With the nomination basically sealed up, Team Kerry (and the White House) now turn their attention to the red state/blue state calculus of the general election. So far, the talk is basically what you’d expect: “Bush advisers hope to keep Kerry pinned down trying to hold on to states that former vice president Al Gore narrowly won in 2000 — Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Michigan among them…[On the other hand,] Bush also will have to fight hard to win some of his red states that have suffered economically. ‘Bush has got to thread the needle,’ said a GOP strategist in one of the battleground states. ‘He won several states by a very small margin. Look at Ohio, Florida, Missouri, West Virginia, New Hampshire. I just think it’s a tough sled.'” And, in related news, The Atlantic‘s Josh Green evaluates the swing regions in 2004.
Category: The Dubya Era
Chancellors of the Republic.
In honor of President’s Day (and by way of LinkMachineGo and WebGoddess), it’s every politically-minded fanboy’s favorite party game, Bush or Palpatine? Their overconfidence is their weakness.
Kerry Digs In, Dubya Dips Out.
As Kerry readies for the big fight ahead, the GOP starts getting real ugly, with doctored Hanoi Jane photos and Drudge-inspired, Murdoch-driven tales of a possible extra-marital dalliance. Yep, the GOP sure loves them the adultery card, but I don’t think that dog will hunt this time around…not after the impeachment fiasco. Update: The accused woman says drop it, already, and Drudge — without apologizing for slandering her or Kerry — changes his tune about the alleged affair.
On the flip side of the card, Dubya’s Document Dump answers few questions about his guard duty, and reports are now surfacing of National Guard documents destroyed by Governor Bush’s people in 1997. And then, of course, there’s the matter of that skipped drug test…
ARF and AWOL?
Via Genehack, Calpundit delves into the documents of Dubya’s desertion.
The Bin Laden Bounce?
Unfortunately, I missed Dubya’s flailing about on Russert Sunday morning, so I can’t really venture an opinion about how that went. (The rightniks seem dour about it.) But Salon has put up an interesting presidential popularity chart, which shows that Dubya’s approval rating has only spiked thrice: 9/11, the Iraq War, and Saddam’s capture. Makes you wonder if Karl Rove is on the phone with Pakistan this very moment.
Kerry Nation and Shoeless Joe.
Seven states across the nation up for grabs last night, and five go to John Kerry. On the flip side, Joe Lieberman finally faced the music and bowed out of the race (So much for that “three-way tie” in NH.)
Well, call me an establishment sellout, but I’m close to putting this one in the fridge. I was glad to see Edwards take my and his home big, but I think Clark’s ekeing out of Oklahoma will hurt Carolina’s Finest on the momentum front. (That being said, Edwards is looking like a grand Veep.) And Dean, well, his 0-7 strategy was a gamble anyway, but I personally don’t believe he’s hitting the right notes to make a comeback anymore. Kerry a Republican? That’s just plain goofy. I’m all for running on campaign finance reform, of course, and I agree with Mark Shields that Dean’s made an enormous contribution in that regard…but I think spinning the “outsider” rhetoric just for the sake of it is lame. (Might as well say “Vote for me! I won’t know what the hell I’m doing for the first two years of my administration!”) Besides, it’s hard to run as the outsider who’ll change the insidious culture of Washington once you’ve nestled the likes of Al Gore to your breast. I’ll still put up Gore’s primary performance last cycle as an order of magnitude more shady than anything that’s gone down this time around.
So, if Kerry’s our horse, I’m ready to circle the wagons. He’s already up ten on Bush according to Gallup. And, having just seen California freak-show Darrell Issa on late-night CNN frantically go the “Dukakis Dukakis Dukakis” route, I’d say we have a real chance to win this thing. Between this and the atrocious State of the Union, I’m starting to get the sense we’ve been grossly overestimating Karl Rove’s political savvy. And, if the Big 47 holds up…it means trouble for the GOP that even Rehnquist, Scalia et al can’t solve this time. Bring it on.
Miller’s Crossing.
Not that this is really news to anyone, but Dennis Miller freely admits he won’t ever badmouth Bush on his new CNBC show. Well, if that’s the case, as I said before, Sayonara, cha-cha.
The Fighting 47.
In the midst of the battle for New Hampshire, a glimmer of great news. A new Newsweek poll has Kerry up 3 on Dubya in a head-to-head match-up. And the key stat isn’t Kerry, per se: All four major Dems poll well against the Prez (Clark down 1, Edwards down 3, Dean down 5.) No, what’s cause for cheer here is the breakdown: 47% of voters strongly oppose a second term for Bush (and 52% say they don’t want him back in general.) That’s compared to 37% of voters strongly in the Bush camp. With those kind of strong negatives, much of Dubya’s financial advantage is neutralized — all the money in the world isn’t going to change the minds of people who’ve already decided they hate you. And this means that, state-by-state electoral math notwithstanding, the Dems only have to sway 4% of the electorate between now and November, give or take a percentage point to account for more Florida-type shenanigans by the GOP.
Along those lines, the Republicans shift their attention to Kerry, while conservatives fret over their standard-bearer‘s right-wing cred. I’m sure y’all can get Pat Buchanan to run again…
Meanwhile, in NH news, the consistently insufferable Mickey Kaus points the way to Chrisishardcore, a young statistician who’s teased out daily movement from the three-day ARG polls (this is the information the talking heads have when they make their predictions.) At any rate, yesterday’s poll shows a bounce back for Dean, who looks to probably come in second by these numbers. Elsewhere, the Wyeth Wire, a SC political mail-list to which I subscribe, does the same thing for Carolina.
The Dubya Decimal System.
Still quite busy over here -- The megalithic history freelance project I mentioned here is finally drawing to a close, and orals reading is now consuming the bulk of my time. I know that portion of the site hasn't been updated lately, but I do plan to finish it, even if I have to post much of the content after my orals date, which should be sometime in the first two weeks of March.
In the meantime, I've also recently begun helping Bill Press finish up another book project, Bush Must Go. (We previously collaborated on Spin This! together in early 2001.) And, in keeping with the book's subtitle, Press has asked for "Top Ten" submissions, your Top Ten reasons why George W. Bush has to go down as a one-termer like Papa, over at the DNC Blog today. So, if you're feeling creative or have to get a particular Bush vent off your chest, leave your list over there. As he says, your ideas may very well be incorporated into the book.
The Last Debate, the First Deserter, and the Primal Scream.
The Dems held one more for the road last night in New Hampshire and, given that a rather bland Kerry didn’t stumble, it’s starting to look dire for Dean, who was subdued and chagrined most of the evening and only now seems to be turning the corner on his Muskie Moment. Edwards did reasonably well despite invoking states’ rights (which never sounds good with a southern accent) to support his convoluted gay marriage position. And I actually liked Clark better than usual, and thought he handled his recent party switch as well as he could.
But, I have to say, I was extraordinarily irritated by the way the whole Dubya Deserter thing played out last night. First Peter Jennings tells Wesley Clark that Michael Moore’s deserter comment was “a reckless charge not supported by the facts” and asks him if it’d have been “a better example of ethical behavior” to contradict him. Clark doesn’t go either way on it, claiming not to know all the facts. (Which is lame — What’s the point of having a General in the running if he’s not going to call out Bush on exactly this question?) Then, once the show’s over, Fox News pulls out Team Bespectacled White Guys (Mort Kondracke and Fred Barnes), who both immediately argue that Clark irreparably damaged his candidacy by not refuting this baseless charge, yadda yadda yadda.
Um, am I missing something? It’s been substantiated quite well that Bush seems to have gone AWOL by the Boston Globe and others, and I’m not talking about the six or seven critical hours on September 11 when he was toodling around above the Heartland. While absence of evidence isn’t necessarily evidence of absence, Dubya seems to have disappeared from the Air National Guard for almost a year between 1972-73, conveniently right before a drug test (an offense for which he was grounded), and, to this day, he has never satisfactorily explained where he was. (In fact, as the Straight Dope notes, later reports in The New Republic (by Ryan Lizza, if I remember correctly) even cast doubt on the half-hearted “some recollection” explanation Dubya gave during the 2000 campaign. (By the way, this all happened several years after Bush scored in the underwhelming 25th percentile on the pilot’s aptitude portion of the entrance exam, thus having to rely on his congressman-daddy’s connections to jump the year-long waiting list for the Air National Guard in the first place.)
Does all of this prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that Dubya pulled a Cold Mountain? Well, no, but it’s definitely enough to suggest that Bush has some serious explaining to do. (And he revoked any “youthful indiscretion” type-defense when he began parading around in flight gear on the USS Lincoln.) So, I mean, c’mon, now, a baseless charge about Bush? At this point it seems more correct to say that the bases were “Bush-less.” Next thing you’ll know Fox News will be screaming at John Kerry for perpetuating the “vicious rumor” of Dubya’s DUI.
At any rate, regarding other matters, I didn’t see Diane Sawyer or Letterman last night so can’t ascertain how Dean damage control went there, but I did catch the Dallas-Laker game on TNT, and during Inside the NBA EJ, Kenny and Charles must have played the Dean Scream about thirty times…in fact Ernie had it connected to his desk button. “Nash kicks to Dirk, Dirk from the corner…YEEEEEAAAAGH! Sacramento’s up big in the third…YEEEEEAAAGH!” And so on, so on. Pretty much the first political content I’ve ever seen on the show, and, yeah, it was funny every time. Poor Dean.