Month: September 2003

Democracy DeLayed

For some reason I never hear the real reason the Texas redistricting plan is undemocratic. It’s not because they are redistricting just 2 years after it was done by a court. That’s not customary and if it’s practiced widely it’s going to throw the machinery of democracy for a loop. But, it’s not strictly undemocratic.

The reason this reprehensible ploy is undemocratic is because the reason that Republicans hold fewer congressional seats than their Republican majority would normally call for is because there are some Texas Republicans who split their ticket and vote for a Democratic representative.

I’m sure that DeLay has held guys like Martin Frost’s head in the toilet at the Capitol gym and threatened to cut of his “funding” if he didn’t switch to Republican, but it didn’t work. And, I’m sure they’ve done everything possible to get those rural Republicans to vote for someone else and that didn’t work either. Those Texans like their congressman and they don’t care that he is a Democrat.

These Democrats, as you might expect, are not exactly bleeding heart liberals and vote like republicans more often than not. DeLay wants to get rid of them purely for reasons of Party strength, not ideology.

So, he and Rove are doing an end run by redistributing the constituents who like these Democrats into uncohesive districts, many of which make no sense at all in terms of common concerns and affinity.

Basically, DeLay is using technical rules to deny members of his own party the right to have the congressman of their choice. That sure sounds undemocratic to me.

Here I Go Again

Here’s some rather obtuse analysis for you from TNR, which should know better:

We don’t entirely agree with the reasoning behind Dick Morris’s prediction of a Wesley Clark flame-out. But Morris does have a point when he says, “The Dean candidacy is the first creation of the Internet age. By contrast, Clark’s is perhaps the last of the media-created candidacies.”

A number of conservatives (and non-conservatives) have compared Clark to Ross Perot to foreshadow what they hope are the soon-to-be-exposed flaws in Clark’s candidacy–namely, that he’s a little short-tempered, nutty, and prone to conspiracy theories. But the real value in the analogy between Clark and Perot has less to do with the characterological flaws the men share than with what Morris rightly identifies as the media-driven nature of their campaigns.

If Dick Morris says it, you can be sure it’s utter bullshit and this one is a doozy.

Here are just a few of Dickie’s greatest hits:

“Eventually, France will cave to the U.S. position.” – On the Iraq/war alliance, New York Post, February 4, 2003

“Republican members of the Senate want their own person controlling the floor so they can have an independent voice … When they reconvene in January, Trent Lott will still be there for one good reason: The Republican senators don’t want him to go.” – New York Post, December 16, 2002

“(U)nless (GWB) starts this war on schedule in September … he’s going to lose Congress.” – Fox News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, August 5, 2002

“None, none.” – The Sean Hannity Show, May 13, 2002, in response to Sean asking if Dick has any doubt that Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2008

Yeah, he’s the fucking oracle of Delphi.

But his greater “point” (and that of TNR) is total nonsense as well. All campaigns are media driven campaigns.

The greatest political media creation is history is George W. Bush — not Ross Perot and not Wesley Clark. Karl Rove managed to get over 50 million people to vote for a brand name in an empty suit for president. He further managed to turn this ventriloquist dummy into someone whom over 60% of the people believe is a “strong leader.”

The Republican media operation managed the media so effectively during the last administration, with tabloid style manipulation and constant spoon-feeding of speculation and innuendo, that it created an environment in which the line between fact and fiction has narrowed to the point that our current president can lie blatantly about matters of life and death while the “press” meekly stands by and treats it as a purely partisan matter.

Politics IS the media. Rather than this election featuring “the last media campaign” I’m afraid we are really only seeing the beginning.

As I have said before, I agree that the internet is potentially a powerful organizing and communication tool. Lest people remain confused about the massive influence of the internet on ordinary Americans today, or the huge liberal movement it signifies, it would do well for them to read the PEW center report(pdf) on internet usage and attitudes on the Iraq war.

If you make the logical correlation between liberal politics, an anti-war position and internet usage, we are a long, long way from critical mass.

89% of all Americans reported that they get most their news from television. 87% of internet users report the same thing. In fact, only 17% of internet users reported that they get most of their news from the internet. 64% of those who got any of their news from the internet believed it was about the same as the news they got elsewhere. 76% said they got their news from American network sites, newspaper sites or US government sites. Only 18% reported that they regularly visited foreign and alternative sites.

6% said they got news from sites opposed to the war. 4% visited blogs.

In the days before the Iraq war, internet users supported the war by a 3 – 1 margin. They were more likely than non-internet users to think that the war was going well and that president Bush had made the right decision.

54% of internet users had said they sent or received patriotic e-mails or prayer requests with respect to the war. 10% received information from an organization opposed to the war. 5% communicated with an elected representative about the issue.

By the same token, while it seems terribly impressive that an estimated 70.1 million watched the first night of the Baghdad bombing on the eight major news networks: ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, it should be noted that the January 2001 Super Bowl attracted 79.5 million viewers.

Just the top 10 rated TV shows on prime time gain a weekly audience of about 200 million viewers, on average.

The fact is that most Americans are going to vote on the basis of what they see in the mainstream media and a large amount of that through advertising and quick cuts of news images. They are going to make a decision based less on specific issues and more on an emotional reaction to the candidate and the party. They are not going to be largely motivated by the internet, no matter how much we news junkies and bloggers would like to see that happen. That just isn’t the world most Americans live in.

None of this is to denigrate Dean’s accomplishment (or the draftClark people, for that matter.) And I see no reason why Dean cannot win a media campaign if he gets the nomination. His rolled-up-sleeves, straight talking approach and feisty willingness to speak truth to power is a very potent television image, if handled properly.

Because, let’s face it liberals — it’s not his stand on gun control or balancing the federal budget that gets you all excited about this guy either. It’s his attitude and personality that turns you on.

That’s what I’m talking about and that’s how campaigns are won and lost in this country nowadays. If more people watched the super bowl than the opening night of the war, I think it’s fair to say that we’re going to need to run a “media campaign” if we want to win this one.

Not even “Shock and Awe” could get as many viewers as the thrilling contest between Tampa Bay and New York — and that super bowl was the lowest rated since 1990.

They Remind Me Of My Maiden Aunt Sally

Thank you TBOGG for the link to the best laugh I’ve had in weeks:

Needles on the Beach’s Prick(s) of the week: Master Ben Shapiro and his cadre of sad little Bushie Jungen:

But the perpetual adolescent in me would say that if you’re a 17-year old (who’s been in the biz for a couple of years) who frequents airports and worries about the miniscule chance that a terrorist will board his plane and kill him – you are a fucking loser. Might as well give up now, punk. It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).

What a fucking pussy. We – that is, those of us who were adolescents from 1953 to 1991 – lived under a modulating, but ever-present threat that our lunatic, lazy or brain-damaged ‘leaders’ were going to end mankind with the touch of a button. Not an airliner. Not a few blocks of a city. The WHOLE FUCKING PLANET. Now that’s fear, baby. Knowing that ‘duck and cover’ would ensure that we were atomically fused to the underside of a desk, or that Reagan simply could have thought he was ringing the butler instead of ending life as we knew it – man, it was a bracing time.

Read it all. You’ll thank yourself.

* haha. Fixed freudian slip. Thanks p mac. Although it actually worked the other way too…

Non-stick Pans

Sullivan dutifully repeats the brand new shiny meme that Wesley Clark is a loopy nutcase a la Ross Perot.

I’m sure the kool aid kidz are lapping this stuff up, but it’s not going to work for real, actual humans out in Murica.

See, they believed that Ross Perot was a nut because he acted like a nut on national television. He babbled like an idiot about half the time and even gave interviews claiming that George Bush tried to disrupt his daughter’s wedding and that secret agents had scaled the walls of his compound. True, by the end of that campaign, Ross still got 20% of the vote, but apparently some people just like a screwball.

Clark may be a lot of things, but a screwball he’s not. Nobody is going to believe he’s a crazed kook because it’s obvious when you see and hear him that he isn’t.

The Republicans are trying out a lot of smear campaigns against Clark, Dean and Kerry because they believe that one of them will end up the nominee. (They know that Lieberman is highly unlikely to win, but they hedge their bets by repeatedly calling him the “good Democrat” so the grassroots will be sure to reject him.) As with the justification for the Iraq war, they are throwing everything against the wall and seeing what will stick.

Personally, I haven’t seen anything particularly threatening yet.

“Dean is an NPR liberal” doesn’t fit because he doesn’t come off as a touchy-feely, new-ager, which is the common perception of liberals (except to Ann Coulter who sees us as evil agents of Satan.) Most people have long forgotten what a combative liberal sounds like so they don’t really think they exist. Liberals are supposedly lovers, not fighters.

Kerry on the other hand is supposed to be an aloof, patrician blue nose but both his veteran and anti-war experience put him right in the middle of the raucous hedonism of the baby boom cultural revolution. He’s actually one of the strongest connections there is to the turbulent 60’s version of liberalism but because of his personality and gravitas they can’t make that case either.

Clark as a crazed lunatic is belied by his articulate authoritative demeanor as well as his completely straightlaced patriotic biography. Nobody looks at this guy and thinks, “Strangelove.” (Not as long as Don Rumsfeld is alive, anyway.)

None of their caricatures bear enough resemblance to the candidates to have any real salience with the public. It worked to some degree with Al Gore, not because he actually was a liar, but because his association with Clinton made it easy for people to make the connection, particularly since the “lies” were silly and personal, like Bill’s. More importantly, there seemed to be an (unfair) desire amongst some of the less decent folks in our country to see Gore as a pencil necked geek, probably because of the way he spoke. Certain adolescent assholes enjoyed making fun of him. (Still, he did win the election anyway.)

I do not doubt that the Rove machine is working overtime to find just the right derisive smear against any possible rival. They haven’t found them yet.

And, of course, their own boy is so target rich it makes me weep with joy at the prospect of turning their slobbering, lowlife tactics right back at them.

Josh Marshall has more on this topic.

Hack Attack

For any of you devious Rovian trolls out there who think you can use David Hackworth’s “Perfumed Prince” accusations against Wesley Clark, think again.

Reporting for Duty: Wesley Clark

By David H. Hackworth, 9/22/03

With Wesley Clark joining the Democratic presidential candidates, there are enough eager bodies pointed toward the White House to make up a rifle squad. This bunch of wannabes could make things increasingly hot for Dubya – as long as they don’t blow each other away with friendly fire.

Since Clark tossed his steel pot into the inferno, I’ve been constantly asked, “Hack, what do you think of the general?”

For the record, I never served with Clark. But after spending three hours interviewing the man for Maxim’s November issue, I’m impressed. He is insightful, he has his act together, he understands what makes national security tick – and he thinks on his feet somewhere around Mach 3. No big surprise, since he graduated first in his class from West Point, which puts him in the super-smart set with Robert E. Lee, Douglas MacArthur and Maxwell Taylor.

Clark was so brilliant, he was whisked off to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and didn’t get his boots into the Vietnam mud until well after his 1966 West Point class came close to achieving the academy record for the most Purple Hearts in any one war. When he finally got there, he took over a 1st Infantry Division rifle company and was badly wounded.

Lt. Gen. James Hollingsworth, one of our Army’s most distinguished war heroes, says: “Clark took a burst of AK fire, but didn’t stop fighting. He stayed on the field till his mission was accomplished and his boys were safe. He was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart. And he earned ‘em.”

It took months for Clark to get back in shape. He had the perfect excuse, but he didn’t quit the Army to scale the corporate peaks as so many of our best and brightest did back then. Instead, he took a demoralized company of short-timers at Fort Knox who were suffering from a Vietnam hangover and made them the best on post – a major challenge in 1970 when our Army was teetering on the edge of anarchy. Then he stuck around to become one of the young Turks who forged the Green Machine into the magnificent sword that Norman Schwarzkopf swung so skillfully during Round One of the Gulf War.

I asked Clark why he didn’t turn in his bloody soldier suit for Armani and the big civvy dough that was definitely his for the asking.

His response: “I wanted to serve my country.”

He says he now wants to lead America out of the darkness, shorten what promises to be the longest and nastiest war in our history and restore our eroding prestige around the world.

For sure, he’ll be strong on defense. But with his high moral standards and because he knows where and how the game’s played, there will probably be zero tolerance for either Pentagon porking or two-bit shenanigans.

No doubt he’s made his share of enemies. He doesn’t suffer fools easily and wouldn’t have allowed the dilettantes who convinced Dubya to do Iraq to even cut the White House lawn. So he should prepare for a fair amount of dart-throwing from detractors he’s ripped into during the past three decades.

Hey, I am one of those: I took a swing at Clark during the Kosovo campaign when I thought he screwed up the operation, and I called him a “Perfumed Prince.” Only years later did I discover from his book and other research that I was wrong – the blame should have been worn by British timidity and William Cohen, U.S. SecDef at the time.

At the interview, Clark came along without the standard platoon of handlers and treated the little folks who poured the coffee and served the bacon and eggs with exactly the same respect and consideration he gave the biggies in the dining room like my colleague Larry King and Bob Tisch, the Regency Hotel’s owner. An appealing common touch.

But if he wins the election, don’t expect an Andrew Jackson field-soldier type. Clark’s an intellectual, and his military career is more like Ike’s – that of a staff guy and a brilliant high-level commander. Can he make tough decisions? Bet on it. Just like Ike did during his eight hard but prosperous years as president.

Priorities

I still believe in the dream of a progressive, liberal nation in which everyone has opportunity and security, freedom and equality. And, I would love to see our politics move beyond the canned soundbite and the market tested message so people can debate civilly and sincerely about policies and philosophy, vote their conscience and elevate the discourse, secure in the knowledge that no matter what, America as we know it will continue to thrive.

But, right now I am scared to death that things are changing so fundamentally that not only will I not see any more progress in my lifetime, but that this country is undergoing a radical and perhaps irreversible, right wing revolution that will reverse most of the progress of the last 100 years.

I wish it were 1972 again or even 1992 again and I could feel sanguine that the United States was going to toddle along, for better or worse, under a basic bipartisan consensus that recognized certain constitutional boundaries and limits that could not be breached. I wish that we had an independent media that was less focused on entertainment values and instead recognized that it had an intrinsically important role in democracy. I wish that we were not in the grip of a revolution in technology and communications at the same time as a radical group of idealists have seized power. I wish we had the luxury of choosing candidates purely on the basis of their commitment to a bottom-up revolution of the people and progressive ideas.

Unfortunately, it is not that time. The modern Republican party presents a clear and present danger to everything we hold dear — the social safety net, the rule of law, civil liberties, consumer protection, a clean environment, international legitimacy — everything. They envision a one-party state. They mean to completely and thoroughly change the way this country works.

It’s important to recognize that major revolutionary change can happen slowly at first and then all at once in a civilized democratic society through sophisticated propaganda and by undermining the principles of democracy. History provides an instructive example and one that I’m no longer going to shy away from.

One of the least appreciated aspects of the Nazi rise to power is that it is the only fascist government that came to power through legal means. After the Beer Hall putsch, Hitler realized that he would best be served by a combination of some street action for intimidation purposes, but mostly by growing the Nazi party and building legitimate support. He had some success through the 20’s but it wasn’t until the great depression that his support grew significantly and the Nazis won large numbers in the elections of 1930 and 1932.

However, the communists and the social democrats also saw significant gains. The traditional centrist liberal democratic parties had by now been marginalized to such an extent that politics in Germany were now totally polarized. (In the 1928 elections in Germany the social democrats (SPD) had formed a government with broad parliamentary support. It was a broad coalition that included most of the middle parties, and moderate right party the DVP.) By 1930, the country (for many complicated reasons) had become significantly radicalized.

Despite their gains in 1930 and 1932, the Nazis never gained a majority and ended up seizing power through a quasi-legal parliamentary maneuver rather than forming a legitimate coalition. And one of the main strategic reasons they were in a position to effect such a maneuver was that the newly empowered communist KDP had decided that their main enemy was the more moderate social democrat SPD rather than the Nazis. The Communists claimed that the SPD was a more dangerous enemy because it “looked” like a leftist party and therefore undermined the true Marxist vision and enabled capitalism.

They called the social democrats “Social Fascists.” During the period leading up to the fateful deal that made Hitler Chancellor, when the KDP weren’t arguing amongst themselves as to whether they should concentrate on staging a mass revolution or using the democratic system to gain power, they were consumed with subjugating the social democrats who offended their radical sensibilities.

There are many reasons for Hitler’s rise, but it is clear that he would never have been in a position to do so if the opposing parties had coalesced to fight him from 1930 on. And again, there are many contributing factors – including, but not limited to, economic crisis, Nazi collusion with big business, a willingness on the part of various Weimar leaders to whittle away at democratic principles and Hitler’s masterful grasp of propaganda that appealed to the German sense of exceptionalism.

However, the radical left could have stopped him by seeing the danger clearly and aiming its fire at their real enemy rather than moderates in their midst in a self-defeating endless debate about strategy and ideological purity. Sadly, they paid a huge price when Hitler did assume dictatorial powers and manufactured a crisis that enabled him to clamp down on communists in his first act of brutal repression.

History never repeats itself exactly the same way and I don’t suggest that it is now, but sometimes you have to shake your head and wonder if human motivations are biologically programmed to be dumb in exactly the same ways, over and over again.

Required Reading

The freelancing Dwight Meredith has written some excellent pieces for the fine blogs Lean Left and Body and Soul that everyone should read. (Don’t read the second unless you are prepared to bang your head against the wall in total frustration…)

Bush’s Little Black Dress and

Justice For All

Hey Dwight, where’s mine?

Roll Tape, Please

Pilger uncovered video footage of Powell in Cairo on February 24, 2001 saying, “He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.”

Two months later, Rice reportedly said, “We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.”

LINK

Bring it on.

Barney Fife at the UN

I sure am glad them dumb ferriners cain’t read.

In words written as much for a domestic audience as for an international one, Mr. Bush is expected to make limited concessions giving the United Nations more control in Baghdad, as the allies would like. But he will keep real authority in American hands.

“There’s a feeling that you have to assert that the United States is still in control, if nothing else for domestic concerns,” said a senior administration official, who, like most of those interviewed, requested anonymity.

“We’re going into an election year and the president has to project an image of power and authority,” the official added. “There will be a lot of language implying that we’re not going anywhere. We’re asking for help, but not for anyone to take over.”

LINK

The General Has Been Terminated

Joan Walsh says that Clark’s candidacy is being foisted on the Democratic party by Democratic Big Shots. Cool. I should definitely get a slot on the DNC blogroll, now.

The rest of her screed is simple snottiness worthy of Lucianne Goldberg. She’s “tempted” to call Clark’s candidacy “doomed” after one day because:

…it would just feel good, in a way. A dead-in-the-water Clark candidacy would be a great rebuke to party big shots who are trying to foist him on Democrats because he’s more “electable” than Howard Dean or John Kerry. We’re going to see about that. It should be interesting.”

We’re just going to see about that, my pretties … heeheeheeheehee!

It’s funny. Today, I’m hearing very nasty things about Clark — all of them from Democrats, none of them candidates. Walsh points to a letter in the Note from an “angry democrat” who says:

I am not a Dean supporter — but I am angry that our party’s leaders have anointed an alternative to him who seems even more ignorant and unprepared — and that this supposed ‘anti-war’ candidate turns out to have been in favor of both the war resolution and Richard Nixon!! And let’s not even talk about the Clintons. Today I am embarrassed to be a Democrat.”

Interestingly, I got a handful of similar e-mails today striking a similar theme, one of them from somebody named “Sal” who said:

How can you support Wesley Clark when he’s even stupider than Bush? I’m don’t support any candidate yet, I’m keeping my options open. Howard Dean never voted for Richard Nixon at least! How much does the DLC pay you, anyway?”

I haven’t had this much fun since I argued with Nader voters in 2000. (Oh, and did I mention that I’m a Democrat who, nonetheless, believes that George W. Bush is the messiah?)

Joan figures Clark’s toast. One day in and it’s over. He’s just another Schwarzenegger — nothing but a lazy, Austrian, weightlifting moron without the women problems (although the day is young….)

But, at least we won’t have to endure that nasty campaign we are convinced he must have been planning with those horrible Clinton people.