Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

New Blog

Welcome to a great new group blog, Daily News Online. There’s some serious talent writing for free over there…

I also have a little piece up on American Street today about the General.

Kerry’s Secret Weapon

Super smart commenter Sara points out something very interesting that may very well be a potent arrow in Kerry’s quiver:

Well next month we have yet another book to digest — from the inside of the Bush White House. Richard Clarke, the former NSC counterterrorism expert from Bush I, Clinton and 2 years plus of Bush II is publishing his insider book that takes no prisnors. Word is that Rove is very afraid of what Clarke has to say — particularly because Clarke was the August 6 2001 briefer of Bush, and there is a good deal about how he got told never to raise such matters again with Bush. Book will get big play. Richard Clarke knows where all the bodies are buried.

The close collaborator with Richard Clarke — going back to Bush I at NSC was Rand Beers — who quit last summer in disgust, and walked down the street and volunteered his services to Kerry, where he has been ever since. Beers eventually drew Joe Wilson into the Kerry camp. Taken together this represents about 75 years of high level Bureaucratic Counterterrorism experience — and it is super connected with every establishment going. To put it mildly, Kerry is not going into battle unarmed and with pacifist intents. If Bin Laden’s been warehoused for use in October — these are the guys who know it, and know who else knows

Kerry’s foreign policy team is formidable and the fact that he has Wilson, Clarke and Beers on board, all of whom have been on the inside of the Cheney administration is very, very interesting.

If Kerry’s biding his time with the kind of explosive info that could expose Bush on 9/11 then he is a major league threat. Big Time.

ReWrite!

Lord Saleton is upset that Clark is stopping Edwards from stopping John Kerry. That bastard General just won’t lie down when he’s told to by members of the press who “are itching to write him off.” He’s screwing up the whole storyline.

When Wes Clark entered the presidential race five months ago, I said it was a rebuke to John Kerry for failing to catch on as “the candidate with the war record, the candidate who was supposed to keep the party in the center and fend off the standard-bearer of the left.” I still think it was a rebuke. But Kerry reclaimed his role, and now Clark is clearing his path to the end zone by blocking the only candidate who could stop Kerry: John Edwards.

First Clark squashed Edwards’ official campaign kickoff in September, leaking word that very day that he would get into the race. Then, a week ago, Clark beat out Edwards for third in New Hampshire by a fraction of a percentage point. That cost Edwards the ability to claim plausibly that he had continued his momentum from Iowa. Tuesday night, it happened again: Clark eked out a margin over Edwards in Oklahoma so narrow that the state election board will have to review the ballots before declaring an official winner. Edwards argued that he had “exceeded my expectations” and that his finish in Oklahoma, combined with his win in South Carolina, was “a continuation of the surge we’ve seen in other caucuses and primaries.”

Nice try. I think Edwards would be the strongest Democrat in the general election. Nobody expected him to do this well in Oklahoma. But when the history of the 2004 race is written, my guess is that we’ll look back at Oklahoma as Edwards’ Stalingrad. He had to kill off Clark. The media were itching to write off Clark, and a no-win night would have given them license to do so. Now they can’t. Clark will go on to Tennessee and Virginia, where he’ll do what he did in Oklahoma: split the non-Yankee vote and keep Kerry in the lead. Maybe Edwards will win Tennessee and Virginia, and Clark will fade. But by then it may too late to stop Kerry.

Edwards was clearly pining for a Clark defeat in Oklahoma. He delayed his flight to Tennessee more than an hour as he waited for the last returns to trickle in. On CNN before the Oklahoma returns were final, Edwards said, “This race has narrowed dramatically tonight.” He said the differences between himself and Kerry would “become clearer and clearer as the race focuses on the two of us.” On Fox News, Edwards said the contest was looking “more and more like it’s a two-person race. I’m looking forward to that two-person race.”

Oops. A couple of hours later, Clark took the stage in Oklahoma to declare, “The results are in! We have won!” Rubbing it in, Clark boasted that a week earlier he had “won the non-New England portion of New Hampshire.” It’s a thin but valid claim. And now Edwards will have more trouble running as the outsider against Kerry, because Clark will run as the outsider against both senators. As Clark put it to Larry King Tuesday night, “I’m an outsider, Larry. I haven’t been in the Senate. I didn’t vote for No Child Left Behind. I didn’t vote to go war with Iraq, and I didn’t vote for the Patriot Act.” The general who auditioned for the role of John Kerry is ending up instead with the role of Howard Dean.

He even uses the words “audition” and “role.” Please spare me any more superior e-mails about how silly my thesis of politics as showbiz is.

See, Clark was the guy who was supposed to stop Dean, but Kerry stopped him instead and now he’s going to win because Clark is trying to stop Edwards. Doesn’t Clark know what his role is supposed to be? Didn’t anybody give him the new script for gawdsake? The idiot actually thinks he’s running to win when everybody knows that he and Dean have been written out.

Kerry and Edwards are the new It Boys. Dean and Clark are like so 2003.

Salon Giv Atrios Turkee

Is there any further doubt that the media consist of people so obtuse that there is no explanation for them other than that they are actually the abandoned household pets of aliens from another planet? You simply cannot be this cretinously stupid and have a brain larger than the size of a walnut.

This is priceless:

Not surprisingly, journalism experts suggest anonybloggers are operating outside of any reasonable ethical line. “One of the things that’s going to have to become a standard for the Internet is, if you want to be taken seriously, you have to be identified,” says Alex Jones, director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. “Anonymity is almost always, for the mainstream anyway, something that says, ‘Be very, very careful.’

One might also say that if you want to be taken seriously by the mainstream you probably should not attach your real name to a piece that reveals you to be an utter moron.

It is indisputable that we “anonybloggers” (aka pseudonymous writers, for those who didn’t major in massage therapy at San Quentin Community College extension) are certainly operating outside any ethical guidelines and I would suggest that all “professional” mainstream Salon.com writers “be very, very careful” lest they accidentally find themselves all alone in the woods with the Blair Witch. She’s real, you know. Oh yes she is.

Boo

The Savior of 9/11

Interesting article from Slate. I do believe this is the way it will come down:

The Bush rally does, however, provide some insight into the general-election campaign message that the Bush-Cheney campaign is trying out. If the Democratic primaries and caucuses over the next four or five weeks are a referendum on John Kerry’s electability, it’s worth knowing what he’s expected to be electable against. Monday’s rally is the second Republican event I’ve attended this campaign—the other was in Nashua, N.H., where John McCain stumped for the president—and the president’s re-election argument, as advanced by his surrogates, couldn’t be clearer. The Republicans want the threshold question of this election to be: On Sept. 11 and Sept. 12, 2001, would you rather have had George W. Bush as president or his Democratic opponent?

Both Bush rallies that I’ve attended emphasize the idea that the president merits re-election as a reward for past performance, as much as—or even more than—any promise of future results. “On Sept. 11, when this nation faced in many respects the greatest threat to our security, President Bush stood forward, led this nation with clarity and with strength, which has earned him the admiration and appreciation of the overwhelming majority of Americans, and I believe has earned him another term as president of the United States of America,” McCain said in Nashua. The speakers at Monday’s event strike similar notes. “This is a man who has restored peace to the American homeland, after we suffered the worst attack we have suffered here since Pearl Harbor,” U.S. Sen. Jim Talent says. U.S. Sen. Kit Bond puts it this way: “I’m most concerned about the war on terror. When Sept. 11, 2001, hit us, George Bush knew what to do.”

It’s not going to be about Iraq. Certainly, Kerry is going to have a hard time making the argument. His explanation for his vote is reasonable but sounds like it isn’t. Both Bush and Kerry, for different reasons, will take it off the table.

It’s going to be about 9/11. Picture the flags, the music, the tearful testimonials, Chris Matthews going on and on about the big bullhorn as phallic symbol. He kept the babies safe and kicked the Taliban’s ass and didn’t wait for permission from any old cheese-eating bastard to do it. Bin Laden is irrelevant. He kept the babies safe.

Kerry had better get his rhetoric together and stop with the “IIIII led the fight against the Dingell-Daschle compromise in 1986 when my goooood friend the Senatooor from Delawaaaare and I stood firm for working women and the Contras in the funding for the Omnibus Spending bill 227 that offered nothing for the nuclear freeze under the Salt III treaty banning all long range ballistic child care vouuuuchers. I stoooood firrrrrm then and I’ll stand firrrrm agaaaain!”

The Republicans are going to reply, “When America was attacked, George Bush knew what to do. He kept you safe.”

It’s bullshit. But, it’s effective.

The Big Winner

I’ve been taken to task for complaining about the media and upon reflection I think the criticism is valid. I keep forgetting about the all American belief that winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. I was cruelly reminded of this on inauguration day 2001 when a neighbor of mine said simply “Stop your bellyaching. Americans respect winners. Bush deserves to be president because he is the president.” Winner John Kerry is quoted as saying something similar:

He is impatient with Democratic oratory about the “stolen” election. “Stop crying in your teacups,” he told one audience. “It isn’t going to change. Get over it.”

That’s winner talk. One reason that Kerry is the winner is because he knows how to talk like one, as when he said, (in response to Dean’s vaunted internet presence) “Well, the last person I heard who claimed he had invented the Internet didn’t do so well.” The media’s ears are well tuned to that kind of language. It feels right to them.

Whining about the media’s unfairness or RNC cheating or primary voter’s laziness or the Supreme Court stopping the vote count is useless. It does not matter how it happens, the end justifies the means. If you can’t make it happen, you don’t deserve to win, even if the deck is stacked, the media are useless lemmings or the other side hacks into the Diebold voting machines. If the game is rigged a true winner would make sure it’s rigged in his favor. That’s the American Way.

So, while it is certainly true that Kerry is not even close to attaining the required number of delegates, he is the winner because he has won and that means he will keep winning. And that is exactly what the Democratic Party wanted. The entire point of pushing up the primaries was to get a winner as quickly as possible. The DNC apparently knew that Democrats in these new early states would have no clue that they were playing a hugely important role in picking the nominee so they’d go with whoever Iowa and New Hampshire chose simply because they figure those guys “did the research.”

And, if there are two states in the country that we can rely on to pick winners for us it’s Iowa and New Hampshire.

At least we won’t have to go through another losing nominating process like the last time we had a large field. In 1992, they didn’t even hold the New Hampshire primary until the end of February, fergawdsake. Bigtime Loser Clinton won just 3 of his first 14 contests. In fact, he finished fourth four times, often behind “Uncommitted.”

Here’s the breakdown:

1.21.1992

IA caucus: Harkin 76.4%, Tsongas 4.1%, Clinton 2.8%, Kerrey 2.4%, Brown 1.6%

2.18.1992

NH primary: Tsongas 33.2%, Clinton 24.8%, Kerrey 11.1%, Harkin 10.2%, Brown 8.0%

2.23.1992

ME caucus: Brown 30.3%, Tsongas 29.0%, Uncommitted 16.1%, Clinton 14.8%, Harkin 5.2%, Kerrey 3.0%

2.25.1992

SD primary: Kerrey 40.15%, Harkin 25.25%, Clinton 19.12%, Tsongas 9.6%, Brown 3.9%

3.3.1992

CO primary: Brown 29%, Clinton 27%, Tsongas 26%

GA primary: Clinton 57.2%, Tsongas 24.0%, Brown 8.1%, Kerry 4.8%, Uncommitted 3.8%, Harkin 2.1%

ID caucus: Harkin 29.7%, Tsongas 28.4%, Uncommitted 17.2%, Clinton 11.4%, Kerrey 8%, Brown 4.5%

MD primary: Tsongas 40.6%, Clinton 33.5%, Brown 8.2%, Uncommitted 6.4%, Harkin 5.8%, Kerrey 4.8%

MN caucus: Harkin 26.7%, Uncommitted 24.3%, Tsongas 19.2%, Clinton 10.3%, Brown 8.2%, Kerrey 7.6%

UT primary: Tsongas 33.4%, Brown 28.4%, Clinton 18.3%, Kerrey 10.9%, Harkin 4.0%

WA caucus: Tsongas 32.3%, Uncommitted 23.2%, Brown 18.6%, Clinton 12.6%, Harkin 8.2%, Kerrey 3.4%

3.5.1992

ND primary: Clinton 46.0%, Tsongas 10.3%, Brown 7.5%, Harkin 6.8%, Kerrey 1.2%

3.7.1992

AZ caucus: Tsongas 34.4%, Clinton 29.2%, Brown 27.5%, Harkin 7.6%

SC primary: Clinton 62.9%, Tsongas 18.3%, Harkin 6.6%, Brown 6.0%

As everyone keeps pointing out to me, that was a long, long time ago. Everything has changed completely. There is no point in even thinking about it, now.

Still, there is one important lesson to be learned from the past. By drawing out the primaries the way they did, the Democrats had far too much time to think about who they were voting for and they often voted for someone who wasn’t a winner. If Bill Clinton couldn’t win Iowa and New Hampshire, he had no business being the nominee. But, nobody told the voters or the press (who were fixated on Ross Perot at the time) so he managed to eke out the nomination when it was obvious that either Tom Harkin or Paul Tsongas should have run against George Bush.

It is a good thing we’ve learned from our mistakes. We won’t let that happen again.

As The Election Turns

The next time anybody starts reaching for their smelling salts because of negative campaigning, they should recognize that one of the main reasons politicians resort to it is because the flaccid political press corps will not cover anything that falls outside of their settled narrative unless it’s a deliciously vicious stab in the back. (And for reasons unknown they will cover Joe Lieberman as if he were a serious contender with endless droning televised interviews and serious examination of his performance in debates.) Other than that, it would appear that only a full-on, feral attack by rivals will shake their attention from the story they decide is the story that must be told.

The story of the Democratic campaign for the presidential nomination in 2003/2004 is “The Howard Dean Story.”

Whether he’s winning or losing, the plucky governor from Vermont and his erstwhile campaign manager are the only story they wish to tell. Even John Kerry, the man who looks as if he is going to sail through the nominating process without Democrats ever taking a real look at him, only exists as a sub-plot to the ever exciting “Dean Phenomenon.” (I realize that Kerry got skewered early last year, but the only people paying attention at the time were 3 bloggers and Ed Gillespie.)

The Dean rise and fizzle is an interesting story. But, the continuing obsessive attention it is getting is not only destroying Dean’s chances of coming back, it has ruined everyone else’s chances of getting any oxygen whatsoever. Kerry wins the nomination because he beat Dean in Iowa, period. The press framed the election in those terms and those terms seem to be propelling the voters to assume that this is the contest. Nobody else exists, except as they relate to Howard Dean.

(The big story of the debate last night, for instance, wasn’t the debate at all. It was the fact that Joe Trippi was going to speak out on Deborah Norville’s show following the debate. And, he delivered a soap opera worthy performance. And there is no greater sign that the tabloid artists are taking over the story then the appearance of Lisa “Gary Condit did it!” Depaulo. There she was, showing all of her noted objectivity practically delivering a big juicy lewinsky to Trippi, right there on TV. )

There is no oxygen left after that kind of thing. My favorite candidate, Wesley Clark, has apparently vaporized, for instance. Despite the fact that as of yesterday he held the lead in 3 of the 7 February 3rd primaries, was well in the mix in 2 others and had plenty of money to continue, the NY Times and Washington Post did not even acknowledge that he was at the debate last night in their first editions, although they quoted Lieberman and Kucinich at length. (I wrote to both papers and was informed that they would add something about him in later editions. They did; it was pathetic.)

I don’t think there is any malice or political bias, it’s just that Wesley Clark existed in their minds only as the Anti-Dean and, as such, is irrelevant in the current plotline of Dean the soap-opera and Kerry the juggernaut. They are obsessing on Dean’s demise from frontrunner to such an extent that they apparently see no necessity to examine Kerry’s questionable statements, gaffes and inconsistencies. (I think we can all say with some assurance that the Republicans will have no trouble making up for lost time on that count.)

Dean fucks up. Kerry wins. Let’s move on to the general election.

So, what should a candidate like John Edwards or Wesley Clark do in this situation? They both have good reasons to challenge John Kerry’s unexamined claim to electability. He represents, in many ways, a return to the 80’s for the Democrats and another round of liberal bashing on a scale we haven’t seen since Dukakis was derisively accused of being “a card carrying member of the ACLU.” (Most importantly, his appeal as a veteran is going to be shredded by the RNC in ways that already make me sick to my stomach.) Clark and Edwards are new faces who don’t have the tired familiarity and old fashioned bombastic rhetoric of a liberal Senator from Massachusetts (ohjayzuz) who has a record of voting, a personal life and a public statements so long that Rove can spoon out a psuedo scandal a day into the yawning maw of the political media until Kerry has been morphed into a bizarre combination of Hanoi Jane Donald Trump, Al Gore and Foghorn Leghorn.

Nonetheless, it looks like Kerry is poised to win, Dean is poised to be the goat and everybody else is poised to disappear because nobody can get their message out over the rank silliness of the media narrative — at the very time when people are actually paying attention and need the information.

So, the other candidates will go negative. It’s the only way to make the mediawhores look up from their soap opera scripts and sniff the air for something nasty and enticing. Once they do, of course, they will tut-tut about how sad and desperate it all is. But, they have no choice but to try to change the narrative and refocus the little lemmings in another direction. It’s not pretty, but I can’t see what other options exist.

Normally, I would not encourage the Democrats to go negative on each other. However, I think if they are going to do it, the time is now. If Kerry sweeps on Tuesday, the game is over before he has been properly tested. And, then we’re stuck. I like Kerry, and I voted for him in 1984. I’m a liberal, after all. But, he has got some general election weaknesses you can drive a semi through. The voters need to know this and he needs to show how he’s going to deal with them before we make this decision.

The Dean story has so overshadowed everything else, for good and ill, that the other candidates have not gotten a proper airing. If Kerry can take the kind of heat that Dean underwent, then he deserves to win. But, to let him win as a default is a grave mistake.

Ooooh, so that’s why they call them “mediawhores”

Final note from Sunday night: Which well-known “Fox Democrat” approached the comedians’ table and boasted about how much money Fox pays her? (Brought it up twice!) “That’s exactly what we’ve been saying,” one mordant wag later said.

Via the incomparable Daily Howler

Card Smarting

Regarding the post below, I thank those who wrote to fill me in on the meaning of Dean’s speech. I had read it, and the two articles I linked and was skeptical of the McCullough spin. However, I don’t think it was out of line for me to have had questions about Dean’s comments even though he made it clear that he was a believer in privacy rights. The substance of his remarks about this new technology was, at least, murky.

I realize it isn’t the biggest deal in the world and I don’t plan on making a crusade out of this. It’s just a hot button issue with me. I’m dead set against a national smart-card and I’m extremely resistant to using property rights (in the guise of copyrights) as an excuse to further encroach on individual liberty.

Having said that, it goes without saying that our civil liberties would be in much safer hands with Howard Dean in charge than Junior and the Calico Cat-Man. I never meant to suggest otherwise.

Dean On Individual Liberty

I just got a note from Charlie Stross asking if I knew anything about this. I confess I didn’t, but after reading the article, I am concerned. I’m one of those “left-libertarian” types on the political compass (I score in the same area as Noam Chomsky, if you can believe that) so privacy and civil liberties are a huge deal to me.

Do any of you internet Deaniacs out there have some information about this?

Dean’s current stand on privacy appears to leave little wiggle room: His campaign platform pledges unwavering support for “the constitutional principles of equality, liberty and privacy.”

Fifteen months before Dean said he would seek the presidency, however, the former Vermont governor spoke at a conference in Pittsburgh co-sponsored by smart-card firm Wave Systems where he called for state drivers’ licenses to be transformed into a kind of standardized national ID card for Americans. Embedding smart cards into uniform IDs was necessary to thwart “cyberterrorism” and identity theft, Dean claimed. “We must move to smarter license cards that carry secure digital information that can be universally read at vital checkpoints,” Dean said in March 2002, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. “Issuing such a card would have little effect on the privacy of Americans.”

Dean also suggested that computer makers such as Apple Computer, Dell, Gateway and Sony should be required to include an ID card reader in PCs–and Americans would have to insert their uniform IDs into the reader before they could log on. “One state’s smart-card driver’s license must be identifiable by another state’s card reader,” Dean said. “It must also be easily commercialized by the private sector and included in all PCs over time–making the Internet safer and more secure.”

This article indicates that there might be something more to the story. I reserve judgment. But, I’d like to hear from people who could shed some light on this.