The need for California millionaire welfare

This is something from Daniel Weintraub of the Sac Bee that's linked by Dynamist that escapes my comprehension. It's a story about how state revenues are way down because the very wealthy are making less and thus cutting billions out of the coffers in their poverty. The conclusion is that Arnold better not raise taxes, because we NEED those rich folks' money! But how are the reported declines in revenue for the top income earners in California at all related to tax increases? The rates have only gone up indexed for inflation (see 2000 here and 2003 here), so where's the connection? In 2000, despite being subject to a top rate of 9.3%, the millionaire-level filers raked in 172 billion and paid 15 billion. So where's the problem with tax rates there? If you're going to pin aggregate revenue to taxation, why not discuss the federal rates, which affect the gross amount reported to California--and which have gone DOWN since 2000--twice?

Obviously the amount of revenue generated by California taxes in these examples is not dependent on the rate at all, but a much more broad set of economic factors. So what's Weintraub's point? Make sure you insulate the super rich in Cali from harm, Arnold--we need them to reap as much as possible from us, so that we can get 9 cents on the dollar back. The sad thing is, if you look at California's rate, it's among the friendliest in the country. You can make almost $22,000 and pay only 4% on it. Most states pass the 4% threshold before you even make your first 10 grand. The rate does top out higher than many states, but everybody gets more of their first $38,000 back before hitting the ceiling. Shoot, where I live you pay 9% after 6 grand! (Of course we have no regressive sales tax).

If you're going to complain about the deletrious effect tax increases have on revenue, at least wait for a) an increase, and b) deletrious effect.

National Intelligence Estimate

from an article in the Virginian-Pilot, a look at excerpts from the National Intelligence Estimate document that Bush and Cheney claim formed the basis of their decision to prosecute the war. Note the almost parenthetical inclusion of parts of the State Department's dissent.

It kills me when one of these guys says something like "Saddam Hussein was clearly a threat"--based on what? If the administration is now forced to grudgingly admit at least that the intelligence was wrong, what was it that made him a threat? It's theoretically fair to say "at the time we thought he was a threat," but if the things that made him a threat aren't true, how was he a threat?


Going around are reprints of these comments by Colin Powell, showing how little the State Department, at least, thought of Iraq's trendline in terms of capacity:

"We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction..."

The cheating culture

Interesting article by David Callahan in the new Nation. "The Cheating Culture" echoes themes I've been processing and debating for a while--that we continue to become a more personally insular, self-involved country of people. "Out of many, one" has slowly eroded to, "One, and...what was the other thing again?" I was disappointed that Callahan took no opportunities to actually document barometers of cheating in any of the ways he describes. I certainly agree his instincts are right, but it would be nice to see that supposition supported by objective analysis. Politically however, he has noticed exactly what I have with regards to Edwards and a new theme of moral community that the Democrats seem to have long been afraid of expressing:

"Edwards has been the most aggressive of the Democrats in attempting to move the values debate onto home turf by couching the liberal ideals of fairness and opportunity in strong moral language. This is good stuff, and I think it points the way to the future of the Democratic party. Democrats need to sharpen their core values, and then hammer them home again and again."

Hey, the transcript!

GB WaPo, again, for posting the full transcript. I didn't put a lot of dilligence into finding it, and now it's days old so I may or may not write about the text therein. But for anyone else who missed the video, here's the written version--which actually gives you a better chance to evaluate what they're saying (and typically realize what a crock of pandering jackassery most of it is). So in that sense it's fun, and maybe once in a while you read something revealing about a candidate's beliefs (or more likely strategy).

But it's Saturday, and there are sticks all over the yard from the rainstorm Thursday, that I have to pickup. Later.

Bush falls below magic threshhold

Under 50% job rating for the first time, says Newsweek.

Their stuff seems to run left (and you can see Quinnipiac has a slight bump for him in their last poll), but the trend in the rating matches the slide in electoral competitiveness against both Kerry and Edwards. There is a long way to go, and Bush still has all the advantages, but when Saddam was captured there was talk of Bush being barely challenged in November, and that is clearly now not going to be the case.

Polling update

More polls, as Kos says. Too tired to analyze tonight; reach your own conclusions and quit bothering me, wouldya?

OK, now it's getting started

The backlash has begun on Kerry, and not a moment too soon in my view. Not because Kerry is a bad man, or wants to take us to bad places, but because the speed at which he is being anointed threatens to rush the process to the point that Democrats will not have fully thought through their decision, and end up with someone who runs a wooden, same old same old campaign against a formidable opponent. It should be said that Kerry is doing very well now poll wise, but the test is how you do when they're trying to kick you in the nuts. I'll spare you the charges between candidates--Dean on lack of legislative resume', Clark on affirmative action--and head out to the sphere for more character- and record-based charges from others. Atlantic Monthly has this piece that can't decide whether it loves Edwards more than it dislikes Kerry, or vice versa.

The key question here is whether appearing qualified is a more "electable" trait than being able to move people. John Kerry's theme is a disunified jumble of slogans and catch phrases, the kind of stuff that is repeated in each of his speeches until the crowd recites it with him like they're at Rocky Horror. Good one liners like "bring it on" and "don't let the door hit you" are best used in spots, particularly debates where people are seeking one memorable image to take away. I suppose you can argue that as the media soundbite their way across the electoral terrain, what usually gets picked up in stumping video is those one liners. But the crowd aping him doesn't give you the sense that they're mesmerized by his vision--they're mesmerized by his writers. I mean, is anyone really inspired into thinking that John Kerry will actually "fight for them?"

It's tough talk, all about the big battle against Bush, the Big Bush Battle. And that's precisely NOT what a president needs to be about. Ultimately, his angle is no less about process than Dean's "the campaign IS the message" theme, but at least the residue of Dean's efforts will be a host of newly reenergized public citizens. Kerry seems to want nothing more from his supporters than to help him oust Bush, and then, well, we'll get back to you in 2008.

Edwards, by comparison, frames the debate against Bush in terms that almost ignore him entirely. Sure, he roasts Bush about policy failure and going in the wrong direction, but those inadequacies are mere propholders for Edwards' illustration of the greater problems that face us, and why we should be motivated to change them. He doesn't say "Bush cut retraining dollars for people laid off," he says we need to address why jobs are going overseas, and make sure we are trained to stop the bleeding. Nobody else in the race is talking about poverty and saying, "look, with our values and our country's heritage, it should bother us that we are ignoring this problem in order to fight wars overseas and try to improve OTHER people's lives. What we're doing is wrong." Edwards strikes a chord in people when he says, "this is wrong," and he does say it a lot. But it's not a catch phrase, it's a statement of belief, and people hook onto beliefs a lot more deeply than they do slogans they can chant at a rally.

The New Republic has a debate between what appears to be two detractors--one who does so intentionally, and one who was apparently under editorial duress to take the supporting view, but in so doing cannot control the accessions of Kerry's venality from coming to the surface. I hope for the latter's sake they weren't paid on the basis of persuasive outcome.

On the vastly more important subject of which entertainers are endorsing the candidates, there are rumbles that Hootie and the Blowfish may be sucking all the cool out of Edwards' campaign, but at least Britney Spears has already committed to the other side, so none of the Democrats need to worry about a Sister No-Souljah moment in the offing. Rumors that Joe Lieberman has received the endorsement of Styx in order to declare himself "Mr. Joeboto," appear unconfirmed.

Here's the mail, it never fails, it makes me want to wag my tail!

(That thing about Steve dying is a hoax, by the way).

We have mail! Longtime reader Zap writes:

I support no profanity blogging. :)
To me, we cuss, because it adds emphasis and _expression to our feelings. It's so much more affective to be able to emphasize and express the same feelings without profanity. On that note, I've worked with all walks of the public for... eeesh... 18 years now, and it's been a long standing observation that the better off folks are, the happier they are, the more civil they are, the more rational they are, the less I hear them cussing. Cream rises to the top, and shit sinks.


Right you are, Zap! Only a weak mind relies on vulgarity to make his point! So fucking true. Since I had nothing substantive to offer on the SC debate, why not entertain Zap's view of it while we've got him on the horn--

Kucinich and Sharpton handled questions deftly. Both extracted big applause from the crowd. Neither should have been there.
Clark looks more and more like a deer in the headlights with each one of these events. Again he was ambushed with questions that seemed to be thinly veiled attacks. He always stumbles out of the gate when responding and then finishes strong, but the stumble is too fresh to make his recovery notable.
Edwards had his worst public moments so far. He went overboard preaching his homefield advantage. If it plays well in SC, I doubt it earned him any new votes elsewhere. There was also something a little haggard, maybe worn, about his performance. Hopefully the tv audience was minimal. What do I mean hopefully? Of cours it was.
Kerry's mantras, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out, bring it on, bla bla bla" are starting to wear on me. I'm sure many an undecided must be getting a similar vibe. Kerry is a pro. He reads from his notes more than Clark. He's getting stale. He needs to freshen it up. I hope he doesn't.
Dean was the winner. He attacked Kerry on specific items. Kerry responded aggressively, but the upfront nature of the confrontations clearly favored Dean because Kerry went into his act instead of countering with substance. Dean's Clinton worship may turn against him, if Kerry is campaigning like a dirty rotten bonesman.

Psssst! It's a conspiracy! Thanks, Zap. See how easy it is, folks? Still no comments form, but it has only been 5 days. :)

SC debate fact-check

I apologize for not being able to see any of the debate other than the news bible excerpts, but I am grateful for WaPo's review of statements for accuracy. This is a key, positive function for the press, and every reputable paper should carry a story beside all their debate and ad writeups, disclaiming the claims. I knew when I read Dean's quote about Cheney berating the CIA that a) there was no firm evidence, and b) it's probably true, but you still shouldn't say it.

Bless John McCain

I don't think I could ever vote for him in a federal election; in many respects he's Barry Goldwater with a nice smile. His 2000 campaign proposal to use the US military to fight the drug war within our borders, was when I realized the fresh talk hid some crazy ideas.

But McCain is one tough, principled little bastard. Some candidates (cough--Kerry!) bounce from issue to issue in an ENTP frenzy, never actually making much headway on any of them. McCain continues to wrestle with issues of campaign reform--despite fierce opposition from otherwise friendly corners--and is once again taking the Bush administration to task for its continued resistance to inquries about both 9/11 and Iraq. This is the "good" power of the incumbency. McCain knows that he is strongly supported in his home state; he's not going anywhere. That freedom lets him wield considerable influence without endangering his political career--but he deserves plenty of credit for taking that chance on a regular basis. I can't imagine the private conversations he has with some of the GOP establishment. While I said I'd likely never vote for McCain, let me say this: if I was guaranteed that George Bush would be removed from office, but only if he was replaced by McCain, I'd take that offer without blinking.

FEC: Ads made with Bush endorsement count as donations

That's one loophole closed, anyway...MyWay News

Missed the debate!

I wasn't able to catch any more than excerpts of the SC debate. If someone knows of a full-length video transcript, I'd love to see it. Send me some mail.

And send me some mail anyway! If your comment is relevant and non-abusive, I'll post it.

Damning with faint praise

Jim Clyburn's rationale for endorsing John Kerry, from MSNBC:

Kerry received the endorsement of South Carolina’s top black Democrat, Rep. Jim Clyburn, who said he backed Kerry over Sen. John Edwards, a South Carolina native, “to give John Kerry viability to help him go to the championship as a viable candidate.”

There used to be a time when you endorsed the guy you liked best. [ed--maybe not, but we can dream.] How half-hearted and condescending can you be to assert that you're endorsing a guy because he needs viability (and that you can bestow it upon him)? Don't you endorse someone BECAUSE they're viable? They cut off the quote in this article; I wish I could find the rest of it where I read it originally. He actually mentioned Edwards, that I recall, saying something about how great Edwards was, and Kerry needed his endorsement so that he could stay viable and let people have a chance to decide--or something like that. The number of Democrats who are rolling over and letting John Kerry stroke their bellies on the basis of some perceived electability is getting creepy. And then Edwards says, "That's OK--all his people are working for me anyway." WTF?

Carnahan needs some polling data, stat!

from the Atlanta JC:


Carnahan said Kerry is the most electable of the Democrats because of his military background and national security policies.

"That's something most Americans are very concerned about," she said. "They want a strong defense, they want to feel safe here at home, they want to feel like we can make the kind of commitments abroad we need to keep the nation safe. They feel a lot more comfortable with someone who's had military experience, and certainly I do."

BS, Jean! Or at least if most Americans are concerned about it, it's not what they're MOST concerned about. Economic/domestic issues are easily more important to the voters right now, not Iraq or national security. I'll grant that there is a gut sense among a majority that we need a strong leader, but as Saletan points out in Slate, Kerry is 0 for 2 in making calls on wars--he was against Gulf I, for Gulf II. Scroll down a bit for Newsweek numbers on Iraq feelings, and you'll see that a majority of the country either is less likely to vote for Bush because of Iraq (and thus will be lock Democratic voters no matter who it is), or it will make no difference. If not Iraq, what's the obvious answer as to what WILL make the difference? Jobs and healthcare, and Kerry brings almost nothing to the table on these issues for anyone but committed Democrats.

When the candidates talk to voters, again and again they are telling the press and anyone who will listen, "We are not getting questions about Iraq." The media and the political establishment on the Left are not hearing them, and continue to tell us that people will only vote for a Democrat who's a war hero. Again I say, BS.

Missouri polling data

via Kos, who is getting slammed in his comments file for strongly insinuating that the Kerry campaign was doing some dirty tricks polling on Dean in both Iowa and NH. Kos is a pretty ardent Dean fan, so it's hard to view him objectively on what would be a sensitive issue to someone so high on Dean still.

Anyway, thanks to him we have this link to SurveyUSA's current Missouri polling. Kerry's way out in front, with half the calling even done before NH, and they break out the daily trend showing him upward since then. Even with a surprisingly large ad buy in MO, five days isn't enough time for Edwards to catch him. Of course, in the Democratic system he doesn't need to catch him to claim success here; it's not winner take all. Frankly, given the way everyone except he and Kerry are tanking there at the moment (or due to tank, in Dean's case), it may have been wiser for Edwards to spread the jing around a little bit and not outbuy Kerry. Still, he wants and needs to do well here; there are relatively many delegates available and Missouri is a pretty good bellwether state with all types of voters. With these updated numbers I don't think Edwards can win, but as it stands he should easily lock down 2nd and maybe scrape his way into the low double digits behind Kerry. It would take a lot more Gephardters than he's gotten so far, though. The one highlight is the number of independents he is scoring. Independents are the holy grail for Democrats this election; that Kerry and Edwards are 1-2 in that respect should be no surprise to anyone who thinks they are the anointed two overall.

As for Kerry, so far the botox angle has not caught fire this week, although I did see it discussed on I believe CNBC this morning, in the context of a fashion evaluation of the candidates' style. :rolleyes: Listening to some metrosexual tell me that Clark needs to lose the argyle and Lieberman could use a new haircut was an unfortunate waste of 10 minutes, but after hearing the magic word "botox" I had to stay with it until I was sure the moment had passed. :) CBS's minor blog almost seals the deal on "does he/doesn't he:

"Absolutely. I’ve never even heard of it ... I’ve never even heard of it." – John Kerry on denying having Botox injections to smooth his wrinkles. Kerry’s wife, Theresa Heinz Kerry, enthusiastically - and publicly - touted the benefits of Botox in Elle Magazine last year. (WRKO, New York Post)

Are these people so disconnected that he doesn't even know his WIFE has had botox? Yeah, right.


We'll see if the push-poll allegations go anywhere, but so far all the anti-Kerry backlash has stayed on the margins. I'm beginning to see a similar but ideologically opposite sense of defeatist doom from some quarters about Kerry's inevitability, in the same way that people who were repulsed by the idea of Dean as candidate, were grumbling when the news was All Dean, All the Time. It's definitely looking more and more like Super Tuesday will be the decisive day, much to Terry McAulliffe's chagrin.

Howard's End?

(can't believe I haven't seen that headline yet! Another scoop!)

Took me a little bit, but I found some detail to the allegation that Howard Dean is running out of money. The campaign is fluffling the idea that they have $5mil on hand, but as The Note notes, "'If we had $5 million in the bank, we would not be asked to defer our paychecks,' one senior member of the staff said yesterday." You probably also don't announce that you're not going to air a SINGLE ad in any of the states being contested on Feb 3. Not a one--that's pretty insane, unless...you're out of money. $10mil in Iowa and $5mil in NH, and all they got was a lousy establishment lobbyist/pol for a new campaign manager. Wow. Kos suggests that the number is closer to $3mil on hand--but with about that much in debt.

Spinning this, Dean's people are stressing that it's a marathon, not a sprint, and that one state coming up--Michigan--has more delegates at state than any of the ones contested on the 3rd. As I've mentioned, the "win via consistent 2nd places" gambit can work, but you have to actually get 2nd place in a lot of states. Dean's best chances for victory states seem to have passed him by, and if you are facing a crisis of momentum (yours down, your perceived 2-man opponent's up), you don't have time to sit back and huddle for the big prize down the road. Dean may have a solid chance in both Michigan and Wisconsin, but he is going to bleed there as a result of not being the story this week--or worse, that he's the story for having a lousy week in the states he didn't contest. Under the 2-man race scenario, Dean's best chance to portray himself as the "other man" to Kerry is in fact this week, after NH results that showed the gap between he and Clark/Edwards being bigger than the one between he and Kerry. Inevitably the press from Feb 3 will be either Kerry's alone, or Kerry and Edwards or Clark (or both). Lieberman is this week's post-primary victim, and while he'll definitely stay in the race Dean is setting himself up to be next week's.

Who benefits from Dean's capitulation? AP says it's Edwards, and that makes sense. Iowa gave him the much needed financial boost to carry ads and troops to multiple states this week, and he has kept up a presence in the key ones for him (SC, OK, MO) for a while now. Clark likely has more money, but not the organization nor the previous presence. Clark is making a showing in most of the states, but seems to be concentrating on SC and the two Southwest states--which makes sense for him, but he's probably not going to win SC and is likeliest for 3rd there, and MO is more important than either AZ or NM in terms of both delegates and as a national barometer of one's candidacy.

And then there's the question of where Dean's supporters will go, which I guess begs the question of IF some of them will go this week as he tries to regroup. I guess the more timid will gravitate to Kerry, but I don't really buy the "married Kerry" concept--I just don't sense any kind of ideological or personal similarity between the two. As someone who was very supportive of Dean's candidacy before he began to implode (and I still like what he says), I can't imagine a scenario where my vote will shift to Kerry if there are other choices. Clark seems much more similar, but if you're leaving one candidate because he's kind of kooky and amateurish and not looking presidential, why would you place your bets on another one like him?

So from a purely speculative standpoint, I think Edwards is the beneficiary all around. Edwards shares some of the "outsider/newcomer" sheen without any of the crackpot-ism that afflicts Clark. He's somewhat messianic like Dean, but feels safer, like Kerry.

The people who are reading best between the lines in this race are firmly of the mind that this is ultimately a 2-way race between Kerry and Edwards, Kerry's to lose. Clark is a wildcard for this week, but really for this week only in my judgement. Tonight's debate will be interesting, and I'll try to recap it for you later tonight. But first I have to find out who Donald Trump will "fire" (how can you be fired from a job interview? You haven't even been hired yet!)

Upcoming primary polling

I forgot to post Kos' reprint of polling data yesterday for some of the upcoming races. With Dean not spending any money over the next week (cause he has none; more on that later), it becomes a three-way between Kerry, Edwards and Clark. Barring a tailspin by Clark, it looks like he's battling Kerry for Arizona. Oklahoma looks like anybody's race, but I imagine it will be a two-way Kerry/Edwards. South Carolina looks like the most wide open; anyone of the three could take it (although Survey USA has Edwards well in front early in the week). Hopefully we'll see some of the other states' polling data coming in, but at the moment it looks like next Tuesday will solve nothing, unless Edwards can't hold on in South Carolina. If I'm Edwards, I stop by there as best I can, and throw everything else into Missouri and Oklahoma. Any two of those three would be enough to keep him viable, IMO. More to come.

Boston Botox

I am utterly loathe to give rumor monger Drudge any more referral ink than he already gets, but he has compiled a pretty stunning dossier on the current Democratic frontrunner. Drudge nails Kerry to the wall with these incredibly detailed documents showing a complete reversal on the part of the Senator. The evidence these damning documents provide, show a pattern of deceit and backward-thinking that may cost Kerry some or all of his new momentum.

Just look at the cold, hard, unvarnished, unwrinkled facts.

Another election, another candidate shoots himself in the face...er, foot.

Obviously, this is nothing more substantial than a symbol of Kerry's shallow inauthenticity. We'll see if it has any legs in a "Dean Scream" sort of parody sense. But remember my prediction about Kerry blowback this week. Not that you gotta be Nostradamus to predict that one--as sure as the sun rises (somewhere, if not in the Pacific Northwest), once the media are finished building your pedestal for you they put down the hammers and get out the saws. And while it's fashionable to smugly wag your finger at "the media" for their political Madonna/whore complex, it reminds me of something we all too easily forget:

The media are us.
The government is us.
The politicians are us.

It's not like we import our talking heads. We grow them here, and there hasn't been a drought in decades. We get what we ask for. If it were ridiculous to suggest that John Kerry might have a better shot at getting elected if he didn't look so wrinkled, he never would have done it. The joke of advertising is that it's on us: companies are not stupid; they spend large sums of money on ads because they work on us. And in politics, the only rule of advertising is never to get caught trying to advertise. Again, you needn't have phoned Dionne Warwick to guess that somewhere along the line, John Kerry might have an authenticity problem. The trick was whether he could be inauthentic without being caught. I think this is Leno fodder more than anything else, but oddly enough Leno matters in our elections, in a small and perverse kind of way.

This vulnerable heel of John Kerry is Howard Dean's last shot. Dean is banking on the idea that people will forgive you for being you, a lot faster than they'll forgive you for NOT being you. Being right may not ultimately help Dean (a theme that I'm noticing seems to follow Dean around), but there could be some collateral damage along the way.

Torrid's World Leads the World! (Trippi Gone)

OK, so I was only half right the last two days--they didn't hire John McEnroe OR Mark Burnett. But the Dean campaign did experiment with the John Kerry "Fire your guy and make people think your candidacy is doomed, then come roaring back" strategy today, hiring former Gore flack Roy Neel (scroll down a bit) as the new train conductor.

This must be another attempt to break out of the mainstream, establishment conceit that drives all the other candidates--by hiring a guy who's been with Al Gore since 1977. The only time Neel has taken a break from running interference for either Gore or Clinton was as head of the USTA (sadly, the telecomm lobbying group, not McEnroe's Tennis Association), where he gained a reputation for wanting to cut the FCC off at the knees.

As a guy firmly in tune with technology and communications, I suppose Neel's not a bad choice for a campaign addicted to its own process. But the transaction is less notable for who than for when--after a slightly redeeming but still disappointing finish in NH. Various "rumors" in the sphere have talked today about deep divisions within the Dean camp on whether to try to hit everywhere a little bit in the next week, or to zero in on states they think they can win. The article notes that "nomination via consistent 2nd place" doesn't appear to be a strategy anyone wants to try, despite the fact that it's certainly possible. The suggestion that Dean asked Trippi to stay and he demurred, indicates that Trippi was overruled and could not carry out the order. Whichever way Dean goes in the next week or two, we'll know that Trippi wanted to go the opposite way, which will make for a fairly simple way to judge post facto whether the switch was a good one.

Kerry gets Clyburn, Carnahan...Eagleton?

The Holy Grail of SC endorsements has come through for John Kerry, reportedly. But who are these "officials," and why is Clyburn not commenting on his own endorsement? Is he waiting for the press event to make his first comments on the matter? He's been quite coy to this point, saying he's "chilling out."

The face value of this endorsement is that it's big--Clyburn would reputedly bring a sizeable chunk of the African-American vote with him to Kerry's side, thus crushing both Clark's attempts to get them as a veteran, and Edwards' quest to get them as a Clintonite cultist. But haven't we been down this road before in a general sense as they relate to Dean (Gore, Bradley, Harkin) and Clark (the delightfully alphabetic trio of Moore, Madonna and McGovern)? What if black folk in South Carolina don't give any more of a crap about which establishment honcho supports you, than white folk have shown? I don't think it hurts Kerry, obviously, but I'm not ready to put the dirt on Edwards and Clark in that state because of it. Maybe Clark to some extent, but I've already kind of written him off in SC for other reasons.

The other endorsements in Missouri will get less play, because the candidates haven't been laying themselves prostrate in front of the endorsers like they have for Clyburn. At least Clyburn is a sitting Congressperson with current political credentials. Jean Carnahan is well loved by Democrats, but she likely has zero organizational pull--and is the vote of Thomas Eagleton really an endorsement you want? If McGovern couldn't help Clark, on what possible basis does the guy who got thrown off McGovern's ticket help Kerry?

It's something to watch, but if Kerry thinks this means he can buff up his chances in the other five states for next week, I think he'll be disappointed.

How the polls did

Hardcore Chris has a table of the final poll numbers from NH. Gallup got the order right and the approximate percentages, but they underguessed on Edwards and Kerry by a bit. The closest set of numbers to reality was actually the average results, which I view as a good thing. Chris, I've added you to the blogal compendium. Welcome! (but lose the hat).

New Hampshire--Candidate Outcomes

Here's MSNBC with the numbers at 12:30 AM out PST way

Kerry
Obviously a good night for John Kerry. One forgets for a moment that he was supposed to have been here in this position all year, but it's been a weird ride for Mr. Heinz. I guess if his ambition really is to be President, that was a pretty good $6 million of his wife's money that he spent over Christmas to keep his campaign on life support. He really is at his best when the chips are totally down.

The next week will be interesting, and I think there will be some media blowback and buyer's remorse on Kerry. It looks like he'll throw a lot of energy into Missouri, particularly, and it looks like his to grab because of the money involved. Dean is going to stay away from Missouri and try to cherry pick in the Southwest and bide his time until the rust belt states come the following week. Clark and Edwards are going to have to challenge Kerry in the mid-South; because Clark will probably try to focus on the Southwest like Dean, it may be left to Edwards. I remain optimistic about Edwards in that sense; he should end up with South Carolina as Sharpton's current vote power recedes, and could, without much money or effort, be the simple beneficiary of any Kerry blowback in a place like Missouri. I tell you what, if Kerry takes a relative beating next week all over the South and Southwest where he is least well positioned beyond monetarily, he will find his frontrunner bubble rudely burst.

Dean
Dean did just enough to keep media perceptions from forcefully tanking his candidacy. He went from 3rd to 2nd, and was the only serious challenger to Kerry in New Hampshire. Of course, two weeks ago he was positively CRUSHING Kerry, but that was then and this is now. He's got the cash to fan out everywhere Kerry can go and more, and this is where I think his national legion of scarily focused supporters will come in most handy. Iowans and Hampshirites are pretty leery of outsiders as a rule, I think. I have a sense that the earnest Deaniacs will both be better practiced and less overtly annoying to the locals elsewhere. On the other hand, what Dean has to sell is least valued on the market in most of the states he's contesting. Still, his rebound from death was politically reassuring in a broad sense: a real candidate with real ideas was thankfully not dismissed on the strength of a zealous concession speech that was surely weird, but ultimately should not be the basis of nominee selection. By contrast, tonight's speech should have been cause for real celebration--he's not dead!--but while Dean gave a very nice oration, it was as if the Zoloft they'd been sneaking into his Diet Cokes had finally kicked in. The crowd was as into it as ever, but the candidate was not going to let anything unduly excite him. He learned, in the nick of time, that people are actually WATCHING him as he runs for President.

Clark
A bit of a surprise for me and many others; we were all riding the CW that Edwards had the Big Mo that was so important in Iowa. But this is about the most uninspiring 3rd place finish in the history of politics. Well, maybe all 3rd places are dull--except that some eventual winners have been 3rd in NH. You definitely do NOT get the idea that Wesley Clark will ride this 3rd place finish to victory in November. For one thing, he had about a month to himself here, and as soon as everybody got off the plane from Iowa, poof! there went all that work. Another week, and Edwards would have passed him. Another week, and I assure you Edwards will. Even his speech was apologetic: "we're smarter, better, stronger." Feh. What you're saying is that you learned that you can't put together a highly credible campaign--your first--in 5 months off the Internet. Clark's niche in the nomination process, if he had one, is clearly being obliterated. I cannot for the life of me figure out what he offers the Democratic voter that you can't get somewhere else. Every base he has, is being stood on by a different candidate.

Edwards
Just a hair short of making the magical top 3, but this was as painless as a 4th place could be. There was some wild talk of him overtaking Dean if his bounceback was illusory, but Dean's people and dollars had just been here too long and in too great a force for Edwards to challenge him. But he was definitely everyone's favorite orator, and I think the hard on he gave the press (and the willies he's beginning to give some GOP strategists) will keep him from falling too far or hard. And of course his big entrance to the dance is South Carolina. Clark theoretically thinks he's going to contest in South Carolina, but I don't see great things--probably 3rd bordering on 4th like tonight, with Edwards and Kerry taking the first two slots and Dean threatening him from behind (so to speak). This is Edwards' turf, and just being a generic Southerner with veteran status isn't going to make it for Clark here. Besides, he'll split the vet vote with Kerry anyway. This state will of course be the marquee event for testing Kerry's play in the land of hominy, and secondarily now that Kerry's the frontrunner, how Edwards does as the tempting candidate to seek the electoral high fruit of '04. Get ready for a week's worth of wall to wall smiles and good ol boy populism, SC!

Lieberman
Poor Joe Lieberman went out there and tried to crow about 9%. None of the top four were losers tonight, although Clark came damned close. Joe Lieberman definitely lost. The victory for Dean is that even if he loses, the nominee will be a lot more like him than if Dean had not run. Dean's victory is Lieberman's loss, because in this winter game of crack the whip, Joe's centrist beliefs were ironically not at the center of the whip but way to the edge. The faster the "outsider who fights for YOU!" spin began to cycle, the slicker the ice got for Lieberman. As he careens around the metaphoric lake I've built for you here, he's got to be wondering how he went from inches away from the Vice Presidency, to teetering on the edge of dangerously thin ice. He's finished, obviously--NH was clearly his best shot and he failed miserably. Two of his comments in an admittedly difficult speech to write were particularly absurd. First, he whined about not getting a photo in the day's Union alongside the Big Four. "We deserved a photo in that paper!" he thundered. Friends, that's just sad. That's a pathetic way to rally your troops in their lowest moment. And then he said, "You know, for us it's always been more than a campaign." I sure hope so, because the campaign and a dollar doesn't even get you a single Euro these days. He'll waste some good folks' money by staying in it at least another week, but he ought to hang it up now.

Kucinich
Got 1%. Love ya Denny, but this may be time for you as well. Hell, you got to show your charts on NPR in a real live debate! Other than your utterly preposterous desire to immediately pull out of Iraq, I think you have excellent ideas for turning around this country, that will never, ever, ever, ever, ever come close to being adopted as policy by your fellow Americans--at least not in your political lifetime. You have added honor and substance to the debate. Your time is done. Be glad that assmeg Simon from American Idol doesn't judge the debates.

Sharpton
If he fucks things up for Edwards in South Carolina, there are going to be some Research Triangle-type crackers really, really pissed off at him. I think he'll do better than at least 342 votes (I don't want to short him; the returns are only at 97%, after all), but I give black voters credit enough for not considering Sharpton a serious candidate, even if they tell pollsters they're going to vote for him.
Beware of some seriously shameless pandering for the African American vote by all candidates, however. Bleh.

New Hampshire Overall Wrapup--

Or is it wrap-up?

Let's have a couple of notable bloggers represent for you in my space.

First is Matt Stoller at Blogging of the President 2004:

After a day in Manchester trying to write something interesting about this primary that no one else has, I've realized the only thing that comes to mind is turnout. It's high. And there's a sort of sense that this is a highly politicized atmosphere; beating Bush, like in Iowa, is a paramount concern here. I'm more convinced that turnout will be high in Nov 2004, and that's probably bad for Bush. It's interesting that each person I've met who is newly politicized has a different point of turnabout. The Clarkies talk about 2000, the Deaniacs talk about the war, the Kerry people a sort of graduated process - one voter tonight spoke of the Mars pronouncement as her last straw. Indeed, there is a sneaking sense of illegitimacy to the President, as voters snap, one by one, their bond of trust with the President. People are, as one Iowan told me, 'getting tired of his act' - conservatives, moderates, uninterested, the press even. This doesn't mean that Bush will lose; there are powerful forces with a strong interest in his reelection. But it's something I'm noticing, at least in Democratic primary states.

You know when fiscalites start grumbling about George Bush's economic performance--on the subject of DEFICITS, for heaven's sake!--there is a structural problem developing for Bush. He can no longer walk through this election without serious challenge, as wondered whether he might have in April '03.

and from Sullivan:

Most of the day, I thought that Edwards was going to be the un-Kerry from now on. Dean was too damaged after losing both Iowa and New Hampshire. But Edwards' disappointing fourth place showing - behind the nutcase Clark - after such a big win in Iowa has to make his candidacy more suspect. Dean did a little worse than the exit polls suggested. But his concession speech was easily the best of the night. It was authentic, uplifting, and red meat to the Democrats. It actually rang true to me as Dean's real view of the world. It isn't one I entirely share, to say the least, but it is genuine, represents a lot of people in this country and deserves a hearing. He seemed more affable than recently as well. He smiled more. He spoke more calmly but not ineffectively. He's real. Kerry is so fake, in contrast, I cannot believe that Democratic primary voters will continue to support him in such numbers. Dean gave arguments. Kerry spoke in packaged Shrumisms. Dean has a vision. Kerry has ambition. If I were a Democrat, I'd vote for Dean over Kerry in a heartbeat. To my mind, this is a battle between the Democratic party's soul and its fear.

This assessment gets to the meat of my natural preference for Dean, compared to the nose-holding begrudgement I give Kerry over Bush. It's true that Dean's positions are both somewhat moderate and radically liberal, and his tax plan is so rational it has about a 75% chance of dooming his candidacy outright. It's true that he can appear arrogant and smug, as with GDub, and it's true that he's ultimately too short to win a plurality of votes against a Texan. But as Sullivan says, his flaws make him authentic. He's not an amateur politician like Clark, but he sort of Bullworths his way through things. He has a crazy tendency to express things in revealing campaign jargon terms (unintentionally, as in when his staff accidentally used a press conference line for a private strategy call; or intentionally, as when he addressed post-Iowa crowds with an apology for not bringing any "red meat") that make him unvarnished. I think I have uncovered the single unifying principle of Howard Dean's candidacy: He is The Reality Show Candidate. Fire McEnroe (who you'll see in yesterdays notes I fired Trippi for) and sign up Mark Burnett. Think of the improvement you'd see in Howard's stump speeches after the careful, teasing editing!

That's interesting sentiment, but unless Sullivan read Stoller and mindmelded with him, this is more notable--an uncanny restatement of the above from Stoller:


I'd say something else. The huge turn-out in New Hampshire; the electability factor for Kerry; the passion of the Dean people: all this shows how thoroughly energized the Democrats are to win back the White House. Bush is in the Rove-Cheney cocoon right now. From the SOTU, it looks like he's going to run on 9/11. Bad, backward-looking idea. His coalition is fracturing; his reach out to Hispanics seems to have hurt him more with the base than won him new votes; his spending has independents deeply concerned; Iraq is still a wild card; prescription drugs pandering hasn't swayed any seniors; the religious right wants him to attack gay couples in the Constitution - which will lose him the center. More worrying: I'm not sure he even knows he's in trouble.

I know for the last two weeks Bush can't get into the news cycle edgewise, but far from draining them, it seems the protracted struggle for the nomination by the various aggrieved groups is also effectively wearing on the political Kevlar Bush has cloaked himself in.

A more formal assessment on the outcome, and indulgence in some horse racing next...

More by accident on Dennis Miller, who I found as I dragged across the 40s of my channel lineup--the "news bibles" as my slightly paranoid sociology professor might call them, as he called Newsweek, Time and USNews. At first I was horribly revulsed to see utter freak David Horowtiz engaged in a mid-loud point about the immigrants who are killing California and Texas and thus the nation at large, etc. I've had personal dealings with David, and as a rhetorician he is skilled, but his social skills need a good bit of polishing. I could not yet see who he was smarmily abusing, but when Dennis said "Bush gets a pass," I was unprepared for this level of pass-giving.

Turns out he was lecturing Naomi Wolf*, who was in the ironic position of defending George Bush's semi-legalization of foreign (read: Mexican and thus Hispanic) workers who are already here and holding jobs their employers pledge to let them keep. I personally think it's the best thing he's done since he decided to hold the arsenic limits at Clinton levels when it looked like he might raise them just for laughs. (Before the war I thought the best thing was ordering Cheney and Rumsfeld to reassess troop deployment strategies and paradigms--they made what I think were some good choices in terms of division size and makeup and readiness ...but then they figured, "Man, we gotta try this out!")

To Naomi's left--physically, anyway--was Henry Louis Gates, Jr. , a faculty buddy of Cornel West.

Miller turned out to be pretty good at the Bill Maher "funny guy who has a wide ranging panel" style of show, from what I saw. The most interesting thing I heard was Horowitz's strong assessment that Edwards is "by far" the most challenging opposition to Bush. Wolf seemed to identify the visceral reaction to 9/11 as her rationale for making Edwards too untenable, too "young" (he's 50). Notably, no one thought Kerry represented the toughest challenge for Bush, and yet his whole ride to glory so far has been the perception of him as the most electable, whatever that is. And the polls show it now--Newsweek has Bush losing to Kerry; Quinnipiac has him a bit behind, and even Fox is showing Kerry within 7. See all three here. So why is Kerry not automatically the toughest? Answer: because there is so much out there that Rove can seize on, trumped up or legitimate. I think many Democrats (well, 60% of them at least) are a little uneasy about the fodder and Lurch-like campaign presence the Massachusetts Senator will provide. But then they go through the list: Dean? Hah. Edwards? No national security help at all. Clark? Flaky and a total amateur. Lieberman? Dean has almost singlehandedly caused the demise of Joe Lieberman's political career, so no. Of course then it's back to Kerry, hoping your man will be able to duck and weave his way to 270 electoral votes. The title of "least fatally flawed" is not the mantle that fits well on a banner.

The tempation to dive into New Hampshire is seeping into my point about Dennis Miller's new show: he wasn't as bad as I thought he'd be. He was much quieter, and I think that made his potentially very volatile guests (particularly David) hold down their own volumes, although it sure wasn't Wall Street Week. His questions were pretty good and not directed towards the comment he wants to make after you've answered the question briefly. He asked the question and then didn't offer judgement on all of them, which was nice.

So a small apology to Dennis, but I still think saying outright you're not going to say bad shit about Bush is really pathetic.

*Naomi talks in this as if she's bummed that men are not all over her anymore. Some feminist! :)

Am I supposed to refrain from actually typing out words like shit and fuck? I see a lot of popular and seriously good blogs that eschew it, or just (&*$% them out. I suppose this fucking entry won't ever get quoted in Pres 04's shit, or in Kaus' fucking column. But sometimes when I talk or even write, I say shit and fuck. This is my blog, isn't it? All you need to know about the liberating power of profanity is that about 95% of guests who went on Dennis Miller's HBO show took the opportunity to say at least one cuss word, usually fuck--and it was some of the strangest people. Y'know, Ben Kingsley talking about getting a fucking taxi in New Dehli or something. Half the time, it would just be a total non sequitur--the guest would ASK to swear, just to enjoy not being edited.

If it's good enough for HBO, far and away the best television network in history, it's good enough for my shitty blog. Fuck yeah!

More on Miller, briefly, in a minute.

Amid the frenzy and (for me, anyway) enjoyment of the primary season, the death toll in Iraq marches on, less noticed. That makes 18 US hostile fire deaths in a little less than 2 weeks by my count, and 12 just since Saturday. This ignores the two CNN employees and two Iraqi citizens killed in the latest attack, and all of the other civilian deaths that are difficult to accurately track.

If, as the Post elsewhere quotes various field commanders as saying, that progress is being made in Iraq and the attacks are lessening and become more desperate in nature, at least in the short term it would appear the insurgents have traded quantity for "quality"--fewer attacks are nonetheless as deadly, or more deadly, than the periods of 30 and 40 attacks per day over the summer.

Does this have any substantive, direct impact on what's going on at home? At the moment, not really. We're too distracted right now--except for those of us who have lost friends or relatives in Iraq, or anxiously wait out the terms of those still there. Beyond all the traded rhetoric about the moral rectitude of the conflict, let us never forget the sad human cost. Rightly sent or not, they deserve remembrance.

"Well sure, Cheney and Rumsfeld said imminent threat, and Fleischer and Bartlett agreed on imminence, but I never said that!

If--as the GOP mindset rather reasonably contends--that a vote for the war resolution was a vote for the war, and that no amount of conditional backtracking changes that, how bad does it look to claim "well, we never SAID it was imminent?" This is somewhere Bush definitely should not be going. The "we were there to enforce resolutions and liberate a people" angle is disingenuous enough, but at least it has a modicum of merit on principle. To suggest that the White House tried to sell the war on the basis of a vague, indeterminate threat calendar is totally absurd.

I got impatient waiting for this story about the apparently pugilistic Al Franken to hit some source beyond the NY Post and Frontpage, so here it is.

I get the sense that there might be more to this story that didn't make Murdoch's rag, but assuming the account is roughly accurate, who took away Franken's meds? Or has he just upped the dosages since his book gave him the income to do so? Couple this with the impromptu audition for A&E's "Airline" reality show on his way out of Iowa, and you have to wonder if his new fame as liberal gadfly is beginning to bloat his noggin. [geez, Post AND Frontpage in one entry! I hope Andrew Sullivan stops by and notices my generous use of "opposition" news sources!]

I bet you this would lead all the news shows if Rush Limbaugh tackled a heckler--but then again that's because there would likely have been serious injury to the pancake-ee (and we already have confirmation on Rush's drug-induced hazes).

I promised a prediction on the top 3 today. It's still today, although the polls are near closure, and both LATimes and MSNBC are running exits (the former of which Kos has showing Kerry exhibiting a slimmer lead than late polling yesterday.) Then again, you get the feeling Hampshirites get a perverse kick out of screwing with the exit pollsters--"Me? I pulled the lever for George Wallace." So I don't feel like I'm cheating to make a late stab at it.

Kean 33
Dean 28
Edwards 17

And I'm sticking by it! (I guess).

There is a chance that Dean's "bounce" of the last couple days is illusory, and the favorite choice for "most likely underestimated in polls" is Edwards, but I think the gulf was a little too wide. Despite that, if Edwards indeed finishes in 3rd it has to be almost as huge as his 2nd in Iowa. He started out with almost no support at all, and stands to triple, quadruple or even quintuple his poll standings from just a week ago. Put this with a fairly likely win in SC (especially owing to his possibly true but not politically smart Fuck the South! strategy), and Easy Ed is well placed to help drag this all out well into February. The rest of the Feb 3 slate is mixed in terms of who has the edge, but if my perception is right and the media focus on South Carolina for their coverage, that can only help Edwards too. And not to suggest a black-voter monolith, but I suspect many Southern African-Americans will eat up Edwards' patter in the same way they did Clinton's. Watch the relationship between Sharpton's numbers and Edwards' before the primary. I suspect that there will be a direct inverse correlation between the two.

Clark needs a 3rd or he is in serious trouble. He was counting on Clark/Dean or Clark/Kerry in SC, figuring he could trade on his Southernality, money and service record. Unfortunately, he's matched in Southernality by Edwards, money by Dean and service record by Kerry. Look for "the prettiest eyelashes" or "most flexible set of issue positions" as strategies should he finish fourth or worse.

Republicans in NH seem bemused and surprised that Lieberman isn't doing better. Perhaps they should go back and look up the definition for Bob Dole: "respected, moderate, establishment, completely uninspiring fodder for the opposition. Syn., Lieberman."

CLARK WINS! Well, Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, anyway. (Do town names get any more dourly explicative than Hart's Location, New Hampshire? Sounds like a map point in Middle Earth.)

I predict this will be absolutely the best news of the day for the General. The only charges of desertion he'll be addressing Wednesday will be in reference to the voters who have left his column. I am giving Wes the #4 slot in New Hampshire, and a disappointing #4 it will be. Lord help him if Lieberman can pass him, and it's not out of the realm--I'd expect a Gephardt like "no mas" from Clark if that happens. The number of independent voters will to some extent judge where (or how hard) he falls; Democrats appear singularly unimpressed and unconvinced, while the undeclareds seem to like him almost as much as Kerry and more than Edwards.

But hey--Wes Clark has won the first electoral races of his life, and that's got to be pretty thrilling. The folks in Dixville (another unfortunate name) and Hart's will be getting some lovely Christmas cards in December.

Top 3 predictions later today.

Man, this is fun!

I never would have picked Dennis Miller, one of the ultimate cynics of a cynical age (and my membership card is well worn) as a likely victim of fear-by-9/11 politics. He never seemed to take anyone's comments seriously or at face value, not even his own. The longer his HBO show went on however, the less his rants had a scattershot, "I could go all day describing how people are idiots" sort of approach, and the more they became pointedly political and--yes--conservative. I'm not necessarily saying that he's changed his stripes, more that he's shucked his skincover entirely and now stands bare before us, preening his indignance at the "pussification" of America and declaring that we all need to WAKE THE HELL UP and start cracking heads like John Wayne after bad sake on Okinawa.

Dennis essentially comes clean on his rebirth as a commentator with an agenda, saying he'll "give George Bush a pass." Odious as it might be to me, I'm willing to begrudge him the option of having GIVEN Bush a pass, based on evaluations of things he's already done. But how better can you define blind partisanship than to say "Not only do I forgive anything he HAS done, I'm also going to cut him slack on anything stupid he may do in the future!" How does someone with one of the more sensitive bullshit meters on the planet place his electrodes on GDub and come away smiling?

He then goes on to say "I take care of my friends," which in my view casts a pall over almost anything he says now: if you gave Dennis a ride in your Lear or sat him next to Liv Tyler at the Golden Globes, don't worry about getting skewered in front of--what?--30 or 40 thousand people watching CNBC at the time. Dennis takes care of his friends, which only leaves the people he doesn't like--and if he doesn't say something snarky about them he has no show--so you'd better hope the people he doesn't like do something legitimately deserving of your scorn.

CNBC hopes to balance Dennis by following him with John McEnroe, who, if there were comedic justice in politics, would be Howard Dean's advance man instead of Joe Trippi. "WHAT? John Kerry said WHAT about Howard's flip flops on Medicare? That is fucking OUTRAGEOUS!" So I guess their idea is to balance out focused, partisan anger with a more generalized, non-ironic anger from the heart. At least John still makes me laugh with the things he says. They ought to have given Dennis' slot to Charles Barkley, no less a conservative but much more amusing. I watched Dennis' HBO show faithfully for years, right to the end, and I thought picking him for MNF was a fine choice, one that might invigorate an especially lopsided midseason contest. Boy, was I wrong. It wasn't that he knew nothing about football in a useful sense, it's that he a) tried to hint as if he did, and b) his cracks and references went almost entirely over the heads of his boothmates, which made for a series of odd gaps of silence and lots of nervous, I-better-laugh-here-in-case-everyone-else-got-that-joke snickers. Having failed there, it seems Dennis has fallen back on a narrower audience who will give him the validation that he had recently come to lack.

I think this is one of my favorite sites these days--a clearinghouse of polling material from a variety of sources, sans analysis but INCLUDING the exact text of the questions, and usually an indication of the responder universe (registered voters, likely voters, etc.)

A hot link is of course "Bush vs." polling, and hotter still is the news that for the first time that I know of, a reputable outlet (Newsweek via Princeton) has GDub losing to a Democratic candidate, in this case John Kerry. Bush is within the +-3 MOE, so technically they're tied. But look at the other comparisons--not only is Bush "tied" with Kerry, but also Edwards and Clark. There's only ONE point that separates Clark and Bush! Even Mr. Mean Dean is within 5 lousy points!

Now, if you scroll through the history of the polls, you'll see that Newsweek tends to trend a little anti-Bush, although not to the same degree that Fox pulls towards him. And note that the Newsweek survey pushed leaners and undecideds to pick a category, which is why there are so many fewer undecideds (obviously). But given the fact that any poll taken in January isn't going to tell you much about what will happen in November, what you're seeking here is a trendline, or some kind of shift in opinion. Clearly, even without further deterioration in either the economy or Iraq (and in the case of the former, in the face of some improving signs), the race is by no means a Lock Of the Week for GDub.

Also take a look at GDub's job approval ratings, which have bottomed out at 50%. What's most shocking to me about this number is that it comes AFTER the State of the Union address. You could make a living placing bets on the idea that a sitting president ALWAYS gets a bump after the SotU. That he got no bounce at all from Newsweek, and in fact went down, is highly surprising to me.

Again, just a trend. But Bush's support is looking soft. You have to wonder if some of the fiscal hardcores will just decide to stay home rather than actively support such a spendthrifty Republican.

*****Time for an intermittent sports headline******
Aaron Boone could be gone for 2004

Other than the Washington Redskins, the Yankees are the team with which I feel the strongest affiliation, and because of their place in both competitive and fiscal discussions of the sport, much (although definitely not all) of the talk will be Yankee-based.

I actually think this is a good thing for the Yankees. Boone is not as bad as he looked most of the time he was in NY last season (the GW HR notwithstanding), but at 5.75mil per year he's somewhat overpriced. The Yankees have not been able to lock down the hot corner since (Oregonian!) Scott Brosius retired, and while Boone was an improvement over Ventura--certainly for 2004 and beyond--he's not Troy Glaus or anything.

Anyhow, because Boone fucked up and got hurt doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing, the Yanks will likely get a fair bit of their money back, and can begin shopping anew. It would have been nice if this had happened closer to the winter meetings (when, say, Joe Randa was likely available for next to nothing), but in the Yankees' world no player is unavailable.

In better injury news, Jon Lieber looks like he'll be ready to air it out in Spring Training and assume a regular role in the rotation. He's up to 50 pitches off the mound per session, which sounds like a perfect pace to be throwing full stints by the end of March. If he is able to re-establish the ability he showed with the Cubs in '01 and '02 in the bandbox known as Wrigley, he will be another Cashman coup.

Two pieces of SCOTUS news today:

Agreement to hear juvenile death penalty case
and
9-0 affirmation of Miranda

I think the second is more compelling than the first, obviously because it involves an actual decision rather than a decision to hear--and because it's a 9-0 vote in an area that seemed threatened by retraction the past few years. There are multiple Miranda cases coming for a hearing this year; this first one is a hopeful harbinger for rights advocates, as well as another indirect (IMO) rebuke against the Bush administration regarding due process for "bad actors."

The decision to hear Missouri's case on 16/17 year old death penalty issues reflects a continuing trend of reassessments by the Rehnquist court regarding the ultimate punishment. Certainly the bloc standing behind death sentences on principle is still firm, but you can see the cracks beginning to show when you talk about things like special circumstances (the mentally challenged and the young) or exonerative procedure (such as emancipation by DNA and the right to ask for it). Sandra Day has been a pivotal piece to this retrenchment of the death penalty; I have to imagine it was her 5th vote that got Simmons vs Roper heard.

She's not even Chief Justice (although I have a feeling before she retires she will be), but if Reagan were coherent enough to comment on it I bet he'd be as rueful as Eisenhower was about putting Earl Warren on the Big Bench. But for Sandy Baby, we'd be a lot closer to Ashcroft's wet dreams than we are now. Vive la moderacie!

More from Mickey the K--hey, I can't be on the trail; I have to steal from thems that are!

"At a firehouse in Hampton yesterday, a man told Kerry that he thinks it's unfair that people say a New Englander can't connect with people from varying backgrounds. And to prove that you can do it, he says, explain the importance of the icon on my hat. Kerry is mystified. 'The Latin? The Ten?' he asks. Malcolm X, the man explains."

Perhaps next week Kerry will regale South Carolinian blacks with a generous pander towards "the humble words of Malcolm Ten just before he was assassinated..."

Some thoughts as Zogby seems to gain media credence as the polling arbiter of record in these early contests...

WaPo yesterday

Check out page 2 for a discussion of Zogby's rather imperious decisionmaking process when creating his sample. It's OK to review your results and then conform your analysis to your own view of why the data look they way they do, but to fudge with the orientation of the sample (eg by unilaterally declaring "too many respondents under 25") is risky business indeed. Zogby captured the trend in Iowa but was way off on every one of the major contenders except Dean. It looks like the same thing is happening in New Hampshire--he's getting a sense of the momentum, but as a point-in-time snapshot of reality he's lagging.

Kausfiles is keeping an eye on things in this vein, and somewhere along his travels he's found
"chrishardcore", who uses a little spreadsheet sleight of hand to try to isolate daily Zogby numbers and thus hopefully get back even with the curve. Chris notes this morning that he's changed his picture, which is a damn shame. Even though the current Howdy, Tex is goofy enough, it doesn't hold a candle to the original pic, a true classic of "mom's basement" evocation if ever there was one. On the other hand, people laughed at Drudge, and now he's, well, OK--bad example.

afternoon edit: apparently, as kausfiles notes today, Zogby has crunched his numbers to include "leaners" added into the "definites" for today's NH numbers that show Dean basically running a dead heat with Kerry. Which, as Kaus notes, might be reflective of reality, but it obliterates any real ability to track the poll as it tracks the candidates. When you keep shifting your standards of reportage and analysis--and furthermore keep those details a mystery or at best oblique--the value of your results IMO greatly suffers.

My horse race prediction for NH a little later.

Monday morning, day before New Hampshirians (Hampshirites? Hampshirts? Hampshirers?) hit the polls and declare their quirky independence...

but today I lead with comedy, Ashcroft-style:

Eeeeeeevil!

Is it that Reagan got so much mileage out of the phrase "Evil Empire," that causes current Republican leadership to use the word so much? Now not only is Saddam an evil, evildoing tyrant from the Axis of Evil, he practiced "evil chemistry" and "evil biology" in service of his evilness. What the hell is evil biology? Being forced to dissect a frog in high school? Grafting Richard Simmons' head on Brad Pitt's body? (Or maybe the reverse is worse; you be the judge).

And what does Iraq have to do with drug trafficking anyway--which is why he's in Vienna in the first place?

Welcome! I finally decided to stop spending much of my online time posting my thoughts, harangues, agonies and ecstasies in various message boards, and begin posting more of them in a centralized place. Most of what I expect will come up is either political or sporting in nature. Haven't decided how to split those off--I'm very, very new to the mechanics of building a blog, so at the moment I'd just like to get a presence going. As is apparently the norm, I plan to reference news articles, opinions and other blogs from around the stratosphere.

Since we are in the throes of an election year, certainly for the next few months politics will dominate. We'll see what else happens, now and once the election is over.

Comments that are not personally abusive are welcome. I have no trouble accepting argumentation _on point._ Be warned however, that I will view your disagreement as a sign that I have not yet achieved the desired persuasiveness of my own position, and thus will redouble my efforts. It is certainly nothing personal.

That said, let's see where this takes us! Enjoy.