Get this guy some Prozac!

[DanMcQ]

Gore warns of grab by Bush

news.bostonherald.com/election/view.bg?articleid=49751

...at least he's lost the "marooned on a desert island" beard - he's not bitter though.

Yikes!

[PushyGuyFanClub]

David Brooks wrote this is today's NY Times:

"But there is a deeper assumption, which has marred Democratic politics for years. Some Democrats have been unable to face the reality that people have been voting for Republicans because they agree with them. So these Democrats have invented the comforting theory that they've been losing because they are too virtuous for the country.

According to this theory, Republicans - or usually some omniscient, omnipotent and malevolent strategists, like Lee Atwater or Karl Rove - have been tricking the American people into voting against their true interests. This year, many Democrats decided, we'll be vicious in return."

Is that what's happening? I think Al Gore and others are in denial, but would appreciate other perspectives, so long as they don't cherry pick transparent talking points like Gore did/does/always will (another interesting article in the NY Times about how climate change scientists are sick of the Bush Administration, but were also sick of climate change "guru" Gore).

[nychoya3]

Well, there of course is the fact that the GOP did win in Florida because they were ready to play dirtier faster. The fact that Gore is "shrill" is of more interest to Brooks than the possibility that Bush is really that bad. Forget tactics for a moment. Policy is what this election is about. Brooks and Safire and various other part time hacks laugh and point and say, "hah hah, look at Gore! He's gone crazy!" Meanwhile soldiers are getting blown apart half way across the globe for no good reason. Maybe Gore is angry for a reason. Read his speeches for what they are: an indictment of Bush's administration and its policy. If you disagree, fine.

Fundamentally, there is nothing Karl Rove won't do to win. Read this article in the Atlantic looking back on his career. Whispering campaigns alledging pedophilia, spousal abuse and other nice stuff. The Swift Boat attack was small potatoes for Rove. What's the dirtiest democratic attack this cycle? Apparently its mentioning that Mary Cheney is gay-a fact that was so secret that she was a coordinator for gay outreach for Coors and brings her partner to campaign events. If some of the unrepentant bigots and homophobes that the mainstream GOP has gotten in bed with are offended by that, I'm not sorry.

Can anyone name an instance of real democratic visciousness this cycle? In a national ad campaign or coordinated way? Brooks thinks he can wave away decades of race baiting and voter supression. He can't. Willie Horton isn't going to wash away so easy.

www.theatlantic.com/doc/200411/green

Brooks assertion that Dems think are a bit perplexed why people vote Republican isn't entirely off base. They are correct that Bush has constantly misrepresented the effects of his policies. Many people supported Bush's first tax cut though it gave them relatively little benefit. And Dems look today at the absolute disgrace that is the Bush foreign policy and wonder why people still trust him on terror. The GOP has been very successful in parlaying cultural issues into votes.

Quick question: Is anyone here voting FOR Bush, or just AGAINST Kerry? If so, why? I have a very difficult time understanding how anyone could look at the last four years and approve of what the administration has done.

[nychoya3]

www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041019/REPOSITORY/410190316/1037/NEWS04

Here's another link. Another whining Republican.

[jerseyhoya34]

On the Mary Cheney subject, it should be noted that one Republican called her a "selfish hedonist," and Lynn Cheney was nowhere to be found when it came to calling him out. What is perhaps more striking is Mary Cheney's complete absence on the podium at the RNC with the family members of the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate. All this when Mary plays a significant role in the BC04 campaign. The faux outrage that emerged after Kerry's comment was a sad, but cunning, attempt to get a "do over" after Bush's lackluster performance at the three debates.

[kchoya]

nychoya3 said:

Quick question: Is anyone here voting FOR Bush, or just AGAINST Kerry? If so, why? I have a very difficult time understanding how anyone could look at the last four years and approve of what the administration has done.

Both.

And if you look at the polls, it's interesting because those voting for Kerry (or saying they will) are voting more AGAINST Bush than for Kerry, whereas Bush voters are overwhelmingly (80%+) voting FOR Bush. It echoes the piece Dana Milbank had in the Wash Post last week about the different receptions Bush and Kerry get out on the stump.

[nychoya3]

It makes sense that more voters would vote against Bush than against Kerry. What Bush stands for is well known. He has been on the front pages and television for four years, where as Kerry is new to the national scene. Frankly, we don't know how good a president Kerry would be until he gets there. We known what Bush is about. I bet that's a universal feature of races for an incument presidency. More importantly, the two candidates have almost identical favorable ratings.

[DanMcQ]

I feel so much safer now that Candidate Kerry has laid out his national security plan...

www.boston.com/news/politics/president/kerry/articles/2004/10/20/kerry_aims_to_avoid_gore_recount_mistakes/

Six so-called "SWAT teams" of lawyers and political operatives will be situated around the country with fueled-up jets awaiting Kerry's orders to speed to a battleground state. The teams have been told to be ready to fly on the evening of the election to begin mounting legal and political fights. Every battleground state will have a SWAT team within an hour of its borders.

The Kerry campaign has recount office space in every battleground state, with plans so detailed they include the number of staplers and coffee machines needed to mount legal challenges.

"Right now, we have 10,000 lawyers out in the battleground states on Election Day, and that number is growing by the day," said Michael Whouley, a Kerry confidant who is running election operations at the Democratic National Committee.

While the lawyers litigate, political operatives will try to shape public perception. Their goal would be to persuade voters that Kerry has the best claim to the presidency and that Republicans are trying to steal it.

****

Nothing like campaigning on actual issues...

[TrueHoyaBlue]

DanMcQ said:

I feel so much safer now that

Nothing like campaigning on actual issues...

Nope, haven't seen anything like it in years on either side, particularly from Rove and Co.

[DanMcQ]

TrueHoyaBlue said:

Nope, haven't seen anything like it in years on either side

Exactly. Presidential politics has turned into TV spin and the candidate choices we've been offered lately haven't been what I would consider to be high quality.

[thebin]

I love this nonsense that Rove is in any way less scrupulous than Shrum. The biggest difference between the two is that Rove has been succesful in his career.

[nychoya3]

Read the Rove article and give me a comparable story about Shrum. In fact, give me any story about Shrum. When was the last time a democratic presidential candidate built a campaign around telling voters that if they vote for John Kerry, terrorists will blow up their city? Rove's record is without peer since the days of Lee Attwater, who of course taught Karl everything he knows. Politics, contrary to the way it's practiced by Rove and company, should not be war by other means.

As for Rove being more successful, well, yeah. He has also chosen better candidates and easier races.

That sort of moral equivlancy and cyncicism (oh, everyone is dirty politics, so why bother complaining) is intellectually lazy. Of course both parties have dirt.

Thebin, are you going to be enthusiastically voting for Bush on election day? Why?

[PushyGuyFanClub]

I think nyc is demonstrating Brooks' thesis that Democrats believe Rove to be an evil genius who is tricking people into voting Republican. There are many good reasons to vote Republican and to vote for Bush. They are not stupid, but rather represent a vision fundamentally at odds with that being proposed by Kerry. Namely, viewing the war of tecord as a war and pursuing it aggressively, keeping marginal tax rates low to increase investment and hiring, and giving people more control of their health care and savings (hsa's and personal retirement accounts). I know all of the arguments against these plans so there is no need to rehash them here, but I fall on the other side of the fence. Therefore, I am voting for Bush.

[kchoya]

What about building a campaign around a pair of January surprises that Bush is gong to reinstitute the draft and privatize social security? What a bunch of bs. At least the claim that Kerry is going help paraplegics get up out of their wheelchairs and walk is laughable?

As far as Cheney and others saying that terrorists will be more likely to attack, the only problem is that he came out and said it. I think there is a legitimate argument that Kerry will be weaker on the terrorists and pander more to the UN/Europe -- thus sending a signal of weakness to the terrorists and inviting more attacks. You may disagree with that line of thinking and the underlying analysis (and a lot of people do), but I think it's a legitimate approach.

But god forbid that the VP come out in say it, that's just scare tactics. But telling seniors that social security is going to be taken away and telling high school seniors they're going to be drafted if Bush wins, well that's just fine.

[PushyGuyFanClub]

The "January Surprise" arguments are pretty last ditch. If Kerry thinks they are true, he should have been honorable enough to bring them up during the debates. He said nothing. The White House debunks both here, www.whitehouse.gov/interactive/, giving credence that Kerry's "whispering campaign" has put them on the radar.

[jerseyhoya34]

Bush did say in an interview that privatization would be high on his agenda with respect to Social Security to the degree that it would be an early priority in a second term. That is legitimate grist for the mill, if you ask me.

Also, the notion of using either campaign website or even, sadly, the official White House site as a debunking tool is somewhat silly unless it is used to link to a speech or an article from a news source.

[thebin]

nychoya3.... Here is a nice little story about Shrum's race baiting tactics from NRO's Jay Nordlinger. And don't just gripe about the source, the pertinent nugget I pasted from a long piece is in there for the facts of that particular campaign that Shrum ran- not the editorialzing. Particularly notice the black Democrat mayor of Baltimore having to rise to Saurbrey's defense after Shrum's disgusting slander tactics.


www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_12_52/ai_62828446/pg_2

excerpt of a long and often generous bio on shrum...



"There's worse. A lot worse. The 1998 gubernatorial election in Maryland pitted the Republican Ellen Sauerbrey against the Democrat Parris Glendening. The race was neck and neck until the final days of the campaign, when Glendening and Shrum played the race card. Really, that is understating it: They lit that card and proceeded to torch the landscape. As a state legislator, Sauerbrey had voted against minority set-asides and a "hate crimes" bill. She had also opposed a measure- deviously labeled a "civil-rights act"-that had to do with sexual- harassment suits, and that was ultimately quashed by the Democratic state senate. Reaching his lowest, Shrum unleashed an ad that smeared Sauerbrey as a racist, with a "shameful record on civil rights." (Just to be sure, he also blanketed black communities with a flier that did the same.)

A good portion of the state was aghast. Several black Democrats, including Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke, rose to Sauerbrey's defense. Schmoke told the press pointedly that he knew the "difference between a political conservative and a racist." He made clear that he did not regard the Shrum spot as "truth-in-advertising." Schmoke refused to make an ad for Glendening that faulted Sauerbrey on civil-rights grounds. Even The New Republic balked, editorializing against the "dishonorable" practice of "race-baiting." It also noted that a "short- run gain to the governor may come at some cost to the racial atmosphere in his state."

The ad, however, worked its terrible magic. It apparently frightened black Marylanders, boosting their turnout and putting Glendening over the top. According to Campaigns & Elections magazine, this was the "Most Brutally Effective Attack Spot" of the year.

Today, Ellen Sauerbrey warns that the Bush campaign had better be prepared for more of the same. Shrum, she says, "has no scruples about distorting the record to try to scare African-American voters. This is a nasty man, without a conscience, who will drag someone through the mud and use the most divisive political issues he can think of." Look, she continues: "If you attack people on something like their environmental record, after the election, you haven't done any lasting harm. But when you divide and polarize communities on the basis of race, I think it has long-term and very nasty effects."

[jerseyhoya34]

If you want to establish some level of equality between playing this card in a mayorial race in a blue state and Rove's list of "accomplishments," then be my guest. Among his most recent endeavors are:

1) Establishing a whisper campaign about a Presidential candidate's alleged use of painkillers.
2) As part of such whisper campaign, insinuating that the candidate had a child out of wedlock in a foreign country. (A similar campaign was evident in the political work of Goebbels and Stalin, among others).
3) Planting a bug in one's own office and blaming the opponent.
4) Sending debate prep footage to the opposing Presidential candidate and then accusing their campaign of theft.
5) Using a group of Vietnam veterans to shamelessly attack the service of a Presidential campaign using sensationalist advertisements and a book that isn't worth the paper it is printed on.
6) Running advertisements comparing a Presidential candidate, who is, to some degree, of Jewish descent, to Hitler.
7) Running advertisements depicting a Senator who lost three limbs in Vietnam alongside Osama bin Laden.

Does anyone care to add to the list?

[Z]

www.theatlantic.com/doc/200411/green

this article provides a nice summary of rove's tactics. scroll to the bottom for a description of his effort to raise the spectre of pedophilia.

[showcase]

"If you attack people on something like their environmental record, after the election, you haven't done any lasting harm. But when you divide and polarize communities on the basis of race, I think it has long-term and very nasty effects."[/bi]

Funny, I was thinking this very same thing about the RNC and the issue of sexual orientation.