Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Blasphemy

Robert George, conservative pundit for the NY Post, just said on Larry King that unless Junior gets his message together this speech may have been the acceptance speech of the next president of the United States. And the reason is that the speech is likely to appeal to swing voters. I feel strongly that this is correct — and perhaps it is even more correct, although George won’t admit it, that it may appeal to a fair number of moderate Republicans.

Ron Reagan’s new article in Esquire (thanks Susie) explains why:

It may have been the guy in the hood teetering on the stool, electrodes clamped to his genitals. Or smirking Lynndie England and her leash. Maybe it was the smarmy memos tapped out by soft-fingered lawyers itching to justify such barbarism. The grudging, lunatic retreat of the neocons from their long-standing assertion that Saddam was in cahoots with Osama didn’t hurt. Even the Enron audiotapes and their celebration of craven sociopathy likely played a part. As a result of all these displays and countless smaller ones, you could feel, a couple of months back, as summer spread across the country, the ground shifting beneath your feet. Not unlike that scene in The Day After Tomorrow, then in theaters, in which the giant ice shelf splits asunder, this was more a paradigm shift than anything strictly tectonic. No cataclysmic ice age, admittedly, yet something was in the air, and people were inhaling deeply. I began to get calls from friends whose parents had always voted Republican, “but not this time.” There was the staid Zbigniew Brzezinski on the staid NewsHour with Jim Lehrer sneering at the “Orwellian language” flowing out of the Pentagon. Word spread through the usual channels that old hands from the days of Bush the Elder were quietly (but not too quietly) appalled by his son’s misadventure in Iraq. Suddenly, everywhere you went, a surprising number of folks seemed to have had just about enough of what the Bush administration was dishing out. A fresh age appeared on the horizon, accompanied by the sound of scales falling from people’s eyes. It felt something like a demonstration of that highest of American prerogatives and the most deeply cherished American freedom: dissent.

Oddly, even my father’s funeral contributed. Throughout that long, stately, overtelevised week in early June, items would appear in the newspaper discussing the Republicans’ eagerness to capitalize (subtly, tastefully) on the outpouring of affection for my father and turn it to Bush’s advantage for the fall election. The familiar “Heir to Reagan” puffballs were reinflated and loosed over the proceedings like (subtle, tasteful) Mylar balloons. Predictably, this backfired. People were treated to a side-by-side comparison—Ronald W. Reagan versus George W. Bush—and it’s no surprise who suffered for it. Misty-eyed with nostalgia, people set aside old political gripes for a few days and remembered what friend and foe always conceded to Ronald Reagan: He was damned impressive in the role of leader of the free world. A sign in the crowd, spotted during the slow roll to the Capitol rotunda, seemed to sum up the mood—a portrait of my father and the words NOW THERE WAS A PRESIDENT.

The comparison underscored something important. And the guy on the stool, Lynndie, and her grinning cohorts, they brought the word: The Bush administration can’t be trusted. The parade of Bush officials before various commissions and committees—Paul Wolfowitz, who couldn’t quite remember how many young Americans had been sacrificed on the altar of his ideology; John Ashcroft, lip quivering as, for a delicious, fleeting moment, it looked as if Senator Joe Biden might just come over the table at him—these were a continuing reminder. The Enron creeps, too—a reminder of how certain environments and particular habits of mind can erode common decency. People noticed. A tipping point had been reached. The issue of credibility was back on the table. The L-word was in circulation. Not the tired old bromide liberal. That’s so 1988. No, this time something much more potent: liar.

I have no statistics and no data to support the idea that there are moderate republicans out there who are ready to jump, but like Ron Reagan, I have seen a vast amount of anecdotal evidence in my own life.

An investment banker friend of mine who reports that formerly rabid GOP colleagues will not vote for Bush again. He’s perceived by these macho masters of the universe as a loser.

Veteran friends of my father who haven’t voted for a Democrat since Truman cannot vote for Bush. His arrogance on the world stage is offensive to them.

Libertarian relatives who have never voted much but who are afraid of the Bush’s overly warm embrace of the religious right and are talking to their friends about voting for Kerry.

An active Republican neighbor who is disturbed by the fact that there turned out to be no WMD in Iraq and expressed a very unusual desire to hear Kerry speak tonight.

I don’t know if there are any significant numbers of these people out there, but I felt the same shift in the zeitgeist when all the accumulated weight of “mission acomplished” and “whoops no WMD” and “Abu Ghraib” and “hair on fire” all seemed to suddenly weigh down the Bush juggernaut and wake up all those people in the middle who had been floating along with the left-over 9/11 conventional wisdom.

Kerry’s speech tonight spoke directly to those people, people who have serious concerns about whether a Democrat can adequately handle a national security crisis but who also see that things are not going well under Bush. Those people may have tuned in to see a Democrat speak tonight and saw a president instead.

John Kerry For President!

I think he absolutely nailed it. If you didn’t know John Kerry before tonight, the impression you got was of a tough, fighting Democrat who is taking the battle right to George W. Bush. He pulled no punches and he gave no quarter. And I think he tapped into something that people of all political persuasion are experiencing — the deeply felt need to feel a sense of pride in this country again.

And it sure sounded to me like he told everybody to play nice all week so that he could go for the jugular. This is the fighting spirit that people saw in Iowa and New Hampshire and I think the entire country saw it tonight. I loved it and I think Kerry’s got exactly the right idea of how to run this campaign.

The bad news is that the total assholes of the media gave him exactly 5 seconds before they brought in the GOP shills to trash him — Scarborough on MSNBC and Ed Gillespie on CNN. And Woodruff and Greenfield just blatantly started waving GOP talking points pointing out the shocking and disturbing fact that Kerry didn’t give a detailed run down of his senate career. They didn’t even try to hide it. Scum.

Huzzah

I’m a big fan of Wes Clark and I greatly enjoyed his speech. And it appeared on C-Span that the delegates liked him too. He will be part of the Kerry administration I have little doubt. His message tonight was simply that Democrats are patriots too, and we won’t let anybody say otherwise. He made the case that Kerry is a leader and a fighter. I think that’s effective politics. (In fact, he seemed to have channeled almost the exact words I wrote earlier in the day, weirdly. I guess I’ve always been on that guy’s wavelength.)

Naturally, CNN navel gazed through it and didn’t show it, but MSNBC did — followed by some good initial reviews by the whores until they realized that they were being much too easy on him and they remembered the script called for him to be called half crazy and uninformed. Luckily, they could move quickly to Sharpton and discuss whether the campaign was mad at him for last night’s speech and then rip him to shreds. (Whew. That was close.)

They’re Comin’ Ta Git Ya!

Fear of Death Wins Minds and Votes, Study Finds:

President Bush may be tapping into solid human psychology when he invokes the Sept. 11 attacks while campaigning for the next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

Talking about death can raise people’s need for psychological security, the researchers report in studies to be published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science and the September issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

[…]

For their first study, Solomon, Greenberg and colleagues asked students to think about either their own death or a neutral topic.

They then read the campaign statements of three hypothetical candidates for governor, each with a different leadership style. One was charismatic, said Solomon.

“That was a person who declared our country to be great and the people in it to be special,” Solomon, who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.

The others were task-oriented — focusing on the job to be done — or relationship-oriented — with a “let’s get it done together” style, Solomon said.

The students who thought about death were much more likely to choose the charismatic leader, they found. Only four out of about 100 chose that imaginary leader when thinking about exams, but 30 did after thinking about death.

Greenberg, Solomon and colleagues then decided to test the idea further and set up four separate studies at different universities.

“In one we asked half the people to think about the September 11 attacks, or to think about watching TV,” Solomon said. “What we found was staggering.”

When asked to think about television, the 100 or so volunteers did not approve of Bush or his policies in Iraq. But when asked to think about Sept. 11 first and then asked about their attitudes to Bush, another 100 volunteers had very different reactions.

“They had a very strong approval of President Bush and his policy in Iraq,” Solomon said.

Solomon, a social psychologist who specializes in terrorism, said it was very rare for a person’s opinions to differ so strongly depending on the situation.

Another study focused directly on Bush and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.

The volunteers were aged from 18 into their 50s and described themselves as ranging from liberal to deeply conservative. No matter what a person’s political conviction, thinking about death made them tend to favor Bush, Solomon said. Otherwise, they preferred Kerry.

Interesting. Regardless of the scientific accuracy of the study, it seems clear that the Republicans will ramp up the fear factor. If nothing else fear tends to stifle change, which has it’s own fear factor — the unknown. People tend to stick with the familiar in times of stress.

Look for the presstarts to subtly take up the theme for them. Scary reports are all over the media here in southern California about some nutball who poisoned some baby food. He supposedly used Ricin. A bioweapon. Like the terrorists got from Saddam. What would we do if terrorists put Ricin in our diet cokes? It could happen. News at eleven.

We can’t run from this. Republicans are going to be flogging the “dangerous world” theme over and over again. I say we use that to our advantage. I firmly believe that Kerry can make the case that Bush doesn’t know what he’s doing on national security— he failed to act on 9/11 and he overeacted on Iraq. He is a failure. He’s made us less safe.

Thanks to the Donkey for the link.

Powermad

This article in The Guardian discusses all the people we have “disappeared” in the GWOT. It’s a very interesting article and reminds us of the stakes in this election.

Under military order No 1, issued by President Bush in November 2001, the president gave himself the right, in defiance of national and interna tional law, to detain indefinitely any non-US citizen anywhere in the world. Many ended up in Guantánamo where at least some of their names were discovered. Others simply vanished. They became in the US euphemism, “ghost prisoners”, an unrecorded host held in secret, their detention denied, hidden from the Red Cross, legal or family access barred, their fate in the hands of unaccountable and unnamed US personnel.

Perhaps Kerry would make the same decision, but I have to assume that he’s savvy enough, if not moral enough, to understand that these things can never be kept a secret. Imagine if you will the Republican congressional and senate hearings on this matter if President Kerry ordered such a thing and it became known. They went apeshit over Elian Gonzales, fergawdsake.

The article reminded me of perhaps the most sickening line ever uttered in an American presidential speech and one which should go down in infamy if there is any justice in this world:

In his state of the union address in February 2003, he said: “More than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Put it this way, they’re no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.”

Notice that even he used the word “suspected.” His movie script tough guy lines may sound cute to some but when you actually look at that statement, and realize that he gave it in a national address before the US congress, he sounds like a sociopath.

Good thing this politics thing doesn’t matter. Did Teresa say anything kooky today?

One-Two Punch

I just love the good cop/ bad cop schtick that Carlson and Novak are playing on Crossfire. They really should take this show on the road.

(paraphrased)

Novack: There are many charges that John Kerry has falsified his military records and falsified his medals. Shouldn’t he release his records to prove that this is not true? All he has to do is sign form XSXX and he can put all these rumors to rest.

Carville/Begala: !!!!%%##@$##@!!!!

Carlson: See, doesn’t this prove just how unseemly all this talk of Vietnam is — a war that happened decades ago and is completely irrelevant to anything people care about today?

First you spew some wild and unsubstantiated charges and then come back with the soothing bromide that Vietnam doesn’t really matter, thus creating the impression that Kerry is even worse than Bush about lying about his record while simultaneously using that same accusation as the rationale for ignoring Kerry’s real record as a war hero.

Very slick.

One thought about this constant refrain I’m hearing today from GOP whores about the irrelevance of Kerry’s Vietnam service. Woodruff practically grabbed Max Cleland by the throat and demanded that he tell her why in Gawd’s name we should even give a second thought to this boring Vietnam crapola.

Might I suggest that people say that when a man runs for president his past is his resume. Kerry’s Vietnam experience is a demonstration of his courage, his judgment, his leadership and his coolness under pressure. Those facets of his character were clear when he was a young naval officer and they were present when he was a federal prosecutor and they are present in the US Senate. These are the traits a man needs to lead this country in times of great challenge both here and at home.

That’s what the whores need to hear. It’s obvious, I know, but they have been given their talking points and they won’t shut up until you shut them up.

Warrior Nation

Ruy Teixeira posts some interesting observations by Frank Newport of Gallup which seem to indicate that Kerry should concentrate on the economy instead of terrorism:

The public’s rating of the economy’s direction is significantly worse in states that are considered to be Democratic or battleground states than in states considered to be safe for the Republicans. In other words, the economy has a high probability of being of the most importance in precisely the states Kerry must win in order to become president.

As noted, independent voters are more likely than Republicans to say the economy is the top problem they will consider in their presidential vote.

There is evidence from data analysis from three key showdown states that voters’ perceptions of the economy in their state is related to their propensity to vote for Kerry.

Texeira endorses the idea that Kerry should run the fall campaign on the economy and maybe he’s right. My feeling, however, is that the issue of who should be commander in chief in an era of terrorism, which will be endlessly and repetitively flogged by the GOP, is actually a proxy for the concept of “leadership” and that kind of “leadership” is something that people, particularly undecideds and mushy swingsters, are likely to see as dispositive.

I have no doubt that most people when asked what issue they “care about” the most say they the economy or jobs or health care. But, voting is a more complicated equation than where politicians stand on the issues no matter how much people in focus groups claim otherwise. (Frank Luntz certainly knows this.) And swing voters in particular are looking for certain personal characteristics because if they had any kind of political philosophy they would choose a party and vote for that party’s candidate. (Most independents actually vote consistently for one party.) In America 2004, the warrior king will beat the policy wonk. That’s the zeitgeist.

I’m reminded of the 2002 election in which the polls all stated that people really wanted to talk about kitchen table issues. Then Bush launched his “triumph of the will” tour and engaged the emotion of people with a lot of pomp and pageantry. We came close, but no cigar. I’d hate to see that happen again.

I think this is a gladiator fight not a civil debate. We should battle Bush on his own turf this time out.

Straight Eye For The Queer Dem Guy

Jeffrey Daubner at the TAPPED convention blog ferrets out the first reports of how the RNC is deftly planning to spin the convention and convey, in yet another new way that the Democrats are weak and sissified:

C-SPAN, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE BRIEFING, 1:50 P.M.: The RNC sure puts on an effective press conference. Rudy Giuliani, Ed Gillespie, and former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld fire away on the DNC and tout the upcoming Republican National Convention. The room is packed with supporters cued to explode at Giuliani’s line, “I don’t need Michael Moore to tell me about September 11.”

You can really see how well the media’s conventional wisdom plays into their talking points; the meme that the DNC has been all about putting Bush-bashing aside and presenting a moderate, unified Democratic Party is just a short step away from the RNC spin that the Democratic Party is “running away” from its record.” Giuliani even has a well-scripted and well-delivered response to the question of what makes the Republican convention less of a “makeover” than the Democratic convention: “I haven’t had a makeover. I’ll be the same as I’ve always been and so will all the speakers.”

And on the bottom of the screen, C-SPAN runs the message, “For more information: www.demsextrememakeover.com.” Not the Bush-Cheney and Kerry-Edwards Web sites; not the RNC’s anti-Kerry Web site and the DNC’s convention Web site; just the RNC’s attack site. Even through C-SPAN, they put together a very slick package.

Their methods are always very slick and their message is always consistent and it’s always delivered with the requisite derisive tone. Everything plays into the subliminal theme that Kerry and the Democratic party are effeminate cowards.

He Doesn’t Even Know What A Racist, Elitist Pig He Is

Salon.com Politics:

Following Edwards, and as a prelude to nominating Kerry, the multiracial hip-hop group Black Eyed Peas came out to perform their hit, “Let’s Get It Started.” Flipping channels to try and catch the performance, I found that the only network carrying it uninterrupted was Fox News. And just as I was getting suspicious about why Fox News was giving a hip-hop group time that could have been handed over to their pundits, the song ended and Fox anchor Brit Hume came back and said, “The Black Eyed Peas with their rendition of a song that’s popular in the swing states, especially the refrain ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,’ which the Kerry campaign believes will have particular resonance.

Spin Bitches

In yet another fine report from Eric Boehlert in Salon he notes, as I did last night, that Wolf Blitzer immediately cut to GOP spin after Edwards’ speech.

One other note about CNN’s at-times head-scratching coverage last night. Following Edwards’ acceptance speech, Blitzer, in what may have been a convention first, immediately turned to partisan representatives from the opposing party for a reaction; Bush campaign advisor Ralph Reed and former Bush Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke.

We’ll be watching closely during the Republican gathering in New York City to see if following Vice President Dick Cheney’s speech, CNN immediately seeks out Kerry advisor Mark Mellman and former Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart for their analysis.

Atrios mentioned tracking disparities in spin opportunities earlier in the week. Maybe before the GOP convention we could prevail upon Uggabugga to do one of his great charts so we can keep track of this stuff.

This is becoming a favorite new trick. Fox did it during the Democratic primary debates they hosted (and even cut off the last of the debate itself to fit in Bill Bennett’s trashing before the end of the hour.) I have no idea if Reed and Clarke were previously booked for the slot or if they themselves arranged to be there at the appropriate moment. But, the fact remains that the first interview and reaction (and it went on for some time) that was shown on CNN after Edwards’ speech last night was from a highly critical Republican operative. If they do this again tonight I think we should make it our cause to demand that Democrats be given the same opportunity to immediately trash Cheney and Bush’s speeches in NYC before anybody has had a chance to even catch their breath. Very often, people stay tuned in for just a few moments after an event like that. Those moments can be critical.