12.19.07
Are Clinton’s supporters trying to get her to lose?
I’ve been trying to figure out if some of Senator Clinton’s most vocal supporters – including her own husband – are clueless, morons, or are subvert Hillary’s campaign.
Now, I don’t really believe the last one, but I can’t think of many reasons for the behavior of some of her supporter’s behavior and comments except for the other two reasons.
First, you have Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign co-chair Billy Shaheen saying that Obama would be difficult to elect because of his admitted previous drug use. He ended up having to resign because, frankly, most people who are ever going to vote for a democrat in the general election probably don’t give a flying flip over drug use someone might have engaged in 20 years ago.
You then have former Senator Bob Kerrey coming out and saying that Obama attended a secular madrasa in Indonesia. Now, to Kerrey’s credit, he is probably technically correct in the sense that a madrasa is the Arabic word for “school,” whether secular or religious.
The problem Kerrey has is two fold, though. First, the language most Indonesians speak is Indonesian (amazingly enough), not Arabic, so to call it a madrasa within Indonesia would imply that it was within the Islamic cultural community, thus almost certainly making it a religious school. Second, Obama has already been subjected to attacks that he attended a radical Islamic madrasa in Indonesia, and so people already have in their heads Obama + madrasa = bad.
I think this was more of an issue of Kerrey being uninformed than anything else, but it was still moronic, and doesn’t help him, or the candidate he supports, with those who are tired old, long debunked stories being dredged up again.
Next you have former President Clinton sticking his foot in his mouth for a 2nd time in a relatively short time by saying that Hillary planned to send him and former President George H. W. Bush on basically a “hey! we’re not really so bad now” tour. (the first time was his statement that he was against the war from the start. While Hillary may have the public statements to be able to claim that, Bill Clinton appeared not to).
I would have to think that this was still in the idea or planning stage since Senator Clinton herself didn’t mention it, and clearly former President Bush wasn’t on board yet. Either Bill Clinton thought it was close enough to a done deal that he thought he would let it out to make Hillary sound somewhat conciliatory, or, again, he was acting either unwisely or without full knowledge of what he was saying.
Even if all of these things are unauthorized from the Clinton campaign, and I seem to doubt that Clinton herself authorized any of this (though lower, more-disgruntled with the way things are going members of the campaign may be involved), it still doesn’t show well on the campaign.
Part of the problem is that a cross-section of Hillary’s campaign is much like a cross-section of the democratic party in general, with both liberals, moderates, and conservative democrats. This may sound like a pretty decent plan as you’re basically welcoming everyone in the party.
The problem is that when things started going to hell, the inherent mistrust between the liberals and the moderates and conservatives came out in full force. You can see this mistrust everywhere, really. You saw in the 2004 primary battle between Dean and everyone else. You see it in the everyone-but-Clinton movement this year. You see it on blogs, and now you’re seeing it within the Clinton campaign itself.
The reason for much of this mistrust is that the Democratic party is, at it’s core, a coalition party between people who have similar sympathies, but pretty different ideas of how intense and quickly new policies should be put in place, and how it is politically best to implement those policies (among other things, I’m sure).
This extends itself to liberals believing that moderates will sell out on principles, since moderates are often willing to “go half way” in compromising while liberals are far less likely to be open to compromising.
Meanwhile, moderates mistrust liberals because they fear that if the party drifts to the left, they’ll bleed more support from the middle than they’re gain from the left, and they don’t trust that liberals are going to keep voting for democrats, even if they do appease them.
And now portions of the Clinton campaign has become somewhat of a proxy war between these two groups, with the most conservative aspects of the democratic coalition breaking off first and assailing the liberal part of the party.
Clinton can’t like all of this because she was already facing a threat that some of the more liberal members of the party may sit home if they lose the “anyone but Clinton” campaign in the primary, and a lot of this party infighting that’s popping up form her supporters can’t do anything than increase the likelihood of something like that happening.
Clinton can still win the nomination, given her still-strong lead in national polls, but one merely has to look back at 2004 to see how Iowa can change the race.
Newsweek did a poll about 10 days before the Iowa caucuses in 2004 which showed Dean leading with 24%, and Clark and Kerry basically tied for 2nd, and 14% saying they didn’t know nationally, and Edwards at 3%.
After Kerry won, Edwards finished 2nd, and Dean finished 3rd, Kerry jumped from 11% support to 30% support nationally, Edwards jumped from 3% to 13%, while Dean dropped from 24% to 12%. After winning New Hampshire, Kerry again jumped up to 45%, and the rest is history.
While Clinton’s 40%+ national ratings clearly are much better, and thus give her a bit more room than Deans’ 24% in 2004, the trend is going down, which has to be a worrysome sign for her. All this infighting can’t be helping either.
12.18.07
Different Methods of Measurement
There is just something seriously wrong and disturbing about measuring the size of your manly equipment by how many people you had killed:
Speaking to reporters Monday in Los Angeles, California, Huckabee disputed the ad, pointing to his record of carrying out the death penalty while governor as evidence that he was tough on crime. Massachusetts doesn’t have the death penalty.
“The difference between us is that I did something he never had to do. I carried out the death penalty 16 times, more than any other governor in my state’s history,” Huckabee said.
And this is supposed to be a good thing!
It doesn’t help when you have a press like this
I realize that Democrats haven’t necessarily done a lot to help themselves on this front, but if you have a press which frames things like this, it’s hard to get good press, even if you do something right:
The result would be a…defeat for Democrats, who…had spent months on legislation to add $27 billion to domestic programs, an almost 7 percent increase.
Bush sought a much smaller increase, less than 1 percent, for domestic programs other than military base construction; the Democratic bill provides domestic increases averaging about 4 percent, once “emergency” funding above Bush’s budget is included.
Democrats succeeded in reversing cuts sought by Bush to heating subsidies, local law enforcement, Amtrak and housing as well as Bush’s plan to eliminate the $654 million budget for grants to community action agencies that help the poor.
So, they were able to pass a bill that Bush is willing to sign, that stopped Bush from making cuts into domestic programs that he wanted to make, shifted some money from military spending into those domestic programs, and increased domestic spending by 4 times what Bush wanted.
And this is a “defeat” for Democrats, because they weren’t able to get their 7%. I thought Democrats and Republicans were supposed to compromise. Last time I knew, deciding on 4% when the two parties in the negotiations want 7% and 1% was considered to be a good compromise.
Oh, and Republicans oppose this democratic “defeat” as well.
12.07.07
Congressional Oversight in Name Only
Cross Posted on Daily Kos
This isn’t meant to be a piece critical of how Representative Harman and Senator Rockefeller dealt with the fact that they knew that the CIA tapes of the detainee interrogations existed back in 2003. As Representative Harman said:
Given the nature of the classification, I was not free to mention this subject publicly until Director Hayden disclosed it yesterday.
Now, I’m sure there are many a liberal blogger who is screaming that this is a BS excuse. “It’s their moral duty to disclose this information to the public!” they will or are saying I’m sure.
I have two problems with this, however. First off, we typically like our Congresscritters NOT doing illegal things – especially things which could hypothetically damage national security by leaking classified documents. I’m sure it’s happened in the past, but breaking the law to uncover something isn’t exactly a glorious thing, especially if you’re an elected representative.
There is an even more important reason than this, though, why I think a habitual leaking of classified information by these select Congressmen and Senators would be bad in the long run: it gives the Administration a perfect excuse not to give them any information at all. You could very easily see an argument that if Congress can’t keep secret things secret, then they shouldn’t be given the access to secrets. I think this would be the single most dangerous repercussion to people like Representative Harman “snitching.”
Instead, I think the very system of the “gang of 4″ or the “gang of 8″ is broken on it’s face. Giving 2 members on either the House or Senate intelligence committee access to classified information may technically fulfill the White House’s requirement for Congressional oversight, but it is an oversight in name only.
The reason is because if a House member or a Senator sees something in these classified briefings which alarms them, there is no legal way for Congress to act to investigate and correct the situation. None. The only way they could do it is for the Representative or Senator to break the law and leak the information.
While going after a Senator for leaking information which ends up being damning to an administration may not be a politically viable thing to do, Congress should never be put into a situation where there is no legal way for it to investigate something that’s going wrong.
Classified information like this is only useful for the purposes of Congressional oversight if the entire committee is given that information and is able to hold hearings on that issue – even if those hearings are conducted in secret and are classified themselves.
Also, I think there must be some way for the intelligence committee to be able to declassify information themselves if they deem it necessary – perhaps with a 2/3 vote or something.
But giving a piece of classified information to 4 Congressmen & women, then ignoring any warnings they may raise, but preventing them from doing anything other than writing angry letters (which are themselves classified) if the administration does something dumb or illegal isn’t any sort of meaningful oversight.
12.06.07
Is Joe Klein Moron on the Month?
OK, Joe Klein has written some dumb stuff in the past, and he’s written some stuff which the liberal blogs decry as dumb, but which I don’t really have a problem with. And of course I, myself have been called just about every label that they like throwing at right wing republicans by some left wing blogger or another (not necessarily well known ones, I should note).
All that being the case, I’m trying to figure out what reasoning Joe Klein had to execute in his brain to come to this conclusion:
Today on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Klein cheered President Bush’s response to the NIE, stating that it was “an amazing moment of candor by the United States”:
The Bush reaction to this — he didn’t try to block it. He didn’t try to postpone it. He didn’t spend weeks, he didn’t ask the intelligence community ‘give me a couple of weeks, let’s see if we can figure out some kind of negotiating initiative or some way to respond to this.’ He didn’t try to spin it to our advantage. This is an amazing moment of candor by the United States.
Um, sure. That’s why the White House is saying nothing has changed and we still need to put pressure on Iran so that they’ll stop their nuclear program which they’re no longer working on?
And yes, Bush and the White House did try to postpone the release of the NIE…for a year. And in the meantime went out and were talking about Iran like the conclusions of the NIE didn’t exist.
This, after famously showing he knows jack about the new FISA bill in Congress, I’m trying to figure out how one could be unintentionally that misinformed, especially when it’s your job TO be informed.
12.05.07
Why Clinton wasn’t wrong on Kyl-Lieberman
Now, note how I didn’t say she was necessarily right, about Kyl-Lieberman, but posts saying that the revelation that Iran apparently halted their nuclear weapons program in 2003 is worse for Hillary than it is for Bush seems a bit absurd to me.
First of all, despite many on the left’s mischaracterization (to put it kindly. I could use “lie” as well) of Kyl-Lieberman, it was nothing like the AUMF (and even that I claim isn’t as bad as the left makes it out o be).
Basically, liberal blogs claim that the Kyl-Lieberman amendment is AUMF II, except this time for Iran. There are several reasons why it’s not.
1. The Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq was a law. It was binding. The Kyl-Lieberman amendment was a Sense of the Senate resolution.
2. While the AUMF against Iraq did authorize the use of force, it did so by requiring that Bush show to Congress that:
“reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq”
Meanwhile, the original text of Kyl-Lieberman didn’t even go as far as the AUMF and said:
to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies
Not necessarily great language, but it’s not AUMF language. However, this text killed the amendment and Kyl and Lieberman ended taking it out. As a result, the Kyl-Lieberman amendment that actually passed neither had this text PLUS it had added text stressing that diplomacy was clearly the preferred way to deal with Iran.
How you get a “vote in favor of war with Iran” out of that, I’m not sure. That is unless you just hate Hillary Clinton and everything she does is evil.
3. There is the argument that by stating that it was the sense of the senate that Bush designate the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization (note, the Senate was merely saying they thought he should. They didn’t actually give the designation, and he could have, and probably would have, granted it even without this), they give Bush free-reign to attack Iran since, of course, if they’re terrorists, then we bomb them.
There are several issues with this. The first one I’ve already pointed out: Bush almost certainly would have designated the Revolutionary Guards as such even without this resolution, so this resolution basically caused nothing. Second, if Bush wanted to use terrorism as an excuse to attack Iran, he already had that justification, being that Iran is on the list of state sponsors of terrorism already.
4. I can vividly recall the days when liberals decried these Sense of the Congress resolutions as “toothless” and “meaningless.” I guess they’re only toothless and meaningless when they vote on a Sense of the Senate resolution that liberals actually support.
Now, granted given the news that Iran may have ended it’s nuclear weapons program in 2003, voting in favor of Kyl-Lieberman may seem, in part, unnecessary (though there were more reasons behind it than just their nuclear program), and I’m not sure whether any members of Congress had access to this NIE report before voting on that resolution. If not, all they had access to would have been the previous NIE, which was much more dire about Iran, and thus one could understand why someone might take a position to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Also the claims that this gives Bush a blank check, in essence, validates his “unitary executive” viewpoint. The Left Coaster explains it well, I think:
Just because Bush might falsely claim that this toothless resolution gives him the legal authority to invade Iran, doesn’t mean that progressives should be claiming that it gives him that authority. What Sen. Obama and Sen. Edwards are doing here – with this line of argument – is unfortunately advancing the destructive right-wing meme that the President of the United States can use stuff that has nothing to do with law as justification to do patently illegal things. According to this theory – which Sen. Clinton obviously disagrees with – if Sen. Obama becomes President and the Senate passes a legally toothless “Sense of the Senate” resolution against Country X, President Obama can bomb Country X freely because such a bombing would be considered Congressionally sanctioned. This is dangerous nonsense that no Democrat should ever be advancing.
Many on the left either hope, or even think, that this vote will come back to bite Clinton. However, they thought the same thing about the AUMF vote, and it didn’t. Remember back in February when everyone who voted for the war couldn’t stumble over each other fast enough to get in front of a camera and apologize for it? Meanwhile, Clinton wouldn’t, and everyone on the left said that this would doom her?
Well, obviously it didn’t. And not only that, but A Washington Post/ABC poll at the time showed that 52% of democrats believed that Clinton’s vote for the AUMF against Iraq was the right decision. This was February of this year. And only 31% of the 47% who thought it was a mistake thought she should apologize for it (that’s 15% of the total).
I think the same would be true for Kyl-Lieberman, and I have a feeling it’s for a rather simple reason: who people place the burden of responsibility on for taking an action.
What I mean by this is that, I think (I don’t have any real evidence to back this up, I’m just hypothesizing), is that most people have a belief that someone is responsible for their own actions, but that people who may have enabled them to take that action may not necessarily be responsible.
It’s kind of the belief that it wasn’t appeasement which started World War II, it was Hitler who started World War II. With Iraq, I think people are smart enough to realize that the ultimate trigger-puller was Bush, not Congress. This is especially the case since Congress told Bush that he shouldn’t start the war unless it was clear diplomacy couldn’t work anymore and that clearly wasn’t the case. Should members of Congress take responsibility for their vote? Yes, and Clinton says she has. However, let’s not forget that if Bush invades Iran using some non-binding Congressional resolution that doesn’t even call for war, that the problem is Bush’s, not Congress’.
And one final note. I hear a lot of reasoning along the lines of “we know Bush will grab onto anything he can get, so you shouldn’t give him anything!” to justify basically doing nothing on anything when it comes to Iran. This even goes as far as some saying that “all options are on the table” – something which is basically known to be understood even when it’s not said - gives Bush justification for an attack.
However, under a situation where Iran could possibly be a threat (and it was believed that this was the case up until only a few days ago), what did Democrats think Bush could do? There was basically a feeling on the left that telling him to negotiate was pointless, and telling him to flex his muscles was dangerous. So what exactly should Congress have done? The answer I seem to get is “sit on their hands until 2009.” That’s not a great policy position to take with a county which allegedly had a nuke program and was unfriendly to us. Luckily for the liberal wing of the party, this report came out, hopefully making Iran, for the most part, a non-issue (or at least not as big of one).
As for Clinton, the test for her is to see how she changes her rhetoric in response to this new NIE report.
