This is officially the dumbest thing to have ever come out of the NY Times. The absolute most completely moronic thing I have seen in a long time and it just pisses me off...
Article will be printed here, followed by some ranting and analysis
Also, could someone show me how to properly show links?
This is officially the dumbest thing to have ever come out of the NY Times. The absolute most completely moronic thing I have seen in a long time and it just pisses me off...
Never Love a Stranger
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: November 12, 2003
WASHINGTON -- Both power centers of the Democratic establishment -- the Kennedy left and the Clinton middle -- are frantic at the prospect of losing control of their party to Howard Dean. They fear a McGovernesque debacle that would hand the G.O.P. a super-majority in the Senate.
Clintonites were first to take the Dean threat seriously. As reported gleefully in this space (full disclosure: I'm rooting for Dean's candidacy in hopes of the debacle), the Clinton crowd surrounded ex-Gen. Wesley Clark with Clinton managers, spinmeisters, pollsters and fund-raisers and marched him into battle against Dean.
The Clinton political strategy was, as usual, astute: let Dick Gephardt slow Dean down in Iowa, then push Clark hard enough to upset Dean in New Hampshire, or at least attract enough of the isolationist vote from Dean to let John Kerry squeak through.
Of course, if the national economy had gone south, Hillary would have gone South with Clark on her ticket to take on an unemployment-ravaged Bush herself. But with the economy surging and Democrats robbed of their central issue, Hillary can wait till 2008. It is in the Clintons' interest for the 2004 Democratic nominee to lose respectably, not in a landslide, laying the basis for a 2008 comeback that would be impossible if Dean were in the White House.
But what of the other power center of the Democratic establishment -- who would be its logical stop-Dean candidate? Not Gephardt, who -- although an ardent tax-raiser and entitlement maven -- has been a stalwart supporter of winning the war and peace in Iraq. Not Joe Lieberman (too centrist and moralist), not Wes Clark (property of the Clintons), not John Edwards (too light).
So the Kennedy Left moved in to resuscitate John Kerry's campaign. Kerry is a war hero who led Vietnam Vets Against the War and has long been a Kennedy Senate ally. Some liberals believe he expunged his sin of having voted for this year's resolution to overthrow Saddam by recently joining Kennedy in voting against paying for it.
The Kennedyization of the Kerry campaign was carried out by Jeanne Shaheen, the former New Hampshire governor. She prevailed on the candidate to fire his longtime manager, Jim Jordan, and replace him with Mary Beth Cahill, Ted Kennedy's chief of staff. Cahill has impeccable far-left credentials, from Emily's List fund-raising to Representative Barney Frank's staff. She is an ideological soulmate of the superb writer and Kennedy Boston braintruster Robert Shrum, who has been battling Jordan to yank Kerry's moderate position over to the demonstrative dovecote.
Will this Kennedy-Clinton Combine be able to save the Democratic establishment from the assault of this generation's McGovern? Will Terry McAuliffe, imposed on the Democratic National Committee by the Clintons, count any more now that Dean has broken free of the normal financing to rely on Internet movers and billionaire George Soros?
Dean has an unexpected development going for him: because his basic pitch has been to deride Iraq's liberation, he is the one Democrat not ensnared in the now-embarrassing denunciation of Bush economic policy.
Every Democratic candidate, Dean included but not most loudly, has been hammering at the rising deficit and the loss of new jobs, blaming both on Bush tax cuts. But that ground is crumbling under them; if prosperity continues to make its comeback, their biggest complaint would become Bush's greatest boast.
Then Dean would make a bumper sticker out of what we have already begun to hear: "It's the War, Stupid." He would echo the McGovern slogan, "Come home, America," and if the war is going badly in a few months, Dean would blow Clinton and Kennedy and the other old-timers away.
But both Democratic power centers are surely considering the other possibility: that Bush is lucky. What if the war on terror begins to succeed by next summer, casualties decline, Saddam is found or Osama is killed? In that case, Bush would campaign on both growing prosperity and impending victory.
In that case, the Clinton-Kennedy establishment would be better off maintaining control and losing respectably with Kerry, Clark or even Gephardt than getting buried in a landslide with Dean. And in 2008, as Jeb Bush and Condi Rice fight out their G.O.P. primaries, Hillary will be tanned, rested and ready.
This is the End of William Safire talking out of his ass... Everything following is me talking out of my ass.
OK stupid assessment number one
the idea that Republicans will get a supermajority (defined as 60 seats to block filibusters in the senate). This would mean that the Republicans would pick up 9 seats in the Senate and hold all the seats they currently hold (including Alaska and Illinois, which seem pretty vulnerable to me)
Chuck Todd of the National Journal defines the top 10 most vulnerable Dem seats in order as Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida (the 4 open ones), Washington, South Dakota, Wisconsin, California, Louisiana, and Nevada.
If Breaux retires in Louisiana, then it could be a GOP pickup. However, in Nevada the GOP has no candidate. GOP will have a good day if they pick up one of Washington, South Dakota, Wisconsin, or California. The idea of getting all of them or 3 of them is absolutely ridiculous. Besides plenty of states elected Bush in 2000 and elected Democratic senators (think Nebraska). Not a snowmballs chance in hell.
OK this Dean=McGovern thing has got to stop. I just dont buy it. Dean is way to fiscally moderate to be painted as a liberal. And hes smart to boot. I think that the second he gets the nomination he will start selling himself as the folksy rural doctor from Vermont and will draw moderates too him.
Also, Hillary is not secretly trying to make plans to run for president. That is stupid. I bet she doesnt even run in 2008. Ed Rendell, Bill Richardson, and Janet Napolitano are all far more likely candidates in 2008. Hillary might want to be president, but she will settle for Senate Majority leader... which I think she has a good chance of getting when Daschle inevitably retires (prolly in 2010).
These are just the stupid things I discovered. I'm sure there are plenty more and I would welcome people pointing them out to me. I only wish I could get the NY Times to pay attention to what their editorialists are saying. I tried sending a letter when David Brooks claimed New Englanders were cynical, mean spirited miserable human beings, but I got no response.
Oh well...
Also, could someone show me how to properly show links?