Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Simple Strategy

NewDonkey.com says:

It’s bizarre, to say the least: at precisely the moment when the Bush-Cheney campaign has fully committed itself to an 18-day drive to demonize John Kerry as a Massachusetts Liberal, BC04 and its conservative media echo chamber are suddenly focused on a different L-word: Lesbian, as in the sexual orientation of Mary Cheney.

Kerry’s reference to the veep’s daughter, in response to a debate question about each candidate’s views on the nature or nurture origins of homosexuality, is now the obsessive preoccupation of the entire pro-Bush talking points network.

Their motivation is not 100% clear. In part, Bush partisans are simply trying to find something in the last debate that will change the public perception that Kerry won that one, and the whole three-game series. In part, Bushies want to dent the more positive impressions of Kerry’s character by suggesting he’s playing dirty politics. And finally, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that BC04 is simply freaking out at Kerry’s exposure, deliberate or inadvertant, of a vulnerability in their base-first strategy, which depends heavily on piggy-backing battleground state referenda on gay marriage. Mary Cheney’s father, after all, has conspicuously declined to support his boss in demanding a constitutional amendment to defend the “sanctity of marriage” against the alleged assault from those demanding gay marriage rights. This is not something conservatives want to be reminded of.

The morning news on Fox just spent half an hour talking about it and came to the conclusion that this was a bigger issue than taxes and the war in Iraq. Then one of the hideous dough boys wondered if the question had been on obesity, if it would have been appropriate for President Bush to bring up Elizabeth Edwards’s “problems.” I sure wish that all those moms and kids had heard that one.

I think this is simply the opportunistic opening salvo in a full-on character attack on John Kerry as a “hit below the belt” dirty campaigner. Typical GOP projection. In between will be more of the Rove patented ratfucking that they will pin on the Democrats.

At this point I don’t think that Rove has anything too sophisticated up his sleeve. We are going to see simple, crude attacks on Kerry’s character in the hopes that it will stimulate the neanderthals to vote and to swing a few simple minded undecideds.

And, of course, this is an innoculation against a Kerry win. They are setting it up to say he stole it.

Hell Froze Over

CNN.com

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: That’s right. This week there was an issue that hit home with voters and forced the candidates to rethink their scripts. It even walked off with the political play of the week.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) SCHNEIDER (voice-over): They’re standing in line in Florida and Michigan, in New Jersey. The line goes around the block. Eager swing state residents lining up to vote? Not exactly. They’re lining up for flu shots.

DR. CHARLES GONZALEZ, INFECTIOUS DISEASE SPECIALIST: It’s incredibly serious. We have half as much vaccine as we should have.

SCHNEIDER: How did that happen?

BUSH: We relied upon a company out of England to provide about half of the flu vaccines for the United States citizens.

SCHNEIDER: Uh-oh. Sounds like outsourcing. The president had a solution.

BUSH: We’re working with Canada, hopefully they will produce a — help us realize the vaccine necessary.

SCHNEIDER: But hasn’t Bush expressed problems with drug imports from Canada?

BUSH: My worry is, it looks like it’s from Canada, it might be from a third world. We have to make sure before somebody thinks they’re buying a product, that it works.

SCHNEIDER: President Bush made a plea to the public.

BUSH: If you’re healthy, if you’re younger, don’t get a flu shot this year.

SCHNEIDER: Sounds like rationing, something the president said would result from Kerry’s health care plan.

BUSH: Government sponsored health care would lead to rationing.

SCHNEIDER: The government has the situation under control the president says.

BUSH: The CDC responsible for health in the United States is setting those priorities and allocating the flu vaccine accordingly.

SCHNEIDER: Isn’t that government control?

BUSH: My opponent wants the government to run the health care.

SCHNEIDER: Maybe the answer is legal reform.

BUSH: Vaccine manufacturers are worried about getting sued, and so therefore they have backed off from providing this kind of vaccine.

SCHNEIDER: Kerry says the issue is the whole health care system.

KERRY: There still aren’t enough flu vaccinations. What’s the president’s solution? He says, don’t get one if you’re healthy. That sounds just like his health care plan to me, hope and pray you don’t get sick.

SCHNEIDER: The flu bug has infected the campaign. The side effect was the political play of the week.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER: What President Bush warns could happen under the Kerry health care plan, shortages, rationing, that’s exactly what is happening now. So the issue is whether the Kerry health care plan would solve the problem, or as Republicans charge, make it worse.

WOODRUFF: Is there any evidence yet how this issue is playing out politically? Do we see polls? Do we pick up what people are saying?

SCHNEIDER: We don’t have any direct evidence that it’s having a political impact yet. We know it is a very big issue on voters’ minds. They’re very dissatisfied with the fact that there is a shortage and frankly many are looking for somebody to blame. When the administration is the incumbent administration, they’re likely to take some hits.

WOODRUFF: You know it’s serious when you read that some states will fine or jail doctors and nurses who give flu shots to people who are not at high risk.

SCHNEIDER: Right, and that sounds a lot like rationing.

He’s Naked And We’re Sick Of Looking At It

Richard Cohen does it again:

For months now I’ve dropped bets on the presidential election like Hansel (of “Hansel and Gretel”) dropped pebbles. For honor and money, I’ve wagered on George Bush, not because I wanted him to win but rather because I thought he would. Now I’m changing my mind. It’s not the tightening polls that have done it — I knew that would happen — but rather something I could not have predicted. The president is missing.

The president I have in mind is the funny, good-natured regular guy I once saw on the campaign trail — a man of surprisingly quick wit and just plain likeability. I contrasted this man to John Kerry, who is as light and as funny as a mud wall, and I thought, “There goes the election.”

Where it has mattered most — the three debates — Bush has been wooden, ill at ease and downright spooky. He makes bad jokes, cackles at them in the manner of a cinematic serial killer and has lacked the warmth that he not only once had but that I thought would compensate for a disastrous presidency and give him a second — God help us — term. In short, he could take over the Bates Motel in an instant.

The missing president must be Richard Cohen’s imaginary friend because the man I saw in the debates was absolutely no different than he has ever been.

He has always been an arrogant, cold, testy little asshole. It’s just that people like Cohen built some image in their minds — probably based upon some frat house fantasy that we don’t even want to think about — and they have foisted their little wetdream on us for the last four years.

Here is one of my favorite examples of Bush’s warmth and likeability that Cohen believed in so fervently. Here you see the guy who really believes that the country would be a lot better off with a dictator — as long as he’s the dictator:

The American people must understand when I said that we need to be patient, that I meant it. And we’re going to be there for a while. I don’t know the exact moment when we leave, David, but it’s not until the mission is complete. The world must know that this administration will not blink in the face of danger and will not tire when it comes to completing the missions that we said we would do. The world will learn that when the United States is harmed, we will follow through. The world will see that when we put a coalition together that says “Join us,” I mean it. And when I ask others to participate, I mean it.

And when the world told him to stick it where the sun don’t shine, they meant it too. Strangely, they didn’t seem too impressed with his macho threats.

Go to the link and listen to the audio to get the full effect of this phony jerk lecturing the entire world about what they had to do. You’ll see that the entire diatribe was spoken as if he were an angry father punishing his children. It was disgusting. And it was way back in 2001. It’s not like this creepy, aggressive personality is anything new.

I don’t consider myself to be any more persipicacious than others. I generally don’t have superior insight into the hidden psychology of people I see on television. But, it has been clear to me and to millions of others that George W. Bush is a prick from the moment we laid eyes on him back in 2000 and nothing he has done since ever made me change my mind.

Richard Cohen, the emperor has no clothes you silly twit, and most of us have known it for a long, long time. In typical Democratic pundit fashion you waited until the very last minute to admit it. Very impressive performance as always.

Fighting The Narrative

Jonathan Chait has an interesting article in TNR in which he makes a good case that it’s Kerry’s to lose. He chalks it up to a better Democratic ground game and obvious Bush weakness.

But he says something at the end which I find kind of amusing:

The biggest mystery may be why most pundits haven’t noted how bad things look for Bush right now. Maybe the reason is that he’s built an aura of inevitability, starting with his 2000 victory and continuing through his legislative triumphs. The man just doesn’t seem to lose very often. And his campaign firmly believes in projecting an air of confidence in the belief that it’s self-fulfilling. (Remember Bush in late fall 2000, in an effort to show he was so confident that he could play for a landslide victory, devoting time and money to California?) The day before the 2000 election, a front-page headline in The Washington Times read, “Bush campaign says it’s in the bag; Top strategist sees 320 votes.” In retrospect, we now know that Bush’s victory was not exactly inevitable. So maybe it’s just hard to believe that Bush will lose, even if the data suggest he will.

Could Bush still win? Of course. I can think of three things that could intervene. First, Kerry is highly gaffe-prone. Roughly once a week he utters a statement–global test, terrorism as a nuisance–that plays right into his opponent’s hands and forces him to explain himself. Any day, he could utter a gaffe big enough to change the dynamics of the campaign. Second, whenever the terrorism threat level rises, Bush’s ratings go up. What are the odds we don’t have an elevated threat between now and election day? Right–pretty slim. And third, a terrorist attack within the United States would probably cause a major rallying effect for Bush. On top of all that, there are limits to our predictive ability. Elections can’t be forecast with perfect accuracy. It’s possible that there are other important variables that we don’t or can’t know right now that could swing the race toward Bush. But what we do know says a lot, and what it says is that Kerry looks like a good bet to win.

With the exception of a terrorist attack, every single point that Chait makes is a result of a flaccid, ineffectual and in-the-tank news media.

Why does Bush have an “air of inevitability?” Why, it’s because they have pretended in plain sight and the news media have either been too lazy or stupid to challenge it, despite the fact that in the paragraphs preceding this one, Chait just laid out a devastating case against Bush’s electability. The fact that an incumbent wartime president is in this much trouble two weeks before the election is a powerful story that the media just can’t be bothered to report. They are going to wake up on November 3rd scratching their heads and saying wtf because they aren’t paying attention to what is really going on. And then they’ll do it all again.

Furthermore, the idea that Kerry is “gaffe prone,” at least in comparison to the most inarticulate president in the history of the United States, is ridiculous. It’s not that Kerry is gaffe prone, it’s that the media are addicted to snotty GOP talking points and the GOP is quite adept in knowing how to frame these little gaffes and scandals in ways that appeal to their puerile worldview. They play willingly into the GOP’s hands by pimping stories they know very well are full of shit but thrill them in some way.

The terrorist alerts are a national joke and the mainstream media have done virtually no reporting on how this came to be. They behave as if these stupid color coded charts are some sort of third rail and as a result they have allowed the administration to manipulate the electorate over and over again. If they allow the administration to cry wolf again, they have no one to blame but themselves if it nobody pays attention and something horrible actually happens.

So, maybe it’s true that it’s Kerry’s to lose. But he is forced to anticipate the moves of a very powerful and dishonest GOP machine (and likely controversial election result) and at the same time he has to battle the silliest and most ineffectual political media in the world in order to win. Talk about a challenge.

I think we’ll do it anyway. But it’s a testament to Kerry’s skill as a politician, a great organization and more than half the country just getting sick and tired of this bullshit and coming out to vote. It really shouldn’t be this hard.

The Falafel Factor

Just in case you’d like to send Bill O’Reilly a sandwich or a nice little gift.

Dumboys

I don’t know how many of you are watching Crossfire, but Jon Stewart is on and he’s making both Tuckie and Paul a tad uncomfortable.

They seem to be unaware that The Daily Show is a parody of the news and that its mission is to make fun of them. And that’s because they are so insular and self-referential that they have no idea how the country really sees them.

They don’t like it. Especially the Tuckster who is plainly wants to scratch his eyes out.

Stewart is trying to make the point that they are contributing to the dumbing down of the discourse by presenting this fake news, or political theatre, that they pretend is news. He isn’t being funny and he isn’t doing the usual celebrity circle jerk and they are finding it very discomfiting.

Good.

Reward The Good Guys

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thanks to reader Gail S.

Anybody Got A Problem With This?

Via Josh Marshall:

As we told you a few days ago, six Republican party staffers and campaign workers in South Dakota resigned over a burgeoning voter fraud scandal. Chief among them was Larry Russell, head of the South Dakota GOP’s get-out-the-vote operation, the Republican Victory Program.

To date, no criminal charges have been filed. But the state Attorney General says the investigation is “continuing.”

Today comes news, however, that Russell — still under investigation in South Dakota — has been reassigned to run President Bush’s get-out-the-vote operation in Ohio. Russell will now “lead the ground operations” for Bush in Ohio, according to an internal Republican party memo obtained by the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.

And Russell’s bringing along with him to Ohio three of the five other GOP staffers who had to resign in South Dakota and are similarly under investigation in that state.

I can see that they are going to try to overwhelm us with dirty tricks all over the country and make it difficult to concentrate on any single thing. It’s clear that they are embarking on a concentrated battleground ratfucking effort on top of full-on voter intimidation combined with misdirection about vote fraud.

Is there anything to be done about this? Perhaps e-mailing the local media with the story and asking them to keep an eye on it? Maybe it’s time for some push polling on our side. “Would you be more or less inclined to vote for president Bush if you knew that his campaign brought in suspected criminals from South Dakota to run his get out the vote effort in Ohio?”

Semen Found On Karl Rove’s Tie!

Not really, but I thought it might get the mediawhores’ attention. There is some news but it doesn’t have anything to do with semen so it likely won’t require the Republicans to answer unwanted questions during the waning days of the presidential campaign about the president’s chief political strategist being called before a grand jury to testify in the matter of exposing an undercover CIA agent.

Still, you’d think Judy Blitzer and the gang might at least mention it…

Rove Testifies in CIA Leak Investigations

WASHINGTON – President Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, testified Friday before a federal grand jury trying to determine who leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer.

Rove spent more than two hours testifying before the panel, according to an administration official who spoke only on condition of anonymity because such proceedings are secret.

Before testifying, Rove was interviewed at least once by investigators probing the leak. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell also have been interviewed, though none has appeared before the grand jury.

Try to imagine this circumstance happening in the Clinton, Gore or Kerry campaigns. Close your eyes and visualize the spitting, drooling GOP talking heads like Bay “of Pigs” Buchanan and Sean “pom pom boy” Hannity. Just think of what a thrilling final two weeks we’d have…

This seems like it might just be worth the Democrats making a bit of a fuss over. Bush’s brain just spent two hours in front of the grand jury in a criminal matter. Today.

Family Values

Apparently, the kewl kidz in the press tent all “gasped” when Kerry used the word “lesbian” the other night. And like their emotional role models, Beavis and Butthead, the mere mention of any word they associate with sex excited them a little bit. Because it did, and the Bush campaign sensed it, it’s become one of those faux outrage dances that the media and the Republicans perform so well together.

I just had the misfortune to see Mickey Kaus on Fox (playing the conservative, for once) discussing the Mary Cheney incident. He claims that Kerry and Edwards were making an “ugly” cynical outreach to homophobes. (The fact that gay people don’t see it that way should be telling, but no matter.) According to Kaus it’s clear that Kerry and Edwards are trying to pry the homophobes away from the Bush campaign.

This is such patent nonsense. If he outed Mary Cheney perhaps it would be worth a fuss, but the woman (who is 35 years old) has been out for years working explicitly on gay and lesbian issues. She’s the third most famous lesbian in America, fergawdsake. If Kaus thinks that Kerry is hoping to pry the homophobes away from the Republican party by outing an already famous lesbian he needs to think a little bit about how that might work.

On the other hand, it is perfectly fair to out the personal hypocrisy within an admininstration that, at the behest of its bigoted base, wants to enshrine discrimination against gay people into the constitution yet are quite tolerant of homosexuality in their personal lives.

This isn’t just a little game. It is a serious matter of equal rights under the constitution. And, the Cheneys’ behavior can be directly compared to the type of behavior that used to be tolerated from white men like Strom Thurmond who agitated for decades for Jim Crow and discrimination against african americans while privately being quite fond of his african american daughter. That goes beyond hypocrisy. For any enlightened person, it is intellectually and emotionally incoherent.

We, as citizens, are not in a position to pass judgment on how people deal with such issues in their personal lives. But those like Thurmond and Cheney publicly promote laws that discriminate against selected people in our society and in their own families. That is such a counterintuitive concept to most Americans that it deserves to be exposed and openly discussed.

I can certainly understand that the Cheneys are uncomfortable with this situation and are trying mightily to distract public attention from the fact that they are behaving in an incomprehensible manner. In their case, it is very confusing because they not only seem to tolerate their daughter’s orientation, they have welcomed her partner into the family on equal terms with other spouses and employ her in a public role in the campaign. It is not unreasonable to wonder how they square this with the Republican party’s open hostility to gay people, even to the extent that the Log Cabin Republicans made a very public break with the party in this campaign. What led them, and her, to accept the ignominy of not appearing on the stage with the entire family at the GOP convention?

It’s not surprising that Republicans would try to portray this as a Kerry campaign dirty trick, because it feels like that to them. The hypocrisy of the Cheneys is something they’d very much like to keep under wraps. And when they heard the gasp of arousal from the press corpse when Kerry said a “sex-word” they knew just what to do — launch one of their faux outrage campaigns that would allow the media to talk about “dirty” things all day while expressing their shock and awe at how terrible the Democrats are for bringing it up. Republicans never lose by tickling the pre-adolescent libidos of the political media.

Cheney and his erotically imaginative better half are really the ones on the hot seat with this but have successfully spun the press these last couple of days. However, as a very stupid man once said, they can run but they can’t hide. At some point, maybe not until they are on their deathbeds, they will have to face the fact that they betrayed their beloved daughter countless times by refusing to use their power for good and stand up for what they knew in their hearts to be right. It may not be on their gravestone, but that will be their true epitaph.