What's At Stake?

Monday

Imagine that I'm posting this on April 4th, instead of today (the sandhill cranes' migration through the Channelled Scabland took precedence, sorry, folks).

And on this awful anniversary, these two things:

- RFK's extemporaneous speech that terrible evening (props to The X-Files for having pointed my generation towards this speech in the first place, and never mind the fact that it's now IMPOSSIBLE to imagine [outside of the WB] a man who would've been President (slightly mis-)quoting Aeschylus in our own era - that could be good, could be bad, though an epigone is an epigone whether or not she or he's ever heard of Aeschylus - note rather how far away, now, is that era's roaring clamor for a more just America, its uprising of new forces on the Left so clear-and-present that even a Kennedy could get his inner Machiavelli to side with his inner More)

- the yet-unredeemed words of the great man himself

Monday

Good to see that W's folks are worried enough that they've begun the mudslinging and flag-waving... and that it's not (yet) working well for them.

And that The Economist quoted the American Queen Mother as saying something along the lines of, "It's starting to feel like I've seen this movie before."

(What a blogging faux pas, I know: electing to cite what I remember rather than rummaging around the piles of stuff to find the exact quote!)

Disappointing that the Washington Post, of all papers, should have wagged its editorial finger at the Spanish electorate for having thrown out a government caught lying to its people one too many times about the whys and whos of violence. As if the refusal ever even to SEEM to give Terror a victory were more important than getting the "You misheard us! We never said it was ETA. We said [Al-Qa]eda!" folks out of office. Is a nation really to be expected to vote back into power a group that lies to the public about who might have attacked them? What's next, leading them into a war for fabricated reasons?

Hmm...

But best of all to see this past weekend, as Spring arrived, the pics (of the mass itself and of the faces comprising the mass) of the more than 1M people out in the streets of Rome for peace and against terrorism.

As it turns out, these folks marching past the ruins of the Forum remind us, it's possible to be against terrorism AND against empire.

Monday

About a week back, myself, Friday and a friend were talking about whether we thought Gens X & Y were, for the most part, (to caricature the conversation) still opting-out of the political process, and if so, why that might be.

And given recent attention (check this and this out, for example) to this question, thought I'd rain on the optimism parade a bit.

It SHOULD be no surprise to anyone that economic hope is now a key issue for these generations. But can KERRY genuinely mobilize that hope, specifically in the swing states?

Being the lesser of two evils on this is OF COURSE not sufficient to bring out the youth vote. And, at least right now, it doesn't seem like Kerry is going to rock the youth vote.

I know that some of my fellow Days of the Week here feel that consistently and vociferously clarifying how JFKerry is the far lesser evil than W. will accomplish all that a blog of ordinary citizens can politically accomplish - more dedicated bloggers can provide better flashlights, but the objective is the same.

But what about for the folks who aren't going to change their vote or get mobilized to vote in the first place out of outrage at misuses and abuses of power? Their answer to "What's at stake?" is "Not enough promise to bother."

All that said, there's cause for some cautious optimism in the current Gallup results on the breakdown in 2000's Red, Purple, and Blue states:
- withOUT Nader in the race
- WITH Nader in the race (takes away from Kerry only; whatever about 2000, he's unambiguously a spoiler this time)

Monday

As Friday said to me the other day, it's actually somewhat interesting that W. is going to some length (though what a risk-free length that is) this early in the campaign to ensure that the Fire-n-Brimstone Brigade continues to consider him Their Man in Washington.

Or, more precisely, tries to ensure that they come out and vote at all.

Could it be that he's trying to get check his ideological boxes early so that, later on in the season, he isn't giving Kerry's folks more fodder every day for the Extremism angle?

Unlike Mr Bill, Kerry'd hardly be likely to make his first act as Prexy anything related to the Closet, so it's hardly a question of choosing between a bigot and a champion of gay rights in November, but I couldn't resist closing with Teddy K's observation that W. will

go down in history as the first president to try to write discrimination back into the Constitution.

Ok, actually, I couldn't resist closing with a few bits of entertainment from, ah, let's say a pretty different perspective on what's at stake in this election:

- this niceness

- and this gem, about which I have only one question: isn't the use of the word "agitprop" in the quote below a DEAD GIVEAWAY that the putative conservative is, in fact, an unregenerate MAOIST SPY trying to cover her true allegiance with a veneer of zeal for America? (As her supposedly-unjustly-shrugged-off Atlas, Senator Joe McCarthy, would have said, "Ma'am, you're saying exactly what I would say if I were, in fact, a Communist spy.")

From Hiss to Clinton: How, at every critical moment for the Democratic Party for the last 50 years, liberals would wage monstrous campaigns of disinformation and liberal agitprop

If it weren't for the fact that such vitriol is coming out of the halls of Congress and the Oval Office, we could all laugh at this stuff, however popular it's proving at the bookstores, but as it is, I just keep wondering when we're going to see the Patriot Act's re-up renamed the Alien & Sedition Act, Part Deux...

Monday

Working on a theme-song to auto-play when you check out my posts (hey, if Jon Stewart gets one...), but I spilled coffee all over the lapper when I heard the news.

Welcome back to the circus, Ralph.

I think.

Except, if I heard you right on Meet The Press, explicitly saying that conservative GOPers who're mad at Bush are folks whose votes you're chasing... then, um...??? You're going to help get W. out by splitting the GOP vote enough to enable the Donkey to ride on into the White House??

Whatever we think about your impact on the Stolen Election, at least we all understood why you were running and believed that you made sense as the best celebrity candidate possible at the time to bring the Green Party's positions into national prominence.

But this is the Year To Get Bush Out, and if you mean what you say that your running is really all about beating Bush, then that really means working to get a Democrat elected, and if it's about electing a Democrat, then help campaign for the Democrats this time around; don't just split the GOP vote, get the actually-useful anti-GOP vote out there.

I'm no huge fan of the two-party system, myself; wayyyy too much gets swept into the dustbin of the lobbys. And the spectre of the so-called chaos that comes with proportional-representation parliamentary systems seems pretty orderly and tranquil next to the havoc our own system causes when a single, hell-bent-on-transformation party, only marginally victorious in enough winner-take-all congressional elections, holds the reins of both the presidency and of congress.

But, Ralph: for now, isn't this the year for a United Front? Isn't it time to use the two-party system to try and keep in check (by removing from power) the greater lunatics who love power for how it can benefit their wallets, their friends' wallets, and their own blinkered view of what our nation Oughta Be?

Monday

First, some entertainment:

Inside, Teamsters hoisted signs advertising their dream ticket: Kerry-Hoffa.

It'll be interesting to see what version of What's At Stake will be put forth by the coming $100M Republican smear campaign against Kerry in a likely-successful attempt to drown out Kerry's own efforts to portray this Administration as betrayers of the trust of the American people to do what they need with respect to what they value.

I suspect this'll end up being another pocketbook-and-prayer-book scare campaign, with the "let us continue our successful work" angle on the military front (i.e. the two candidates more or less neutralize each other on the military front, with the edge in that "less" going to Kerry).

Since I don't think Kerry is going to come out in favor of steroid use in pro sports, I guess W. can't use that surreal State of the Union plank in his election platform...

Friday (a bit early)

Monday, it looks like it's down to just you and me, my friend. You're right that W doesn't have Lee Atwater. However, there's a whole generation of political operatives around DC who learned from him, as well as from the great Arthur Finkelstein. They're just as good...

Last night, a friend and I were discussing the fact that Kerry was now a lock, barring a bombshell. I'm not sure if today's Drudge article is enough to derail him by itself. However, it will lead to the press poring over every inch of Kerry's life in excruciating detail, and that might dominate the news cycle for a while. And perhaps it will force the campaign into an extended period of damage control, giving Edwards an opening. The next 48 hours are the key, to see if the story has any legs. Drudge's scoops are sometimes garbage, but often they're not.

It's great for the Bush campaign. They're offiically going to stay on the sidelines on this one, and let the media do the tough work. They'll save their real firepower till after the nomination.

Good times...

Monday

So, against all predictions even a month ago, it now looks like we'll have a Kerry/Bush showdown!

Which leaves me ponderin', America.

Even IF Kerry plays the Irresponsibility card over and over and over, will he be able to make the fiscal slam a real dunk? Can a Senator from Massachusetts successfully pull THAT off, EVEN in the face of gems like this one.

Kerry's no Dukakis, for sure. But he's no Clinton, either - not either of them.

Can he win the Reagan Democrat vote? Can he actually own the position of standing for the capital growth of the self-imagined Average-Jane-and-Joe and paint W's crew as a bunch of fat-and-happy carnys taking America over the edge of Niagara Falls in a pork barrel?

You would THINK that there's enough beginning to unravel for W. that Kerry only has to tug away, hard and smart. And W. has no Lee Atwater to save him.

It's a ludicrous day when the Left has to root for the July Monarchy, but if that's the only United Front on offering, then that's what we have to work with.

Friday

Probably the most entertaining political stories in the last couple of weeks have been the revelations about Roger Stone's role in the Sharpton campaign. The NYT first broke it a few weeks ago, and the Village Voice recently ran a good piece.
It's a heartwarming story, proving that people can stretch across the political aisle and find common ground. It's good to see that neither Stone nor Sharpton have lost a trace of their sleaziness and cynicism.

On to Washington and Michigan. While Dean says that Wisconsin on the 17th will be the make-or-break state for him, this weekend is really the key. I think he needs to win Washington in a big way if he is to stand a chance. He's already given up on Michigan, he has no shot in Virginia or Nevada, and winning Maine doesn't do diddly for him. I just can't see how he's going to resurrect his campaign on the 17th after having lost 15 primaries in a row.

MONDAY

Dean Campaign the Last of the .Bombs?

Think about it: a sudden shift back to old-school organizational and financial management after an unsuccessful advertising binge

Whoops. Too late. Dean? Done. Dayyyymn, is about all there is to say.

The Revenge of the Missle Gap

Looking ahead to November, interestin' to note that W. finally (and unfortunately) listened to folks urging him to take the WMD ball out of play by appointing an independent commission; it's rumored that said commission will be holed up in an undisclosed location observing CIA operatives playing the board game Clue, sometimes with and sometimes without piped-in suggestions to "find evidence that it was Colonel Mustard Gas with the candlestick in the drawing room."

Interesting, of course, for Dems this time around to re-read this description from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists of the two-score-and-four-years-ago JFK missle gap: swap out "dictator-with-a-moustache" for "Soviet" and it's disturbing how close it reads.

"...the product of misinterpreted intelligence, over-reliance on worst-case scenarios, anti-Soviet hysteria, and cynical domestic political calculation."

All of our Presidential Dems have been Hawks, even Carter. And if Hillary does become our first Mrs. President, she sure won't be a Dove. But hopefully we'll get a military-force doctrine a bit less lunatic than the current Whenever We Damn Well Please Doctrine.

The Journal of Atomic Scientists is a fun read - I went there to check out what the latest reading on the Doomsday Clock is (7 minutes to midnight, since last year, the same as it was back in '47, which should not encourage anyone). In all the beating of the red-white-and-blue drums, no one seems to be hearing their reminders that our nuclear power plants are far from secure.

Unlike the Germans' serious efforts to protect their populace, our own NRC seems to have opted for a "well, the Libyans in the VW bus shouldn't be able to get in" policy.

Could be an interesting tack for Kerry to take, pointing out how soft on terror-prevention this Misadministration has really been, for all its bluster, goofy Big Brotherhood patches, and Wrathcroft wackiness.

(And hey: if you wanna indulge that spooks-will-rule-the-world streak, knock yourself out here; pick up hats, mugs, ... even thongs with the DARPA logo that had even the Cigarette-Smoking Man shaking his head. For the backstory on the shop, read this.)