10 September 2007

While Petraeus testifies about the success of the surge, and the need to continue the surge, Colin Powell has this to say:


You can surge all of the American troops you want, but they can’t stop this. Suppose I’m a battalion commander. My troops ask, “What do I do today, boss?” “Let’s go fight the Shia militias!” “What do I do tomorrow?” “Let’s go fight the Sunni insurgents!” “What do I do the day after tomorrow?” “Let’s go chase Al Qaeda!” “What do we do the day after that?” “We’re going to guard streets!” Our kids are fantastic. But this is not sustainable.

1 Comments:

At 20 September, 2007 08:58, Blogger Unknown said...

Excellent comments.

If only he had thought of that, say, five years ago . . .


On top of these problems, it's becoming more and more clear that we're losing Afghanistan, largely as a result of being stretched so thin in Iraq. Dammit.

 

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09 August 2007

110th Congress, day 218

Well, now seems like as good a time as any to revive this little blog, no?

I left off resolved to elation after the election of the 110th Congress ended up a sweep for the Democratic Party, which took both houses.

How, then, is the mood today?

Well, this congress has had some notable accomplishments to date, there's no denying. In no particular order:
They exposed Alberto Gonzales for the dissembling, bumbling, torture-defending evildoer he seems to be.

And they also cited Harriet Miers and Joshua B. Bolten for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify regarding the US Attorney firing scandal. (Though of course it's Gonzales who must enforce the citation, so that may go nowhere. . . .)

A particularly serious summary, from the Daily Show:



One more positive before I move on: the Congress also passed an excellent extension of health care coverage for children, and the Senate even did so with a veto-proof margin. Bravo.


On the other hand
The farm bill passed by the House is actually worse than what President Bush suggested, which seems impossibly frustrating and horrible to me. Subsidies for wealthy farmers? Protectionist policies? What the h**l is the point of electing these people if they're just going to repeat their forerunners' idiotic policies?

Support seems strong, also, for this new 'relationship' with India, wherein they are granted access to U.S. nuclear fuel and equipment. A serious, and seriously harmful strike against non-proliferation. Nice opinion piece in this week's Economist, which explains the foolishness of this plan.

And now just the other day, this newer, better Congress made what should clearly be illegal wiretaps legal. Sheesh.

2 Comments:

At 10 August, 2007 14:56, Blogger DGL said...

I applaud the rebirth of the blog, but damn you, YHD, with your nuances and caveats. Is the fightin' 110th up to snuff, or not?

I guess I'm inclined to offer a wobbly thumbs-up, when you consider how narrow the majority is. Reid and Pelosi have made some saavy moves, and they're playing the game the only way they know how.

On Iraq, for instance, all the political theater, slumber parties etc., are distasteful and have yielded little in the way of results, but given the fact that they just don't have the votes to override the ever-stubborn Bush, what option do they have but to use the tools at their disposal to register a loud, shrill protest?

More later on your more specific points.

 
At 15 August, 2007 15:07, Blogger Unknown said...

A fair complaint, Mr dgl; and a fair point about the 110th.

You're right that the majority is not large enough to act (dare I say) unilaterally, and they certainly have forced some people (or at least tv personalities) to attend to issues that the administration might rather ignore.

I suppose my own predictable complaint, though, is that the protest has not been more shrill.


Perhaps a nice test will involve the soon-to-be-departed Karl Rove: will Congress compel him to testify despite his resignation? I certainly hope so. . . .

 

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08 November 2006

Good Afternoon!


I just heard that Rumsfeld was fired.

So I'll spend a little time elated.

Well played, all.

6 Comments:

At 08 November, 2006 11:50, Blogger Unknown said...

And it just gets better: now they're calling MT for Tester.

Never felt so good to be from Montana!

 
At 08 November, 2006 12:32, Blogger Christopher said...

Here, from Tapped, is a better explanation of my feelings about this conservative class of Dems:

GO AHEAD, CALL THEM CONSERVATIVE DEMS. WHY SHOULD WE CARE?

Unlike Tom Schaller, I have to admit, I wasn’t bothered at all by the spin that the Democrats won because they embraced a lot of candidates with conservative views and backgrounds. Now Tom’s a political scientist, so he has to be concerned with empirical truth and all that stuff (didn’t Karl Rove get rid of that?), and as a matter of truth, he and the legendary political researcher Dennis Yedwab are of course right: the bulk of the Democratic majority came from Northeast, Midwest and Mountain seats where the winners were not conservative.

So the spin that the Democrats won because they moved in a more conservative direction is inaccurate. But so what? Consider the alternative spin, which is that Democrats are a bunch of extreme liberals, who will be as far out of touch as the Republicans and who will be destroyed in 2008? I’d rather have a party that’s fairly liberal but has a reputation or image as moderate than one that’s really moderate and over-cautious but has a reputation for being extremely liberal, which was the situation through much of the 19990s. The more sophisticated version of the spin, of course, is that the Democratic leadership is a bunch of liberal freaks, and the newly elected Heath Shulers et al won’t get along with them. But that’s not a real issue unless they actually don’t get along, and the Democratic Party has handled much wider disparities of opinion in the past.

The Republicans might get some satisfaction out of claiming that these new Dems are more conservative, but what do they gain from that? The fact is that they are Dems for a reason, and the reason is not the old "Daddy was a Dem, Grandpappy was a Dem" of the past, but the simple fact that even fairly conservative people cannot tolerate what the Republican Party has become. That's their shame, not something for them to brag about!

The fact is that the Democratic Party has been a centrist, moderate party for some time, in the sense that on balance the party’s governors, legislators and policy agenda fully represent the center of public opinion. (As shown, for example, by the fact that the viewpoint of independents was very much in line with that of Democrats.) But it was a damaged brand; it needed a remake of its image. This is a chance to do it, by showing that the party has in fact incorporated the center. Highly visible veterans, openly religious candidates, and social conservatives like Casey send a cultural signal, not an ideological one, a signal that this is a party you can be comfortable in. Sometimes you need to seem like you have changed just to make people understand what’s been going on all along.

The underlying story of this election, and one that the press will eventually understand, is that there are now two parties in this country: A constructive majority party of the center-left on one side, and on the other, a regionally based faction of the far-right party, now stripped of its last moderates, a remnant that is probably the most ideologically extreme minority party since the New Deal. The "conservative Dems" spin, even if wrong, helps move this understanding forward, and that's fine.

We now return you to the regular reality-based programming.

 
At 08 November, 2006 14:18, Blogger a*merrica said...

Moderate, Conservative, Liberal Dems... For the time being I'm going to focus on Rummy's exit strategy, hehe. Is it bad to equate this to Christmas coming early? I'm just so darn happy!

Also, proud to have voted in Montana (^-^)v

 
At 08 November, 2006 14:22, Blogger Unknown said...

That Tapped column seems exactly right to me, especially the claim that "the Democratic Party has been a centrist, moderate party for some time."

I suppose the real source of my hangover is that I'd forgotten (in all the pre- and post-election glee) that I have "for some time" found myself to the left of the Democratic Party.
To put it another way: I recall thinking back in 2000 that, as I put it in the 1am post, the two major parties weren't as different from one another as I'd like.

So not different as to make me indifferent to these results? Absolutely not. A change for the better, no doubt about it.
My real gripe, then, isn't with these "new conservative Democrats"; I just wish there were a few more Bernie Sanders' out there.

But again, as I've said--and as my MT-voting sister (well done, Merrica!) seconds,--this election is good news all around.

 
At 09 November, 2006 10:16, Blogger Unknown said...

More good news today: Allen is expected to concede at 3pm Eastern.

Perhaps you're right, Chris: this does seem like a sea change; for the duration of the week, I promise to remain elated about this change for the better.

 
At 01 December, 2006 03:40, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, here's the China perspective. They don't like the Republicans because of all the war, but they like the free trade. They don't like the Democrats because the Democrats don't like free trade anymore. China doesn't like anyone. I guess they're libertarians over here.

 

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07 November 2006

Good Morning?



Here's a screen-capture from cnn.com taken at about 1:00am (CST):

does this result hold?
Do the Dems take Montana and Missouri?
Will Webb survive a seemingly inevitable recount?

And if so, what direction for this new Democratic Congress?
Both houses--seems quite possible right now, though much precinct reporting (and probably much legislating) remains outstanding. . . .

How did it happen?
Was it Iraq?
Perhaps "frustration and unease"?

Or, on a less jubilant note, was it that the Dems ran candidates opposed to abortion rights, in favor of the war in Iraq, and not really all that different in the end than those whom they replace?

(Someone's got to be disappointed by this (apparent) sweep; might as well be me.)

5 Comments:

At 07 November, 2006 23:32, Blogger Unknown said...

Ah, one more down: they're now calling Missouri for McCaskill.

Huzzah!

Misgivings aside, I much prefer this 110th Congress to its predecessor.

 
At 08 November, 2006 05:21, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It will definitely be a conservative freshman class of Democrats, not ideal "in a perfect world of Yancies."

Still, it's nice to see some right-wing sacred cows go down in flames: Santorum, Katherine Harris, Ken Blackwell, Phill Kline, Jim Ryun, Pres. Bush, and the Maestro himself, Karl Rove.

 
At 08 November, 2006 08:56, Blogger Christopher said...

That was a good night.

These new conservative Dems just prove the point that the Democractic party is the liberal and conservative party.
The Republicans are just wing-nuts.

There was a lot of pipe dreaming on msnbc last night, with Dick Armey, Joe Scarbrough, and Pat Buchanan noting how conservative these Dems are and how that means the country is getting more conservative.

Let's look at Webb. He was a Republican until Iraq and Katrina shamed him into switching. Heath Shuler was technically independent, but the Republicans have been trying to get him to run for years - now he's a Dem. Wes Clark was a Republican until the 90's - and I'd bet the veterans and military culture as a whole starts tilting Democratic.

Did the Dems just get conservative? Or did the Republican party not only lose Congress but also most of their moderates in the party? I mean, they are shut out of the Northeast as much as Dems have been shut out of the South.

They are becoming a regional party.

Also, brilliant move on Webb to declare victory. The heat is on Allen. He's got every right to recount away, but he has a hill to climb. I knew Allen was in trouble when he came out in measure tones and talked of the importance of the process. Allen's not a process guy and he's not prone to understatement, so I figured he knew he was in trouble.

Webb came out and sounded like his usual stiff self, then came to life: "I want to say that I appreciate what Senator Allen said not long ago, we all need to respect the process . . . but I also would like to say that the votes are in, and we won!"

Another funny moment was when Chris Matthews was critizing Hillary's behavior at her victory speech. She and President Clinton were clapping rhythmically onstage. As best as I can recall, Matthews said "Why is she up there clapping for herself? That looks so weird! So Chinese!"

Keith Olbermann, who was sharing a desk with Matthews, broke into a giggling fit. It was an odd comment, but the image was a little strange.

 
At 08 November, 2006 09:05, Blogger Unknown said...

Well, if a party with almost no moderates has 49 (let's hope) seats in the Senate and, what, like 195 seats in the House, then I'm hard-pressed to be elated about that.

(Again, I of course prefer this to the 109th Congress, but whether the country's more conservative or the Republicans have lost their moderates but continue to get nearly as many votes as the moderates-cum-Democrates, I'm bound to feel down.)

I agree, by the by, on Webb--great move; having the lead going into the recount sure puts him (and Tester, as I understand it) in a good spot.

 
At 08 November, 2006 09:16, Blogger Christopher said...

Oh, and the tighter and more legalistic the Virginia race becomes, the more of a problem it is for Allen.

The FBI is already investigating charges of voter suppression in Virginia. He needed to win convincingly and move on. The more time we have to suss out the vote via recount, the more time we have to pay attention to that investigation.

You should feel elated, Yancy. The Dems finally won an election after three hearbreakers in 6 yrs - '00, '02, '04.

We got the House, we're ahead in the Senate, so far we're beating the projections. There's really very little to be disapointed with from last night. Maybe there are larger trends to be concerned with, but apart from Tennessee and a some right wing ballot measures, last night was a big V.

 

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30 October 2006

'06 '08

Barack Obama admitted last week that he was considering making a run for the white house in 2008. It's ordinary for Obama to consider this, it's extraordinary for him to admit this. I know, I know, the booksales. But I have to think he's written the book as much to position himself for a run as he has for the money.



While there are plenty of other credible Dems sniffing around the '08 trough, Obama does make for an intriguing candidate. He's a genuine star without all the negatives of Hillary. He was consistently opposed to the Iraq war. And, as he has argued, he offers a break from the baby boomer grudge matches that have held politics captive for two decades. Re-litigating the sixties - I believe that's how he puts it.

While I am bullish on Edwards, and think that Biden and Clark are tops when it comes to national security/foreign policy, Obama appears the most promising at this very early stage (almost a pre-stage) of sussing out the talent for '08.

While Obama's experience is an issue, I am not being cute when I say that Senate experience is less than crucial to both a candidate and a chief executive. If Obama runs in '08, he will have almost the exact same amount of experience as FDR had in 1932. FDR had been govenor for 4 years, secretary of the navy for 4 years, and state senator for 2 years. Obama will have been senator for 4 years, and a state senator for 7 years.

I think it's Obama's moment, and he'd better strike. I don't understand the downside. If he falls, he can try again - John McCain, anyone? I think the bigger risk is in letting the moment pass, as Mario Cuomo and Bill Bradley managed to do in 1992. Bradley felt ready in 2000, but people had moved on.

And he's speaking my language on Iraq:

"I thought this whole venture was, was poorly conceived. Not just poorly executed, but poorly conceived. I think it was a mistake for us to go in. I felt that once we had gone in, it made sense for us to try to make the best of the situation.

What we’ve seen is such a rapid deterioration of the situation. There was an article in The New York Times on Saturday where the government isn’t even venturing into some neighborhoods in Baghdad to pick up bodies. And the—a Iraqi was quoted as saying, “If a government can’t come to pick up the bodies because it’s too afraid, is it really a government?” And I think that’s the question that we have to ask ourselves right now.

There are no good options in Iraq. There are bad options and worse options."
-Meet the Press

He went on to say flatly - no equivocations, that we should begin a phased withdrawal by the end of 2006, maybe sooner.

This - plus his personal candor - bodes well for a pol who has appeared almost too cautious in his first 2yrs in the senate. On his personal candor, we turn to a sit down he had with New Yorker editor David Remnick:

"Oh, look, you know, when I was a kid, I inhaled. Frequently. That was the point."

In the same sit down, he could be off the cuff eloquent:

"You go to a little farm community, and somebody’s concerned about Darfur, or you go to—I write about going to a South Side church with a whole black inner-city congregation and somebody asks you about farm policy, and what you realize is that, in fits and starts, and very imperfectly, when the country is engaged we really do have the best form of government yet conceived."

Enough on Obama and '08. What's going to happen next Tuesday?

My prediction: Dems take House, fall just short in Senate. The only surprise for me would be if 1) Republicans win the House 2) Dems win the Senate 3) Dems win the House by extremely large margins.

Of the big three Senate races - Missouri, Virginia, Tennesee - which will swing Democrat? Any?

Will the Dems hold on to New Jersey and Maryland? The most recent polls suggest they will, but the Republicans probably have the better candidates in these races, so it's hard to say.

Beyond Iraq, Foley, the debt, etc, the Dems have done a few basic things well. The first that comes to mind is fighting back. Dems haven't been this feisty since '92. They attack, and respond to attacks quickly. They actually have swagger, and on national security to boot.

The second factor is the strong recruiting jobs done by Emmanuel and Schumer. Menendez and Cardin notwithstanding, most of the candidates in the competitive races really fit the profile of their districts/states. I'm glad that Schumer and Emmanuel have dropped the checkbox/litmus style of recruiting candidates. They have moderate and even conservative Dems running in the South and West. These candidates may be more right wing than me, but it's important to get as big a tent as possible - guys like me are already voting Dem.

Oh, and those stories running everywhere in the last 48 hours about Rove single handedly pulling this election off through optimism, genius, and GOTV? (You have your math, I have the math) Well, I think Josh Marshall has his number:

"The answer is really, really simple: nothing. There's not anything he knows. In fact, he's not even confident. It's a bluff.

It's the bandwagon effect. Psyche out the other side. Act like you're winning and you'll charge up your activists/voters and demoralize the folks on the other side. Mainly, get the press to believe your hype and they'll do the charging up and demoralizing for you.

So my point is not to make anyone think this is all in the bag. It's not. It is only to get people to finally drop out of the Rove (anti-)cult and realize he's seeing the same thing everyone else is seeing. He's just putting on a game face because that's what he needs to do to do his job."

9 Comments:

At 01 November, 2006 08:02, Blogger Christopher said...

Great quotes in Fred Kaplan's piece on Hillary's foreign policy address:

"is the Bush administration doing anything? For all the fuss over the White House's recent disavowal of "stay the course," has actual policy changed in the slightest? And, by the way, what is that policy?

grand ideas are the ones that most often get you in trouble. There are plenty of good ideas—sound ideas out there in the realms of history, shrewd analysis, and common sense. It might be enough simply to call for candidates who are smart, skeptical, and rooted in reality."

That last sentence is why I didn't have a big problem with John Kerry in 2004. Just give me competence, thank you. You shouldn't run on competence, but you ought to govern that way.

 
At 02 November, 2006 07:28, Blogger Unknown said...

It comes as no surprise that I agree on Obama. It's not quite his race to lose, but he sure sees to bring an electricity to events that no other Dem. lately is able to match.

What did surprise me a bit on Obama, though, was the Economist's agreement:
Mr Obama's rapid rise has inevitably provoked criticisms. One is that he is a young man in a hurry. He should take his turn in the queue—get a Senate chairmanship under his belt, and learn the ways of Washington. Such advice is either malign or misguided. The 2008 race is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—with the nominations open on both sides and the country desperate for a fresh face and a new direction. If he waits until 2012, he will have to take on an incumbent president; by 2016 he could well be yesterday's news. And a Senate record is a wasting asset. At best, you accumulate hostages to fortune in the form of controversial votes; at worst, you contract senators' disease, droning on about mark-up, earmarks, filibusters and cloture.

They do also take up a more serious concern, namely that he lacks foreign policy experience (junior Senator from Illinois is no Secretary of the Navy). I second this worry, but I'm also buying part of the reply:
"people voted for John Kennedy (who was only 43 when he was elected) because of his stardust, not his record."

As Chris and the Economist's mysterious "Lexington" have said, more eloquently than I, there's no reason not to run, and there's a big downside to waiting. And besides, Oprah wants it.

 
At 03 November, 2006 16:23, Anonymous Anonymous said...

John Kerry's idiocy this week is yet another straw in the Obama '08 cap. With Mark Warner out of the picture, and Kerry's chances for '08 having moved (as Conan put it last night) "from zero to less-than-zero," Obama is suddenly right there w/ Edwards among the top un-Hillary options for Democrats.

(We can only hope that Kerry is the only Democrat whose electoral aspirations are damaged by his thoughtless "joke.")

But we're still talking about Obama like he's a late-'90s tech stock. He seems to have inspired a cult of personality that's overriding every substantive issue. Stardust, my ass.

If he's such a brilliant communicator, and I agree he is, he's surely capable of defending his Senate record in '12 or '16 or whenever (he'll be of electable age for at least twenty more years). If that record is too dismal for someone of his rhetorical talent to defend, then he probably never deserved to be President in the first place. (I'm also still unconvinced that even he believes he's ready--for the campaign or the Presidency itself).

I love Obama, and I won't even commit to saying I'd vote against him in a primary, but I do think there are a lot of talented young Democrats out there in waiting, and the party won't crumble if he misses the chance to become President.

If he contracts "Senator's Disease" in the future, fine. There will be others to take up the mantle--names like Spitzer, Ford, and Schweitzer come to mind.

 
At 06 November, 2006 08:55, Blogger Christopher said...

If the Democratic field includes Edwards, Hillary, Biden, Bayh, Clark, etc - then I think we'll find out whether Obama is ready. He'll have to spar with some pretty impressive figures who have more experience.

Short of John Edwards - who has just a tiny bit more experience than Obama, no one on this list can combine experience with charisma. I think Clark is charming, but not exactly electric. Biden is eloquent on foreign policy, but not so much domestically - and he's got a flakey personality.

I think that crop is perfectly solid, but I'm not sure that anyone trumps Obama, except maybe Edwards who's a very skilled candidate, but his experience advantage (policy-wise) is mighty slim.

I will still say that staying in the Senate for multiple terms is great if you want to be Daniel Patrick Moynihan or Robert Byrd, but it's a bad place to be for a presidential candidate or nominee. Just ask Bob Dole, Joe Biden, Bill Bradley, Bob Graham, Bob Kerrey, Dick Lugar, Phil Gramm, Joe Leiberman . . .

Now if Obama wants to run for governor first . . .

If he can't make it through the primary system, great, he can run again. But there's no reason to wait, he ain't going to get hotter. And I just don't think more time in the Senate makes for more presidential material.

We can blame the current president's mistakes on his lack of experience, but LBJ was "master of the senate" and it didn't prevent him from screwing up over Vietnam.

The dems could use a little cult of personality, and he'll have to sharpen his stance on the issues to get through the primaries. I'm not saying he should be the nominee, but hot dem talent has sat on the bench before (cuomo, bradley) to their, if not our, detriment. Jump in and he'll either grow with the experience or he won't.

Not to keep driving the point home, but politics, the game of getting to the white house, doesn't wait until you're perfectly seasoned. Jump when you have the chance - if you fall you can always jump again, but you don't want to miss what could be your best chance.

Now he can jump in with all the hype, but he won't be the prohibitive favorite - that's still Hillary. So he can be in that sweet spot of media darling, but not frontrunner - she's still has the institutional advantage.

 
At 06 November, 2006 10:15, Blogger Christopher said...

what? what?

In Virginia's U.S. Senate race, a new SurveyUSA poll shows Jim Webb (D) has surged ahead of Sen. George Allen (R-VA) in the last poll of the campaign.

Webb leads 52% to 44% among likely voters.

The last week has shown good news poll-wise for Webb, and not so good news for Ford. I wonder if this will hold up tomorrow, or whether they flip again.

For some reason I feel good about Missouri, which has a pretty good Republican candidate, and less good about Montana, which has a pretty awful GOP candidate. I think it will be tough to get over the hump in the Senate, but it's still possible.

 
At 07 November, 2006 11:43, Blogger Unknown said...

Well, it'll all be over soon.
I am feeling pretty good about Montana, actually: the most recent USA Today/Gallop poll puts Tester up by nine points. Now I know that other polls show a dead heat, but the Burns campaign is weirdly upset about that poll. As my hometown paper reports, they initially revoked USA Today's press credentials when they saw the poll (though they did back down eventually).

That sort of behavior suggests at least two things: the Burns people are scared that the poll might influence voters, and they're scared that the poll might be accurate. (Why react like an angry child to data that's easily refuted or should have little impact?)

Missouri also feels good, though the race appears to be a dead heat.

Exciting, yes, though I'm looking forward to tomorrow, when we can take a break from all this (only to start back in on '08? alas, probably so).

Oh, and don't worry about me: no voting machine problems here--we were given, thank goodness, paper ballots.

Any last-minute predictions, DGL?

 
At 07 November, 2006 13:06, Blogger Christopher said...

All over the blogs today are reports of misleading negative "robo-calls" from Republicans. These calls come late at night or at dinner time, some of them claim they are from a Democratic candidate - the idea being that repeated calls at inconvenient hours will turn off voters. There are reports of elderly voters receiving calls saying they are not registered and will be arrested if they try to vote. This is called voter supression.

From The Washington Post:

In Connecticut, NRCC robo-calls have targeted Dianne Farrell, the Democrat seeking to unseat Rep. Christopher Shays (R). Asked if Farrell has her own automated calls, campaign spokeswoman Jan Ellen Spiegel replied: "Only one, and it's rather distinctive because it's Paul Newman. We haven't gotten complaints about that one."

Bill Clinton at a Webb rally:

You've all heard about it (Republican efforts to supress voter turnout). You know what that means? "Well, we (Republicans) get a poll that says if there's 25% black turnout, we lose. If we can get black turnout down below 20%, the polls are tied."

You know what that means? They're saying to these people "It's okay with us if you have a job, and then you have to pay taxes. It's okay with us if your kids put on a uniform and go to Iraq or Afghanistan and fight, maybe get wounded, maybe get killed. But if you're not gonna vote the way we tell you, well we're going to try to keep you home. No matter what we took from you, no matter what you gave to this country." That is wrong!

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick on the Virginia race:

Allen . . . takes responsibility for not a single thing that he and his colleagues have done in the Senate; he stands behind no coherent policy idea, except for some half-formed theory of a national assault by Ted Kennedy and his torch-wielding activist judiciary.

Maybe this old rant will get out the vote for Allen again tomorrow. Maybe Americans are genuinely more afraid of the Massachusetts Supreme Court than they are of a war that won't end. But given a choice between a Jim Webb poised to address a real war and a George Allen who's involved in some odd ninja smackdown with a bug-eyed caricature of Hillary Clinton, this hardly even seems like a choice. This country faces terribly serious problems right now: a corrupt Congress, an economy that has been rapidly annihilated, and a war that everyone wants never to have begun. If these boring, serious, real issues worry you more than judges and the Kennedy clan, I'd opt for the boring, serious real guy who at least plans to deal with them.

 
At 07 November, 2006 13:28, Blogger Unknown said...

Speaking of Virginia, in what I'd like to think is good news for Democrats, officials are reporting high voter turnout.
How high? estimated 65%! That would, as the AP points out, "double the midterm turnout in 2002."

The worst part of the robo-calling (aside from the voter suppression, which is clearly both illegal and immoral) is that now left-leaning groups that are trying to emulate the right's GOTV success are stuck looking like a**holes. Every call made, now that the robo-call story was on msnbc and all over newspapers, starts to look like a 'harassment call.'
Bastards.

 
At 07 November, 2006 16:23, Anonymous Anonymous said...

May not have much time to comment tonight, as I'm pulling an all-nighter at the office, but on our office pool I'm projecting the Dems pick up 20 in the House and only five in the Senate--I just can't see my way clear on TN. Given the polling trends of the last week, it might not even be THAT good.

 

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12 October 2006

On the Ropes

This week North Korea tested a nuclear weapon. Johns Hopkins University says that 650,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the 2003 invasion. You know it's a bad week for Bush when these headlines are a welcome change from the neverending Foley media circus.


From Newsweek:

"And so, here we are. North Korea has exploded a small nuclear device. Iran is well on its way to developing the technology to build one if it wants (while saying it doesn’t). And, yes, the regime in Iraq has changed, but the failed state that replaced it has become an infinitely more dangerous terrorist training ground, a clearing house for corruption and a cloaca breeding international radicalism." - Christopher Dickey




I honestly had no intention of taking on John McCain again anytime soon, but he went and misbehaved this week.

McCain is courageously blaming Clinton for North Korea's nuclear capabilities. It's one thing to debate the different levels of responsibility between the administrations over 9/11, an event a mere 8 months in to Bush's presidency. How long does Bush get a pass for national security blunders? Six years?

Fred Kaplan takes the bait:

"Sen. John McCain has skidded his Straight Talk Express off the highway into a gopher's ditch of slime. The moment came Tuesday, when he responded to charges by Sen. Hillary Clinton, his potential rival in the 2008 presidential election, that George W. Bush bears some responsibility for North Korea's newborn status as a nuclear-armed power.

McCain's version of history goes beyond "revisionism" to outright falsification. It is the exact opposite of what really happened.
Did Clinton "reward" them for doing these things, as McCain claims? Far from it. Not only did he push the U.N. Security Council to consider sanctions, he also ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draw up plans to send 50,000 additional troops to South Korea—bolstering the 37,000 already there—along with more than 400 combat jets, 50 ships, and several battalions of Apache helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles, multiple-launch rockets, and Patriot air-defense missiles. He also sent in an advance team of 250 soldiers to set up logistical headquarters for the influx of troops and gear.

He sent an explicit signal that removing the fuel rods would cross a "red line." Several of his former aides insist that if North Korea had crossed that line, he would have launched an airstrike on the Yongbyon reactor, even knowing that it might lead to war.

This combination of sticks and carrots led Kim Il-Sung to call off his threats—the fuel rods weren't removed, the inspectors weren't kicked out—and, a few months later, to the signing of the Agreed Framework.

McCain called the accord a "failure." This appraisal isn't quite as dead wrong as his claim that Clinton did nothing but toss Kim flowers. But it's highly misleading, to say the least.

The accord fell apart, but not for the reasons that McCain and others have suggested. First, the U.S.-led consortium never provided the light-water reactors. (So much for the wild claims I've heard lately that North Korea got the bomb through Clinton-supplied technology.) Congress never authorized the money; the South Koreans, who were led by a harder-line government than the one in power now, scuttled the deal after a North Korean spy submarine washed up on their shores.

Second, when President George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, he made it clear, right off, that the Agreed Framework was dead and that he had no interest in further talks with the North Korean regime; his view was that you don't negotiate with evil, you defeat it or wait for it to crumble.

Third, a few months into Bush's term, evidence mounted that the North Koreans had been … not quite violating the Agreed Framework but certainly maneuvering around it. Confronted by U.S. intelligence data in October 2002, Pyongyang officials admitted that they'd been enriching uranium—an alternative route (though much slower than plutonium) to getting a bomb.

It should be noted that the bomb that the North Koreans set off on Sunday was apparently a plutonium bomb, not a uranium bomb. In other words, it was a bomb made entirely in Bush's time, not at all in Clinton's.
The rest is history. John McCain would do well to read up on it sometime."




John Kerry sets McCain straight:

"He must be trying to burnish his credentials for the nomination process," said Kerry, who labeled McCain's comments "flat politics and incorrect."

"The truth is the Clinton administration knew full well they didn't have a perfect agreement. But at least they were talking. At least we had inspectors going in and we knew where the (nuclear fuel) rods were. This way, we don't know where the rods are, the rods are gone. There are no inspectors. Ask any American which way is better," Kerry said."


Josh Marshall makes the case in the simplest of terms:

"Failure" =1994-2002 -- Era of Clinton 'Agreed Framework': No plutonium production. All existing plutonium under international inspection. No bomb.

"Success" = 2002-2006 -- Bush Policy Era: Active plutonium production. No international inspections of plutonium stocks. Nuclear warhead detonated.

Face it. They ditched an imperfect but working policy. They replaced it with nothing. Now North Korea is a nuclear state.

Facts hurt. So do nukes."



Former Defense Secretary William Perry's devastating blow by blow of the Clinton and Bush tactics toward North Korea:

"North Korea's declared nuclear bomb test program will increase the incentives for other nations to go nuclear, will endanger security in the region and could ultimately result in nuclear terrorism. While this test is the culmination of North Korea's long-held aspiration to become a nuclear power, it also demonstrates the total failure of the Bush administration's policy toward that country. For almost six years this policy has been a strange combination of harsh rhetoric and inaction.

The Clinton administration declared in 1994 that if North Korea reprocessed, it would be crossing a "red line," and it threatened military action if that line was crossed. The North Koreans responded to that pressure and began negotiations that led to the Agreed Framework. The Agreed Framework did not end North Korea's aspirations for nuclear weapons, but it did result in a major delay. For more than eight years, under the Agreed Framework, the spent fuel was kept in a storage pond under international supervision.

Then in 2002, the Bush administration discovered the existence of a covert program in uranium, evidently an attempt to evade the Agreed Framework. This program, while potentially serious, would have led to a bomb at a very slow rate, compared with the more mature plutonium program. Nevertheless, the administration unwisely stopped compliance with the Agreed Framework. In response the North Koreans sent the inspectors home and announced their intention to reprocess. The administration deplored the action but set no "red line." North Korea made the plutonium . . .

The attractive alternatives are behind us."


He could be talking about Iraq. In fact, on a number of issues, crises, and challenges, the attractive alternatives are behind us. Six years of corruption, incompetence, and neglect will do that.

Robert Farley of Tapped:

"On the domestic front, the Republicans have settled on their narrative; Clinton did it. The point man here is John McCain, who, as Brad Plumer notes, is making noises that seem to indicate that he would attack North Korea if he were president. This is the perfect political opportunity for McCain. He gets to act hawkish without paying the cost of actually launching a disastrous war. The hearts of his right wing critics, those who believe the problem with neoconservatism isn't that it failed but that it was never tried, are no doubt aflutter. Liberal hawks who hold to the incompetence dodge will also be excited by the prospect of a hawkish president who's possibly somewhat less inept than George W. Bush. Centrist liberals have rather a history of seeing the McCain that they want rather than the one who actually exists, and in the process of swooning they may be willing to excuse his more indefensible statements as just "what he needs to do to win the Republican primary"."

Obama Watch

Jonathan Alter has a piece on why Barack may want to go ahead and jump in while the water's fine. Ezra Kline isn't so sure.

Two Warners from Virginia made news this week. Today, Mark Warner announced he won't seek the presidency in 2008. Most commentary notes that the space he staked out (to the right of Hillary) was getting smaller. The big beneficiary is not Hillary, but John Edwards - another youngish Southerner who wisely has gone left of Clinton.

Sen. John Warner gave the Dems a boost and the White House fits with this assessment from his latest trip to Iraq:

"The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee warned Thursday that the situation in Iraq was “drifting sideways” and said that the United States should consider a “change of course” if violence did not diminish soon." -New York Times

The upshot of all this is don't count on moderate Republicans to provide oversight. Hagel, Warner, McCain and others sometimes make noises about defying White House policy, but they rarely get results. Maybe it's not their fault - maybe there aren't enough senate moderates to make a difference. Regardless, the only way to achieve meaningful oversight in the House or Senate, is to vote Democratic and put Republicans in the minority status. That's what November is about, not whose plan is better for Iraq, or other calamaties - do all congressmen need a plan for Iraq?- no this November is about repudiating the last six years, bringing back Congress' traditional role of oversight by supporting Democratic candidates.

Rep. Harold Ford put it simply:

``If you want to stay the course, I'm not your guy,'' Ford said. ``If you believe America is better than what they've given us this past six years, then I ask for your vote.''

He seems to be making an impression:

Ford's candidacy is going over well with voters such as Steve Pettyjohn, 45, a local contractor who voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s but says he is backing Ford because there are "no checks and balances" in Washington now that Republicans control the entire government. -The Baltimore Sun

Left or center, withdraw or redeploy, all Dems can make this simple case: Change vs. more of the same. Do you want a rubber stamp, or have you had enough?

3 Comments:

At 13 October, 2006 14:35, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I believe I can stop "swooning" over JM long enough to concur with you that his comments were off base. In fact, I think I can agree with everything you say in this post without taking back any of the positive things I've said about him on this blog.

 
At 14 October, 2006 16:00, Blogger Christopher said...

i don't consider you a swooner. that comment from tapped wasn't about you. i just think he went way over the line this week.

 
At 17 October, 2006 09:21, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Who knows? Maybe Tapped was referring to me. I have swooned before and may do so again, though I wouldn't actually vote for the guy.

Turning off-topic for a moment, here's a gag-inducing story about our Sen. Brownback. Apparently there are occasions where even Republicans don't want Bush judicial nominees to have an "up-or-down vote."

 

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06 October 2006

October Surprises

I don't think much analysis is needed about the events of the last week. We are watching a full scale implosion of the majority party. Just two years ago Rove's dreams of making Republicans a permanent majority seemed all but inevitable. But the electorate is fickle; they treated Social Security "Reform" like it was the bubonic plague. Bush's base revolted over Harriet Miers. The situation in Iraq and Afghanistan deteriorated sharply. And then Katrina.

Katrina highlighted the incompentency and neglect of the Bush Administration. The drowning of a beloved American city was harder to ignore than the slow motion disaster of Iraq. Foley-gate is this year's Katrina, but for the House of Representatives (they're on the ballot this year - not Bush - another reason for this scandal to sting) It's a more sensational picture of decadence than a million Duke Cunninghams. Oh, yeah, and when Foley isn't the headline, it's Bob Woodward and his new book, State of Denial. The Republicans have tons of dough, and the electorate is always fickle, but this looks like a tipping point to me.

At the very least, this scandal has provided great quotes.

MSNBC's David Schuster on Hardball:

"Every Republican that we spoke to today said this has almost guaranteed that the Republicans are not going to keep control of Congress."

Senate candidate Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn):

"I'm not going to take a lecture on morality from a party that took hush money from a child predator."

Chris Matthews:

"This is a stink bomb of high megatonage, I think you‘d agree."

"You know, Chuck, it reminded me of Jack D. Ripper in “Dr. Strangelove.” He starts talking about precious bodily fluids as the cause for the world‘s problems. What is this talk about George Soros in the middle of a sex scandal in the House?"

Nancy Pelosi:

"Drain the swamp."

Paul Begala:

"Most normal people, even political people, react to this like moms and dads. I’m a dad. Somebody sends an email like that to my kid, they are going to deal with the law firm of Smith & Wesson, OK? It ain’t going to go to no Page Board."

Keith Olbermann was trembling as he lashed out at President Bush last night:

"While the leadership in Congress has self-destructed over the revelations of an unmatched, and unrelieved, march through a cesspool ... The president of the United States — unbowed, undeterred and unconnected to reality — has continued his extraordinary trek through our country rooting out the enemies of freedom: the Democrats.

Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, “177 of the opposition party said, ‘You know, we don’t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.’”

The hell they did.

One hundred seventy-seven Democrats opposed the president’s seizure of another part of the Constitution.

Not even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn’t be listening to the conversations of terrorists.

It defies belief that this president and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow . . .

Mr. Cheney lives on, in defiance, and spreads—around him and before him—darkness, like some contagion of fear.

They are never wrong, and they never regret -- admirable in a French torch singer, cataclysmic in an American leader.


Mr. President, you want to preserve a political party’s power. And obviously you’ll sell this country out, to do it . . . Please, sir, do not throw this country’s principles away because your lies have made it such that you can no longer differentiate between the terrorists and the critics."

Even former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough piled on:

"From the White House to Capitol Hill, where late-breaking news in the Foley firestorm with new developments in a sex scandal that will bring a lurid end to the Republican Party‘s 12-year monopoly on Capitol Hill.

The explosive new charges have all but eclipsed Speaker Denny Hastert‘s press conference where the embattled GOP head refused to step down. Hastert said he accepted responsibility, but only after telling “The Chicago Tribune” earlier that the GOP sex scandal was the blame of ABC News, the Democratic Party and George Soros.

Harry Truman, Mr. Hastert is not."

2 Comments:

At 06 October, 2006 12:34, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Foley thing may not convince anyone to switch their vote from (R) to (D), except in FL 16, but it could seriously depress conservative turnout all across the country.

Democrats would be wise to shut up and let the Republicans implode. Unless you're on the House Ethics Committee or a House candidate whose opponent is closely tied to the scandal, you can't make this thing any worse for Republicans by talking it up.

The only way this could backfire on the Democrats is if they're seen to be piling it on, a la Gingrich in 1998. The last thing they want to do is play in to the Republicans' ridiculous conspiracy theories.

(Incredibly, there have been at least four instances when Foley was identified as a Democrat on Fox News.)

 
At 06 October, 2006 20:05, Blogger Christopher said...

from the nytimes:

"At least five more Republican Congressional seats are now in serious contention, analysts said Friday, an unwelcome development for Republicans as they begin to confront a political environment further darkened for them by the Congressional page scandal."

And keep in mind, this yanked the megaphone right out of Bush's hands all week. The implications are much bigger than Foley's seat.

 

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