A comentator i heard the other day opined that even a growth economy such as was in effect ten years ago will not clear this deficit, without raising taxes. The Shrub and Co. have ****-canned the economy as has never been done before.
I don't know if anyone else noticed the little backpage item in the NYTimes -- yesterday I believe. When Reagan and DaddyBu were investigated about Iran Contra, 59% of their legal fees were paid by the taxpayer. This week, a fed court ruled that Clinton can recover only 2% of his legal fees in connection with the failed (turned up nothing to incriminate Clinton) Whitewater investigation. Ain't justice wunnerful!
It would appear Lieberman's downhill ride is well underway, while Dean, though trailing Gephardt yet, appears to be posing a real challenge to Kerry. I still feel Kerry's got an edge, and I fully expect a vigorous counter attack, but Dean certainly isn't to be dismissed. I think the second poll is significant too, in that 73% of the respondants chose "Don't know/Refused" or "None" as the answer to an inquiry as to which Democratic candidate they agreed with most. I would anticipate the mob of candidates turning on itself in the near term, and the field to narrow a bit. They have got to come up with something more substantial than "Bush is bad". In the process of winnowing their numbers, they could stumble over an issue that will take hold with The Electorate at large, but so far, Middle America is passionately disinterested in The Democrats, even if no longer in love with The Current Administration.
July 18, 2003
LIEBERMAN CAMPAIGN MELTDOWN
Dean, Kerry And Gephardt Close Gap
With Lieberman In Nationwide Polls
NATIONWIDE
Lieberman Loses Lead. A Newsweek Poll asked registered Democrats and Democrat-leaning Independents nationwide, "Now I'm going to name nine Democrats who might run for president in the next election ... [T]ell me which ONE you would MOST like to see nominated as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate in 2004."
Dick Gephardt 14%
Joe Lieberman 13
Howard Dean 12
John Kerry 10
Bob Graham 7
Al Sharpton 6
John Edwards 6
Carol Moseley Braun 3
Dennis Kucinich 2
Other (vol.) 1
None (vol.) 3
Don't know 23
(Newsweek Poll, 376 Registered Democrat And Democrat-Leaning Independent Voters Nationwide, Conducted 7/10-11/03, Marin Of Error +/- 6%)
Most Americans Don't Agree With Dem Hopefuls' Agenda. A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll asked, "Which one of the Democratic candidates currently running for president in the next election do you agree with the most?"
None 21%
Joe Lieberman 7
John Kerry 4
Hillary Clinton 3
Howard Dean 3
Dick Gephardt 3
Joe Biden 1
John Edwards 1
Bob Graham 1
Dennis Kucinich 1
Al Sharpton 1
Bill Clinton -
Al Gore -
Carol Moseley Braun -
Wesley Clark -
All equally 1
Other - specify 1
Don't know/Refused 52
(Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll, 900 Registered Votes Nationwide, Conducted 7/15-16/03, Margin Of Error +/- 3%)
Kerry and Dean have noted Gephardt's surge, and are currently hammering him, on GET THIS, his affiliations with unions. I thought Dems were big on unions...?
Anyway, the unions have lined up behind Gephardt.
Looks like Dean and Kerry aren't worried about offending them.
Sofia wrote:Kerry and Dean have noted Gephardt's surge, and are currently hammering him, on GET THIS, his affiliations with unions. I thought Dems were big on unions...?
Anyway, the unions have lined up behind Gephardt.
Looks like Dean and Kerry aren't worried about offending them.
Sofia, I think Dems
were big on unions, but as we've watched the 2 parties merge closer together (witness the DLC) in recent years in order to reach the center majority, I don't think that's true anymore...
I do believe it is too early to actually know who will get the nomination, however, looking at the current pack, I really don't see how any of them will be able to beat Kerry with his financial resources and political contacts.
The big unknown is if someone presently not running does something rather spectacular and therefore gets 'drafted', as if from nowhere, someone who at this time we just can't imagine.
Tart:
'This week, a fed court ruled that Clinton can recover only 2% of his legal fees in ......"
And the judge who rendered the decision? This was a 3-judge court, with one dissension, The judge was David Sentelle, the same one who, after lunching with Kenneth Starr, gave the okay to start the whole Clinton investigation. There, too, it was 2 to 1, partisan line. 2 republican judges, 1 democrat. This is one of the courts the administration tries to get to sit in any cases involving that district. Another reason to be so careful about judicial nominations. In the beginning, Starr had actually expressed hopes of nomination to the Supreme Court. Sentelle also has an eye towards that, if things go well.
Sophia - I'm mixed about that. While I think appearances are important, and they say say three month notices were given, sometimes there really are circumstances. I think Mfume was unnecessarily harsh in his criticism, and was trying to make it into a bigger thing than it was. None of the three candidates had any history of what he was suggesting. And I should have thought more could have been made of the missing Bush, who has never come.
Howard Dean has 16 questions for Bush I'd also like answered:
1. Mr. President, beyond the NSC and CIA officials who have been identified, we need to know who else at the White House was involved in the decision to include the discredited uranium evidence in your speech, and if they knew it was false, why did they permit it to be included.
2. Mr. President, we need to know why anyone in your Administration would have contemplated using the evidence in the SOTU after George Tenet personally intervened in October 2002 to have the same evidence removed from your October 7th speech. (Washington Post, 7/13/03)
3. Mr. President, we need to know why you claimed this week that the CIA objected to the Niger uranium sentence "subsequent" to the SOTU address, contradicting everything else we have heard from your administration and the intelligence community on the matter. (Wash. Post, 7/15/03)
4. Mr. President, we urgently need an explanation about the very serious charge that senior officials in your Administration may have retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson by illegally disclosing that his wife is an undercover CIA officer. (The Nation, 7/16/03)
5. Mr. President, we need to know why your Administration persisted in using the intercepted aluminum tubes to show that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear program and why Condoleezza Rice claimed that the tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," when in fact our own government experts flatly rejected such claims. (CNN, 9/08/02)
6. Mr. President, we need to know why Don Rumsfeld created a secret intelligence unit at the Pentagon that selectively identified questionable intelligence to support the case for war including the supposed link to al-Qaeda while ignoring, burying or rejecting any evidence to the contrary. (New Yorker, Seymour Hersh, 5/12/03)
7. Mr. President, we need to know what the basis was for Rumsfeld's assertion that the US had bulletproof evidence linking Al Qaeda to Iraq, despite the fact that U.S. intelligence analysts have consistently agreed that Saddam did not have a "meaningful connection" to Al Qaeda. (NY Times, 9/28/02, 7/15/2003)
8. Mr. President, we need to know why Vice President Cheney claimed last September to have "irrefutable evidence" that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, an assertion he repeated in March on the eve of war. (AP, 9/20/2002, NBC 3/16/2003)
9. Mr. President, we need to know why Colin Powell claimed with confidence and certainty before the UN Security Council that "Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." (UN Address, 2/05/03)
10. Mr. President, we need to know why Rumsfeld claimed in reference to WMD: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." (The Guardian, 5/30/03)
11. Mr. President, we need an explanation of the unconfirmed report that your Administration is dishonoring the life of a soldier who died in Iraq as a result of hostile action by misclassifying his death as an accident. (Time, 7/13/03)
12. Mr. President, we need to know why your Administration has never told the truth about the costs and long-term commitment of the war, has consistently downplayed what those costs would be, and continues to try keep the projected costs hidden from the American people.
13. Mr. President, we need to know why you said on May 1, 2003, from the flight deck of the USS Lincoln, that the war was over when US troops have fought and one or two have died nearly every day since then and your generals have admitted that we are fighting a guerrilla war in Iraq.
14. Mr. President, we need to know why your Administration had no plan to build the peace in post-war Iraq and seems to be resisting calls to include NATO, the United Nations and our allies in the stabilization and reconstruction effort.
15. Mr. President, we need to know what you were referring to when you said, "For those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them." (Wash. Post, 5/31/03)
16. Mr. President, we need to know why you incorrectly claimed this week that the war began because Iraq would not admit UN inspectors, when in fact Iraq had admitted the inspectors and you opposed extending their work. (Wash. Post, 7/15/03)
This just in from Dean headquarters:
"The most incredible thing has happened. We've known that Howard Dean has gained momentum and is the only candidate in serious contention to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. Today, however, the latest Field Poll revealed that Howard Dean is now in the lead-- in California, the most populous state in the nation..."
Tartarin
And probably the most liberal. It is no surprise that they would go for Dean. I would expect most middle of the road Democrats and disenchanted republicans will not vote for Dean in a general election.
Tartar, Just heard that on the radio, that Howard Dean is running ahead at 17 percent. Amazing that my first pick to win over GWBush in 2004 is really turning out as time goes by. c.i.
I don't know about winning, Ci, but the guy is doing the Democratic party one helluva service as are, I'd like to think, his supporters. Whether Dean wins now or not is in some part irrelevant. He's provided the muscle and the spirit to a party which badly needs it. I look forward to seeing, somewhere, a deliciously well-written and perhaps deliciously scathing account of what's happening at both the DNC and DLC. What are they doing about this? Are they sitting there jerking off, or are they paying attention? Have they realized how many more supporters and dollars Dean got JUST BECAUSE the DLC tried to pull him down?
Now here's a question for you (CI), imagine for a moment the rest of the Dems got messy, helped by the party, and imagine a dramatic instant in which Dean and supporters decided to break off and form a third party (just hypothetical, mind you), would they pick up more support, or lose more support?
They would lose more support, IMHO. c.i.
HELLO??!
I found a very interesting bit of writing on MSNBC. The Greens are LOUD, PROUD and pissed at Dean and Dems. (Of course, they hate Bush.)
They are shaping their strategies for 2004. A must read!
http://www.msnbc.com/news/941276.asp?0dm=N1CNN
Would love to hear what people have to say about this. Will they or won't they spoil in 2004?
how about we get hillary to run with bill as vice-president then after she wins she can step down making bill the president after which he can appoint al gore as his vice-president?
Sofia
Check out
http://able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9008
ye110man
What you suggest has been disallowed by law.
R Nader or the Greens have no possible chance of getting a winning canidate on the ticket. It must be democratic based candidate that will get the media exposure and name recognition. I voted on principle during the last election by voting for Nader, but what that accomplished was getting GWBush into the WH. No more! Anybody besides GWBush gets my vote - the top runner. c.i.
I'm with c.i. and after nader came out publicly and said he was happy things turned out the way they did because GWB would screw things up so badly it would increase his chances in 2004.....well nader can eat ****, die and go to hell. Just another politician.
