I Swear I'm Not Getting My Hopes Up...

Not again. Americans really have no right to complain about the quality of their presidential candidates. It seems like every four years at least one truly good candidate steps up. And then is promptly and utterly destroyed...

The New General

Now that the other contenders have dropped out, it's all but official.

Saving the Party from Howard Dean

There's an entertaining article by Howard Fineman in Newsweek about the desperate, and so far unsuccessful, efforts of Democratic insiders to prevent Howard Dean from becoming the party chairman. I particularly like the part where they were worried that Dean would "ruin the Democratic brand in Red States." Heaven forbid that, you guys have been doing such a bang-up job there. Bill Clinton went so far as to try and reenlist Terry McAuliffe, a move which, I fear, has forever ruined Clinton's credibility as far as I'm concerned.

The Candidate That Could Have Been

New Republic editor Peter Beinhart has a column in this week's Time Magazine speculating how the election may have gone if Howard Dean were the candidate. He reaches many of the same conclusions I did a week ago...

Democrats Slow On the Uptake

A Michael Tomasky column in The American Prospect considers the reasons why, despite being supported by significant majorities on most key issues, the Democrats still get their asses handed to them by Republicans. He does a good job of identifying the Karl Rove genius: it's all about perception, and public perception is surprisingly easily malleable through the use of very simple tactics. Democrats frequently fall victim to relying on the public to support them for their superior policy positions, and fall victim to astute manipulation of public perception by folks like Rove.

Nowhere can this be more clear than John Kerry, who was chosen precisely along the lines of this sort of thinking. Democrats felt they had a slam dunk on the issues and wanted the safest and dryest candidate to get them there. They were simply after the guy who was least vulnerable to attack, so that they wouldn't blow their big opportunity. They failed to recognize that there is no such candidate who is safe from attack, and that if they don't aggressively act to set the agenda, Karl Rove will be more than happy to do it for them, and the issues that they want to talk about will not be on that agenda. This thought seems to be suddenly occurring to them, and now trying to make an about face, but Kerry is just not the man for this job. Case in point:

Yesterday John Kerry finally decided to take a stand on Iraq stating:

"Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell, but that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."

George Bush needed only to roll out Kerry's comments regarding Howard Dean's statement that the capture of Saddam did not make the US safer:

"I couldn't disagree more. And not so long ago, so did my opponent. Last December, he said this: "Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe we are not safer with his capture don't have the judgment to be President or the credibility to be elected President." I could not have said it better."

Could we make it any easier for him? Am I still bitter about Dean losing? Damn right I am. What a stupid, stupid mistake. It still galls me every time I see Kerry speak. Dean was defining the agenda from the moment he came onto the scene. He could speak in simple, strong terms about what he believed in and wanted to achieve. And he was not shy about launching direct attacks against mistakes made by the Bush administration, something Kerry has only now realized he needs to be doing. He was the man that Democrats now wish Kerry was. Playing it safe isn't good enough when the other side is playing for keeps.

Cheney: Vote For Us... Or Die

Dick Cheney on the campaign trail argues that if Kerry and Edwards win, America will probably be attacked again "in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States". That man has a talent for subtlety. Meanwhile, George Bush notes that John Kerry, recognizing the fact that voters still don't have a clue what he represents, is trying to make himself Howard Dean. A pity that our candidate has to pretend to be Howard Dean instead of, well... being Howard Dean.

Steamrolled By the Bush Machine

Foreign Policy Mag is running a short editorial noting how easy everyone made it for Bush to have his way on Iraq. Thanks to Howard Dean and others, liberals are beginning to come back to life and have done a decent job of vilifying Bush. However, it should not be forgotten how many people rolled over and played dead in order for Bush to create all of the mayhem that we now need to clean up. Reading this column and thinking about it have brought to mind (again) a couple of internal conflicts that I frequently struggle with.

First, is the conflict between wanting to hold people accountable, and wanting to take back control from Bush and his cronies. This was thoroughly discussed here and elsewhere in the context of Howard Dean (and to a lesser extent Ralph Nader). The Democrats who voted for Bush's war should be held to account. But how can this be done without further aiding Bush and friends? In the presidential race Dean and Clark offered good opportunities for this, but both are now out of the picture. Additionally, in races for the House and the Senate, due to the way elections are structured it is nearly impossible to beat incumbents in the primary, leaving the only real opportunity to inflict penalties through the ballot box at the general election, at which point you would obviously be aiding Republicans in the process. In a strongly partisan environment, it seems that accountability goes out the window. A viable third party would certainly help in this regard..

My other conflict is also between principle and patisanship, but of a slightly different nature. Ideally there should be politicians who are pragmatic and moderate, but who still retain the courage of their convictions. In practice, there are vanishingly few of these people (Feingold and McCain are the only ones who pop into my head, and I think Dean could have been one as well). And with the increasingly severe problem of gerrymandering, these people will grow increasingly rare. More often the choice is between "moderates" who are spineless, calculating political hacks who will roll over to anything that polling supports on a given day, or fire-breathing partisan zealots, who can be counted on to oppose stupid things proposed by the other party, but who will never achieve anything useful through moderation and compromise with the other party. I'm generally fairly moderate myself, and I used to think I preferred the former, but having witnessed what these "moderates" did in the context of the Bush administration I've found myself wishing for more of the latter. But truthfully I despise them both. It makes me ever more worshipful of a Feingold, who has the courage to be the only person in the Senate to vote against something stupid, but the good sense to be cooperative and bipartisan to achieve important results. Unfortunately, like my other conflict, it leaves precious few good choices for voters to make. It is difficult for a person of principle to know what to do. Even more unfortunately it seems that on both issues, the trends are getting worse as time goes on.

Re: And Then There Were Two..

I rarely see NewsHour these days, but somebody at Dean For America pointed out these online segments about Wisconsin and Dean's concession. The last two in particular were pretty good, and, I think, offered some of the more cogent analysis of the whole situation that I've seen.

And Then There Were Two..

Howard Dean announces through his blog (of course) that he is ending his candidacy today. Based on his comments I suspect he doesn't intend to drop out of the political scene..

Trippi Moves On

I just noticed that Joe Trippi has started a blog. So far he has, not surprisingly, mostly written about the campaign and the things he tried to accomplish and lessons learned and such. It's interesting reading. It will be interesting to see where he goes from here..

Update: Trippi as Color Commentator

Reuters has this report confirming that "Ex-Dean Campaign Manager Lands Job at MSNBC."

Trippi as Color Commentator

The Drudge Report claims that "Former Dean manager Joe Trippi joins MSNBC for election analysis starting tonight ... Developing ..."

Dean Bets Farm On Wisconsin

Joe Trippi out, Roy Neel in. Today Roy Neel posted a lengthy message on the Dean blog highlighting the new strategy to get Dean back in the race. It's a hell of a last-ditch gamble, and I'm not sure I approve, but I found it to be very interesting that the focal point has now become Wisconsin. They are making a fairly weak effort for Feb 3, with Neel claiming 3rd place finishes will be enough. Then they are putting significant resources into a strong showing in the Feb 7-8 Michigan, Washington, Maine contests. But the main focus is to get Wisconsin, in order to have momentum going into Super Tuesday, where the campaign still feels they have a strong following in New York and California. It's good to see Wisconsin have some influence. So, Ryan, we're counting on you.

ps. Here's the footage on ABC's mea culpa for their part in the Dean Scream debacle.

Dean Goes Nuts

I thought this was a neat story from the campaign world, my human interest story for the month... So after Iowa, Dean goes and makes the speech heard round the world. By the next morning various people (including Rush Limbaugh, IIRC) were circulating all sorts of remixes of the speech. An enterprising 21 year-old Deanie decided to register www.deangoesnuts.com and start collecting remixes. In addition to hosting 30-40 different remixes of the speech, he posted his own personal story of why he is supporting Howard Dean. He's been interviewed by the press 30 times, has raised $800 for Dean, and has received numerous emails from folks who were won over by his site. I'm awed by his creativity in subverting an embarrassing situation into a positive resource. The internet is cool. My favorite is the Howard Dean Unchained remix. He's also got an awesome and inspiring non-scream Howard Dean remix that I think the campaign ought to make use of. I challenge any person to listen to that track or to listen to Dean's speech after the New Hampshire primary (available here) and tell me that man is not electable. What crap...

BTW, it's been reported that ABC actually ran the speech on the news today with the crowd noise added back in, noting that the scream can barely be heard over the cheering. Now they just need to run it 686 more times to even the score (the Dean campaign was keeping track).

John Kerry Has A Howard Dean Moment

In a distinctly un-Kerry-like performance, the Senator said he didn't think the Southern states were that important for a Democratic candidate. This seems very much like a play out of the Howard Dean playbook, because a) I think he's right, b) I think he'll get crucified for it. Ah well, welcome to our world, Senator.

A Little Different Perspective

Check out this video for (literally) a different perpective on the now infamous Dean Iowa speech. Looks a little different when the camera is not zoomed in on Howard and the sound not feeding directly from his mic. Watching that, I suspect Dean and his staff walked off that stage thinking it was a pretty good performance...

Latest New Hampshire Poll

It looks like the New Hampshire primary will be interesting as Dean tries to lick his wounds (including the self-inflicted) from Iowa. The latest Zogby poll shows Kerry leading Dean by 7 percentage points, 30 to 23%. I believe this is an average of the last 3 days. Of note, the latest poll, for Saturday, shows Kerry leading Dean by only 28 to 25%. It remains to be seen whether this is just a statistical anomaly or perhaps a combination of Kerry's momentum fading a bit, with some recovery by Dean.

Money Talks

First, to answer your question. You are a lawyer, you support the candidate favored by your industry, you earn approximately 5 times the median US income. Are your interests the same as the average American? Will issues that directly impact lower and middle income familes resonate as strongly with you as with them? You can answer that. On an individual basis that answer may be yes. From an aggregate perspective, probably not. And even you, who earn more than 95% of US households, state that you would give more than the $300-400 you've given now if you can afford it. Who do you think can afford to be giving $2000? If $300 contributors arguably have a different perspective and priorities compared to the general population, how much more true will that be of people who can afford to give $2000?

The frontrunner argument lacks traction in view of the percentages. George W. Bush may have more small contributions than anyone, but his ratio of cash raised from big money contributors to small donors shows who he depends on for his money. That ratio is heavily tilted in favor of big spenders. Edwards's ratio is worse.

I don't think anyone on either side of the spectrum will argue that big money is having a corrupting influence on our political system. Even the Supreme Court acknowledged in their campaign finance decision. This is the form that corruption takes. We don't have a problem with money under the table, with out and out bribes. The problem is that candidates know where their money comes from and they make sure that it will still be there when they come back for more. From the donors' perspective, they simply select candidates who they think will advance their interests and use their money to put them in office. Thousand dollar donors (which used to be the top limit) put over $300 million into the 2000 election. That's a lot of raw political power. With the McCain-Feingold bill that could double this year. Enron employees alone, in the decade from 1990-2000, kicked $6 million in to politicians, according to US PIRG. Just because they are individual contributions does not mean they don't represent special interests. This disporportionate exercise of power undermines the one person-one vote democratic principle.

Edwards talk a good game, as I mentioned from my viewing of his speech. But then both parties do. Just about every candidate of any party at any level that runs for office rails against the influence of special interests and big money. But little has been accomplished. Why? Because they live and die by that money. Being whores to big campaign contributions is a bi-partisan proposition. Both parties let Microsoft off the hook in their anti-trust case, both parties passed the ineffective and pork-laden energy bill, both parties passed Bush's tax cut for wealthy campaign contributors, both parties passed the DMCA and the copyright extensions, both parties allowed the SEC to rot and wither, and when Enron blew up, Democrats couldn't attack Republicans for it despite the clear ties, because they were too far in bed with Wall Street and the accounting firms who were also involved. They can talk all the bullshit they want about special interests and big money. But the evidence shows that when it comes down to it, money talks, bullshit walks.

I've read Edwards's policies and they amount to slapping a few restrictions on registered lobbyists. This isn't the problem. The money, and the dependency of politicians on that money is the problem. As far as I can tell, Edwards would do nothing about this. He likes to make a big deal about being the only candidate not to take money from PAC's, as if that were also the problem. It's not. The total funding Dean, Kerry, and Clark together have gotten from PAC's is less than $100,000. It's small potatoes compared to the $8+ million Edwards has gotten from $2000 contributors. That's 65% of his funding. Without them, he's not even in this race. I can guarantee you he knows that. I don't find him credible on this issue, nor do I believe his reforms would have any significant impact.

Take away all of Howard Dean's $2000 contributions and he's still got more money than any of the other Democrats. That gives him a sort of independence that the other candidates don't have. His reform proposals strike directly at the heart of the problem and move the US much closer to a publicly funded campaign model. I find him to be personally more credible and policiy-wise more effective than Edwards.

Worth Fighting For

Today Gov. Dean released his campaign reform policies. They are very aggressive (and progressive) and address an issue that none of the other candidates have really addressed (at least as far as their online policy positions go). Democratic reform is near and dear to my heart and these proposals would mark a major improvement. I once again feel obligated to post opensecrets.org's data on donor demographics in the presidential race. The numbers are stark, and say a lot. I caught a bit of an Edwards speech on cspan tonight, with him railing against special interest big money corrupting politics. Yet here's a guy who has collected only 3% of his funds from small donors. He's only got a little more than half as much money as Howard Dean, but has already accepted almost 3 times as many large contributions as Dean has. He's one to talk about big money and politics.

Dean's topping the charts...

Well, ok, maybe not.

(Thanks, Dave Barry)