Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Swoon Strategy

Matt Yglesias responds well to Michael Kinsley’s uncharacteristically obtuse piece on Wesley Clark.

For one thing, Kinsley seems to be contradicting himself here. Either Dean is “the one candidate who seems to be able to get people’s juices flowing” or else people are “in a swoon” over Clark. It can’t be both unless there’s some subtle swoon/juice distinction I’m missing out on. More fundamentally, though, Kinsley doesn’t seem to have considered the possibility that some of us are attracted to Clark not just because we think he’d be a good candidate, but because we think he’d be a good president

I don’t have much to add except that I think it’s absurd to characterize support for Clark as a “snub” of Dean. I like Dean. I’ll vote for him unreservedly in the general if he wins. At this point, I happen to believe, for a variety of reasons that Clark is the better candidate (not the least of which is that he has, in my view, a certain kind of starpower that makes it easier for the Democrats to compete against a 300 million dollar advertising campaign.)

Is it a strange new concept in presidential primaries to pick the candidate you think can win or did I miss the memo instructing us that the guy who is in 2nd place in the national polls is automatically anointed because his fervent supporters feel entitled to it? Frankly, this entire argument feels like deja-vu all over again. The McCarthy kids vs. Bobby’s army. I really hope that doesn’t happen. It isn’t good for the party.

On a slightly different note, this article in the LA Times this morning makes for some interesting reading on the subject of early campaign shake-ups. Sometimes winning campaigns have some rough spots in the beginning and they manage to get beyond them and defy expectations — even bringing over a lot of people from the opposing party.

Schwarzenegger had kept his decision to enter the race a surprise even to his political strategists. Offstage at the “Tonight Show,” Gorton had stood with a press release in his pocket declaring that Schwarzenegger would not get in the race.

The surprise generated a huge media reaction, but it also got his campaign off to a flat-footed start.

[…]

Saturday, the day after his poor television showing, Schwarzenegger talked a reluctant Bob White, the former chief of staff to Gov. Pete Wilson, into running his campaign. Schwarzenegger had been chatting with White about politics for years, conversations that often involved the nature of government finance.

To make way for White, Schwarzenegger eased Gorton, a longtime Republican operative who had moved his family from San Diego to Los Angeles the previous year to help the candidate, into a more limited role as an advisor.

White immediately began hiring, tripling the staff in about a week, and he created a structure, with daily staff meetings at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.

The changes steadied the campaign but did not stop its woes. Campaign strategists largely kept Schwarzenegger under wraps, relying on proxies who hurt as much as they helped.

[…]

Two weeks in, the campaign’s polls were showing a decline from the day of his announcement. And time in the short race was running out. “Every day was like a week, and every week was like a month,” said Mark Bogetich, who did opposition research for Schwarzenegger.

The campaign lacked both a compelling theme and a field general. Over the middle two weeks of August, both problems would be addressed.

The theme came first. Over that first, gloomy weekend, the campaign’s ad-maker, Don Sipple, faxed Schwarzenegger a memo, without telling Gorton, which outlined a populist argument that would become the campaign’s centerpiece.

Schwarzenegger should portray himself as the “governor of the people,” as contrasted with Davis’ appeals to “special interests,” the memo said. Soon phrases from the memo began appearing regularly in Schwarzenegger’s remarks.

To resolve the field general issue, Sipple teamed up with White to recruit Mike Murphy, the Republican strategist who had successfully managed campaigns for governor for John Engler in Michigan and Jeb Bush in Florida as well as John McCain’s bid for the White House.

Inside baseball types would have said that in a very short campaign these problems would have been fatal. And a lot of us would be saying it was immoral or something to call in seasoned pros to advise an outsider politician. Seems they got through it ok.

Commander Codpiece Lays It On The Line

Via Altercation:

Studies in Misplaced Confidence:

The Bush Administration on finding Osama Bin Laden in Central Asia: “We’re going to hunt them down one at a time…it doesn’t matter where they hide, as we work with our friends we will find them and bring them to justice.”

— President George W. Bush, 11/22/02

The Bush Administration on finding Saddam Hussein in the Mideast: We are continuing the pursuit and it’s a matter of time before [Saddam] is found and brought to justice.”

— White House spokesman McClellan, 9/17/03

The Bush Administration on finding the leaker in the close confines of the White House: “ I don’t know if we’re going to find out the senior administration official. I don’t have any idea.”

— President George W. Bush, 10/7/03

Rush To Judgement

Calpundit wonders about the baseball Hall of Fame’s continued hostility to the admission of former Dodger owner Walter O’Malley. He notes O’Malley “won eight National League pennants and four World Series, was part of the original migration of the league west of the Mississippi, and built one of the beautiful ballparks in the country.” He also played a large role in breaking the color barrier in baseball as an owner in the team that hired Jackie Robinson.

Ostensibly he will never be voted into the Hall because of the still simmering anger over moving the Dodgers from Brooklyn to LA.

But really, isn’t it clear that now that the baseball Hall of Fame has assumed its rightful place as an adjunct of The Party, resistance to O’Malley’s admission is simply a rational response to the misplaced “social concern” of the 1947 Dodgers and the traditional fraternity of ultra-liberal sportswriters who were very desirious that a black player do well? The Hall may just agree with the correct sentiment that Jackie Robinson got a lot of credit for the performance of the Dodgers that he didn’t deserve and that while it’s impossible to remove the slacker from the Hall after all this time (the commie PC sportswriters do get uppitty) they can draw the line at admitting one of his do-gooder bosses.

Oh, and by the way, that’s not a racist statement. It’s just a very obvious observation by someone who isn’t afraid to see the truth about the delicate politically correct world of professional sports.

Anybody got some little blue babies? I’m jonesing, Big Time

Pumping Up the Deficit

Bob Sommerby rails eloquently about the total irresponsibility of the press corps in continuing to describe the California budget deficit as being 38 billion rather than the 8 billion it actually is. He quotes numerous Schwarzennegger aides and spokesmen using that figure as well.

The reason for this is quite clear. Governor Schwarzennegger is going to rescind the car tax and then “open the books” and “end the crazy deficit spending” by reducing the deficit from 38 billion to 12 billion.

I’m sure that a few lone Democrats will show up on television to argue the figures, but they will be interrupted and talked over with a flurry of competing numbers and angry denunciations of partisanship. The hosts will quickly move on to the subject of how Schwarzennegger’s superior leadership skills were able to bring California together.

Everybody knows that Davis was recalled because of the 38 billion dollar deficit and soon everyone will know that Arnold Schwarzennegger, in less than 3 months, was able to reduce it by more than two thirds.

Thank Gawd we got rid of Davis. Think how many more hospitals, libraries and police stations would have had to close if Schwarzennegger hadn’t stopped the crazy deficit spending.

Dumbass Media, Dumbass Politics

There is some awfully good writing in the blogosphere today. Here, Jeanne D’Arc shares a searing portrait of her own personal brush with an Arnold-pig and how it made her feel — the powerlessness and self-doubt that such actions provoke.

And, she points out yet another example of the extreme ignorance that permeates the media coverage of politics:

My angriest moment last night did not come with the announcement that a sexual predator was now in charge of my state, but earlier, when, on MSNBC, Laurence O’Donnell was making an interesting point about Gray Davis, which I think applies to all the Democrats progressives hate.

He noted that Davis took huge amounts of money from growers, but when an issue of enormous importance to farm workers came up last year — giving them the right to mandatory mediation, which they needed to get around the growers’ stalling — he sided with the workers. Ultimately, even the worst of the corporate Democrats has the glimmer of a soul, which can’t be claimed by the other side.

O’Donnell went on to point out that this time around it was Herr Schwarzenegger who got the growers’ money, but he was struggling to talk over Chris Matthews, who snapped, “Who gave him more?”

The farmworkers? Chris Matthews thinks Gray Davis sided with farmworkers because they gave him more money than growers? Well, don’t I feel silly. I’ve lived in an agricultural part of this state for more than twenty years, and I never knew that rich farmworkers were buying up our politicians. It must be all the money they save by living five or six men to one seedy motel room.

There were so many examples of dumbass commentary last night that any questions as to why the public voted for a groping, malicious, preening movie star were answered. Rank stupidity is a ratings grabber.

Psssst

To those who are jumping on Clark for being a tool of the evil DLC, while also jumping on Clark for allowing “smart cookie” Donnie Fowler to go, be advised that said smart cookie is also one of the DLC Washington crowd. He worked on all 3 Clinton/Gore campaigns and his father was the chairman of the Democratic Party. He’s not exactly a fresh faced internet activist.

It’s entirely probable that Fowler has some other reasons for resigning that are a little less…romantic.

This is inside baseball crapola and at the moment, it is far more entertaining and worthwhile to watch the Red Sox and the Cubs try to defy history.

Clark’s organizational issues will or will not take care of themselves.

One thing people really need to get a grip on about Clark’s campaign is that any thought that it’s going to be an up by the bootstraps grassroots effort like Dean’s is kidding themselves. He’s a different kind of candidate with a different approach. Perhaps it isn’t as thrillingly participatory at the moment, but it has its own logic, timing and strategy.

I Sense The Rabble Is Getting Roused

I’ve often been accused of being a radical left wing rabble rouser, but the truth is that I am really just a very freaked out moderate liberal Democrat. This Republican Party has been giving me the willies since they used the nuclear option of impeachment. I’ve worn my tin-foil hat with some discomfort these last couple of years, with my “shrill” carping about the GOP being seen as slightly …er…Krugmanian.

So, it is music to my ears to find Calpundit saying things like this:

So what’s next? The California recall is just the latest in a lengthening string of naked power grabs that reveal the cankered soul at the top of the Republican party these days. Even leaving aside Florida 2000, we’ve seen unprecedented mid-decade redistrictings in both Colorado and Texas; campaigns that compare Democrats directly to Osama bin Laden; an indecent and truly morally bereft performance following Paul Wellstone’s death; the end of the traditional blue slip rule for judicial nominees in the Senate — because control of both houses of Congress and the White House and most of the judiciary isn’t enough for them; and the Valerie Plame affair, a scandal that, I think, is truly an “At long last sir, have you no decency?” moment.

And now this. Fighting Arnold or trying to recall him is hopeless, and we should forget about it. A recall would fail, it would engender a big backlash among California voters who are tired of the circus, and it would make the Democratic party look like obstructionists and crybabies.

But this has got to stop. We should be mad as hell over what’s happening, and we do need to be willing to fight every bit as nasty as the Republican leadership is obviously willing to fight. It’s pretty obvious they simply don’t understand any other language.

But we don’t just want to get mad, we also want to get even. And that means picking our battles. State and local action is important, and we should fight hard for every governorship and every congressional seat, all the way down to every city council seat. But — to kill a snake you cut off its head.

Texas-style Republicanism is the engine of the radical right today, and George Bush is its leader. He should be our target, not Arnold Schwarzenegger. So stay mad, stay mad as hell, but stay smart too. November 2004 is the next battleground, and evicting George Bush from the White House is our goal. Don’t forget it.

Amen brotha.

Dark Wishes

Please, please read this excellent piece by Cary Tennis in Salon (who writes the best advice column ever) called The Moviegoing Voter

This election — on the heels of the only slightly less celebrity driven win of the equally unqualified George W. Bush — is a reflection of an abdication of citizenship and an entertainment addled collective id. As Tennis says, it will not make me sleep better at night.

I have been thinking for some time now about the appeal of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the appeal of an avenging hero from a foreign land who rescues us from our indolence and despair. I have been thinking about the visceral appeal of a terminator, the man of violence and certainty who will end things as they are and bring about a new world that looks as fresh and bright as the world of childhood. I have been thinking about Schwarzenegger as a man with the appeal of a violent Christ into whom all our sins of weakness and equivocation are poured in the form of punch cards: A Christ with special sticker options, a V8 Christ, a Hummer Christ who does not turn the other cheek but fires his weapon with the vehemence of Jehovah and the casual coolness of a gangster, who slaps around the whimpering, duplicitous and heartless — actionless! — gray father Davis who has unforgivably let the roof collapse on California, who has let Easterners and Southerners trick us and take our stuff, who in his pasty, wimpish impotence has failed to register even one pure, simple, masculine note of outrage at what he has allowed to happen, whose gestures are as cold and empty as the gestures of a department store mannequin, whose face is as unmarred as the face of a virgin, whose tactics seem the tactics not of a lion but of a lowly, cunning reptile, a snake or poisonous insect.

damn…

Tomorrow Belongs to Him

This photo from the Joe Weider Collection was published in the Sports Illustrated edition of December 7, 1987

The article linked above was written in 1991. We’ve elected an ruthless, fascist misogynist and the press has known all this about him for many, many years.

thanks to reader tomm for the link

Isn’t It Pretty To Think So?

As I roll around the various comments boards this morning, commiserating with my brethren, I’m finding a rather disturbing strand of analysis that portends very ill for the future of the Democrats if this idea gets perpetuated within the party.

There is a strong and vocal group within our coalition that have come to believe that the reason the Democrats have come up short recently is because they are simply not liberal enough. If it weren’t for the DLC and Joe Lieberman and, most importantly, the evil pernicious Bill Clinton, these people believe that the Democrats would be running the country today. Indeed, Gray Davis would have survived if he had not been such a tool of the DINO wing of the Democratic Party.

By golly, he got what he deserved for not being a true liberal and if he had been none of this would have happened.

This is followed by calls to action to purge the party of these nefarious centrists and moderates who have cost us our natural majority by playing to the middle.

I would be very interested in seeing the evidence to support this, particularly in light of the fact that the state of California, including 30% of self described liberals, just voted for a Republican who can in no measure be seen as more liberal than the man he replaced.

I have complained vociferously about the establishment’s unwillingness to fight the Republicans and I am certainly supportive of the idea that consensus politics will no longer work. I agree that a change of tactics is necessary to defeat a very ruthless and dishonest GOP political machine.

But, everybody had better wake up to reality and wake up quick if they think that centrist/moderate Democrats should be drummed out of the party because that is the surest ticket to minority status for a generation.

Here’s a little list of Democrats for you:

Tom Allen, U.S. Representative, ME Joe Baca, U.S. Representative, CA Brian Baird, U.S. Representative, WA Chris Bell, U.S. Representative, TX Shelley Berkley, U.S. Representative, NV Marion Berry, U.S. Representative, AR Earl Blumenauer, U.S. Representative, OR Lois Capps, U.S. Representative, CA Dennis Cardoza, U.S. Representative, CA Brad Carson, U.S. Representative, OK Ed Case, U.S. Representative, HI Jim Cooper, U.S. Representative, TN Bud Cramer, U.S. Representative, AL Joseph Crowley, U.S. Representative, NY Jim Davis, U.S. Representative, FL Susan Davis, U.S. Representative, CA Artur Davis, U.S. Representative, AL Peter Deutsch, U.S. Representative, FL Cal Dooley, U.S. Representative, CA Rahm Emanuel, U.S. Representative, IL Anna Eshoo, U.S. Representative, CA Bob Etheridge, U.S. Representative, NC Harold Ford, Jr. , U.S. Representative, TN Charles Gonzalez, U.S. Representative, TX Jane Harman, U.S. Representative, CA Baron Hill, U.S. Representative, IN Ruben Hinojosa, U.S. Representative, TX Joseph Hoeffel, U.S. Representative, PA Rush Holt, U.S. Representative, NJ Mike Honda, U.S. Representative, CA Darlene Hooley, U.S. Representative, OR Jay Inslee, U.S. Representative, WA Steve Israel, U.S. Representative, NY Chris John, U.S. Representative, LA Ron Kind, U.S. Representative, WI Nick Lampson, U.S. Representative, TX Jim Langevin, U.S. Representative, RI Rick Larsen, U.S. Representative, WA John Larson, U.S. Representative, CT Zoe Lofgren, U. S. Representative, CA Ken Lucas, U.S. Representative, KY Denise Majette, U.S. Representative, GA Carolyn Maloney, U.S. Representative, NY Jim Matheson, U.S. Representative, UT Bob Matsui, U.S. Representative, CA Carolyn McCarthy, U.S. Representative, NY Karen McCarthy, U.S. Representative, MO Mike McIntyre, U.S. Representative, NC Gregory Meeks, U.S. Representative, NY Michael Michaud, U.S. Representative, ME Juanita Millender-McDonald, U.S. Representative, CA Brad Miller, U.S. Representative, NC Dennis Moore, U.S. Representative, KS Jim Moran, U.S. Representative, VA Grace Napolitano, U.S. Representative, CA David Price, U.S. Representative, NC Silvestre Reyes, U.S. Representative, TX Mike Ross, U.S. Representative, AR Steve Rothman, U.S. Representative, NJ Loretta Sanchez, U.S. Representative, CA Max Sandlin, U.S. Representative, TX Adam B. Schiff, U.S. Representative, CA David Scott, U.S. Representative, GA Brad Sherman, U.S. Representative, CA Adam Smith, U.S. Representative, WA Vic Snyder, U.S. Representative, AR John Spratt, U.S. Representative, SC Charles Stenholm, U.S. Representative, TX Bart Stupak, U.S. Representative, MI John Tanner, U.S. Representative, TN Ellen Tauscher, U.S. Representative, CA Mike Thompson, U.S. Representative, CA Jim Turner, U.S. Representative, TX Tom Udall, U.S. Representative, NM Robert Wexler, U.S. Representative, FL David Wu, U.S. Representative, OR Evan Bayh, U.S. Senator, IN John Breaux, U.S. Senator, LA Maria Cantwell, U.S. Senator, WA Tom Carper, U.S. Senator, DE Kent Conrad, U.S. Senator, ND John Edwards, U.S. Senator, NC Dianne Feinstein, U.S. Senator, CA Bob Graham, U.S. Senator, FL Tim Johnson, U.S. Senator, SD John Kerry, U.S. Senator, MA Zell Miller, U.S. Senator, GA Herb Kohl, U.S. Senator, WI Mary Landrieu, U.S. Senator, LA Joe Lieberman, U.S. Senator, CT Blanche Lincoln, U.S. Senator, AR.

The above are the national representatives who belong to the DLC. Notice the states they represent and then tell me that the key to victory is to purge these people (and their constituents) in favor of more liberal candidates.

19 of our 49 Senators are members. 74 of our 204 Representatives are members. They represent 37% of the Democratic coalition in congress.

That is not just a fringe group. These people don’t subscribe to centrist thinking because it’s cool. They do it because a rather large number of Americans do too. And even in a state like California, which is as good a Democratic state as exists, you find one of the Senators and many Representatives belong to the DLC. And again, it isn’t for the wild and crazy slumber parties. It’s because, as we’ve seen, even a Democratic state is not monolithically liberal.

Seeing the DLC as the reason for our troubles is simply the wrong analysis. That is not the problem. (If anything, it’s the Republicans who have the policy problem — they could not win if they ran honestly. And they’re on the verge of crashing into that internal inconsistency.)

The Democrats’ problem is one of tactics and strategy. We have been too complacent and too stiffly unresponsive to the modern politics of personality, public relations and advertising. We have consistently underestimated the power of Republican dominated talk radio (which I believe was hugely responsible for Arnold’s victory yesterday.) We have been slow and sluggish in recognizing that we are in a new political era in which symbolism and image are going to substitute for serious dialog and in which substance is only relevant to those who are deeply engaged.

The problem has nothing whatsoever to do with the perfidious DLC or a legacy of Clintonism. Moderate Democrats are a fact of life and if liberals insist on turning this election into a refendum on purity or make it a “grassroots vs the establishment” battle, we will lose.

The Republicans are going to have more money than anyone can even imagine in this election. They will be spending it on everything from blanketing the airwaves with patriotic images of Junior at Rushmore to opening offices in every single precinct to get out the vote. If anyone thinks, after watching this debacle of an election here in California, that we can win without using every single resourse at our disposal — and that includes establishment Democrats with experience and access to money and power — then we are fools.

The lesson isn’t that we aren’t liberal enough. And, it’s not that we are too liberal. It’s that we are naive about the modern political landscape. That’s what we need to change.