Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Tooth And Nail, Might And Main

As we think about the relentlessness of the Republican machine and its propensity for playing hardball, it pays sometimes to remember that their ruthless tactics are actually a matter of temperament rather than ideology. Conservatives have always been this way. The problem today is that they are operating with a radical agenda, an incompetent president and a country with much too much power to be allowed to run wild with either.

This interesting post from Steamboats Are Ruining Everything takes us back to 1820 and reminds us that brutish conservatives are nothing new:

William Hazlitt explained the nature of it in his 1820 essay, “On the Spirit of Partisanship.”

Conservatives and liberals play the game of politics differently, Hazlitt wrote, because they have different motivations. Liberals are motivated by principles and tend to believe that personal honor can be spared in political combat. They may, in fact, become vain about their highmindedness. Hazlitt condemns the mildness as a mistake, both in moral reasoning and in political strategy. “They betray the cause by not defending it as it is attacked, tooth and nail, might and main, without exception and without remorse.”

The conservatives, on the other hand, start with a personal interest in the conflict. Not wishing to lose their hold on power, they are fiercer. “We”—i.e., the liberals, or the “popular cause,” in Hazlitt’s terminology—“stand in awe of their threats, because in the absence of passion we are tender of our persons.

They beat us in courage and in intellect, because we have nothing but the common good to sharpen our faculties or goad our will; they have no less an alternative in view than to be uncontrolled masters of mankind or to be hurled from high—

“To grinning scorn a sacrifice,

And endless infamy!”

They do not celebrate the triumphs of their enemies as their own: it is with them a more feeling disputation. They never give an inch of ground that they can keep; they keep all that they can get; they make no concessions that can redound to their own discredit; they assume all that makes for them; if they pause it is to gain time; if they offer terms it is to break them: they keep no faith with enemies: if you relax in your exertions, they persevere the more: if you make new efforts, they redouble theirs. While they give no quarter, you stand upon mere ceremony. While they are cutting your throat, or putting the gag in your mouth, you talk of nothing but liberality, freedom of inquiry, and douce humanité. Their object is to destroy you, your object is to spare them—to treat them according to your own fancied dignity. They have sense and spirit enough to take all advantages that will further their cause: you have pedantry and pusillanimity enough to undertake the defence of yours, in order to defeat it. It is the difference between the efficient and the inefficient; and this again resolves itself into the difference between a speculative proposition and a practical interest.

It is not fair play, and Hazlitt thinks that liberals who decline to fight fire with fire are fools. “It might as well be said that a man has a right to knock me on the head on the highway, and that I am only to use mildness and persuasion in return, as best suited to the justice of my cause; as that I am not to retaliate and make reprisal on the common enemies of mankind in their own style and mode of execution.”

Hazlitt was right. And never more than today when the stakes are so high.

As I said, we have been fighting this beast forever. Conservatives are just more inclined to fight and more serious about winning. But, I have seen the Republican agenda change from conservative to radical in the last 30 years and their candidates from steady, stolid leaders to firebrands and incompetents. America is the most powerful nation on earth. If the modern GOP boasted prudent, tested leadership and a simple desire to avoid radical change, I would still oppose them but I would not be worried. But, these people want to wildly experiment on a global scale and their track record of the last three years is devastating. History proves that bad things do sometimes happen. Being barely left standing to say “I told you so” will be no compensation.

Thanks to reader K Greier for the link.

Negativity Rising

Liberal Oasis has a typically trenchant take on the latest polls that comports with my gut feeling about the state of the race at this moment. There’s plenty of good news, so go ahead and click the link and read the whole thing. But I’d like to focus on a specific point that I think we still need to keep in mind:

There’s no getting around Kerry’s negatives were raised by the GOP convention onslaught.

Even in the dead heat polls, Kerry lost ground in areas like leadership, personality, ability to fight terror, flip-flopping and favorability.

Of course, there’s still conflicting data.

In the Gallup poll, Kerry’s favorable-unfavorable rating is 53-43, down from 57-37 after the Dem convention.

Not good, but manageable (Bush is a similar 55-44).

The CBS poll, which appears not to have pushed undecideds to choose, has far worse data for Kerry: 32-41 (with Bush at 47-39).

Can a candidate win with unfavorables in the 40s?

Well, yes. Bill Clinton did in 1992.

Near the end of the race, his fav-unfav was similarly polarizing and conflicting: 51-45 (Gallup), 52-45 (LA Times) and 33-39 (CBS/NYT).

It’s not that there was widespread love for Clinton, who was dogged with attacks on his “character” by Poppy Bush, and won with just 43%.

In fact, a late CNN/Time poll had vastly more people saying Poppy was more “honest and trustworthy” than Clinton.

But Poppy’s fav-unfav was still worse than Clinton, with his unfavorables generally in the low 50s.

That’s Kerry goal, to jack up Bush’s negatives.

Like any Bush campaign, this race will be filled with muck, making it impossible to stay positive and generate warm feelings.

Kerry can’t expect his unfavorable numbers to go back down to the 30s.

But with Bush probably at his high-water mark, just after his convention, Kerry should be able to get Bush’s unfavorables higher than his.

This is not to say Kerry shouldn’t try to talk himself up and articulate his compelling, alternative agenda.

It’s always a balancing act: promoting yourself, tearing down the other guy.

And since Kerry can’t single-handedly put this campaign on the high road, going after Bush is the bigger priority.

One of the keys roles that we in the blogosphere could play is to keep hurling the negative crap out there, build on good stories from the widely read blogs like Atrios and kos and just keep up a relentless pace. If the Killian documents prove to be a distraction from the ongoing negative stuff, just pull back and pick something else. There is plenty to choose from. This isn’t pretty, but it’s absolutely necessary to raise Bush’s negatives over the next couple of months and to do that we have to be a bit….icky.

Kitty Kelley’s book has some interesting items, I’m sure. Sy Hersh could provide a new angle. Cheney says something stupid almost every day. We should take a page from Rove and Cheney and Card and Condi and do as they did when they were building their case against Saddam. “We just keep hurling stuff against the wall and hope that some of it sticks.”

I know it sounds unattractively shrill to keep pointing this out, and there are those who do not believe that anything substantial will change in everyday Americans’ lives if Bush is elected to a second term, but I truly believe that winning this election is more vitally important than any in my lifetime. (My first typewriter was a manual, which after our recent crash course in typewriter history should tell you that I’ve observed a few.) George W. Bush and the modern Republican party are not business as usual.

I think the country is far more likely to survive a negative campaign from the Democrats than endorsing what George W. Bush has been doing for the last three years and validating the very worst beliefs about America all over the world. This is as serious a problem as terrorism itself. We just have to win.

Playing By The Rules

It’s admirable that lefty bloggers are being duly skeptical of the CBS documents and diligently reporting it on their blogs. It means that we have more integrity than the other side and will probably go to heaven.

Unfortunately, it also means that we are helping Republicans spin their lies and hurting our candidate. Again.

But, now that professional Republican propagandists are on the case, if you can’t stomach the idea of not standing up for truth, justice and the American way in all circumstances, the better part of valor may be to blog on the myriad other Bush atrocities and let the right do its own dirty work:

Throughout the Swift Boat smear campaign, the veterans involved asserted they had no political agenda and were unaffiliated with any political party. But Creative Response Concepts, which was obviously paid some undisclosed amount for its Swift Boat work, has many links to the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Among its clients are the Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee. Its client list also includes the Christian Coalition, National Taxpayers Union, Media Research Council and Regnery Publishing. Regnery is the firm that published “Unfit for Command,” the SBVT screed against Kerry’s military record.

Now Creative Response is working the case against CBS’s “60 Minutes” report on Bush’s questionable service in the Texas Air National Guard…By Thursday, the online Drudge Report and the Weekly Standard were also trumpeting the accusations. And Creative Response Concepts sent out a press release to major news organizations stating that the “documents on Bush might be fake.”

In the release, Creative Response promoted a Web site called Cybercast News Service, one of several groups directed by Brent Bozell, a longtime right-wing activist who has devoted years to attacking the “liberal bias” of the mainstream press. His Media Research Center and other similar efforts have been heavily funded by conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.

They have the Mighty Wurlitzer fully cranked. Do we really need to help the right turn what is an irrefutable charge that Bush was given A LOT of special treatment when he was in the National Guard into a charge against John Kerry? Because, mark my words, that is coming next.

If voices of the left blogosphere work to actively advance the idea that the documents are forgeries, no matter what their earnestly high minded motives, then whatever influence the blogosphere provides certainly doesn’t benefit our side.

Imagine the shoe on the other foot.

updated for clarity

The SS

Atrios has a disturbing post up about the Secret Service preventing the press from interviewing protestors. This isn’t the first example of the Secret Service behaving badly toward the press. In fact, I would venture that this was even more outrageous:

Inside the Fleet Center, the working press sits at tables that flank the convention stage. Except during major speeches, the reporters — like the delegates themselves — seldom pay much attention to what’s happening on the stage. They talk among themselves, burn through their cell phone batteries and write pieces on their laptops.

That’s what we were doing Thursday afternoon when a Secret Service agent had another idea. “Excuse me sir,” his voice boomed from behind us. “It’s the presentation of the colors, and I think it’s important enough for you to stand up.”

The agent had noticed — we had not — that the American flag was being presented in the still half-empty convention hall. We acknowledged his right to his opinion, then we returned to our work. At that point, the agent ordered us to stand — ostensibly so he could confirm that our press credentials were valid. We complied with the order, then turned on our tape recorder and asked if he was actually ordering us to stand for the flag.

“No sir, I’m not. I’m looking at your deal,” he said. “I’m ordering you because I want to see your credentials, and you’re going to stand here until the flag is over with.”

What’s your name? “I’m Chad Reagan, and I’m checking your credentials, out of the New York field office. I’m checking your credentials.”

Because we’re working during the presentation of the flag?

“No sir, because I’m wondering who you are.”

We told him that we worked for Salon.

“Great,” he said, “I’m checking your credentials.”

Nearby officials from the Congressional Periodical Press Gallery instantly confirmed the validity of our credentials. We asked the agent if he always orders people to stand for the flag, and whether Secret Service policy either authorized or required him to do so.

“I served for six months in the United States Marine Corps overseas, sir, so I like it when people stand. The reason I came over here was to credential you. You can think what you want, but the reason I came over here was to credential you. And I’ll stick to that. I’m allowed to credential anyone I want. That is Secret Service policy.”

But you told us to stand for the flag, right?

“No sir, I didn’t tell you. I said that I think it’s important enough to stand, and then I said, ‘Let me see your credentials.’ There’s a difference.”

If they are now behaving in a blatantly partisan manner and keeping the press from interviewing protestors, I can only assume that they will not be happy guarding a Democrat. If I were President Kerry, I would not feel particularly secure with people who think like this guarding me.

The Power Of Workplace Chit Chat

Donkey Rising asks:

Why would September 6-8 be a better period for Bush than September 3-5, right after the convention?

Because by the 6th, everybody had heard that Bush kicked ass at his convention and he had a huge lead in the polls. When people came back to work on the 7th, the water cooler chatter passed it around.

Then he asks:

And could Fox’s polling period, which does not include September 6, mean they missed Bush’s best day and he was starting to go downhill a bit?

Could be. As the news that his bounce was questionable began to filter through the grapevine, people probably started to get a grip. Now, with these new numbers based upon the old numbers, the process may reassert itself for awhile.

But reality bites. If Bush has a lead it is still small and manageable. And nobody’s measured since the news came out that he was a perfumed little sissy in the national guard who called his daddy in every time he had to do something he didn’t want to do. That could slow his alleged big mo just a tad.

Gut Instinct

One of Josh Marshall’s readers writes in to criticize this latest storyline about Bush’s guard service because he feels it does not address the real issues in the campaign and will not persuade undecided voters. I hear this a lot — the whole Vietnam thing is allegedly a distraction from what is really important and Kerry has brought all this trivia on by emphasizing his wartime experience.

I disagree. Campaigns run on several levels only one of which is to reach people with an explicit message in the hopes that they will make the rational decision of voting for your candidate. There are complicated tactical and strategic matters that are just as important (and I would argue more important in this campaign) than telling voters you have a better plan.

The first reason is tactical in that every day Bush and his campaign staff have to defend themselves against these charges is a day they are not getting their message heard. The staff is distracted and worried, they have to weigh all of their statements carefully, the campaign takes on a seige mentality and they make mistakes. It’s not a particularly elevating aspect of politics, but it’s effective and necessary.

Another reason is that undecided swing voters just don’t make decisions based upon the rational assessment that Bush has been a terrible president. Most voters have a complicated range of reasons why they vote the way they do, from tribal identity to personal likeability and reasoned discussion of the issues is way down the list. But, as this very interesting and widely read article says, undecided swing voters are the most susceptible to personality impressions and marketing manipulation:

The advice to the political professionals is: Don’t assume that your candidate’s positions are going to make the difference. “In a competitive political climate,” as one article explains, “informed citizens may vote for a candidate based on issues. However, uninformed or undecided voters will often choose the candidate whose name and packaging are most memorable.

Using reason to reach these voters is a waste of time. In this close election, most people have, for whatever reason, made a decision and are sticking to it. Therefore, the two bases must be mobilized and the undecideds must be reached on a marketing or entertainment level.

The article goes on to discuss the various theories to explain why the electorate as a whole is so dismally uninformed and whether that can translate into any coherent political philosphy. The theory that makes the most sense is that people use shortcuts, or hueristics, that give them a fairly accurate assessment of the candidates and the issues even while they are not specifically informed about the details.

Voters use what Samuel Popkin, one of the proponents of this third theory, calls “low-information rationality”—in other words, gut reasoning—to reach political decisions; and this intuitive form of judgment proves a good enough substitute for its high-information counterpart in reflecting what people want.

These little dramas in campaigns, which seem to be about everything but what we informed voters believe are the essential issues, actually serve as character and issues proxies for the electorate to come to its gut reasoning. Therefore, the Vietnam drama was a way of illustrating the contrast between the high achieving Kerry and the screw-up son of privilege. This was a man who did his duty without complaint but was not afraid to later challenge the orthodoxy that was leading the country into ruin. This picture provides a gut reason for people to vote for Kerry over the privileged playboy who doesn’t seem to realize that he’s made a mistake.

And, on another level the campaign controversy itself works as a proxy for each man’s will to win. In that fight, George Bush has shown repeatedly that he is determined, most recently when he winked and nodded at what is now a notorious smear campaign. In this proxy fight, it is important that Kerry be seen as giving as good as he gets. “If you wimp out when George W. Bush attacks you, what will you do if there’s another terrorist attack?” This is not particularly rational, but for many, it is a short cut to figuring out if Kerry is willing to be tough on terrorism. In this sense, the picture of Bush becomes uneasily contradictory and vague, while Kerry is sharply and consistently tough, both in his past and in the present.

Finally, this argument brings to a final head a long standing metanarrative that has been killing Democrats ever since the Vietnam war— our perceived weakness on national security. Just as Clinton had to work very hard to convince the nation that a Democrat was capable of managing the economy (after decades of relentless negative propaganda) Kerry is having to work very hard to reverse a successful decades long effort to portray Democrats as a bunch of hippies who would stick a daisy in the barrel of bin Laden’s Uzi rather than stop him from blowing up Chicago. By exorcizing the Vietnam ghost, perhaps we will actually be able to leave it behind once and for all by killing the shopworn image of Democrats as flower children.

In a long term strategic sense, then, Kerry’s history is vital to changing that narrative. His experience in Vietnam and afterward merges that narrative into a more realistic vision of Democratic national security that people can absorb and understand in their gut.

And finally, let us not forget the care and feeding of the press corpse. Stories of the murky mysterious past are far more interesting to them than stale policy arguments and they are far more likely to frame the debate in a simple way that people can understand if you give them the frame to do it. Feed that beast or they’ll continue to slurp the spoonfed GOP diet of “Democrats are immoral, spendthrift cowards.”

It would be wise for Democrats to accept that in order to win and have the power to implement the policies we care so much about, we have to be ready to construct a narrative that will instruct the public through their emotions and their gut instincts rather than through an intellectual engagement on the issues alone. It doesn’t have to be dishonest and it doesn’t have to be dirty. What it has to be is authentically connected to what you really want to do and it has to be executed in a way that respects the instincts of the populace.

Clinton said over and over again that the American people almost always get it right. I don’t know how true that is, but it’s the right thing to say. Knowing the public’s propensity for gut political decisions we should give them what they need to make the right one. In that sense, Vietnam works. As sick as all of us informed types may be of hearing about it, it gives Kerry the proper image and frame from which to make his pitch that Democrats have the right stuff to lead this nation in a time of great national insecurity.

Nailbiter

Chris Bowers at MYDD comments on a Zogby analyses of the state of the race:

On the one hand, of course Bush is closing the gap. He made up ground before the convention, and he made up ground–even moving ahead nationally–during the convention. However, Kerry remains in a strong position. He leads in four of the six “red” states that are his best chances for pickups, FL, MO, NV and NH, (OH and WV are the other two) even though Bush just had his convention after and the last three weeks of free media were decidedly negative for the challenger. It would be too much to assume that this is Bush peak, since the attacks will keep coming and history does not tell us what always happens in the future. If at what is very possibly Kerry’s low point he still leads in the Electoral College, then it is not hard to be optimistic about this election.

Ruy Texeira analyzes the internals of the Gallup Poll

Prior to the Republican convention, Kerry had a one point lead among RVs (47-46) in the battleground states. After the Republican convention, now that battleground voters have had a chance to take a closer look at what Bush and his party really stand for, Kerry leads by 5 in these same states (50-45)! Note that Kerry gained three points among battleground voters, while Bush actually got a negative one point bounce.

Indeed, if equal polarization of partisans continues and Kerry carries a 3 point lead on independents into the election, he’ll win fairly easily, since the Democratic proportion of voters in presidential elections is always higher, not lower, than the Republican proportion. In 2000, after all, Bush carried independents by 2 points and received stronger support from his partisans than Gore did from his–but still lost the popular vote by half a point.

We can certainly be encouraged that the race remains close. But, keep one thing in mind. If the race remains this close, or if Kerry takes the lead, the other side is going to loose another barrage of negative campaigning equally vicious to that which we saw in August. The Bush machine will do anything to prevent President Asterisk’s loss after his very dubious win in 2000 and his fathers ignominious defeat in 1992. Two one term presidents in a row and this dynasty is done. Father and son will be remembered as historic losers of epic proportion. They know this. They will not go down easily.

Let’s hope the new National Guard info puts them off message. They get all confused when they have to play defense. They aren’t used to it.

Patriotism

Rush Limbaugh has been predicting for weeks that liberals would be celebrating the 1000th death. I haven’t noticed any dancing in the streets. The right, on the other hand is very upset.

Kevin writes that the 101st Fighting Keyboarders are pissed off and ready to rumble:

If I see one more headline like this, I’m gonna beat somebody:

U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq Pass 1,000

So F**KING what?

Kevin adds:

From the Associated Press:

“I want pictures of you, to see how big your belly is getting. How much my baby is growing inside of you. Not being with you makes me weak. You are the link that makes my chain strong. You complete me in every way.”

Army Sgt. Micheal Dooley, 23, of Pulaski, Va., in a letter home to his wife, Christine, who was six months pregnant with his daughter, Shea Micheal Dooley, when he died.

You can’t blame that little cretin. In America, “real men” are too manly to mourn soldiers dying in wars they support but can’t be bothered to fight. Just ask George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. They’ve spent a lifetime doing it. And, no one is more manly than they.

Dumb As As Swing Voter

Irony is indeed dead. In fact, it’s been cremated. Unless it’s George Bush making a Beavis and Butthead joke, every utterance is now taken literally no matter how obviously absurd or satirical.

For instance, everyone from Adam Nagourney to Chris Suellentrop is all atwitter at how stupid John Kerry was for betraying that he cannot make up his mind at a restaurant.”Oh my God, doesn’t he realize that it makes him sound indecisive? Somebody tell Teresa!”

Now, I know that Kerry is no Chris Rock, but really, it is clear to any twelve year old that he was speaking with his tongue firmly in his cheek when he said this:

Kerry decided it would be a good idea in Pennsylvania to talk about how he has difficulty deciding what to eat at restaurants. “You know when they give you the menu, I’m always struggling, what do you want?” he said. A cook at a local restaurant, though, solves Kerry’s dilemma by serving “whatever he’s cooked up that day. I think that’s the way it ought to work for confused people like me who can’t make up our minds what we’re going to eat.”

It’s not particularly funny, but it is also not an earnest admission of Kerry’s flip-flopping dining habits fergawdssake. He was making fun of himself.

Today’s The Day

Freewayblogger Plans 100 Sign Protest in LA

I’m about to hit the 10, the 405 and the 101. I’ll let you know what I see.