Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

No Joke

The wonderful Meteor Blades over at kos comments on the George P Bush quote from spin alley in the NY Times today in which he says:

“I think his main objective, apart from not falling on the ground on the stage, which he didn’t do tonight, was to say, look, here are my positions, and talk directly to the voters.”

The Times characterizes this a setting the bar low and Meteor Blades generously says:

I wish I could be certain that hunky George P. merely succumbed to a bit of nervous levity after the stress of watching his uncle send months of meticulous image manipulation down the toilet in 90 minutes. Just a joke to take the edge off.

Or maybe not. We all know the President has fallen down on the job for the past four years. But we didn’t mean it literally.

Frankly, I think he meant it literally. After all, George W. Bush falls flat on his face quite frequently, for reasons that nobody can adequately explain.

Little Voices

TalkLeft mentioned during the debate how wierd it was for Bush to say “let me finish” when nobody had interrupted him. I noticed it too and thought he had just had a bit of a brain lapse and fell into an intimidation tactic that often works to restrain the press but was clearly inappropriate in the present circumstances. (See the infamous Carole Coleman interview for a perfect example of how he employs it.) I even commented that I could only imagine what they would have said about the “delusional” Al Gore if he’d done such a bizarre thing in one of the debates.

I see, however, that some think that this is actually an indication that Bush uses an earpiece, which would explain why he oddly appeared to be speaking to someone who wasn’t present during the debate.

I can’t remember where I saw it, but there have been pictures of Bush published on the internet that show a strange outline in the back of his jacket when he’s standing at the podium. And if I’m not mistaken, one of the debate rules was that they could not shoot either candidate from the back.

The right-wing blogosphere has a very good defense for this charge, however. If Bush was using an earpiece you have to assume that the person who was feeding him his lines at this debate was very drunk or very dumb because his answers were just awful.

On the other hand, that would definitely explain why, in front of 61 million people, he finally had to say something even though it made him look like he was speaking to an imaginary friend. He was desperate for Karen to shut the hell up.

Update:

Here’s a picture from the actual debate posted on Raw Story. This truly is strange.

Thanks to Hepzipah for the tip

Better Red Than Dead

Jesse and Atrios both rightly take Press The Meat to task for their unbalanced panel of bloviators this morning, although I disagree that Brownstein leans Republican. I think he is one the last of the real journalists in the business. Kate O’beirne can only be correctly balanced by someone like Robert Sheer or Katerina Vandnheuvel (maybe even the ghost of Joseph Stalin) but they never have them on.

However, I think both of the guys miss the truly egregious crime perpetrated by Lil’ Russ these last couple of weeks.

He’s featuring a stultifying series of Senate debates for most of the hour and he’s done something quite appalling by only focusing on senate races in conservative states where the Democrat is forced to repudiate John Kerry at every turn in order to eke out a win — South Dakota and Oklahoma. And he glories in putting this Democrat on the defensive by making him publicly disagree with Kerry while the other guy backs his strong reolute “leader” to the hilt. Unfortunately, the people voting in both of these contests are rather small compared to the national audience that is led to believe that Democrats don’t like Kerry or are useless wimps.

Will we be seeing a debate between Specter and Hoeffel do you think? How about Boxer and Jones? It’s only fair that we watch some blue state Republican twist in the wind a little bit, too.

The Two Faces of Bush

Good Instincts

LiberalOasis, as usual, has a very cogent take on why Kerry pulled it off last night and I agree with him.

In serious times, people are unsurprisingly anxious for a serious, substantive discussion of serious issues. Kerry’s calm, cool temperament and his mastery of the facts made people feel confident that he could handle the job:

How did Kerry make this happen?

Part of it what was LiberalOasis discussed yesterday, the Bushies blew the expectations game, setting Kerry’s bar very low.

Part of it was Bush’s own defensive and irritated demeanor.

(The guy has never had to debate with a controversial record to explain, and he’s not naturally good at it.)

But the other part of it was Kerry’s own instincts.

He chose not to panic at the polls, not to feel the need to force a KO punch.

He made the decision to be himself, which is, to be a statesman (a good contrast with Dubya).

And to not dumb down the issues, but treat the voters — who are looking for answers in an uncertain, anxious time — as adults.

Surrogate Rudy Guiliani’s main spin point (heard on NBC and The Daily Show at least) was Kerry was “lecturing” people.

Nice try.

Rudy and the GOP message masters may think people are stupid, but Kerry doesn’t.

By delving into the issues, Kerry’s the one treating the voters with respect, not you.

The media should take note of this.

Kerry is is a sixty year old man who is prepared to be president in every sense of the word. But, he also has great political instincts and they should not be underrated. By showing his serious, authoritative personality in direct contrast to the impatient, hot-headed president, he may have turned this race at exactly the right moment.

Fierce Partisans

The Political Animal is somewhat, shall we say, dismayed that the blogosphere is actively disseminating talking points for either side, seeing as we’re supposed to be so independent and stuff.

It’s not surprising that the campaigns are reaching out to bloggers, of course, but as near as I can tell both sides are eating this up. Bloggers everywhere are basking in the illusion that they’re sophisticated media operatives, actively collaborating to figure out the best spin for their guy. Emails are flying around from all parties pleading with fellow bloggers to stay on message.

This is insane. It’s bad enough when the mainstream media spends too much time lazily regurgitating talking points, but doesn’t the blogosphere supposedly pride itself on being fiercely independent, a small band of brave truthtellers immune to the spin and cant of professional politicos?

I’m afraid if anyone believed that last, they were the ones who were insane. Fiercely independent? Most bloggers are openly political and we always have been. We don’t identify with the flaccid he said/she said psuedo objectivity of the mainstram media; we are a blatently partisan media and proud of it. I imagine that many of us took up blogging in the first place because of what we saw as a necessary counterbalance to the Mighty Wurlitzer of talk radio, cable news and think tank talking heads that the right has built up over the last 25 years.

We are in the midst of a close fought presidential campaign and I am a devoted liberal who wants to do everything I can to see Kerry elected and to keep the modern Republican party from holding too much power. I recognise that spinning the media (which is what this is all about)is part of that effort and I will happily do whatever tiny little thing I can do. I never held myself up as objective or “independent” in this sense and I’m proud to help the campaign spread its message. To me it’s the same thing as volunteering to phone bank or walk the precinct.

I don’t have any particularly strong belief that the blogosphere is meaningful to this effort (yet), but it certainly costs me nothing to try to spread the word about something I believe in. If I can provide a little inspiration to my fellow travelers, then I feel that I’ve made a small contribution to the cause.

Update:

Blogs will continue to offer personal views and independent analysis. But, after all the talking we’ve done over these past few months about Lakoff’s framing and the right’s information infrastructure, I thought it was obvious to everyone that one of the the things that must be done to cut through the white noise of contemporary media culture is repetition of key phrases, marketing penetration of message and speaking with one voice to hone our ideas and drum them into the public’s psyche.

If Democratic partisans don’t help with this, then the left blogosphere will be a nice little collection of individual iconoclasts who speak to each other while the right blogosphere becomes an internet message behemoth. No thanks.

I can write all I want about anything I want and I’ll continue to do so. Honing the message goes both ways. But, in the final stretch of the most importan political campaign in my lifetime I don’t think it’s too much for us to try to help work the refs a little bit on behalf of our candidate.

And in the long term, we’d better get our shit together or the Republicans will own every last piece of political media while we’re out here singing kumbaya. This is serious and Democrats had better get serious about it.

Petulant And Out Of Touch

The DNC has this video up that’s quite amusing and quite revealing. Bush looks petulant, immature, arrogant, out of touch, unfocused and annoyed. We’ll have to wait for Saturday Night Live and Jay Leno to tell us whether this will take on a life of its own, but he certainly didn’t look presidential in any way shape or form with his puerile fidgeting.

Blitzer appeared to be shocked at that suggestion when it was brought up this morning, however, because the president simply can’t look unpresidential in his book. Sorry, Wolfie, the president is routinely not only unpresidential he is an embarrassment. Here’s some footage (real player) of him spitting out a wad of gum before he signed a major treaty with Russia back in 2002.

We know that Junior has always believed that a dictatorship would be easier as long as he’s the dictator, but that’s too bad. It’s a shame that a president has to go through all this election unpleasantness, but it’s part of the “hard work” of democracy. His highness behaved last night as if he shouldn’t have to stand on the same stage and debate a man who he believes is his lesser.

He’s quite the regular guy, our ill-mannered boy King.

A Tie?

It appears to me as I’m watching the gasbags this morning that there is consensus emerging that the debate was a tie but that Kerry helped himself by energizing the Democratic base that pretty much hates him.

If anyone feels like writing a letter or making a call and reminding the networks that last night they clearly believed that Kerry won, as did most of the editorial boards and polls, here’s the info.

The following links are to articles and transcripts of the post debate analysis:

Larry King Live Post Debate Spin

MSNBC – Kerry, a clear winner

Russert

PBS-Shields and Brooks

ABC’s The Note (calling it a tie)

CNN Post Debate Analysis

CBS

Contact Information:

ABC News

www.abcnews.com

47 W. 66th St

New York, NY 10023

Phone: (212) 456-7477, 456-3796

Fax: (212) 456-4866, 456-2795

World News Tonight with Peter Jennings

Phone: (212) 456-4040

peterjennings@worldnewstonight.abcnews.com

Fax: (212) 456-2771

CBS News

www.cbsnews.com

542 W. 57th St.

New York, NY 10019

News Desk:

Phone: (212) 975-4321, 975-3691

Fax: (212) 975-1893

CNN

www.cnn.com

1 CNN Center

POB 105366

Atlanta, GA 30348

Phone: (404) 827-1500

Fax: (404) 827-1593, (404) 827-1784

Fox News

www.foxnews.com

Speakout@foxnews.com

Viewerservices@foxnews.com

1211 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10036

Phone: (212) 301-3000

Fax: (212) 301-4224

MSNBC

www.msnbc.com

world@msnbc.com

One MSNBC Plaza

Secaucus, NJ 07094

Phone: (201) 583-5000

Fax: (201) 583-5453

NBC News

www.nbc.com

30 Rockefeller Plaza

New York, NY 10112

Phone: (212) 664-5900

Fax: (212) 664-2914

NPR

www.npr.org

635 Mass Ave

Washington, DC 20001

Phone: (202) 414-2323

Fax: (202) 414-3324

PBS

www.pbs.org

PO BOX 50880

Washington, DC 20091

Phone: (800) 356-2626

Never Mind

As I watch Schneider, Blitzer and Rothenberg do the post mortem of the debate this morning, I can’t help but laugh at the fact that today they all seem to believe that the debates don’t really mean much in the long run and that nothing really changes because of just one performance no matter how much the public believes one or the other won or lost.

Gosh. It seems like just yesterday that they were saying that last night’s debate was make or break for John Kerry and that if he didn’t pull it off his campaign was in deep deep trouble. Today, all the polls and editorial pages are saying he won. But, it doesn’t really matter.

Rothenberg did allow that Kerry might have helped himself with his base which Blitzer said had been in terrible malaise. So, perhaps winning the debate by two to one may have helped poor old Kerry just a little bit. Maybe.

They also discussed how often the first impressions of who won a debate later change “once people have a few days to think about it” and then named a list of first debate winners — Mondale, Dukakis, Perot and Gore — who went on to lose the election.

I came away with the clear impression that winning the first debate is the kiss of death.

Won On A Hemmer

The General finds that CNN’s Bill Hemmer had a GOP ringer in his group of “undecided’s”

Early in the program, Mr. Hemmer interviewed three undecided Florida voters about their hopes for last night’s debate. The fact that at least two of the three seemed to be fairly intelligent made me wonder just how undecided they really were–after all, you’d have to be a complete idiot to be unable to choose between one of the candidates by now.

I found it more than a bit curious that one of undecideds, Edward Martos, is a graduate student in public administration at the University of Miami. Public administration? You’d think that he’d certainly be a bit more informed about politics and public policy that the average guy. How could he still be undecided?

After a little googling, I learned that Mr. Martos seems to be leading a double life. While claiming to be the politically independent president of a non-partisan campus group called the Council for Democracy, he is also very involved with the College Republicans, having served on committees to draft the UMCR constitution and organize a veterans memorial committee. He has also served as the Assistant Editor in Chief for the CR newsletter, Eye On Politics.

“Perhaps,” I thought, “there are two Edward Martoses attending UM,” but then I learned that the College Republican Edward Martos promoted Council for Democracy events at College Republican meetings. Certainly, it’s the same guy.

The picture sealed it for me. The College Republican Edward Martos is the guy I saw on CNN. He’s supposed to be on again this morning. Watch it and see for yourself.

Here’s the CNN form to make comments to Bill Hemmer.