Rob's Politics Blog

Bush working to steal spotlight back from Democrats:

Campaigning again after sidelining himself during the Democratic National Convention, President Bush charged Friday that John Kerry lacked any 'signature achievements' in his nearly 20-year Senate career.

That might mean something if it came from someone who hadn't goofed off for 6 years in Austin, while his Lieutenant Governor did most of the work. Keep talking, Dubya.

Electoral Optimism

I'm in good spirits about Kerry's chances. This time out, I'm following state polls with a passion and there's an abundance of great sites that let one do that: Tripias, Electoral-vote.com, and The Swing State Project. Taken all together, a survey of sites like these brings the following points to light:

Kerry is consistently leading in two huge states Gore had to fight bitterly for: Pennsylvania and Michigan. Zogby has his latest lead in these states as 6.5% and 8.7% respectively. Other polls have had it closer, but I like Zogby because of its record in 2000. PA and MI see-sawed for the entirety of 2000. Kerry seems more secure in them now than Gore did.

Oregon and Washington are more solidly for Kerry. Again, this is a big improvement over 2000. Kerry's lead in Oregon is reported at 9.2% and in Washington it is 7.6%.

New Mexico, which was decided by around 300 votes tells a similar story. The last Zogby gives it to Kerry by 9.8%.

Kerry's strong standing in once-vulnerable base states like these enables him to go on the offensive more and prey on Dubya's weak states. Here, he has had some success and some promising indicators:

Florida has been all over the map. The last Zogby poll has Bush up by .1%. Well it figures, since it's Florida

Lest we worry about another damn Florida finish, Ohio is also very tight. Tighter in 2004 than it was in 2000. Bush is currently up there, according to Zogby, but a rash of polls last week favored Kerry by 3-5 points. Right now, Ohio shows every sign of going down to the wire. As a Rust Belt state that isn't feeling the recovery, it may prove receptive to the Kerry/Edwards economic message.

Bush won Missouri the last time out. Kerry is currently ahead by .7% and has led in the last 4 polls there. Like Ohio, it will be close and down to the wire. This is a state where Edwards can definitely help.

Pundits were putting Arizona in the Bush column until an ASU poll had Kerry up 42-41%. This is very narrow, but the high number of undecideds is interesting and not atypical of polls from there.

Nevada also seems to have come unstuck for Dubya. Zogby has Kerry currently up there by .6%.

Most shockingly, a Zogby poll has Kerry up 2.2% in Tennessee.

Kerry still has some spots of concern.

Maine and New Hampshire are a little iffy. Kerry's been up in almost all NH polls, most recently by 4.7%. Maine is his by only 1% in the last Rasmussen survey.

The upper Midwest is still fluky. A Minnesota poll has the two candidates tied. However, Kerry has led in all Minnesota polls other than that one. Wisconsin has had more volatility, but Kerry currently leads there by 4.3%. In Iowa, his lead is a tenuous 1.8%.

Moral of the story? Kerry can relax more about his Pacific Coast base states and focus his efforts on retaining the upper Midwest and dipping into Missouri and Ohio. I'm loathe to say it, but Florida is also a target of opportunity. When he does hit the PST states, he absolutely should visit Arizona and Nevada along with his other stops. Keeping those two in play will deeply vex Bush.

The bottom line is that if Kerry holds the Gore states, he only has to win one of about 4 contested medium or large states (OH, MO, AZ, FL). Should Bush fail to seriously upset Kerry's hold on his base, he otherwise has to sweep the table. This current map puts Kerry on the offensive, anticipating a post-convention bounce. It's a good place to be. From a purely electoral perspective, I'd rather be in Kerry's shoes than Bush's.

# posted by Rob @ 2:41 PM

What is one to make of The Frenzy Over Lewinsky, a bizarre Washington Post story expressing nostalgia for the 1998 White House scandal? Are they out of their gourds?

1998 was not, as the subtitle states, a "simpler time." Osama bin Laden was plotting to kill Americans wholesale. The national GOP was going for broke in its efforts to remove a sitting president. A constitutional provision was about to be abused in the most serious way.

And the media treated it like a damn circus - another event in a long parade of celebrity debacles. That whole Whitewater thing had been so boring anyway! Now they could just focus on something juicy and simple.

1998 was the year that India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons. It saw the collapse of the Russian economy. It was the year when Ethiopia and Eritrea descended into a grueling, exhausting war. The war between African states in the Congo region escalated. Yugoslavian repression in Kosovo attracted international attention. Concern over Iraq's weapons programs led to a crisis in March and a set of bombing raids in December. And, two bombings at embassies in East Africa left a death toll in the hundreds.

The year of Monica (who now gratefully rests in relative obscurity) wasn't anything to look back upon with favor. It was a year of crises and grave challenges to national security, in which the national media chose to obsess itself over a minor sexual affair. The writing for 9/11 was on the wall by the end of the year. That anyone can deem it a more innocent time now is appalling.

Convention Notes, Night 1

What the heck. I watched most of the first night of the DNC - at least the major speakers. And I'm proud to say I did it on C-SPAN. C-SPAN respects viewers in a way that the news networks don't. For years, I have chafed at the condescending, sound-byte way by which networks have covered the conventions. C-SPAN is the glorious exception to the rule of reducing coverage. They give you the event gavel to gavel. And as an added plus, Chris Matthews is nowhere in sight.

The three main network anchors were recently featured in a panel discussion on convention coverage at Harvard. They were memorably upbraided by PBS's Jim Lehrer:

"We're about to elect a president of the United States at a time when we have young people dying in our name overseas, we just had a report from the 9/11 commission which says we are not safe as a nation, and one of these two groups of people is going to run our country. The fact that you three networks decided it was not important enough to run in prime time, the message that gives the American people is huge."

As the lecture hall echoed with applause and the three men bristled, Mr. Lehrer added, 'As a citizen, it bothers me.''

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Also, as reported in Boston Globe, the anchors objected that the parties are not making the conventions newsworthy and need to rethink them. Lehrer responded:

We're not in the business of telling the parties how to run the conventions. We're in the news business.

Nothing I can write would be praise enough for Lehrer. Bless him.

The networks have been pulling this crap for years, except they are the architects of a vicious circle. They narrow down the amount of time they give to the convention and the parties scramble to fill it with the optimal content. Then the networks narrow it down again on the basis of the artificiality of the conventions.

All this is a narrow guise to allow the networks to broadcast shitty reality shows (Trading Spouses) and reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond and King of Queens. Check your local listings to see what your affiliates are showing.

The federal government gives networks a sweetheart deal to broadcast on the public airwaves. The least the networks could do is take a break from summer reruns to give the conventions their due.

But enough of this rant; on to the convention itself.

The highlight of course was Bill Clinton, who managed to fire up the crowd, eloquently praise Kerry and ridicule the Bush administration. People in the audience were crying. Clinton spoke with a real degree of candor - pausing to admit that he had sought to stay out of Vietnam before emphatically praising Kerry's service there. And he was funny. There was something very amusing about his admission that he now resides among the 1% of the electorate favored by Republican tax breaks. Clinton knocked the ball out of the park; and one hopes that middle-of-the-road viewers will think he had some good points.

But Al Gore did pretty well as well. He was in a good humor, he held back from the more scathing (and bitter-sounding) criticisms of the Bush administration and chose instead to take the high road. This was the Gore we saw on the night of his concession, that grim December evening in 2000. Touchingly, he thanked Clinton for giving him the opportunity to serve as VP - reminding us of the better days of their partnership. There was also a nice direct appeal to Nader voters - did they still think the two candidates were the same? Nice work, Al. Still, don't say anything more about the Florida senate race.

Jimmy Carter's speech was nice enough, but I don't think he said enough about Kerry. His critique of the administration was much the same as everyone else's.

Hillary delivered a nicely emphatic speech - perhaps it was a bit too short. What came home best from her delivery was her experience staring at Ground Zero. Being able to invoke 9/11 is a must for Democrats, since the Republicans will be wrapping themselves in it in a month's time.

All in all, a solid first night. I look forward to seeing how Barack Obama does as keynote speaker tomorrow.

Well that didn't take long:

Democrats file challenge to Nader's candidacy in Michigan

They're trying a wide array of tactics here, the most interesting of which is claiming that the petitions submitted by Republicans are invalid because Michigan law requires the candidate's own campaign to collect signatures. Also, they're going to claim that some 20,000 are ineligible or fraudulent. The first complaint is probably their best hope. Kicking Nader off the Michigan ballot would give him a serious black eye and probably help Kerry somewhat.

In a special election, the Democrats retained North Carolina's 1st Congressional District. This is apparently a fairly reliable district for the party, but its notable that the retiring Democrat was leaving under a cloud of scandal, and that this makes the party 3 for 3 in special elections this year, having also won in South Dakota and Kentucky.

Intriguing news about the South Dakota race: Frist cuts cash to Thune

For some reason Bill Frist gave much less to Thune in the second quarter of the year than in the first, giving more to candidates in Virginia, Alaska and North Carolina. The article doesn't really manage to say why, though there is the suggestion that direct GOP support of Thune hasn't paid off

Last Nader Post of the Day

Salon.com has turned a critical eye on Ralph Nader, this election cycle, publishing several investigative pieces about him. One, The Dark Side of Ralph Nader was a searing examination of Nader's personality that raises serious questions about his treatment of friends and allies. Another, Strange Alliance, asks the interesting question of why Nader's book is being published by Rupert Murdoch.

Ralph Nader was very displeased about the coverage he was receiving from Salon. So, he decided to give Editor-in-Chief David Talbot a call. The resulting conversation, captured in On the phone with Ralph Nader, is a startling window into the feverish, manic mindset of Nader. It's definitely worth viewing the Salon Day Pass to read.

But, for now, a choice passage where Nader tries to defend his decision to publish with Murdoch:

Nader: But to follow your principle would be for me to say, "I don't want anything to do with NBC. It's owned by a pig company called GE. And I certainly don't want anything to do with MSNBC because it's owned by both GE and Microsoft." They are worse than Rupert Murdoch, and I will tell you why -- Rupert Murdoch does not produce death-dealing weapons and sell them to dictatorships.

Talbot: No, he just supports and promotes those dictatorships.

Nader: Yes, but there's quite a difference isn't there, between bullets and support? He doesn't build nuclear plants; he doesn't pollute the Hudson River.

Talbot: He just played the leading role in creating the propagandistic atmosphere for the war in Iraq. His media company played and continues to play that role. You know that, Ralph. It's just disingenuous of you to downplay what Rupert Murdoch is all about.

The conversation is remarkable - right up to the point where Nader quits it, claiming he has another call. Read it for yourself and see if you don't think he's losing it.

This Is Ralph Nader

I truly hope that some independent filmmaker - a contemporary Marty DiBergi, if you will - is following the Nader campaign and filming it daily. The result, once this election is over with, could be the political equivalent of This Is Spinal Tap.

Ralph Nader will be appearing on the ballot in Michigan. This shouldn't really be news, since Nader's endorsement by the national Reform Party leadership (well, the Buchananite remnants of it) was supposed to guarantee him access in Michigan and 6 other states. Except, in Michigan the Reform Party has fractured into two feuding halves and until the question of legitimacy is resolved, it's not clear that Nader's Michigan endorsement applies.

Naturally, the reaction from the Nader camp to the Michigan party's schism was outraged denial. You'd think they didn't know what sad shape the Reform Party was in, and that it never occurred to them to check to make sure that the fracturing party was capable of delivering what it promised.

No, according to the Nader campaign, they were so relieved by the endorsement that they ceased trying to collect signatures in Michigan. One might have thought that a "better safe than sorry" approach would have been appropriate. We're only talking about a presidential election, after all. The later revelation of the party schism caught them shorthanded - by about 24,000 signatures.

Enter the Michigan Republican Party. In their fervor to ensure ballot choice (a fervor oddly limited to ensuring Nader's name appears) the statewide GOP submitted at least 43,000 signatures - more than the 30,000 Michigan requires.

Prior uproar about Nader taking Republican donations and petition assistance had resulted in the Nader campaign pledging to return Republican donations. In Michigan, Nader's people say that they'll now accept the signatures collected by Republicans. This after Nader claimed he was running to get rid of Bush.

Of course, this new partnership is not going unchallenged. The AP reports that a legal challenge from the Michigan Democratic Party is imminent:

[Democratic Executive Chairman] Brewer said Nader's decision not to withdraw as an independent will force the party to file a federal election complaint against Nader's campaign and the Michigan Republican Party, which it contends exceeded a state political party campaign limit of $5,000 in helping Nader get on the ballot.

This is only an allegation, but given all the corners that Nader cut in his ill-fated Arizona ballot effort, Democratic complaints may have some substance.

The pathetic spectacle of Nader-GOP collusion is farce piled upon farce. Nader's campaign promises to be an increasingly ragged spectacle, characterized by dubious alliances with Republicans and Buchananites and increasingly vitriolic feuds with former allies on the left. It's pathetic that he has come to this, but it's also fitting. I share the view that his electoral impact this time out will not be what it was in 2000. By November, Saint Ralph will be a national laughingstock. Let's hope someone is getting this on film.

South Dakota's Aberdeen News features a nice letter by a South Dakotan in favor of Tom Daschle. Interestingly, it mentions John Thune's career as a lobbyist, indicating that this might be getting some play within the state:

In a written statement on Tuesday, John Thune called Sen. John Kerry's selection of Sen. John Edwards as his running mate, "Tom Daschle's worst nightmare." I'm not sure what Thune worries about at night in his job as a Washington lobbyist, but I am sure that Daschle's concerns are not as petty . . . . Thune's suggestion that the vice presidential selection is of grave concern to Daschle is a clear indication that Thune is more interested in negative, partisan politics than in standing up for South Dakotans.

Sooner or later the South Dakota senate race is going to erupt into unfettered mudslinging. When it does, expect to learn about John Thune's dodgy activity as a lobbyist.

The Boston Globe reports that Thune may have broken a lobbying law by pitching directly to the Senate and House in 2003. By law Thune, who left office after the 2002 election, was not allowed to lobby former colleagues for one year.

Daschle does not strike me as the mudslinging sort, but if the campaign gets nasty - and Thune's slur that Daschle is an "embarrassment to South Dakota" augurs a harsh phase of campaigning - expect this to come up. As a non-South Dakotan gamely trying to understand small-state politics, I can't tell you conclusively what kind of impact this might have, but if it leads to an ethics investigation, Thune may be on thin ice.

The current chaos in Gaza is illustrative of the bankruptcy of Yasser Arafat's regime. The depredations of the last few years has clearly undermined his authority, but the PA has always been riddled with corruption and Arafat has been unwilling to seriously focus attention on the problem - better to galvanize his people against Israel than to deal with the numerous internal problems of the Palestinian territories.

Frustrations like the ones finding expression in Gaza now can be deferred, but eventually they erupt and usually are all the worse for having been postponed. Arafat's sheer inability at state-building (as opposed to his relative success in fostering and hyping national consciousness) will leave his people remarkably nationalistic and fundamenalist, but still quite unable to deal with statehood.

MSNBC makes a reasonably good case for the importance of courting the black vote. What they can't explain - what probably no one can explain - is why George W. Bush is trying so hard to lose that segment of the population.

Yes, blacks are overwhelmingly Democratic, but every 4 years - usually at some point 9-12 months away from a presidential election - one hears Republican strategists musing about cutting into this demographic. They talk about using the voucher issue - which is a potent wedge between the party's secular leadership and inner city African American supporters. Or about values - since many black Democrats are fairly conservative on the values spectrum.

But somehow all that musing never amounts to much. A certain candidate will miss the NAACP convention or go to Bob Jones University and that will be that. Republican musings about the black vote would be more meaningful if they had the foggiest idea about how to get it.

The Five Ohios - more information about the swing state of Ohio than you ever wanted to know.

A Rasmussen poll finds Bush only slightly leading Kerry in Virginia: 48-45. That is not a margin that the White House can welcome. Virginia is supposed to be an integral part of the Republican base, not a swing state.

Who's running this show?

What in the world was the Bush campaign thinking in rejecting an invitation to speak before the NAACP? Bush's defense - that he has been criticized by the organization - is beyond weak. If their mindset is this brittle, expect a lot more in the way of self-destructive pettiness in the next 4 months. This is gonna be good . . .

The Philippines has pledged, in response to the demands of Iraqi hostage-takers, to withdraw its troops from Iraq.

Manila had better hope that the same idea doesn't occur to its own Islamist terror groups. Oh wait, it already has. Years ago. Better put off that vacation.

One can appreciate the profound pain and anguish that these hostage-takings cause. But yielding to the demands of the murderers makes everyone less safe. Adversaries of the Philippines know that its will can be broken. Those nations remaining in Iraq will also face an upsurge in kidnappings.

It bears mentioning that the U.S. has expended considerable effort in aiding the Philippines in its own war on terror - under a generous presumption that groups like Abu Sayyaf have tangible connections to Al Qaeda. If our efforts on their behalf are to be rewarded so meagerly, we might as well take our advisors out of the Philippines and send them elsewhere.

Ron Reagan, son of the recently-deceased president, will be speaking at the Democratic National Convention. That's a coup of sorts. Republicans are whooping it up that they've got Zell Miller, but the nation didn't just go into a one-month paroxysm of mourning for anyone in the Miller clan. Since Miller is more unconditionally pro-Bush than many Republicans, I think the GOP is exaggerating the wow factor here.

An interesting disagreement has surfaced within the Nader camp over the question of donations from Republicans. Nader's vice presidential candidate, Peter Camejo, has stated that he would recommend giving donations from Republicans back if they have been given to undermine Kerry. Nader won't hear of it.

To a degree, Camejo's position rests on grounds that make it difficult to implement - one can imagine interviewing these Republicans only to have them swear with a straight face that they support only Saint Ralph. But this is a divide nonetheless, and Nader's refusal to admit that there is a problem here is indicative of the extent of his denial (or apathy). This is a great wedge issue to use against him.

See: Nader defends GOP cash

The New Republic reports that the Bush administration has stepped up pressure on Pakistan to find and apprehend Osama bin Laden. This is no surprise, but what is odd is their insistence that his capture occur before the election:

Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: 'The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington.' Says McCormack: 'I'm aware of no such comment.' But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that 'it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] [High Value Target] were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July'--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

This is brilliantly devious and contemptible. Any American wants bin Laden in custody, but if, as TNR reports, the Bush administration is deploying previously unutilized pressure on Pakistan, the question is why they waited.

I trust The New Republic. The publication takes the war against Al Qaeda seriously. It supported the war in Iraq. It scoffs at the conspiracy-mongering of the left and Michael Moore. If it's printing something like this, it is out of conviction.

So. The Bush administration has decided to try to play a trump card: the war against terror. And if bin Laden is captured, no one in their right mind would bewail the political impact. Myself, I'll go out for a beer. Democrats would not be able to speak ill of the operation - their only real option would be to shift the praise to Pakistan. We're getting into some very dangerous territory when Al Qaeda and Pakistan are becoming actors in our electoral process.

I have one word for the GOP charge that John Edwards lacks experience: Bullshit.

It shows how far we've come from 2000 when a 5.5 year governor of Texas ran for president. This governor momentarily thought that the Taliban was a rock band. He also had a hard time naming the president of Pakistan and was briefly cheered by the news that Canadian Prime Minister Jean Poutine had endorsed him. Dubya could perhaps be forgiven for not realizing that a poutine is a favored Quebecois snack, but not for missing the fact that: a.)the Canadian Prime Minister at the time was Jean Chretien, and b.) Sane heads of government do not make endorsements in other countries' elections. Bush did not run on foreign policy. He could not run on foreign policy. He was visibly out of it when the topic came up. He was still out of it when he undermined Kim Dae Jung during the Nobel Prize winner's visit the following spring.

I would wager that John Edwards is incapable of making any of the above mistakes. Unlike Bush, he did not just spend the last 5.5 years lazing around a governor's mansion while his lieutenant governor did the work of governing (Texas actually vests most authority on the lieutenant governor). He was in the Senate - dealing with a range of issues. He served on the Intelligence Committee. He's been overseas quite a bit in the past few years: to Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. The John Edwards of 2004 could blow the Bush of 2000 out of the water on foreign affairs. Heck, the John Edwards of 2000 could humiliate the Bush of 2000 on this topic. So it's a little rich when the GOP starts pretending that they care about the experience level of a candidate. The Republican establishment slammed aside their most experienced contender in 2000 (a certain Arizonan) in favor of a Texan with the right last name. Remember this when the Republicans and their placid media myrmidons repeat this nonsense. They're scared of Edwards and they have every reason to be. Consistency and coherence, in such circumstances, tend to fly out the window.

The Rapid City Journal reports that the Edwards pick is popular among South Dakota Democrats. One naturally expects to read such things, but the article does mention that he was the first choice of 7 of SD's 11 delegates.

Thune is naturally trying to cast the Kerry-Edwards ticket as wildly liberal, but take a moment and ask: "what would he have said if it had been Gephardt?"

South Dakota Post of the Day

North Dakota's Grand Forks Herald assesses the South Dakota GOP's odds of beating Daschle as better than ever because they've ceased attacking his service to South Dakota and started attacking him as a Democratic leader.

The assessment of strategy seems apt, but I frankly doubt that South Dakotans are about to be recruited to dump Daschle on the basis of his frustrating Bush. If Daschle wins the "Good for South Dakota" argument - as he definitely can - linking Thune to Bush won't do much. Thune is as well-placed as anyone to run as a local - as South Dakota's former statewide representative, he has as much recognition as Daschle.

Which "partisan stands" does Daschle stand to lose ground on? The war may not give the GOP much ground anymore. Daschle may have a winning hand on drought relief and funding of the Veterans Administration. I think this will be a tight race, but I don't think GOP strategy is particularly well-chosen here.

In the "Amen to that" column

Gephardt supporters hope he'll play role in Kerry White House

In the hopeful event of a Kerry victory, I'd expect Gephardt to get a Cabinet-level position. He's got a lifetime of experience, a lot of ability and is available (ie nominating him doesn't force an election to fill his seat). Here's hoping.

One fact worth noting: Gephardt is probably disappointed but there is no known bad blood between him and Edwards. On the night of the Iowa caucuses Edwards made a point of praising Gephardt and saluting his service (something a certain Vermont candidate neglected to do). I don't think there should be a bitterness factor between Gephardt and the Kerry/Edwards ticket.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports Northwest Democrats hail selection of Edwards

Everyone is going to rally around the veep right now, but the statements made about Edwards are notable, as is the possibility that his popularity will transcend regions. If Edwards can narrow the Democratic deficit in the conservative eastern regions of Oregon and Washington, he'll be able to restore them to the safe column for Kerry - irrespective of anything Nader and his Republican friends can do.

Pretty remarkable news from Iraq: Iraqi group threatens to kill al-Zarqawi:

A group of armed, masked Iraqi men threatened Tuesday to kill Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi if he did not immediately leave the country, accusing him of murdering innocent Iraqis and defiling the Muslim religion.

The threats revealed the deep anger many Iraqis, including insurgent groups, feel toward foreign fighters, whom many consider as illegitimate a presence here as the 160,000 U.S. and other coalition troops.

In a videotape sent to the al-Arabiya television station, a group calling itself the 'Salvation Movement,' questioned how al-Zarqawi could use Islam to justify the killing of innocent civilians, the targeting of government officials and the kidnapping and beheading of foreigners.

The effect of the handover may be to decouple Iraqi nationalists who are tired of the bloodshed from foreigners that they've tolerated. Let's hope so. One of the most clarifying images we saw when the Taliban fled was that of the Afghan population turning against the jihadi tourists in their midst. The increasing frequency of coalition attacks on Zarqawi-linked targets may point to a greater supply of tips about the Jordanian's movements. This is a development worth watching.

Kerry/Edwards

For once, the choice of a vice presidential candidate was no surprise. Democrats have been begging for this ticket since February, before the clear end of Edwards' own campaign. The main question was whether and when Kerry would overcome his own initial unease about the North Carolinian.

It was hard to see a contest between Edwards and Gephardt or Vilsack. The latter two are both established leaders, but Edwards brings a degree of excitement to the campaign that is unparalleled. Gephardt's primary base is that of union voters. Vilsack remains a leader with some regional appeal but little nationwide recognition.

Vilsack has his job in Iowa to go back to, but - though I'm happy that Edwards was picked - it's a bittersweet moment because of Richard Gephardt. Gephardt has not gotten nearly the recognition he deserved for his capable leadership of the Democratic House contingent during some very dark hours: after the 1994 GOP landslide and during the current administration. He has devoted his life to the political process in a way that few others have done. If he hasn't been the flashiest of leaders, he's been among the most capable and adroit. The qualities we look for in legislative leaders are only occasionally those we look for in presidential candidates - tellingly, the last legislative leader to rise to the presidency was the unelected Gerald Ford. The last to win a popular election (a reelection) was LBJ.

Were Kerry more of a Clintonesque campaigner, a Gephardt choice would make sense. Gephardt is an individual ready to assume the reins of government at a moment's notice. Edwards has good judgement and a good command of issues, but his real skills are on the campaign trail. The vice presidency would offer him an excellent opportunity to attain solid executive experience. Hypothetically speaking, he'd be a very strong candidate running on a VP record.

Edwards has remarkably broad appeal and best of all his appeal is concentrated in areas that Democrats normally have a hard time reaching: areas that are rural, Southern and somewhat conservative. People who see him speak are captivated, even those who are unlikely Democratic voters. The balance that he brings to the campaign is terrific and all this talk about him upstaging Kerry is likely to be nonsense. The two men complement each other marvellously. Edwards is going to throw the map open: difficult states like Virginia, Tennessee, West Virginia, Arkansas and Louisiana are going to be less uphill; the impact in precipitously balanced states like Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin should also be sharp. Matthew Dowd, a pollster for Bush, wrote his boss a memo recently forecasting a 15% jump by the Kerry campaign. John Kerry's choice of Edwards makes this a real possibility, and messages like this in the Bush camp indicate the stirrings of real panic.

An interesting letter to the Aberdeen News notes a problem John Thune has with being the GOP leadership's golden child - he's unlikely to be able to challenge the party when it acts against the interests of South Dakota.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has recently acted to delay a bill by Tom Daschle to fund the Veterans Administration. The letter's author, Dennis Hahnemann, cleverly throws down a gauntlet for Thune:

My challenge to Thune is pretty simple: Condemn the actions of Frist for playing politics with vets' health and well-being and pressure him to support the Daschle legislation. If Thune really wants us to believe he would have any influence in Washington, this would be an easy way to prove it. For some reason, though, l doubt that Thune would have either the political courage to call Frist on his actions or the influence to change how Frist acts. Not very becoming of someone who thinks he deserves to be a senator.

This will be interesting to watch. Would the GOP give Thune enough leeway to condemn a partisan action such as this? More stories like these will seriously damage Thune.

South Dakota - General Thoughts

One of the conventional bits of wisdom about South Dakota's impending election is that the victory of Democrat Stephanie Herseth in the special election for the state's House seat bodes badly for Tom Daschle. The rationale is that South Dakotans, generally conservative folk, are unwilling to have their Congressional delegation entirely run by Democrats. On that basis, someone's got to go: Daschle or Herseth when they both face reelection this fall.

Is that really a solid motivating factor? South Dakota has a Republican governor and the GOP dominates both houses of the state legislature by substantial majorities. South Dakota votes reliably for Republican candidates for president. South Dakotans will be generally be casting at least two Republican votes (for president and state legislature) when they hit the booths this November; I don't know that they'd feel incomplete without a third. To South Dakotans used to accepting Tom Daschle, a Democratic Congressional delegation may actually seem like balance.

I'm not a South Dakotan. I've never been there, though I hope to drive through at some point. But here's my reading of the election. South Dakota is a small state with citizens used to knowing their representatives. Daschle and Thune are both astute at local politics. I think Thune hurts himself by running as the president's man, but allowing himself to be the White House's implement for punishing Tom Daschle. Daschle put himself in harms way by his (limited) questioning of the administration on Iraq, but at this point his doubts look prescient and will hopefully appear so in a state with a disproportionate number of active servicemen. If Daschle runs as a local who can deliver - especially in light of a Kerry victory or the prospect of a Democratic Senate - and Thune runs as Bush's friend, I'd think the election would go to Daschle. South Dakota voters aren't in this to act as the GOP's enforcers. As citizens of a state that is fairly impoverished, small, and often at a loss for getting Washington's attention - notably 2 years ago when the Bush administration stalled on supporting drought relief - they have distinct needs. My out-of-state guess is that they'd have pause about unseating a native son with the strong capacity to deliver for them - especially if the case against him is made in such a partisan way.

Signifying the increasing bitterness of the South Dakota senate race, GOP challenger John Thune called his opponent, Tom Daschle an embarrassment to S. Dakota. Very well. Thune has definitely drawn his line in the sand there, also saying that he was "running to kick Tom Daschle out of office, to remove the thorn in President Bush's side."

This may reflect a rightward trend in the South Dakota GOP, but running against your opponent in this manner was also tried in New York against Hillary Clinton. Hillary was more of an immigrant, though New York is of course far more liberal than South Dakota. Thune is speaking this way of a native son of South Dakota, whose efforts to stay in touch with his constituents are legendary - evidenced by his annual unscheduled driving trips through the state. The drawbacks of this harsh style of campaigning in a state where voters call their representatives by name are clear.

The uprising of the Nader Republicans - a nice witty column on Nader's increasingly erratic trend in the Oregonian.

Glorious news: Nader has conceded in his efforts to get on the Arizona ballot.

Naturally, Saint Ralph is whining about interference from the Kerry campaign, never mind the fact that Kerry hasn't said anything one way or another about the Arizona ballot issue. And about the wide variance between state-level ballot requirements (It's called federalism - look it up). Or that bigtime politics does involve court challenges and legal decisions - if you want to play with the bigs, don't expect them to pitch you softballs. And don't cry if the pitches come in too fast.

Frankly, I'm surprised that Nader couldn't manage to get on the ballot, since he had plenty of Republicans signing petitions for him and his petition campaign in AZ had financial support from a prominent local Republican. It's a shame that this case was resolved so quickly, since it would have been interesting to find out where his funds were coming from.

For once, Nader could consider blaming himself for his poor showing in Arizona. His effort to gather signatures was decidedly half-assed, coasting on the use of some dubious right-wing allies. Since he scorned the Green Party, he denied himself a viable party organization that might have made the petition process easy (finding 14,000 voters or even liberals who think Nader should be on the ballot shouldn't be that hard, even in Arizona). Also, it just seems clear that he's gone about this in an ad hoc way. His candidacy was declared almost a year after the basic Democratic primary contenders had made their intentions clear. Does he think he can shake and bake an effective organization overnight?

His efforts in other states - see this piece on Nader's minimal appeal in Arkansas - promise to be equally half-assed. He also failed to get on the Indiana ballot - which probably wouldn't affect Kerry (a May poll found Kerry trailing Bush in the Hoosier state 54-33) - but also testifies to his organizational weakness. Indiana requires around 29,000 signatures and it does still have some liberal urban pockets where getting those wouldn't be too hard.

But introspection is not one of Nader's virtues. If it were, he wouldn't even be running. Perhaps he'll make it on the ballot elsewhere, but this promises to be an entertaining spectacle.

E.J. Dionne has a thoughtful column on how Kerry might deal with a Republican Congress, but I fear he's too optimistic. Even if Democrats take the Senate back, the use of the filibuster has become so normalized that gridlock is guaranteed - and there just aren't enough moderate Republicans to make a difference.

It had to come to this - W Ketchup - ketchup for conservatives. I imagine Francophobic Dijon mustard is next.

Moore vs. Nader

In a bizarre sequel to 2000, Michael Moore and Ralph Nader have hit the skids. I wouldn't want to get between the two of them, since this thing is guaranteed to be ugly. Barbara Ehrenreich reports that, in an opening salvo:

The anorexic Ralph Nader, in what must be an all-time low for left-wing invective, has even called [Moore] fat.

Fat? Anorexic? This might make the oldtime WWF look civilized. I can't take sides here, though I suspect my dislike for Nader exceeds my dislike for Moore. On top of that, it's amusing to read the feminist Ehrenreich using anorexic as a slur.

What exactly did Nader say? The Washington Post reports the following:

Addressing Moore:

[My friends are] trim and take care of themselves. Girth they avoid. The more you let them see you, the less they will see of you.

About Moore:

I've been at him for years, saying 'you've got to lose weight,.' Now, he's doubled. Private exhortations aren't working. It's extremely serious. He's over 300 pounds. He's like a giant beach ball.

I'm really disgusted. I don't care for Moore politically, but slamming him on his weight is beyond petty. Nader's own asceticism perhaps makes him less tolerant of Moore - I frankly doubt that most people would dissociate from Moore due to his weight. Or do Ralph Nader and his aforementioned friends have the social ethics of 12 year olds?

Slam Moore in the morning, defend him in the afternoon. What a weird day.

Getting into the Gutter with Michael Moore

When asked why he didn't directly challenge Joe McCarthy, Dwight Eisenhower declared that he "didn't want to get into the gutter with that man." Eisenhower's refusal to immediately engage the vicious Red-baiting senator from Wisconsin is a dark mark against his presidency, but one can understand his unwillingness to find himself having descended to McCarthy's level. There is something unseemly about getting involved with people who base their careers on guilt by association, by insinuation, and by half-truths. The hard right has no monopoly on people of this type, though Ann Coulter is definitely working to preserve Tail-Gunner Joe's memory. On the left, she is complemented by Michael Moore.

I have yet to see Fahrenheit 9/11. I wouldn't oppose seeing it altogether, but there is a very simple rule: no money of mine can go toward the film - no money spent on my behalf either. The optimal scenario would involve my buying tickets to White Chicks or Spider-Man 2 and then sneaking into Fahrenheit - the kind of thing I did plenty of times while a kid. Michael Moore was a wealthy man before this thing came out and the dollar or two I'd deny him wouldn't account for much. Still, I abhor the notion of rewarding him in the slightest way. Not in my name, as the anti-war protesters might say.

Why this distaste for Moore? It stems from a lot of different sources. I have doubts about anyone who has publicly declared that Americans "are possibly the dumbest people on the planet... in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks." I have my doubts about the populism of anyone who crusades for causes by humiliating store clerks and lower-middle managers. I had my doubts about his ridiculing of the city of Flint in Roger & Me - their efforts to build a tourist industry to replace GM had considerably more promise than his trying to pester Roger Smith to death. Or about the extended segments with the strange rabbit-skinning woman, which seemed to be in there largely for comic effect. Or his failure to ask really hard questions as to why car manufacturers were moving out of Michigan. GM was not alone in abandoning its Michigan manufacturing center. The 1980s were not a great decade for the US auto industry, and Michigan was no longer a cheap place to make cars. Moore might have at least recognized that fact - as venal as Smith was, a more conscientious CEO would have made the same call. Instead of asking hard questions about Flint's economic future, he engaged in a Quixotic quest to beat back the ocean with a broom. It might have made for good celluloid, but Roger & Me is deficient of any economic logic.

Moore always begins his movies with his villains defined for him. Bowling for Columbine was no exception. It sought to link the murderous rampage of Klebold and Harris with the concurrent U.S. war in Kosovo (pause and think everyone: if a deal had been struck at Chateau Rambouillet in NATO-Yugoslavian negotiations averting war, would Klebold & Harris have gone to school on April 20 with peace in their hearts?). To further this distasteful argument, he falsely linked it to a Lockheed Martin plant in Littleton (the Denver suburb where Columbine was located). By Moore's account, the plant manufactured "weapons of mass destruction." Forbes revealed that the plant makes space launch vehicles for TV satellites. Worse was Moore's alteration of a 1988 Bush/Quayle campaign ad to directly link the Willie Horton smear ads with Bush/Quayle. Altering evidence should be a big no-no in documentary filmmaking, but Moore thought a little forgery would help the argument flow better.* Also, in Bowling for Columbine, Moore (irrelevantly) repeated the old saw that the U.S. aided the Taliban before 9/11. The aid package in question was humanitarian, and distributed through NGOs, not the Taliban. There is something appalling, perhaps, about lefties bashing humanitarian aid in this fashion, but I guess it relates to gun ownership in America . . . somehow. [see Spinsanity.org for extensive research on Moore]

Fahrenheit 9/11 was filmed to answer a question that no one was really asking: why Michael Moore had his celebrated outburst at the 2003 Oscars. I was watching them at the time. I did not wonder for a second why he was ranting on stage. But, Moore being Moore, we're treated to a 2 hour explanation. Lucky us.

It's pretty easy to construct a map of the movie's points if one reads about it. Most of the pieces I've read about the film are quite positive and give a lot of stress to the film's strong points. Movie reviewers tend to be pretty liberal - Fahrenheit has a 85% Fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes - so I imagine that they relish this film saying what they normally couldn't in print.

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes real hay out of relations between the Bush and bin Laden families. Well there are about 30-some bin Laden siblings and Osama is generally considered the black sheep of the family. Some of them have longstanding business ties in the U.S. The charge is made as part of a general effort to implicate the Saudis in shaping American foreign policy. He charges that crooked Bush operatives authorized the flight of the bin Ladens from the U.S. after 9/11 - with the smug certainty that he's saying something new. As Christopher Hitchens points out, this isn't a new point. More damaging, the flight was authorized by Richard Clarke, who otherwise appears as an expert witness in the film. Moore's lame excuse for omitting Clarke's authorization of the flight is that his name appears on a briefly shown news article about it.

Fahrenheit 9/11 also charges that the war in Iraq is a diversion from the war in Afghanistan. This is a new one for Moore, who hardly supported the war in Afghanistan when it kicked off. Back in 2002, Moore wrote:

What if there is no "terrorist threat?" What if Bush and Co. need, desperately need, that "terrorist threat" more than anything in order to conduct the systematic destruction they have launched against the U.S. constitution and the good people of this country who believe in the freedoms and liberties it guarantees?

Hardly the words of someone concerned about troop levels in Afghanistan. Also, as Hitchens notes,

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified.

Fahrenheit 9/11 reportedly does not embrace this tack. It borrows a more hawkish critique from others. That's basically a tactical shift. If Moore wanted to allege that bin Laden was innocent, as many on the illiberal left tried to do, this film would receive an entirely different kind of controversy. Moore does fish around with the notion that UNOCAL wanted to build a pipeline in Afghanistan, but in doing so he contradicts itself: if a pipeline was an overriding priority, why has so little been invested in securing Afghanistan? The Taliban militants running rampant are in a good position to kill construction workers and blow up the (nonexistent) pipeline - just like Iraqi insurgents are doing. As Hitchens notes, Moore is markedly ambivalent about Afghanistan.

Also distasteful, is the way Moore deals with Iraq. He utterly avoids showing the viewers anything that might make us think that something was wrong with Iraq before the U.S. invaded. As Richard Cohen - no supporter of Bush - states:

Moore's depiction of why Bush went to war is so silly and so incomprehensible that it is easily dismissed. As far as I can tell, it is a farrago of conspiracy theories. But nothing is said about multiple U.N. resolutions violated by Iraq or the depredations of Saddam Hussein. In fact, prewar Iraq is depicted as some sort of Arab folk festival -- lots of happy, smiling, indigenous people. Was there no footage of a Kurdish village that had been gassed? This is obscenity by omission.

Moore was challenged about this by Jake Tapper on ABC News:

TAPPER: Is it not also legitimate to question whether, however, you are doing the same thing you're accusing the U.S. government of doing? You fault Saddam Hussein for being a brutal dictator back in the '80s when the United States was allied with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, yet when it comes to the part of the movie where you discuss going to war in Iraq in 2003, that's not a part of the movie you talk about how brutal Saddam Hussein was.

MOORE: Because people like you and this network and other networks over and over and over again told us that. Look, we all get it. We all know that. I'm just trying to present another side of the story. Why don't you think that's a good idea to have a filmmaker out there presenting a point of view and a side of the story that really wasn't well represented in our mainstream media?

It's only a point of view. Selectivity is not defensible on those grounds. Any argument can be constructed on the basis of selective evidence. With the right combination of half-truths and omissions, Michael Moore could have blamed the 9/11 attacks on the Buffalo Bills. Moore's film is purporting to be definitive; not "the other side of the story." A more careful Moore might have made the argument by acknowledging that Saddam was terrible long after the U.S. broke its limited relations with him, but that would have involved muddying the water, making a more nuanced argument. Nuance and Michael Moore have yet to be acquainted.

We come to the famous clock scene, showing Bush's reaction after hearing of the first plane striking the World Trade Center. Perhaps he waited in the room too long. Perhaps he was genuinely did not know what to do for a few crucial moments. Perhaps he didn't want to alarm the children. Perhaps Michael Moore - who in 2000 aimed far more scorn at Al Gore than Bush, while working with Ralph Nader to undermine the Democrat - still hasn't taken the measure of a man he hates too much to fathom. Bush's reaction on 9/11 was too slow and too dazed. But let's consider the reaction of another man on that fateful day, who wrote:

If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC and the planes' destination of California - these where places that voted AGAINST Bush!

These are of course words that appeared briefly at Michael Moore's website, were observed by millions, and then were wisely deleted. But we're left to conclude that he might have been more amenable to an Atlanta-based flight slamming into a Houston skyscraper. So, I think Moore would be wise to consider that he lives in a glass house on this issue.

You'll read all this and wonder how grounded it is since I (at time of writing) haven't seen it. The people I cite have. If you have, compare my points against Moore's and ask yourself where they match up. If you haven't and plan to, keep these arguments in mind when you see it.

Liberals are exulting that they have an avatar in Moore. I wouldn't be so happy. Moore contributed to the election of Bush in 2000 by his scouring attacks on Al Gore. Associating with him did Wesley Clark no good; nothing hurt the Clark campaign as much as the general's silence when Moore charged Bush with desertion. Like Richard Cohen, I think Moore's toxicity makes close association with him hazardous. The people who will most appreciate Fahrenheit 9/11 are those most appreciative of this new Coulter of the left. Not centrist independents or undecideds - whose reactions to the film will be harder to predict. For my part, I see Moore's new popularity as a sign that the entire spectrum is slowly sinking into the rhetorical gutter, where facts count for less than innuendo, a little alteration makes the story better, and half-truths trump the search for the whole.

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*Ironically, he didn't really need to do this. The specific Willie Horton ad was released not by the Bush/Quayle campaign, but by a closely related PAC.