Captain Howdy's Biggest Liability
By Ben Domenech Posted in User Blogs — Comments (22) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Promoted from Diaries.
So what's John Kerry's biggest liability in Boston?
No, it's not the ground ball pitch he threw yesterday on ESPN at Fenway.
No, it's not the very nutty Teresa Heinz, who told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's Colin McNickle after a pre-convo speech on the value of civility: "You said something I didn't say. Now shove it!"
Instead, it's illustrated by this fact: 95% of the Delegates to the Democratic Convention oppose the War.
Despite how the Boston Globe phrases their headline, this isn't really a "split." Instead, it's a fact that highlights how out of step this Democratic Convention really is - not just with the country, but with their own party.
Conventions are always expressions of the view of the party faithful, not the ideological center. That's to be expected. But it's rare that such a large political gathering has absolutely no diversity of thought about a given issue - I doubt even abortion policy is as unifying in Boston.
So why is this a liability? Besides the obvious problem of seeming out of the mainstream (one wonders if the percentages for ANSWER protesters is any different than this delegate pool), the fact is that John Kerry's just not cut out for a convention like this. He voted for the war. He's been all over the map on his foreign policy. The last thing he wants or needs is for every major applause line repeated on local TV to be a condemnation of a war that a plurality of Americans still believe was the right thing to do, and (according to the CBS/NYTimes poll) nearly a quarter of his own party believes was the right thing to do. In the end, is America going to see a political party that looks like them, or a mass of angry Red Sox fans?
That's the biggest political liability in Boston. Ideologically, this delegation isn't built for John Kerry. It's built for Howard Dean.Peter Beinart makes a similar point about the speakers at the Democratic convention in the most recent New Republic:
To be sure, Kerry eschews the liberal label. And the Democratic platform is a study in moderation. But, in its choice of convention speakers, the Kerry campaign is presenting an almost shockingly realistic picture of what the Democratic Party really is. And that means liberalism is on tap virtually every night.
The festivities begin on Monday night with Jimmy Carter, who the Clinton campaign kept off stage in 1996 because of his economic and national security weaknesses. Also that night is Clinton, who the Gore campaign tried to muzzle in 2000 for fear he would alienate moderates. Joining them is Gore himself, who has moved to within ideological spitting distance of Michael Moore.
Tuesday night includes Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, one of the few convention speakers who has shown she can win in a red state. Also speaking are Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack, Ron Reagan, and Teresa Heinz Kerry. And then there are the ghosts of liberalism past and future: Convention keynoter Barack Obama--enormously gifted but, as my colleague Noam Scheiber has pointed out, no New Democrat ("Race Against History," May 31)--and Ted Kennedy, the living embodiment of the pre-DLC dream that (thanks partly to Kerry) has not died.
Wednesday night features two politicians smack in the Democratic mainstream: New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, as well as a little-known retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel turned Democratic congressional candidate named Steve Brozak. It ends with Elizabeth and John Edwards. Thursday night is given over to Kerry's family and one of his Vietnam boatmates, along with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Introducing the nominee will be former Georgia Senator Max Cleland, a decent, embittered man who could teach a course on how not to win in a conservative state.
I doubt the Kerry campaign tried to stock the podium with liberals. They simply chose the people in the party with mass appeal, great promise, or both. Being Democrats, they tinkered to make sure no race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation was overlooked. And, this being post-September 11 America, they threw in people with military backgrounds. All this is, in its way, admirably honest. And, unsurprisingly, it produced a convention roster that looks--and sounds--like the Democratic Party.
But just because it's honest doesn't make it wise. In 1988, the Democrats picked a successful red-state governor--Bill Clinton--to give the nominating speech. In 1992, Clinton himself tapped another successful red-state governor, Zell Miller, to give a keynote. (That was before Miller morphed from a Democratic iconoclast into a Republican hack.) And in 1996, Clinton chose yet a third--Evan Bayh, then-governor (now senator) of Indiana--to give the keynote.
Each speaker was more conservative than the party's nominee. Each represented the party not as it was, but as it might have been had liberal interest groups not exercised such control over the nominating process. (In 1988, for instance, the party had not yet reconciled itself to a nominee, like Clinton, who aggressively supported the death penalty.) The Democrats didn't do what the Bush Republicans are doing this year: They didn't showcase speakers who opposed core party principles. But, for the Democratic activists assembled in 1988, 1992, and 1996, the convention speakers required a modest ideological stretch. They pushed slightly beyond the party's comfort zone and, therefore, escaped the self-congratulatory echo chamber that an activist base can so easily become. This year's Democratic delegates, by contrast, will sit through the convention speeches in utter comfort. And that comfort could make Americans around the country squirm.
I'm sure it'll be in the 80% range of support for the war. But the bigger problem for Kerry (and the one that I pointed out) is that his party really is split on this, with about a quarter of registered Democrats still favoring the war. This convention isn't going to do much to draw them in.
polls show Republicans support the President in the 90% range and Kerry garners significantly less support from the party's base. When it is all said and done: thank you Nader!
from the convention right now. He both addressed the NYT/CBS poll numbers, and just got through interviewing some female delegates from AZ.
- Prager believes (and I humbly concure) that people believe Iraq is not worth the cost at this time because the good stuff is a)not being covered b)hasn't come to full fruition. If Iraq moves into a place where it is a functioning democracy, those poll numbers will flip. One only as to look at the newspaper coverage at the time of post WWII occupation in Germany and Japan to hear a cacophony of voices screaming "failure! quagmire!"
- Prager is unfailing polite even as he asks the tough questions. The AZ women were hard pressed to give substansive answers to questions about how "extremist" and "intolerant" Republicans are. The only concrete example one woman could come up with (and she struggled) was that Republicans push for vouchers and charter schools, which demonstrates their disregard for the "separation of church and state."
Hmmm... and conservatives are accused of voting as unthinking, emotional rubes.
The pro-war Democrats certainly wouldn't be far off from the views of Kerry and Edwards themselves, including the desire to keep troops in Iraq in an effort to stabilize the country. The anti-war Democrats just want Bush to lose, and don't care so much how it actually happens.
You can look at the flip side, of course, as 18% of Republicans think we should have stayed out of Iraq (CBS/NYT, 7/11-15). They will find themselves very lonely as far as the GOP convention is concerned.
I used to like Prager, but I've lost all respect for him after he wrote an entire column about John Kerry's* use of a word that President Cheney felt good about using on the Senate floor. Sorry, but I can't do it.
*It turns out that Kerry, a certifiable war hero with 20 confirmed kills, has been known to use that word since the battlefield. As with the Sentate floor, that's entirely acceptable to me and to President Cheney.
Not if the convention is like it was in 2000. The GOP allows for a lot more liberal Rs than the Dems allow for conservative Ds. There will be plenty of antiwar GOPers there, including some friends of mine. Like I said: 80%.
In fact, he used it again in the latest issue of ESPN The Magazine (published on Earth The Planet).
...the GOP convention pretty much only lets liberal/moderate members speak, since the party leadership knows they'd get trounced nationally if they showed the true face of the party by letting the Tom Delays and Rick Santorums speak.
I thought you believed they were going to be trounced anyway, Steve.
he doesn't take the easy (and weirdly the position of some leftists) way of declaring a certain behavior "bad" or "good" regardless of circumstance. Dennis always examines context. Also, Dennis makes a very clear distinction between private and public behavior. This is the column you're referring to:
It needs to be understood that it is not the use of an expletive per se that demands censure, let alone disqualifies a person from public office. If it did, only the mute would qualify for office. Moreover, when judiciously used, expletives can help a person let off steam in private and can be legitimately used in eliciting laughs in some humor. The issue here is the public use of expletives.
The difference between using an expletive when you think no one can hear you and when you want the world to hear you should be obvious to everyone. But in part due to the unprecedentedly large number of people who have attended college, the obvious often needs to be explained.
Too bad you didn't read his followup column the next week:
You want to know what many conservatives and liberals agree on? That there is little or no moral difference between public and private behavior.
Religious conservatives who disagreed wrote that God knows and judges all our actions, private and public, while other conservatives noted that a man's character is best demonstrated by his behavior "when no one is looking."
Liberal objectors generally offered two other arguments: right-wing hypocrisy and the triviality of the issue.
In short, many conservatives think public cursing and private cursing are equally wrong, and many liberals believe that public and private cursing are equally OK.
They are both wrong.
Special Patrol, you ought to understand that Dennis' column was not about Kerry per se. Indeed, Dennis wrote and talked about how truly awful it is to have the newsmedia clamoring for Kerry's divorce records.
This is not a liberal-conservative issue. The news media are virtually all liberal, but their love of power and willingness to humiliate people have little to do with their liberalism. Conservatives are more likely than liberals to believe that the public needs to know a political candidate's sexual desires and history. So, we have liberal-conservative collusion in the belief that it is important to expose public figures' most private actions and even desires to ridicule.
Whatever you might personally think of Prager, he's no Republican, or even conservative, hack.
Hmmm.
Frankly I think that Kerry's biggest liability is John Edwards. Simply put, any sort of debate between Edwards and Cheney will have Edwards getting hammered through the floor. Just on the subject of abortion will be enough to make Edwards look like a fool.
Practically speaking Edwards has to toe the DNC line that abortion on demand, by anyone and at any age, is the right way. The problem with this is that Edwards made the bulk of his personal fortune litigating malpractice lawsuits on behalf of infants. In particular his famous channeling the words of an unborn infant.
Really Cheney just has to mimic that, bring up the fact that 12 week old (first trimester) fetuses can smile and Edwards is toast.
Hmmm.
"a certifiable war hero with 20 confirmed kills"
Ummm. Excuse me but could you reference just where you got that tidbit of information? Not that it's relevant but I'm curious as to where that's documented. This is the first time that I've seen anyone put a number like that up.
shrug I suppose you could put up other stats while you're at it. "Kerry, 14 weeks of Vietnam and then off to Brooklyn."
Still. Where did you dig up that number?
"certifiable", but we all know Gore is already there.
;-)
I'm going to have to get a tape of this show. Dennis is a wonderful interviewer... genuinely polite, non-confrontational, but asks questions like a skilled surgeon weilds a scalpel.
He was just interviewing a woman (not a delegate) from a Conservation group (he noted that her claim her group was non-partisan but she was wearing a button her group put out that was anti-Bush). He asked very revealing questions when it came to environmental issues, and lots of questions that demonstrate she was talking in emotional generalities with little or no substansive examples to back those generalities.
Dennis asked one of his standard values questions:
If you came upon your pet and a stranger both drowning and could only save one, which one would it be?
Her immediate answer was:
Well, if it was George Bush, I'd save my cat.
And she was serious. Dennis then asked her questions "I really want to understand where your animosity towards President Bush comes from." probing down through specific "whys" and guess what? Bottom line, she has never considered him a legitimate President. There was/is nothing GW could have ever done this woman would like.
Says a lot, eh?
I remember when the Pentagon was telling how great we were doing in Vietnam under Johnson and Nixon. We had lots of kills. It's possible that the numbers were accurate, but it's possible they were not. PR seemed more important at times than actually pursuing a successful war. Certainly nothing the Pentagon did at the time seemed calculated to make us believe their numbers. Yep, according to the Pentagon, we were beating the Vietcong and North Vietnamese every day.
I'll spare you the punchline.
I'm wrong. His biggest liability really is Teresa, after all (From Time, conducted 7/20-22 by SRBI Public Affairs; surveyed 1,000 regis. voters; margin of error +/- 3):
"Which wife best fits your opinion of the role of the first lady?"
L.Bush: 53%
THK: 19%
Bush is going to be trounced.
However, Congress may pull through. I think the GOP will probably hang onto the House, but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't, either.
I'm sure that a real stemwinder from Rick Santorum would change that balance in the House, though. I guess the RNC agrees (and learned from letting the Pats have at it in '92).
And nothing short of the Apocalypse will change the balance in the House. So sorry.
Now, Dean, he could help the balance in the House.
Maybe I'm right, maybe you're right. We'll know in 3 months and a few days.
Not if the convention is like it was in 2000. The GOP allows for a lot more liberal Rs than the Dems allow for conservative Ds.
Did you read that TNR piece you quoted?
Ideologically, this delegation isn't built for John Kerry. It's built for Howard Dean.
The schism you see is more the aftereffects of the detachment of the Democratic Party from its base in the fall of 2002, when John Kerry and many others voted to let Bush go to war. The selection of John Kerry as the nominee was strictly practical, as Dean couldn't make the sale that he was the one who take on Bush. Dean's words were coming out of John Kerry's mouth as the primary campaign heated up, so Kerry got the nod for at least belatedly understanding what his base wanted.
BTW, attitudes toward the Iraq war are polarized by party, but opposing it is hardly out of the mainstream. Majorities now believe it was a mistake. That becomes a supermajority when it is asked whether it was worth the cost in blood and treasure.
What percentage of GOP delegates do you think support the war?