November 14, 2004 - November 20, 2004

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Meet the New Dems

How's the reinvention of the Democrats going so far? A Bush Wars translation guide 

weholdthesetruths.org

1: What is it the Democrats need to do, James Carville?

The purpose of a political party in a democracy is to win elections. We're not doing that well enough. And I think that we can't deny that the problem exists. I think we have to confront the problem. And by and large, our message has been we can manage problems while the Republicans, although they will say we can solve problems, they produce a narrative, we produce a litany.... These guys had a narrative — we're going to protect you from the terrorists in Tikrit and from the homos in Hollywood. That's it. I think we could elect somebody from Beverly Hills if they had some compelling narrative to tell people about what the country is....

The underlying problem here is, there is no call to arms that the Democratic Party is making to the country. We've got to reassess ourselves. We've got to be born again.

Translation: Beats the fuck out of me. Could be we need to talk prettier.

2: Who's going to run the DNC?

An AP dispatch last week named Howard Dean as well as "Govs. Tom Vilsack of Iowa and Mark Warner of Virginia, and former Gov. Roy Barnes of Georgia. Harold Ickes, a New York lawyer who was a White House aide in the Clinton administration and has close ties to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has a large following, especially in the Clinton wing of the party. Ickes is a passionate advocate and successful fund-raiser, but his Clinton ties might work against him among Democrats backing other candidates. Other names being circulated: Inez Tenenbaum, South Carolina's education superintendent and unsuccessful Senate candidate; and Simon Rosenberg, founder and president of the centrist New Democrat Network."

Incoming Senate Minority Leader Harry "I always would rather dance than fight" Reid has gone on record touting Vilsack, a colorless party hack who, with a little luck, could be another Dick Gephardt someday.

Translation: We gotta find someone who will play ball with the cash clientele. We can't give donors the idea we're going a whole new way here.

3: Where's the silver lining in this latest rout?

According to contributors at DailyKos and other pro-Dem bulletin board sites, it's that some moderate Republicans may jump ship and become Dems. Here's a few excerpts from one such thread:

I will repeat what I have written several times: If you are a moderate Republican, the message is clear. Your party does not want you. But, thanks to the conservative group Concerned Women for America, you no longer have to take my word for it. Their chief counsel has made that abundantly clear.

heck yeah, we want them! incumbents are hard to beat! but more to the point, i think we need to take these seats back to Dem either by changing the candidate's party or by getting our candidate in.

Why wouldn't we want them?  There's nothing inherently evil in fiscal conservatism (see John Kerry's record), it makes sense in a lot of ways, we just happen to disagree.  Heck, even on Kos we've been talking about increased states' rights etc (end red state welfare and all that).  I say, it's good that the moderate of the GOP are starting to see things as they are.  We need to make this more and more about the loonies that are still with Bush, after all this. This is even a good meme, even normal republicans (not neocon/religous wackos) are with us!

I want them too.  I think it's become a matter of semantics - that 'liberal' somehow doesn't equate to 'mainstream'.  The democratic party is mainstream, we just let the pubs frame all the issues in ways that make the it sound like we're on the fringe.

And so on, ad nauseam.

Translation: When the Democrats have absorbed enough alienated Republicans to make themselves resemble even more thoroughly the pre-Bush Republican party, the Democrats will be victorious again--booYAA, Republicans!

So there's your DNC post-election roundup: craven, false, same as it ever was.

Posted by Steve Perry at November 17, 2004 10:56 AM

 

CIA Analyst on al Qaeda: Next Time, Nukes?

Scheuer speaks out; Time highlights Mexico

Last night Michael Scheuer, the CIA bin Laden analyst and anonymous author of Imperial Hubris who resigned from the CIA on Friday, appeared on 60 Minutes. Scheuer said he believes that al Qaeda means to attack the US with nuclear weapons or radiological "dirty bombs," and disclosed that in May 2003 bin Laden obtained a fatwa from a Saudi cleric authorizing the use of nuclear weapons against America. (Scheuer also seems to believe that the bin Laden tape released just before the election may have constituted the convert-to-Islam-or-else warning that many Muslims would expect him to offer non-Muslims before a major attack.)

From CBS's written summary of the 60 Minutes report:

"You've written no one should be surprised when Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda detonate a weapon of mass destruction in the United States," says Kroft. "You believe that's going to happen?"

"I don't believe in inevitability. But I think it's pretty close to being inevitable," says Scheuer.

A nuclear weapon? "A nuclear weapon of some dimension, whether it's actually a nuclear weapon, or a dirty bomb, or some kind of radiological device," says Scheuer. "Yes, I think it's probably a near thing."

What evidence is there that bin Laden's actually working to do this? "He's told us it. Bin Laden is remarkably eager for Americans to know why he doesn't like us, what he intends to do about it and then following up and doing something about it in terms of military actions," says Scheuer. "He's told us that, 'We are going to acquire a weapon of mass destruction, and if we acquire it, we will use it.'"

And this morning Time features a dispatch regarding intelligence reports that al Qaeda may be planning to move WMD or the raw materials for making them through Mexico.

Posted by Steve Perry at November 15, 2004 9:24 AM

 

Equal Time: The GOP Sucker Bet

Mind if I borrow this flag?

It's amazing that anyone in the whole wide world takes the talk about Schwarzenegger in '08 seriously. Some do, though, and some journalists dutifully regurgitate it, either because they don't know any better or it's good copy. This is even more fatuous than the establishment Dems' Hillary dreams. Do you honestly think 38 states are going to pass an Arnold amendment to clear a path for the Terminator's first term? Do you think it will even be an unqualified hit in the (nativist, anti-celeb) red states? Enough already. It's more plausible that Dick Cheney will expire in his bunker during the next four years and an animatronic replica will succeed GWB.

Posted by Steve Perry at November 14, 2004 9:31 AM

 

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