2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

dys,

I'm not aware of any Republican groups to which Dean has any appeal, except perhaps as an eminently beatable Democrat candidate.

I think your point about the appeal of 'outsiders' indeed has some merit. However, I don't think that really touches Bush very much.

I agree that Bush is doing a good deal of spending, but suspect far less than we would have with a Democrat President and Congress. The relative restraint of the Clinton years was more a result of the gridlock between a Democrat Administration and a Republican congress, than it was any deliberate policy choices of the leadership of either party.

I suspect the Republican motives are to take the issues off the table with a Republican plan that will do less harm than its Democrat alternative - and eliminate campaign issues next year. Frankly, a very clever tack. It leaves the Democrats with little to sputter about except the deficit.

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I think you're right about pulling the rug from under the Dems, but I don't think the spending is clever. Just because it is assumed that a Dem pres. and a Dem congress would have spent us into hyperdebt......come to think of it.... this admin. is proving that theory.... when everyone agrees spending runs amuk. Not clever at all.

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I have to disagree with your conclusions George:
WASHINGTON -- Congress is set to end its session next week with a vote on an $820 billion appropriations bill, capping two years of record-level spending economists say has raised the per-household outlay to its highest since World War II.
Such programs as the No Child Left Behind education law have combined with wartime costs and a generous farm bill to increase government spending by 16 percent in the last two years, compared with an average of 3.5 percent a year during the 1990s. The recent passage of a $396 billion Medicare expansion and overhaul bill is expected to drive spending even higher in future years.
The Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups expressed concerns yesterday about the spending habits of a Republican Congress that had promised fiscal restraint. The foundation said this Congress's spending increases went well beyond outlays for defense and homeland security: Subtracting those, spending still went up 11 percent over the past two years.
"It's always easy to be generous with other people's money," said Brian M. Riedl, a Heritage Foundation economist who released a report yesterday on special interest, or "pork barrel," items in the upcoming omnibus spending package, which would fund seven appropriations bills for 2004.

Riedl found that per-household spending this year reached $20,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars for the first time since World War II -- a trend he said makes a tax increase nearly inevitable. "People haven't felt the pain yet because . . . spending has been financed by budget deficits," he said.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a group that has defended spending on social programs in the past, arrived at similar conclusions. Looking at "discretionary spending" -- appropriations that exclude entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, whose payments are largely out of the control of the president -- spending in inflation-adjusted dollars has increased 8.7 percent a year under the current administration. That's up from an average of 4.2 percent a year in the last three years of the Clinton administration, CBPP economist Richard Kogan said.

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I've hated gridlock in the past, but I'm learning to like it.

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georgeob1 wrote:

I'm not aware of any Republican groups to which Dean has any appeal, except perhaps as an eminently beatable Democrat candidate.

Quote:

Already, hundreds of New Hampshire Republicans have declared their support for Dean. Hilary Cleveland, lifetime Republican activist and wife of former Republican Congressman Jim Cleveland, explained why she is now chair of New Hampshire Republicans for Dean in the Concord Monitor:

"My husband was a Republican congressman. I campaigned for both Bushes. But I've had it with the president's extremism.

"As a lifelong Republican, I am proud to endorse Gov. Howard Dean for president.

"Those words may be surprising to some: I served as the New London co-chair for George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign and was the New Hampshire finance chair for the campaign of his father, President George H.W. Bush, in 1980. I have attended three Republican National Conventions and was married to former New Hampshire U.S. congressman James C. Cleveland, a Republican. I would not lightly support a Democrat against President Bush.

But since 2000, President Bush has moved to the extreme right. His views represent only a small minority of our party, much less the nation. Our Republican president is out of step with most Americans on the two most important issues for any president: foreign policy and the economy."

Republicans For Dean

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Here's a bit of standings analysis, though I still stand by my original premise (that it's a two-man race):

1. Howard Dean
Two new polls give him the Iowa lead, though narrowly. Has started fundraising for the first of what promises to be many congressional candidates, helping him adopt the role of party builder.

Has weathered the "controversies" over his draft board deferment and sealed records. The guy is teflon. And, despite public proclamations that they want a Dean nomination, the GOP is now running to Vermont to try and stem his momentum.

2. Wesley Clark
Finally has a good campaign manager. Poll numbers are steady, and he may or may not be leading in SC, depending on the poll. And he really, really needs a win in SC.

Fundraising efforts and online expertise are second only to Dean's.

3. Dick Gephardt
Advantage in Iowa polls has evaporated. Gep has to win Iowa or he's toast. Still, Dean's lead, if it's there at all, is microscopic. I suspect we'll see several more lead changes heading into the caucus.

4. John Edwards
Edwards spends a lot of money, and has little to show for it. He is probably tied with Clark in SC, and while the nice-guy thing is nice, it can't last. Edwards needs to shore up his SC support, and he's got Clark firmly in the way.

5. Joe Lieberman
Still leads in a bunch of the 'sleepy' states (those with no major campaign efforts by the field). Is close to the top in many other polls.

Of course, the more people see of him, the more support he loses. But the poll numbers are enough to keep him relevant.

6. John Kerry
Campaign strife threatens to sink him. He is the only major candidate to have zero clean leads in any state, and would apparently lose his own home state badly. Not a lot of good news for Kerry lately.

7. The others

They exist.

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OK there are some self-styled Republicans in New Hampshire who are declaring their support for Dean, no doubt motivated by the excess spending of the Administration and other factors too. However, I very seriously doubt that this represents a phenomenon of sufficient magnitude to affect the outcome. Nor does it significantly dent the strong opposition Dean evokes in other Republicans and swing voters.

I agree with dys that spending on agriculture and social programs by Republicans has been excessive. I suspect the causes are some combination of the political strategy I outlined in an earlier post and the dizzying effect of political majorities in both houses of Congress. However I seriously doubt that it would have been less in a Gore Administration with a Democrat controlled Congress - indeed I suspect it would have been far greater. In the last several decades we have seen that the only reliable political restraint on government spending is the gridlock that occurs when different parties control the White House and the Congress.

If others here have a different theory or explanation of the Administration's behavior, I would like to hear it. However, please spare me more trash about the nefarious conspiracy of evangelical theocrats bent on crushing the freedoms of right thinking folks through agricultural and prescription drug subsidies.

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georgeob1 wrote:

I agree with dys that spending on agriculture and social programs by Republicans has been excessive. I suspect the causes are some combination of the political strategy I outlined in an earlier post and the dizzying effect of political majorities in both houses of Congress.

By "the political strategy I outlined in my post", do you mean the "starve the beast" strategy? If so I agree. I think the absence of gridlock explains the spending binge. A deliberate strategy of driving the government to the brink of insolvency explains the simultaneous tax cuts. I would only disagree with the nomenclature: To me, driving the federal government toward insolvency is plain old-fashioned irresponsibility; calling it a strategy is an insult to every real strategy out there.

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Thomas wrote:

Scrat wrote:
Where would you draw the line in "dealing with the terrorism"? Do we just clean-up after a bombing and try to track down the perpetrators? Do we try to prevent terrorism? Do we try to cut off funding, find and destroy training camps? What do we do with those who fund or knowingly aid terrorists in any way?

Generally speaking, I would draw the line when the cost of preventing terrorism -- measured in loss of civil rights, loss of human lives et cetera -- exceeds the cost of living with it. I don't think I can draw a well-defined line, there is certainly a broad grey zone between the extremes.

I agree, and I would argue that this is what the current administration is trying to do. They just differ with you on where that line is drawn. (That doesn't make either your position or theirs "right" or "wrong". I'm just trying to dismiss the notion that your principles are so different from those who prefer a more vigorous, more offensive stance against terror.

As to your comparison to all those other ways people can and do die, none of them involve an intent to kill. I think that puts terrorism into a different category. Diabetes isn't actively trying to figure out how it can kill more people, nor does our war on terrorism mean we are doing nothing about diabetes. Further, terrorism has a much higher price than simply a body count.

But, good comments and as usual, food for thought. Cool

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Thomas wrote:

By "the political strategy I outlined in my post", do you mean the "starve the beast" strategy? If so I agree. I think the absence of gridlock explains the spending binge. A deliberate strategy of driving the government to the brink of insolvency explains the simultaneous tax cuts. I would only disagree with the nomenclature: To me, driving the federal government toward insolvency is plain old-fashioned irresponsibility; calling it a strategy is an insult to every real strategy out there.

Yes. However, I don't give most of them quite as much credit for farsightedness as, perhaps, you do. I believe in the short run the Republicans are working to take Democrat issues off the table. They congratulate themselves for doing it and rationalize the cost by believing the solutions would have been worse (even more expensive) with the Democrats in charge. The more farsighted few among them likely do have the 'starve the beast' solution in mind just as you suggest. Certainly that is a much described policy objective of a key element of the Republican party. I'm not entirely sure where Bush fits in all this.

"Driving government to the brink of insolvency" is your phrase, not theirs. I believe they would note the undercurrent of reform of social and medical insurance programs in their policy, and the rapidly rising productivity of the U.S. economy (something they credit themselves for sustaining) as enabling them to avoid the brink of anything that bad by a wide margin. In this context it is worth checking the IMF data on net public debt among the G-7 economies since (say) 1980. In 2003, among the G-7 economies only the UK had a lower net debt as a % of GDP than the U.S. In the next few years ours will likely rise to the level of France, but will likely peak still below those of Japan, Italy, and Germany. Moreover our labor markets are a good deal more flexible than those of any of the other G-7 nations, giving us an important relative advantage in adapting to new economic challenges.

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Scrat wrote:

As to your comparison to all those other ways people can and do die, none of them involve an intent to kill. I think that puts terrorism into a different category.

I agree with your first sentence but disagree with your second. To see why, consider a naive and seemingly silly question: What's wrong with an intent to kill? My answer is that an intent to kill makes it more likely that people get killed, and that's what's wrong with it -- I don't want people to get killed. But the people who get killed don't care what the killer's intention was, nor if he had any. They just don't want to die, period. Therefore I feel that counting the intent extra skews the comparison by counting the consequences of the intent twice -- once explicitly, once implicitly

Many decent and intelligent people disagree my position, but I stand by it nevertheless.

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georgeob1 wrote:

OK there are some self-styled Republicans in New Hampshire who are declaring their support for Dean, no doubt motivated by the excess spending of the Administration and other factors too. However, I very seriously doubt that this represents a phenomenon of sufficient magnitude to affect the outcome.

I agree, I dont think Dean really has a significant appeal to cross-over Republicans, though there will be some of those, for sure, especially in the Northeast.

But then I dont think Republicans are an important target group for Dean, anyway. What he would have to do to win is two things:
- get the people who lean Democrat out to the polls; with a turnout as low as America's attracting some of the non-voters is probably a quicker way to affect the balance than trying to eat away a little from the other's camp;
- win over the Independents.

I dont think Dean stands much of a chance of doing those two things sufficiently to win against Bush, but on the whole his chances to do either are not necessarily worse than any other Democratic candidate's. Perhaps even better.

After all, his "rhetorics for the disaffected", his appeal to, I dunno, rebellion, "taking back power", "voting for the outsider", would stand to actually do quite well both among the semi-disaffected who only vote half the time and the Independent voters who came out for Perot and McCain.

It did struck me that Dean's lead on Kerry in NH was bigger among independents than among Democrats. His success thus far in mobilising people beyond the traditional "democratic church" would suggest he could succeed in doing so.

Only problem for him is how to get in those semi-disaffected who wouldnt bother for Lieberman, but stop middle-class, suburban Clinton-Democrats who are not necessarily all that angry from slipping away from him simultaneously at the other end.

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Nimh,

Interesting speculations - all plausible. I believe that Dean is more attractive as a champion for frustrated Democrats than he would be as a candidate for President, even to some of those same frustrated Democrat voters. Vermont is a very small state - smaller and less populous than many of the counties in the country. Dean has not yet shown the gravitas and restraint that people look for in their leaders. I concede that Bush was no champion in this regard when he ran, but he demonstrated even then a good deal more than does Dean now, and Bush has grown considerably since then.

Perhaps it is difficult for Europeans to grasp that the American exceptionalism that Bush so well evokes, and which appears to be so infuriating to Europeans, is truly a popular sentiment in this country. The differences in world view between Europe and America are real and enduring - they will not pass with the end of the second Bush administration (which is surely coming).

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Quote:

Perhaps it is difficult for Europeans to grasp that the American exceptionalism that Bush so well evokes, and which appears to be so infuriating to Europeans, is truly a popular sentiment in this country.

And largely the product of a paucity of information about the rest of the world in American education, leading to our particularly repellent brand of chauvanism.

Quote:

The differences in world view between Europe and America are real and enduring

I don't know how enduring they are. The 18-25 yr. olds I deal with daily are far better informed about the US' position in the world than those of my generation were at that age.

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hobitbob wrote:

And largely the product of a paucity of information about the rest of the world in American education, leading to our particularly repellent brand of chauvanism.
....

I don't know how enduring they are. The 18-25 yr. olds I deal with daily are far better informed about the US' position in the world than those of my generation were at that age.

These two statements seem oddly contradictory. I doubt that American chauvinism is much different from that of other countries. However as the oldest and most successful constitutional republic in the world we do indeed have some basis for ours. The word, 'chauvinism', by the way is a French product, originally used to describe theirs.

I will concede that our educational system, bureaucratized and controlled as it is by an establishment dedicated only to its own preservation and its cant of political correctitude, is nothing to brag about.

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Quote:

I doubt that American chauvinism is much different from that of other countries

Travel, George, travel!

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Our major attribute in American seems to be comsumption. We are held in high esteem by ourselves for accumulating stuff. It's not just the accumulation of stuff, it's the attitude I run across too often that that is all that life is about. We go to war not to save anything but our stuff.

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hobitbob wrote:

Travel, George, travel!

I doubt very seriously hobit that you have seen half as much of the world as I have.

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Seeing the world and actually absorbing what the world is all about are two different things.

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It'll be interesting to see what Dean does to the latest drug benefit legislation that works towards privatization vs his universal health care initiative - if he's elected.

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2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

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