Category: Politics & Elections

Edwards — the beginning of the end

Electablog* has a good assessment of Senator John Edwards:

Edwards, if anything, hurt himself during the debate. He is, as I’ve discussed here, remarkable on the stump. Less so during debates (except for those times when he can verbally work his way back into that stump-speech script). The guy simply makes a better lawyer than a defendant.

Much of the evening’s focus was on who between Kerry and Edwards is more electable in more states. Differences were established in the areas of trade, the death penalty and lobbyist’s donations. Kerry often brought things back to Vietnam while Edwards continued to focus on the Mill closing of his childhood (at this point I’ve never been so depressed about a company shutting its doors and I’m not even entirely sure what happens at a mill).

Getting it right

NewMexiKen has long been troubled by the innaccuracies and misunderstanding found in even the presumed best news sources. CJR Campaign Desk does a good job of pointing them out, as least for the campaign. This report from Brian Montopoli is a good example.

One of the oldest rules of journalism is the hoary maxim given to green reporters by crusty city editors everywhere:

“No matter who said it, check it out; if your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

And each election year, that maxim is duly ignored by political reporters scrambling to make deadline. So it is that already, with snow still on the ground, partisan talking points have begun to find their way, unchallenged, into the reports of the mainstream campaign press. Writing on “Tapped,” Nick Confessore points out that Associated Press reporter Lolita Baldor essentially regurgitated a GOP press release in a story criticizing John Kerry’s defense voting record. Confessore also noted that Slate’s Fred Kaplan did his research on the same issue and got the facts right.

Baldor’s piece is almost completely devoid of context — relying on Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson, she writes that Kerry voted “against spending on weapons systems that have proven invaluable in the Persian Gulf, including the F-16 and F-15 fighter aircraft” — implying that Kerry serially voted down one weapon system after another.

Baldor is not alone. WendellGee points us to a nearly identical case on CNN last night, where Judy Woodruff, in an interview with Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), goes through most of a Republican-generated list of “something like 13 different weapons systems that they say the record shows Senator Kerry voted against” — apparently unaware that all of the systems were in the same defense appropriations bill. That’s exactly the mistake Baldor made.

As Kaplan points out:

Kerry was one of 16 senators (including five Republicans) to vote against a defense appropriations bill 14 years ago. He was also one of an unspecified number of senators to vote against a conference report on a defense bill nine years ago. The RNC takes these facts and extrapolates from them that he voted against a dozen weapons systems that were in those bills. The Republicans could have claimed, with equal logic, that Kerry voted to abolish the entire U.S. armed forces, but that might have raised suspicions.

Baldor and Woodruff found it easier to regurgitate partisan rhetoric than to research the nuances.

Reporters should resist the urge to lean on storylines crafted by political operatives. Whether RNC or DNC, they’re selling a political pitch, not a database.

Just wondering

[Florida] elections officials banned any attempt to recount votes cast on touch-screen voting machines Friday, reversing an earlier decision as counties prepare for the presidential primary less than a month away.

What’s going to happen when all the polls going into the election show the Democrat leading, and all the exit polls show the Democrat winning, and then the voting computers whirr, the software does its magic, and out comes Bush?

Who’s running against this guy?

Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) says Bush’s plan for illegal immigrants goes too far. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Tancredo told the California Republican Convention that he knew a gynecologist who surveyed patients and found it [Bush’s plan] “rated right below genital herpes.” Tancredo also said America had taken “rabid, overstated multiculturalism” too far.

Honorable discharge

TBogg points out that an honorable discharge from the National Guard isn’t necessarily a testimonial.

John Allen Muhammad, convicted last November for his participation in the D.C. sniper shootings, served in the Louisiana National Guard from 1978-1985, where he faced two summary courts-martial. In 1983, he was charged with striking an officer, stealing a tape measure, and going AWOL. Sentenced to seven days in the brig, he received an honorable discharge in 1985.

‘Significantly more Democrats and independents predict Democratic victory than did so in January.’

From The Pew Research Center:

Bush’s personal image, by contrast, is at the low point of his presidency. His overall favorability rating has tumbled from 72% last April, shortly after the fall of Baghdad, to 53% in the current survey. Moreover, when asked for a one-word description of Bush, equal percentages now give negative and positive responses, which marks a dramatic shift since last May when positive descriptions outnumbered negative ones by roughly two-to-one (52%-27%). The most frequently used negative word to describe Bush is “liar,” which did not come up in the May 2003 survey. The president’s job approval also stands at an all-time low. Just 48% approve of his performance as president, the first time in his presidency his rating has fallen below 50%.

Edwards vs. Kerry

Mark Kleiman has some thoughtful analysis of the differences between Edwards and Kerry:

Edwards seems to be by far the better natural politician. If he looked older and had some foreign policy or national security credentials he’s make a great candidate. But as it is, he’s almost as unqualified to be President as GWB was four years ago, and that’s pretty scary. Plus he carries the “trial lawyer” baggage, which offsets somewhat his man-of-the-people appeal.

Kerry seems to have found his voice; I just hope his war-hero record will insulate him against some imprudent post-Vietnam remarks on military and security issues.

Which would make the better President? Search me. The record tells you much less than you think it does.

Harry Truman and JFK were both long-service Senators with negligible records of legislative accomplishment, and both performed more than adequately as President. No one predicted — or, I submit, could have predicted based on his Senate record — that LBJ would be the manager of the Second Reconstruction, but so he was.

Jimmy Carter was, as far as I can tell, a pretty damned terrific governor of Georgia, and Bill Clinton had a solid record in Arkansas and a sky-high IQ. Both of them were piss-poor Presidents, who never figured out the Neustadtian lesson that a President’s first job is to make the people who nominally work for him actually work for him, and to convince the other players that their interests will be served better by helping the President than by obstructing his path.

Kleiman concludes he’s “planning to relax, help remind my readers of Mr. Bush’s inadequacies, write checks to both Kerry and Edwards…and support the winner enthusiastically.”

It’s a good piece; worth reading it all.

Bush at 43 percent

Andrew Sullivan has an astute observation:

…I have absolutely no doubt that there has been a profound mood-change in the country toward president Bush. Some of this is a result of the Democrats’ dominating the media during primary season. But much of it is also due to the president’s extraordinary drift, incoherence and – at the same time – cockiness. That’s a lethal combination…

‘Rare for an incumbent to be trailing any named opponent at this early stage’ – Gallup

A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll taken Feb. 16-17 indicates that if the election were held today, Kerry would be chosen by 55% of likely voters over 43% for Bush. Edwards beats Bush 54%-44%.

Of course, it’s February not November and the Democrats have been getting most of the attention. But, as NewMexiKen posted last week:

Gallup has a long history of asking presidential trial-heat questions in election years. There are comparable data from as far back as 1948 for elections in which an incumbent president was pitted against his eventual challenger in January or February of the election year. While it is not clear at this point who the Democratic nominee will be, Gallup’s historical polling shows it is rare for an incumbent to be trailing any named opponent at this early stage in the election year.

Tuesday’s important election

The significant election Tuesday wasn’t the Wisconsin primary, though it got interestingly close. Rather it was the election to fill a vacant Congressional seat in Kentucky — an election won by the Democrat Ben Chandler. It was the first time the Democrats have won a special election for the House since 1991.

Josh Marshall sums it up:

Oh, how sweet it is. We’ve been telling you for some time about the 6th congressional district special election in Kentucky, pitting former state Attorney GeneralBen Chandler against Alice Forgy Kerr.

This was the first federal election of the 2004 cycle. Kerr based her campaign almost exclusively on her strong support for the Bush agenda. And the AP is now reporting that Chandler has beaten Kerr decisively. That marks the first time since 1991 that a Democrat has won a Republican seat in a special election.

This is a big deal for a number of reasons.

The first is the shot in the arm it’ll give to Democrats around the country.

But another part of the story is Internet fundraising. As you’ll notice there on the left, the Chandler campaign has been advertising for about the last two weeks on this and a number of other blogs. The campaign budgeted about two grand for blog advertising. And my understanding is that by today they had raised close to $100,000 from contributors who linked through from those blogs on which the campaign was advertising.

In other words, they got roughly a 50-fold turnaround on their investment in the final two weeks of the campaign. And in case you’re wondering one hundred grand is a lot of money in a House race.

Now, obviously that’s exciting news for proprietors of blogs looking to open up revenue streams from advertisers. But the bigger story here is about the Democrats and the Internet, and the way this technology seems to click, shall we say, for the Democratic demographic.

Democrats have always lamented how Republicans just have far better direct-mail lists than they do, and how the Republicans are just plain better at it. And they do have better lists and they are better at it. But I’ve always thought that it wouldn’t really matter all that much if the Democrats had high quality lists too. The truth is that direct-mail, for whatever reason, just works with folks who are apt to give money to Republican campaigns. And it just doesn’t with Dems, or at least not nearly as well. It’s a different demographic. For whatever social or cultural reasons, the technology or mechanism — in this case fundraising by mail — is just particularly well suited to one demographic and not to the other.

But the Internet does seem to work for Democrats. That was clear in the spectacular early success of the Dean campaign and now you’re seeing it in smaller ways in individual House races. That doesn’t mean that it won’t work equally well for Republicans; we just don’t know yet. But for the first time in a long time Democrats have a technology, a mechanism that is allowing them to raise large sums of money, not from a few well-heeled givers but from large numbers of energized Democrats giving $10, $50 or $100 a shot. It’s already starting to make a difference.

And as long as we’re at it, there’s another special election coming up in which a Democrat has a good chance to pick up a seat currently held by a Republican. That’s the June 1st special election for South Dakota’s single House seat. The Democrat is Stephanie Herseth.

Bush economic plan

“It’s unfair to say that the president’s only plan is massive tax cuts for the wealthy,” Mr. Graham said, according to remarks distributed by the Kerry campaign. “That’s not his total economic policy. He’s got other plans, one of which is to cut overtime pay.”

Quoted in The New York Times

Bring it on

From Ellen Dunkel on the Knight Ridder Election 2004 blog:

Wondering how we, as a country, are going to get Janet Jackson to keep her top on? Or at least keep her from undressing on TV? Evangelist Franklin Graham told Christian broadcasters on Sunday that only President Bush will see that this happens.

“If this president is not re-elected,” Graham told the National Religious Broadcasters’ convention in an unofficial endorsement of Bush, “the floodgates of this garbage is going to be open because there won’t be anyone to stand against it.”

He said the Super Bowl halftime at which Janet Jackson exposed a breast is the “tip of the iceberg” for what secularists have in store for the nation. Without mentioning names, he said the goal of “these people” is to show open sex on TV, much like what he said is shown on TV in Europe.

Ted Kennedy, Green Bay Packer?

From Jim Kuhnhennthe on the Knight Ridder Election 2004 blog:

Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, who helped John Kerry draw huge crowds in Iowa, joined Kerry for a campaign stop in Green Bay, Wis., and revealed that in 1955 Kennedy was recruited by Green Bay Packers head coach Lisle Blackbourn.

Kennedy, who played offensive end at Harvard, brandished a letter addressed to “Dear Sir,” with Ted penciled in, stating that Kennedy had been recommended as a possible pro football prospect.

“I’ll tell ya, I’m not going to use up my eligibility until John Kerry is president of the United States,” he bellowed to more than 1,000 Democrats at a rally at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.

Before the rally, Kennedy paid special homage to Lambeau Field, the home of the Packers and a football temple to Packers fans.

“Ted Kennedy went to Mecca,” Kerry said. “He went to Lambeau field. He went all around the field. He walked out on the field before he came here. Ladies and gentlemen, Ted Kennedy came here this afternoon in a state of grace.”

As for the recruiting letter, it’s clear that football scouts in those days weren’t what they are today. In a P.S. at the bottom of the two paragraph letter, Blackbourn added: “Please list in the Offense or Defense Position You Play Section whether you play Right or Left Guard, Tackle, Halfback, etc.”

If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit

Reporting on the Democrats’ debate in Milwaukee CJR Campaign Desk says “there seems to be some confusion about the status of the Democrats’ gloves”:

According to The Boston Globe, “(John) Edwards, Who Vowed a Positive Campaign, Takes Off the Gloves.”

But Alan Borsuk of The Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel believes that the candidates “mostly kept their gloves on.”

And Michael Tackett of the Chicago Tribune tells us that “Slugging Hopefuls Put on Kid Gloves.”

That’s my Congresswoman!

Josh Marshall —

Credit, I always say, where credit is due.

And with that in mind, tonight we’re awarding Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R-NM) the first annual Heather Wilson “I think the American people are a bunch of god-forsaken idiots” Award….

After detailing all the reasons why the president’s pre-war rationales for war make sense in retrospect, she uncorked this beauty. “And to me,” she told CNN’s Heidi Collins, “the most important thing was his biological weapons program, which we’ve now confirmed he was continuing to pursue up to the day of the invasion, and the ability to deliver those biological weapons against Americans on American soil.”

An on-going biological weapons program? Really … Continuing research into delivery systems for biological weapons attacks on the United States mainland? She really needs to bring her data to David Kay and the president. The president, I think, would find Wilson’s new findings really helpful right now.

Ex-officer: Bush file’s details caused concern

NewMexiKen isn’t certain what this Bush-National Guard AWOL thing really amounts to, but when the story gets this kind of treatment in USA Today of all places, it’s mainstream. (It’s been hot in the blogs since Peter Jennings asked Wesley Clark why he didn’t repudiate Michael Moore’s endorsement because he, Moore, called Bush a deserter. That was at the New Hampshire Democratic debate January 22nd.)

It’s beginning to look like a cover up of some sort. And, as we all should have learned by now, it’s the cover up that gets you in the end.

Calpundit has been providing the most details on the AWOL story.