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2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

 
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 02:11 pm
Ehem, let's put it this way:

- I'm not very good in criticizing actors - thus I don't commend on "recent affairs" in California,
- as a former member of the Navy, I've just basic knowledges of other forces (althought I've 'climbed' a hill in all men-known kinds of going forward & backwards -and even some more!).

:wink:
0 Replies
 
Scrat
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 02:44 pm
Craven de Kere wrote:
Well Scrat, Gore never claimed Bush said that and you claimed he lied, so while I agree that this is a silly game that can go on forever I'll note that it's a game of your initiation and that the futility of it was something I had intended to point out.

I claimed he "lied" to illustrate the absurdly low standard being used to make such a claim these days. (Read up on humor, sarcasm, irony.) I believe Gore knew the statement was false, though I don't think he made it with the intention to mislead so much as to play to the misled. I still wouldn't call it a lie though; I'd call it ignorant liberal rhetoric. Gore knows that "getting" Osama was never the reason for liberating Iraq, stated or unstated. I pointed out that it was never the stated reason given by anyone. You disingenuously focused on the fact that I included the President specifically because you clearly are more interested in trying to win an argument than you are in acknowledging what I actually wrote.

Straw man, anyone? Craven's cooked up a fresh batch! Cool
0 Replies
 
Scrat
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 02:46 pm
Craven de Kere wrote:
Scrat accuses Gore of lying because Bush never said the war in Iraq was about catching Osama.

THAT IS A LIE. I NEVER WROTE THAT GORE ACCUSED BUSH OF ANYTHING. CAN YOU READ???? Evil or Very Mad

Pick up the phone, Craven, reality is calling. Rolling Eyes
0 Replies
 
Craven de Kere
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 04:35 pm
Scrat wrote:
Craven de Kere wrote:
Scrat accuses Gore of lying because Bush never said the war in Iraq was about catching Osama.

THAT IS A LIE. I NEVER WROTE THAT GORE ACCUSED BUSH OF ANYTHING. CAN YOU READ???? Evil or Very Mad

Pick up the phone, Craven, reality is calling. Rolling Eyes


Scrat,

You set yourself up too easily so I'll have to do it again.

I never said you said Gore accused Bush of anything. Twisted Evil Laughing I was very careful not to say that because you have shown an unbelievable tendency to delienate between inference and a direct statement on one hand and fail to do so on the other.

The phone's not ringing and I really don't care about "winning this argument". I'm content to watch and am reminded of a Radiohead song: "You do it to yourself..."
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 04:55 pm
timberlandko wrote:
LOL, Tart Laughing
Bleating in a widely unnoticed press release, wingnut fringe group MoveOn wrote:
..

A webcast, satellite TV coverage on a channel most subscribers don't even know they get, and C-Span but only if nothing else is going on isn't exactly a Bully Pulpit, ... Hell, I'll bet the co-timed Miami Book Fair on C-Span2 will pull higher ratings than the Gore non-event. Pandering to an already devoted niche market is not the stuff of substantive political discourse.


Actually, I came across prominent references to this speech on the WashPost, NYT and CNN websites before arriving back here at A2K.
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 05:07 pm
timberlandko wrote:
Well, now, Tart, I would opine [..] the focus and unanimity of The Repubs indicates the voice of The Electorate.


As, presumably, is born out by the current opinion polls, according to which some 50% would not like to see Bush reelected, and only 44% would ...

- among Independent voters, thats only 40% pro reelection, 53% against -

- among men, the anti-bush sentiment prevails by a 6% margin, among women, by a 9% margin -

... or according to which Bush's lead on the supposed far-left liberal Dean has shrunk to a mere 4% (49 against 45)...

http://www.pollingreport.com/images/reelected.gif
0 Replies
 
Tartarin
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 05:16 pm
Another interesting erosion of confidence seems to be within the Supreme Court which has agreed to take on the matter of the holding of detainees ("enemy combatants") at Guantanamo. Pro-admin lawyers and others are worried, per report just now on NPR ("erosion of executive power"). "The court seems to be moving away from the administration" (paraphrase).
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 06:55 pm
Actually, I find these Bush Vs. X/Y/Z polls extremely interesting. Well, that aint saying much cause I find all poll results extremely interesting - even if its about whether the Dutch are going to win their next soccer game. But still - these specific ones have shown a curious turn of developments lately - I commented a bit on that already.

You see, the consensus seemed for a long time that Dean was somehow unelectable, because he's a liberal, far-left, north-eastern, elite, out of touch, etc. Much has been made out of that by both his moderate primary competitors and by the Republicans.

And polls for a long time showed them right. Even while Dean was edging towards the top of the pack, he did disastrously, in comparison to Kerry, Lieberman and later Clark, too, when pitted against Bush in the polls. In July, a Fox poll showed Dean trailing Bush by 28%, while Kerry trailed by 19%. Even in mid-September, the Newsweek polls had Dean trailing by 14-16%, while Clark polled only 4% less than Bush.

Timber, Scrat, georgeob1 e.a. are still making much of this: Dean as McGovern II, so laughably leftfield in relation to American society that conservatives should feel gleeful at his every succes. E.g.:

timberlandko wrote:
Yup, Dean is lining up for his position among other Democrat Greats ... McGovern, Hart, Dukakis, Gore ... I support his Candicacy Campaign wholeheartedly.


georgeob1 wrote:
I wish Dean every success in the Democrat primaries. I believe of the serious contingent among the ten dwarves he will be the easiest for Bush to beat.


But recent polls seem to have totally turned around on that. There is no longer an unelectability gap among the Democratic candidates. Not just is the margin with Bush getting smaller - it is also getting increasingly the same for each candidate.

In the latest Newsweek poll, Dean trails Bush by 4% - just like both Lieberman and Kerry. Gephardt trails by 5%, Clark by 3%. Apparently The Mainstream Electorate no longer sees Dean as a scary leftwinger - centrists and independents are as open to his message as to Wesley's or Joe's. It was the same two weeks ago, too.

Now Dean, of all Democratic candidates, shouldnt be an unknown person anymore to Americans who intend to vote. They've seen the latte-drinking DINKies and young punk kids gather for the Sleepless in Seattle tour. They've heard the commentators do their Dean-the-liberal thing - but somehow, it doesnt seem to deter them anymore.

Now I dont know whether Dean can win. The new union support might help him in the midwest, but I really dont see him winning many of those white Southern poor. But then the cultural vs economic affinity line cuts both ways. Dean might lose low-income Democrats in the South, but win over middle-class Independents in the suburbs. Bush is again polling particularly badly among women (like in 2000), who traditionally respond less to the macho rhetorics of victory and war that Bush will have to rely upon to sell the continuously violent endeavour in Iraq with. I dont know whether it'll be enough, but it seems by now that Dean at least stands as good a chance as any Democrat.

Thats a bit of a relief. I cant take part in any case, but until now I was kinda torn as an observer - I kinda liked Dean, but was afraid he couldnt win - but the alternatives (Kerry, who seems to run on his autobiography, and Clark, who seems vain and shifty) didnt instill much trust. But if the unelectable issue is out of the way, the choice is much simpler.

Consider this. Until now Dean has focused on rallying the troops, mobilising "the Democratic wing of the Democratic party" with angry rhetorics. He can only move to the center from here, yet already he is polling as good as any candidate, and only 4% behind Bush. The inevitable move to the center that will ensue can only narrow that margin. And with the radical / moderate thing out of the way, other things start to count.

First, Bush is a bit of a radical himself - or leads a radical team, in any case - but he's got unprecedently deep pockets. To have even a fighting chance, you need a Dem who can come even close in matching his funding drive. The only candidate who's been able to do that so far: Dean.

Second, I dont know if you noticed, but I read alarming news in the TNR about the spectacularly increased campaign efficiency of the Republicans, since 2000. Lemme summarize what I read. For example, HOW THE GOP LEARNED VOTER TURNOUT:

Quote:
Greg and the rest of this flushing team are the bottom rungs of a grand Republican plan--an operation the party has spent two years building--to match Democrats on Election Day in turning out their most loyal voters. After decisively losing the turnout battle in 2000, the GOP has spent the last election cycle studying what went wrong and how to fix it. In state after state in 2000, media polls had shown George W. Bush with a much larger share of the electorate than he actually received. In New Hampshire, polls suggested a 10-point lead, yet Bush won by only a single point. In Washington, he was up by 1 point but lost by 5 points, and, in Delaware, he was leading by 4 points on election eve but lost by a whopping 13. On the left, union members and African Americans overperformed, turning out in higher percentages than their share of the population; on the right, social conservatives underperformed.

So Karl Rove and the White House political shop ordered the party to revitalize its grassroots operations. Their solution: the "72-hour task force," a program the party used in more than 30 states this year to boost turnout in the final days. [..] This time, it was Republicans across the country who exceeded expectations and outperformed at the polls. In race after race, the Republican margin of victory was larger than what the final polls predicted. In Colorado, the last public poll showed Wayne Allard at 44 percent, yet he won with 51 percent of the vote. In Georgia, where Republicans had one of their best GOTV operations, Saxby Chambliss was at 44 percent in the last two polls but received 53 percent. There were similar surges in the Senate races in North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Texas.

The woman who oversaw this effort is Blaise Hazelwood, the relatively unknown political director of the RNC. She has become the party's evangelist for returning to grassroots organizing, which emphasizes person-to-person contact rather than lavish spending on increasingly ineffective TV ads. Talking in a conference room at Republican headquarters in Washington, she spoke about the effort in revolutionary terms, saying that Rove asked her to do nothing less than "change the culture of the party."


The figures are impressive - the new strategies of grassroots mobilisation seem to be making just the difference one needs in order to win. The DNC, in comparison, seems clueless (from &c):

Quote:
[..] as bad as McAuliffe's efforts to bring discipline to the nominating season have been, his electoral record is even worse. Between the disastrous midterm elections and yesterday's dismal off-year elections, the DNC chairman has had few Election Day successes. And on McAuliffe's watch, it appears, the Democrats' once fearsome turnout operation has withered on the vine.

In the two election cycles before Bill Clinton's victory over George H.W. Bush in 1992, then-DNC Chairman Ron Brown was busy building an impressive turnout machine known as the "coordinated campaign." Brown's innovations helped Democrats notch a string of victories in 1989, 1990, and 1991, which presaged Clinton's eventual win in '92. But these days all the innovation is on the GOP side. Republicans [..] transform[ed] their party into a powerful voter mobilization tool on the back of strategies like their 72-Hour Task force. [..] "This is not an optional program. It is the direction that the party is going, and has been unanimously agreed to by party leaders at every level [..] we are conducting training seminars all over the country."

If there's a similarly aggressive program on the Democratic side, McAuliffe has kept it a secret.


So, is Clark or Kerry going to succeed against the ever motivated christian/conservative troops on the ground, now so much better organised than in 2000, if you look at the McAuliffe record on central campaign coordination? If not, who can compete in terms of grassroots effort, using his own resources on the ground? Only Dean. Dean and Trippi. Read the fascinating article: JOE TRIPPI REINVENTS CAMPAIGNING :

Quote:
[E]ven though campaigns are organizing supporters more efficiently than ever before, they're still using the same basic techniques they've been using for 35--and in many cases 150--years. Donna Brazile [..] recalls that her single most important concern at this point in 1999 was the campaign's Iowa hard count--i.e., the number of people who have committed to supporting your candidate in the upcoming election. "It's a standard recipe," Brazile explains: [..] The people who say they're definitely supporting your candidate are assigned a "one." The people who say they're leaning your way get a "two." And the people who say they're for the other guy get a "three." Your job is to convert all your twos to ones and to keep your ones from sliding. The number of ones you have at any given time is your hard count. Let it fall too low, and you can kiss the election goodbye. [..]

It's helpful to think about these developments in terms of what you might call "cost per body"--that is, the total amount you end up spending to bring a single supporter to the polls. If resources were unlimited, no one would care about the cost per body. [..] But resources are limited. Which means that, among candidates with similarly appealing platforms and equal amounts of money, the one with the lowest cost per body wins. [..]

Meetup figured perfectly into Trippi's grand campaign strategy. He reasoned that Dean's antiwar, anti-Bush message would resonate at the grassroots, meaning Dean could raise impressive amounts of money from a large base of small donors. [..] The hope was that each person who attended a Dean Meetup or who wrote regularly on the Dean blog would turn around and involve several more people--siblings, parents, friends, business associates--all of whom could be put to work for the campaign. [..]

[A]t th[at] time the campaign has a measly 8,000 people signed up on its website. To say, as Trippi does, that Dean is going to have 150,000 people signed up by June and 450,000 by September, and that it's going to lap the field in fund-raising--well, the average Democratic suit just has no idea what to do with that. [..] Come early July, the suits [..] want another look at [Trippi's] PowerPoint presentation. [..] "They were just going like, 'Oh ****.'" Suddenly, it's dawning on the suits that, if you can go from $2.6 to $7.6 million in ten days, and if you can go from 22,000 to 159,000 people in three months, then those 450,000 people Trippi promised by the end of September just might materialize. And, if those 450,000 people Trippi promised materialized, who knew how much money they might bring with them?

But, in truth, the suits are only grasping the tip of the iceberg. Because the money is incidental--a by-product, really. Far more important is that Trippi is racking up a hard count most campaign operatives could only dream of--and without having to make a single phone call, knock on a single door, or send a single piece of direct mail. [..] Like all those fanatical Wave Systems investors, the Dean supporters are doing the hard work of organizing for him, which means the cost per body is falling like mad. Come to think of it, the campaign is even making money in the process. [..]

Trippi waves me around to his side of the table and directs me to a portion of the Dean website called "Deanlink," which tracks the number of additional supporters each current Dean-backer is bringing in. "Here's Jonathan Kreiss Tompkins," Trippi says, pointing to a picture on the screen of his laptop. Jonathan Kreiss Tompkins lives in Alaska and, it turns out, has single- handedly signed up 463 other Dean supporters--their names go on for screen after screen down the left side of Jonathan's Deanlink page. "What I'm trying to say is ... all these people have linked themselves to this guy--and it keeps going, dude." Trippi pauses and looks up. "Now here's the really cool thing: Jonathan Kreiss Tompkins is fourteen years old." [..]

[W]hen you're raising money from people in small increments, and when those same people think they're being listened to, then those people start to feel like they own the campaign. And, once they start to feel they own the campaign, it's almost impossible to pry them away. In the language of political organizing, you never have to worry about your ones backsliding into twos.

Trippi gets a perfect test of this proposition in late June [..]. Dean goes on NBC's "Meet the Press" and, according to just about every pundit in Washington, falls flat on his face. But the average Dean supporter doesn't quite see it that way. [H]e's annoyed at how dismissive the media is when it comes to a campaign that, after all, he partly owns. Pretty soon, he's writing e-mails and ponying up more cash, trying to send a message to the people who would tread on his investment. [..]

Dean is widely expected to receive the endorsement of the 1.6 million-member Service Employees International Union this week. Between Dean's Internet operation and the manpower of big labor and various women's and civil rights groups, a nominee Dean might even surpass the turnout operation that put Gore over the top in several states--Delaware, Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan- -where he was running even with Bush or trailing in the final days of the 2000 campaign. [..]

If Dean becomes the Democratic nominee, his Internet fund-raising ability will once again be a crucial factor in his chances of success. "This is like in January, and we're sitting there, and we finally realize it's going to take two million Americans each giving us one hundred dollars online" to raise as much money as Bush, Trippi says. "There's only one medium ... that can change things enough that, if two million people tomorrow morning just woke up and thought, here's your one hundred dollars, it could happen in a day."
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 07:34 pm
Into the realms of the bizarre - Bush looks cool in his shorts, Kucinich fantasizes about his First Lady and Al Franken ponders running for senator.

Follow the Money

Bitter?

Quote:
"I love George W. Bush," says the Weekly Standard's Noemie Emery. "I worship the man. I wake up every morning glad he is president. When annoyed by small things -- traffic, the weather, an overcharge -- I say to myself, 'President Bush,' and at once feel better. I like his worldview. I like his dogs and his wife and his mother. I think he looks cool in his shorts and his t-shirts. But it isn't these things that make my heart flutter: It's that he drives the people I hate the most nuts.

"[..] no one has yet coined a word for the happiness that can come to a person when those who annoy him complain. Open the paper, and there they all are: the hard-faced women who refer to abortion as 'choice,' the soft-faced male writers who look a little too pampered, the actors, the artists, the faculty hotshots, the with-it, the urbane and the urban, the concerned, the refined, the sincere. [..]


You wish ...

Quote:
If you've spent no time thinking about Dennis Kucinich's romantic life, this Slate item from the trail is for you:

"What role would a 'first lady, first man, or first friend' play in their administrations? . . . it's Kucinich, who also is divorced, who steals the show. 'As a bachelor, I get a chance to fantasize about my first lady. Maybe Fox wants to sponsor a national contest or something,' he says. He adds that he wants 'someone who would not want to just be by my side,' but would be a 'dynamic outspoken women who was fearless' in her support for peace in the world and universal, single-payer health care. So, 'If you're out there, call me.' "

Could this be the campaign's hidden agenda?


Mr. Franken goes to Washington?

Quote:
If there's a Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, then why not a Sen. Al Franken?

The New York-born comedian and writer says he is "intrigued" at the idea of joining the ranks of Hillary Clinton and Trent Lott - as a senator from his adopted home state of Minnesota.

Friends in the state want Franken to reclaim the seat held by the late Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone - a seat now occupied by Republican Norm Coleman.

"Republicans always say, 'How dare Susan Sarandon and Martin Sheen get involved in politics!'" Franken tells this week's Newsweek. "Then Arnold showed up and it was, 'Oooh! Arnold's running! Oooh! The Terminator!'"
0 Replies
 
timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 08:35 pm
I have no problem with the idea Democrats think Dean is electable. I note that Kerry has decided to "Shake up" his campaign, replacing his campaign manager, and has broached the subject of eschewing Federal campaign money a la Dean. Both measures indicate to me at the very least dissatisfaction on Kerry's part with the staus quo, and suggest something not too far short of panic, coming together as they do. A strong sjhowing by Gephardt in Iowa, a respectable Kerry turnout, and its a 3-man race going into New Hampshire,, I would think. Its early yet, but I figure both Lieberman and Edwards are now more than ever outmatched. and I fully expect Clark to seal his own doom with some gaffe.
And again, its early yet, but The Dems have more-or-less staked all on The War and The Economy. That could, and I suspect will, leave them little to use come next November.
0 Replies
 
timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 08:39 pm
Ahnuld ran for office. Striesand, Franken, Moore, and the like run their mouths. Let one or two of them mount a serious campaign. What the hell, if Sonny Bono could do it, one of that crowd ought to be able to. Failing that, they amount to little other than pundits-withouit-credentials ... entertainers with pretensions. Ahnuld, whatever he may have been, now is a politicician with a solid victory. Big difference.

Of course, Jesse Ventura comes to mind.
0 Replies
 
fishin
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 09:01 pm
nimh wrote:
Now Dean, of all Democratic candidates, shouldnt be an unknown person anymore to Americans who intend to vote. They've seen the latte-drinking DINKies and young punk kids gather for the Sleepless in Seattle tour. They've heard the commentators do their Dean-the-liberal thing - but somehow, it doesnt seem to deter them anymore.


This is probably some "wishful thinking". Not to be negative or anything here nimh but it was just a few months ago where the majority of registered Democrats couldn't identify any of the 9 candidates running (that was prior to Clark entering the race and Graham dropping out..). The numbers who can ID a few of the candidates has probably gone up some but I doubt it's by much at this point. As much as we'd like to think otherwise the American public is pretty apathetic and they'd rather watch re-runs of "Friends" than the evening news and read "Us" or "People" magazine rather than a newspaper.

Thusfar the candidates are still speaking to and seeing the party faithful for the most part. A huge portion of teh voting public doesn't look into who's running until the last few weeks before the actual election.

Quote:
Consider this. Until now Dean has focused on rallying the troops, mobilising "the Democratic wing of the Democratic party" with angry rhetorics. He can only move to the center from here, yet already he is polling as good as any candidate, and only 4% behind Bush. The inevitable move to the center that will ensue can only narrow that margin. And with the radical / moderate thing out of the way, other things start to count.


Why is it that the gap can only narrow??? Why can't the gap widen? In moving toward the center he has to be cautious not to trip over what he's been saying so far while courting the far left. If he gets caught making statements that contradict statements he's been making (and he's already been caught in a few of those) then he could just as easily be seen as waffling or flip-flopping on issues which isn't generally seen as an acceptable concept in US politics.

Quote:
First, Bush is a bit of a radical himself - or leads a radical team, in any case - but he's got unprecedently deep pockets. To have even a fighting chance, you need a Dem who can come even close in matching his funding drive. The only candidate who's been able to do that so far: Dean.


Again, this could turn out to be a double-edged sword. So far Dean is raising some money but he's now decided to forgo public campaign financing. That decision may be something that brings Nader back out into the race as a Green Party candidate (since a large part of his last campaign was about fighting the campaign finance system it may irk him enough that he decides to throw his wrench into the race.). If Nader is back in that isn't good news for any Dem. candidate.
0 Replies
 
timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 09:13 pm


Hmmmm ... is Ralphie jumpin' up and down and sayin' "Hey, look at me"?
0 Replies
 
Tartarin
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 09:43 pm
Very good stuff, Nimh. Nice to see some sanity. I'd like to address at least some of your points in detail but suffice to say that Dean is pretty damn near center and yes, Bush is a radical (or puppet of radicals), and yes the Republican Right is extremely well organized. This slickness has won them a series of elections but I don't think it will go on forever. The hard edge is beginning to really incur some dislike among their own centrists.

There are curious anomalies. One of the latest is the hoopla about Dean's remark about "confederate flags." The press made a big deal of it but it appears that many in the south (and here in Texas) admire him for it. My sources (since I'm so tuned out when it comes to TV and urban communications) are talk shows, rural and nearby urban, largely local. And they seem to lean heavily towards defending Dean, even in this very Republican territory. Go figure. I wouldn't have expected it.

The earliest support Dean got was very local New England support -- people who knew him, knew him as governor, had met him, etc. etc. One of the very things they liked about him was his stalwart centrism (even though they didn't always like it, particularly when pet environmental programs got cut) combined with reach-out social policies and, above all, his rock-ribbed fiscal conservatism. He seems to have a first-rate staff and, when he's not able to attend a rally himself (as the big one I went to), his staffies make an impression as hard-working, very accessible, well-organized and low-ego. His most visible supporters are young, but he has a great following among older people (who often don't attend his get-togethers and rallies because they seem to be held in places somewhat inaccessibly to creaky older people!). I'm fascinated by the style of this campaign. I got pretty deeply involved in Kennedy's campaign back in 1960 and the styles seem quite similar in many ways. Lots of really impressive folks running both campaigns. Very, very different from the Rove style.

I think many Americans are really sick to death of being bulldozed by large (now perceptibly corrupt) corporations and I think Bush, Rove, and the Republican Party feel like a large, bulldozing (increasingly corrupt) corporation.
0 Replies
 
Tartarin
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 10:03 pm
Quote:
Support the Troops
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Yesterday's absurd conspiracy theory about the Bush administration has a way of turning into today's conventional wisdom. Remember when people were ridiculed for claiming that Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, eager to fight a war, were hyping the threat from Iraq?

Anyway, many analysts now acknowledge that the administration never had any intention of pursuing a conventionally responsible fiscal policy. Rather, its tax cuts were always intended as a way of implementing the radical strategy known as "starve the beast," which views budget deficits as a good thing, a way to squeeze government spending. Did I mention that the administration is planning another long-run tax cut next year?

Advocates of the starve-the-beast strategy tend to talk abstractly about "big government." But in fact, squeezing government spending almost always means cutting back or eliminating services people actually want (though not necessarily programs worth their cost). And since it's Veterans Day, let's talk about how the big squeeze on spending may be alienating a surprising group: the nation's soldiers.The article went on to assert that there has been "a string of actions by the Bush administration to cut or hold down growth in pay and benefits, including basic pay, combat pay, health-care benefits and the death gratuity paid to survivors of troops who die on active duty."

At one level, this pattern of cuts is standard operating procedureBut it's hard to deny the stunning insensitivity of President Bush's remarks back on July 2: "There are some who feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring 'em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." Those are the words of a man who can't imagine himself or anyone close to him actually being in the line of fire. If this disillusionment spreads to the rank and file, the politics of 2004 may be very different from what anyone expects.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/opinion/11KRUG.html?pagewanted=print&position=
0 Replies
 
dyslexia
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 10:14 pm
the only thing I find interesting about politics is that it brings out the worst of the lunatic fringe and then the populace, in all sincerity, votes for them.
0 Replies
 
timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Mon 10 Nov, 2003 10:24 pm
Astute observation. Dys.
0 Replies
 
Brand X
 
  1  
Reply Tue 11 Nov, 2003 06:44 am
Soros's Deep Pockets vs. Bush
Financier Contributes $5 Million More in Effort to Oust President
By Laura Blumenfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 11, 2003; Page A03

NEW YORK -- George Soros, one of the world's richest men, has given away nearly $5 billion to promote democracy in the former Soviet bloc, Africa and Asia. Now he has a new project: defeating President Bush.

"It is the central focus of my life," Soros said, his blue eyes settled on an unseen target. The 2004 presidential race, he said in an interview, is "a matter of life and death."

Soros, who has financed efforts to promote open societies in more than 50 countries around the world, is bringing the fight home, he said. On Monday, he and a partner committed up to $5 million to MoveOn.org, a liberal activist group, bringing to $15.5 million the total of his personal contributions to oust Bush.

Overnight, Soros, 74, has become the major financial player of the left. He has elicited cries of foul play from the right. And with a tight nod, he pledged: "If necessary, I would give more money."

"America, under Bush, is a danger to the world," Soros said. Then he smiled: "And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is."

Full story
0 Replies
 
Tartarin
 
  1  
Reply Tue 11 Nov, 2003 07:01 am
Moveon.org is raising money for more NY Times (and other major newspaper) ads to oust Bush, if anyone would like to help out! Every penny counts.
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Tue 11 Nov, 2003 07:43 am
To my great regret, I had to be off the Net for over a week in pursuit of real world projects. To my even greater regret, I had to leave this thread in the middle of an interesting discussion with Scrat. I hope I don't annoy people too much by trying to complete this sub-thread now.

Scrat wrote:
Krugman is the worst kind of partisan hack, and I'm shocked that you find any value in his writing.

I'm troubled to hear that, but all the more relieved to see that you have eventually found the courage to live on despite the trauma of this shock.

Scrat wrote:
And I'm glad to see you acknowledge that you are sharing a theory and not a fact. (There is a difference, you know.) Though personally, I don't care how accurate you think your theories are, I'm still going to call them opinions, and jump when you pretend they are facts.

I agree that neoclassical economics, from which Krugman's criticism of Bush's tax cuts follows naturally, is just a theory. Then again, Copernican astronomy is also just a theory. And Galileo Galilei, in his articles and books, was extremely biased in favor of the Copernican world view, and just as extremely biased against the Ptolemaic world view held by the Catholic church. In the view of the Catholic church and its academic allies, this made Galilei a partisan hack. And who knows? By the standards of his time, he might well have been one. But all this is completely irrelevant, for one single reason: Galilei was right.

The point of this analogy is not that Krugman is a Galilei-caliber intellect. He isn't, and he'd be the first to admit it. Neither do I intend to concede your assertion that Krugman is pushing a partisan agenda of extreme liberalism. He isn't, but that's not the point I'm arguing at the moment. The point is to illustrate why I don't see the accusation of partisanism, even if it's true, as a valid argument against a position. The relevant test of a position is not whether it opposes the views of powerful people, nor whether it deviates substantially from the majority view. The relevant test is whether the position is internally consistent, and whether it is consistent with the evidence.

Krugman's columns pass both tests. The Bush tax cuts, considered as a stimulus program, are a failure in terms of bang for the buck. The only reason they provide some stimulus is because an awful lot of bucks has been spent on it. Better don't look at the budget busting deficits that were created in the process. The war on Iraq, considered as as an anti-terrorism and anti-WMD project, failed in a similarly spectacular way. Nobody has found any WMDs in Iraq, and terrorism is thriving there in a way it didn't before the attack.

Krugman might well be a partisan hack for pointing this out. But even if he was, it doesn't matter for a simple reason: He is right.
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