You're all watching the debate? Let us know what it was like!
In the meantime, on a less serious note ...
Quote:The Argyle General
OP-ED COLUMNIST
MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 11, 2004
WASHINGTON--Can we trust a man who muffs his mufti?
Trying to soften his military image and lure more female voters in New Hampshire, Gen. Wesley Clark switched from navy suits to argyle sweaters. It's an odd strategy. The best way to beat a doctor is not to look like a pharmacist.
General Clark's new pal Madonna, who knows something about pointy fashion statements, should have told him that those are not the kind of diamonds that make girls swoon.
Is there anything more annoying than argyle? Maybe Lamar Alexander's red plaid shirt. Maybe celebrities sporting red Kabbalah strings.
After General Clark's ill-fitting suits in his first few debates — his collars seemed to be standing away from his body in a different part of the room — a sudden infusion of dandified sweaters and duck boots just intensifies the impression that he's having a hard time adjusting to civilian life.
It's also a little alarming that he thinks the way to ensorcell women is to swaddle himself in woolly geometric shapes that conjure up images of Bing Crosby on the links or Fred MacMurray at the kitchen table.
"I think there's an impression that the armed forces is a male-dominated, hierarchical, authoritarian institution," he told The Times about his gender gap, notwithstanding the fact that the armed forces is a male-dominated, hierarchical, authoritarian institution.
After his rivals jumped on him for trading hats with the Bosnian war criminal Ratko Mladic in 1994, you'd think he'd stick to his true gear.
His own Army camouflage — a material modish in the last few years in everything from bras to cargo pants to grenade-tossing Madonna videos — would have caused more of a frisson in female voters than country club plaid. (After all, the president's harnessed "Top Gun" costume set Republican female hearts aflutter.)
On Thursday, eight reporters and three minicams trailed the general as he sweater-shopped at L. L. Bean in Concord, N.H. Chris Suellentrop filed a fashion dispatch in Slate that the Democratic candidate tried on "a plain, green, wool crew neck sweater."
Maybe the former supreme allied commander should stop fretting over his style and do more with Colin Powell's belated admission that despite his assertions to the U.N. last year, he had no "smoking gun" proof of a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. General Clark has long been skeptical of that link. [..]
nimh wrote:You're all watching the debate? Let us know what it was like!
John Edwards looked like the winner, again. Poised, positive, and above the fray.
Howard Dean managed to fend off the attacks from Sharpton and others, so he wins again --sort of -- by not losing, though the air of inevitability no longer surrounds him. His momentum toward the nomination seems to be stalling. Of course, if he wins the caucus in Iowa and the primary in NH, he regains all of it and then some.
Wesley Clark perhaps won by not playing. Perhaps.
It was a contentious and sometimes awkward debate. The racial stuff made me squirm; the lights went off for a few seconds during Kerry's turn (they got them back on after about five seconds); and Dean's attempt to circumvent the debate rules by calling on someone in the audience instead of one of the other participants was thwarted.
Gephardt, Kerry, Lieberman and the others made no profile-raising comments. Stuck in the snow, they are.
PDiddie wrote: It was a contentious and sometimes awkward debate. The racial stuff made me squirm; the lights went off for a few seconds during Kerry's turn (they got them back on after about five seconds); and Dean's attempt to circumvent the debate rules by calling on someone in the audience instead of one of the other participants was thwarted.
I caught most of this part on the radio while I was driving home and it sounded like Sharpton really wanted to go after Dean on the race issue and Dean didn't really have a good response. Sounded like Sharpton had him cornered.
and Paul O'Neil tells us that taking down Iraq was discussed immediately after Bush took office (in direct contradiction to what he'd said in running for office) and that plans were in written up months before 9-11 for control of Iraq, and for the management of it's oil.
blatham wrote:and Paul O'Neil tells us that taking down Iraq was discussed immediately after Bush took office (in direct contradiction to what he'd said in running for office) and that plans were in written up months before 9-11 for control of Iraq, and for the management of it's oil.
As I remember it, taking out Saddam Hussein may have been discussed briefly in the presidential TV debates between Bush and Gore. I am even more confident that the subject also came up under Clinton, in a side thread of the discussion about whether to take out Milosevic. Does that mean my memory betrays me, or does it mean O'Neill's 'revelations' are old news? I'd bet about even money on the two.
Quote:"From the very first instance, it was about Iraq," said Mr O'Neill, who was a participant in all the meetings and provided voluminous minutes and other documents to the book's author, Ron Suskind. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The President saying 'Go find me a way to do this'."
Quotation from the
Independent
At least, this does look different.
Thomas, That may be true, but only GWBush had a personal reason to oust Saddam. It's called "vendetta" according to my dictionary.
Walter Hinteler wrote:At least, this does look different.
Good point, Walter. I agree.
That, on the other hand, is why I like reading TNR: they can't, the one day, endorse Lieberman without, the very next, starting a vigorous debate on how stupid that perhaps was. Today is Monday, and
twoseparate writers get to make "The case against Lieberman". Which magazine dares to be so at odds with itself so consistently? (The only ideological orthodoxies at TNR concern the rationale of the Iraq war and Israel, on which topics no reasonable discussion appears possible).
Interestingly, it is Jonathan Chait (he of the Dean-o-phobe blog) who first picks up the gauntlet and argues that his magazine has just endorsed someone who represents "venality at home": "Of course, most members of Congress are in hock to some kind of parochial economic interest or another. The trouble is that Lieberman [..] seems to be in hock to the interests of corporations in general." Then there's Christopher Orr arguing that, furthermore, "Lieberman stands no chance at all of becoming the Democratic nominee for president, let alone of beating George W. Bush in the general election" - in fact, "the more primary voters see him, the less they like him".
Read more
here - the debate will rage on for a while still, I think.
SurveyUSA polls have Clark leading in AZ, and Clark 9 points behind Dean in NH:
SUSA AZ (a 6-page .pdf file)
SUSA NH (a 6-page .pdf file)
Now, here's the deal about SurveyUSA: they use automated telephone polling, so their methodology is suspect (IMO). They also offer their cute little headline/opinions, which I personally find unprofessional. Worthy of note is that they were closer to outcome than Zogby in the last election, so, as with all polls, remember that some are single-ply, some are multi-ply, some have pretty patterns, some are industrial texture....
Maybe if Dean, Gebhardt, Kerry, and Edwards ran on the same ticket as President, VP, Secretary of State, and that office that GWBush now holds, we may have a chance of replacing the ignobles currently in the white house.
Interesting:
Iowa Democratic Caucus Results
1972
Uncommitted 35.8%
E. Muskie 35.5%
G. McGovern 22.6%
1976
Uncommitted 37.2%
J. Carter 27.6%
B. Bayh 13.2%
1980
J. Carter 37.2%
E. Kennedy 31.2%
Uncommitted 9.6%
1984
W. Mondale 48.9%
G. Hart 10.5%
G. McGovern 10.3%
1988
R. Gephardt 31.3%
P. Simon 26.7%
M. Dukakis 22.2%
1992
T. Harkin 76.4%
Uncommitted 11.9%
P. Tsongas 4.1%
1996
No Caucus; Clinton unopposed
2000
A. Gore 63%
B. Bradley 35%
Uncommitted 2%
A win in Iowa seems not to be good news ... either for a candidate's eventual selection as party nominee or for final electoral success. The prospects for a Republican Iowa Caucus winner are only slightly better. The trend is that whoever wins whichever party's caucus in Iowa does not wind up in The Whitehouse.
Interesting insight, Timber. But maybe this year will be different. It happens. So we're on to New Hampshire.
So what are the best-case scenarios for each candidate out of Iowa? Here's how I see it:
Clark
Clark needs to get this down to a two-man race as soon as possible; his best outcome is a solid, convincing Dean victory. It would knock out Gephardt and deal a mortal blow to Kerry. And while Dean would be strengthened, Clark has little chance of winning NH anyway, but doesn't need to win NH. A strong second-place finish will set him up nicely heading into the Super Tuesday primaries on Feb. 2.
The general doesn't want Gephardt mucking things up, so he wants him out. He also wants a weakened Kerry. He also doesn't want Edwards to gain any traction.
(Oh, and Edwards under 15 percent wouldn't hurt.)
Dean
The doctor, as they say in football, needs a little help from his opponents to be completely happy with Iowa. He's still leading enough to be able to look back and hope those chasing him can jostle each other.
Dean needs Gephardt out, and a Kerry and Edwards only strong enough to split the ABD vote.
So a solid victory, but with a strong second-place showing for Kerry that would garner positive "comeback kid" press. A strong third by Edwards would be gravy -- giving him momentum in SC that would cause Clark's people nothing but headaches.
Edwards
Edwards has momentum of late, and he needs to keep it up to validate his "tortoise and the hare" strategy. He's got to know that an Iowa victory is all but impossible. But he doesn't need it. A strong third or fourth with some delegates in his pocket would suit him.
More important to Edwards would be slowing some of Clark's momentum. And no one can do that better than Kerry. A strong Kerry showing in IA would knock Clark down a peg or two in NH, and kill some of that momentum heading into February 2, where Edwards has to make his move.
So, Edwards needs a third- or strong fourth-place finish, and a Kerry victory or strong second-place finish.
Gephardt
Must have a win. Second's not good enough because he's currently no better than sixth in NH.
He wins, or he leaves the race.
Kerry
Kerry is in a bind. When the race was neck-and-neck for second between he and Clark in NH, a strong Iowa finish may have been enough to propel Kerry into the lead in the Granite State. But now he would have to leapfrog two candidates there -- Clark and Dean.
And Clark has had free rein in NH, which he's been using to push Kerry farther back.
A strong second-place finish in Iowa would garner Kerry some good press and maybe even a little "comeback kid" talk. While that might be enough to get past Clark in NH, it's hard to see how it would be enough to get him by Dean (assuming Dean wins Iowa).
So Kerry needs either a win in Iowa, or a strong second-place finish and a Gephardt victory to build strong momentum for NH.
Lieberman
Ol' Joe needs to be the last man standing next to Dean to have a chance (what little chance he might have left). So he needs a strong Dean finish, killing Gephardt, and a strong second-place finish for Kerry. That would allow Kerry to dent Clark's momentum in NH. He'd also like to see Edwards flounder in IA.
That way, the NH primary features a strong Dean, a vicious Clark/Kerry battle for second, and a weak Edwards. Lieberman might slip in and steal a second or third place finish. Since he's the weakest of the poll-leading candidates, he needs to bring down the non-Dean opposition to his level.
* * *
Notice how the farther down the list one prognosticates, the more far-fetched the prognostication becomes? :wink:
Only two candidates (out of Dean, Gephardt, Kerry and Lieberman) emerge from Iowa and NH strong enough to counter the swelling Clark (and possibly Edwards) campaign in the Super Tuesday states.
That's probably going to be Dean and Kerry, if for no other reason than the money they have makes it possible.
Interesting scenarios ... cool to see some original thought here.
One thing, though / about Gephardt in Iowa. Not much to speculate on there, I think, in the sense that he won´t suddenly fall into a weak third) or even fourth' position, not will he suddenly become a convincing winner. Dean has shown greater fluctuation and Kerry´s made a come/back, but Gephardt has been getting around 18-25% in the Iowa polls as long back as I can remember in this race. And everybody knows him from way back when - noone's gonna suddenly change his opinion about Dick. He'll be there, somewhere between 18-25%; the only question is how far up Kerry and Edwards might still surge, pulling in the undecideds or perhaps wavering Deanies. Still, Kerry actually overtaking Gephardt seems improbable ...
Here's one just for fun. The site popularity ranks of some of the candidates:
http://pages.alexa.com/features/candidates.html
Doesn't say much except the obvious, that Dean is the one who is leveraging the net the most.
The others are probably paying someone to design their sites but aren't really getting many visitors. To put it in perspective only two of the candidate's sites have a better traffic ranking than A2K.
Heck we've got Bush's site beat. Hillary's site is REALLY low.
Actually I don't think that's an official Hillary site at all. It's claims of being the largest political forum are bogus.
