What's At Stake?

Wednesday

Just back from a New Year's Party in the other side of the world (I guess it will be several hours before it is 2004 back home.).

Before I set out for the party, I was watching a Tarrot card reader's show on TV. The host asked the woman about Bush, and she predicted that although he'd decline in popularity, he will win the elections come November.

Now, I've not been known for consulting Tarrot cards, and since I have a few beers and other stiffer beverages in my system as I type, I am going to refrain from analyzing her prediction.

Let me instead wish you a very happy 2004. Let's hope this year brings sense and sensibility all around, including in the White House.

In the meanwhile, enjoy the new year party whereever you are. It was great fun here. : - ))

Monday

Apologies for the cold-but-not-influenza-influenced delay in this week's post, which, on the upside, allows me to wish an excellent New Year in advance to all of you.

If there remains anything worth saying about '04, it surely will not be about the election itself - the sort of sudden catastrophe which theoretically could upset all bets on the inevitability of Bush will also have the effect of rallying the country around the existing duce. So no hope from that quarter.

For myself, I expect to continue to try and think through how the battle for '04 sets up the coming battles for '08 and ownership of Congress between now and then, as well as what it sez about the current state of our real-but-don't-exaggerate-the-value-of-that democracy itself.

But for now, in need of a win, I'm off to play the Dean Iowa caucus game.

Auld Lang Syne.

Wednesday

Having missed last week’s blog due to a heck of a lot of work, I find myself this weekend in a city half way around the world. It is cold here, foggy, but festive, and everyone is winding down for the end of the year festivities.

I’ve been traveling in Asia during the past three weeks and interestingly, across the breadth of this continent, whenever people learn where I am from – where I live and work, they accost me with versions of the same question: “Why do Americans support Bush so overwhelmingly?” I try to explain the nature of the political equation, and make the case that there is opposition to Bush’s foreign (especially Iraq) policy – but thus far have been unable to really sound convincing to anyone. The overwhelming perception is that Americans as a unit have just gone off the rocker, so to speak, and that they have embarked upon a path that will destroy them and every good thing in the world. Today’s Steve Bell cartoon makes a similar case, for Britain, where, about a month ago, I encountered similar sentiments.

What is becoming increasingly clear to me is that the United States is increasingly isolated in much of this world – to the point that it is perceived as a rouge state. The tragedy is that with the perception of the US as a country that promotes the use of might rather than right as the normative principle in international politics, many of the issues on which it has legitimately intervened, such as human rights, might be dismissed, at least by some regimes, as nothing but empty rhetorical posturing. Having rendered the idea of human rights redundant by its excesses in Guantanamo Bay, and having elected a regime under dubious circumstances in the previous elections, the two traditional post war platforms of the US’s international rhetoric – human rights and democracy, are now seen, by many around the world, as diluted by the United States itself.

It appears to me that regardless of the outcome of the 2004 election, it is extremely important for Americans to join with freedom and democracy loving people around the world in other parts of the world – to somehow make these concepts alive, important, and critical once again. Perhaps, if we can’t influence the outcome of the election, we can at least ensure that grass-roots movements that promote such causes survive. One way to do this is to contribute to and support any good human rights, environmental, or such organization in the United States. Every organization is now feeling the pinch, and this season might be a good place to start upholding their importance – especially, the critical role they play in shaping public debate, and on occasion, fighting for the very freedom of individuals and peoples around the world. So, if you are considering writing out checks to buy gifts for your relatives and friends, consider writing another for any organization of your choice that promotes that values you’d like to see America represent.

Monday

Well, I'd rather not have called it a few weeks back about Pink-baiting having abated only because of the overwhelming dominance of the fear of Terror. I haven't YET heard the two being linked, but who knows what new nonsense is going to come out in the ramp-up to the proposed No Adam & Steve Amendment, or NASA for short, as the FMA will be renamed in the new year - you know: to enable cooler logos, give it a more directly patriotic pedigree (the first NASA was all about showing those Rooskies who had the bigger missles, remember), and also so W. can feel all historic and JFK-like when he tells the American people, as he urges the States to ratify the Constitutional Amendment which the next Congress will pass during his second term, that while the first NASA only put a man on the moon, this NASA will make damn sure that only a man can be a woman's lawfully wedded spouse.

How epic an achievement for our proud nation! JUST the sort of fair-deal-for-all that we're all about, this nation that's so Elect that we're even quite sure the ol' whom-God-has-joined-let-no-man-put-asunder can't possibly apply to some Mary and Elizabeth in our midst!

And now that feminism is dead (oh, I'm sorry, it's happily married and shopping at Gap Kids? And here I thought that was only one stratum of what used to be sisterhood), who will point out the irony if, through the efforts of millions of women, NASA passes through enough of the State Legislatures, where the ERA got swept into the dustbin of history (or is that wiped up by the Bounty quicker picker-upper)?

But enough crotchety grousing about culture wars, about bigotry cloaking itself in anti-elitist rhetoric - it's nearly Christmas!

Which (whatever about spectres-haunting-Europe, ghosts of Christmases past present future, etc.) certainly means, for the portion of this nation that purports to care about such things, it's time to reflect on how lamely We That Portion Of The People honor the memory of that guy born in a stable because his mother's husband, in the town of his own ancestors, couldn't find his wife any place better.

Defend the definition of marriage?? While real families in this country, in this century, amid so much abundance, can still hear the story of the Holy Family's sufferings and nod in recognition???

Thursday

Barring an unforseen twist, the Democratic primary is over, and Mr. Dean has clinched it. So, here is a bit of constructive advice for those who are responsible for his foreign policy profile.

The current president has assembled a respectable foreign-policy team, and he himself has developed a considerable expertise. Nonetheless, had Saddam been still at large, it would have been relatively easy to articulate the notion that the administration is mismanaging the situation and needs to be replaced with people who are more competent. This is now harder to do, and should Osama be captured (dead or alive) between now and November, it will become even more difficult. Yet, this is precisely what needs to be done.

Therefore, the Dean campaign has to drop the anti-war stance as a centerpiece of its foreign policy platform. In the Spring, it made perfect sense to build a primary campaign around this message because the administration handled its public relations poorly and failed to convince the country that the war was necessary. But now the war is over, and it is time to move on.

Consequently, Mr. Dean has to articulate a constructive vision of what he stands for. In particular, he has to communicate that he is passionate about exporting democracy to Iraq and then he has to criticize the administration for doing so poorly.

Take, for example, the issue of Iraq's territorial integrity. Should we keep that country as a single entity and risk religious and ethnic strive that might undermine our effort in creating a stable democracy, or should we partition the country into smaller but more homogeneous states?

Or consider the issue of who should control Iraq's oil. Should we allow a Russian-style oligarchy to emerge and risk the subsequent corruption of Iraq's new democracy, or should we insist that Iraq manage its oil reserves the way Norway does and so make Iraq's politics relatively clean?

One final thing. The current administration will be tempted to use the trial of Saddam Husain as a public relations event during the Fall campaign. They will have an electoral incentive to emphasize Saddam's brutality, which was real, in order to deflect public attention from the fact that he did not have weapons of mass destruction. As a countermeasure, Mr. Dean should already start insisting that Saddam be questioned about his weapons program.

Friday

The good news about Saddam has given new life to Joe Lieberman's flailing campaign, but unfortunately it still hasn't made a significant dent in Dean's national poll numbers among Democrats. Meanwhile, Dean's idiotic conspiracy theory comments are going to dog him throughout 2004. Jonathan Chait over at TNR has started a Democratic anti-Dean blog, and does a great job at capturing how I feel about the good doctor. Here's a snippet, but read the whole thing:

"It's not that I think Dean would be a worse president than Bush--he'd probably be better, although that's extremely faint praise given that Bush is the worst president of the last 80 years. Bush is like the next-door neighbor who lets his dog poop on your lawn and his kid shoot bb's at your house and who says something irritating to you every day on his way to work. Dean, on the other hand, is like the ne'er-do-well who's dating your daughter. You realize the neighbor is a worse person than the boyfriend, but the boyfriend (and the frightening prospect that he'll become your son-in-law) consumes more of your attention."

Monday's comments about Condi are quite interesting; I've been mulling over the same thing. Cheney is incredibly valuable to this Administration, but he doesn't help GWB with any voter constituencies that Bush doesn't already have in his pocket. Making Condi his running mate would be brilliant master stroke. The Republican Party has done poorly among women and minorities for a long time, and Condi might help close those numbers. And it sets up Condi perfectly in 2008 for a battle with HRC. I really can't see a downside for Bush. So some parts of the conservative base (i.e., the Jesse Helms wing) might have some issues, but they're hardly going to vote for Dean. Cheney helped buff up GWB's foreign policy/maturity credentials in 2000, but Bush hardly needs that today.

Tuesday

The Democrats are paying $100,000+ to a few party planners in Boston (who in turn hired an army of $25k staffers) to throw a convention for the upper crusties Dean, Kerry, Clark, or whoever it will be. The city almost spent $100k on the Pops' underground inaugural of the overdue big dig tunnel (canceled after public pressure), and Gov. Romney yesterday said the root of all evil are the trade unions. What's at stake??

Monday

Well, Friday seems to have scooped my crack about Dean and McGovern and already said what I would've said about Candidate Clinton, so I'll take it from there, I think.

In terms of the details of the race itself, the only remaining real point of interest may well be whether or not Cheney is jettisoned for Condi, which would be pretty epic.

So what remains at stake, for those of us who think the outcome is more or less in the bag already?

Observers who've noted that Sen. Clinton is already looking like the primary Democratic beneficiary of the 2004 election remind us that there are at least a few relevant lenses through which to view the election, only ONE of which is the who-will-hold-the-tiller-of-State squinter.

It may be a peculiar obligation of those of us who think the Left will remain the Left Behind regardless of who wins the American Presidency (in this or any forseeable year) to focus on the aspects of this presidential election that aren't about winning access to power but about the battle over expectations for how that power should be used.

If indeed there's any way meaningfully to do even that, given what we've seen over the past 4 years. Maybe what's important at this point is working, now, to remake the mid-term Congress Bush will face in the remaining years of his second term.

And to focus on building, as the Religious Right has patiently done for decades and decades, solid foundations in civil society for future campaigns aimed at taking control of the power available in our political system.

Work that can continue on past the probably-quite-futile formality of voting for the far-lesser of two evils next November.

And the tempatation of opting for the always-closer-than-you-think Greatest of All Evils .

Friday

To follow up on Thursday:

I don't doubt that Dean's not as far to the left as most of his campaign supporters are. Joe Trippi has admitted as much; they chose a run to the left, based around opposition to the war, because it provided an opening. To quote Trippi," it couldn't be a mainstream campaign, because the mainstream space was already taken." He's clearly going to start moving to the center as soon as he can. The question remains whether he's boxed himself too much in a corner with some of his positions. Maybe not--after all, all that most people really know about his issue positions is that he's against the war.

Dean's got a lot of other flaws as a candidate beyond his political positions, that will be easy to capitalize upon. Check out the last GOP ad--When Angry Democrats Attack!

I've spoken quite a bit in the last few days with friends working on some of the Democratic presidential campaigns, and all were pretty stunned by the Gore announcement. There's a good article in yesterday's Post about it. Folks (me included) are pinning their hopes on Clark, but the General still has to figure out how to get a compelling message across that resonates with the public.

I haven't seen any detailed poll numbers since the Gore announcement. I'll be most interested to look at breakdowns, and see if Dean's gotten a lift among African-American voters.

The other major political story this week is equally if not more interesting--the Hillary Clinton factor. On the talk shows this past week, she's been staking out ground to the right of perhaps any of the current Democratic candidates (with the possible exception of Lieberman).

Over the past few weeks, several commentators, most notably Howard Fineman at Newsweek have speculating that Hillary might step in as a consensus candidate if we end up with brokered Democratic convention, to "save the party." Her comments over the past week have only heightened those rumors.

I still don't think that's going to happen, but it does put her in great shape for 2008. After we get a McGovern-like failure in November, led by Dean, Senator Clinton can swoop in to start aggressively rebuilding the party.

I've always felt that Hillary is too polarizing a figure to win a Presidential race; however, I've groslly underestimated her political acumen and effectiveness. If she's begining to win over Andrew Sullivan and other neo-cons, who knows where she'll be in four years?

Thursday

If I understand it correctly, the argument against Dean is simple. We in the Democratic Party can not afford to have him as our presidential candidate because he is too liberal to defeat Bush. If we are serious about victory, then we need a centrist candidate - someone like Clark, Kerry, or Liberman.

I disagree!

We have absolutely no idea what Dean's true political views are. He could be leftist, centrist, or whatever. Perhaps he just wants to be a president. Only he knows what he wants. All that we know is that he has chosen to run a left-of-center campaign. Now, we could take his campaign at face value and infer that he is too liberal to be elected, which seems to be what those who criticize Dean are asking us to do. But this strikes me as remarkably simplistic.

Since when do we believe that politicians say what they mean? Any thinking person knows, or at least should know, that what politicians say while they campaign may or may not reflect their true beliefs. As voters, we have absolutely no way of distinguishing those candidates who tell the truth and those who dissemble.

The only thing that we can be certain of is that Dean has spent considerable time thinking about how to win the presidency, and that the left-of-center campaign is an integral part of his larger electoral strategy.

So what might his over-all strategy look like? I suspect it is quite simple -- win the Democratic nomination by going to the left and then win the American presidency by going to the center. Since the primaries are front-loaded, the nomination will come quickly and leave plenty of time to develop a centrist persona.

The genius of this approach is this. In May, when Dean moves to the center, the left will believe that he is a liberal who is making a strategic move to win the presidency, while the center will believe that he is a moderate who is only now showing his true colors. In short, both will assume that the other is naive and both will support Dean as their candidate. Brilliant! But is it honest?