, it is time to bite the bullet and analyze the U.S. election as we would analyze any other -- on its own terms.

From the beginning, there has been a single, overriding factor in the 2004 presidential campaign: It is the first election since 1988 in which a substantial third-party candidate is not running.

In 1992 and 1996, Ross Perot captured a substantial number of votes in critical states. In terms of the popular vote, Bill Clinton took well below 50 percent in 1992 and just a shade above 50 percent in 1996. There is a great deal of debate as to how the votes that went to Perot would have broken if he had not been in the race, but it is our view that without Perot, George H.W. Bush likely would not only have made a much closer run of it, but probably would have been re-elected. Perot gave an outlet to voters in Republican areas who deeply distrusted Bush's internationalism but were equally uneasy with the Democrats' tax policy.

In 2000, Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the presidency. In a race as close as 2000 was, it is clear that, absent Nader, Gore would have nailed down the handful of critical states that would have given him an uncontested victory.

Certainly, we can say this much: The last three presidential elections might not have been determined by third parties, but these third parties certainly defined the dynamics of those elections. Now, there is no full-bore third-party candidate. What limits Nader's effect is that he is able to run only in a limited number of states. He is on some important ballots, like Florida, but it would take an extraordinary election -- as in 2000 -- to make it matter.

The starting point of all analysis is in historical precedent, but in this case, that means that we have to reach back to 1984 for an appropriate comparison. That is 20 years ago, but it was the last time that a sitting Republican president was challenged head-to-head by a Democrat. The 1984 race contains some other parallels also: One of the charges against both Reagan and George W. Bush is that they are simplistic and simple-minded, totally unsuited for the job -- amiable but not particularly bright. In each race, both have been condemned for pursuing adventurist foreign policies. Both cases involve Democratic challengers who served in the U.S. Senate and were broadly regarded as much more deeply versed in policy matters. Both challengers are or were liberals. In 1984, Reagan demolished Walter Mondale.

In considering this, two things must be remembered. First, no Democrat from outside the former Confederacy has been elected president since John F. Kennedy in 1960 -- 44 years ago. Johnson, Carter and Clinton all came from the South. Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis all came from well outside the Confederacy. Gore was the only Southern Democrat to be defeated in a presidential election, and that was as close to a dead tie as you can get. Carter lost in his second try. So we can make the following statement: It is not enough to come from the South if you are a Democrat, but you cannot win unless you come from the South.

There is a reason for this. Until 1960, the South was a solid bloc for the Democrats. From reconstruction onward, the Democrats could count on the region as their electoral base. It wasn't enough to win the presidency, but it was enough to put the presidency within reach so long as coalitions could be cobbled together from other parts of the country. During the 1960s, however, the South ceased to be automatically Democratic, given the split over civil rights. While the far West (excluding the Pacific states) became increasingly Republican, the Democrats no longer had a solid bloc anywhere. If the South came in Republican along with the West, all the GOP had to pick up were a couple of industrial states to win -- whereas the Democrats had to build a new coalition in every election.

This was why Southern Democrats had a chance of winning. Leaving Johnson out of this (as there was a very different dynamic at play there), for 40 years, Democrats could win the presidency only if they at least split the South. That made the general election a horse race, with Republicans and Democrats equally scrambling in the industrial states and California. In practical terms, only Southern natives were able to truly split or rally the South. Thus, non-Southern Democratic candidates lose. The reverse is not true: Nixon and Reagan were not from the South.

Second, the last president to be directly elected from the Senate was -- once again -- Kennedy. Nixon was the last president to have served in the Senate, but he had been out of the Senate for 16 years before moving into the Oval Office. Carter, Reagan, and George W. Bush had all been governors. Bush Sr. had served in the House of Representatives -- but again, long before becoming president. Goldwater, Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, Dole and Gore all were rooted in the Senate. Ford had been House minority leader before becoming vice president, and Michael Dukakis was a governor.

There is actually a reason why senators lose elections. More than others, they are in the business of taking policy positions. They are constantly voting on bills, constantly making speeches that are remembered, and they are somewhat less sensitive to public opinion than Congressmen because they have six years between elections rather than two. They figure, properly, that the things they say and do in the first four years of their terms won't affect them much in their last two years. That is true, but it is also the case that when they run for president, all of these votes, statements and positions that they themselves might have forgotten and which might have been well-received in their own states, suddenly are dragged out of the deep by teams of sophisticated analysts looking for trouble.

Governors have this problem to a much lesser degree. For one thing, they tend to deal with much more parochial matters. Whether a highway should be built in a certain place is, of course, a burning issue in that state and in that time, but it rarely has national significance. Moreover -- and this is an interesting fact -- speeches by governors are not recorded with the precision that those of senators are, nor do governors actually vote on issues. A huge amount of deniability is built into the jobs of governors because the history-making machinery of the U.S. Senate isn't there. People sort of remember what a Clinton or Bush said or did on some subject or another, but everyone knows what a Gore or Dole said or did -- and if they don't, they can look it up. Somewhere in that record, something will alienate some important constituency. All senators take positions and shift them over time. It is an easy business to make them appear inconsistent or unprincipled.

This year, the Democrats are running a non-Southern senator for president. That means that they are starting the campaign with two strikes against them. The Democrats are going to have a much tougher time building a coalition in the South, which means that they must focus heavily on the industrial Midwest and North, as well as on California. This can be done, but it hasn't been done by a Northerner in 44 years. Second, the Democrats have Kerry's highly recorded political career in front of them, with thousands of votes and statements. For the Republicans, casting him as indecisive will be a breeze, leaving Kerry constantly on the defensive.

The specific dynamic of the 2004 race also poses serious challenges for Kerry. In looking at the polls, it would appear that about 43 percent of likely voters have made the decision to vote for Bush regardless of the course of the campaign, while about 41 percent will vote for Kerry. That is, in effect, a tie, and actually shows a larger Democratic base than in previous elections. That means that the election battle is for 16 percent of the voters. Of that 16 percent, about 6 percent are undecided by reason of stupidity. How they vote or whether they vote will depend on almost random events.

About 10 percent of the electorate, therefore, are the intelligent undecideds. They are actively considering the options. This 10 percent seem to be heavily focused on the war against militant Islamists in general and on Iraq in particular. They are far from anti-war voters, in the sense that they have not bought into Michael Moore's view of the war as a vast right- wing conspiracy, nor are they at all impressed with Bush's execution of the war. Their view appears to be -- and it is tricky and not altogether fair to sum up such a diverse and fragmented group -- that the war against terrorism was forced on the United States, that the war in Iraq was probably a mistake, but that withdrawal is not an option. They are looking for someone who can do better than Bush in fighting and winning the war.

This should make it Kerry's presidency in a walk. In fact, he thought it would, which is why he led with his military record. Bush struck back at Kerry's center of gravity, attacking what would have appeared to be an unassailable military record. With his own military record known and discounted, Bush had nothing much to lose. He not only tarnished Kerry's record, but forced him onto the defensive when Kerry needed to be taking the offensive instead.

But Kerry's problems are more than simply tactical. Kerry has a severe problem on his left wing. Entirely apart from Nader, Democratic voters have the option of staying home. Many of them, particularly supporters of Howard Dean, have severe doubts about Kerry. More important, they are a single-issue constituency: They are anti-war. If they revolt against Kerry, he can't win.

That means that if Kerry appeals to the intelligent centrists by acknowledging that the war must now be fought and offering himself as a superior commander-in-chief, he faces the very real possibility that he will bleed off support from his left. George W. Bush had exactly the same problem in 2000: He waged a campaign to take the center and did fairly well, but his campaign alienated the right. Several million Republican voters stayed home.

Bush has an advantage over Kerry this time. His right wing is fragmented and can be motivated to vote on issues other than Iraq. Abortion, stem cell research, gay marriage -- all rank as higher-priority issues on the far right of the Republican Party than does Iraq. Moreover, these issues seem to alienate primarily those voters who are never going to vote for Bush anyway. The center is so fixated on the war that these other issues tend to have limited impact.

It is understandable why Bush opened his campaign with a series of apparently random positions that appealed to his flank, and then attacked Kerry directly at the point where Kerry had crafted his appeal to the center. Kerry, on the other hand, is faced with a huge problem: His far left has become a single-issue bloc that is highly sensitive to his position on Iraq. The center is single-issue and highly sensitive to Iraq. Any move that satisfies one side will alienate the others.

This is why Kerry has had such difficulty defining his Iraq policy. It is clear that his heart is in the center, and that he would like to take the centrist position. His problem is that his polls are telling him that his bleed-off to the left -- perhaps no more than 3 or 4 percentage points -- could well spell his defeat. That gives Bush the opening he needs: He uses Kerry's senatorial record to paint him as inconsistent -- the antithesis of the kind of leader the center is looking for -- while allowing Kerry's political problem to make him appear to be consistently wobbly.

Given all of this, it would appear extremely unlikely that Kerry can defeat Bush. There is no precedent for a Democratic victory with these dynamics, and the internal structure of the campaign militates against it. Put simply, the idea that a wealthy Massachusetts liberal will defeat a sitting Republican president in time of war is a dubious proposition.

But that is the wild card in the election. Bush is an incumbent president in a time of war. The public is much less sensitive to the war itself, according to polls, but it is highly sensitive to the idea of mismanagement of the war. This is what could pull the middle toward Kerry without threatening his flanks. If Kerry remains unclear on the war but centrist voters conclude that Bush doesn't know what he is doing or that the war is going out of control, Kerry can win the election.

His problem is that he cannot force this to happen. More than in most cases, he must play the passive observer, benefiting from Bush's failure. Kerry is trapped by his left -- preventing him from offering war-fighting solutions -- and by the center, preventing him from abandoning the war altogether. He also cannot afford to appear to be hoping for failure in Iraq. Failure must come to him.

That is certainly possible, and militant leader Abu Musab al- Zarqawi is certainly trying to create a situation in which Bush is toppled. Militants like al-Zarqawi care not one whit for either candidate, but they do care for the perception in the Islamic world that they have the ability to define American politics. But it is not clear to us that al-Zarqawi alone has the resources for a sustained campaign. He needs support from other factions in Iraq. Thus far, that support has not materialized -- and that is because Bush does have a degree of control over the internal evolution of political relations in Iraq.

Kerry's only hope is a massive shift in public perception of Bush's management of the war. There are six weeks left to go, so it is not impossible that the first northern Democratic senator since JFK is about to take office. But it isn't the likely bet.

blog

This begs the question as to whether we should've gone into Iraq in the first place. If Osama was our target number one, why didn't Bush send 150K troops into Afghanistan and obliterate al Qaeda? The answer is he had another agenda - the original plans for invading Iraq were drawn up by the necons in 2000 - and if you track back all Bush's comments on the war in Iraq he has used every excuse under the sun for going in there (WMDs, nope, they're MIA; Al Qaeda link to Hussein, oops, a neocon myth used to justify the war, no link exists, well keep insisting it did anyway, you're the president, people will believe anything you tell them, sorry; Liberating the Iraqi people - oops, they hate us; oh, bringing democracy to the mideast - maybe that will fly). And even many Republicans and conservatives (have you read Pat Buchanan recently?) admit that the neocons had sold the county on the war being a cake walk, and that we'd be greeted with roses thrown on the ground and cheers, and there was absolutely no plan for how to handle Iraq after the initial military victory. Combat deaths have been rising each month since January, Part of Iraq are in chaos. Alawai is a former Baath party official and the pick the CIA who is rigging the election in January to become the strongman in Iraq. there was just a report that all the independent parties have agreed to unify and run on a single candidate slate. is that democracy? Iraq is sliding into chaos and either Bush and Cheney are lying about it or they are sadly deluded. (Those two will say anything, do anything, to stay in power for another four years so they can tear down social security, destroy Medicare, invade Iran and Syria, reinstitute the draft, etc.)

As an indication of their crass cynicism - American military commanders are frustrated that they can't go into the Sunni triangle right now to get the region under control because every month you wait the stronger the insurgents grow and the higher the casualties to root them out. But they are being held back by Bush's team till after the election so that the casualties from such a military action won't be splashed over TV screens back home before the election.

It's Vietnam all over again, with the military being jerked around by the politicians in power back home, told to invade this, hold off invading that, all to manage the political fallout back home, which we all know is no way to fight a war.

Whoever wins in November is going to have a huge mess on their hands and if you actually read about it rather than listening to what Bush says about it you know that its a no-win situation on the ground that at absolute best will sub Alawi or some other strong man for Hussein since that will be the only way to hold the country together - you've got the Kurds, the Sunnis,and the Shiites, who each hate each other, and will spin apart unless a strong man (read, dictator) keeps the country forcefully together.

That's my 2 cents.

Craig

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Don't mess with the Bushes

cecline@shazam.fc.interop.net thought you would be interested in this article at Salon.com http://www.salon.com

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Don't mess with the Bushes
By David Talbot

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2004/09/14/kelley/index_np.html

- - - - - - - - - - - - Tue Sep 14 09:36:04 2004
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Stung!

cecline@shazam.fc.interop.net thought you would be interested in this article at Salon.com http://www.salon.com

Your friend's message:
Bush's chickens are coming home to roost
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Stung!
By Eric Boehlert

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/09/bush_guard_duty/index_np.html

- - - - - - - - - - - - Thu Sep 9 08:41:41 2004
cecline@shazam.fc.interop.net came from IP: 167.89.225.162

SiliconValley.com - Dan Gillmor

siliconvalley.com - The siliconvalley home page Dan Gillmor
News | Columnists | Personal Technology | Markets | Venture Capital

Published: Tuesday September 7, 2004

Labor Day musings on work and tax policy

By Dan Gillmor Mercury News Technology Columnist

As first a presidential candidate and now the Democratic vice presidential nominee, John Edwards has described the core of President Bush's economic policy: valuing wealth over work.

``President Bush has a war on work -- you see it in everything he does,'' Edwards said in a September 2003 speech. ``He wants to eliminate every penny of tax on wealth, and shift the whole burden to people who work for a living. So people won't pay any taxes at all when they make money from selling stocks, when they get big dividends every year, or when they inherit a massive estate.''

On the eve of Labor Day, the traditional kickoff to the fall presidential race, Edwards' point is worth noting. National tax policy -- to which both major parties adhere to a greater or lesser degree -- disfavors those of us who ``only'' work for a living.

There's another way to look at this policy, which deserves broader discussion. Yes, it values wealth over work, but a key aim is to spur investment.

While the overwhelming tilt is misguided -- income is income, no matter how you make it -- there are at least some serious arguments in its favor.

Bush lacks credibility in making the case. His wealth was glaringly unearned, a product of family money and influence. His own business record was weak at best, and he traded on his name and connections at every step.

Vice President Dick Cheney also reeks of hypocrisy. He embodies the new American plutocracy. The bulk of his wealth comes from his 1990s corporate joyride when, after serving in government for years, he became chief executive at Halliburton, the Texas company that somehow keeps winning sweetheart government deals.

The fact that Bush and Cheney are such ludicrous messengers doesn't change a valid part of their message, though. In the long term, societal wealth and a stronger economy do stem in large part from private-sector investment, from the risks willingly taken by entrepreneurs, who need capital. We need to encourage risk-taking.

And like it or not, better-off people tend to do the investing, which does create jobs and does allocate capital in a generally efficient manner.

Seen this way, Bush's tax policies have been fairly consistent: Cut taxes on profits from investments, preferably to zero, and give the bulk of income tax cuts to the wealthiest who don't need the extra cash for everyday living.

I also give Bush credit for not, in this case, pursuing only short-term political gain. Had the income tax cuts been much smaller in aggregate, and had they gone almost solely to middle- and lower-income Americans who produce the most votes, the money would have been recycled immediately into the economy via old-fashioned consumer spending. The overall economy would probably be doing a lot better today. (Of course, rewarding the wealthy had a payback of a different sort, in campaign contributions.)

The return from investing is slower. If Bush is genuine in what he says, he's hoping for a farther-off but more sustainable economic bounce, the kind that gives an economy more legs.

I'm convinced, however, that he made a poor choice. Budget deficits, a growing danger to the nation, are out of control in part because the tax cuts were so huge.

I also believe the sound instinct to reward investment turns sour when it so visibly rewards people who haven't earned their new riches. Doing away with the inheritance tax, in particular, is an outright scam -- and a step toward the most grotesque imbalances in wealth, the kind that ultimately will poison our society and democratic system.

Worst of all, our current approach deliberately shortchanges another, equally crucial kind of investment. Capitalism and the private sector are the engine of economic progress, but they can't do it all.

Through our taxes we invest in people and institutions that enforce some rules. These help make capitalism more honest and fair -- to workers and communities -- and, equally important, competitive.

Through our taxes we invest in projects that private industry will never take on, including the physical, legal, educational and basic-research infrastructures that are a bedrock for modern capitalism's existence, never mind its ability to thrive.

Through our taxes we pay for the armed forces and diplomats who protect American commercial interests around the globe.

Bush says he aims to foster more investment, to push toward an ownership society. Fine. But let's remember two things: Investment takes many forms. And equity means more than a stock certificate.

But wait, there's more ...

Enjoy Dan Gillmor's column? Then register to receive our other newsletters: Good Morning Silicon Valley, an irreverent look at the tech news of the day and First Edition, a daily digest of tech news headlines from our partner The Mercury News.

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