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November 14, 2002

Where's Osama?  Inquiring minds want to know.  Really inquiring minds might also wonder - admittedly with 20/20 hindsight - why the Dems weren't throwing that question in Bush's face at every opportunity.  By not raising the question forcefully, focusing attention back on the actual terror threat, they allowed Bush to avoid the issue and go on rounding up the usual suspects, in this case Saddam.

Another 20/20 hindsighter:  How come the Senate didn't hold some really good, high-profile hearings on the whole corporate-corruption thing?  The standard Beltway-pundite jive was that the issue wasn't resonating.  Well, no issue resonates unless you pump on it, or some religious fanatics fly into buildings.  I do vaguely recall some low-voltage hearings where a bunch of guys took the Fifth.   What ever happened to immunizing someone and making them spill the juicy stuff?

Meanwhile, the post-election conventional wisdom is into about Release 5.0.  Are the Democrats Abandoning the Center to Veer Too Far Left?  What exactly does "center" and "left" even mean now, anyway?  The GOP spin machine would scream "leftist" about anyone to the left of Attila the Hun, or at least Theoderic the Ostrogoth.  And it isn't like they're actually eager to run on their issues, as witness the way Republicans ran away from Social Security privatization like it was anthrax. 

Left, right, or center of the party, just give me someone willing to kick butt and take names.

November 6, 2002

Not a really great day, all around.  No need to belabor my Rix Pix predictions - all of my GOP calls were accurate, and none of my Dem calls were, except South Dakota (if Johnson's razor-thin margin holds) and Gray Davis' expectes feeble stagger across the CA guv finish line.  Two things are obvious.  The late GOP undertow was for real, and the Dems' GOTV effort ("get out the vote") didn't GO enough V's. 

The GOP spin machine, including their tame "neutral" pundits (e.g., CNN's Bill Schneider), are going to play the outcome as the greatest epic since the Trojan War.  First time the prez's party has picked up seats in a midterm since, well, 1998, yada yada yada.  But this was no 1994 shocker, or for that matter a 1998 shocker. 

In a shocker, a party loses major seats that were thought to be safe.   Didn't happen this time - all the Senate losses and most of the handful of House losses were seats known to be shaky.  Okay, a "safe" Dem guv in Georgia lost to a GOPer named Sonny Perdue - but what can you say about a state that even has major-party candidates named Sonny Perdue?

Okay ... all that said, yeah, we took a shellackin'.  Why?   Not because Bush has three-digit popularity.  His job approval numbers are lower than Clinton's during the Year of Monica.  He is incredibly popular among Republicans, though, and was able to turn them out, while we had nothing to turn our people out.  The most we had was Wellstone's death, not the ideal way to fire up the troops.   (And, his memorial service probably did as much to fire up GOPers.)

The Democrats are now clearly an opposition party - and might do well to start acting like one.  The GOP attempt to demonize Tom Daschle, to make him our Newt Gingrich, was always one of their sillier ploys.  Daschle's problem, though, is that he hasn't been tough enough.  Half the debate was conceded to Bush going in.   Where, during the spring and summer, were the high-profile Senate hearings about corporate corruption in general and the Great Electricity Swindle in particular?  (Swindlers, remember, with pretty close ties to Bush.)

I could go on, but you get the idea.  The only good news, so to speak, is that today is the first day of the 2004 Democratic presidential primary campaign.  Whoever gets the nomination will do it by firing up Democrats, and the way to fire us up is to get in Bush's face.  High time, too!

November 4, 2002

RIX PIX 2002 !!

Well, it's crunch time now.  If you believe the last round of polls, the mild Dem undertow of a few days ago has gone slack, or turned slightly GOP.  Generally, people who badmouth polls are about to get reamed by one, but there's some reason to take some of these latest ones with a grain of salt.

The biggest pro-GOP shift has been in the CNN/Gallup poll.  Now, Gallup is The Famous Name in polling, but their 2000 effort was a joke - remember those huge swings that instantly disappeared? 

Also, most of the polls (not just Gallup) blew the 2000 results - even if you still believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and that Bush won in Florida.    In 1998, too, the polls and pundits were all talking about how many House seats the GOP would pick up, right up till the results showed a Dem pickup.

The Dems' secret weapon has been GOTV.  For those of you who come to this site for pre-dreadnoughts or starships, not politics, that means Get Out The Vote, AKA the ground war.  Democrats are just plain better at it than Republicans are - it's just really hard to get first-rate volunteers for the minimum wage these days.   (No, that's not the real reason, but the real reason is long, complicated, and basically boring, so I'll skip it.)

Anyway, the upshot is that polls, especially "likely voter" polls, tend to miss the people that GOTV gets out to vote.  Soooo ... tomorrow's results are more likely to lean to the Dem side than the GOP side of today's last round of polls.

And with all that, on to Rix Pix --

Senate:

Arkansas - Pryor (D) - turnover

Here lies Asa Hutchinson, who ran on self-righteousness and then dumped his wife.  Live by the Lord, die by the Lord.

Colorado - Strickland (D) - turnover

Terminal boredom for Allard.

Georgia - Chambliss (R) - turnover

Only Southern Republicans would get away with calling a triple-amputee war hero a coward.

Iowa - Harkin (D)

Lame phony "tapegate" scandal is dead and buried by now - so's whatever forgettable GOPer was challenging him.

Louisiana - Landrieu (D)

She'll be forced into a runoff, but win it - if the GOP had a top tier candidate, they wouldn't have had to triple-team her.

Minnesota - Mondale (D)

Paul's dead ... his ideals live.

Missouri - Talent (R) - turnover

Media hype about the "rude" Wellstone wake costs Carnahan the sympathy-echo bump that would have held her on.

New Hampsha - Shaheen (D) - turnover

Bob Novak foaming at mouth Monday morning over her brilliant campaign - all you need to know.

New Jersey - Lautenberg (D)

Never in doubt, once Torricelli committed (assisted?) seppuku.

North Carolina - Dole (R)

Sugar Lips pulls this one out of her aspect, but way close.

South Dakota - Johnson (D)

Phony Indian-registration "scandal" not enough to save Thune's scalp.

Texas - Kirk (D) - turnover

The shocker of the evening, and in Dubya's own state.  All conventional logic says Cornyn should win, but there have been too many reports of extraordinary early turnout in heavily Latino areas, so GOTV pulls it off.

Net result, Dems +2, for a 52-47-1 Senate (effectively 53-47).   Yeah, this is a squeaker, but I've called it conservatively - so to speak - except for Texas.  And, on the whole, I think Carnahan or Cleland has a better chance of pulling it out than the GOPers do of bagging any of the other Dems.

House of Representatives:

I'm not going to tote up individual races - none of the reported close ones are in California, so I never heard of any of 'em. 

Net result: no change.

This basically sucks, not on a partisan level but on a democracy level.   Old time gerrymandering stacked the deck for one party, but at least provided a chance of surprise.  Traditional gerrymandering was based on spreading your supporters among lots of districts while concentrating the other guy's - which meant you could spread your support too thin.  Modern gerrymandering just gives nearly all incumbents safe districts.  Out of 435 House seats, only something like 30 are even competitive this year, and only a dozen or so real cliffhangers. 

Governors:

California - Gray Davis (D)

Outcome no surprise, single digit margin waaay narrower than it should have been.  I don't know what it is with Gray Davis.  I have no problem with him, and jeez, he could put on the Zorro mask for saving California from the Great Electricity Swindle.  But the guy has negative charisma.  Fortunately he had a good strategy team, who chose the one opponent he could beat.

Florida - Brother Jeb (R)

Maaaaan, every Dem wanted this one so bad we could taste it.   But the Bushies wanted it too - and would see that Brother Jeb got it, even if some people had to go for a swim in concrete overshoes.

Maryland - Whatzisface (R)

I don't remember his name, and who outside Maryland cares?  This race was only interesting because Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was in it.  But she's no Catherine de Guienne, and the brief shining moment is over ...

Net result: I haven't toted up the other races, but a big Dem gain in statehouses.  Which = tougher sledding for Bush in '04.

Overall result:

Of course the GOP is going to spin this election as a Historic Triumph for Bush, losing no House seats in the off year, only one Senate seat, yada yada yada.   Yeah, right.  If it plays out per my predictions - a big if to be sure, this year - these results bitch-slap Bush.  The only GOP campaign theme has been All Bush All The Time.  And, the big races in this election are heavily in the red states, where Bush's popularity is supposed to be real.   Close is no cigar, and the long knives will be coming out now ...

November 2, 2002

The death of Sen. Wellstone was such a sudden, sad event that I didn't much know what to say here, so I didn't say anything.  Wellstone is someone who probably voted where my heart is more often than I would if I were in the Senate.  He wore his ideals, while if someone in a TV debate asked what political philosopher most influenced me, I'd be in a jam.  The honest answer would be old Nick Machiavelli, and you can't say that on TV.  (If you want to know why, don't read The Prince; read the Discourses.)

I like to think, though, that I would have voted against the Iraq war resolution.  There's no point in being in politics if, sometime, you're not willing to take a risk.

When I heard of Wellstone's death, so eerily similar to Mel Carnahan two years ago, I'll admit that an ugly thought crossed my mind.  Isn't there just a whiff of WASP Sopranos about la famiglia Bush?  Don't whinge, right-wingers - we heard plenty of "Arkancide" crappola from your side for years. 

The irony, though, is that - even outside Minnesota, where Walter Mondale has stepped into Wellstone's lead along with his shoes - the tragedy has probably fired up a previously dispirited Democratic base nationwide.  Wellstone was someone who reminded us of why we're Democrats.

Now we're heading into the 72-hour drill.  Over the last few weeks, there's been a slight but perceptible drift toward the Democrats in the key races.   It's certainly no tidal wave, scarcely even an undertow, but it's there.  This could reverse in the last couple of days; it sometimes does.  My guess, though, is that it will hold and even strengthen just a bit.  And, in recent elections the Democrats have built a strong "ground war" of getting out their vote.  So, fingers crossed ...

On Monday, I'll follow my long-standing tradition by posting Rix Pix '02, my predictions for the major races.

October 18, 2002

Let's see ... North Korea has announced that it has an active nuclear weapons program.   According to the head of the CIA, al-Qaeda is ramping up its activities to a level comparable to the weeks before 9/11.  Can someone out there explain why, exactly, the Bushters continue to have such a single-track focus on Iraq? 

In other news, an Enron "energy trader" pled guilty to having manipulated the California energy market back in those rolling-blackout days of 2001.   This is not precisely new news - except for copping the plea - but it points up something interesting. 

The California energy-market manipulation was probably the largest single swindle ever perpetrated.  The swindle went into high gear - odd coincidence, this - soon after the Bush administration came to office, having long and deep ties to the energy industry.  If the Bushters didn't wink and nod, they at least regarded very suspicious operations with cool indifference, while wagging a finger of Bill Bennett-esque self-righteousness at California. 

All of which has attracted remarkably little attention from that damn liberal press you always hear about.  By way of comparison, remember how much the media obsessed in 1998 over a few blow jobs?

In still more news, a new round of polls is up at PollingReport.com.  The Investor's Business Daily / Christian Science Monitor poll shows Bush's approval ratings down to 55 percent.   Admittedly, while IBD is not exactly a leftie rag, their poll has tended to be at the low end of the range.  However, the Newsweek poll has Bush at 61 percent, while the latest CNN/USAT/Gallup poll (not listed on PollingReport, but reported on "Inside Politics") has him down to 62 percent.  And the CNN poll has tended to be at the high end of the range.

All of these numbers are post-9/11 lows.  A month of whipping up war fever, and pulling media attention away from the economy, has failed to have the results Karl Rove might have hoped for.  Reports from the various close Senate races tell a similar story.  Jean Carnahan seems to be slipping, but all the other close-race Democrats are holding their own or gaining ground.  Meanwhile, Jeanne Shaheen looks neck and neck against against "Kid" John Sununu, while in Arkansas, Tim "preach morality, dump the wife, and marry a staffer" Hutchinson is in big trouble against "Kid" David Pryor.  The Dems may well come out with a Zell-proof margin in the Senate.

Oh, yes, and in Florida, Jeb Bush looks locked in a waaay tight race.   Could any single election result be more delightful than to see Brother Jeb's ass get tossed out of the Florida statehouse?  :)

Mind you, the Dems don't really deserve to do so well, not after wimping out the way most of them did on the Iraq debate.  But hey, sometimes good things happen to the undeserving!

October 15, 2002

The terrorist attack on Bali sort of underlines one of the basic problems - not the only one - with Bush's war fever against Iraq. 

Bush was quick to connect the bombing with al-Qaeda, which is plausible enough, though it may underestimate the variety of murderous fundamentalists running around in the Islamic world.  Not even the Bushters, though, have claimed a tie-in to Saddam.   They know they'd get laughed out of court if they tried.  Which leaves the little question of how, exactly, taking a whaq at Iraq is supposed to further the War on Terrorism.

Actually, calling it a War on Terrorism may itself be part of the problem.  There's the old saying that if all you've got is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.  We have a really big hammer in the form of the US military, but banging away with it at supposed nails - or even real ones - isn't terribly helpful if the problem calls for a screwdriver or a pair of pliers.

Good old shoot-'em-up war was helpful in Afghanistan, at least initially, to bust up the Taliban, clean out the al-Qaeda training camps, and so forth.   Even last winter, though, we slipped too much into conventional military thinking - with the result that most of the key al-Qaeda people slipped through our fingers at Tora Bora.   

What we need now, though, is something different, more like a police investigation than a shooting war.  And for that - cluephone ringing, Bushters - we need some cooperation from local police departments.  Which doesn't make "unilateralism" and dissing actual or potential allies look like the very greatest idea in the world.

There's also the matter of resources.  Bill Clinton, whom I usually agree with, has said that we can walk and chew gum at the same time.  (He can do a good deal more at the same time, but that's a different story.)  Now, it's true that since going after al-Qaeda and likeminded fanatics doesn't call for 250,000 troops, we could use those troops to invade Iraq, or whatever.  But what about other resources?  We don't exactly have bench strength to waste when it comes to, say, fluent speakers of Arabic.  If the ones we do have are listening in on Saddam's field commanders, they aren't listening in on possible al-Qaeda suspects.

Maybe a little focus on the real problem would be in order?

October 8, 2002

Actually, I sort of did a blog thing once before, during the 2000 election recount battle.   You can read it here   At the time, though, I had never heard of a blog, and my running account ended when the Supreme Court elected Bush.  Mostly, I'll admit, I'm taking a shot at blog format out of constructive laziness - lazy, because it means I don't have to format up a new article page and links every time I want to write something, and constructive because without the gruntwork I'm more likely to actually, well, write something.

And, I'll start with something I wrote nearly a month ago, for our county Democratic newsletter.  You're probably not supposed to recycle old stuff in a blog, but on the whole it stands up all too well.  Bush has (belatedly) started giving lip service to gaining support from allies and the UN ... once polls showed that going it alone wasn't selling.  He still, though, hasn't really explained why we're supposed to go to war against Iraq.  Even in his speech last night, he went back and forth between "nukular" weapons and claims - substantiated by nothing and no one - of cozy ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda.   

I am writing this on September 10. That is sheer coincidence - it happens to be the deadline for this issue, and as usual I waited to the last minute to do my work. (Sorry, Ann!) But since it is September 10, I'll give into the natural impulse to write about where we've come in the last year.

On the whole, George W. Bush did better a year ago than I would have expected. Well, actually, on September 11 he didn't do well at all - shuttling around the country for hours (something the White House later lied about) instead of showing leadership. In the days after 9/11, though, he went a good ways to redeem himself. He spoke out firmly against the wave of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate crimes, and focused our retaliation on al-Qaeda and its Taliban partners instead of haring off on a tangent ... such as Iraq.

Needless to say, this sensible focus now has ended. The Taliban is out of power, but al-Queda is very much alive (and possibly Osama bin-Laden as well), and Afghanistan is gradually falling into a dangerous shambles. This does not seem to register with Bush; nor does the powder keg that is the rest of the Middle East. Instead, he seems completely obsessed with completing his father's unfinished business with Saddam Hussein.

Now, if you've been reading this column for some time, you know that I am no pacifist. I will also grant that that Saddam is the worst of the world's nasty strongmen. His use of poison gas aside (we turned a blind eye to it during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s), Saddam does have the unique distinction of having invaded two different neighbors. A case might well be made for forcible "regime change" in Iraq.

Bush, however, seems nearly oblivious to the need to make that case. He was completely oblivious till a few weeks ago, when it finally sank in on him that the rest of the world was not joining his parade. Even the Republican foreign-policy establishment was doubtful - vocally so. As well they might be.

Sure, Iraq has chemical and no doubt biological weapons, and Saddam would dearly like to have a nuke. Still, this does not make Iraq the greatest potential threat to our security. Pakistan already has nuclear weapons - only a coup away from falling into the hands of al-Queda sympathizers in the Pakistani military and intelligence services. Beyond Pakistan, the entire Middle East is roiling, and Bush has shown contemptuous indifference to the shattered Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the one thing that could do the most to stabilize the region.

On top of these problems is a broader one. To invade Iraq, in the absence of any immediate and direct provocation, is an enormously grave step. A plausible case could be made, after all, that we would be the aggressors - invading a country that that, however nasty its government, has neither attacked us nor even threatened to do so.

In the harsh world of power politics, nations do sometimes take such steps, and sometimes are even justified in doing so. The burden of proof, however, falls on whoever claims the right to make "pre-emptive" war. Every possible effort should be made - made seriously, not as transparent pretext - to resolve the matter short of war. In this case that means getting the weapons inspectors back into Iraq. If that fails, every possible effort should be made to get the imprimatur of the United Nations, and to bring our allies along. It is these things that mark the difference between a justified last resort and a display of arrogance - between a world leader and a world bully.

Bush has made so little effort to do these things as to show active contempt for them. In the process, he has thus also shown contempt for America's long-term interest. As a friend put it, it is a lesson in how not to go to war.

-- Rick Robinson

Last revised 11/07/2006 ... by RM Robinson

Email me: Lyonesse@compuserve.com

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