Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

We must not be too confident. There are certain polls that always seem slanted to this party or that. We must simply do our best for change.

This just means that those who confirmed that they are "likely voters" (I bet many possible respondents are hiding that fact) no longer like the President beyond the margin of error. It means that either candidate is alive in most of the "swing" states.

The problem with Democratic strategists and talking to the press is that there is always an unhappy camper, and while sometimes the unhappy camper is right, quite often, the unhappy camper is promoting ideas in the campaign that are shot down for a good reason. Hence, the ubiquitous "Some Democrats say..." story - and the reason you don't see Republican strategists saying things like this is that they'll be thrown out on their asses if they do. Democrats apparently don't often use that threat against insubordinate campaign staffers.

Brad, while Zogby's nationwide polls are pretty accuate, his statewide ones are infamous for their wild errors -- in both directions. In 1998 he predicted that Sen. D'Amato would win in NY by 0.5% (he lost by 10), and also that Carol Moseley-Braun would win in Illinois by 3 points (she lost by 4). His statewide polls are worth exactly nothing -- as you should be able to guess from the fact that his new one shows Kerry trailing Bush by 6 points in West Virginia but only 1 point in Tennessee!

Anyone want to wager that the senior party strategist also wrote an op-ed to the Washington Post talking about how Kerry was blowing it and that he should instead follow the winning ways of the Liberman campaign?

I think it pays to be absolutely clear on what has happened - the Democrats haven't won on any substantive point; the Republicans lost. Bush melted and Cheney sweltered, but neither Kerry nor Edwards rose above the quotidian.

On almost every key issue, Kerry and Edwards appear availing themselves of right-wing rhetoric and policy. If it weren't for the gift of Iraq's current mess, I doubt the Republicans would crumble so easily.

OT, but I just read Joan Didion in the NYRB on the walk over and she now knows that the beast exists. She used to be clinical dissection of political hackery and press foolishness, with a touch of the shrill, but she's gone over the cliff, and now she's nothing but shrill barking into the abyss. Just a bit:

"As this suggests, the word "truth" itself had by then been redefined, the emprical method abandoned: "the truth" was now whatever we needed it to be, the confirmation of those propositions or policies in which we "believed in our hearts," or had "faith." "Belief" and faith" had in turn become words used to drop a scrim, white out the possibility of decoding, let alone debating -- what was being said... The President had famously pioneered this tactic, from which derieved his "resolve": he "believed" inthe weapons of mass destruction, for example, as if the existence of weapons was a doctrinal point on the order of transubstantiation...

Lenin, if it weren't for the "gift" of Iraq, Bush would go to the poll as "the president who destroyed the economy". So the war plays more into the hands of the incumbent than against him. Also, the "gift" is a direct consequences of the Administration choices so I don't see why holding somebody accountable for their actions is such a surprising thing.
In any case, an election with an incumbent President is always a referendum on his performance more than a boxing match between two equals. Based on this poll the answer to the question "do you still want Bush and Cheney?" seems to be a resounding NO.

I distrust the polls simply on a gut feel that the "likely voter" algorithms, based on previous elections, are wrong.

Bases: a poll comparison between Republicans and Democrats on the question "Is this an especially important election?" 2000 vs 2004 Reps 49% v 50% Dems 38% v 68%

On a personal level, I know several people who were never involved in polititcs before who are this year. And when was the last time the Democratic campaign described as "lavishly funded?"

On a bad note:

All the lies VP Cheney states in recent debate are taken as gospel by rural states that Republicans covet. These joe-six-pack types watch the debate, but normally do not sit down with a east-coast big-time newspaper and try to disseminate the facts from truth and fiction.
So, that is why Cheney repeats the lie over-and-over again- it works.

On a good note:

I feel no one can anticipate how many seniors who are pissed off, and young voters whom normally never vote are going to be poured on the scales of voting tabulations. The centrists who voted for Bush last election are not riding the fence anymore. The registration has been quietly going on to the Republicans' dismay. Watch out, you may be surprised by 'the sleeping giant' (The American apathetic underground has been aroused, fear of draft, medicare, oil prices, economy, health care, et cetera.

Point taken, Sandor, but I stand by my suggestion that the poll numbers reflect lousy Republican performance rather than any stellar qualities in the Democrat leads.

Dave S makes a good point: we might be better off not waiting for Cheney's "disaster" to sink in. From electoral-vote.com:

"More results on the vice-presidential debate from Survey USA. In 8 states, Cheney won; in 5 states, Edwards won. California was a tie. In cities, Cheney did better. He won 17 of the cities polled vs. only 4 for Edwards. These results are clearly different from the instapolls available right after the debate" ( http://www.electoral-vote.com/oct/oct07.html ).

It's kind of a great strategy on Cheney's part actually: he knew that Edwards didn't have the time or documentary evidence to refute every wrong (or misrepresented) thing he said, and the viewer just can't believethat the VP is trying to misinform them so consistently..

Lenin,

Short of being an ex-president himself, it is always an uphill task for the challenger to 'show' his record. A referendum is a given when the incumbent is running for re-election.

Unknown angels can trump known devils.

The Perlustrator

DavidS, and Rob,

I think you are both right and wrong. Right because, true, Cheney's factual inconsistencies are largely lost to joe-six-pack's, and probably still work well with them as they have for 4 years. Wrong, because it's not really the issue here, good or bad. At this point, this campain feels to me like a personality contest. Kerry and Edwards may not be doing as well as we would like them to (but again people reading this blog aren't their target voters), yet they are certainly coming out as much stronger, smarter, patriotic and more coherent guys than the Bush campain had sofar been able to portray them. As Edwards said, now voters can see for themselves, and there is only so much pre- and post-debate spin can do against the first-hand opinions of undecided and usually-but-not-this-time-slacking voters.

It's a shame the Democrats just put up with loudmouthed campaign staff who feel compelled to blab to the nearest reporter every time that a defeatist, pro-Republican notion comes into their little noggins. Can't the party leaders do anything to discipline these insubordinate losers?

On another note: I'm glad that Kerry has pulled even and has momentum, but I desperately hope the campaign isn't gettig overconfident. Kerry MUST be as well prepared on Friday as he was last Thursday: he can't assume that Bush will again, give him the gift of pouting/shuffling/hunching/ twitching.

About the "party strategists" and
"senior advisers": we have no idea who these people are. I don't trust the media's representation of anonymous party sources.
I would not be at all surprised if Zell Miller is one of the sources for this article.

i've said all along that i have no expectations that john kerry will be a great president, and i'm not even sure that he'll be a good one. All i ask of him is that he be a better president than george bush, which, admittedly, a coin-flipping machine could accomplish.

that said, the great is the enemy of the good. The Kerry/Edwards team will at least restore to the white house a belief in reality, which has completely departed this group (i love the AP headline that Cheney feels the new report justifies the war).

Yes, it's true that lots of people simply accept the lies that bush and cheney tell; there's not much we can do about that. But lots of people don't accept those lies, and see the cognitive distortions of, for instance, a weapons report saying that iraq had no capabilities and cheney saying said report justifies the war.

The dynamic of this election has always been about whether kerry could transfer the larger amount of anti-bush policies feeling into Democratic votes. At this moment, bearing in mind that we are dealing with the sleaziest set of characters in the white house since the nixon era, he and edwards seem on the verge of accomplishing this feat. Whether that's due to bush and cheney being exposed as fools and liars or intrinsic qualities of kerry and edwards makes no difference to me: just win, baby....

"If it weren't for the gift of Iraq's current mess, I doubt the Republicans would crumble so easily."

And the number of people out of work.

...and perhaps even the *weather*. Bah!

But that's always the case; most people in the USA make their political decisions without regard to policy. Maybe that's actually reasonable, given that US political parties are geographic coalitions, and their political stances change.

In any event, I doubt that any seriously liberal candidate could win this year; at the very least, that candidate would have to be a great orator. Maybe Barak Obama, in a decade or two.

Howard, I respectfully disagree with your assessment of Kerry. The more I learn about him and how he operates, the more I like him. He isn't flashy, it's true, but that's a good thing in my book, not a bad thing.

He is rock-solid. Completely unflappable. There's no getting him down. But he's capable of absorbing many points of view, and building a consensus. His politics are center-left, fine by me.

Personally, I'm a bit suspicious of the "charismatic" leader that everybody seems to want so much. As the Tao says, "with the best leaders, the people say, Oh, we did it."

With Clinton, I liked his politics, appreciated his political skill, but didn't really like his style.

With Kerry, I like his politics and his style, the jury is still out on his political skill. Let's see more of his famous 4th quarter game.

By the way, I don't think that Bush and Cheney self-destructed entirely by accident. KE put them in the position to do so, knew how they would react to certain things.

Considering the vagaries of polling, none of them (good or bad) should be taken seriously. We should use the good polls to cheer up people discouraged by the bad polls, but we shouldn't allow ourselves to become either overconfident or discouraged. In other words, we should "stay the course". :-)

I really feel that almost all the media, including the pollsters, are poisonous, and that in critical moments they are more likely to stab us in the back than to help us. Some of it's stupidity and some of it's bias, but the media re not our friends.

Evidence: Clinton impeachment, Gore-Bush election, the second Iraq War debate, and (to a lesser degree) the fraudulent Swift Boat smears.

I now relinquish the floor Patrick R. Sullivan and Adrian Spidle, who will now claim that the media have a left-wing bias.

Jay, to be fair, i don't disagree that John Kerry has demonstrated many solid virtues that suggest that democratic primary voters made the correct choice in selecting him. But without wanting to spend a lot of time on the importance of charisma of some sort in a president, and noting that i'm fully prepared for kerry to be a "good" president, the point i want to emphasize (especially to those undecided voters) is that to make the case for voting for john kerry, it's not necessary to oversell him. It's not necessary to have great expectations for him. It's not necessary to wish that he combined the best of clinton, johnson, kennedy, truman, and roosevelt.

It's only necessary to know that there is no question that he will do a better job as president than george bush.

(1) Andrew Sullivan last night neatly summarized the REALLY bizarre, absolutely inexcusable aspect of the Bush policy in Iraq (although it's been done before, notably by Brad):

"Returning to Bremer. One of his early complaints was insufficient troop numbers to stop looting, restore order, AND PROTECT UNGUARDED WEAPON SITES. Leave everything aside and focus on the latter. The war was launched because we feared Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The main fear was that these weapons might be transferred to terrorists who could use them against us. And yet in the invasion, there was little or no effort to secure these sites! And there was no effort to seal the borders to prevent their being exported, or purloined by terrorists. Why? I've long pondered this, but Bremer's gaffe brings it back into focus. Why would you launch a war that failed in its very planning to avoid the disaster that you went to war to prevent? I don't understand. We were lucky in retrospect that Saddam DIDN'T have any WMDs. The way this war has been run, it would have actually increased the chances of such weapons getting to America via terrorists rather than reduced them. At least, that seems to me to be the logical inference. Am I somehow wrong? Why did the administration leave weapons sites unguarded for so long? Why did they not send enough troops to secure the borders? I'm still baffled. And rattled. Can anyone explain?"

Well, there are only two possible explanations: either the Administration is mostly composed of absolute idiots, or they KNEW in advance that Saddam really had no WMDs and deliberately lied to Congress and the voters in order to initiate the war. Two rather unpleasant alternatives, wouldn't you say? If the Democrats don't use this as a talking point, they're fools -- but they haven't used it up to now.

(2) The polls are continuing to show that voters in general seem to regard the VP debate as a modest win for Cheney -- see, for instance, the new Rasmussen poll. The best thing the Democrats could do to make hay out of that debate is to run a TV ad showing a clip of Cheney saying he had "never suggested" an Iraq-al Qaida link -- and then clips of the various times he's done so.

Kerry flip flopped his poll number. He is a real flip flop, isn't he ;)

"If the Democrats don't use this as a talking point, they're fools -- but they haven't used it up to now."

My instincts say this is a trap KE are wisely avoiding. The great unwashed know all politicians are liars, but think it is bad form and whining for candidates to say so. I expect Bush/Cheney to start lying with abandon, just making stuff up, in the hope that a shrill response from KE will keep undecideds from the polls.

Of course, much is being set up now for the post-election activities.

One other thought - Kerry went much further than I would have expected in his criticisms of the Iraq war, even going so far as to say he would not have voted for war if he'd known then what he now knows. (He did say that, right? I'm going on a newspaper report).

Do you think Bush was taken aback by the vehemence of the criticisms? I think he perhaps expected Kerry to be much weaker, given that he seemed to have played himself on Iraq.

I'd prefer that the Democrats only *hire* smart senior strategists, or at least ones who don't spread defeatist crap the month before an election. Then Jackie Calmes can talk to whomever he/she/ wants.

> Zogby's statewide polls are worth exactly
> nothing
>
>Posted by Bruce Moomaw at October 7, 2004 05:54 > AM

I'm sure that's why the WSJ publishes his numbers.

Whichever strategist the WSJ talked to, the Kerry campaign really was in a defeatist mood last week. About a week ago, they pulled the leaders of the Virginia office out to work other (presumably more swingable swing) states, according to the WaPo. The WaPo went on to say this was conceding the state to Bush. You don't go to an electoral vote strategy unless you're convinced you're losing nation-wide.

Man, I am going to have soooo much fun with the comments here...on November 3rd.

No incumbent President with the economic numbers Bush has, has ever lost. On top of that he's winning the War on Terror. Against that, youse guys have...nice hair!

'No incumbent President with the economic numbers Bush has, has ever lost. '

Thats because no incumbent President has ever had the bad economic numbers Bush has had since Hoover.

"Man, I am going to have soooo much fun with the comments here...on November 3rd."

You bring the appetite and we'll bring the crow.

Presumably, Patrick in his first assertion is relying on the Fair model, and i'm no historian of the Fair model or other economic stats for Clinton in '96, Reagan in '84, Nixon in '72, Eisenhower in '56, Truman in '48, or FDR in '36, '40, and '44, so let's assume he's right, and that if bush loses, it will be an uprecedented experience against (iirc) the Fair model's emphasis on GDP growth.

But the notion that Bush is "winning" the "War on Terror" is about as supportable as the notion that the Duelfer Report justifies the war in iraq, meaning only in parallel reality universes, not the known one....

Here on planet earth, the election has now changed direction for the third time: it began as bush's to lose, became kerry's to win in april/may, returned to bush's to lose by late august, and now is pretty much neck-and-neck with kerry showing the improving trendline. I fully expect the the most ruthless expression of attack and smear to be the essence of the bush/cheney/rove strategy from here on out (supported and enabled by people like patrick), and who knows? it could work as well as it did in august.

but the trendline favors kerry today....

rg-- no encumbent president has ever lost with the numbersw bush has. better check your data.

every incumbent, or his vice president with the missery index higher than at the last election has lost the popular vote -- at is now about 1.0% higher than at the last election.

Jam: "About a week ago, they pulled the leaders of the Virginia office out to work other (presumably more swingable swing) states, according to the WaPo. The WaPo went on to say this was conceding the state to Bush. You don't go to an electoral vote strategy unless you're convinced you're losing nation-wide."

Jam, this is entirely incorrect. I heard to a talk by someone from the Kerry campaign (at the 21st Century Dems training). Kerry has has an electoral vote strategy from the beginning of the campaign and the strategy includes dropping swing states as the campaign continues until they are focussed on a small number of the very closest.

Re: Bush and the economy;

There was an opinion piece in the Toronto Star today written by Joseph Stiglitz, who is a professor of economics and finance at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate in 2001.

His column starts:
-----
Many around the world are surprised at how little attention the economy is receiving in President Bush's re-election campaign. But I am not surprised: if I were Bush, the last thing I would want to talk about is the economy.
----

Why is that, you may ask.. well:
---
..the average American family is worse off than it was 3 1/2 years ago. Median income has fallen by more than $1,500 in real terms, with families being squeezed as wages lag behind inflation

..some 45 million Americans have no health insurance, up by 5.2 million from 2000. Families lucky enough to have health insurance face annual premiums that have nearly doubled, to $7,500. Families also face increasing job insecurity. This is the first time since the early 1930s that there has been a net loss of jobs over the span of a presidential administration.

...National debt, too, has risen sharply. The huge trade deficit provides the spectacle of the world's richest country borrowing almost $2 billion a day from abroad, contributing to the weak dollar and representing a major source of global uncertainty.
------

The full opinion piece is here:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1097099409234&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

Re: Bush and the economy;

There was an opinion piece in the Toronto Star today written by Joseph Stiglitz, who is a professor of economics and finance at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate in 2001.

His column starts:
-----
Many around the world are surprised at how little attention the economy is receiving in President Bush's re-election campaign. But I am not surprised: if I were Bush, the last thing I would want to talk about is the economy.
----

Why is that, you may ask.. well:
---
..the average American family is worse off than it was 3 1/2 years ago. Median income has fallen by more than $1,500 in real terms, with families being squeezed as wages lag behind inflation

..some 45 million Americans have no health insurance, up by 5.2 million from 2000. Families lucky enough to have health insurance face annual premiums that have nearly doubled, to $7,500. Families also face increasing job insecurity. This is the first time since the early 1930s that there has been a net loss of jobs over the span of a presidential administration.

...National debt, too, has risen sharply. The huge trade deficit provides the spectacle of the world's richest country borrowing almost $2 billion a day from abroad, contributing to the weak dollar and representing a major source of global uncertainty.
------

The full opinion piece is here:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1097099409234&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

Apologies for the double post.

Me: "Zogby's statewide polls are worth exactly nothing."

Goethean: "I'm sure that's why the WSJ publishes his numbers."

Well, hell, Goethean, we all know the WSJ publishes a LOT of stuff that's worth exactly nothing, although admittedly most of it is found on their editorial page. I repeat: take a look at Zogby's actual statewide poll figures as compared to the actual ersults and you will be appalled. The poller of multiple statewide races who is by far more accurate is Mason-Dixon, which is usually very close to the truth.

And, Patrick: If the FAIR model is really that accurate in predicting Bush's certain reelection, you have just a wee bit of trouble explaining why all the polls now show the race close. You also have a wee bit of trouble explaining why all the polls show the people continuing to take a dim view of Bush's economic performance. And as for Bush "winning the War on Terror" when Iraq is disintegrating, Iran is about to acquire the Bomb, and George Will agrees that there are more Islamic Fascist terrorists now than when we invaded Iraq... well, it isn't the first time one has been forced to conclude tht you've been hanging around P.J. O'Rourke's stock of hallucinogens for too long. Take two Andrew Sullivan columns and call me in the morning.

Scott, good points and well worth posting twice here and on lots of other blogs as well.

"Why did the administration leave weapons sites unguarded for so long? Why did they not send enough troops to secure the borders? I'm still baffled. And rattled. Can anyone explain?" [--Andrew Sullivan]

Well, there are only two possible explanations: either the Administration is mostly composed of absolute idiots, or they KNEW in advance that Saddam really had no WMDs and deliberately lied to Congress and the voters in order to initiate the war. Two rather unpleasant alternatives, wouldn't you say?" [Bruce Moomaw]

I'll give you a third, even more unpleasant alternative, Bruce: the Bush Administration didn't give a shit about whether there were WMD, on the theory that even if there were WMD, we didn't *WANT* to obtain them, because we'd rather have people thinking the weapons are still a threat, and thus, we still need to be in Iraq and waging the War On Terror(tm). The worst thing for Bush-Cheney would be winning the war on terror, because it would remove the basis for their whole scare-your-ass-off administration.

I'm happy to report, after months of hammering away at a large and growing smarm of Republican friends, associates and chat room pals, all who before the debate were firmly entrenched in,
"It's Clinton's fault and Kerry is a traitor" echoed and re-echoed in every note, are now, after the debates, and after the CIA reports and admissions of catastrophic blunder, re-assessing their positions! A crack in the armor!

All Kerry and Edwards need to do to win is to project leadership on the economy, and a no-bail out hold-the-line support for Israel and Iraq.

Such a simple task. Can they manage it?

Then it's on to 2008, the Second Depression, the Perpetual Crusade, China's Ascension, and a 500-year Republican Reich under President Tom Ridge.

Payback is hell, jugends.

"No incumbent President with the economic numbers Bush has, has ever lost. On top of that he's winning the War on Terror. Against that, youse guys have...nice hair!"

The Incredible Shrinking Troll. Win or lose, Bush or Kerry, on November 3 Patrick Sullivan will still be a fool.

Another difficult month of job creation. Only 96,000 new jobs created last month, and we need 150,000 simply to stay even with additions to the labor force from population growth. Not an encouraging month. We simply are not growing fast enough to spur employers to add jobs at a pace that will allow recovery from the past recession.

Employers are evidently still cost cutting. This is discouraging. Growth is reasonable, but productivity is high enough that we just do not have a healthy demand for labor. Interestingly the robust estimate for job creation that Brad pointed to, was not nearly realized. But, estimates have routinely been to high since spring.

So, 50 dollars a barrel of oil and weak job creation and rising short term interest rates. Not a pleasing combination.

"So, 50 dollars a barrel of oil and weak job creation and rising short term interest rates. Not a pleasing combination."

Reality: Low unemployment and inflation. Decent real GDP growth. Bush wins 400 electoral votes.

Iraq according to Paul Bremer:

http://flyunderthebridge.blogspot.com/2004/10/dept-of-indignation-isnt-intelligence.html

---------quote-------
I believe it would have been helpful to have had more troops early on to stop the looting that did so much damage to Iraq's already decrepit infrastructure. The military commanders believed we had enough American troops in Iraq and that having a larger American military presence would have been counterproductive because it would have alienated Iraqis. That was a reasonable point of view, and it may have been right. The truth is that we'll never know.

But during the 14 months I was in Iraq, the administration, the military and I all agreed that the coalition's top priority was a broad, sustained effort to train Iraqis to take more responsibility for their own security. This effort, financed in large measure by the emergency supplemental budget approved by Congress last year, continues today. In the end, Iraq's security must depend on Iraqis.

Our troops continue to work closely with Iraqis to isolate and destroy terrorist strongholds. And the United States is supporting Prime Minister Ayad Allawi in his determined effort to bring security and democracy to Iraq. Elections will be held in January and, though there will be challenges and hardships, progress is being made. For the task before us now, I believe we have enough troops in Iraq.

-------------endquote---------

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/opinion/08herbert1.html

Working for a Pittance
By BOB HERBERT

Reality keeps rearing its ugly head. The Bush administration's case for the war in Iraq has completely fallen apart, as evidenced by the report this week from the president's handpicked inspector that Iraq had destroyed its illicit weapons stockpiles in the early 1990's.

Coming next week are the results of a new study that shows - here at home - how tough a time American families are having in their never-ending struggle to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. The White House, as deep in denial about the economy as it is about Iraq, insists that things are fine - despite the embarrassing fact that President Bush is on track to become the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs during his four years in office.

The study, jointly sponsored by the Annie E. Casey, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, will show that 9.2 million working families in the United States - one out of every four - earn wages that are so low they are barely able to survive financially.

"Our data is very solid and shows that this is a much bigger problem than most people imagine," said Brandon Roberts, one of the authors of the report, which is to be formally released on Tuesday. The report found that there are 20 million children in these low-income working families.

For the purposes of the study, any family in which at least one person was employed was considered a working family. Very wealthy families were included.

The median income for a family of four in the U.S. is $62,732. According to the study, a family of four earning less than $36,784 is considered low-income. A family of four earning less than $18,392 is considered poor. The 9.2 million struggling families cited by the report fell into one of the latter two categories. And those families have one-third of all the children in American working families.

Not surprisingly, the problem for millions of families is that they have jobs that pay very low wages and provide no benefits. "Consider the motel housekeeper, the retail clerk at the hardware store or the coffee shop cook," the report said. "If they have children, chances are good that their families are living on an income too low to provide for their basic needs."

Neither politicians nor the media put much of a spotlight on families that are struggling economically. According to the study, one in five workers are in occupations where the median wage is less than $8.84 an hour, which is a poverty-level wage for a family of four. A full-time job at the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour is not even sufficient to keep a family of three out of poverty.

Families with that kind of income are teetering on the edge of an economic abyss. Any misfortune might push them over the edge - an illness, an automobile breakdown, even something as seemingly minor as a flooded basement.

For the families in these lower-income brackets, life is often a harrowing day-to-day struggle to pay for the bare necessities. According to federal government statistics, the median annual rent for a two-bedroom apartment in major metropolitan markets is more than $8,000. The annual cost of food for a low-income family of four is nearly $4,000. Utility bills are nearly $2,000. Transportation costs are about $1,500. And then there are costs for child care, health care and clothing.

You do the math. How are these millions of poor and low-income families making it?

OK, Patrick. Time for you to stand up and go on the record.

"Bush wins 400 electoral votes."

Please list what states you expect President Bush to carry. I am interested to see how you get to 400.

Once you do that, I'll post my prediction and we can revisit the topic on November 3.

Thanks in advance.

The splendors of the economy (is it lousy or merely adequate?) we can discuss with Patrick until the cows come home, but i do wonder if he might grace us with an explanation as to why George Bush believed, 18 months ago, that we needed and could create 5.5M new jobs by 12/31/04 if we only passed his dividend tax cut, and an explanation as to why that hasn't happened, and an explanation of how great this economy can be if it has created only roughly 1/3 of the jobs that bush claimed his stimulus package would create.

if it wouldn't be too much trouble.

as for the bremer op-ed, there is nothing that better demonstrates the totalitarian propagandistic bent of the modern gop than the show trial confession that bremer was forced to publish today that patrick quotes.

meanwhile, as a helpful guide for poor Patrick, i might note the key word "American" modifying troops. What the commanders on the ground said (it was General Abizaid, iirc) was that we needed more troops but they should come from countries with large Muslim populations. Our military leadership in Iraq isn't irrational; they knew that there were no more american troops to be had from rumsfeld and bush, but they also knew (as did bremer) that we didn't have enough troop presence in iraq to accomplish anything more than our initial confirmation that blitzkreig is still an effective military tactic.

But if Patrick thinks things are so smashing in iraq, i'm willing to bet that my fellow posters would join me in underwriting a trip by patrick to the green zone for a month....

I predict the Iraqs' will soon dedicate a vast square in Baghdad in honor of Patrick R. Sullivan.
You heard it here first! They will start work shortly after the square they are currently constructing in honor of gwb. Those loud noises you hear are explosives used to erect the foundations.

Patrick? Anyone, anyone? Bueller?

Re: Patrick Sullivan's frantic summoning-up of Paul Bremer's attempted return to the Party line:

(1) Josh Marshall ( http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003623.php ):

"But look at what the Washington Post says [Bremer] actually said: 'The single most important change -- the one thing that would have improved the situation -- would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning AND THROUGHOUT.'

"In the Times today, Bremer's only response seems to be: 'Even though I said what I said, I wasn't really saying it when I said it.'

"From there the column is a lockstep recitation of the full Bush Regime Change catechism."

(2) Spencer Ackerman ( http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2159 ):

"CAN I BE SECRETARY OF STATE NOW?: It doesn't get more absurd than former U.S. proconsul L. Paul Bremer's attempt on the New York Times op-ed page to stuff the toothpaste back in the tube. Bremer writes:

" 'In my speeches, I have said that the United States paid a price for not stopping the looting in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of major combat operations and that we did not have enough troops on the ground to accomplish that task. The press and critics of the war have seized on these remarks in an effort to undermine President Bush's Iraq policy...

" '[U.S.] military commanders believed we had enough American troops in Iraq and that having a larger American military presence would have been counterproductive because it would have alienated Iraqis. That was a reasonable point of view, and it may have been right. The truth is that we'll never know.

" 'But during the 14 months I was in Iraq, the administration, the military and I all agreed that the coalition's top priority was a broad, sustained effort to train Iraqis to take more responsibility for their own security.'

"Leave aside for a moment Bremer's quote--conveniently ignored here--that we needed more troops 'throughout' the occupation. Consider that the U.S. military presence never returned to its May 2003 peak of 150,000 troops. Consider as well that the insurgency, a marginal phenomenon in May 2003, grew from an estimated 5,000 insurgents in November 2003 to an estimated 20,000 insurgents in September 2004--and those numbers are surely understatements resulting from insufficient intelligence. Iraqi forces--well, the less said about their capabilities, the better. Ambassador Bremer, how does an insufficient number of troops to stop the early looting magically become a sufficient number of troops to combat an insurgency that gathers strength as the occupation continues?

"Critics of the war hardly need to seize on Bremer's remarks to 'undermine President Bush's Iraq policy.' Bush can pull that off without any outside assistance."

(3) Bruce Moomaw: Note that Bremer -- even during his frantic effort to reestablish his repuation as "a true-blue loyalist, a favorite of the president’s who had a good chance at a senior position in a second term, perhaps even as secretary of State" (to quote Newsweek) -- says that we may very well have had too few troops at precisely the time when we needed them to guard Saddam's possible WMD sites! Which (as Brad and Andy Sullivan and I keep saying) was supposedly the whole purpose for the damn war. And (as the three of us also keep saying), thank God Saddam DIDN'T have any WMDs -- because if he had, Bush's complete bungling of this war would have put the U.S. much farther up Shit Creek than we are now.

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