January 2004

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Kerry's Flip-Flops: Let the Countdown Begin

Johnny, we hardly know ye. Sadly, that won't last.

Now that Kerry is the clear leader, stories of his epic capacity for playing both sides are beginning to make the rounds. Last week Jeff St. Clair of Counterpunch sent around this Rich Lowry (National Review) blog note on Kerry's Patriot Act pronouncements:

Today's Kerry excoriates Attorney General John Ashcroft for violating American civil liberties with his evil tool, the Patriot Act. "We are a nation of laws and liberties, not of a knock in the night," Kerry huffs. "So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time." Maybe Kerry should have thought about that before voting for the Patriot Act in 2001 — since laws and liberties are pretty important and all.

Back before he had to worry about competing with one Howard Brush Dean, Kerry was positively delighted by the Patriot Act. "It reflects," he said on the Senate floor, "an enormous amount of hard work by the members of the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. I congratulate them and thank them for that work." While supportive of "sunset" provisions in the bill, Kerry pronounced himself "pleased at the compromise we have reached on the anti-terrorism legislation." These are not the words of a man about to help inaugurate an era of brown-shirt law enforcement.

And Sam Smith's excellent Progressive Review (link at right) highlights this nugget from James Taranto of Opinion Journal:

Former Democratic front-runner Howard Dean recently criticized current Democratic front-runner John Kerry for taking the wrong positions (by Dean's lights) on both the liberation of Kuwait, which Kerry opposed, and the liberation of Iraq, which he supported. As we all know, Kerry has tried to have it both ways on Iraq, voting "yes" on the October 2002 resolution authorizing war, then proclaiming himself shocked that President Bush actually waged the war Congress authorized.

It turns out Kerry was no less two-faced about Kuwait 13 years ago. The New Republic's blogger Noam Scheiber credits TNR intern Josh Benson with digging up an item that appeared in the magazine's March 25, 1991, issue, quoting a pair of letters Kerry wrote to constituent Wallace Carter of Newton Centre, Mass.:

Jan. 22, 1991: "Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition . . . to the early use of military force by the US against Iraq. I share your concerns. On January 11, I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work and against a resolution giving the president the immediate authority to go to war."

Jan. 31, 1991: "Thank you very much for contacting me to express your support for the actions of President Bush in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and nequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf."

How many such anecdotes has Karl Rove's team already amassed?  

Posted by Steve Perry at January 31, 2004 12:21 PM

 

Dean: Trippi Out, Neel In

Hardly surprising, hardly encouraging--though Trippi has not exactly done wonders for Dean of late. According to today's NYT account, it was Trippi who encouraged Dean to shake the rafters in his Iowa concession speech. 

Roy Neel is an old telecom lobbyist and party hack. Maybe they could raise money by issuing a Howard Dean phone card that runs out of minutes after you've called too many people in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Back tomorrow or over the weekend.  

Posted by Steve Perry at January 29, 2004 10:53 AM

 

Kerry: Everything's Coming Up (Paper) Roses

And that's John F. Kerry to you, bub

Everybody loves a clown. From the, uh, 
incomparable www.ramisalami.com

Before we go sifting through the New Hampshire results, let's pause for a second to commemorate the absurd and purposeful bit of voodoo that is the modern primary system. In the past week and a half, John Kerry has gone from also-ran to frontrunner on the strength of wins in two states that are neither consequential to the larger election nor representative of the country as a whole. Both are remarkably white, rural, and culturally conservative--by which I mean, warier than most of change in all its guises. And after those two states come a series of primary days dominated by southern states that are considerably more conservative on the whole. There is real institutional genius in the design of the primary season; it helps mightily in culling out insurgents and left-libs, as it was intended to do.

On the other hand, I don't mean to say that "the system" got Howard Dean in any simple sense--it certainly stacked the deck against him (and that goes for the media as well as the Democratic party apparatus), but Dean also played into its hands. Last night's post-New Hampshire speeches offered a fair glimpse of how Kerry has managed to advance and Dean to decline. Kerry, speaking first, delivered a well-wrought address touching every theme that Dean popularized; Dean, in contrast, was received like a rock star by his supporters and spent the first 10 minutes or so shouting--sorry, invoking--slogans in parallel construction. The tone was more subdued than his post-Iowa rally, but he was no less the off-key, uninspiring cheerleader. Finally, after he had made most of his audience tune out, Dean turned to a more reasonable facsimile of the stump speech that made him popular in the first place. But barring a miracle, it was--and is--too late.

This is a huge win for Kerry, as much for the way the rest of the field broke as for his own point total. To put it another way, Kerry didn't just win; everybody else lost. No one is going to buy a resurgent Dean at this point. When all the spin's been spun, he still blew a 20-plus point lead in the state where his campaign first caught fire. John Edwards made relatively paltry gains on the basis of his strong Iowa showing, winding up a nose behind Wesley Clark, who skipped Iowa to engineer a strong showing in New Hampshire. (As of this morning, with 98 percent of precincts and over 200,000 ballots counted, Clark led Edwards by fewer than 700 votes.) [CNN results page.]

Consequently, there is no number two in the race at the moment. (And Kerry's fundraising is starting to reflect that: reportedly he raked in a million on the net this past week.) Edwards and Clark will tussle head-on for that designation starting next Tuesday, but if Kerry takes next week's big prize, Missouri--and with Gephardt's endorsement, it shouldn't be very close--and performs respectably elsewhere, the two Southerners may be running for vice-president at this point. That race is presumably Edwards's to lose, since Clark's military credentials would be redundant on a ticket headed by Kerry.

I'll be writing more about the question of Kerry's "electability" later, but meantime here's a sampling of BW reader responses to my query on the subject yesterday. (I'm interested in hearing more, also from Kerry enthusiasts.)

In closing, I wonder if you've noticed the increased frequency with which media are referring to Kerry as John F. Kerry, no doubt nudged on by Kerry's people. Privately, Kerry has always felt that his middle initial would be an ace in the hole someday. Here is Brian Willson, a very bitter former Kerry supporter and fellow Vietnam vet, on an encounter he had with JFK v2 shortly after Kerry's 1984 election to the Senate:

In the wee hours of the morning, you made two comments that troubled me: (1) you stressed [that] your initials, JFK... would help you one day in your quest for the White House, and (2) that after War Department briefings (and perhaps CIA as well) about the need for funding and training contra terrorists in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, you had a new appreciation for their importance in furthering U.S. policies. [Read Willson's essay.]

So here's today's question: What does the F stand for, anyway? Use your imagination; Kerry admirers welcome to play as well.  

 

Posted by Steve Perry at January 28, 2004 8:28 AM

 

Bush War Readers on Kerry's Electability

Chuck Holtman writes:

I'm no expert, but have deep and long-standing doubts about Kerry's chances as a candidate. Gore lost because: 1. He was so compromised and tergivasatory himself on all of the issues on which Bush was grotesquely vulnerable that he was unable, in the campaign and in the debates, to even attempt a strong critique of Bush.

2. He was deeply committed to the notion of impuissant civility that implicitly confers assumptions of good faith and dignity on the Republicans and has rendered the mainstream Democrats an object of humiliation for so long.

3. He appears to be, and is, a well-bred dilettante that cannot speak with emotion, principle or understanding to the ordinary person.

To me, in all three respects Kerry is Gore redux in spades.

Kevin Musolino writes:

I have to think Bush would beat Kerry like a rented mule. John MacArthur put it best, calling Kerry, "...a thoroughly compromised moderate Democrat--kind of pro-invasion when he voted for war authorization on Oct. 11, 2002, when it took courage to vote no; kind of against it now, when it's easy to attack the president's lies..."

Kerry has been in Washington so long he's become what he used to oppose; note that he spends a lot more time these days highlighting his Vietnam combat record rather than his later antiwar activism. Now he says he voted for the Iraq war because the president lied about the threat. Sure, like it would never occur to a Vietnam vet that a president would mislead the nation into war.

Lynnell Mickelsen writes:

Kerry strikes me as yet another boring, meandering wimp candidate with good hair. Another Al Gore, only less passionate, if that's possible. Or another Michael Dukakis. Kerry is the national version of [Minnesota Democrats] Roger Moe, Skip Humphrey, Warren Spannaus.... and on and on.

What is with the Democrats, especially the party leaders? Why do they go for these energy suck holes? Why are they so afraid of passion....anger.....straight talk?

The media jackals (Jesse was a megalomaniacal boor, but he got that right) who hated Dean for his "anger" and intemperate speech will soon be attacking Kerry for wimpy, wandering answers. Of the top four candidates (Kerry, Dean, Edwards, Clark), I think Kerry is the LEAST electable. He won't wear well.

I'm a Democrat, I'll be voting Democrat on the ticket, so if Kerry's the man, I hope I'm wrong.

Jeff McLarty writes:

"Thirty-five years" he talks about. He describes it in fairy land beauty, all soft-focus and Disney colored. Truthfully, he represents the status quo more than any other candidate. I can't imagine him having the ability to suddenly develop a vision of anything other than a continuation of his years in Congress. The powers that be will love that.

Kerry has government credentials and "Liberal Blue blood" respectability, but he doesn't have soul. He can hardly even get a spark out of a room full of supporters. He may, if elected, stop the slide over the edge that George has precipitated, but I doubt he would be able to make any actual improvements.

 

Posted by Steve Perry at January 28, 2004 8:16 AM

 

Back Tomorrow

Plus a question for readers

As regular visitors have already noticed, I'm not posting every day since Mark Gisleson's departure, and I probably won't be until the campaign gets going this summer. (Or--the perpetual caveat--unless something blows up, literally or otherwise, between now and then.)  I'll be putting up items two or three times a week on average, occasionally more.

Tomorrow I'll be posting on the results from New Hampshire, which I fear may include the Dean campaign's obituary. (Monday's Zogby tracking poll had Kerry up by 3; today's has him up 13. I'll bet that's not far wrong.)

Meantime, a question: Am I the only one who has doubts about Kerry's stature and staying power as a candidate? Write and let me know.  

Posted by Steve Perry at January 27, 2004 7:35 AM

 

A Last Babelogue

A final note from Mark Gisleson

Thanks for the ride. This has been a blast and much as I hate to move on, as a part time obsessive-compulsive with manic-depressive traits, I’ve learned to jump off trains before they get all the way up to speed. Babelogue is a going concern and I look forward to watching it grow into a transformative asset for City Pages.

I’ve been neglecting my clients and that has to stop. Too much fun is too much fun and it’s time for me to get serious again and apply some of this newfound insight into the blogging process to my “work” as opposed investing it into Babelogue and Bush Wars (my passions).

I’m still struggling with my G3 OS 9 to G4 OS 10.3 transition, and I’ve got a lot of work to do on my career development website to transform it into a business weblogging site. I’ve got some calls out and intend to start prospecting for a few good clients, but in the meantime the break from hours of research and writing every morning is exhilarating.

One thing has become clear to me from all my reading and thinking, and that is that Bush is toast. That’s not my hope, that’s an assessment based many things, including the stunning Iowa Caucus results. Party building exercises rarely turn into plebescites, and this year the caucuses were more of a primary than coffee klatch. The results certainly reflected that. People are angry, as well they should be. Take the pundits with a grain of salt this year — regardless of the polls, this election will be controlled by the people. No Supreme Court interventions this time around.

Take care, and be of good cheer. This is going to be an interesting political cycle, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy kicking back and reading what Steve Perry and Atrios and MWO and all the rest of my favorite commentators have to say about it.

 

Posted by at January 21, 2004 11:07 AM

 

Mistah Dean, He--Dead?

I came, I saw, I ate my shoe

I wrote yesterday that I'd be very surprised if John Kerry won in Iowa, and I was right--I am very surprised. 

For those of you who've been checking back today, here is an advance of the analysis column I wrote this morning, which will be published in tomorrow's City Pages.

***

Iowa Death Trip

 

by Steve Perry

 

The waters of Iowa are often a mixed tonic to visitors who imbibe them. In the black heart of winter, 1959, Buddy Holly journeyed there with a miserable cold and a yen for home; his brief stay cured both. More recently, Cary Grant went to speak to a Davenport film society in 1986 and, upon arriving, thought it better to expire in his hotel room instead. Howard Dean was lucky to get out badly mangled.

 

John Kerry's big number, stunning as it is, hardly seems the main story here. Few people think Kerry, who has already fumbled away the party's favorite-son status once, will keep looking strong when the primaries head south shortly. Iowa will likely wind up meaning more to Dean, John Edwards--even, in absentia, Wesley Clark--than to Kerry.

 

The real fight in Iowa from the start was the national Democratic establishment's full-on press to unseat Dean as frontrunner, a fight that had been slated since the interloper from Vermont began raising a fortune on the Internet and talking reckless talk about not only beating Bush but remaking the Democratic party. Iowa regulars called it the nastiest internecine fight they had ever witnessed, and there's no contesting that it was the most expensive--over $10 million on TV advertising alone.

 

However vicious the beatings, though, Dean's Iowa collapse was in considerable part self-administered. For most of the past month, the pack snarled at Dean and he always snarled back. Along the way he managed to unravel himself. Among the TV pundits, the Democratic pollster Pat Caddell put it best: Dean's campaign ceased to be about anything but--Dean's campaign. Everywhere he went in the last weeks, he shouted slogans and bragged of his superior organization (prompting a reasonable question: So what do you need us for?) while his opponents began talking issues. Iowans, well acquainted with their own status as a cherished national punch line, know when they are being talked down to. In the end Dean lost a lot by sheer condescension.

 

Last night as the final numbers dribbled in, there was an interesting moment on MSNBC. The aforementioned Caddell and Pat Buchanan ganged up on Chris Matthews for calling Kerry the new leader in the race. Each argued that the Dean movement nationally was for real, and that his setback in Iowa shouldn't be overstated. (Even in the middle of getting attacked in Iowa, Dean raised another $2 million in donations during the first 10 days of January, roughly half as much as either Kerry or Edwards were able to raise in the last quarter of 2003.)

 

Getting back the mantle of insurgency might even help Dean, they suggested. It all made sense for five or ten minutes, until the candidate appeared before the cameras to deliver a concession that aimed for tent revivalism and came up all Wrestlemania instead. Shouting out the names of his opponents' home states and vowing to win them, he looked every inch the intemperate boob his detractors made him out to be. You expected him to lock his hands together, flex his pecs,  and growl.

 

Whether there's a continuing national foundation for a Dean campaign may be a moot question. He looks like a man who has just about had it with campaigning. Privately, some Dems in Iowa and elsewhere who have spent time with Dean outside the glare of flashbulbs say he genuinely despises the tumult and the circus aspect of political campaigning--and has no abiding sense of humor or perspective about his distaste. I find this a positive testament to Dean's character, myself, but it doesn't augur well for his chances. It wouldn't be entirely surprising to me if Dean dropped out of the race abruptly at some point, and well before he's clearly beaten.

 

Or not. His overwrought extemporizing on Monday night proved that his ego's still in it; maybe his political imagination will rejoin the wagon train at some future stop. But in either case it was clearly Dean who defined the entire race in Iowa, and not just in the sense that it was predicated on knocking him down. When Kerry and Edwards passed Dean, they did it by giving Howard Dean speeches. It was Dean's seeming formidability in Iowa that finally led the others to heat up their anti-war, anti-Bush rhetoric, and they struck gold in doing so. Bush-bashing stump speeches across the board produced Iowa's largest caucus turnout ever, and the media spotlight there seemed to depress W's approval ratings, which were back down to 50 percent in a New York Times/CBS poll last weekend.

 

Basking in their newfound sense of purpose, Iowa Democrats scarcely seemed to notice that Kerry and Edwards alike voted for both the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. It was supremely strange to see entrance polls indicating that Kerry and in some cases Edwards as well outperformed Dean with precisely the demographic segments Dean's early campaign excited most: anti-wars, first-timers, under-30s.

 

Kerry and Edwards (call them The Hair Club for Democrats) got by with this sleight of hand in Iowa, where the brightest light always shone on Dean, but presumably they won't be able to run from the disconnect between their present and past positions forever. They are saying things a lot of people want to hear, but in a general election either of them could be painted convincingly as a by-the-numbers political opportunist. (The wooden, patrician Kerry hardly needs anyone else to do the job for him; it seemed telling that he lost his voice at the end in Iowa, after several straight days of uncharacteristically raising it.)

 

Even in fielding such a candidate--and thereby making the election more or less a straight referendum on Bush--I suspect the Democrats would have a better-than-advertised chance to win. But leaving the initiative mainly in Karl Rove's hands hardly seems like a best-case scenario.

 

Tuesday morning's conventional wisdom got one thing right. The biggest beneficiary of the whole pageant was Edwards, largely by virtue of his being neither of the main things Kerry is: a Boston Brahmin stiff ticketed for burial in the South, and an already failed one-time frontrunner. (Yes, Kerry's a war hero--which might forestall certain kinds of attacks from the Bush camp, but hardly looks like a marquee attraction in a race defined by the economy and by widespread opposition to a war that Kerry supported.) If Dean stays on the ground, which is not quite a forgone conclusion just yet, Edwards could be looking as invincible as Dean once did by the time the Super Tuesday southern primaries roll around on March 2.

 

Besides Dean, the other big loser in Iowa may prove to be the man who wasn't there, Wesley Clark. When the field appeared to be Dean and everybody else, Clark's late entry and his tough-guy bona fides as the former NATO Supreme Commander made him a lightning rod (or a Trojan horse) for the proto-Republican Democratic Leadership Council, the ruling party junta arrayed around the Clintons. In short order he became the party's Get-Dean vehicle of choice. Bill and Hill stopped short of endorsements, but both had auspiciously kind things to say about Clark. Later the general got big wet smooches from Michael Moore and George McGovern.

 

A four-way pileup such as the polls predicted would have elevated Clark even further. But with Kerry and Edwards each amassing over 30 percent and running away from the field, Clark's future usefulness is in question. Suddenly he's no longer the only guy in the limelight who is not Howard Dean. Good thing, too. There are those who still think that a four-star general offers the best possible contrast to Bush's military recklessness, but Clark comes with more liabilities than any of the Democrats left in the field, including Dean. In terms of practical politics, Clark has no experience at all with the issue that most motivates voters in Iowa and elsewhere, the economy. And his credibility as a critic of the war and the administration is undermined by any number of stories about his chumminess with the Bush gang in the past three years.

 

Clark elected to stay out of the Iowa race, but he was nonetheless an important player there. A disproportionate amount of the dirt dished in the caucus race originated with the Clark campaign's dirt-digger, the "opposition researcher" Chris Lehane. In particular, one New York Times profile of Lehane revealed that Dean's people hold him responsible for the single most damaging bit of anti-Dean agitprop, an old appearance on Canadian television in which Dean derided Iowa's caucus system.

 

The general is a creep, but he also shows signs of being a genuine megalomaniac. There is the murky, disturbing yarn most of us have already heard and forgotten, concerning his 1999 orders to a British general in Kosovo to intercept some Russian paratroopers who had landed at the Pristina airfield without authorization, to which the Brit famously replied, "Sir, I'm not going to start World War III for you." Within the past few weeks, Clark has made two more pronouncements that ought to chill anybody who's paying attention. First he swore that no terrorist attack on a par with 9/11 would ever happen during a Clark administration. Then he proclaimed that Osama bin Laden would already be caught or killed if he were president.

 

Best case, this is mere shamelessness on a Bush-like scale. I don't think so. I think he means every syllable. Did you catch Clark on Bill Maher's HBO show last Friday night? There's a gulf between the man's cloying argyle sweaters, avuncular smiles, and bright, empty eyes that suggests Mr. Rogers--back from the dead, with a taste for human flesh. It's hard for me to imagine that Clark is anything but Karl Rove's first choice for an opponent on the morning after Iowa.

 

If Iowa has turned Wes Clark into damaged goods, that's one cause for rejoicing. Another is that the Democrats' experience in Iowa revealed a depth and bitterness of anti-Bush sentiment round the countryside of which no one has quite taken the measure yet.

But when you're through rejoicing, you might take a hard look at what's left. I agree with Caddell and Buchanan that Dean still has a substantial base. But my gut feeling is that he's tired of this and he's already taken his best shot. If that's so, and Dean recedes from this point, will the Democrats left in the race continue what he's begun and keep turning anti-war, anti-Bush animus into new sources of money and votes? The answer is a lot less obvious than it seems.

Posted by Steve Perry at January 20, 2004 3:36 PM

 

Iowa Death Trip: Fresh Crack From the Hawkeye State!

The last dime bag of Zogby tracking poll numbers from Iowa has arrived, and they show Kerry up 3 points on Dean, 4 on Edwards, 7 on Gephardt.

They don't mean a thing, but there they are. For all the press's attention to the quaintness of the caucus system, journalists mostly fail to recognize--as Gisleson pointed out here last week--both how difficult and capricious it is to gauge likely turnout for these things, and how volatile the swings in allegiance at the evening-long horse-trading sessions tend to be. 

Purely on instinct, I see three plausible outcomes. I'll list them from most likely to least likely:

1) Dean wins, and by a margin (say, 5+ points) that comes as a bit of a surprise after the battering he's taken there.

2) Edwards edges Dean, and both finish substantially ahead of Kerry and Gephardt.

3) Kerry edges Edwards, pushing Dean into third with distinctly underwhelming numbers.

Really, though, I'll be more than a little surprised if Kerry wins. The machine Democrats in Iowa have already watched him flop as the anointed front-runner once before, a year ago.  

NOTE: If you arrived via a Counterpunch link, press here to go to the Bush Wars homepage and view other Iowa-related posts. 

Posted by Steve Perry at January 19, 2004 9:01 AM

 

Iowa Death Trip: Will It Ever End?

Steve Perry: Idle Sunday thoughts on what the Democrats have learned in Iowa

1) There is real electoral gold in going after the Bush gang directly and lustily. It already should have been evident from the successes of Howard Dean, but these people are extraordinarily slow to learn and predisposed to stick to the Republican Lite script. Iowa should demonstrate to anyone paying attention that anti-Bush sentiment runs broader and deeper than our pols and pundits have yet recognized.

2) Even though Wesley Clark's is clearly the ascendant Get-Dean candidacy in the eyes of establishment Democrats, John Edwards could easily leave Iowa contending with Clark for that mantle. (Kerry will have a harder time doing so even if he wins Iowa; the party tried to hand him the nomination on a platter at the outset, and he only dribbled it down the front of his shirt.) If Edwards performs well in Iowa--and I really think he might top Kerry's finish--look for Wes the Shark to start splitting his attentions between Dean and Edwards. 

 

Posted by Steve Perry at January 18, 2004 12:30 PM

 

Iowa Death Trip, Day 3

Everybody must get slimed

Gisleson: It's not like they're being at all subtle. Drudge throws up a banner link to a story at the Sun Myung Moon owned Washington Times about John Kerry's once proposing the "abolition of the U.S. Agriculture Department." A Friday story to influence the Monday night caucuses. Just enough time for Kerry to scramble and defend himself while the rest of the Democratic pack attacks.

I'd love to see Dean, Edwards, Gephardt and Kucinich jam this back into Karl Rove's face like a Mack Sennett cream pie, but they won't. By the time this diablog posts the recriminations will have begun and the final weekend before the caucuses will be what Karl Rove wants them to be about. A brazen maneuver by a desperate man who knows better than anyone else on this planet just how many Bushbombs are waiting to go off in the coming months.

As usual, maestro Karl's timing is impeccable: today's Des Moines Register story on Kerry is about taxes and energy policy. Tomorrow's Sunday headlines will be less kind. It's rank punditry on my part to say this kills Kerry, but I do fear that Rove has just dispatched one of his two most feared opponents: Senator John Kerry, Vietnam veteran with three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and the Navy's Silver Star, and an early member and spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

To be candid, I doubt either of us will go to bed tonight teary eyed over this bit of media manipulation, but it wouldn't hurt to think of this in terms of the end game. To paraphrase Pastor Niemöller:

Perry: Yeah, Drudge has certainly been entertaining the last few days. Only one problem: Without any major exceptions that I'm aware of, this is not Rove and the Republicans doing the "opposition research," as it's called. It's the Democrats themselves, most especially the Clark camp. Didn't you look at that NYT piece about Chris Lehane I mentioned yesterday? (There's a link in yesterday's post.)

It's a very good story, and one of the things it suggests is that the other Democrats usually know when they're on the receiving end of Wes-slime. Clark's decision to stay out of Iowa and let the others fight among themselves might have proven a good idea--except that his fingerprints are all over Iowa at this point, and the others are mad as hell at him about it. When the focus shifts from Iowa to New Hampshire and beyond, it will be interesting to see them take turns going upside Clark's head. He'll get treated very roughly, I think. About time.

There's another testament to Wes's "character" buried in here, too. He has gladly cultivated a reputation for staying out of the mud in his public utterances about other Democrats; meanwhile his pet lizard is handing the press all the scabrous-sounding bullshit "scandals" it can turn up.

Incidentally, what I'm hearing from our City Pages reporters in Iowa is that Dean seems to be in real trouble where public enthusiasm is concerned. Many cite his comment about the caucus system from a few years back--which, of course, was dug up and disseminated by Chris Lehane.

Gisleson: While I have no doubt whatsoever that Chris Lehane could be the source of this information, I think you're being far too kind to the Rovemeister. I'll give Lehane his due on the Canadian story - no advantage to Rove to leak that one this early - but let's face it: the RNC's opposition research team has had the Alexandria Library of Political Dirt sitting on some inside the Beltway hard drives for some time now, and we all know how much the Republicans love to manipulate the Democratic nominating process (can you say Edmund Muskie?).

I am in a bit of a quandary about my caucus predictions. If Dean holds up, then this Kerry smear should make my predictions come out right on target, but as little as I support Kerry and as much as I think Rove's pulled off yet another fait accompli, I can't help but hope that Iowa Democrats prove to be as angry as touted. It would be too sweet if savvy caucus-goers gave Kerry an upset win on Monday night to send a clear message to the rest of the party that this year it's not about politics, it's about getting rid of the hyperpoliticized Bush and his corrupt gang of crony capitalists.

 

Of course that wouldn't necessarily give us a three-man race, it would just mean that the media pack would annoint Kerry, trash Dean as a lo-o-o-o-oser, and New Hampshire would turn into a three-way brawl with the potential to put Kerry or Clark in the driver's seat headed into South Carolina, assuming nothing happens in Arizona, Delaware or Missouri to further complicate the picture. Spinning this all the way out to mid-February, Wisconsin could experience its most important primary since 1968.

Or Dean will prevail in Iowa, win New Hampshire, survive South Carolina and roll to the nomination.

 

Perry: I'm not sure I even understand your analysis of the post-Iowa picture. And I'm not making any predictions at this point. Since the caucuses are so much about organizing, one would expect that the Dean campaign with its touted grassroots network should outperform in the caucuses its real level of public support in Iowa. So that's one thing we'll see tested--is Dean's organization really all that?

 

But I think it's already clear that the Democrats will come out of Iowa damaged as a group by all the mudslinging, and that redounds to the benefit of the absentee Clark going forward--for a little while, until the others start carving pounds of flesh from him.

 

And while I still would not be surprised to see Dean win Iowa when it's all said and done, it's clear that his public honeymoon is over. You can chalk a great deal of it up to the dirt in the campaign; also to the press's efforts to get Dean, not only because he's the frontrunner but because he is not part of the Democrats' capital gang.

 

But you have to place some of the responsibility on Dean, too. I think his personality, or lack thereof, becomes a bigger issue the more people are exposed to him. Dean really despises campaigning nationally, the whole circus aspect of it, or so I'm hearing. And it does seem to fit what we know of his temperament.

 

I happen to like these things about Dean. But they don't seem to spell a long and resilient campaign. Even if he comes out of Iowa having weathered the storm, I have a grimmer sense of his "viability" (his stomach for the process is what I really mean, not his electability) than before. Qui bono? I can't see Kerry or Edwards or Gephardt seizing people's imaginations; they're the same piece of cardboard cut into three different shapes. As much as it revolts me to say so, it seems pretty clear that for the near term, Clark benefits most from the clusterfuck in Iowa.

Posted by Steve Perry at January 17, 2004 11:53 AM

 

Iowa Death Trip II: Are DLC Lilliputians Getting Gulliver Down?

Perry/Gisleson: more bloodshed in the Caucasus--er, caucuses

Gisleson: Twas the Friday before the caucuses...

And all through the state pundits were twittering about the new polls showing John Kerry surging up towards the top. It's easy to trash polls as relics from a previous age when you could reliably crunch the populace's mood with just a few hundred - maybe a couple thousand - phone calls.

My question is, how do you measure the sentiments of caucus goers? Half the people you call will hang up the second they realize the call's about politics, and the other half will include countless folks who will lie and say they're attending when they haven't been to a caucus ever since that nice Mr. Carter talked to them at the Dew Drop Inn.

Even more to the point, there's a real advantage to be gained by partisans by misidentifying who they support. While activists fear bad polling data before a primary, they know that caucus goers rarely change their minds at the last second unless they were wavering all along. What better way to abuse a pollster than to tell them you're supporting John Kerry when you're a big Deaniac? And as far as Gephardt supporters go, it's pretty easy for a union to put out the word that members should reply KERRY whenever someone asks. Deflate expectations for your guy and up the ante on the other poor schlub - that's pre-caucus maneuvering the way the pros do it.

What's to gain? Eliminating Kerry in Iowa works for Dean in New Hampshire, and it opens the door for Gephardt to hang around a while longer.

At least that's my take.

 

Perry: I don't buy all your reasoning, but I agree that polls about caucus-going are necessarily imprecise and suspect. I don't think that means you can just ignore the trends in them, though, and it's very clear that the forces of Democratic party reaction have seized the Big Mo in their race to do in Dean at any cost.

While we've been focusing on Iowa, the party's Great Satan, Wesley Clark (Joe Lieberman is too trivial in the broader scheme of presidential politics to qualify), has been advancing on Dean by leaps and bounds in the tundra of New Hampshire. Suddenly the two pony shows that were supposed to make Dean's command of the race unassailable are very much up for grabs.

For this we can probably thank Clark more than any of the other rats on the creaking Democratic ship. Just this morning Drudge featured a post about the general's employment of one Chris Lehane, a seasoned operative who is one of the party's more esteemed dirt-diggers.

I'm not jumping to the conclusion that Dean has irretrievably lost control of the race. But unless he goes on to prevail in Iowa (and he well might) by a large margin (not bloody likely), we will want to keep a close eye on two things. One is the arc of Dean's campaign rhetoric. If it turns more cravenly conservative (excuse me, "centrist") in the weeks to come, he's doomed. The other is the rate at which money is donated at his website. That will go a long way toward measuring whether the public enthusiasm for Dean is waning.

In closing, there is one thing that particularly distresses me about your sympathies for Wesley Clark. You do understand that this is a pitched battle for control of the Democratic party, correct? And you do accept that Clark is now the DLC's anointed one, right? I have no fucking idea how you can spend so much time in off-years lamenting the control of the party by proto-Republicans and then give a big wet smooch to someone who could not be a more palpable stooge of those interests.

Oh, but he's a smart manager and a man of principle in your private political universe, right? So what have you got to say about yesterday's Drudge leak of El Diablo's pro-Iraq War testimony to Congress? If you're keeping score, this means the Republicans will be able to counter--hell, laugh in the face of--anything Clark has to say about the conduct of the war. You simply make a commercial with two elements: Clark proclaiming he's always been against the war, and big bold excerpts of his closed pre-war Congressional testimony. Of course this leaves his domestic policy bona fides intact--or would if he had any, which he does not. At this point I'll wager that Clark is the Democrat Bush/Rove are dying to face. (And don't cite week-old poll numbers that say otherwise--yesterday's news about his support of the Bush policy on the eve of war changes all that drastically.)

I want to be clear in closing that I don't really think Howard Dean would do great progressive things with the Democratic party apparatus if he did manage to take it over. But Howard Dean happens to be the only Democrat who could actually compete to define the race. He is the only one who could draw "nontraditional voters" in large numbers. Any other Democrat would merely be standing around hoping that Bush or the economy fucked up badly--which they may. Myself, I don't think it's a particularly smart bet to place your hopes on Karl Rove beating himself.

Gisleson: Defending Clark is not how I want to spend my campaign season, but if you scroll down to the earlier post today you'll find a link to Josh Marshall explaining why Drudge's allegation of a Clark flip-flop is less than convincing. More to the point you'll also find a link to Paul Krugman's column in the New York Times today.

Krugman makes it clear that to date only two major Democratic candidates are focusing on the real issue in this race: Bush's duplicity.

 

The real division in the race for the Democratic nomination is between those who are willing to question not just the policies but also the honesty and the motives of the people running our country, and those who aren't. [Read column.]

Maybe it's my Iowa Lutheran upbringing, but I do tend to forgive fairly easily. I credit Nixon for that. Not that he taught me anything about forgiveness, but in studying him I came to realize that the more you know, the harder it is to condemn someone. Nixon didn't hate America, and he wasn't indifferent to the common good. Compared to George Bush, Richard Nixon was a second Lincoln.

In politics, it's easy to criticize officeholders and others in positions of leadership, but - with one major exception - these people generally acquit themselves well, working hard to achieve what's best for the country.

The exception? Anyone who's held captive by special interests. Sadly, that includes most of our officeholders nowadays, and, obviously our incumbent president. I don't think Howard Dean is in anyone's back pocket, but like Paul Krugman I also believe that of Wes Clark. Taking money from special interests to be a lobbyist is, quite frankly, honest work compared to serving the people and voting up special interest legislation in exchange for campaign funds.

You're right that the winner will not just become the Democratic candidate, but the titular head of the party as well. Will that give the DLC another four years of control if Clark wins? Without a doubt. Will that mean that the DLC will run Clark's agenda? I don't think so.

There's no shortage of Lincoln quotes that show an antipathy towards slaves, but there's also no arguing that Lincoln did more for non-white Americans than any President prior to FDR (or even LBJ if you want to argue the point).

Character is a big part of the electoral process. Not so important in the campaign phase thanks to the blinding gloss of media manipulation, but once the winner takes the oath of office, it's all about character.

The LA Times cheapshots John Edwards today by implying that he's not some country boy anymore and it's all BS to work that angle in his campaign. I disagree. Character is developed early on in life and adversity is a big part of that process. Clark and Edwards understand adversity, just as they understand what it's like to excel in life despite adverse forces.

There's really only one reason I haven't been eager to jump on Dean's bandwagon, and that's the fact that I find it hard to get around his privileged upbringing. I fear his Wall Street background far more than I do Wes Clark's temp jobs in the private sector.

And, as I've said time and again, it's not like the winner of this election will get a blank check to remake the world in his image. The winner of this election will inherit a mountain of debt, the distrust of our allies and the hatred of our enemies who are now vastly more numerous than they were before Bush left his mark.

2005-2009 will be about fixing the American economy and repairing foreign relations. In that regard I find Bosnia more relevant than Vermont, and Clark a better man than Dean. I'm sure you disagree.

 

Perry: Whenever I hear someone prating about a candidate's character, I wish I played the violin so that I could accompany them. But if you want to talk about character, consider the very thing regarding Clark that you're in so much denial about: the way in which he has complimented and shilled for the Bush administration at various times in the past couple of years. Does Josh Marshall have a positive spin on Clark's now-forgotten remark--reported at Counterpunch back when he joined the race--that he would have been a Republican if he could have gotten Karl Rove to return his calls?

But it doesn't really matter what you think of that, because it is all too clear what Karl Rove could and would do with Clark's various flip-flops. And there is likewise no doubt that the great pack of terriers in the press corps would take such controversies, legit or no, and blow them to high heaven, because those sorts of stories are what they live for.

Incidentally, that may be the weakest Krugman column I've ever read. I will give him the benefit of the doubt by noting that the piece was clearly written and filed before the news of Clark's Congressional testimony broke yesterday. He shares your signal blind spot as a political critic: He is so wishful a Democrat partisan himself that he fails to recognize how these guys' records and personae (a much safer and more accurate word than "character" in this age of thoroughly mediated campaigns) will be kicked around by the Republicans and the media in a general election. Ultimately, what helpless Dems like you and Krugman fail to see is what an endangered species you've become: No matter how angry "the Democrats" may be at the grassroots, there simply aren't enough Democrats at the grassroots to carry this election, or come close to doing so. There's a lot of Bush-hate out there, but my feeling is that it's no more pandemic--and probably less so--than the widespread public distrust and distaste for the Democratic party in general.

Incidentally, you're wrong about Lincoln. He was consistent in his distaste for slavery. But as a matter of priorities, he cared far more about the preservation of the Union at all costs than he did about abolition.

Posted by Steve Perry at January 16, 2004 1:27 PM

 

Jeers and the bubble boy

by Mark Gisleson

An outstanding Iowa Caucus story just went up at The Economist. It’s a real joy to read serious journalists when they seek to educate their audience. The information in this article is exceptionally on-target, and with a minimum of cutesiness the un-bylined piece sums up the caucus process with considerable perspicacity. Yeah, it’s good. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone else mention the fact that Dean’s Iowa operation has grown until it now takes up two buildings, and the isolated examples presented are set out just so — no bullshit implications that they speak for the whole. Exceptional and recommended.

Iowa Secretary of State Chet Culver has predicted a record turnout with over 125,000 Democrats expected to turn out on Monday night. In part, I’m sure Chet checked out the weather and figured a predicted low of 10°F wouldn’t stop Iowans from turning out. Still, it could be that a lot of people will figure it’s going to be too crowded (heavily attended caucuses tend to drag on late into the night), and will decide to stay at home to check it all out on CSPAN during commercial breaks for Fear Factor.

But regardless of turnout, contrast the right of Iowans to express their political views with that of motorists in the deep South who make the mistake of sporting Howard Dean bumperstickers.

The Iowa media checks out the national media for yet another round of quadrennial navel gazing, including a rundown on how much all those annoying ads cost. Paul Begala gets a good turnout in Council Bluffs, and salutes the “Pope of Pottawattamie County.” John Kerry discusses “Big Mo” in Sioux City while the Mitchell Country Press announces that all four Osage precincts and West Lincoln Township will meet at the Senior Citizens Center. The Republicans trump that by having all the Osage precincts and five out of town precincts meet at the high school cafeteria. Also, John Edwards gets a well-timed endorsement from Timberwolf Fred “The Mayor’ Hoiberg.

Dean	30%
Gephardt	26%
Kerry	17%
Edwards	15%
Uncommitted	8%
Kucinich	4%

 

Credit where credit is due. I give Steve Perry crap about his taste in music, but, for the record, he’s got an awesome collection of vintage classics. However, as I constantly point out to him, most of his music dates back to the last century. Well, thanks to Steve here’s a link to one of my favorite 20th Century musicians writing about the Iowa Caucuses. Representing Punkvoter, Wayne “MC5” Kramer visited Des Moines recently.

I got the opportunity to talk with Iowa Senator Tom Harkin who was there with the troops working the phones and stuffing envelopes. He was surprisingly candid, saying that Bush is creating a climate of fear that is designed to keep us under control and out of doing something to change the way things are. He also acknowledged that no one was talking to young folks and that needed to change. I couldn't agree more.

How will all this play out? No one knows.

My rhapsodizing yesterday about Kucinich’s opportunity for a showing may have seemed a bit odd to some of you, and, if you clicked on the Kramer link above, you may have noticed that the greatest punk guitarist of all time was less than impressed with Dennis. Still, I can’t think of Democrat more qualified to take Paul Wellstone’s mantle, and I for one think Kucinich has earned a seat at the table. He should speak at the DNC, and in primetime.

* *

Jack Shafer sticks it to the blustering Richard Perle at Slate. Back in Iraq, the grateful liberated folks "in charge" are about to impose sharia law, i.e. mandatory veils. Meanwhile, 30,000 Shia protesters march in Basra demanding elections.

You knew this day was coming: our Bubble President finally tried to make an appearance in a place that the Secret Service couldn’t lock down, and the rest goes down exactly as you’d expect:

Shouting "Bush go home," hundreds of demonstrators lined historic Auburn Avenue--once the hub of the civil rights movement--to protest President Bush's visit to lay a wreath at the tomb of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the slain leader's birthday.

Though anti-war protesters, environmental groups and human-rights activists were among the demonstrators, many in the crowd were African-Americans who said they opposed Bush's visit because his policies have gone against most of the values King stood for.

"He is desecrating Dr. King's grave by placing a wreath there," said longtime civil rights activist Billy McKinney. "It's all political. Why else would he come here when he was not invited?"

Bush, accompanied by King's widow, Coretta Scott King, and other relatives, appeared unfazed by the demonstrators, who were barricaded across the street and blocked from view by several large city buses. Still, their chants and boos could be heard throughout the area.
As several presidents have done in the past, Bush placed the wreath in front of the crypt, in the middle of a reflecting pool on the grounds of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change. He stood briefly in silent prayer before being whisked away to attend a $2,000-a-plate re-election fundraiser where he was introduced by Democratic supporter Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia.

Save this one: Max Sawicky’s “Government by Time Bomb” lists all the things the Bushies are up to that will, over the long haul, pulverize our economy into dust.

Over at the New York Times, Paul Krugman spells it out once more, quoting Wes Clark’s memorable pronouncement, "I think we're at risk with our democracy....I think we're dealing with the most closed, imperialistic, nastiest administration in living memory. They even put Richard Nixon to shame."

The real division in the race for the Democratic nomination is between those who are willing to question not just the policies but also the honesty and the motives of the people running our country, and those who aren't.

What makes Mr. Dean seem radical aren't his policy positions but his willingness — shared, we now know, by General Clark — to take a hard line against the Bush administration. This horrifies some veterans of the Clinton years, who have nostalgic memories of elections that were won by emphasizing the positive. Indeed, George Bush's handlers have already made it clear that they intend to make his "optimism" — as opposed to the negativism of his angry opponents — a campaign theme. (Money-saving suggestion: let's cut directly to the scene where Mr. Bush dresses up as an astronaut, and skip the rest of his expensive, pointless — but optimistic! — Moon-base program.)

Josh Marshall notes that on the same day Drudge distorted some soundbytes from Wes Clark, RNC Chair Ed Gillespie touted the same points in a speech in Little Rock. Wes may be Steve Perry’s idea of the anti-Christ, but apparently he’s the anti-Christ of Karl Rove’s nightmares as well.

* *

Steve Perry slipped this URL under the door last night: Top Ten Drug War Stories of 2003. Number one with our bullets: Afghanistan is again the world’s top supplier of opium. Gee, just like everyone but Donnie Rumsfeld and the Pentagon predicted. Another victory for the gang that couldn’t shoot up straight.

* *

 

 

Posted by at January 16, 2004 11:42 AM

 

Nad this

by Mark Gisleson

Hmm, this is the problem with trying to do client work before finishing my daily posts. Once my inner crank gets to cranking, efforts at creating client cover letters tend to sound a bit, uh, militant. Not drawing from my usual plethora of links, but here's what I've got right now.

Starting out with the caucuses, WHO-TV in Des Moines has an insanely bad poll posted that shows John Kerry in first place. I don't think so. Here's my take on where everyone's at today based on conversations with Iowa activists, my readings and gut instincts:

Dean	31%
Gephardt	27%
Kerry	16%
Edwards	14%
Uncommitted	8%
Kucinich	4%

This is based on the fact that the folks in the middle of the pack really get hammered in the caucus process unless they have exceptional people on the ground, and frankly, I don't think that's true of Kerry or Edwards. I'm also hearing good things about the Kucinich organization. They're targeting the campuses and inner city precincts as I thought, which is smart politics. Braun's endorsement of Dean will help Howie a smidge, but the real beneficiary will be Kucinich.

* *

Richard Florida on the “Creative Class War” and yes, he is talking about the arts, among other things like how the Right has convinced the creative community to work abroad where it’s friendlier.

Why would talented foreigners avoid us? In part, because other countries are simply doing a better, more aggressive job of recruiting them. The technology bust also plays a role. There are fewer jobs for computer engineers, and even top foreign scientists who might still have their pick of great cutting-edge research positions are less likely than they were a few years ago to make millions through tech-industry partnerships.

But having talked to hundreds of talented professionals in a half dozen countries over the past year, I'm convinced that the biggest reason has to do with the changed political and policy landscape in Washington. In the 1990s, the federal government focused on expanding America's human capital and interconnectedness to the world--crafting international trade agreements, investing in cutting edge R&D, subsidizing higher education and public access to the Internet, and encouraging immigration. But in the last three years, the government's attention and resources have shifted to older sectors of the economy, with tariff protection and subsidies to extractive industries. Meanwhile, Washington has stunned scientists across the world with its disregard for consensus scientific views when those views conflict with the interests of favored sectors (as has been the case with the issue of global climate change). Most of all, in the wake of 9/11, Washington has inspired the fury of the world, especially of its educated classes, with its my-way-or-the-highway foreign policy. In effect, for the first time in our history, we're saying to highly mobile and very finicky global talent, "You don't belong here."

They’re kidding, right? $1.5 billion for marriage training? What the hell is wrong with these people? It’s like a joke to them: promise anything that will keep your fringe lunatic base in place. I almost think Karl Rove is trying to lose so as to avoid the inevitable lamp post that awaits him if we have to resort to the other kind of regime change.

Sorry, don’t mean to be Coulterish, but the vibes around here are pretty weird ever since Dennis Perrin’s recent Lileks-bashing piece subjected the whole site to rightwing fisking, with Glenn “Instahack” Reynolds at the head of the BMD* mob. I can’t tell you how weary I am of seeing one particularly tiresome local group blog repeatedly trotting out my “nads/heart” comment from earlier this year. Wingers get to write Bret Ellis intensity stuff about corpse-fucking Bill Clinton, but throw hissy fits anytime someone suggests that we might have to resort to a roots style Declaration of Independence mandated action agenda to rid ourselves of this pustulently corrupt administration. Hey blogwipes — try reading what real conservatives have to say about our pretzel-choking, vacation-taking loser-in-chief!

That’ll probably just egg ‘em on, but I think this is the year when the brown shirts get a taste of what life was like for Mao-ey Wowists like myself during the Clinton years. He wasn’t really one of us, but we certainly had to eat a lot of shit on his behalf. I think true conservatives have long felt this way about G.W., a sarcastic God’s answer to an idiot’s prayer for a second Reagan. Well, that’s what they’ve got, up to and including the premature Alzheimer’s.

*Blogs of Mass Deception

* *

HOT: Democracy Now! hosted a debate between Richard Perle and Paul Krugman on terrorism. Here’s the transcript.

Courtesy of Badri, Halliburton and food poisoning. Nothing's too cheap for our boys and girls in uniform.

* *

I've been sitting on this one for a while. Greg Easterbrook at The New Republic has some interesting takes on Bush's space plans.

Forget for a moment the purpose, just think about cost. A rudimentary, stripped-down Moon base and supplies might weigh 200 tons. (The winged "orbiter" part of the space shuttle weighs 90 tons unfueled, and it's cramped with food, oxygen, water, and power sufficient only for about two weeks.) Placing 200 tons on the Moon might require 400 tons of fuel and vehicle in low-Earth orbit, so that's 600 tons that need to be launched just for the cargo part of the Moon base. Currently, using the space shuttle it costs about $25 million to place a ton into low-Earth orbit. Thus means the bulk weight alone for a Moon base might cost $15 billion to launch: building the base, staffing it, and getting the staff there and back would be extra. Fifteen billion dollars is roughly equivalent to NASA's entire annual budget. Using existing expendable rockets might bring down the cargo-launch price, but add the base itself, the astronauts, their transit vehicles, and thousands of support staff on Earth and a ten-year Moon base program would easily exceed $100 billion. Wait, that's the cost of the space station, which is considerably closer. Okay, maybe $200 billion. Now, what would astronauts do from a Moon base?

•  Suit up and go outside

•  Collect rocks and check measuring devices

•  Go back inside

There's nothing on the scientific radar that could be done on the Moon by people that couldn't be done at one percent of the expense, and without risk, by automated devices. Note that in recent years, all the space programs of the world have shown little enthusiasm for sending even automated devices to the Moon, since there's little to do there other than pursue abstract knowledge of geology. (The Moon may have lots of "helium three," a substance that might someday power fusion reactors that make energy, but helium three won't matter to the Earth for decades.) A Moon base would actually be an impediment to any Mars mission, as stopping at the Moon would require the mission to expend huge amounts of fuel to land and take off but otherwise accomplish nothing, unless the master plan was to carry rocks to Mars.

[link]

One parting thought on the practicality of Mars. Spirit, the rover that just landed there, weighs half a ton. Spirit cost $410 million to build and place on Mars--and it's about the size of a refrigerator, and does not come back. Mars-mission proponents want to send something to the Red Planet the size of an office building, and bring it back.

What NASA needs right now is not an absurd, bank-breaking grand mission: It needs to spend a decade researching a safer lower-cost alternative to the space shuttle.

And why might George W. Bush endorse a Moon base or Mars mission? Either he's a science illiterate surrounded by advisors who are science illiterates, or it's a blank check for aerospace contractors.

[link]

Denny, one of my Iowa Caucus correspondents and the person who first forwarded me an excerpt from these Easterbrook columns, also got this feedback from Hugo award winning science-fiction author Joe Haldeman who echoed Easterbrook's comments:

Bush's "enthusiasm" for manned space flight is just another lie. The money is so not there. But he can use it as a cover to pump money into defense projects like whatever they're calling Star Wars this year.

Science fiction fans will remember Haldeman's debut novel, "The Forever War," which was widely described as the Vietnam response to Robert Heinlein's WWII-era "Starship Troopers."

I've seen some positive responses from NASA types, but I'd be interested in knowing if anyone's seen any non-NASA comments that favor Bush's plan.

* *

More from the WYSO front: the Yellow Springs News shares its take on Judy Pitstick's departure.

This week Anne Williams, who served as the interim general manager at WYSO before Spencer joined the station in 1998, said in an interview that her discomfort with Spencer contributed to her decision to leave the station five years ago, two months after Spencer took over as general manager.

Williams, who currently works at WNRN in Charlottesville, Va., said that her discomfort with Spencer began at her first meeting with him, due to his use of profanity.

“My first meeting with him, Spencer used a tremendous amount of foul language. I asked him to stop but he continued,” said Williams, who also served as a former radio host and volunteer coordinator at WYSO.

She said that Spencer’s style set a tone at the station that she found difficult to adapt to. “It was very different than the kind of environment we had been used to. We had been polite to each other,” she said.

Williams also said that Spencer told her several times that he thought she would be happier somewhere else, leading her to believe that he did not want to work with her. She said that a combination of the tense working environment and her feeling no longer wanted at the station led to her decision to leave.

Spencer, who returned to work this week from vacation, did not return a phone call seeking comment.

* *

I may post more later, but God I hope not.

 

 

Posted by at January 15, 2004 1:17 PM

 

It's good to be the station manager

by Mark Gisleson

Running way behind today, but if you scroll down you'll notice a lot of text left over from yesterday (I dunno, we just kept posting). If you read everything yesterday, check back later, or check out Babelogue's front page, where I do more of a pop-sociopathic kind of thing.

* *

Or, if you're stopping by to see if there are any WYSO updates, the Dayton Daily News has reported that long-time office manager Judy Pitstick has called it quits. Judy's not talking, but her departure gives reporter Jim DeBrosse an excuse to rehash the mess that station manager Steve Spencer has created. Steve's finally back to work after taking a few days off to recuperate from his month-long holiday season vacation. It's good to be the station manager.

Via someone who talked to someone at NPR, I've learned that Antioch Vice-Chancellor Glen Watts and Steve Spencer, neither of whom were willing to return recent DDN calls for information on the ongoing management scandal, called the DDN to raise hell about this story not being newsworthy. Niki Dakota, queen of the airbrushed photo and the Nixonian Spencer's current favorite on-air tool, then went to bat for Antioch by denouncing Cox Media on the air. Miami Valley media watching's getting interesting as canned "community" radio goes live to take on the local dead tree news.

 

 

Posted by at January 15, 2004 10:41 AM

 

Iowa Death Trip

Steve Perry and Mark Gisleson on the Democratic party's Get-Dean movement

Perry: I sent you this morning's Zogby numbers a little while ago. It's the only poll I even remotely trust in electoral matters, and it shows Dean's lead in Iowa dwindling to 3 points over Gephardt and--Kerry?

It's been amazing to watch the assault on Dean by the Democratic party. What they've been doing in Iowa is practically Rove-esque in its meanness and rigor. Especially the bit about the Dean people allegedly importing ringers from out of state to the caucuses, which seemed to be based on one volunteer's stupid remark blown wickedly and knowingly out of proportion. Or Kerry and Lieberman's open declarations that Dean cannot beat Bush.

There's no way those two could have failed to realize how such remarks might play in Republican ads later if Dean is the nominee. But it's clear the party hierarchy doesn't care about that. The Clinton/McAuliffe/DLC chieftains who run the DNC are fully prepared to tank the election rather than turn over the reins of power to a new party organization. Which, after all, is one of the things Dean has promised. (Though I'm not at all sure he means it; each time he is embraced by a usual Democratic suspect like Al Gore, Tom Harkin, Jimmy Carter, you have to wonder who is absorbing whom.)

Realistically, this is something we have to keep in mind: If the DNC does not succeed in undermining Dean as a primary candidate, numerous elements in the party will go right on undermining him as the nominee. Shades of "Democrats for Nixon." (Which in turn would place an even higher burden on Dean to bring "non-traditional voters" into the process, but that's part of a different harangue.)

I see you ventured a prediction today that Dean would win the caucuses with about 30 percent. City Pages has a couple of reporters heading to Iowa this week, and in the background conversations they've had so far with party insiders there, the view seems to be that no one is confident what will happen. Jerry Anderson filed these notes from one source:

"Total toss-up four ways. Dean and Gephardt hit stasis around 25 percent, Kerry and Edwards on the upswing. [Source] says Dean is not so much the story as the way he has profited from the level of anger toward Bush. Iowa dems haven't been this angry since Nixon."

I have a slightly different prediction. Along with you, I suspect the enthusiasm and numeric strength of Dean's volunteers will land him on top. But here's the catch: The growing wave of anti-Dean conventional wisdom is going to mean that any result but a big margin of victory (which I doubt he'll get) will be painted as a disappointment and a setback. Heads, the party establishment wins; tails, Dean loses.

So here's a question for you: Do you still expect him to win the nomination at this point?

Gisleson: At this point, the nomination is Dean's to lose. Much as I'd love to see Clark as the nominee, I don't see any Clark strategy in play that will bring about that scenario, short of a party-rending kneecapping of Howard Dean.

As to polls, when it comes to the caucuses, I don't trust any of them. What kind of legitimate pollster would even try to claim that they can sniff out the result of such an arcane and byzantine process as the caucuses?

So far I don't think any of the charges leveled at Dean have been all that harsh. Compared to the daily grinding out of disinformation by the major media dailies, the roughing up Howie's getting from Gephardt and Co. is pretty tame stuff.

Regarding predictions, I reserve the right to tweak my prognostication on a daily basis right up through Monday's post. Right now, my gut feeling is that this is a fairly typical big field caucus. They're hard to call but in the final analysis the frontrunner gets a delegate bonus (up to a point), the folks in the middle of the pack bleed, and the real underdogs steal delegates in isolated precincts.

That adds up to problems for Kerry and Edwards, and a tough fight for Gephardt. Labor's clearly working hard to win this for the Gepper, but labor's unlikely to surprise anyone. The real surprise will come from the college students and first time attenders, and that's Dean's audience. Those are also the exact same people pollsters don't even try to find, obsessed as they are with "likely" voters.

Short of the media finding a young boy or dead girl in Dean's room at the Holiday Inn, from here on out there won't be any surprises capable of affecting Monday night's caucuses. If a caucus goer's support for a candidate is so fragile they're still unsure of who to support, chances are they won't go. A caucus is a commitment to spending an evening in a crowded room with a lot of angry people. Not a lot of fun.

This isn't to say that there won't be a sizable number of uncommitted delegates, but that's another ballgame altogether. I accidentally posted them as undecideds in my prediction, but that was a typo. Uncommitteds are rarely undecided, and they're often serious people finessing themselves a delegate slot, or working to undercut an opponent's chance of staying viable.

The caucuses are an interesting phenomenon and I look forward to seeing how they play out almost as much as I look forward to hearing the subsequent stories about who screwed who where.

Perry: Oh, how to put this diplomatically?

Wesley Clark is the anti-Christ. He is quite literally the face of business-as-usual DLC reaction. I have read a fair amount by and about him without garnering the impression that there is anything he has consistently believed in besides Wesley Clark. In appearances I've seen, he comes off rather like Mr. Rogers' long-estranged con artist brother. I loathe Wesley Clark.

If he is the Democratic nominee, and I think that's a very plausible scenario right now, I'm not sure I would bother voting. And I suspect there are many others who feel as I do--precisely those people who are not traditional Democrats but were attracted to some aspects of Dean, not least his disdain for the Democratic party as now constituted.

Gisleson: Well, compared to how you talk about Wes in private, that is fairly diplomatic. I can't defend my love of Clark on the issues, and truth be told, I don't like him all that much.

Posted by Steve Perry at January 14, 2004 3:34 PM

 

Who cares where John Wayne was born?

by Mark Gisleson

Well I've been burning up the phone lines talking to long-lost acquaintances who, for the most part, seemed to remember who I was. One tired party activist reminded me that the Iowa legislature just started its new session this week so there’s lots of competition in the local papers for “above the fold” stories. There’s also a lot of dross about who’s endorsed who, but I confirmed the common wisdom that endorsements don’t mean squat in the caucus process unless the endorser is right there in the room with you, and then you’re just talking about one precinct’s delegates.

Mention Winterset to most Iowans and two things spring to mind: John Wayne’s birthplace and the covered bridges of Madison County. If for even a moment Iowans forgot either of these facts, an out-of-state reporter would remind them of them, over and over again. LA Times reporter John Glionna, between recitations of mossy trivia, finds that most Iowans are tired of talking politics. Uh, actually I think it’s more a case of Iowans being tired of talking to out-of-state reporters, especially jackasses who probably didn’t bother to qualify who they were talking to. True to the established format, Glionna adds value to his article by peppering his text with quotes from the retirees at the Rexall drug store, even though he acknowledges that most of them admitted they won’t go to their caucuses. If that’s true, who cares what they have to say? And, unless Winterset has changed radically since I left Iowa, 90% of those drugstore retirees were Republicans anyhow.

Martin Sheen and Rob Reiner are in Iowa stumping for Howard Dean. Smart move both ways. Iowa caucus goers probably constitute one of the prime demographic groups that keep The West Wing on the air so this should be a good thing for Dean.

Kos has the results of the DC primary in case you missed all the banner headlines in today's newspapers. (I should probably clarify that this is sarcasm on my part. If you don't read Kos's story, you'll probably never find out who won or how Al Sharpton did.) Kos also assesses each candidate's expectations. Bottom line: Dean wants to win, Gephardt has to win, Kerry can get by with second place, and Edwards will be happy with third or fourth.

These aren't the numbers you'll see in the polls, but here's my prediction for the Tuesday morning newspapers:

Dean	30%
Gephardt	27%
Kerry	16%
Edwards	15%
Undecided	10%
Kucinich	2%

Most years the nature of the caucus process gives an extra bump to the frontrunner and a tire iron to the knees of those in the middle or bottom of the pack. At the same time, candidates with no chance of winning but with isolated pockets of strength (inner city precincts, college campuses, etc), often steal a few delegates.

Here's the WaPost’s Terry Neal’s take on the horse race. Also in the WaPost, David Broder spins the spin on Dean. The book he references, BTW, has been out for a while now so this is probably a column he’s had sitting in the drawer. The reporting routine is pretty well established now: talk to David Yepsen, eat at Taste of Thailand, write your story for tomorrow's paper, then hit the bar at the Hotel Savery.

Three of the larger local newspapers have set up an Iowa Caucus page:

Des Moines Register

Cedar Rapids Gazette

Iowa City Press-Citizen

Despite Drudge's headline, Jimmy Carter still hasn't endorsed Howard Dean yet as of this posting.

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Whoops, this isn’t good. Don't click if you're tired of reading about atrocities. If you are keeping up with the news in Iraq, don't forget to read Juan Cole who has more on the latest casualties.

Damn! What Really Happened has a killer link to a page showing the 1998 letter Bill Clinton got encouraging him to go after Saddam. Scroll down to the names at the bottom. You won’t be disappointed.

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The O'Neill stuff just keeps piling up:

Andrés Martinez has a scathing follow up to the O’Neill flap in today’s NYTimes: “Mr. O'Neill can't tell you what it feels like to steer the world economy. For that, read Mr. Rubin's book. Mr. O'Neill's is a woeful tale of what it feels like to sit in the office once occupied by Alexander Hamilton and be subservient to people like Karl Rove and Karen Hughes.” The real stinger, however, comes deeper in the editorial:

Mr. O'Neill was a Nixonian Republican caught up in a Reaganite restoration. He had admired how President Bush's father, when faced with a dire fiscal outlook, had reneged on his "no new taxes" pledge. And while some Democratic liberals had viewed President Bill Clinton's fiscal discipline as a betrayal, for the likes of Mr. O'Neill it represented the triumph of Republican values.

Wes Clark rips Bush on the O’Neill investigation, and contrasts it with the snail-like pace of the Plame investigation. This link is popping up around the ‘n