First I wanted to pass on some thoughts on Dean's MTP appearance. I honestly was very impressed with his first five minutes or so. He has seemed much better on TV lately (maybe the new campaign CEO got Howard some long-overdue media training).
But more significantly, he was very disarming in his trademark "straight talk"--and engaging in said straight talk, IMO, is his only (long)shot to still prevail in this race. I liked how he quipped "oh, how the mighty have fallen" and was very up front about how his massive spending in Iowa was a gamble that didn't pay off. (I would have been interested in Russert asking him why some of that money was spent on seemingly frivolous purchases like fancy embroidered scarves given out to reporters, but hey.)
Once it was shown that Dean actually called Kerry a "Republican", though, he was sunk. Not only was that an absurd charge given Kerry's liberal voting record, it turned out that Dean's tirade against "special interest" money and "Washington insiders" looked patently absurd when contrasted with his own record and his recent hiring of a DC lobbyist as campaign CEO.
One other thing I wanted to pass along was excerpts of an interesting AlterNet piece. I was very pleasantly surprised to see someone from that very left publication join the pragmatic "electability" bandwagon! Coupled with Nation honcho Katrina van den Heuvel's recent abandonment of Dean ("the Dean movement was always more interesting than Dean himself") and her rejection of talk of HRC as running mate (she explicitly used pragmatic language in so doing), I am becoming increasingly in synch with the strategic priorities of the hard left. Or should I say, they are becoming increasingly in synch with me? :)
Regime Change Movement Picks Up Steam
Don Hazen, AlterNet
Last summer, I sat in a hotel room at the Campaign for America's Future gathering in Washington D.C and listened to four presidential candidates -- John Edwards, John Kerry, Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich -- speak in rapid order. At that point, I didn't "have" a candidate, although I knew and admired Kucinich. But the issue already on my mind was electability; who among these candidates could go all the way come next November?
I remember thinking as I listened to Kerry's speech, "OK, this guy is presidential, he's electable. I can live with John Kerry."
The other candidates gave more rousing speeches and had more natural speaking talent, especially Kucinich, who brought the crowd to its feet a dozen times. John Edwards displayed the folksy charm developed in his successful career as a trial lawyer. But I came back to Kerry, who seemed to have the most gravitas -- and perhaps electability.
Much has happened since that June day more than seven months ago. One of the most dynamic insurgent campaigns in recent presidential history, by former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, crashed and burned in the corn fields of Iowa and in the bitter cold last night in New Hampshire. But some things haven't changed; I still don't have a candidate, and I'm thinking about John Kerry. I don't have a candidate because I don't want a "candidate"; I want to see a new president elected, and he can be Anyone But Bush.
For the first time in recent memory, many progressives -- self-styled members of the "regime change movement" -- are aligned with a broad cross-section of the Democratic Party electorate. We can call this alliance the ABBA party -- Anybody But Bush Again. Analysis of voting in Iowa and New Hampshire underscores that electability reigns supreme as the chief overriding issue for many Democratic and independent voters, as it is for me.
[...]
There is a long history of insurgent presidential candidacies that temporarily caught the wave and then bit the dust long before the nominee was chosen. Gary Hart, Jerry Brown -- particularly Eugene McCarthy's peace quest in 1968 in New Hampshire that sent Lyndon Johnson to the sidelines -- are examples. Insurgencies can make a huge impact, as Dean's may yet. But they can also leave a lot people deeply disappointed.
As Dean's chances for the nomination have shrunk, many are concerned about the huge expectations on the part of tens of thousands of young people who joined his campaign and decided that politics is cool. These are the troops counted on to help expand the electorate among younger voters. Even though they vote at a considerably smaller rate than adults, "the under-25 voter will constitute between 7 and 8% of the total vote in 2004," according to pollster Anna Greenberg.
Hopefully the Deaniacs' insurgent effort will take a lot of credit for energizing the collective political psyche. Dean's in-your-face campaign motivated the other candidates, made them better and more assertive.
[...]
Yet in Iowa, a majority of young voters ended up supporting Kerry and Edwards. Once again, electability trumped popularity. That's why the talented and passionate Dennis Kucinich, despite lots of admiration, doesn't get any votes. It's why Gephardt is on the sidelines, and will likely eventually be joined by Dean and Clark. [...]
Anything can still happen as the primaries go south and west and spread across the land. But one has the sense that Iowa and New Hampshire expressed some collective wisdom.
[...]
How is all this good for regime change? First, it suggests the maturity of voters who recognize that getting Bush out of office is paramount. Second, polls in Iowa and New Hampshire indicate that health care and the economy are more important in the national consciousness than the war, terrorism and national security -- areas where Bush still polls relatively well.
[...]
Even Iowa anti-war voters supported Kerry more than Dean, even though Kerry voted to authorize the war on Iraq. How could this be? Well, the war is turning out not to be the fundamental litmus test in the primaries, and it won't be in November. More importantly, John Kerry is seen as a critic of Bush's war, and he voted against the authorization of $87 billion for Iraq. For more moderate voters, the undecideds who are now deeply suspicious of Bush, the Kerry path is more like theirs, and in Kerry they sense someone who has stood for peace.
[...]
There has been very little squabbling among progressives,
Whoops, he hasn't visited Kos, apparently! LOL
while the independent media, particularly on the Internet, is providing an enormous amount of material that should sink the ship of Bush, if communicated far and wide. And people are even trying to understand how to frame a positive vision and message and not fall into the easy trap of always attacking the conservative message.
Insiders report that the efforts of organizations, especially MoveOn.org, to raise fundamental questions about Bush's character are having an effect. MoveOn's television ads, tested in battleground states and produced with funds raised from their tens of thousands of donors, are having a powerful impact on voters, according to those with access to the follow-up polling results.
In the meantime, according to Washington columnist Mike Lux, Bush's State of the Union address demonstrated that the president and his team are not feeling as confident about the upcoming election as they pretend:
[...]
"Bush's strategy remains consistent: First, scare the hell out of people; second, show his compassionate conservative side with (mostly unfunded) rhetoric on education, jobs and health care; finally, stoke up his right-wing base with culture war attacks on gays, peaceniks, trial lawyers and liberals."
Increasingly, it seems, this strategy will not work. Bush's base is too small and the anti-Bush base too energized. The ABBA party has a challenging battle ahead, but there is a growing confidence that the Ayatollahs of fundamentalist America can be pushed aside for a more just and inclusive society.
