douglass carmichael: Politics

Regrets

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 14:54:01 GMT

Richard Armitage in a press conference on retiring as undersecretary of state said something so well many of us wish I had been sent by the leadership of the country .

Daily Kos — Outgoing Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said:

The Decembrist: Bill Thomas Gives the Game Away

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 05:20:19 GMT

This seems a very plausible analysis.

"What Thomas was saying is exactly the point I've been trying to make: that the Bush/DeLay goal is not primarily to privatize Social Security, although they would be happy to do that if they can. Rather, the goal is to create a political dynamic over the next one to two years in which the Republicans appear the party of opportunity, ownership, dynamism, and forward thinking, while the Democrats appear to be the defenders of old, boring, inadequate safety net programs. "

Problem is PR, or the content?

Sat, 15 Jan 2005 18:10:58 GMT

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/nyregion/13profile.html

A) PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

1. U.S. LACKING STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS - RICHARD HALLORAN (KOREA HERALD, JANUARY 13): America’s ability to persuade other nations "is in crisis," says a task force report from the Defense Science Board, "and it must be transformed with a strength of purpose that matches our commitment to diplomacy, defense, intelligence, law enforcement, and homeland security." "Policies will not succeed unless they are communicated to global and domestic audiences in ways that are credible and allow them to make informed, independent judgments," the board says. "Messages should seek to reduce, not to increase, perceptions of arrogance, opportunism, and double standards." Those messages are carried in public diplomacy, through American Cultural Centers abroad and exchange programs that bring foreigners to the United States, and public affairs offices that address the foreign press. In addition, strategic communications include broadcasts by the Voice of America and information operations that can involve controversial psychological warfare. Missing from these efforts are "strong leadership, strategic direction, adequate coordination, sufficient resources (funds) and a culture of measurement and evaluation," the report says.

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 23:13:26 GMT

Reviewing the Democrats, the question of press bias, and why there is no left of center in the US.

January 2, 2005

DEMOCRATS ENTANGLED

So What Happened in That Election, Anyhow?

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

First example:

For example, did Democrats lose because they were seen as lax on "values," which was the early verdict on the Kerry loss, or because they were seen as weak on terrorism?

Note how this precludes the possibility that they lost because they also seemed to support the war, and the polls show most people have had it with the war.

Note the definition of the "base" in the following

But the importance of values is disputed by more than a few Democrats, who obviously would prefer not to follow a plan that might irritate some fairly crucial parts of the base, be they secular Democrats, abortion rights advocates or supporters of gay marriage.

This precludes the possibility that the real "base" in the Democratic party is social fairness, less difference in wealth and income, support for social security, support for a more creative positive and peace inducing foreign policy.

He then quotes two Democrats without pointing out that their underlying position is strongly pro war in Iraq, and then fails to point out that Truman and Kennedy were much better at multilateralism, nor that the cold war was itself a bit of an invention.

"Values obviously are important," said Terry McAuliffe, the national Democratic party chairman, whose term expires in February. "But clearly, the overriding issue in this election was terrorism and national security. You don't get to those other issues until you have checked the box on national security."

Timothy J. Roemer, a moderate former Indiana congressman running to be Democratic chair, said: "We did not have a very compelling message about how to make Americans feel safer in a post 9/11 world. The message was more about Iraq, where our base voter was, than it was about talking through how, for instance, Truman and President Kennedy made Americans feel safe in the Cold War."

And to call Roemer a moderate is to say that anything let of center is not. As Kos tells us

Well, he's a strong opponent of abortion rights. And he's one of only 20 House Democrats to vote in favor of social security privatization back in 2001. We're a big enough tent to accommodate differences on abortion (I'm not prejudging Reid because of his abortion stance). But Roemer's social security record is a deal killer. Roemer is not a Reform Democrat, and, beyond that, clearly outside the party's mainstream.

The point is, for the press, any democrat who is for social justice, legal justice, multilateral approaches to international security for all, and in favor of some constraints on corporations, is considered beyond the pale. How did this happen?

In debate, it is hard to make progress when one side is de-ligitimated, and only small differences are allowed. The point is, for the press, any democrat who is for social justice, legal justice, multilateral approaches to international security for all, and in favor of some constraints on corporations, is considered beyond the pale. How did this happen

My proposal is that we are in a corporatist state, it is winning, and everyone knows it. So live with it. Those who oppose it are going against the system, not looking for small reforms, because there are not going to be any .

There are no Democrats, only Republicans. There are two Republican parties. One fairly southern and rural plus suburbs called Republican, and one more urban and capital intensive called Democrats. Anything to the left of these positions is basically called socialist, and defined as out of the game

Meanwhile

From ABC news's The Note for today

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=156238

In fact, the greater long-range consequence of the events in Asia gives the Leader of the Free World and the Commander in Chief another extended opportunity to sit astride the world look tough and compassionate at the same time.

It looks like Bush can do anything, and the rest of the country is powerless. Social security, environment, ..

And it just might be that he will lose on social security, and while progressives are fighting its destruction, environmental laws, energy policy, court appointments, proceed under the smoke screen.

For alternative voices we have things like

The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.

Listen to George Bush say that the will of God excuses his behavior. Listen, as he refuses to take responsibility, or express remorse, or even once, admit a mistake. Watch him strut, and tell us that he will only work with those who agree with him, and that each of us is only allowed one question (soon, it will be none at all; abusers hit hard when questioned; the press corps can tell you that). See him surround himself with only those who pledge oaths of allegiance. Hear him tell us that if we will only listen and do as he says and agree with his every utterance, all will go well for us (it won’t; we will never be worthy).

http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/001041.html

and

The War on Terror is a conservative frame. It is a phrase that was invented by Bush speechwriters after 9/11 for the sole purpose of casting the upcoming shift in foreign policy in terms that would evoke the conservative worldview in both the majority of the nation and the majority of electorate.
The War on Terror evokes specific conservative ideas that include, but are not limited to, all of the following: the need for continuing escalation of the size and influence of the military industrial complex; a simplistic conceptualization of identity revolving primarily around the notion of a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West; a view that threats can only be countered and tamed through the use of force; justification of any United States military action overseas, whether unilateral or pre-emptive.
When Democrats and liberals argue that Bush is not properly conducting the war on terror, they end up supporting that frame and all of the ideas it evokes. When Democrats and liberal hawks urge their candidates and fellow party members to take the war on terror more seriously, they end up reinforcing that frame in the mind of the nation and electorate and all of the conservative ideas it carries with it. When Democrats and liberals argue that there is ore to the war on terrorism than military actions they end of enhancing the power of the "war on terror" frame in the mind of the nation and the electorate and all of the conservative ideas the frame itself reinforces.
That so many Democrats are not only willing, but also chomping at the bit to go along with the conservative frame of the "war on terror," is the main reason why Bush won in 2004. By repeatedly and unquestioningly reinforcing the "war on terror" frame, we aided conservatives in their goal of pushing the country decidedly into the conservative camp when it came to foreign policy. That we continue to claim that Bush is losing the war on terror, that conservatives do not understand the war on terror, or that we do not take the war on terror seriously only serves to worsen the problem. By using the frame "war on terror," we continue to reinforce the conservative ideas I listed above in the minds of the electorate and then wonder why the country keeps voting for conservatives.

From http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/12/30/16138/652

Mon, 06 Dec 2004 01:49:25 GMT

The most important reading today has been the difficult article in The New Republic

www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20041213&s=beinart121304

AN ARGUMENT FOR A NEW LIBERALISM.

A Fighting Faith

by Peter Beinart

Post date: 12.02.04

Issue date: 12.13.04

Basically he argues that the democrats ("The Liberals") must embrace a new cold war mentality toward "Islamic Fundamentalism." He says it is the only way to win, and it requires confronting the soft side of the democratic party, and abandoning the social issues ( he does not name them but environment, economy, health...).

He does not see that the basic humanitarian side of the democrats is concerned that the it is the US fundamentalists that mirror the Islamic fundamentalists, and support the same kind of totalitarian government - in response to each other.

He seems to reduce the whole issue to winning. An alternative reading would be that he is trying to mobilize the democrats to be a war party. Why? protecting Israel might be one answer. It is not clear what other logic leads down this path, especially if the argument that it is the way to win fails. He wants to say that people Voted against Kerry because he was weak on Iraq, which equals weak on Terror. But the polls show that people are much more concerned about terror than the war in Iraq, and their concern about Iraq is that it is such a mess.

Therefore being concerned with terror is not the same as supporting the war. Kerry made attempts to separate the issues, but because he was ambivalent in his voting about Iraq, and talked at the end about More troops to fight harder to win, I think the evidence shows that many couldn't see a difference between Kerry and Bush, and that sometimes foolish consistency is smarter than flip-flopping. It may be that the popular perception of both candidates is close to the discernible truth.

But now to the article.

During World War II, only one major liberal organization, the Union for Democratic Action (UDA), had banned communists from its ranks.
Announcing the formation of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the statement declared, "[B]ecause the interests of the United States are the interests of free men everywhere," America should support "democratic and freedom-loving peoples the world over." That meant unceasing opposition to communism, an ideology "hostile to the principles of freedom and democracy on which the Republic has grown great."

This is his set up. That being militant against Islamic fundamentalism is equivalent, and that he has no critique of the costs to US society of the way Bush has gong about it.

At the time, the ADA's was still a minority view among American liberals. Two of the most influential journals of liberal opinion, The New Republic and The Nation, both rejected militant anti-communism.
The American Civil Liberties Union (aclu) denounced communism, as did the naacp. By 1949, three years after Winston Churchill warned that an "iron curtain" had descended across Europe, Schlesinger could write in The Vital Center: "Mid-twentieth century liberalism, I believe, has thus been fundamentally reshaped ... by the exposure of the Soviet Union, and by the deepening of our knowledge of man. The consequence of this historical re-education has been an unconditional rejection of totalitarianism."

And he continues to equate anti totalitarian with being against Islamic fundamentalism and for the war in Iraq, not noting that Iraq was one of the most secular Arabic countries, itself opposed to fundamentalism (and conceivably holding it at bay more than the US or post Saddam government can do).

Today, three years after September 11 brought the United States face-to-face with a new totalitarian threat, liberalism has still not "been fundamentally reshaped" by the experience.

And here the equation is complete, and the idea that American liberalism needs to act cold war toward Islamic fundamentalism as if it were Soviet communism. The shift in scale makes Beinart Quixotic, spending all on very weak opponents, while strengthening them

On health care, gay rights, and the environment, there is a positive vision, articulated with passion. But there is little liberal passion to win the struggle against Al Qaeda--even though totalitarian Islam has killed thousands of Americans and aims to kill millions;

He reduces the humanitarian justice side of the democratic party as completely as do the Bush folks.

When liberals talk about America's new era, the discussion is largely negative--against the Iraq war, against restrictions on civil liberties, against America's worsening reputation in the world. In sharp contrast to the first years of the cold war, post-September 11 liberalism has produced leaders and institutions--most notably Michael Moore and MoveOn--that do not put the struggle against America's new totalitarian foe at the center of their hopes for a better world. As a result, the Democratic Party boasts a fairly hawkish foreign policy establishment and a cadre of politicians and strategists eager to look tough. But, below this small elite sits a Wallacite grassroots that views America's new struggle as a distraction, if not a mirage. Two elections, and two defeats, into the September 11 era, American liberalism still has not had its meeting at the Willard Hotel. And the hour is getting late.

Get rid of the softies is the message, make the democratic party the center of a new cold war.

The real change this year was on foreign policy. In 2000, only 12 percent of voters cited "world affairs" as their paramount issue; this year, 34 percent mentioned either Iraq or terrorism. (Combined, the two foreign policy categories dwarf moral values.) Voters who cited terrorism backed Bush even more strongly than those who cited moral values. And it was largely this new cohort--the same one that handed the GOP its Senate majority in 2002--that accounts for Bush's improvement over 2000. As Paul Freedman recently calculated in Slate, if you control for Bush's share of the vote four years ago, "a 10-point increase in the percentage of voters [in a given state] citing terrorism as the most important problem translates into a 3-point Bush gain. A 10-point increase in morality voters, on the other hand, has no effect."

This does not do a good job of sorting out the difference between the Iraq voting and the Terrorism voting, nor does it include the possibility of a much more strategic "win the hearts and minds" strategy and what it could accomplish, which was crippled by the negatives f the war (its stupidity, lying, meanness, ill-planning and Prisons scandals, to name a few). Nor does he in the article deal with the loss of esteem in all the countries of the world (according to poling such as done by Pew on worldwide country by country attitudes toward the US.

You get the idea. Here are further excerpts and a closing comment.

On national security, Kerry's nomination was a compromise between a party elite desperate to neutralize the terrorism issue and a liberal base unwilling to redefine itself for the post-September 11 world.
Like the other leading candidates in the race, he voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. This not only pleased Kerry's consultants, who hoped to inoculate him against charges that he was soft on terrorism, but it satisfied his foreign policy advisers as well.
For top Kerry foreign policy advisers, such as Richard Holbrooke and Joseph Biden, Bosnia and Kosovo seemed like models for a new post-Vietnam liberalism that embraced U.S. power. And September 11 validated the transformation. Democratic foreign policy wonks not only supported the war in Afghanistan, they generally felt it didn't go far enough--urging a larger nato force capable of securing the entire country.
At the Democratic convention, Biden said that the "overwhelming obligation of the next president is clear"--to exercise "the full measure of our power" to defeat Islamist totalitarianism.
Three months before the Iowa caucuses, facing mass liberal defections to Dean, Kerry voted against Bush's $87 billion supplemental request for Iraq. With that vote, the Kerry compromise was born. To Kerry's foreign policy advisers, some of whom supported the supplemental funding, he remained a vehicle for an aggressive war on terrorism. And that may well have been Kerry's own intention. But, to the liberal voters who would choose the party's nominee, he became a more electable Dean.
That wasn't an accident. Had Kerry aggressively championed a national mobilization to win the war on terrorism, he wouldn't have been the Democratic nominee.
Kerry was a flawed candidate, but he was not the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem was the party's liberal base, which would have refused to nominate anyone who proposed redefining the Democratic Party in the way the ADA did in 1947.
In 1950, the journal The New Leader divided American liberals into "hards" and "softs." The hards, epitomized by the ADA, believed anti-communism was the fundamental litmus test for a decent left. Non-communism was not enough; opposition to the totalitarian threat was the prerequisite for membership in American liberalism because communism was the defining moral challenge of the age.

Moore is a non-totalitarian, but, like Wallace, he is not an anti-totalitarian. And, when Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and Tom Daschle flocked to the Washington premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11, and when Moore sat in Jimmy Carter's box at the Democratic convention, many Americans wondered whether the Democratic Party was anti-totalitarian either. [badly wrong minded]

By January 2002, MoveOn was collaborating with 9-11peace.org, a website founded by Eli Pariser, who would later become MoveOn's most visible spokesman. One early 9-11peace.org bulletin urged supporters to "[c]all world leaders and ask them to call off the bombing," and to "[f]ly the UN Flag as a symbol of global unity and support for international law." Others questioned the wisdom of increased funding for the CIA and the deployment of American troops to assist in anti-terrorist efforts in the Philippines. In October 2002, after 9-11peace.org was incorporated into MoveOn, an organization bulletin suggested that the United States should have "utilize[d] international law and judicial procedures, including due process" against bin Laden and that "it's possible that a tribunal could even have garnered cooperation from the Taliban."

Bush has not increased the size of the U.S. military since September 11--despite repeated calls from hawks in his own party--in part because, given his massive tax cuts, he simply cannot afford to. An anti-totalitarian liberalism would attack those tax cuts not merely as unfair and fiscally reckless, but, above all, as long-term threats to America's ability to wage war against fanatical Islam. Today, however, there is no liberal constituency for such an argument in a Democratic Party in which only 2 percent of delegates called "terrorism" their paramount issue and another 1 percent mentioned "defense."
or liberals to make such arguments effectively, they must first take back their movement from the softs.
As Mary Sperling McAuliffe notes in her book Crisis on the Left: Cold War Politics and American Liberals, 1947-1954, while some of the expelled affiliates were openly communist, others were expelled merely for refusing to declare themselves anti-communist, a sharp contrast from the Popular Front mentality that governed MoveOn's opposition to the Iraq war.
In 1969, Ronald Radosh could remark in his book, American Labor and United States Foreign Policy, on the "total absorption of American labor leaders in the ideology of Cold War liberalism."
That absorption mattered. It created a constituency, deep in the grassroots of the Democratic Party, for the marriage between social justice at home and aggressive anti-communism abroad. Today, however, the U.S. labor movement is largely disconnected from the war against totalitarian Islam, even though independent, liberal-minded unions are an important part of the battle against dictatorship and fanaticism in the Muslim world.

But, if elements within American labor threw themselves into the movement for reform in the Muslim world, they would create a base of support for Democrats who put winning the war on terrorism at the center of their campaigns.
Challenging the "doughface" feminists who opposed the Afghan war and those labor unionists with a knee-jerk suspicion of U.S. power might produce bitter internal conflict. And doing so is harder today because liberals don't have a sympathetic White House to enact liberal anti-totalitarianism policies. But, unless liberals stop glossing over fundamental differences in the name of unity, they never will.
But, despite these differences, Islamist totalitarianism--like Soviet totalitarianism before it--threatens the United States and the aspirations of millions across the world. And, as long as that threat remains, defeating it must be liberalism's north star. Methods for defeating totalitarian Islam are a legitimate topic of internal liberal debate. But the centrality of the effort is not. The recognition that liberals face an external enemy more grave, and more illiberal, than George W. Bush should be the litmus test of a decent left.

Today, the war on terrorism is partially obscured by the war in Iraq, which has made liberals cynical about the purposes of U.S. power. But, even if Iraq is Vietnam, it no more obviates the war on terrorism than Vietnam obviated the battle against communism.

Of all the things contemporary liberals can learn from their forbearers half a century ago, perhaps the most important is that national security can be a calling.
If the struggles for gay marriage and universal health care lay rightful claim to liberal idealism, so does the struggle to protect the United States by spreading freedom in the Muslim world. It, too, can provide the moral purpose for which a new generation of liberals yearn. As it did for the men and women who convened at the Willard Hotel.

We don't need a calling for the ambitious, we need a calling for truth and justice that appeals to the majority of mankind. The choice is not between being against totalitaruanism or leaving it alone, it is between getting it here in a worst kind of war there, vs working for justice and a liveable world.

Beinart's forced logic seems to argue that to win the next election (or to have won the last several) the Democrats ("Liberals") need to act like its a new cold war. I think most of us find that logic flawed. Multilateral justice and targeted police action would be much better, and leave us some room to deal with larger issues like environment, energy, spread of nuclear weapons.If so, what is his motive for going down this new cold war path? Why do we need to force terrorism (world wide a still small number of people and casualties compared to Bhopal, auto accidents...) to be the single issue to define the party?

How much of it is to keep the US on a path that protects Israel. Is there any other explanation?

Friedman in the NYT

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/opinion/05friedman.html?oref=login&;hp>

Of all the irresponsible aspects of the 2005 budget bill that

the Republican-led Congress just passed, nothing could be more

irresponsible than the fact that funding for the National

Science Foundation was cut by nearly 2 percent, or $105

million.

On CBS news , there are other ways..

Millions of folded paper cranes fluttered down from warplanes in the skies over southern Thailand Sunday as the air force completed a mission of peace aimed at expressing the nation's hope for an end to separatist violence in the Muslim-dominated ...

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 23:41:11 GMT

Thanksgiving was a time to think, to experience, to connect with nature and people. It seems like the Republicans now will turn to some serious infighting, and it may make monolithic governance even harder for them.

The Democrats don't seem to have a Central story: nearly winning the election, demographics moving in their favor (young voters more than any other group for Kerry), but the need to tell a story brings out how little of an agreed on story there is. The war? Globalization? Corporatism? There is no real agreement.

Makes one just thoughtful.

I read Vonnegut's 1950 Player Piano, a wonderful story about a dumb Texas governor, and the division of the world into managers, machines, and prols.

What most caught my attention was that the prol description fits much of the red voter profile, but that much of the managers (not admired in the story) fit the profile of many blue voters, and especially their spokespeople.

Suggests that the current red/ blue division is very thin, and the real division lines cut across all known identifiers.

Sat, 20 Nov 2004 05:53:04 GMT

More on garden world

from http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/opinion/20rogers.html

It's Easy Being Green
By WILL ROGERS
San Francisco — Though nobody seemed to notice, Republican and Democratic voters seemed to be of similar minds on one issue this election: the environment. Across the country, in red states and blue states, Americans voted decisively to spend more money for natural areas, neighborhood parks and conservation in their communities. Of 161 conservation ballot measures, 120 - or 75 percent - were approved by voters. Three-and-a-quarter billion dollars were dedicated to land conservation.
In Florida, for example, President George W. Bush won at least 60 percent of the vote in Lake, Indian River and Collier Counties. On the same ballot, more than two-thirds of the voters in each of those counties approved local park bonds worth $126 million, by margins as high as 73 percent. In Gallatin County, Mont., where the president beat John Kerry by 56 percent to 41 percent, 63 percent of voters approved $10 million in bonds to buy conservation easements to preserve ranchlands. In Chesterfield County, Va., which Mr. Bush carried 63 percent to 37 percent, voters passed a $20 million park bond by 76 percent to 24 percent.
It was the same in the states where Mr. Kerry prevailed. In Massachusetts, 10 townships approved extra taxes to support conservation and historic preservation. In Los Angeles, which Mr. Kerry won by 73 percent to 26 percent, 76 percent of voters approved a $500 million water-quality bond that included $100 million for conservation. And in both Burlington, Vt., where Mr. Kerry won 75 percent of the vote, and in Kendall County, Tex., where the president won 81 percent of the vote, voters approved $5 million to protect open spaces.
So what's the story? Simply put, these measures unify Americans. It's hard to be against new parks and trails, or to disagree with wanting to protect farms and forests from development. What's more, voters have learned that these measures often provide local solutions to water-quality problems: preserving natural lands in watersheds can help protect drinking water sources or reduce storm-water runoff.
It helps that success is contagious. For example, more than a decade ago, New Jersey created a program to provide extra money to local communities that had approved measures to raise money for local conservation programs. The program has enjoyed sustained support from Republican and Democratic legislators and governors. Now, every county in New Jersey has a program to finance land conservation, along with more than 200 of the state's cities, townships and boroughs.
True, this year's election didn't turn on environmental issues. But the voters sent a message anyway: whether we're red or blue, we all have a little bit of green in us.
Will Rogers is the president of the Trust For Public Land, a national conservation organization.

Thu, 18 Nov 2004 01:18:07 GMT

We are also confused about the meanings of key words, especially liberal and conservative. Favoring private property, concern for fellow human beings, desire for an ethical society, preserving what is good, avoiding war, or tending to side with tradition? Which goes with which?

Starting in 2003 I was part of a small group consulting to one of the campaigns on the use of language, and, noticing the difficulty the “progressives” had entering imaginatively and compassionately into the possible thought process of the right, I worked up a seminar called "what is on the minds of the Republicans." There were two core ideas.

That both progressives and the right feared bigness, but projected it on to the other, and did not take responsibility for their own ties to bigness. The right feared big government and its bureaucracy, and the left (using these as token words, filled with abstraction and error) feared big business and big military. The left was tied to government and high tech business, and the right to business (especially large old style: energy, agriculture, pharmacy and energy) and the military, and to some degree church.

The right was afraid of a government bureaucracy that could undermine family responsibility with welfare, but was happy with farm subsidies and military pensions. and the left feared big business with its concentration of wealth and ties to a media which "determined" peoples' point of view.

Each side demonized the other in order to prevent the confusion that came from seeing how close their values were. They all believe in education, justice, security, love of nature, healthy families, and a home with access to good food, health and hope.

The divergences, of which there are many and real, were not understood for what they meant - such as gun control and abortion, or Justice and Iraq and the nature of security, and the increasing marginalization in the economy of many - to the other side.

At the same time, George Lakoff's work on political Language ( see his book Moral Politics) became the buzz. He saw the left as favoring a kind of government acting like a nurturing tolerant family with care and concern for losers. The right was drawn to the image of the paternalistic one right way family building strength of character to win in a tough world.

I could see the advantages of both views. It seems to me that the two together: fear of bigness and image of the family, combined, could "explain" lots of political behavior and the use of language to appeal to voters.

I think these can reduce to fear of change and technology, increasing alienation and the destruction of the ideas around human nature. The left stresses the need for support under change and the right favors retrenchment (and reaching out to religious community) to avoid the changes.

Fundamental issues, such as corporate charters, are not present in the larger debate, but polls I’ve seen and a few informal ones I’ve done suggest that the increase in corporate power, loss of environment, and threts to children are powerful issues.

What we on the progressive side need is to honor the fears on all sides, see our own side in an alliance with corporations and communications technology (for which a major customer is military), and tell a story that is attractive, not articulated in hate or slander.

A business climate that was regulated to protect the environment, maximizing hi-tech and even biotech, with an encouragement of entrepreneurial activity on a regional bases, new forms of more expressive and creative education, mortgage deductions only for houses under say 200,000, and an international policy of fairness and multilateral efforts, making the world safe for travel of people, not just money, protect social security, and rethink medical aid for the vast majority of non exotic illnesses…plus a clear denunciation of the war in Iraq, new efforts to rethink oil so that we don’t victimize the ME by either staying or leaving, new initiatives with Latin America and China (and an interesting plan for Cuba that is humane), and election reform that is clear and transparent. Boldness would have won this election.

Sun, 07 Nov 2004 19:29:14 GMT

Pasted from <http://www.dailykos.com/>

ABOUT THAT URBAN/RURAL DIVIDE. Gallup's post-election poll seems to do some major damage to the rapidly emerging conventional wisdom about the 2004 election. According to Gallup, George W. Bush improved his share among suburban voters (51 percent in 2000, 54 percent in 2004) and among urban voters (35 percent in 2000, 44 percent in 2004) while doing worse among rural voters (60 percent in 2000, down to 54 percent in 2004). Similarly, while Bush gained among all categories of educational attainment, his biggest improvement was among those holding postgraduate degrees (47 percent, up from 43 percent) while his smallest gain was among those with high school or less (46 percent, up from 45 percent).

Other bits of the polling do tend to support the conventional wisdom that Bush made significant gains among self-identified conservatives or Republicans, and big gains among regular churchgoers, while staying flat among the non-observant. Still, it appears that in a few respects, the cultural divisions in the United States are narrowing, rather than widening.

Add this to the Map link yesterday and throw in some more data from EDM on related subjects:

Religion and the 2004 Election

More importantly, between 2000 and 2004, President Bush's largest gains occurred among less religious voters, not among more religious voters. Among those attending services more than weekly and those attending every week, support for Bush rose by 1 percent, from 63 percent in 2000 to 64 percent in 2004. However, among those attending services a few times a month, support for Bush rose by 4 points, from 46 percent to 50 percent, among those attending only a few times a year, support for Bush rose by 3 points, from 42 percent to 45 percent, and among those never attending services, support for Bush rose by 4 points, from 32 percent to 36 percent.

Bottom line: the President made gains across the board among voters, regardless of their degree of religious commitment but he made his largest gains among less religious voters.

Sun, 07 Nov 2004 19:28:42 GMT

Bush is radical, Kerry was middle of the road. That the press and Rove have gotten the public to accept that Kerry is left liberal is a distortion that leaves us all fairy weak and without leverage, leaving the right and middle to Bush. The left does not exist in America, and the middle is pushed out to the periphery. The middle has no leadership, and not much press.

It is in this condition of the frame that events will unfold, creating opportunity to get heard, but midst destruction, economic and security. As the country senses this we will move between paralysis of the middle/left to attempts to block Bush actions.

What will make a difference? Falluja, Blair's visit, the start of the social security discussion (for which his middle support is not prepared).

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 18:24:52 GMT

Emerging question: should there be a fight to make Kerry minority leader in the Senate?

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 14:48:12 GMT

There are two problems

Iraq and economy.

The cure in Iraq is a multinational policing of terror

The cure for the economy is to recognize that too many are in jail, widely weak education, too few good jobs, and skewed income and wealth are all intertwined, and a goal of better distribution is essential., and a new business model that is small scale, regional, hi-tech, entrepreneurial and environmentally rigorous.

Politics now is a power game with spoils to the winner: no incentive for a really good social solution.

The democrats had no answer to Bush's "everyone wants freedom and democracy." Kerry did not offer any actual alternative on Iraq, nor on the economy. He avoided all the real issues, mirroring rather than countering Bush.

Kerry did offer a more reasoned style, but it appeared weak and inconsequential. It did not appear to be gentle,warm, humane and related.

Kerry offered nothing that appealed to the red counties. These are mostly people who are traumatized by change, and losers in it, left behind. They are motivated by fear and resentment and their need is primarily to make their failing families work. They cling to the only "community" offering them anything: the church. Outside are drugs, pregnancies, job threat, seductive media, which shows them a world of danger not of promise.

A straightforward proposal for policing terror (and corporate crime), and for vigorous environmentally friendly economy, with the education to get everyone there, would have appealed, and won if it were presented with tolerance, even affection, for regional differences.

Wed, 27 Oct 2004 21:07:20 GMT

A great writer talks

at http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/27/1428233

AMY GOODMAN: But right now, we're going to turn to Alice Walker, looking at artists, actors who have become fiercely politicized in this time. Alice walker, who wrote the book The Color Purple. Her latest book is called Now is the Time to Open Your Hearts. She recently came to New York to be part of a conference sponsored by the Organization of Women Writers of Africa. It took place at New York University. This is Alice Walker.

ALICE WALKER: I want to tell that you three weeks ago I went down to my birthplace in Georgia. I was born in the middle of the deep, deep, deep countryside. Very beautiful. But I went because we had just discovered, someone in Georgia just discovered the grave of my great, great grandmother, Sally Montgomery Walker. She was born in 1861, she died in 1900. She was buried with four of her children, and she was in this forested area, and nobody had ever talked about how she died. She died very young. She was buried with four children, and there was no word of this in my family. My sense of it is that her ending was probably so bad, and there were a lot of endings that were bad in my family, and in the families of many people who were enslaved. She, of course, was born during slavery. But no word about what happened to her, what happened to her and her children. So, I went back to pay my respects and to take flowers, and I was lucky enough to be able to get my Ugandan roommate – when I was at Spellman my roommate was this wonderful woman from Uganda who made me care deeply about Africans and African women. In fact I went to Uganda trying to understand how Constance had been created and produced by this country which before Idi Amin was very beautiful, very tranquil and green. So anyway Constance and I and my entire women's council -- I belonged to a women's council -- went to visit this grave.
Now this part of where I grew up is like so much of the world. It's being completely overrun by rich white people. So in order to get to this grave, we had to ask permission of these white people in their big, ugly house. As I was getting out of the car, carrying my bouquet of flowers, I mean, the whole armful of flowers, all of these -- all of the women in my women's council, all of us very, you know, clearly going to a place that means something to us. So, out of the house comes this Miss Somebody. And she has in her hand a flyer from The Color Purple film. And she honestly says, “Will you sign this?” So, we continued through her, and went on and did what we must do. We did what we must do. We must honor the people who have been before us. We must show them that we are here. We sat there -- my Constance from Uganda, my friend Belvee from – I mean, so many of us with so many histories that are so painful. Belvee’s mother had been actually beaten to death. So, we had a long time of crying there. We watered those graves with our tears. We were happy to do it.
So, from this woman, from Sally Montgomery Walker, and Jim Walker, her father, who actually outlived her. In my family, we live to be a long time -- we live to be really old. One of my great, great, great grandmothers lived to be 125. So, you know, just -- we can outlive them. She outlived everybody who would have owned her. I'm just telling you these things to give you some idea who we are. We can live a long time. We better eat better. And exercise. So, anyway, this woman somehow produced eventually my father and my father and mother produced our family. My father was a sharecropper, my mother, too. Very poor. I was just thinking today, did I ever see a doctor? I only saw one, I think, in my entire childhood. Nobody could afford it. And this, you know, my father sometimes making as much as $300 a year, when they deigned to pay him anything, usually at the end of the year, they came and said, you owe me, or you have to move. And we moved every year.
So, this is to remind you, you know -- this, what we have endured already, some of us, is what they plan for the rest of the world. This is it. This is it. Get really clear. This is a toxic culture. It is a culture that eats people, that eats beauty. It cannot live without feeding, and it is insatiable. It cares nothing for us, really. And it helps to really understand that deeply, deeply, deeply -- to make women's councils, to have groups of our own, to have places where we grow, where we are seen, where we are appreciated, and where we are loved. Just remember that this is a culture that we did not design. We did not design this. When you look at your TV, you will have some idea of the insanity of it. You know, until you are addicted then you think it’s sane, but really it is insane. It is an insane culture. And it's very, very hard for us to thrive here. Very hard. But we have to. We have to thrive. We have to continue, partly because –-
Is that the sign of stopping? No? Oh. I just got a cell phone. It's very miraculous. But the only problem with the cell phone, I think, is that the substance that is in it that makes it work is from the Congo. You know this already. I'm convinced that the grief that the people are suffering in the Congo as they rip off this material will end up really hurting us. So, be very careful. Use that thing very, very little. You know, very little. It cannot -- something connected to such evil cannot be good for us. Really. So, I -- there are a couple of other things I wanted to mention. I mean, I haven't -- I haven’t any notes. I just brought myself, and I figure, you know, this -- this is it. Myself is it.
I was looking at a film earlier, and somebody was saying, well, what about Alice Walker and Audrey Laura and these white men. I thought, oh, honey, please. You know, can you believe that with everything that's going on in the world, people really care who you sleep with? I mean, isn't it just amazing?
But anyway, I wanted to mention one of the -- one of the projects that I have given myself is to travel the world to see how the people are doing. You know? And I encourage that for Americans, because do you know there are only 14% of Americans have passports. And that's one of the reasons when they see bombs falling on other countries, they don't know what it's falling on. They can't make the leap. As sad as that is to think about, but we have to go. We have to travel. We have to travel to see the people. We have to remember that we are our country. You know, forget about being, quote, an American, big fat A, and acting that way, which is so horrible. You have ever been in places where you see Americans come trooping in, you know, wanting their burgers, and just making the people feel really, just like killing them? But we have to go. We have to go to see how the people are doing. So, in the last year, I have been to many places. I was in Cuba. The people are holding on. The people are carrying on. You know, they're just amazing, in their tenacity and in their feeling about what it means to be human. I was in Hawaii, which I consider a country, not a state. And similarly to -- similarly to my experience in Georgia, the white people are just basically taking over the place, and there was a woman -- they had just snuck this huge house -- they managed to build a huge house in this area, one of the last sacred Hawaiian places. And somehow they had done it. I think they had a painting of the landscape that they put up so people when they looked toward the ocean, they just see the painting, and they didn’t see this huge house going up. There's a huge house now and that's in everybody's view. They all hate it, and plus, the house pad was laid out over 19 graves of Hawaiians. Now, Miss -- Miss -- Miss Carol, Miss whatever -- Miss, you know – Miss. Miss says, now, the reason we moved here is because we love the multicultural diversity. Wait a minute, Miss is not done. Then Miss says, and because my house is going to be decorated in the Nepalese style, I think we will just fit right in. So, the people there are suffering. People are suffering. People are suffering deeply. The same displacement, the same people coming with no consciousness about where they're going, who they are with, what the people are doing, what the whole thing is about. None.
And then I went to South Korea. That's where the people, you know, when you see them, they are looking really good. They're all, you know, -- what happens when this country bombs other people and really makes them suffer for decades, you know later after they have beaten them to a pulp, they just give them stuff. Our taxes, but -- so, they all have, you know, cars and gadgets and good schools, and, you know, all of the things that in the ghetto, you cannot find, really around here. So, it's all there. On the other hand, they have incredible pollution because it all is just really fast. There's not much planning. Then I went to a women's island off the coast of South Korea, and they just discovered that when during the Korean war, when the US bombed as far down as Seoul and destroyed most of the city, they continued to an island that is now called Woman's Island – Jeju Island -- where apparently and they have just been able to talk about this, our government slaughtered 13,000 men on that island as communists. So that's part of the reason it's now a women's island. You know, all of those men, whether they were communists or not, were wiped out. So, there's all of that happening. But the part – and the feminists in South Korea are wonderful. They're very strong. Very energetic. They almost wore me -- I mean, I crawled back on that plane to come home because they worked me so hard, you know going around talking to people. But the part that was hardest for me to deal with, and this -- you know, we really have to work so hard with our children, and part of it is trying to figure out how to raise them in a toxic culture without killing – you know, the culture killing them. So, in this place where all of the people have all of the gadgets, all of the cars and everything, they also have an incredible amount of plastic surgery. So that they are all trying to make their eyes round. They're all trying to make their noses, you know, skinny. They're all trying to do stuff to their cheeks. The feminists, you know, who are the ones who are holding the consciousness about this are just having a very difficult time, and in fact, the only reason this had become something of a thing was because there was a school for gifted children, and on the day that all these gifted children graduated, their parents took the entire class for plastic surgery. So -- and then I was telling this to a friend, and he found out that these same plastic surgeons in South Korea now are being brought into China to work on their faces.

Wed, 27 Oct 2004 19:32:16 GMT

This is pretty impressive, and shows how much the rural folks are left out. This was 2000 but suggestive.

Mon, 25 Oct 2004 14:37:37 GMT

As the situation in Iraq worsens, the way of talking about it gets better, slowly. This should have been written on the eve of the war, or earlier.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/opinion/25brzezinski.html?oref=login&;pagewanted=print&position

excerpt

How to Make New Enemies

By ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

t is striking that in spite of all the electoral fireworks over policy in Iraq, both presidential candidates offer basically similar solutions. Their programs stress intensified Iraqi self-help and more outside help in the quest for domestic stability. Unfortunately, these prescriptions by themselves are not likely to work.

Both candidates have become prisoners of a worldview that fundamentally misdiagnoses the central challenge of our time. President Bush's "global war on terror" is a politically expedient slogan without real substance, serving to distort rather than define. It obscures the central fact that a civil war within Islam is pitting zealous fanatics against increasingly intimidated moderates. The undiscriminating American rhetoric and actions increase the likelihood that the moderates will eventually unite with the jihadists in outraged anger and unite the world of Islam in a head-on collision with America.

After all, look what's happening in Iraq. For a growing number of Iraqis, their "liberation" from Saddam Hussein is turning into a despised foreign occupation. Nationalism is blending with religious fanaticism into a potent brew of hatred. The rates of desertion from the American-trained new Iraqi security forces are dangerously high, while the likely escalation of United States military operations against insurgent towns will generate a new rash of civilian casualties and new recruits for the rebels.

The situation is not going to get any easier. If President Bush is re-elected, our allies will not be providing more money or troops for the American occupation. Mr. Bush has lost credibility among other nations, which distrust his overall approach. Moreover, the British have been drawing down their troop strength in Iraq, the Poles will do the same, and the Pakistanis recently made it quite plain that they will not support a policy in the Middle East that they view as self-defeating.

Sun, 24 Oct 2004 17:18:34 GMT

This is very helpful. From

http://contrapositive.blogspot.com/2004/10/election-night-cheat-sheet-as-promised.html

ELECTION NIGHT CHEAT SHEET As promised, here's your hour-by-hour guide to election night 2004.

There are bound to be at least a few mistakes and misjudgments buried in here. (Spot one? E-mail us.) On the whole, though, this run-down should give readers an idea of what to expect as the evening of November 2 unfolds.

Three preliminary notes:

1) For the purposes of this post, best-case results for a candidate are results in which he wins every state he has a realistic chance of carrying, according to recent polls.

Expected results are the results each candidate's camp is counting on to provide the margin of victory. (These numbers are based on CONTRAPOSITIVE's own research and analysis, rather than public statements by either campaign.)

Finally, the needs category refers to the totals required for each candidate to maintain a realistic chance of ultimately emerging as the winner.

2) Results in many of the battleground states will likely be slow to trickle out, and in some states it may be hours (or weeks!) until we know the winner. So the hour-by-hour tally below is very much a theoretical snapshot. The actual counting of votes is likely to be a more fluid process, especially if the numbers are close.

3) All times are EST.

CANARY IN THE COALMINE: 7PM

58 Electoral Votes in play

Polls close in Georgia, Kentucky, Indiana, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia. (Some Florida and New Hampshire polling stations close as well.)

ANALYSIS: If it takes more than a few minutes for the networks to call Indiana or Virginia for Bush, that may bode well for John Kerry.

And if Daniel Mongiardo or Inez Tenenbaum are able to keep the numbers close in early returns from their respective Senate races in Kentucky and South Carolina, it means the Democrats have a chance of taking over the Senate.

Having learned from past mistakes, the networks are unlikely to have much to say about the early returns from New Hampshire or Florida. And CONTRAPOSITIVE doesn't expect any reputable news organizations to call the Sunshine State one way or the other till at least 8pm.

But if word trickles out that John Kerry is ahead in New Hampshire, we may be in for a long evening. By contrast, if Bush pulls ahead in that state, Florida starts to look like a "must" for Kerry.

BOTTOM LINE:

Bush expects: 55
Bush needs: 55

Kerry best-case: 16
Kerry expects: 3
Kerry needs: 3

EARLY WARNING: 7:30PM

83 Electoral Votes in play

Polls close in Ohio and West Virginia.

ANALYSIS: This will be our first real sense of where the presidential election stands. Ohio's results may trickle in slowly, but the candidate who winds up with that state in his column will be breathing a lot easier, and the candidate who loses it will have almost no margin for error.

If Kerry winds up ahead in West Virginia, Karl Rove will be cursing the repeal of steel tariffs. The phrase "one-term president" will likely find its way into the thoughts of senior administration officials even before it passes through Dan Rather's lips.

BOTTOM LINE:

Bush expects: 80
Bush needs: 75

Kerry best-case: 41
Kerry expects: 23
Kerry needs: 3

SERIOUS BUSINESS: 8PM

260 Electoral Votes in play

Polls close in Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

ANALYSIS: A lot to keep track of here.

But first and foremost: If Bush wins New Jersey, it's over. Find a bad movie on cable, break out the booze, and cry yourself to sleep.

And in Pennsylvania: If Kerry is down here, it'll be wise to at least keep the booze close at hand.

Also of note: Keep an eye on the Senate race in Oklahoma--if Rep. Brad Carson is unable to give the Democrats a pick-up here, the Republicans will almost certainly retain control of the Senate.

And in Florida, Betty Castor's numbers will be another indication of where Democratic prospects for control of the Senate stand. Not quite as important as a Carson victory for Democrats, but close.

Speaking of Florida: Both candidates can win the election without picking up this state. The task is harder for Bush--especially if he doesn't win in New Hampshire.

So, to be clear: If, sometime between 8pm and 9pm, Kerry gets the call in both Ohio and Florida, it means George W. Bush is headed for the door. At that point only the Supreme Court will be able save him.

BOTTOM LINE:

Bush best-case: 201
Bush expects: 161
Bush needs: 143

Kerry best-case: 179
Kerry expects: 150
Kerry needs: 91

BREATHER: 8:30PM

281 Electoral Votes in play

Polls close in Arkansas and North Carolina.

ANALYSIS: All things being equal, if Kerry is able to keep either of these states close, the Bush team will have reason to sweat.

BOTTOM LINE:

Bush best-case: 222
Bush expects: 182
Bush needs: 164

Kerry best-case: 190
Kerry expects: 150
Kerry needs: 112

CRUNCH TIME: 9PM

431 Electoral Votes in play

Polls close in Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, New York, Michigan, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

ANALYSIS: At this point, the election could be over--but only if George W. Bush has won contested states (Arkansas, Florida and Ohio) earlier in the evening. (In theory, Kerry could also wrap up the election at 9PM, but he would need to have won North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia to do it--far less likely.)

A few minutes after 9PM, though, in all likelihood, the result will still be up for grabs. All eyes will then turn to Michigan. If Kerry wins there (as polls suggest he should) attention will shift to Minnesota and New Mexico.

If the Democratic nominee has taken Pennsylvania and at least one of New Hampshire and Maine--and if things are either split or not yet decided in Ohio and Florida--the contest now enters the nailbitting phase on both sides.

Of the two toss-up states with polls closing at 9PM, Bush has the better shot in New Mexico. A win there could take him to the brink of victory.

By contrast, a Kerry upset in Colorado or Arizona would be a catastrophe for the Bush campaign. Expect smoke to pour out of the ears of conservative pundits if Republicans lose in either of those states.

If Kerry is able to build a big lead early in Minnesota, that will bode well for the Democrats in Wisconsin--which (at least if Kerry is on the plus-side) is likely to be tighter. An even race in Minnesota could be a bad sign for Kerry.

On the Senate side, with the polls closing in South Dakota and Colorado, we should have a reasonably good idea of where control of that body stands. If Tom Daschle and Ken Salazar are both able to squeak by, the Democrats should have a shot at gaining control. Without those victories, forget about it.

Finally, on the presidential front: If things remain close (which is to say, if Bush and Kerry are both near their targeted tallies of 257 and 200, respectively) you will want to keep an eye on the referendum to amend Colorado's state constitution. (Note: Totals below assume that this proposal fails.) You may not have heard much about it yet, but you might just be in for a crash course.

BOTTOM LINE:

Bush best-case: 372
Bush expects: 257
Bush needs: 239

Kerry best-case: 279
Kerry expects: 200
Kerry needs: 181

MOMENT OF TRUTH: 10PM

451 Electoral Votes in play

Polls close in Iowa, Montana, Nevada and Utah.

ANALYSIS: We will probably know who the next President is sometime before 11PM--or not until December.

But even if things remain close, it's likely that one of the two camps will have lost a state it expected to win by this point. Iowa and Nevada will are the last solid opportunities for either side to pull an upset.

Unless Kerry has won both Florida and Ohio or pulled off a surprise somewhere (e.g. in Missouri, or Arkansas) earlier in the evening, he will need Iowa.

Similarly, unless President Bush has won both Florida and Ohio or pulled upsets of his own (e.g. in Michigan or Pennsylvania), Nevada will be essential for his chances.

To put it in even starker terms: If at this stage Bush doesn't have 259 actual or potential electoral votes--potential wins in states with closed polls but no clear victor--he is extraordinarily unlikely to win re-election.

If at this point Kerry has accumulated fewer than 193 actual or potential electoral votes, for Democrats it will be all over but the crying.

BOTTOM LINE:

Bush best-case: 392
Bush expects: 276
Bush needs: 259

Kerry best-case: 291
Kerry expects: 206
Kerry needs: 193

END OF THE ROAD: 11PM

535 Electoral Votes in play

Polls close in California, Hawaii, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon and Washington.

ANALYSIS: By now we will either have a winner, or we'll be waiting for confirmation from uncontested states. Or David Boies will be headed somewhere on a plane.

President Bush does have a chance of sneaking past Kerry in both Oregon and Washington. But if he's counting on those states for his margin of victory at 11PM, it means he's in deep, deep trouble.

On the other hand, if the election is tight all night long, we could wind up having to wait all the way until 1AM for Alaska, with the country's final three electoral votes, to seal the deal for Bush.

Not a pleasant prospect.

Also at 1AM, Democrats will find out whether Tony Knowles has given them a once-in-a-generation Senate pick-up in Alaska. Depending on what happens elsewhere, a Knowles win will either be icing on the cake, or an almost worthless consolation.

BOTTOM LINE:

Bush best-case: 399
Bush expects: 283
Bush needs: 266

Kerry best-case: 368
Kerry expects: 294
Kerry needs: 270

[Clarification: Bush needs only 266 electoral votes at 11pm because he is sure to win Alaska's three votes later in the evening. If the night ends in a 269-269 tie, the election will be thrown into the Republican-controlled House of Representative, where Bush is just about certain to triumph.]

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 17:05:48 GMT

With lots of young people assisting (?) at the polls but representing both sides in registration challenges and protecting voters ability to vote, the tendency or over vigorous action is accumulating. I am choosing words carefully.

Why is the country split? With modern polling everyone knows what are the hot issues, and move stand on issues to attract from the other side. Since both sides are doing this, with the exception of the personality of the candidates (which can still be spun), and since both sides have heavy professionals managing the pr stuff, the tendency is to have each side move toward the other in a struggle down to the last voter (Florida and Ohio). The result is a tendency, short of mal-practice by the advisers, to divide the electorate equally. Any apparent shift in one direction or the other by voter preference forces the other campaign to adjust its story until the emerging plurality is gone. Hence we get the 50-50 split.

Only dynamic issues, such as the American tendency to throw the bastards out, or under counting issues such as cell phone and younger voters, make for a decisive victory.

If we add together the two thoughts -violence at the polls and a fifty fifty split, you can see the emergence of a nightmare scenario.

My guess is there is no back channel discussion between the two candidates' staff on how to prevent this, nor of what to do if trouble emerges on election day or the day after.

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 00:38:29 GMT

What is important about the following is the fact that the Democrats have not made the case that is there to be made.

From today's Kevin drum at
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/
MONTHLY ZARQAWI POST....From Rick Perlstein's latest in the Village Voice:

Highly placed D.C. Democrats accept Bush's public image [as a down-home decent man] as a fait accompli — a kind of semiotic unilateral disarmament. So they don't even bother to case the weapons in their arsenal. I remind [Democratic consultant Jeff] Shesol of the NBC report last spring — never effectively rebutted by the White House — that revealed the most Orwellian face of the administration imaginable: that "before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out" the terrorist operations of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but didn't because it "feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam."

"Wow," Shesol responds, with a breath of surprise. George Bush sold out our security in order to pull off a sales job; that, certainly, is not an "elite" message. That's not a "process" story. So why don't we hear it?

"I—don't—know," Jeff Shesol answers. He sounds defeated, as if Republican traducing of democratic deliberation was something like the weather, beyond anyone's power to change. "How is it that a month's worth of airtime is sucked up by the Swift Boat Veterans?" he asks, bewilderment in his voice. "How is it that a month of our national attention is consumed by this, and not some of these other questions, is a very difficult thing to explain. And until we can really understand how that happens, I don't know that we can effectively respond to it."

That reminds me. It's probably been a month since I last linked to this, so it's time to do it again: did you know that George Bush had a chance to take out terrorist mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi back in 2002 but didn't do it because he was afraid it might weaken the case for invading Iraq?

Now you do.

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 16:58:18 GMT

That Bush responded to 9/11 by militarizing the world rather than legitimizing it by a police action plus highly surgical military moves plus a strong effort to bring equity to the world. This is I believe, the big failure. Guns or butter at the level of the world, and whether globalization means a surveillance society or a society of deeply embraced human development.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/opinion/21friedman.html

Friedman in the Times says that it comes down to

"The big question about Kerry is, Will he pull the trigger?" Mr. Allison said. "And the big question about Bush is, Can he aim? With Bush, we know he can pull the trigger, but it's like he shot himself in the foot - and the tiger is still out there. It's the tiger who needs to be shot, not us."

The language reveals too much. Tiger? An object of beauty and grace and getting our sympathy, knowing that he/she can be dangerous. you don't deal with a tiger by destroying the habitat.

But to reduce it to aim and shoot, rather than creating a more just world will actually lead to something else: not man vs tiger, but Huntington's clash of civilizations. We are not dealing with a tiger, but with people, which means above all culture, perceptions and expectations. To call them tigers is to take the old colonialist approach of dehumanizing, while fanging, the "other".

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 03:33:17 GMT

In the early days of the primaries I spent time analyzing political language, and recognizing the difficulty the progressives had entering into the mind set of the republican base. Since then the analysis in the press has deepened and broadened , becoming more humane, interesting, helpful and suggestive. We are beginning to see the emergence of a moral vocabulary about not only why Bush was wrong but why Bush was wrong for the country . The New York Times editorial endorsing Kerry and the article analyzing Bush's character , both in today's issue clearly reflect the emergence and can be contrasted with where the New York Times was at the time of the invasion and most of the times since. We also have

Bush 'goes against values I treasure' By Ballard Morton - Special to The Courier-Journal
For nearly 50 years, I considered myself a Republican. I usually voted for Republicans, and I voted for George W. Bush in 2000. I have deep family roots in the Republican Party. My father, Thruston Morton, served as a Republican U. S. senator from Kentucky and also served as national chairman of the Republican Party. My uncle, Rogers Morton, also served as national chairman of the Republican Party, served as a Republican in the U. S. House of Representatives, and served in the cabinet under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
I cannot in good conscience vote for President Bush in this election. What he has done since his election in 2000 goes against the values I treasure both in terms of leadership and in our nation. He has not done what he said he would do. He has lost my trust and my respect.
He is not a strong leader. He is a creature of the neoconservative ideologues who surround him. He chose to go to war in Iraq under false pretenses, turning responsibility over to the military with no plan to win the peace. He refuses to admit mistakes, let alone learn from them. His campaign is based on fear.
Good leaders listen to others, ask questions and encourage dissenting opinions before making important strategic decisions. They know how to manage ambiguity. President Bush has no concept of ambiguity. Everything is black or white, good or evil. If you are not 100 percent for him then you are against him. A dissenting opinion is unpatriotic.
The purpose of political leadership is to govern -- wisely, prudently, and for the ultimate benefit of all citizens, not just those who agree with you or to govern -- wisely, prudently, and for the ultimate benefit of all citizens, not just those who agree with you or support you.
Virtually all thinking and knowledgeable people know that to fight terrorism, we need to have the help, cooperation and support of other nations all over the globe. This President has isolated the U. S. and mistakenly thinks we can fight terror through military might alone. We don't gain support in the world by being bullies.
On the domestic front, President Bush has shown complete fiscal irresponsibility. It is unconscionable to declare war and then to lower taxes for the wealthy. No other president has ever lowered taxes in time of war. The result is a deficit so large that we have endangered the well-being of our grandchildren. That is immoral and irresponsible.
President Bush refuses to take responsibility for his own actions and policies. Instead, he blames others. He talks in sound bites, uses slogans and misleading labels, relies on spin, photo ops and staged events, and brutally smears his opponents. That is not leadership.
Sen. John Kerry offers us a choice. He offers us hope and a new direction in dealing with global terrorism. He offers us hope for change in the war in Iraq. He offers us hope in protecting our environment. He offers us hope in restoring fiscal integrity to the government. He offers us hope in genuinely reforming health care and protecting those who need it most. Above all, he offers a return of decency and integrity to the White House.
I will vote for John Kerry. [end article]
http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/editorials/2004/10/14/oped-ballardmorton-5140.html

what strikes me with this article is that there is nothing in it that would be objectionable to most of what we call progress is today. That suggests that part of the emergence is a new kind of conservatism and Kerr is really a conservative candidate . this suggests that when he wins he will have a new base that is the moral side of progressive and conservative thought and this can provide some powerful leverage to deal with the problems he will face (and we with him) : environment, incomes, jobs, taxes, dwindling national resources, and a leftover messy unnecessary war that has become necessary , even if the immediate goal is to get out quickly .

Fri, 15 Oct 2004 16:39:50 GMT

The reason the Cheney episode is so powerful in the psyche is because it touches on the power of government to humilate the individual. No matter that the case doesn't fit well, the fact that there is such a reaction (stirred by Republican PR folks who need an issue desperately) tells us lots about the psyche and politics. Everyone does feel humiliated by the political scene, the economy, Iraq, Islam, Christianity, environment. It is all a more than bearable dose of humiliation.

Thu, 14 Oct 2004 17:49:35 GMT

The increasing subtlty of analysis is good. The question of what kind of scoiety we are moving towards, a choice each day between yellow or red, or getting on with the more interesting aspects of life, love, learning, inventing, creating. Friedman is intersting to track, having ben a supporter of the war to this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/opinion/14friedman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%

don't know whether to laugh or cry when I hear the president and vice president slamming John Kerry for saying that he hopes America can eventually get back to a place where "terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." The idea that President Bush and Mr. Cheney would declare such a statement to be proof that Mr. Kerry is unfit to lead actually says more about them than Mr. Kerry. Excuse me, I don't know about you, but I dream of going back to the days when terrorism was just a nuisance in our lives.

If I have a choice, I prefer not to live the rest of my life with the difference between a good day and bad day being whether Homeland Security tells me it is "code red" or "code orange" outside. To get inside the Washington office of the International Monetary Fund the other day, I had to show my ID, wait for an escort and fill out a one-page form about myself and my visit. I told my host: "Look, I don't want a loan. I just want an interview." Somewhere along the way we've gone over the top and lost our balance

Wed, 13 Oct 2004 17:32:33 GMT

US is a better hegemon than any other current candidate. But... Andrew Levin is exploring this live at

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/events/index.cfm?fa=eventDetail&;id=721

Wed, 13 Oct 2004 06:28:07 GMT

We are entering the tense destructuve phase. We have for example, just posted

The leaders at the Nevada Democratic headquarters just announced that the Secretary of State of Oregon has just held a press conference. He has announced that they have a registration worker on tape tearing up Democratic registrations forms, and they have sworn statements from registration workers this evening that the workers were told to tear up Democratic registrations.

Very worth looking at the Kos effort around Sinclair and the atemtp to show the anti-kerry film on 62 stations by order of managment etc. This site was put together today and Kos has already had a major impact - along with mobilized others. the stock price is down, advertizers have pulled out. This will be a major case study in net activism when the election is over.

http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group

Wed, 13 Oct 2004 01:03:07 GMT

Here is an old pro, Theodore Rozak, whose sense of history is rich and persoanl, in an article worth the reading, an excerpt

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/

Suppose, then, George W. Bush dropped all pretenses and simply declared,

"OK, you wanna know my domestic agenda? Here it is. Dick

Cheney, Tom DeLay and I aren't just gonna defeat the liberals, we're

gonna obliterate them, along with every progressive reform since the

days of Teddy Roosevelt, every New Deal program, every Great Society

entitlement. Why else do you think we're running these sky-high

deficits? We're handing as much dough as we can to the people who know

how to run this country -- namely the super-rich. Sure, that's gonna

cost the rest of you jobs and social services, but isn't it worth it to

give the poor, the nonwhite, the welfare queens, the gays and the

feminazis a swift kick in the teeth?

"What's my foreign policy? Listen up. We're gonna yank that oil out

from under those dysfunctional Arabs because we need it to preserve our

gas- guzzling way of life, and I'm not asking anybody for a permission

slip to do that. We're God's chosen people and we intend to make the

most of it. And if anybody gets in our way, we've got what it takes to

clobber them."

If Bush took that line, I wonder if it would it cost him a single vote

he doesn't already have. And how many swing voters might be won over by

such decisive, non-flip-flopping leadership? As for the single-minded

evangelicals who have become the key to any winning political strategy,

the Republicans have them so locked in that even if Bush were

discovered having lunch with the devil, they would still vote for him

-- as long as he treated them to an occasional kick at the gays and the

feminists.