Semi-Daily Journal

Democrats had better take to heart the command: "we shall not criticize a fellow Democrat." The need is to focus on radical right Republicans who are bent on destroying the legacy of both Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt. Radical right Republicans who have no regard for the environment or middle class households are the problem!

My guess is, its going to come down to Dean and Clark after New Hampshire, and then, MOST of the Dean camp will see the inevitability of Clark winning and also realize that Beating Bush trumps loyalty to their ideal candidate.

The Clintons are doing what is in the best interest of the Democratic Party, and that is to make certain that a southerner is nominated for president.

Overall, General Clark is the best hope for a Democratic win.

Interesting, but we have yet to hear where Brad puts Clinton hating lefties in relation to Nader voters in the hierarchy of sin.

I love the site and learn a great deal from the commentary, but it would be nice if the road to 2004 was not another occasion for centerist democrats trashing lefty liberals. Turns out you need our votes in those close races after all, huh fellows? Throw some bones to the left and you might win by margins too big to steal, this time.

vsa

Democrats have been learning day by day what it means to lose the White House as well as both houses of Congress. Democrats are learning what radical right Republican policies are, from turning over environmental protection on protection to producing a deficit that will threaten Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Perhaps it takes a while to realize what being a "minority party" is all about. Republicans learned. Now Democrats had better be learning and uniting. Democrats are facing a party that wishes to send us to the 1920s or before. That is the problem. Focus.

yes brad, you are free to conclude whatever you wish, but nowhere did greider brand clark as a weak candidate. you should be informed (especially being the establishment type) of talk of a trojan horse here. note bill's "surprising" comment yesterday that hillary had not yet decided about a campaign run. clark's team would be a group of people that could carry the clinton's cause, no? i think this is the thrust of greider's point.

yes brad, you are free to conclude whatever you wish, but nowhere did greider brand clark as a weak candidate. you should be informed (especially being the establishment type) of talk of a trojan horse here. note bill's "surprising" comment yesterday that hillary had not yet decided about a campaign run. clark's team would be a group of people that could carry the clinton's cause, no? i think this is the thrust of greider's point.

yes brad, you are free to conclude whatever you wish, but nowhere did greider brand clark as a weak candidate. you should be informed (especially being the establishment type) of talk of a trojan horse here. note bill's "surprising" comment yesterday that hillary had not yet decided about a campaign run. clark's team would be a group of people that could carry the clinton's cause, no? i think this is the thrust of greider's point.

It is a fantasy world, but not his own private one: notice the idea that the great Clintons have lost their reigns over the U.S., so they must have someone else to act as their pawns, but when the stars are right, the Clintons shall rise again.

It's obviously ripped off of H. P. Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu."

So the Clintons would have us become like themselves, free and wild and beyond good and evil? Bring it on, I say! 't's gotta be better than what the Bushes would have of us.

Heck, I will happily vote for Dean or Clark or Kerry or Edwards or Kucinich or any of the Democratic candidates who finally gains the nomination. Campaign away with vigor.

Greider is an extremist with an axe to grind. He's written lots of delusional, badly argued stuff over the years, and he's getting worse with age. We definitely need a better press corps.

Btw, I'd be surprised if the General even makes it to the first primary, much less gets the nomination. As a candidate, Sir Wesley fails miserably on several fronts: (1) he's extremely arrogant and unlikable - wasn't even popular in the army, for gosh sakes, (2) he's prevaricating on his official political position on the war with iraq, (3) and he's on countless hours of "talking head" videotape in several different positions on iraq that conflict with whatever his current political position of the moment is on Iraq, and (4) because he's so unlikeable to begin with, it's doubtful that Sir Wesley will be forgiven the way the transgressions of Reagan and Clinton were often tefloned-over.

Short Clark, now. This is his Andy Warhol moment, so be quick.

I assume that most of you are economist. It's poorly funny that economists cannot think up (using your chossen profession) "logical, economical, substainable, long term solutions" to use privet money (corperations) to solve 99 percent of the social, enviormental ect. problems that you complain about. Hint; tree farms, and cultivate between the roles of trees with enough extra invested cash (dividends) to pay the operating cost until the cash crops come in. Heck, the answer is so simple. Read this ten times, "logical, economical, substainable, long term solutions." What's even more poorly funny, is you profess to protect the freedom of people, BUT you choose to pass laws that restrict the freedom or denie people the freedom that you so profess to protect in order to correct the social problem, that, you could correct by using the free market system that you clam the republicans are out to destroy, and you so emotionaly wish to protect. -----Now, for the very real reality. Both partys, only care about themselves! We The People! get frenched from the left and frenched from the right. They ever interchange ishues. One year for something, the next year against it. No matter what, we the people get the short end of the stick no matter who's in power.

What, do we have a full moon tonight? - Where did all the loonies come from?

Anarchus: I have no doubt you would think even less of Clark if the other generals loved him. I've read any number of times that Dean has a temper - does that make HIM a no-hoper?

The candidate who has the most to fear from Greider, et al. is Governor Dean, a center-right Democrat who has been to some extent captured by his party's "rather-be-left-than-president" McGovern wing. If Dean wants to win the election, and not just the nomination, he needs to start pointing out how wrong many of his supporters are in their estimation of him.

And I'll gladly vote for him - or any other Democrat - next year in November.

I think Greider's near the mark on this one. But first, a parenthesis:

No matter who the Democratic nominee is, the next election is going to be a horse race that goes down to the wire--and this was said by Karl Rove several months ago, before Bush's troubles with the economy and Iraq misplanning became so obvious to all. The reason is yet unobserved by any pundit: The Florida 2000 debacle put everyone on notice that your vote can make the difference--your vote could decide the election! This makes it fun to vote again. (There will be more office betting pools.) And if this increases turnout even marginally, the Democrats get a very good shot at the White House, because the country is very slightly more Democrat than it is Republican.

I think all the pols smelled this early on, despite the op-ed chatter about Bush's strength. And the White House has to be worried that, except for the two spikes up at 9/11 and the Iraq invasion, Bush's numbers always go consistently downhill, with no uphills. He has his father's personal unlikeability.

This means that 1) early on, the Democratic field would be predictably large and noisy. And 2) if Gore planned to run again, he would still say he wasn't, to avoid the belittling crush and media sniping.

That said, the Dem's shiniest stars are Gore, Dean, Clark, and Rodham, maybe in that order. Gore says he's not going to run--but why did he come out around last November and give policy speeches? If Dean gets the nomination and wins, he'll get the Clintonites out of the DNC, putting off Hillary's chances maybe forever.

If Clark stays hot, Hillary might get VP. If Clark fizzles quickly (arrogance, hypocrisy, bad telegenics, trying to start World War III in Kosovo) Hillary's still got time to enter the race, pick the general up off the ground, dust him off, and pre-emptively announce he's going to be her VP. So you get Clark-Hillary or Hillary-Clark.

Is this the calculation?

What I'd like to know: is/was Gore planning to announce late as possible, after the field of contenders was set up and shaken out. If I had won the popular vote, knew I was the better man, saw the early fumbling on security issues, the needless and horrible rollback on environment protections, etc. etc., I know I would be thinking about it--all else be damned.

Does Clark's entry spoil it for Gore?

And another question: why did the DNC work to undermine Gore and pressure his supporters to not give him any more money?

"... nowhere did greider brand clark as a weak candidate." [Self]

Greider said "Clark [is] Bill and Hillary’s pick to stop Howard Dean and keep warm the leader’s chair until ‘08 when the stars are supposed to align for Hillary’s candidacy. If Clark wins the nomination and loses the election, that’s fully compatible with the Clinton restoration plan (and maybe would increase Dems' hunger for the re-ascendancy)."

So Greider is casting the Clintons as brewing up a witch's plot in which Clark is the pathetic catspaw, not knowing how insignificant his own prospects are to his cunning masters' overweening ambitions. It's left paranoia mixed with regurgitated pundit pap.

It would be a huge mistake for Clark to choose Clinton as his running mate. (Hillary, that is. Bill would be good. Heh.) I think Josh Marshall (along with most other folks) underestimates the cultural and historical forces that make a female President inevitable. There is a untapped hunger for a female President. A lot of men wouldn't for her, but that would be more than made up for by the increased turnout from those who would. I think these reasons make Clinton a more viable candidate than Marshall thinks. That said, he's right about all her incredibly negative baggage and tendency to polarize people. Those negative factors would be more in play with her as a VP candidate than would the positive factors I mentioned previously. In other words, she'd be a liability.

Now, another woman who's a prominent centrist Democrat would be ideal. I can't think of one, though. Failing that, someone like Ann Richards would be quite good. Ooh, I like that team, although it doesn't make sense from Electoral College considerations. As some people are forgetting, a key here is picking up some of the southern red states. That's a *big* Clark strength relative to Dean. In any event, the Dem VP candidate will be as important in 2004 as it was in both parties in 2000. Either Gore or Bush would have won handidly had they had better running mates. Certainly that's the case with Bush, where Cheney brought not a damn thing to the ticket, especially where Bush was vulnerable. But for all Lieberman's virtues, and he has some, I don't think he helped the ticket in the ways that really matter come election night. Anyway, if Clark gets the nomination, he needs to either A) pick a running mate who has a tremendous amount of popularity in at least two key states; or B) pick a running mate who strengthens the ticket nationally in a very significant way, a popular centrist with domestic policy credibility, for example. Clinton doesn't really satisfy either condition.

As to Greider's theory; well, Safire echoes it. There's no doubt that Bill has a big ego and Hillary is ambitious. But I think the biggest motivation for the Clintons in talking Clark into the race is that they correctly realize that none of the current crop has a chance of winning the general election. Because Bill screwed up and didn't cultivate influence and control of his own party, he's stuck with individually finding someone and talking them into running. Clark's his choice.

Does anybody else agree that this country doesn't deserve to be thought of as a beacon of freedom and democracy if a centrist, budget balancing, Democrat like Howard Dean is considered too leftist to be President, but a right-wing nutcase like George W. Bush is considered a shoo-in. Doesn't anybody else think of that as a sign that something has gone fundamentally wrong in our system of governance? Maybe it's just me.

Dean supporters know all about his moderate background, and they like it.

We need to keep Dean and Clark on message - fighting Bush. May the best man win!

Dave Larson: I think that Clark has high negatives and an unlikeable personality. The fact that he was unpopular with senior officers in his own organization suggests that he's not a likeable sort. If, like Eisenhower, Clark was popular with his command and had won a major war and had national name recognition, I'd think highly of Clark's candidacy. But he reminds me a lot more of Pete Dawkins than Dwight Eisenhower.

That said, no matter who the Democrats run this is likely to be a tight, tight race. I think the lesson(s) of 1992, 1996, and 2000 is that the electorate of the country is almost evenly split between liberals and conservatives. And that's not going to change in November of 2004 regardless of the candidates.

Regarding this: "And another question: why did the DNC work to undermine Gore and pressure his supporters to not give him any more money?" the answer is that Clinton and Gore had a falling out during and in the wake of the 2000 election, and Clinton controls the DNC through MacAuliffe. Btw, the reasons the Clinton's fear Dean the most is that he's promised to fire MacAuliffe is he gets the Democratic nomination. To my knowledge none of the other candidates have taken that stance . . . .

Why does Clinton want Clark to run? When Clark talks about Bush foreign policy and Iraq policy, the media pay attention. Clark has a lot of credibility in foreign policy and the media view him as a resource. He has been sought as an expert who speaks his mind and is difficult to dismiss.

The Democrats need someone who can articulate a foreign policy that addresses the threat of terrorism in a way that is not perceived as weak. Clark brings credibility to the arguments the Democrats have been making. Without Clark, the press will challenge the credibility of the other Democrats. With Clark in the race, the other Democrats who are making similar statements on Iraq can share that credibility.

I have met Greider and his POV is one of organizing against the powerful in order to improve life for the oppressed. This is a necessary counter to the corporate interests that have money and power on their side. However, Greider is at odds with Clinton's third way of using power to improve lives. This is because Greider sees immediate problems and argues for rapid short term remedies. In Greider's view, it is the role of government to provide services and a safety net to the poor.

Clinton, who grew up poor, understood that most poor people really want a job that pays a living wage and health benefits, not a handout. Greider views welfare reform as negative and overlooks the important accomplishments of the Clinton administration. Black voters loved Clinton because the unemployment rate for blacks dropped below 10% under the Clinton administration. Unfortunately, that accomplishment has been reversed under the Bush administration. Many in the GOP, who listen to the racist code about welfare queens and the lazy poor, just don't get it. They don't understand why support for Clinton was so high. Many on the left like Greider don't get it either. They decry the erosion of direct government support for the poor, but underestimate the value of managing the economy so it benefits the poor.

Clinton's enemies view him and his motives as a cynical lust for personnal power. This is in large part because they fail to grasp how Clinton used his power to benefit the poor and don't grasp how the Bush mismanagement of the economy has had a devastating effect on the poorest Americans. I have often read comments to the effect that it was unfair that Bush41 was fired because of the economy when it was starting to turn around in 1992. This misses the point. In a nation such as the US with a very poor safety net, a job is essential. This is why the pocketbook issue is so strong at the ballot box and why any politician that wants to be reelected needs to pay attention to employment.

Clinton wants Bush replaced because Bush policies are bad for America and are weakening our country at home and abroad. Clinton cares less about personalities and more about getting the policy right.

Who cares, really what the Clintons think or plan. Whatever Clark is, he isn't doing this as a stalking horse for Hillary (who, I am quite sure, is sinceely not interested in being a candidate next near). Clark sees a field that consists of Howard Dean and eight other pols who generate no exciteemnt. He's obviously playing to be the alternative to Dean. You'll know he has a chance if he starts to pull and maintain some numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire.

None of this changes the fact that the Dems strongest candidate is sitting on his rear end in Tennessee.

sorry mr. bahko:

the clinton/blair "third way" is really the first-and-a-half way: a full loaf for the rich and powerful interests, some crumbs for the poor and working class. in the meantime, income inequality, together with the large economic and socio-political consequences of such distributional dynamics, continues apace. mr. greider may be too focused on short-term solutions and too woefully ignorant to satisfy the "higher fatuity" of the economists, but the long-term may simply mean never- who is to reliably predict this? at any rate, real welfare reform would have required an increase in expenditures: earlier on, the clintonoids admitted this, sotto voce. and what is the fate of welfare reform today? perhaps we need another boost in incarceration rates.

as to why people so loathe mr. clinton, could it be his utter want of public character? (monica was merely a minor symptom of this, although sir john falstaff was right; there are, indeed, situations where discretion is the better part of valor. he couldn't even manage that right!) his "poor" background seems to have left him with an insatiable need to suck up to the rich and powerful, which, coincidentally, is how power is acquired and maintained in the status quo. (mr. blair's case is psychologically much different: his disabled/dying tory father with frustrated political ambitions, his daring ability to persuade just about anybody of anything, his earnest need for self-righteousness.) the claim that mr. clinton was intent on using power to improve lives, when those lives were scarcely consulted or given voice to, (since they mostly don't vote), is a combination of condescension and bad faith. mr. clinton was a past master of proffering micro-policy "solutions" to problems both real and imaginary, while leaving the real wounds to bleed and fester, so long as middle class anxieties could be overlooked. as for his alleged popularity amongst afro-americans, a sure litmus test for white liberals, could it be that it had less to do with anything he did for afro-american communities and more to do with how he was savaged by the scarcely sublimated jim crow right, which evoked identification on the part of afro-american political alienation?

Bakho is right on target in his praise of Mr. Clinton's domestic policies. The numbers prove it. Declining poverty rates, declining crime rates, real wages going up for the first time in years.

Clinton was a true progressive. By bringing economic rationality (free trade, fiscal restraint) he got rid of a lot of the outmoded
ideological baggage that threatened to send the party to political oblivion.

Some doctrinaire liberals protested, but every time Bill Clinton moved "to the right" his poll numbers shot up like a rocket.

It is one more example of how much more sense the common people have than does the left leaning "intelligentia".

1) declining crime rates are largely a function of demographic decreases in the crime susceptible young male category, plus perhaps a waning of the crack epidemic. increased incarceration rates have been shown statistically to have no effect.

2) the average wage has increased 7% in real terms since 1973, whereas the increase in labor productivity since then has been greater than 66%.
a tightening in the labor markets in the late 1990's accounts for almost all the gain, but this condition no longer obtains. currently, the minimum wage in real dollars is at its lowest level since 1955.

3) poverty rate declines are due to the same factors. the poverty rate since has been increasing since. the next report will be published next friday, since that is the best way to bury the news-(saturday is the slowest, least attended to news day.)

4) in the 1970's corporate interests, allied to a disciplinary conservative movement, set up a well-funded institutional network to campaign for ideological hegemony. upon achieving marginal electoral success, all prior doctrines of fiscal restraint were abandonned, resulting in massive deficits that afforded very little in the way of social benefits-(discretionary social spending as a percentage of the budget sharply declined.) it was inevitable that a center-right democrat would be left with the job of cleaning up this mess. we are now entering round two of this malicious game.

5) the fallacy of the clinton/blair "third way" is that it subordinates governance to electoral success, rather than rendering effective governance and the achievement of real and durable
social progress the basis of electoral appeal. far and away, the best and most effective labor government was the post-war atlee regime, which benefitted by the fact that many of its senior members had served in the wartime coalition government. by the way, the atlee government won the popular vote in the 1951(?) elections, but lost its parlimentary majority due to the first-past-the-post electoral system. the failure of electoral follow through by the clintonoids may have many sources, but i doubt overwhelming public integrity was one of them.

" the fallacy of the clinton/blair "third way" is that it subordinates governance to electoral success, rather than rendering effective governance and the achievement of real and durable social progress"

Democracy is such a drag.

Someone once said of the Bourbons that they have forgotten nothing and they have learned nothing. The same should be said of john c. halasz and the rest of international Stalinist bourgeoisie.

from "postmodern socialism" to "international stalinist bourgoisie"! what next? how about "saddamite pedophile elite." do you have any actual sense of semantics, clueless joe, or due you simply rely upon arbitrary binary oppositions, to set up an ideological punching bag, to fulfill your need for resentful self-justification?

Let's get down to specifics. When Maggie Thatcher came into office Great Britain was an economic and social basket case. After twenty years of Old Labor rule the country was on the verge of joining the Third World. The Iron Lady, whatever her faults, saved her country from ruin, and Tony Blair knows that.

Mr. Halasz, the Brezhnev era is over. You need to pick up on Glasnost and Perestroika.

I have no idea whether or not the Clintons are secretly rooting for Clark to lose, but it's hardly an off-the-wall notion that the Clintons use their immense publicity and fundraising power to their own ends at the expense of the party at large. New York Democrats outside the Clinton camp are still livid at the way the Clintons ensured that Carl McCall would have no money and no public forum for his campaign, widely believing that she squashed him to ensure that New York didn't have another prominent Democrat to compete with her, Schumer, and Silver. Perhaps McCall was unlikely to win . . . but first abandonning him without fundraising support, and then actually competing with him for publicity, was pretty shameful for a New York Democrat.

john c. halasz:

"a tightening in the labor markets in the late 1990's accounts for almost all the gain"

Wasn't this bahko's point?

"rather than rendering effective governance and the achievement of real and durable social progress the basis of electoral appeal."

It is the sustainability thing where you radical leftists aren't doing very well. It has to be the greatest radical leftist conundrum that rational, politically controlled economies with sustainable growth do not exist.

Even worse, the closer economies get to the denigrated Washington Consensus the more likely they are to achieve sustained long-term economic growth. Of course thinking about what that implies isn't on the table. Their statest answer has to be correct. All others are evil.

Stan, it's that old time religion. The two dominant forms of it are: A) economics is an easily understood human artifact that has been intentionally designed so as to oppress many and that an alternative designed system with social justice will only succeed provided the political will to do so along with the neutering of those who have a vested interest in its failure; and, B) that Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is just another name for the Divine Hand of God which distributed wealth, prima facie, in the most Just and unimprovable manner possible. There really is no middle ground in this debate, except among reasonable people who prefer reality to fantastical though emotionally satisfying ideology. Not that there's many of those kinds of folks.

The phrase "social justice" needs a definition.

Social justice, n. (1)Taking money from people who are hard-working and responsible and using it to hire government bureaucrats to dole out payments to those who are lazy and irresponsible. (2) Distributing rewards and promotions to people according to their ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation no matter how unqualified they are.

Shall I teach you how to know something? Realize you know it when you know it, and realize you don't know it when you don't.

Ethics is not necessarily the handmaiden of theology.