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2004-09-15 Home Front: Politix
Kerry campaign in chaos ;Coelho looking for a Democrat Karl Rove
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Posted by GK 2004-09-15 2:22:48 AM|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [11133 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 I rub my hands together and do a little jig when I read this stuff. It just warms my heart.

Coelho is a disgrace to my state. About a corupt as the day is long. He likes them `spensive Wille Brown suits and all you see.
Posted by Sock Puppet of Doom 2004-09-15 5:13:25 AM||   2004-09-15 5:13:25 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 This division may be reflective of the state of the Democratic Party itself. One group wants to tailor their message to appeal to the middle and the other side fervently believes that the only way to win is to be true to their beliefs and lead the middle to the left side of the political spectrum. A house divided?
Posted by Canaveral Dan 2004-09-15 7:04:13 AM||   2004-09-15 7:04:13 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Yummy!

Thus sapke Zarathustra
Posted by Zarathustra 2004-09-15 7:26:22 AM||   2004-09-15 7:26:22 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 The onl thing I can think of saying is: MUUUURRAAAHHH!
Posted by Cyber Sarge  2004-09-15 7:44:11 AM||   2004-09-15 7:44:11 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 Errata. I spake, not sapke. No mystery here, just need better glasses, or drink less wine. Just so you know...

I was thinking about the behavior of dhimmirats and recalling I've seen it before somewhere. Yea! That's it! It's a kiddie flick, but quite funny.
The dodo birds in Ice Age.
Posted by Zarathustra 2004-09-15 7:50:25 AM||   2004-09-15 7:50:25 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 The only question I have is: WHich one of these scumbags came up with the forged memos to pass onto Dan Blather?
Posted by Douglas De Bono  2004-09-15 9:14:24 AM|| [http://www.douglasdebono.com]  2004-09-15 9:14:24 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Problems are worse than Tony thinks. 527's also have their fingers in the pie and help to define Kerry. With all that money, Kerry can't ignore them and looses more freedom to move to the center. Chinese fire drill.
Posted by Mrs. Davis 2004-09-15 9:28:44 AM||   2004-09-15 9:28:44 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 Z-Get better glasses. Keep drinking wine.
Posted by Dar  2004-09-15 9:50:05 AM||   2004-09-15 9:50:05 AM|| Front Page Top

#9 Its the Moveon part of the party versus the last of the "real" democrats.

The Moveon folks have drank so deeply of hatred they cannot see straight and are willing to use "any means necceesary" to defeat Bush. Thats where you get looney crap like the fabricated documents, and stupid name calling they do - the same stuff that stampedes the electorate in the other direction. Problem for them is they are a small core of rich liberal elites, aging hippies and naieve college-aged wannabee-radical children.

The other part of the Dem party is the old liberal "nobility" - people who expect and demand that deference be given to them like royalty. This is the Kennedy-Kerry bunch, who believe in liberalism but generally stay within the bounds of political good sense in order to be electable.

Notice there is no room for so-called "Reagan Democrats" nor "Clinton Republicans". The party has been dragged so far to the left that it has lost its balance - and the moderating influence of "centrists". So the fight is vicious now to control the party. After all, in a religious war, the heretic is treated most harshly.

Assuming Kerry loses the election, the infighting in the Democrat party is going to be bloody. If the traditionalist win, the Moveon crowd and Soros will be dumped out on their asses. If Moveon wins, the party will be abandoned and left as a shell full of only radical idealogues who will toe the far left line, throw out anyone who is not idealogically pure enough (Vote the PETA line or else!), and marginalize themselves in the process.

The Republican party had a similar fight with itself in the 1970's, which resulted in a new unity under Ronald Reagan. But Reagan was not nearly as radical right as these people are radical left, and the "centrist" element of the Republican party was and still is fairly influential as a counterweight. The extreme conservatives didnt like this, but they had nowhere else to go.

Democrats, however, if they are extremists, they do have somewhere else to go: Nader and Moveon. Thats why the Democrat party could shatter after this election if they cannot get Kerry in the Whitehouse.
Posted by OldSpook 2004-09-15 10:41:57 AM||   2004-09-15 10:41:57 AM|| Front Page Top

#10 good post OS

I think what will happen is that the "Democrats" will move to the fringes and stay there. Their following will remain loyal until the day they die - true believers. Envision Grateful Dead devotees, living their future embracing a bygone era.

The next true, ideological battle will be between "moderate republicans" and "conservative republicans". Ie: the Arnie's v/s the Lotts.

The battle might take place in the nominating process: Ie: who gets the nomination to run against the failed moonbats - or it might actually take the form of two separate parties....conservative v/s moderate.

IJMHO, but I think that is where the future elections will split.
Posted by 2B 2004-09-15 11:02:50 AM||   2004-09-15 11:02:50 AM|| Front Page Top

#11 OS,

Great post, but I believe there is one underlying difference between the two parties:

GOP is above all an ideological party. The individual elements may be debated, but they usually include: lower taxes, fewer government programs, self-reliance, strong national defense, etc.

The Democrats, while we enjoy calling them leftist moonbats, have a huge number of constituencies, many (if not most) who could care less about gun control, homosexual rights, etc. These are the ethnic minorities, unions, lawyers, etc., whose main motivation is getting $$$ out of the government, directly or indirectly. Getting such a conglomeration to move in the same direction is akin to herding cats, and probably explains why Dems have been far more successful at the local level than at the presidential.
Posted by Dreadnought 2004-09-15 11:24:30 AM||   2004-09-15 11:24:30 AM|| Front Page Top

#12 Just to expand on what OldSpook and 2B brought up, we could see a realignment like small-government Republicans going to the Libertarians, conservative Democrats going to the Republicans, and hard leftists going to the Greens/Naderites/Etc., leaving the Democrats as the party of mild liberalism. Thus, to use European terminology, there would be Christian Democrats (Republicans, with conservative Democrat refugees); Social Democrats (liberal Democrats); and Greens (hard leftists); with the Libertarians fulfilling their uniquely American role. The Republicans would find their power base in the South, the Libertarians in the West, the Democrats in the Northeast and the Midwest, and the Greens in California and the Pacific Northwest. Then things would get really complicated.
Posted by Jonathan  2004-09-15 11:31:59 AM|| [http://www.workaround.blogspot.com]  2004-09-15 11:31:59 AM|| Front Page Top

#13 Notice there is no room for so-called "Reagan Democrats" nor "Clinton Republicans". The party has been dragged so far to the left that it has lost its balance - and the moderating influence of "centrists".

Not so. On most economic issues the Dems have pretty much swallowed the Republican agenda. Clinton and Bob Rubin brought the party into the economic mainstream. Only on the social issues do the Dems' leadership skew to the left.

The Dems' crisis is not over ideology in general but over the Iraq war and more fundamentally, how to respond to a changed world order. Kerry embodies perfectly the party's confusion and incoherence about the Iraq war. What's not appreciated is the party leadership's inability to come to terms with several larger facts about the changed world situation, especially:

-- the inadequacy of traditional foreign policy notions like state sovereignty in an age of globalized terror and asymmetric threats;

-- NATO's irrelevance to the above threats, which almost all emanate from regions where NATO cannot project real power;

-- the fecklessness of that other legacy of the Cold War, the UNSC, in addressing those threats;

-- the rise of non-European powers that are at one and the same time rivals to the US and increasingly dependent on the US.

What has Kerry or the party's leadership said about China? India? Russia? About asymmetric threats, pre-emptive war, about a replacement for the UN, about troop redeployments etc?

Bottom line is that it will be impossible to come up with any kind of a coherent foreign policy strategy that can simultaneously appeal to responsible internationalist Dems and neo-isolationist conspiracy-mongers like Howie and Mikey Boy. The Dems will have to tilt one way or the other: a leftish isolationism in the Nader mode, or a realistic internationalism in the Truman mode. And either tilt will destroy the party.

Posted by lex 2004-09-15 11:46:30 AM||   2004-09-15 11:46:30 AM|| Front Page Top

#14 Karl Rove-like Dem Advisor?
Posted by BigEd 2004-09-15 12:59:32 PM||   2004-09-15 12:59:32 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 Looks like the Democrats are in a quagmire.
Posted by Austin 2004-09-15 1:45:30 PM||   2004-09-15 1:45:30 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 Isn't anyone drawing the obvious conclusion from the Democratic Party's presidential campaign? The party has become, through failure of leadership and vision, massively incompetent. They focus on appearance not substance. They select a candidate who has only one qualification for the job - he wants it. Can you believe the moral bankrupcy of a party putting up a candidate for the highest office in the land, who, in a just world wouldn't be a senator, he'd be getting ready for his 27th parole hearing in a federal prison where he'd been serving a life sentence for treason.
Posted by Mercutio 2004-09-15 2:16:22 PM||   2004-09-15 2:16:22 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 I also blame this on campaign finance reform.

I'm a small-government conservative; IMO the gov't is too big, too costly, and has its sticky fingers in wa-a-a-a-a-y too many pies.

The more the government assumes authority to interfere in our business and personal transactions (through taxation, laws, and regulation), the more "special interest" money is needed to influence the persons in authority.

I hold that we can't regulate money out of politics; like a river, the money will still find a way to flow. Campaign finance "reform" just forced the money flow elsewhere, leaving the parties with much less control of their candidate and their platform.

Cut the size and scope of government and you'll cut out the need for all the "special interest" money; in the long run, I bet most businesses would rather spend their money on improving their product than on lame politicians...
Posted by Seafarious  2004-09-15 2:28:30 PM||   2004-09-15 2:28:30 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 One other thing the Democrats are/have been unable to deal with is the evolution of Europe. The anti-Americans (France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden...) have long been considered by the Left to be models of enlightened anti-capitalism. The New Europe is the new fruit of the liberation of Eastern Europe (thanks to the US) and the remnants of UK independence -- but the Left cannot allow itself to recognize this as it would endanger their world-view. Communism has failed, Eastern Europe is in full recovery mode, and the franco-german alliance is swimming in proto-socialist institutions.

I would like to hear more Republicans call this out, not just Rummy and Arnold.
Posted by Kalle (kafir forever) 2004-09-15 2:58:10 PM|| [http://radio.weblogs.com/0103811/categories/currentEvents/]  2004-09-15 2:58:10 PM|| Front Page Top

#19 Interesting that the Dem party had to deny their left wing and pretend to be centrist to try and capture votes - exhibit for the prosecution: Dem Convention: "I'm John Kerry , and I'm reporting for duty"
Posted by Frank G  2004-09-15 3:19:39 PM||   2004-09-15 3:19:39 PM|| Front Page Top

#20 I can't see the Democrats' falling apart or disappearing. They have a strong core of the various government unions (NEA, AFSCME, AFT) and trial lawyers. Even if all the moderates join the GOP and the leftists go the Greens, that still leaves 30%+. Now, they might be forced into a regional party (the coasts and inner cities) unable to win on a national level, but still keep 35+ senators and 150+ reps, like the GOP in the 30s or mid 70s.

Still, if that does happen, then I can't see the GOP holding all the other seats without a breakdown eventually. There is simply too much difference between the liberal and conservatives to hold in one party. It works if you have McKinley, TR, FDR, or Ronald Reagan as President, but if you have a Buchanon or Pierce, the leaders of the various factions tear the party in half. It wouldn't happen right away, but it would happen.

Another reason to be dubious about the breakup is the lack of an issue. If you are for the war against the islamists, you more or less have a home in the GOP, even if you don't agree with what the current administration and Congressional leadership are doing on spending, gay marriage, whatever. If you are against taking effective action, you can fit in with the Democrats. In the 1850s, neither of the two major parties was anti-slavery, so splinter groups from each made a fusion into the Republican party, which forced the Democrats to be a status quo party, so that left no room for the Whigs. Today, as I said, the major positions on the war, and most other big issues, are covered by the major parties.
Posted by jackal  2004-09-15 4:01:02 PM|| [http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]  2004-09-15 4:01:02 PM|| Front Page Top

#21 Perhaps, jackal, but it's much tougher to survive today as a splinter party than in 1850. How many Congressional elections have the Libertarians won?

The Dems' unions, along with Hollywood+Wall Street+odd tech millionaire money, are indeed the only thing holding the party together. Given the fact of racial gerrymandering, a game that both parties willingly play, you're right that the Dems will maintain a grip on every >50% afr-amer district and left-lib enclaves in Manhattan, west LA, San Fran, college towns. Maybe that equates to 150 reps; I don't know.

Where I think both parties are vulnerable is with a growing number of fiscally-sane moderates in both parties that are loathe to vote for Kerry but are also not keen on either Rove Republicanism or Bush's conduct of the postwar in Iraq. These folks would be happy to vote for Rudy or McCain over Bush and Kerry, or for that matter anyone the Deaniac Dems or Rove Repubs can put forward. They include college-educated blue state Repubs (think: Calif) and red state Dems (think: Texas) as well as large numbers of active-duty military families who are underpaid and badly treated by the Pentagon (think: TX, NC, VA, CO, GA, FL). Note that these groups are easy to reach via the internet-- no need for union or church-organized boiler room calling bank operations.

If you could add to these groups a large number of Hispanics-- who also do not fit neatly into either party-- then you've got a good shot at winning CA, TX, nearly all the western states and possibly FL, NC, VA, GA as well. That's about 220 electoral votes.
Posted by lex 2004-09-15 4:18:50 PM||   2004-09-15 4:18:50 PM|| Front Page Top

#22 Think of Arnold's coalition: moderate yuppies + current and ex-military + immigrants.

A winning formula for the fastest-growing states in the Union, which are growing fast in large measure because of rapid increases in yuppie and immigrant populations.
Posted by lex 2004-09-15 4:23:29 PM||   2004-09-15 4:23:29 PM|| Front Page Top

#23 Seafarious - IMO, the only campaign finance "reform" needed is that national candidates have 48 hours to post on the Internet the name, city & state, and $ amount of ALL contributions.

They can take all the money they like, but they have to tell the American people WHO and HOW MUCH, and they have to tell us now, during the campaign, not sometime after the election.

(The money must still come from the person donating - no $2000 reimbursements from some rich guy to a bunch of nuns or secretaries or other lower-income people for their so-called "contributions.")

This is the electronic age; let's use it to make these wankers a little more honest (or at least up-front).
Posted by Barbara Skolaut  2004-09-15 6:03:56 PM||   2004-09-15 6:03:56 PM|| Front Page Top

#24 It doesn't matter whether these guys can or cannot find a Democrat equivalent of Karl Rove at this stage of the campaign. The plain truth is, you can't polish a turd.
Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2004-09-15 6:05:20 PM||   2004-09-15 6:05:20 PM|| Front Page Top

#25 Barbara, absolutely. Give as much as you want, but disclose every single dollar.
Posted by Seafarious  2004-09-15 6:05:38 PM||   2004-09-15 6:05:38 PM|| Front Page Top

#26 Jackal, I and my fellow engineers with a large So Cal city south of LA....think Chargers.... are members of our union (union shop agreem't), and mostly (by my count) vote Rep. We want to keep our wages, and support smaller gov't. We provide infrastructure improvem'ts at a cost less than any other similar size city in the region. Don't assume all gov't employees are Dems or support their policies
Posted by Frank G  2004-09-15 6:16:10 PM||   2004-09-15 6:16:10 PM|| Front Page Top

#27 Is there a Kerry campaign left?
Posted by Mark Espinola 2004-09-15 8:57:42 PM||   2004-09-15 8:57:42 PM|| Front Page Top

22:07 Anonymous6474
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08:51 Anonymous6463
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07:53 Silk
02:04 JFM
00:53 lex
00:33 Super Hose
00:08 Zarathustra
00:06 Zarathustra
23:46 Laurence of the Rats
23:45 Brutus
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23:37 Brutus
23:25 Laurence of the Rats
23:24 Capt America
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23:16 CrazyFool
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