September 5, 2003 PERMALINK
Dems Lookin' Good
(posted Sept. 5 1 AM ET)
(edited Sept. 5 9 AM ET)
After last night's debate, anyone who thinks the Dems are putting up a weak field of prez candidates, think again.
As a whole, the pack was sharp, confident, poised, and eager to make the case against George Bush.
After the first major debate in May, LiberalOasis scored most performances from B- to B+. Yesterday, most candidates deserved A- to A.
Part of it was the setting.
In May, they all sat in chairs, had no audience, and faced a celebrity moderator looking to start fights and talk horse race strategy.
Yesterday had a more presidential feel: standing behind podiums, only questions about issues, and a crowd very willing to applaud and cheer.
But the most important thing is almost everybody gave the crowd something to cheer about.
Rep. Dick Gephardt, the supposed machine, was passionate and feisty, repeatedly deriding Bush as a "miserable failure."
Sen. John Kerry, the supposedly aloof one, knocked out a number of well-delivered jokes, including one seeming ad-lib:
It would be wonderful to have a president of the United States who could find the rest of the countries in this hemisphere.
Sen. John Edwards, the supposed neophyte, came off as experienced as any of them, and also got off what might have been the best line of the night:
The president goes around the country speaking Spanish. The only Spanish he speaks when it comes to jobs is, "Hasta la vista."
Gov. Howard Dean, the supposedly angry candidate, showed he could take a punch and fire back without losing his cool (more on that in a bit).
Sen. Joe Lieberman, who mostly continued to pursue his dead-end conservative strategy, made the best case for a more open immigration policy:
It pains me. It outrages me that every year hundred of Mexicans coming to America for exactly the same reason that my grandparents did, die in the desert because of our current immigration policy.
And he went on to nail John Ashcroft where it most matters:
Let's put some due process in our immigration laws, so the Justice Department under John Ashcroft can't again do what they did after 9/11.
Which is to arrest almost 800 undocumented immigrants, put them in jail, without charges, without counsel, without notice to their families. That's not America at its best.
It's only fair to note that Rep. Dennis Kucinich probably scored the most applause of anyone (though LO wasn't counting), which will continue to raise his profile as one of the nation's leading liberal-populists. (Will a talk show follow?)
And Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, who does her candidacy no favors with her minimal campaigning, gave another solid performance, further helping the cause of women and minority presidential candidates.
The only real loser in the group was Sen. Bob Graham.
No embarrassments, but a lackluster performance that will only increase the calls that he should drop out (and it won't help his VP chances either).
The problem for most candidates, with everyone doing so well, is that no one stood head and shoulders above the rest.
Which means that no one will dominate the next-day news coverage (and few Americans actually watched it live, as it was on PBS.)
Which means that everyone who desperately needs to make a move to slow Dean's momentum won't get much out of this.
Lieberman was the only one in serious attack-Dean mode. Most notably, he dragged Dean into a rough exchange on trade policy.
About halfway through the debate, Lieberman said:
[Dean] said here tonight again something that I read he said in an interview with the Washington Post, which I found to be stunning.
...He would not have bilateral trade agreements with any country that did not observe fully American standards.
Now that would mean we'd break our trade agreements...with most of the rest of world.
That would cost us millions of jobs...If that ever happened I'd say that the Bush Recession would be followed by the Dean Depression.
The crowd seemed to mutter in disapproval, as if to say, "Why did you have to start something? We were having fun!"
But Dean, who has said himself that he can get prickly when challenged, took it in stride, maybe even eager to show that he was in control:
We do have to have trade relations which rely on equality of labor standards throughout the world.
They didn't have to be American standards. [It] could be the International Labor Organization...
...And I believe given the reform that's gone on in Mexico...that we will...be able to negotiate with Mexico the same labor standards, the same human rights, and the same environmental standards over a period of time...
...We cannot continue to ship our jobs to countries where they get paid 50 cents a hour, with no occupational safety and health, no overtime, no labor protections and no right to organize.
And with that, the crowd burst into applause.
Lieberman gamely tried to save face:
...Dean, in his interview with the Washington Post, referred to American standards, not international standards.
Dean then said off-mike, "Either is fine with me," to which Lieberman semi-conceded, "That's a reassuring change of position," noting that he had fought for international standards in the Senate.
For debate-watchers, it was clearly Dean 1, Lieberman 0. It looked like Lieberman overshot and got burned.
But did he have a case? Did Dean flip-flop on the spot?
Here's what the W. Post piece about Dean said:
In what would be a radical departure, China and other countries could get trade deals with the United States only if they adopted "the same labor laws and labor standards and environmental standards" as the United States.
Since "as the United States" was not in quotes, the question surely never to be answered is: did Dean really say that and mean it, did Dean say it but innocuously misspoke, or did the reporter misparaphrase him?
(UPDATE Sept. 5 9 AM ET -- Dean's taking the paraphrase defense.)
Lieberman wasn't crazy, but he should know better than to stake his biggest debate gambit on a single report.
And now everyone knows, Dean's pretty damn crafty. Attack at your own risk.
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September 3, 2003 PERMALINK
You're With The Occupation
Or You're With The Terrorists
(posted Sept. 3 1 AM ET)
For several weeks, the Right's refrain has been that the media is skewing what's happening in Iraq, trumping up the bad, ignoring the good.
They are taking the lead of Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld, who recently said:
...with 24-hour news, each setback in Iraq is repeated and repeated and repeated as if it were 10 or 20 setbacks.
And the progress that's being made -- and let there be no doubt, solid progress is being made -- is often not deemed sufficiently newsworthy to report.
Yet apparently, what's not "sufficiently newsworthy to report" by Rumsfeld's crew would fall into the setback category, not the progress category.
Centurion Risk Assessment Services, a British firm staffed with former military that helps civilians "working in hazardous regions," released a bombshell report on Iraq that said:
Many incidents are not making the headlines.
Most of them are not being reported at all by the forces involved as they are possibly trying to minimize the threats and play down the overall threat to all involved in working in Iraq.
(ABC World News Tonight cited the report yesterday, and a fuller account is on the W. Post website.)
What's not being reported? Among other things, a little assassination attempt on two American officers.
It's that reality on the ground in Iraq which explains a new shift the Administration PR game.
Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz took to the Wall Street Journal yesterday, and promptly forgot his boss' Everything's Gonna Be Alright line.
Instead, he laid down a call to arms: you're with the occupation, or you're with the terrorists:
Anyone who thinks that the battle in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror should tell it to the Marines of the 1st Marine Division...
...there was no question in their minds that the battle they wage -- the battle to secure the peace in Iraq -- is now the central battle in the war on terrorism.
The piece is a sad, pathetic, defensive propaganda screed.
It does not seek to debate the merits of internationalizing the occupation and taking away the stigma of unilateral US control.
It only offers one alternative to our current path:
If killing Americans leads to our defeat and the restoration of the old regime, [foreign terrorists] would score an enormous strategic victory for terrorism.
Of course, if this wasn't an American occupation, then our defeat wouldn't be an option.
He goes on to make a number of (surprise, surprise) misleading statements, but most notably was this:
Just as in the Cold War, holding the line in Berlin and Korea was not just about those places alone.
It was about the resolve of the free world. Once that resolve was made clear to the Soviets, communism eventually collapsed.
The same thing will happen to terrorism...
Yes, the Soviets really got the "resolve" message after Korea. Just 35 years and one massive internal economic collapse later, communism was destroyed.
Wolfowitz naturally left Vietnam off his "resolve" list. The whole unfortunate comparison thing.
But obviously, the specter of Vietnam's quagmire is weighing heavily on Wolfowitz and the rest of Administration.
Otherwise, there'd be no need for McCarthyite rants.
Interestingly, the piece was placed on the nation's premier conservative opinion page, not made in a speech to a broader audience.
This either could mean the Administration is worried about weakening support in their base, or that they wanted to disseminate pushback points to those mostly likely to echo them. Or both.
What's certain is that the Bushies are feeling the intense pressure that can be expected when a policy, lacking in solid public support, leads to lost lives.
What's also certain: there's more sad defensiveness to come.
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September 1, 2003 PERMALINK
The Sunday Talkshow Breakdown
A Weekly Feature of LiberalOasis
(posted Sept. 1 2 AM ET)
The race is on to determine who gets to turn the primary into a two-man contest with Howard Dean.
And Sen. John Kerry got first crack, as he faced off with Tim Russert on NBC's Meet The Press, a prelude to his campaign kickoff event Tuesday.
Just in time too.
While LiberalOasis noted last week that Kerry has the leg up on the other 7, that advantage has been fading.
Kerry fell into single digits in a nationwide CBS poll released yesterday:
Joe Lieberman -- 14%
Dick Gephardt -- 11%
Howard Dean -- 10%
John Kerry -- 5%
Al Sharpton -- 5%
Yet, he's still the best-financed candidate (to date).
And if he scores a string a positive press with this week's rollout, and coalesces the portion of the electorate not sold on Dean, those numbers could bounce back quick.
Having said all that, how'd he do on MTP?
When Dean had his (in)famous MTP appearance in June, LO called it "a mixed bag."
Same here, good and bad.
The Good: His answers have gotten crisper, and help bolster his Ready-on-Day-1 image.
LO lightly knocked Kerry back in December for having ponderous, overly-nuanced answers that buried key points and left audiences confused.
He's learned. He's streamlined his responses -- not completely sound-bite friendly, but to the point. For example:
I'll tell you, after I'm sworn in, one of the first things I'm going to do is go to the United Nations and turn over a new chapter in America's relationship with the world, one that strengthens our security and our safety.
Or:
I disagree with the president's approach to almost everything he's doing...
And you look at America and the choices we face today, Tim.
On the budget, he's favoring the wealthy in America at the expense of the middle class. He has ignored the plight of job loss in America.
He has gone backwards on the environment, backwards on cities and urban -- look, we've given a tax cut to people while states are being forced to raise taxes and cut services.
Perhaps there's no poetry here, just prose.
But the approach fits his stern, serious, steady, confident persona.
It's a persona that some praise ("Serious man for serious times") and others criticize ("Not who you'd have a beer with").
But if a candidate is at his best when he is being himself, Kerry is definitely doing that.
The Bad: That crisp answer thing does not apply to his war vote.
Kerry's actual on-air time, subtracting commercials and filler, was about 47 minutes.
Roughly 13 of those -- more than a quarter of the interview -- was spent on understanding his position on the war.
Why? Because his explanation doesn't make any sense. It simply isn't defensible.
Often, the media are incapable of explaining a legitimately nuanced position to the public -- either oversimplifying it or treating it like a cynical waffle.
And in theory, there's nothing inconsistent with believing war was right, but would have been best accomplished with a true coalition (and without all that lying).
But yesterday, Kerry gave a defense full of holes and contradictions. It's spin that makes your head spin.
He said:
The bottom line is that we voted on the basis of information that was given to us, that has since then been proven to be incorrect.
OK then, you got had. Not your fault. Perhaps we shouldn't have gone to war and you should retract your original position.
But Kerry won't go there:
...it was right to hold Saddam Hussein accountable, absolutely correct.
And anybody who doesn't believe it wasn't correct ought to go dig around in those graves or even make a judgment about what would happen if you left Saddam Hussein alone to do this.
Alone to do what exactly, if the info on WMD was incorrect?
And Saddam's cruelty towards his own people wasn't Kerry's rationale going in. In his own words yesterday:
I didn't base it on the nuclear, but the most important and compelling rationale were the lack of inspections and the non-compliance of Saddam Hussein.
Even Hans Blix at the United Nations said he is not in compliance.
Essentially, chem and bio weapons it would seem was Kerry's concern (that was Blix's jurisdiction). Not mass graves. Not nukes.
But hold on again. Just before that answer, Russert aired a clip of Kerry's Oct. '02 Senate floor speech explaining his position then:
According to the CIA's report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that they are seeking nuclear weapons. There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop them.
It's just a mess. He's talked himself into a hole that now he can't get out of.
He should have either taken the Joe Lieberman route, somewhat downplaying the Bush lies, as Lieberman did on CBS' Face The Nation yesterday:
...the president and the administration, I'm afraid, did overstate the case in some ways.
And what bothers me about that is that it wasn't necessary. [It] has threatened to give a bad name to what I'm convinced was a just war.
Or, you can take the claim that you were given "incorrect" info to its logical conclusion and renounce your vote.
Of course, the Lieberman route would pull Kerry farther to the Right than he wants to be.
And to renounce the war completely would peg him an "anti-war" candidate (and, perhaps more unfairly, a "flip-flopper").
That's not part of the Kerry game plan.
So Kerry's made his bed, and he's chosen to lie in it, messy as the bed may be.
He can only hope that after repeatedly hearing him give this spiel with a straight face (which he did pretty well, for what it's worth), people will eventually tire and move on.
Outside of The Good and The Bad, there was The Dean.
In yesterday's NY Times, Adam Nagourney reported:
Dr. Dean's rivals are all stepping gingerly, waiting for someone else to risk the first shot.
The wait lasted about two hours, when Kerry let loose:
-- Howard Dean has zero experience in international affairs.
-- Howard Dean, Mr. Gephardt, several other candidates want to raise taxes on the middle class. I don't want to do that.
They want to get rid of the whole Bush tax cut. I think the problem in America is not that the middle class has too much money, Tim. They're hurting.
-- If you're a $40,000 income earner, Howard Dean's going to raise your taxes more than 20 times. And I don't want to do that.
These lines are nothing for Dean fans, and others Dems who hate infighting, to get too angsty about.
As LO said back in April, it's inevitable that the candidates will get muddy. There's too much at stake.
But these are far from scorched-earth tactics.
Although, the "raise your taxes more than 20 times" line sounds so histrionic to the point of not being plausible.
(One might have expected Tim Russert to push for some backup there, if he had not pulled a similar move against Dean two months ago, with the help of Bush's Treasury Department.)
Things could be (and may get) worse, but history shows that it doesn't spell doom in '04.
As far as Kerry's strategy goes, those attacks don't appear to be aimed at peeling off Dean supporters, but at coalescing the undecided around him by painting Dean as unelectable.
If he can make that case and stall Dean's rise, Kerry probably has enough other advantages to win (namely, money and institutional support).
But it puts a certain amount of control in Dean's hands.
Because if Dean can parry the attacks, and make his case of electability, Kerry might not be able to find another chink in Dean's armor.
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