2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

Fair enough points, George, but in the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding. With that in mind, how many examples in history can you think of where attacking or embargoing a country stopped, or significantly contained, an existing terrorism problem?

Thomas,

Historical examples? None, either pro or con, are entirely apt, because the historical circumstances do vary. You have already offered one suggesting the benefits of a passive response. However some do indeed come to mind.

In the early 19th century the U.S. acting alone attacked the ports of the pirates of the Magreb coast in North Africa who had terrorized merchant shipping in the Western Mediterranean for centuries and exacted substantial tolls. The operation was successful.

Perhaps you recall the revolution in El Salvador during the '80s. It was being sustained by an organized, Soviet-assisted operation, connected to them through Cuba and Nicaragua. Terror squads conducted widespread assassination and destruction, prompting equivalent counter action from right wing groups. Though not all the details have made the public domain, the U.S. stationed covert forces in the Gulf of Fonseca to block the supply routes from Nicaragua; financed a counter revolution in Nicaragua (the Contras) to distract them; and even used mines to close the Nicaraguan harbors through which the weapons and supplys were passed to them by Cuba. We isolated the El Salvadorean movement from its source of supply and the so called revolution ended quickly.

The British faced a serious Communist led (but also nationalistic and anti colonial) uprising in Malaya in the 1950s which involved systematic terror and assassination to destabilize both colonial rule and the good faith efforts of the British to manage the transition to a liberal and presumably friendly independent Malaysia. They sealed the borders and in many areas confined the rural population to fortified villages to isolate the insurgent terrorists. They were successful.

Though it is hard to applaud their motives, the European powers were successful in attacking the source of the Boxer rebellion in China and establishing at least a few decades of relative stability. (One could argue they merely sowed the seeds of greater trouble in the future - However by normal historical standards they were successful.)

Source

A day old Krugman article in the NYT. Hack the Vote
December 2, 2003
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote,
"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes
to the president next year." No surprise there. But Walden
O'Dell - who says that he wasn't talking about his business
operations - happens to be the chief executive of Diebold
Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in
increasingly widespread use across the United States.

For example, Georgia - where Republicans scored spectacular
upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections - relies
exclusively on Diebold machines. To be clear, though there
were many anomalies in that 2002 vote, there is no evidence
that the machines miscounted. But there is also no evidence
that the machines counted correctly. You see, Diebold
machines leave no paper trail.

Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, who has introduced
a bill requiring that digital voting machines leave a paper
trail and that their software be available for public
inspection, is occasionally told that systems lacking these
safeguards haven't caused problems. "How do you know?" he
asks.

What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence.
The details are technical, but they add up to a picture of
a company that was, at the very least, extremely sloppy
about security, and may have been trying to cover up
product defects.

Early this year Bev Harris, who is writing a book on voting
machines, found Diebold software - which the company
refuses to make available for public inspection, on the
grounds that it's proprietary - on an unprotected server,
where anyone could download it. (The software was in a
folder titled "rob-Georgia.zip.") The server was used by
employees of Diebold Election Systems to update software on
its machines. This in itself was an incredible breach of
security, offering someone who wanted to hack into the
machines both the information and the opportunity to do so.


An analysis of Diebold software by researchers at Johns
Hopkins and Rice Universities found it both unreliable and
subject to abuse. A later report commissioned by the state
of Maryland apparently reached similar conclusions. (It's
hard to be sure because the state released only a heavily
redacted version.)

Meanwhile, leaked internal Diebold e-mail suggests that
corporate officials knew their system was flawed, and
circumvented tests that would have revealed these problems.
The company hasn't contested the authenticity of these
documents; instead, it has engaged in legal actions to
prevent their dissemination.

Why isn't this front-page news? In October, a British
newspaper, The Independent, ran a hair-raising
investigative report on U.S. touch-screen voting. But while
the mainstream press has reported the basics, the Diebold
affair has been treated as a technology or business story -
not as a potential political scandal.

This diffidence recalls the treatment of other voting
issues, like the Florida "felon purge" that inappropriately
prevented many citizens from voting in the 2000
presidential election. The attitude seems to be that
questions about the integrity of vote counts are divisive
at best, paranoid at worst. Even reform advocates like Mr.
Holt make a point of dissociating themselves from
"conspiracy theories." Instead, they focus on legislation
to prevent future abuses.

But there's nothing paranoid about suggesting that
political operatives, given the opportunity, might engage
in dirty tricks. Indeed, given the intensity of
partisanship these days, one suspects that small dirty
tricks are common. For example, Orrin Hatch, the chairman
of the Senate Judiciary Committee, recently announced that
one of his aides had improperly accessed sensitive
Democratic computer files that were leaked to the press.

This admission - contradicting an earlier declaration by
Senator Hatch that his staff had been cleared of
culpability - came on the same day that the Senate police
announced that they were hiring a counterespionage expert
to investigate the theft. Republican members of the
committee have demanded that the expert investigate only
how those specific documents were leaked, not whether any
other breaches took place. I wonder why.

The point is that you don't have to believe in a central
conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of
an insecure, unverifiable voting system to manipulate
election results. Why expose them to temptation?

I'll discuss what to do in a future column. But let's be
clear: the credibility of U.S. democracy may be at stake.


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/opinion/02KRUG.html?ex=1071372370&ei=1&en=2dcb48bde937049a

I'd like to make a request of the moderator, please:

It seems to me that there are two very interesting yet divergent discussions happening here, both of which have veered off-topic.

The last post relevant to a Democratic candidate (prior to Brand X's at 7:19 this evening) appears to have been mine, this morning, on John Kerry, which initiated the Saudi/terrorism tangent. There are also some very good posts on electronic voting, which likewise is marginally relative, but there is a very good thread going on on that topic, here.

Accordingly, would it be possible to gather and move the posts associated with electronic voting to that thread, and the various posts associated with Saudi Arabia and terrorism to perhaps a new thread?

There's much still to be discussed about the candidates...thanks.

PDid, Will try to watch topic before I post in the future. My apologies. c.i.

No offense taken and no apology necessary, c.i.

I actually linked to Krugman's article myself, in the thread I referenced above.

His take is extraordinarily cogent.

How are we supposed to discuss whether Kerry's stand on Saudi Arabia makes sense when we can't discuss the subject Kerry took a stand on? I am not interested in an exchange of unsubstantiated cheerleading along the lines of "My candidate good, your candidate bad". But that seems to be the alternative your proposal leads to. Even though I'm fairly sure this is not the alternative you want.

You can; I'm not stopping you, and wouldn't if I could.



Me neither. If that happens, though, I'm sure we'll miss you.



There are lots of alternatives my proposal leads to; this one would not be the most desirable, as you have pointed out.



You're right.

As mentioned, there's lots of good conversation going on here; it's just in the wrong place. Imagine the confusion of a guest or new member to the forum clicking on this thread and reading back over the last hundred or so posts.

As spohisticated and engaging as we all are relative to our views, doesn't it make sense if we observe a little discipline and stick to the subject?

(I hope the moderators agree...soon...)

If the newcomer or guest has any previous experience on the web, he will pleasantly surprised to find any good posts at all. Given the length of this thread, it 'should' have degenerated into virtual mud-throwing and personal abuse long ago, judging by the standards of other places of online discussion.


As far as I am concerned, it doesn't. I don't care where I read interesting posts as long as I read them at all....

... and as a matter of procedure, I think moderators exist to prevent abuse. Interesting posts on slight tangents, which is what you wish to end, don't fall in this category by a long shot. Needless to say, this is not my call to make. I just wanted to give my 2 cents.

PDiddie,
That is the point of an interesting,intelligent conversation.Even in a forum like this.It goes wherever it wants.If you try to corral and lead where it goes,you lose the free flow and it becomes stilted.Leave it alone and it will eventually find its way back to where it started.

No real disagreement with you, Thomas, except for this:



I don't wish to end, stifle, or stop anything (and I feel certain you know that).

Go back to the first page of this thread and read fishin's second post, the fourth one in the thread.

Tangents in threads created other threads, sometimes by the participants, sometimes by the mods, which I'm sure you're also aware of.

Now, I'll request, again, that we keep it on topic, please.

Nah, the A2K moderators do a lot more than that. They even correct your code errors and all.

I've had moderators "snip out" a tangent from an existing thread to one of its own twice already, myself. Once when a personal issue of mine came up in some random thread and started getting reacted to, I asked Moderator to snip it away into a thread of its own. Another time a personal thread suddenly got to feature 20+ really good posts on hip-hop - which, of course, considering the thread was called "random", wouldnt ever have been found back by anyone interested in rap - so I had that snipped away into its own thread too.

All fairly standard procedure, thanks to the amazing service we get here! Nothing wrong or overly suspicious about PDiddie's suggestion at all.

Then again, I personally dont mind digressions all too much. And with a topic like this, which pretty much gets to involve the whole range of political events of the day, and a thread that's been going on for a year or something, I'm sure any newbie immediately understands theres a lot of digressing going on. If I click a page 237 of something, I wouldnt expect anything else either.

So ... 'bout those Dems, huh?

Rules are merely a departure point for common sense. The object of these discussions is the discussions themselves. If no one has been harmed by an excursion from the central topic, then it seems to me there is no foul. As Thomas pointed out, this thread is already rather long and it would be remarkable, even unnatural, if it had not spun off a few excursions. Indeed in the best (from my perspective) threads on A2K one frequently observes multiple dialogues coexisting quite happily and some prolonged excursions. Frankly, I believe the political threads are much more often harmed by the constant drumbeat of advocates hammering away at the same points (usually anti-US or this Administration, but very much 'on topic') to the exclusion of other viewpoints, than they are by the occasional departure from the "assigned" topic.

Copying this from the Dean thread (now there's an annoying habit):

----
The latest Zogby poll (released yesterday) has Dean leading Kerry by 42% against 12% in New Hampshire, with Clark at 9% and Lieberman at 7%. That's the best Dean done there so far, and the worst Kerry's done.

In fact, 'ccording to the Zogby poll on Iowa the day before, Dean's back in the lead there, too: 26% against 22% for Gephardt, 9% for Kerry and 5% for Edwards. Again, the best Dean's done there yet.
----

Kerry's pretty much toast, I think. Dems and Independents are practically as familiar with him as with Dean (In Iowa 13% of likely Iowa caucus voters is "unfamiliar" with Dean and 16% with Kerry), yet they prefer Dean by a wide margin. Particularly damaging is that Kerry, the presumed "electable" candidate because his appeal would be broader than Dean's, does significantly worse in the favourable - unfavourable proportions. In Iowa 74% of likely caucus voters look favourably upon Dean and only 10% unfavourably; Kerry's numbers are 64% vs. 17%.

Striking about those favourable / unfavourable ratings are Dean's in particular. If he really were the strident, aggressive, rash radical that political commentators make him out to be, you'd expect him to have an above-average rate of both fired-up supporters and passionate detractors - as polarising figures usually do. Yet upon the Iowa Dems and Independents he doesnt seem to have made a very polarising impression at all.

In fact, he appears to be the least controversial of the lot. Its Sharpton and Lieberman, and to a lesser degree Kucinich and Clark who divide the party in pro- and opponents, but Dean scores the lowest "unfavourable" of all 9 of them. He "is the favorite of both Democrats and Independents who intend to vote in Iowa’s primary", and leads Gephardt two-to-one among non-union households. In New Hampshire, Dean outstrips Kerry by an even wider margin among Independents (39% to 9%) than among Democrats (44% to 15%). He leads the pack there with 42% of those polled even though the same people favor, by 44% to 30%, "someone whose political ideology is closest to that of former president Clinton" over "someone who is more liberal."

I don't know who has been running Kerry's campaign, but he has been done a great disservice.

I can't believe he's flaming out so quickly. It seems he never got out of the starting gate.

Maybe that's why he fired some of his help, or maybe they saw no hope and left.

I believe the defect is in the candidate, and not his staff. Kerry comes across as very much more preoccupied with himself than either the issues or the people he is addressing. Whether this impression is articulated or not, I believe it is widespread and it has a very corrosive effect. The Senator is far too lofty and self absorbed to be trusted by people looking for someone who will project their concerns about our government.

Dean is far more engaging and is easily appreciated in human terms. His problem of course is in his ideas. They appeal very well to the already mobilized anti administration and single issue groups in the Democrat party, but not nearly so well to the general voting public. This presents a difficult dilemma for the Democrats - an outcome which suits me rather well.

I agree with that assessment.

george said:
in the republican party
could this be about Arnold in California? Just that it seems to me the general attitutudes are rejecting any "political insider" at the moment regardless of party. Arnold sure as hell is not a conservative republican and Dean is sure as hell not a far left liberal in spite of what the talking points are. It seems all to obvious to me that the current batch of republicans are rapidly losing credibility regarding fiscal restaint and are spending spending spending like Ted Kennedy on a 3 day binge. But that's just my opinion I could be wrong.