Polling update

I promised to update the status of the horse race once Fox came out with a new poll, and it has arrived along with a couple of others. Trusted poll index The Polling Report is, as usual, our guide.

A word on polling "bias"--all polls have them. There are several different kinds, almost none of which are the kind of bias that makes Leonard Goldberg get fidgety. Sample bias, phone bias, weighting bias...you'd think that wilth all the ways a poll result can be skewed, they'd be worthless. And many people think they are.

But go find those mystery exit polls from last Tuesday and marvel at how shockingly dead-on they were in each state. They don't predict the future, which is what many people seem to want from them. But they're actually pretty sharp at telling us about right now, and they do an even better job of showing us how we got here. You can't make money in Vegas with those two, but you shouldn't be betting on politics anyway. That sounds like a bottoming out waiting to happen--the gambling addict who turns to handicapping the only people perhaps more hooked on delusion than he is And of course you had to know a subsection of the population does just that, on the Internet. .

But what I was going to mention is that if you seek political bias (and you certainly may find it), don't look at the sponsors--CNN, TIME, WaPo, et al--look at the research house: Harris. Gallup. Ipsos. Mitofsky. Zogby. Princeton. Quinnipiac. Michigan. Their biases are less well known, but surely they have them. John Zogby has very quickly made himself a major presence on horse race polling around the country, initially as someone who made colossal errors in his first high profile attempts, but who has had a very good pulse on a volatile Democratic field. He calls himself the "Real People Pollster," which other pollsters roughly translate as the "Pollster Who Fungifies His Numbers to Make Them Look Like He Thinks They Should," but he is riding a wave of good calls. The others are a lot more straighforward, and Gallup has also been very sharp on the primary calls. ARG and SurveyUSA have had their moments as well. I like playing with SUSA's electoral map calendar, one of many around.

So: to the new numbers, those yeoperson few who have survived my statement of polling advocacy!

Time/CNN's poll is one of two new polls that are as fresh as morning dew upon the internet trunk lines. Picked just before the weekend, they continue to bloom with an increasingly acrid stench for George d'Bush. Not so much where it's down to--at least Bush is leading in this one--but in that it mirrors every other poll I've seen that suggests how sharply Bush has taken it in the ribs this month. This is the second poll for them that switched to likely voters, always a preferable one for judging the actual electorate. Bush holds on to a two point bulge against Kerry, well within the MoE. Edwards is just outside it, but has also gained on the President. What's interesting about this one--at least how PReport carried it--is that Dean doesn't show up. Did they not even ask? The other fresh one is Newsweek, definitely on the left end and now joining CNN/Gallup's call of a Kerry advantage outside the margin, albeit somewhat smaller. Edwards is unchanged, still in the hunt, but bad for Edwards since treading water does him no good. The real surprise of this one is that Howard Dean is within six! This is a guy who appears to have taken a semi-forced hiatus from running for President, and he moved up six points against Bush doing it. I'm going to go on the limb and call that a Kerryover effect. (boo). Newsweek also showed continued dragging in Bush's favorability rating, basically a pure division of opinion. You want some attention this summer? Go register SwingVoter.com.

BC'04 has gotten it in gear finally, about a month or two earlier than they expected--and rightly so, since it used to be that nominating processes always took the presumptive nominee down relative to the incumbent, from absorbing others' attacks. Except since Iowa, there haven't been any. The Big Kahuna is going mano a mano with Tim Russert this morning; that ought be fun. No one in or peripheral to Bush's circle was ready to deal with 20 to 30 point swings in all his ratings in less than a month. This is not a great time for Bush to have the worst numbers of his presidency, and they are at historic pre 9/11 levels. They've got plenty of money to fight with, but they hate to use it against free media. They can't compete right now. Too much is deluging the news cycle for them to get any traction.

Anyhow, the impetus for this update is that Fox's poll is out again. Opinion Dynamics called folks Wed-Thu instead of Thu-Fri. So it's fresh too, just not as daisy-fresh. And yes, here we have it, the seventh sign has been struck--Fox has caught the trend and now has essentially the same result: it's an even race for Kerry and pretty much no one else, maybe Edwards if Kerry kills a guy next Monday. Bush still leads Kerry in the Fox poll just a shade outside the margin, but he is now only getting pluralities, and the undecideds are creeping away from Bush a bit. The one month swing is 18 points, which is a little less but very close to what everyone else is showing. He's bleeding from both sides, it seems.

Annenberg has one that is about a week behind, but targets the slide coincident with Kay's admission. The tracking showed a full 10 point drop just since then.

This is going to be a wild election season, and it may start in earnest on February 18th.

Somebody was thinking quickly

A wonderful photo of Howard Dean, snapped in beautiful light, and framed by a single-word prediction of his candidacy. Photojournalism needs more of these.

Primary/caucus predictions

The polling in Michigan, Maine and Washington has been fairly spotty, but Kos has a good collection. Obviously I don't think there's much suspense, or I would have spent more--any--time discussing these contests. Kerry will win all three, convincingly. The only question is who gets the 2nds. Right now all of them are up for grabs in that sense. Look for Dean to take 2nd in Washington, and Edwards to take both of the others. Maine's a total guess, though. And Dean's numbers have been sinking in WA, so Edwards could sneak one out there. Then there's Clark, but he really seems dead in the water.

Some eyes will be on Tuesday's races; they can't really help Edwards much except in delegates; in perception he can only be hurt. He MUST win one, and really two. Clark winning one is an acceptable alternative. Kerry winning one is not good, and a Kerry sweep would even make Wisconsin anticlimatic, I think.

After Tuesday, I think we can be about 80-90% sure whether the Democrats will be set before Super Tuesday even hits. And that's probably a good thing for them.

Reader mail on gay marriage

Adept reader BT had this to say of my posting of Bush's probable intent to push for an amendment against gay marriage:

"First, a question: is the distinction you're interested in that civil
unions
are more easily dissolvable than marriages? To be honest, I hadn't
registered that as an issue, but maybe it is. And I agree that might
consititute an important difference. But maybe you know more than me
about
it: is dissolving a CU much less easy than getting divorced? I'd have
thought that in the age of "palimony" decisions, it wouldn't really be."

And right you are! The only version we have to look at is Vermont's, and they indeed are explicit about granting all rights and procedures as civil marriage, including dissolution.

But as it stands, all you would practicably need to do to dissolve a Vermont civil union is step over the border. Nobody else recognizes that they exist (New York has limited recognition for wills, I believe). Will Texas help a new resident prosecute you for dissolution of a Vermont civil union? Yeah, right. And Vermont won't let you dissolve it unless you live there:

"A complaint to dissolve a civil union in Vermont may be brought if either party to the civil union has resided within the state for a period of six months or more, but dissolution cannot be granted unless one of the parties has resided in the state at least one year preceding the date of the final hearing. "

So to say it's as good as marriage is true as long as you live where it's true. And really, if it were as good as marriage, why wouldn't they call it that, and why can't heteros get civil unions if they're just as good? They can't, in Vermont--just gays. So to say "none of the committment" as I did isn't really right, but near as I can tell, partners in a civil union only face as much commitment as a tank of gas will take them.

BT then goes on to say

"So, whatever the courts decide, I imagine states (and possibly
Congress)
mounting a successful reargaurd (pun not intended, but what are you
going to
do?) action blocking it. Maybe in some states it'll be legal, but that
will
create a weird situation, since I'm dead sure that Tennessee is going
to
write their laws so they don't have to recognize Bob and Ted's Vermont
marriage, unless there's a federal ruling otherwise."

I thought there was a federal ruling (well, a part of federal law established by the Constitution) otherwise--a state has to recognize other states' marriages, as part of "full faith and credit." That hasn't stopped states from pre-empting the challenge with laws that claim not to adhere to that idea. And since there haven't been any gay marriages to challenge those laws, their legality under federal law is entirely in question. The only closely comparable caselaw, I imagine, would be Loving v Virginia, which immediately forced removal of 16 different state laws against miscegenation. Interestingly, Virginia's claim to its law regarding the 14th Amendment was that, because people of two different races were being punished, it was in fact equal. That doesn't apply here; both people being punished are gay.

So assuming for the moment that SCOTUS finds five people to stand behind the 14th, the only way around that would be through an amendment. 37 states have "defense of marriage laws" now--would all 37 of them vote to change the US Constitution? I'm not sure, and there's a wild chance that a Democratic victory in '04 would turn some statehouses against them before they all got to ratify such an amendment. And nothing's certainly going to get done before May, not in Massachusetts apparently and certainly not at the federal level. Which means that some people are going to be married, and then will have cause to file suit should they move to one of the 37 states prohibiting recognition of their marriage. Won't THAT be interesting?

Thanks for the comment!

The commission's mission

This came at me nearly at random, from an author named Jude Wanniski. It starts off very promisingly:

"I’m happy to see you continue to press for an investigation on how we came to war against Iraq on the basis of “intelligence” supplied by the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, that now turns out to be bunk. In his Georgetown speech yesterday, Tenet insisted he never told the President that Iraq posed "an imminent threat," but I thought one of the strangest assertions he made was when he said: "I can tell you with certainty that the president of the United States gets his intelligence from one person and one community -- me. He has told me firmly and directly that he's wanted it straight, and he's wanted it honest and he's never wanted the facts shaded."

Why is this strange? Because Tenet must have been asleep on the job not to have noticed that the Pentagon crowd with its Office of Special Plans went right over the heads of the other intelligence agencies that Tenet manages and filled the President’s head with the cooked-up “evidence” that Saddam Hussein was in fact an “imminent threat,” given all the weapons of mass destruction he had at his disposal, hidden in cubbyholes, ready to hand out to his pals in Al Qaeda. If Tenet was not asleep at the switch, he would have known Don Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle and Scooter Libby and Vice President Cheney provided the transmission belt for the “evidence of imminence” that was fed into the Oval Office. "


This is an excellent point almost wasted on a quote that is absurd in so many ways. I know they threw the speech together quickly, but does he really mean George Bush gets intel only from CIA and Tenet himself? But Wanniski is right--nailing the CIA for bad intel conveniently narrows the scope of the discussion (and damage) to the one agency that ironically is probably the most on-the-record group to have provided intel.

Nothing is really known about what was collected, transmitted or persuaded by OSP to Bush, but there's no doubt that channel existed, at least from one perspective formerly on the inside, Karen Kwiatkowski, a self-described "Liberatarian" and columnist for Militaryweek. Then there's NSC and the Condi Rice Pipeline. There's FBI on terrorist tracking. Chiefs of Staff are giving you stuff. And let's not forget Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi Governing Council. So George Tenet is hardly the only or even the key conduit. That may explain why what the CIA presented to Bush, and what the administration said and based their charges on, seems to diverge.

Tenet didn't let me down, though. As I suspected, in a purported defense of George Bush's administration and use of intelligence, he uttered the magic words "imminent threat" to tell the world, "Hey man--wasn't us." George always knows how to get his best lines in the paper.

And that's why it's no surprise that the new intel commission will be both overbroad and overnarrowed, in an attempt to paradoxically deluge and squeeze it at the same time. So notes TalkingPoints: by including a host of other intelligence-related activities pertaining to countries beyond Iraq, the theory is that Bush hopes to drop a paper bomb on the commission, chasing down stuff that has nothing to do with intel on Iraq. Simultaneously, the dope on Iraq will be strictly between what was known/reported at the time, and what was true, and how that happened. The debate between units of intelligence won't be a focus point, nor the relationship between public statements and intelligence estimates. And then while they're being hit with Afghan intel estimate documents, they'll be subject to a potentially shifting set of rules on what documents can make it through to the committee:

"The Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, and the Director of Central Intelligence shall promptly and jointly report to the President their judgment whether the security rules and procedures adopted by the Commission are clearly consistent with the national security and protect against unauthorized disclosure of information required by law or executive order to be protected against such disclosure. The President may at any time modify the security rules or procedures of the Commission to provide the necessary protection."

That reads to me like: DoD, DoJ and CIA will let you know what you can look at, and if the President thinks you're getting too much, he'll take it back.

I wish Wanniski's column didn't go downhill from there in a fit of tinfoil hat-ism, but I refuse to let his initial point be buried in hyperbole to come. Kwiatkowsi's archive shows she's definitely not happy with the group of folks occupying the White House, so here again is a case where you have to be a little careful about the conclusions being reached. Militaryweek looks legit and low key. I'm curious to see if Phil Carter has read her.

I try to keep my sources as primary as possible, or at least link to people who provide documents they base their comments on. Myway is excellent for getting a wide body of reported information. Other blogs can be helpful too, but speaking of TalkingPoints I'm beginning to wonder where the legs are on the Plame revelations. It being linkless should have been a warning. Anyhow, allow me my commentary, but if you see material presented specifically as fact that you take issue with, send me the countervailing evidence and shame me for my lies.

The Revision-impervious President

Persdint Boosh went down to Carolina yesterday, ostensibly on public business (wink wink), and here's a story about it. His remarks contain a quote that I still can't believe, even after reading it several times:

“Knowing what I knew then, and knowing what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq,” he said from the Union Pier Terminal. [emphasis mine]

Certainly, to say that you would do it again, knowing what you did THEN, represents a defensible point of view. I'd argue on the merits, but this comment basically falls under the rubric of hindsight being 20/20.

But to say that you'd invade and occupy Iraq, knowing what you know now--that Iraq had no WoMD, barely nascent programs to develop WoMD, a vastly weakened military, an economically starved populace, and an essentially rudderless command structure--that still stuns me. His entire premise was, "he has weapons, will get more, and could very well give them to terrorists." As noted, if you think that premise was validated by intelligence at the time, that's one thing. But since we now know that not a single piece of that rationale triad was borne out by the facts, what's he standing on? Please don't say "liberation."

Not even Colin Powell goes this far; he admitted this week that knowing what HE knows now, he might not have supported the effort to invade. There's hope left for Colin.

Text of Mass SJC followup on gay marriage

This is the Feb 3 followup to their original Nov 18 decision that legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts. The transition from deference and a full layout of the case at hand, to this report, is striking. Apparently, the attempts by the Legislature to proffer civil unions as a remedy--when the Court thought it had been clear to note that they were not one--just pissed them off. You almost wish that they didn't go 12 pages in their response, and simply submitted the final sentence of the decision:

"The answer to the question is 'No.'"

The poetry of an election

I took a rare evening off last night, opting to sleep before midnight instead of 1:30-2AM like I often do when updating the World. So now there is nothing here for today yet, since I'm at work, and the people who pay me seem to like it better when I do stuff for them instead of for the blog. Freaks.

Anyway, in the interest of tiding over you voracious blog-sucking rabble until I can get the little Torrids into bed, I have composed some election poetry. It's often helpful and relaxing to slow down from the frenetic pace in which we assimilate and regurgitate happenings from the sphere, and what's more relaxing than a nice, comforting haiku? EIGHT--EIGHT COMFORTING HAIKU! AH-HA-HA! < /The Count>

the firmness of oak
reminds me of Kerry's face
but oak's more lively

Hi, I'm Howard Dean
YEEEEAAAGH! YEEEEAAAGH! YEEEEAAAGH! YEEEEAAAGH! YEEEEAAAGH! YEEEEAAAGH! YEEEEAAAGH!
I'm presidential!

Just a good ol' boy
supported by lawyers' groups
What? That's unusual?

Killed folks in Europe--
that's why I'm most qualified
Bush just teases them!

I simply won't rest
until you crackers admit
that you're scared of me

Hi! My name's Dennis
I don't eat the animals
hope they'll vote for me

One thing that I've learned
guys that look like Droopy Dog
don't get elected

Hi! I'm George Bush!
I'll bet you can't tell that I wrote this myself!
Pretty smart, huh?

Headline spin

One of the nice things about MyWay's news--besides the lack of banners and popups--is that you can jump back and forth to different news bible sites' pages by category, comparing the stories and headlines. CBS may carry different stories, in a different order, or with different emphasis, than, say--Fox. Yah, no shit, I know. But with so much utter noise out there about media bias in one political sense or another, it would be nice if serious content analysis were used as the barometer for findings in that regard.

Today's pages provide some good examples. Here's how they headed George Tenet's speech at Georgetown--

AP: CIA Boss: Never an Imminent Threat

Reuters: CIA Chief Defends US Weapons Intelligence

NYT: Tenet Says Analysts Never Painted Iraq as Imminent Threat (they win for longest head!)

CBS: CIA Chief: No 'Imminent Threat'

MSNBC: CIA Chief Defends Intelligence Gathering

USAT: CIA Director Defends Intel Officials' Prewar Efforts

FOX: Tenet: Saddam Tried to Develop Weapons

There seem to be three distinct takes on this story. Reuters, MSNBC and USAT all play the "defense of the CIA" angle, choosing to highlight the purpose of his statements rather than what he said. From the standpoint of trying to be as objective in delivery as possible, I think this is the safest way to go. But as you can see, it's kind of a mushy headline. Of COURSE he defends the CIA; he's the Director.

AP, the amusingly wordy NYT and CBS all go with what is clearly the signature phrase of the speech--Tenet choosing the specific words "imminent threat"--and rebutting those words directly. I accept this headline as the biggest "news" of the story, but it runs the risk of encapsulating a complex set of admissions and defenses under a banner that, no matter how you slice it, does not reflect positively on the Bush administration's efforts.

Fox stands alone in what they took from the story, choosing to highlight the confirmation from Tenet that Saddam continued to try to get WoMD, even if he hadn't gotten very far. This is of course the agreed-upon truth, even from war critics--which makes the repetition of it by Tenet not very newsworthy, particularly when there are other pieces that are more notable.

I won't go further with specific links, but there are other interesting examples of discrepancy. I can no longer find stories about Bush's post-primary visit to South Carolina among the top stories at AP, CBS or NYT, but I feel like they were there earlier and have been subsequently pushed off the page. USAT still carries the story at the top, and refers to Bush touting security and defending intel--which is what he did. Fox still has it among their top stories, but its headline is "Bush: 'America Did Right Thing'--a rather curious headline, considering not even the article addresses that quotation until nearly the end of it (they lead with port security, which is why he was there).

I urge you to take this strategy as you read newswire stories. Click back and forth among the different sources, and see who you think is trying to spin for politics, or shock value, in their quest for page hits. Report back to me what you find!

Whoa

TalkingPoints claims UPI will implicate Scooter Libby (Cheney Chief of Staff) and another Cheney staffer in the Valerie Plame affair.

Wow. That can't be good for the White House. Pure speculation, but it makes you want to connect the dots regarding the rumors about Cheney being replaced by Guiliani for '04. Surely they know what's being discovered (and of course, they would know if the implications were true). Cheney and Rove were explicitly excluded from culpability, if I remember the WH's statements at the time. Which at the time struck me as interesting, simply for who was NOT on the list. Rice? Wolfowitz? Libby--ah HAH!

Forgive the spate of conspiracy theorism there. But clearly this is a developing matter, at a completely un-propitious time for the President.

More on veterans as a bloc

Here's something from the Globe a couple of days ago about the competition for the veteran's vote, and a quote that gets at exactly what I was talking about yesterday regarding the power of symbolizing the validation of Vietnam vets:

"`John could reach out to all 8 million Vietnam-era veterans and our families, touching every corner of America, and say to us on behalf of the United States, finally, `Welcome home, brother, job well done!''' said James, who served in the Army's 25th Infantry in 1969 and1970 and who came here to hear Kerry speak Friday. ``As a vet who spoke out against the war, he'd be uniquely positioned to start a healing process on Vietnam like none that's ever been done in America.''

The next paragraph goes on to detail a group of veterans who would like to see him move out of the country, so clearly there is no universality to the healing power of a Kerry campaign. I'm going to continue to flesh this concept out, trying to get a sense of the size of the veterans bloc, how they've voted in the past, and where they are sitting at the moment regarding '04. Here's another article from a couple days ago, this time from WaPo.

Bush to set ball on tee via gay marriage amendment?

If he had planned to ride the fence and just fuss and fume to please the outer wings of his base, hardline conservative values groups appear to be backing him in a corner the last few weeks on gay marriage. There go Andrew Sullivan and the rest of the Log Cabin-dwellers, I suppose. While a slim to moderate majority are not in favor of gay marriage, they are much more ambivalent about using the federal amendment process to force the issue. If you look at recent polling numbers, the issue is clearly complex: a straight (ha) question on amendments runs to majority favor, but when made into a choice between US law and state law taking the lead, sizeable majorities prefer the states to handle it. Independents are nearly similar to Democrats on this issue, however, which is why GDub has been pussyfooting around the issue. If he does indeed endorse an amendment, the DemoKerry* will enjoy the unique pleasure of playing to Bush's right, defending the rights of states to make their own call. Luckily for DemoKerry, the half-loaf civil union compromise, which to me seems a lot less wholesome and incentivist of monogamy than marriage--all the rights, but none of the committment!--means DemoKerry can talk out of both sides of his mouth. Bush has shown little inclination to speak well of civil unions, and with the amendment talk he'll be fairly dogmatically pinned to that position, meaning that he sacrifices the Sullivan vote. I'd bet a paycheck that this is leaving our favorite TNR editor tearing his hair out having to choose between Bush and Das Demokratischer.

The reason Bush looks weak right now, is because he's showing an uncanny ability to unimpress a series of constituencies. The seniors were not impressed by Medicare, Hispanics generally unmoved by his amnesty plan, conservatives hate the new budget, nobody liked Mars at ALL--what the hell is he doing? Next thing you know he'll tell Sharon "Tear down that wall!" and be seen hugging Kofi Annan after he tells Iraq, "No, sorry--George is right. No way you can have elections by July." He's got the 9/11 commission asking for and now getting a two-month extension, meaning that results and recommendations could come out right around the GOP convention, Tenet is ready to rebut him on Iraq intelligence (see below)...the message discipline so famously displayed for three years seems to be falling into disarray, as the administration spins ever-greater numbers of plates on their extremities, just to tread political water.


*If this will quickly get annoying, let me know and I'll stop. I can't think of a better shorthand for "Kerry or other Democrat who becomes the nominee...but it'll probably be Kerry" to use each time I want to refer to that as yet undetermined candidate.

Edwards exploits Kerry on Letterman gap

If you missed it, here's the bottom 5. He wasn't all that expressive, but he wasn't bad either. Free TV is good TV! Number three was pretty sweet: "Lady, that is one ugly baby." He looked vaguely presidential, as much as you can on late night TV, I guess. Remember how low Nixon set the entertainment value bar with "sock it to me?" (Not if you're under 40, I guess).

Tenet rebuts

Things might get a little more interesting tomorrow when George Tenet speaks at Georgetown, promising to correct "misperceptions."

...

Hello again. Children awake and full-focus blogging are not phenomena that tend to intersect for very long, and I wouldn't want to fake the real-time aspect of all this and pretend that I'd written it in one giant swoop, when I'd ducked out for baths and teeth brushing and whatnot. I trust you well enough to let you know that I have gone and returned.

Anyhow, no matter where you fall on the great Iraqi WoMD divide, surely you must be just a little curious about what Tenet might say. His job has been validated and he stays alive yet again, mostly because he does a pretty good job of taking the fall for stuff. But two things strike me about him: he is fiercely defensive of his agency and his people, and for someone who has gotten used to the mea culpa, he's not entirely contrite in his confessions. Look at this classic passage from his yellowcake apology:

"did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed."

It sounds like he's taking the heat, right? But what is he actually saying? That the CIA thought it was certain and it wasn't? Hell no! All Tenet says here is that the evidence presented was not SotU quality, and he should have put his foot down to make sure it was not in there. He KNEW it wasn't certain, and he says as much in the letter--that both CIA and State had begun to question the Niger documents as forgery. So certainly he didn't bring it up himself, and he says that too--it was NSC staff who augured for its inclusion. What kind of apology reads, "I knew it was suspect data, but I didn't risk my career by throwing a tantrum in front of your staff, insisting that those words would go into the speech over my dead body?" "I apologize for not beating it into Scooter Libby's head that this may be bogus when he said we could claim we heard it from the British."

So I'm atwitter with anticipation for another accusatory apology from Tenet. And he has some goods this time, frankly--there is a list of things Tenet can point to that administration members propagated, without sufficient backup from intelligence estimates. They are mostly in the area of nuclear progress and the connection to al-Qaeda, so while he can safely admit giving high confidence in Iraq's possession of bio and chem materials, he can also try to make himself and his beleaguered agency look better by saying, "Y'know--you blew this as much as we did." And that's precisely what I think he'll do, in his offhand, unapologetically apologetic way.

Hey, I need to track this back through Electablog, who alerted me to the speech, and who has a pretty rippin' good blog that I'm adding to the List of Elites. Carry on!

Itemization of 2005 budget cuts

arranged by Cabinet department. A very nice resource from USAT. Does it make sense to anyone else to trumpet an increase in homeland security--and then cut 800 million from first responder funding in that vein? This is going to be a tough budget to stand behind, and it appears he is headed towards veto on the transportation bill--which also seems like a no-win situation for him. He is being criticized from the right for not vetoing a single spending bill in his term, but he couldn't pick one that was more dear to Congresspeople, who know that constituents view highway funding as job engines, and a way to relieve traffic congestion. We'll see how this plays out.

SuperCool Tuesday wrapup

I don't know what the title really means, other than calling it "Super Tuesday I" makes it sound like Bull Run or something--the prelude to the real Super Tuesday, which Terry McAulliffe may or may not have made moot in his attempt to shorten the calendar.

I've got several places I want to go with you tonight. If you need a coat as we roll back and forth across the virtual political landscape, I'll wait for you here...

The first thing I'd like to direct you to are the exit polls for the five states I listed below via Politicalwire--although they spread across the sphere like ebola after NRO's blog leaked it. There was some talk about it being a plant by Drudge to push the voting, but this seemed absurd on its face for at least two reasons: pumping up Edwards at Clark's expense makes little sense, since that's almost the worst scenario for the re-election campaign; and outside of the rarefied blog air, those who noticed almost universally said, "Eh, exit polls, they suck." Drudge as provocateur never got off the ground; most people saw off New Hampshire's numbers were and thus were skeptical. (And as far as I've seen, no one has sourced the numbers, which hurts credibility as well).

Go back and look at them now. That's the most glittering display of on-the-button polling I've seen in a long, long time. This was a diverse set of states with all kinds of late movement, and the tracking polls got the broad themes right but were hampered by undecideds and time-release numbers (the three day rolling poll, which smooths out trends but tends to lag behind reality). But you could have printed those numbers in the papers tomorrow, and been about 90% accurate.

Look at South Carolina. 44, 30, 10 turns out to be 45, 30, 10, with the trifecta finish.
Look at Missouri. 52, 23, 10 becomes 51, 25, 9, right order again.
Delaware: amazingly got Clark and Edwards right at 11, but missed the apparent mini-remorse of Dean voters. Kerry was a solid if not direct hit.
Arizona was predicted at 46, 24, 13, and it came out 43, 27, 14--overestimating Kerry and shrifting Clark just a tad. Order again exactly right.
Oklahoma was the least accurate of the five, but predict a three way tie and get a three way tie, and you gotta be happy. Another thousand Edwards votes and that prediction would have been nearly perfect.

One other note MSNBC gave over the air (I'll see what other exit polling gets published in the news bibles tomorrow), was that Kerry's overally favorability was stunningly high. In almost every one of the contests, 80% of voters said they'd be fine if Kerry was the nominee (I believe SC was the exception at a mere 70%). I would have like to have seen comparables for the other candidates, but that strikes me as rather unusual. Are the candidates all the same, or do 8 out of 10 voters share the same views on electability and the only difference is in how important that factor is to people's choices?

On to the results and the people, starting from the bottom:

Kucinich
I will be stunned if Dennis is not the lead story tomorrow. He had easily the best night of his political career, scoring not one but TWO 5th places finishes, including a rafter-raiser in New Mexico with five full percent of the caucus vote! Surely Joe Lieberman had to shake his head in wonderment: from 537 votes, to running behind Dennis Kucinich for President. Dennis did hit some rough patches; he was all but invisible in Delaware, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Missouri, where he ran just a couple hundred votes ahead of "Uncomitted," and almost four THOUSAND behind Dick Gephardt, who you may recall quit asking for votes already. Dennis will hang on in the primary race for a while longer I suspect, with a surprising amount of on hand cash and no freakin' idea what to do with it to buy a vote. See you for your 4% finish in Washington, D!

"Joe Fired" Lieberman
At least we can regain peace from bad Jo-jokes. If the state you are making your last stand in is not a state with which you have some sort of favored child aura, you have to know that if you tank, you die. Apparently he did not want to do his tanking in CT, which I can understand, so he flailed on the road where the painful speech was perhaps a little easier to make. Joe just had nothing to offer an electorate that was not about bridging the gap and working together. There was no blood, no red meat coming from Joe--like Kucinich, he was a political vegetarian. Plant-eating liberalism is not going to work in 2004. One side wants the other out; the other wants the first silenced forever.

Sharpton
The collected African-American voters of South Carolina did not let me down, refusing to let Al Sharpton's variously shared skin tone unduly influence their vote. I certainly could understand the impulsive joy in not voting for the middle aged white guy for the 200th time in your life. Hell, I'm white, and I'm getting tired of it myself. Al got about 18% of the black vote, which meant white guys got the other 72%. Al's convention time just got a lot shorter, but hopefully this means we can stop talking about which candidate best targets the black niche--and with the Southwest largely out of the way we no longer need to endure the ridiculous pandering to Hispanics that goes on there. Identity politics is one of the things that gets Democrats into trouble; let's hope the non-monolithic results from this evening force that concept from the agenda.

Dean Hard to have imagined a month ago that tonight I'd be putting him right after two irrelevancies and the political death of J-Lieb. But here he is, running on junk food and fresh advice, husbanding his resources for the all important Guam/Virgin Islands caucuses, when only 97% of the delegates will have yet been awarded. Dean thought he'd at least be able to cherry pick some delegates, likely from the Southwest. Well, that strategy worked if the number of cherries he was hoping for was seven. Dean finished 3rd in four of the seven contests, a fact that will probably find its way to my emailbox tomorrow when Roy writes us the internet postmortem, but he certainly got what he paid for this week. Potential embarassments in Washington and Michigan leave open the question of whether he will be able to limp into Wisconsin for a final stand. That is, if he isn't kicked out with prejudice (and then quietly thanked) after Michigan. How the mighty have fallen, indeed.

Clark
Poor Wes Clark was screwed from the get-go on this night. There is really only room for three stories on the primary news cycle--front runner/winner or front runner/loser, viable challenger, and guy-who-drops-out. Two of the three slots were already filled (not that you want to be Mr. Dropout), and if Clark could win decisively in a state where he had focused much of his energy and placed his primary HQ, he could at least share the third slot with Edwards, and maybe claim it for himself if Kerry won SC.

Alas, it was not to be. Not only did Kerry's close third take some of the steam out of any win Clark got, but Edwards got great buzz the last week of the campaign with much less effort than Clark. Once Edwards had SC, Clark had to put his candidacy far enough out in front in OK to make himself part of the overall story. Legitimately speaking, he is. He did well in the Southwest, challenging Kerry for the "Most veterans packed onto my campaign bus to lend me credibility" title. But he was not strong enough to claim a real share of "Kerry alternative," and sure enough, tonight's MSNBC front leads with Kerry, and sidebars the Edwards SC story, and J-Lieb's dropout. Clark is nowhere to be found. How long can he hang? He has to beat Edwards in Washington and Michigan, which is doable because Edwards does not have the money to really hit either, instead focusing on VA and TN. Clark doesn't have much of any organization though, so with Edwards being the 2nd story tonight, he will likely get a slight bounce, and then there's the death throes of Dean to deal with. Although he won a state, tonight was the spiritual exit of Wes Clark's campaign.

John Edwards
Tonight's performance was at once very impressive, and also a bit disheartening for Edwards fans. As someone else said tonight, if he can figure out a way to be from Washington AND Michigan this next week, he's really in business. Otherwise, he's trading on poll bounce and crossed fingers. I predicted that Edwards could force a two-man race with Kerry if he won two states, and he nearly did it, to the point that not calling OK a win for Edwards is a little silly. But I underestimated the sheer psychic power of Kerry's victories. Unless the money starts pouring in--and it will definitely continue increasing for a while--Edwards cannot run the retail campaign on a large scale like Kerry can. He's effectively conceded the next week's worth of primaries, and the inevitability train will only speed up if and when Dean and Clark both drop out, with Edwards not really participating. Edwards' last great hope is to hang on until March 3rd and try to make a big showing in California, hopefully earning a debate along the way (but I doubt Kerry will make that easy for him). But for Kerry's amazing good fortune in letting Gephardt and Dean stab each other in the eye, Edwards would be leading this race and thinking seriously instead of hopefully. The campaign is definitely alive, has its best momentum, and trades on a veritable font of charismatic campaigning. But it's big money time, where ad buys are your only way to meet most of the voters. That's a big challenge for the short-time Seneca, SC resident.

Kerry
This was certainly a big, big night in John Kerry's political life. The nation and the world will assuredly begin the intense scrutiny that goes along with being a serious, highly likely contender for the presidency--a scrutiny that Kerry has so far been lucky to avoid for the most part. There are two things about tonight's performance that stick out to me. First is his 3rd place finish in Oklahoma, which will not get talked about much, but which I view as perhaps his biggest win of the night. Folks, John Kerry never had ONE staff guy working for him in Oklahoma. He bought one week's worth of ads, right after New Hampshire. I think he visited the state one time, over the weekend. In short, other than filing his candidacy, Kerry treated Oklahoma with the proper disdain of a Boston urbanite getting cowdung on his Blahniks. And he finished 3rd, in a near deadlock with two guys who worked an awful lot harder for their 30%.

I am also struck by how amazingly even Kerry's support is. Everyone else in the race has a niche or two where they dominate the polls, and at least one weak area where they come up short. Kerry does well with old people, young people, whites, minorities, men, women, right leaning Dems, left leaners, independents, Republicans for heaven's sake! But the one group that threatens to put Kerry over the top for the nomination is veterans. Veterans and veteran themes are beginning to dominate his campaign, and if you think that's the slightest bit coincidental, you're not paying attention. Poor one-limbed Max Cleeland is being dragged hither and yon to grasp John Kerry's arm with that one good limb, thrust it in the air James Thrash-like, and exorcise the demons that Saxby Chambliss laid upon him in the 2002 elections. And oh, help Kerry win. But Cleeland clearly loves it; you can almost see him repeating over and over in his mind, "paybacks are a bitch, paybacks are a bitch..." There's something larger to the presence of the veterans, however--something that goes beyond the normally craven use of demographic props in order to secure a voting bloc. If Kerry is smart he will carry the themes of veteran service not just to his campaign, but to his vision for the country.

The first broad resonance I'm beginning to feel from a Kerry vs Bush race is a major focus on courage, honor, patriotism and sacrifice. Again, it's no accident that Terry McAulliffe threw out the AWOL charge in order to help the media frame the debate. Various journos are treating the story like it's brand new, instead of one that was known in 2000 but barely glossed over. Why? Because Al Gore's service record wasn't any model of courage, so it wasn't a viable point of contention. With Kerry, the Democrats have realized it IS a point of contention, since instead of trying to get out of responsibility and shirking it once assumed, their guy signed up and killed people for us. But there's something more to the question of Vietnam service that makes it a special issue. As historical wounds go, Vietnam seems to be a ghost we cannot shake. We still have not come to terms with how badly, relatively speaking, we treated those who made the ultimate sacrifice for us. I've recently read articles that sought to quantify or at least make personal the stories of soldiers being spit upon, with surprisingly no luck--no media accounts of any such thing appear to exist. But that doesn't matter; as far as we're concerned we treated the men and women of Vietnam badly, and we feel guilty about what a lousy war we sent them to.

That picture is all the more starkly contrasted with the love fest for our current troops in Iraq, one that is certainly well deserved. For many of us who are too young to have personalized the casualties of Vietnam, those feelings of gratitude and pride are rather easily transferred from today's heroes to those we newly recognize as hero's fathers. And this is where Kerry comes in--he's BEEN THERE, man. You can see on the trail that he carries an aura with him, the same aura that lets you criticize the policy but "support the troops." Voting for Kerry is one more way to both support today's troops (presumably by not getting them entangled in choice wars), and more poignantly, validate yesterday's heroes that never got the support they deserved at the time. To elect John Kerry is to finally purge our guilty conscience, to elevate the forgotten soldier and trust that what he has seen, he is smart enough to avoid unless absolutely necessary. And returning to the crass, every veteran John Kerry signs up is one less veteran who would likely be otherwise predisposed to vote for Bush. Pulling veterans into the Democratic tent is a bold attack at George Bush's base, and once Clark drops out and the remaining veterans move to Kerry, it's an attack that just might work.

A parallel theme that Kerry would be wise to use is a framing of what Democrats consider patriotism vs the GOP's brand. Salon's Ruy Teixeira [click on ad to get one day free access] outlines what a stinker of a theme classic populism will be for Kerry if he persists with it. For one thing, he's already shown how hard it is to be against special interests while taking so much money from them. (I noticed tonight he had changed the word "special" to the word "big," which may be helpful but only dresses the issue a little differently.) Populism is zero-sum politics, and anytime you begin sounding like you're begrudging the haves what they have, you start losing people. There are other ways of dichotomizing the two approaches, in ways that don't sound like code for taking your money and giving it to other people.

As Teixeira notes, as soon as John Edwards is done with it, Kerry needs to snap up the "two Americas" concept and apply it further to the notion of what is considered patriotism. It's actually a very easy game to play: "It's not patriotism to make big profits off your country, but give your jobs and move your HQ to other nations. It's not patriotism to charge an arm and a leg for prescription drugs--unless you're Canadian. It's not patriotism to move the tax burden away from created wealth, and onto the backs of those who put in a full week's work--if they can find a job. It's not patriotism to tell your kids you won't leave them behind--and then make them pay for the ride. It's not patriotism to send our servicepeople to die by themselves and make us pay for it, when there could have been another way. And it's certainly not patriotism to tell me I'm a traitor for not liking your brand of patriotism!" And on and on. The key redeeming feature of this approach is that nowhere does it sound like you want to take things away from one group and give it to another. It's a populist appeal all right--but even when it tackles economic issues, it sounds like political populism.

I'm going to see if I can develop these twin themes of Vietnam-veteran validation and populist patriotism. I think that while economic issues may carry the day intellectually, on an emotional level war and remembrance will be a heavy deciding factor.

Exit polls!

Grain of salt warning, but very, very interesting. A two-man race may finally be upon us!

(from Politicalwire)

Tomorrow's predictions, tonight!

There are really only two states in play: Oklahoma and South Carolina. My feeling is that these will be the only two states John Kerry does not win outright. Clark will just edge Kerry in Oklahoma, and Edwards will win relatively easily in South Carolina. Clark could finish as low as 5th in SC, but Edwards should have 3rd in Oklahoma, outside chance at 2nd. New Mexico is a wild-card, but Kerry should win that as well, perhaps over Dean but more likely over Clark. Missouri is all Kerry; the only other story there is Edwards making the cutoff for delegates. North Dakota is almost entirely an unknown; Kerry is the default choice there. Joe Lieberman will finally have his congenial ass handed to him in the one state where he showed off his ebullient mien, Delaware. Given that "undecided" is sometimes just another word for "sheep," most of the yet undeclared in Delaware are likely to latch onto the Sox-lovin' Senator.

So Edwards hangs on another week and continues to back off from flat declarations of non-interest in the VP, Clark hangs on for no reason other than old veterans think he's pretty, Dean bites his nails and waits until he can get pasted in Michigan a week from now, Sharpton starts writing his "Whatchya'll gonna do for US?" speech for the convention, Lieberman's friends write his political kaddish (why did Lieberman get all stoked about 9% in NH and spend other people's money for another week, just to see his numbers go down even further in the meantime? Perhaps he should have asked Moses), and Kucinich recharges his elfen battery, not to mention his all-electric car battery, for the next round of futility.

Ain't politics grand?

Gallup validates Bush decline

I've been posting Newsweek and Quinnipiac returns as trend leaders; while they are usually on the "left" end of the scale, they do track in the same peaks and valleys as the others, and often seem to presage conditions that become reality. And now a third, much larger and more respected engine of public opinion has found the same turned worm under the rock. USAT/CNN/Gallup catches the obvious wave of positive Democratic press and negative Bush press, and shows very notable and sharp changes across a wide variety of question types, all trending negatively for the President.

I spent ten years working in a survey research unit under Dr. Scott Keeter, who teaches at George Mason in Northern Virginia and is Associate Director at the Pew Center. Polls will be a common indulgence in my World thanks to him. I really learned to appreciate a well-written, sound poll question. They can be highly predictive--that is, predictive of what the results would be if you literally asked everybody. But they don't see the future at all. The most you can do is notice the trend and try to deduce your way towards truly predictive "findings."

Which is what makes this particular poll release so much fun. You've got to be fundamentally challenged not to see what's happening with this poll. First and foremost, there is a bellwether number that has been reached--49% job rating. From USAT:

"Every president who averaged 50% or better in the year of his re-election contest won a second term. Every president whose average fell below 50% during that year lost. "

Note he has to average 50% for the year--and of course nothing other than historical precedent says he has to follow that convention. I will say again: this is clearly Kerry's honeymoon and Bush's potential nadir. But you see just how much of a nadir it has become for Bush; in less than a month his favorable went down 11, and his unfavorable up by 13. Across the board, the numbers took a quick right turn and are trending southward. On the economy--a 22 point swing, 11 up to 11 down. Foreign affairs--a 24 point swing. On Iraq--an incredible 32 point swing in one month. Health care--lopped another 16 points off an already unfavorable showing.

Most personally shocking to me, however, is the steep decline in his personal favorability rating, a number that had held consistently strong for an entire year while Iraq and the economy went up and down. No matter what happened, 2/3 of Americans continued to think that at root, George Bush was a good guy. A majority of them still feel that way, but the division over personal feelings towards the President now mirrors the rest of the findings in other areas.

I think the Bush vs. numbers are interesting as well. This is the third recent poll to give Kerry a numerical edge in a hypothetical matchup, and the 2nd in a row to put it outside the margin of error. That's going to come down at least some, guaranteed--but there are surprisingly very strong numbers coming from the Republican leaners for Kerry. The Democrats are exceedingly high on him right now, which as regular readers know, means to me there are a lot of hungry and gullible Democrats out there. Which leads me to a popular theme of late: Edwards looks just as good, and has the advantage of not sucking as a candidate. To wit: his favorables are good and his unfavorable is even lower than Kerry's (more have not heard of Edwards yet); he has positive favorables with Republicans, like Lieberman but not Kerry; and like Kerry he is polling ahead of Bush right now among likelies. Plus there is very little Bush has to use against Edwards except inexperience (which granted, is a biggie). But if that's true, why doesn't it show up in the polling against Bush?

That said, John Edwards would be a freaking fool to burn any bridges with Kerry right now. Should the Democrats end up taking the White House in '04, he will no doubt in my mind get a solid 2nd chance at the ultimate prize sometime in the future.

I'm putting the race right now at dead even, 50-50 on Bush's reelection. No one has the first clue what will eventually decide it, but if it happened tomorrow instead of the Middlin' 7 primaries, he'd be out.

Do we have our right-wing 3rd party candidate?

If, as it appears from my reading, that Ralph Nader won't run in 2004, this development reported in the WSJ (via DemWatch, who I've just added at right) ought to make left-leaners giddy with anticipation. There is nothing GDub needs less than a values/fiscal conservatism attack from the right, and Roy Moore would be the PERFECT person to siphon true believers away from the President. It's all speculation of course, but it's something to watch closely.

More late polling via DemWatch

here...

Quinnipiac broadens Kerry's lead over Bush

He now leads by eight in their most recent polling. As with any poll I post, mostly ignore the superficial outcome implied, and just note the trend. Things have not gone well at all for Bush in January, and frankly February isn't looking so hot either. It's to be expected that Kerry would be riding high in polls, but it's still instructive to see Bush go from leads well outside the MoE, to deficits outside them. It will be very interesting to see the next numbers from Fox, who historically trend right in their results.

The Note does not agree...

The journo pack apparently disagrees with my analysis of the Dean MtP interview, below:

"Now that the www.Trippi spell is broken, we can say it loudly and clearly: Dr. Dean's performance on "Meet" yesterday was, by Gang of 500 standards, even WORSE than the historically bad one he had on the show right before he formally announced his candidacy last year: contradictory, petulant, non-responsive, small, and unpresidential (or so thought the Gang)."

Dean gives brilliant interview, too late

Howard Dean's appearance on Meet the Press, one on one with a very tough Tim Russert today, reminded me of everything I like about Howard Dean and where he comes from. Here's a text transcript. He was self-deprecating, he was honest about his campaign and himself, he spoke firmly and cogently on a number of topics (too many of which were horse race questions, but c'est la vie), and he did what somebody should have been doing for two weeks now--offer John Kerry plenty of practice in defending his record.

Speaking of Kerry, file this exchange under "Careful what you wish for":

MR. RUSSERT: John Kerry was on this program three weeks ago and he issued a challenge to you. Let's watch and get your response:

(Videotape, January 11, 2004):

SEN. KERRY: I'd love to have a face-to-face debate with him. Let's have you and me and Howard Dean together.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Do you accept that challenge?

DR. DEAN: Sure.

MR. RUSSERT: Any Sunday...

DR. DEAN: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: ...you'll be here?

DR. DEAN: Absolutely.

MR. RUSSERT: I want to talk about...

DR. DEAN: Let's see if he'll accept it.

Note the date of Kerry's challenge: before Iowa, right as Kerry was moving up, but Dean was still definitely the front runner. As we will continue to see until the nomination is wrapped up, someone decided it was time to make it a two-man game (with the media's willing help). Now, three weeks later, there is nothing John Kerry wants or needs less than to get in an extended debate on Meet the Press with Howard Dean. In that format, Kerry would be gored like a hapless orc, and he certainly knows it. You almost wonder how much prodding Dean's people gave Russert to bring up the tape. Ouch.

Other blissfully honest and straightforward gems from the Bullworth of the party:

MR. RUSSERT: It looks as though you're in very tough shape for these coming primaries and caucuses on Tuesday.

DR. DEAN: How the mighty have fallen.

MR. RUSSERT: What happened?

DR. DEAN: We spent a lot of money in Iowa and New Hampshire trying to win. We're were trying to do essentially what John Kerry is now doing. We were planning on trying to get a huge momentum out of Iowa and it didn't work. We took an enormous gamble and it didn't work.

...

MR. RUSSERT: Do you regret spending all the money so quickly?

DR. DEAN: Well, sure. I mean, actually in retrospect, it's always easy. But I don't blame anybody in the campaign for that. I used to drive my campaign guys crazy by wanting to know exactly what they were doing. But the benefit now is that I signed off on all that personally, so I don't have any thoughts that it was their fault, not mine. It was my fault. We knew what we were doing, we took a gamble, and it didn't pay off.

...

DR. DEAN: Well, we probably won't win someplace by February 3, with the possible exception of New Mexico, and we're going to continue on.

..

DR. DEAN: Not only just him got some special interest money--look, we all have special interest money. I'm sure if you went through my campaign, you'd find--there's people in special interests, lobbyists, who have given me money and so forth.

...

DR DEAN: ...everybody on the Democratic side is promising a middle-class tax cut, promising health insurance for everybody, promising full funding of No Child Left Behind, promising funding for special education. The American people know you can't do that. Most Americans know that you can spend what comes in and not more...Where do these Washington people think this money comes from? This is crazy. You can't do this. You have to balance the budget. And nobody is--they're all doing the same thing: promise, promise, promise, "Let's get by election," and then we'll discover, "Oh, gee, well, maybe we can't quite do this."

...

MR. RUSSERT: You said the other day, talking about trade policy in Indiana, Iowa, that under your trade policy, there's some bad news, prices will go up at your local Wal-Mart. How popular is that going to be?

DR. DEAN: Well, you know what they get in return? American jobs stop going overseas, illegal immigration is reduced to a trickle because people are going to make money in their own countries instead of having to come here to feed their families. And you get much better world security because you develop middle classes in developing countries. I think that's a pretty good tradeoff.

MR. RUSSERT: People will pay higher prices at Wal-Mart for that?

DR. DEAN: Yeah. People will pay higher prices at Wal-Mart. Look, I'm just telling the truth here. I mean, I understand that everybody else promises you can have a tax cut, you can do this, you can do that; it's not true. It is not true. You cannot do everything.

...

The only time he really went into Fudge and Cover mode was when asked about consumate insider Roy Neel, former head of the US Tennis Association but seemingly blessed with a good mind for telecomm issues as well. His basis of response was, "Well, it's been four years since he was a lobbyist special interest, Tim." What else could he say? He just hired the guy. Al Gore really is having a Midas Touch with his help, isn't he?

Other notes--he attributes his charge of Cheney berating CIA officers to a retired CIA officer, whom he can't name because he doesn't want to follow Bush's lead in outing CIA people. Very convenient, although if you believe that having Cheney and Scooter Libby look over your shoulder while you're typing doesn't constitute pressure, you probably would believe someone who said Al Sharpton would fake his way through entire primary season being taken seriously as a candidate for President. (Al, I'm heading down to the Federal Reserve tomorrow morning--can I pick you up any money?) But without anybody on the record, that's a dead story.

--admitted The Scream was not presidential, but fun.

--let the cat out of the bag pretty much; his tax reform plan is payroll tax based cuts, limit expansions or holidays.

--just nailed John Kerry every chance he got.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but being chastened in Iowa has not been a good thing for the selection process. As much if not more of the swing from Dean to Kerry was abject fear of losing, as it was Dean and Gephardt going negative. And Dean does cite the negativity as a gamble that backfired. But make no mistake, he lost because people were a little flipped by him and his messianic supporters from out of town. They rushed for the warm, oatmeal-like physical safety of the Kerry candidacy, which had lately begun using the stuff that was frothing the audiences when Dean said them. And Dean kept stumbling. So the NH campaign week was essentially neutered, and now Democrats are exceedingly close to sealing the deal and going ahead with War Hero John. Thank God for Dean at this point to turn the tables on the Senator and attempt to call him out into another 2-man scenario. Kerry will be smart not to bite a dog who's yammering from a porch in Michigan, but it will make news anyway and others will be given a chance to comment on it. Once again, Howard Dean is doing the Democrats a huge favor.

Bush advisers--telling truth not a good idea?

Dana Millbank's WaPo analysis of the Bush retreat on an independent comission is fairly standard stuff, discussing the rationale, the impacts, the political effects, etc. But what stuns my sense of ethics to the core is this paragraph on why it's better to fudge than come clean in the Bush administration's eyes:

"Also, the alternative for Bush -- admitting an error in the prewar allegations -- has not worked well for him in the past. Administration officials now say it was a mistake to acknowledge that Bush should not have included in last year's State of the Union address an allegation that Iraq tried to buy nuclear material in Africa. The admission of error, they say, made Bush appear weak and encouraged more skeptical coverage than if the White House had refused to budge."

Telling the truth was a mistake? Are you kidding me? Look, let's pre-empt the comparative analysis on presidents and the truth by saying this: of course Clinton made a serious error not only in his pre-fabricative judgement, but in not biting his lip and coming clean when he knew he was nailed. Lesson learned? Apparently not. This bugs me on several levels: first, it's just plain wrong. Anybody with a normal moral code can figure that out. Secondly, Bush has made his career on the (completely specious) claim that he and his family and friends are all "good people." Good people don't decide it's better not to tell the truth or admit you were wrong by waiting until you will officially be the last person to recognize it. And finally, DID HE LEARN NOTHING? Was he not watching TV during the last presidency, getting pointers on what NOT to do when you are stone cold busted on the facts? Craven, hypocritical, and a slow learner. The trifecta!

So whoever is advising him to refrain from acknowledging the hammer of truth as it hits him in the face, needs a new job. Then again, so does his boss.

St. Louis Times-Dispatch on MO race

There are several bloggers (many listed at right) who do such a great job of finding the interesting material, that I have no trouble piggybacking on their efforts on a regular basis. I read Kaus for months before I really clued into the blogosphere connection; I just thought he was a great troller for news.

But reacting to conclusions others reach is only half the story. That's why I added the papers link---relying on the major news bibles and most popular blogs for information is bad review policy. Local media have a real tendency to suck, frankly--but there are very competent reporters who work for some of them, and print is better than TV by a mile, locally. I've used local papers for fanalytic sports analysis for years--the local beat writer on a team gets the buzz before injury reports or cuts or role changes hits national media. So it's worth it to hear from those closest to it. The book on Howard Dean was written by Vermont journalists who covered him, and their collected views are revealing (and on balance positive).

So, blah blah. I mention this because the St. Louis Dispatch has a pretty good pulse of the state for the primary, at least from an urban editorial perspective. How Edwards does in rural Missouri will be a key outcome for me--they are generally conservative, principled, overwhelmingly religious, and represent a sizeable chunk of both the national electorate and the South in particular. Edwards is running almost at the point of getting delegates out of Missouri, which would be a spinnable victory for him here. If he pulls well in the rural Missouri areas, and carries South Carolina as expected, I've got to think that some people are going to wonder if "security electability" is more or less important than "Southern electability." It's really the two choices Democrats realistically have left, and it's an honest, serious debate. Or at least it can be. :)

Bad weather to stall campaigning?

So far, in reading newspapers in Oklahoma, South Carolina and Missouri, they're all expecting bad winter weather this weekend and into Monday. That's not going to help candidates get their messages out, and if it bleeds into Tuesday it will affect turnouts. Kerry gets the advantage on the first, probably loses some on the second.

By the way, check out the "city newspapers" link at right. Most of the mid to major US papers are listed there; so far I haven't hit a bum link. Primary sources--catch them!

al-Sistani and 1920

I think most readers know who Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hussani Sistani is--the guy who is holding pocket bullets and just found another one on the flop. [Poker--catch it!] The NSA and CIA would have had to have been high during all the meetings not to surmise that a significant Shia presence would emerge, and that Sistani was the obvious candidate, so I don't know that it would be warranted of me to say that the Bush administration failed to account for him. But a significant outcome of the long delay in military security post-Saddam, has been the lack of time to adequately work on the building social dynamic that naturally rises to fill the power vacuum in a regime change. Why? Because we're getting shot at, of course. Who has time to sip tea with the locals when you have to go out and check your jeep for IED's* again? Without that extra time to truly be in touch with where Sistani's head was on the electoral side of the transfer, Bremer and the coalition planners made some missteps and judgements in primarily US interest, that they might have known Sistani would not go for.

What's his beef? It's fairly obvious--now that Saddam is gone and the US has torn up the country in order to offer its brand of democracy, Iraqis are no more keen to let an occupying nation set up the principles of government than they were in 1920, when it was the British who were nation-building. Of course the British had a rather more directly exploitative goal in mind (at least I hope for Bush's sake they did), but if I was Iraqi I wouldn't trust on that either.

What's compelling about even the brief history of the colonial occupation I gave you, is the religious cooperation of the two major sects in Iraq, in order to wrest control from the common enemy. It didn't work, but it cost the British 3000 lives to break the horse, as it were. And while Sunnis and Shias have that history of common struggle, note that in the end it was the Shi'ites who got the shaft as they so often had before. And you can bet your ass that Sistani ruminates on 1920, and vows that his people will not get the short end of an occupation settlement again.

Somehow I don't think the Pentagon is running through the 1920 playbook, and it will cost us, as sure as it did for not reading up on the history of Vietnam. We seemingly had no clue to our paranoia about China's entry into the war. If John Foster Dulles had read a history book or two, he'd have known that the chances of the Vietnamese turning to the Chinese for help--a country who had occupied them for 1000 years--were nil, and that the chances that the Vietnamese people were not in the mood for another occupation were excellent. I've mailed Torrid's blog address to Mr. Bremer; hopefully he reads it regularly. Hi Paul!

*Improvised Explosive Device--GB Pentagon nomenclature!