Hillary won't shed a tear if Edwards wins Iowa

David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register writes that the Hillary-Obama squabble over foreign policy is most likely to help John Edwards. Well, Hillary won't shed a tear if Edwards wins Iowa. In fact, it's almost as good as winning Iowa herself. Yepsen's logic is that the spat will drive up both of their negatives, helping Edwards. Well, Hillary is pretty much maxed out on "negatives." It's like a woman with facial scars and missing teeth worrying about a knife fight with a fashion model. High negatives aren't new to Hillary.

As for Hillary worrying about helping Edwards too much, the new primary calendar changes things, and I'm not sure if Iowa-based media have taken that into account yet. The Fat Tuesday superprimary gives the national frontrunners a cushion against losses in Iowa and New Hampshire. Why? Because the media's Chase for the Presidency narrative has three categories: the Frontrunner, the Challenger, and Hopeless Campaigns That Haven't Folded Yet. Winning in early states used to help a lot in winning later states, because it meant weeks or months of free media. The prizes in Iowa and New Hampshire were not a few dozen delegates but Frontrunner and Challenger status, cemented by weeks of national publicity. In 2008, there are only 15 days between the Iowa caucuses and the Florida primary. The Florida primary, not New Hampshire and not Iowa, is the first must-win contest for the Frontrunner.

Hillary is the Frontrunner, and will be as long as she leads in the national polls. That means Obama and Edwards are competing for the Challenger spot. Or more exactly, right now Edwards isn't even competitive for the Challenger spot. Winning Iowa would change that, creating an Obama-Edwards dogfight for the Challenger role. As long as there is not even a clear Challenger, the Frontrunner's path to the nomination is clear.

Presidential Prognosticating

There are only two men who can stop Rudy Giuliani from being the Republican nominee: Rudy Giuliani and John McCain.

Giuliani is leading in almost every national poll while being often dismissed as someone who can't possibly win the nomination.

Romney, Thompson and McCain are all campaigning to be the "real conservative" alternative to Rudy after the early primaries. They're hoping that Rudy has hit his ceiling of 25-35% of the Republican vote, and that as other candidates drop out they can pick up the other conservative voters who will never vote for a pro-choicer. Once there is only one survivor out of the "conventional conservative candidates", that one will have 40%, which beats 30%, which makes him the frontrunner at a point when the race is almost over.

Nonsense. Rudy has a 75% positive rating among Republicans. Sure, pro-choice is a negative, pro-gay is a negative. But those are the only reasons GOP voters would have to choose Thompson or Romney over Rudy. All Rudy has to do is wait for the race to come down to two candidates, neutralize his lone opponent's only advantage, and he wins in a knockout. "Strong on Terror, Wrong on Abortion" beats "Weak on Abortion, Unknown on Terror."

Here's how he ends Fred Thompson's campaign, in the first debate after New Hampshire:

"Senator Thompson has made his career in Hollywood playing no-nonsense, take charge prosecutors and leaders. So, he's made a career out of playing Rudy Giuliani."

Followed up later with:

"Senator Thompson has said that show business and the Senate have a lot in common. Okay, I accept that. Let's talk about real life, I was a prosecutor and a mayor, I think we're all familiar with that. In real life, Senator Thompson was an abortion lobbyist. Not everyone knows that, but it's true. He lobbied the first Bush Administration for I believe the National Family Planning Association. Now, there's nothing wrong with that group, or that position. What's wrong is in turning around and pretending that you're a strong, consistent pro-lifer when you're not."

For Rudy to end Romney's political career in 100 words or less:

"In the early 1990s, Governor Romney and I were both pro-choice Northeastern Republicans. Well, I still am. I'm a man of my beliefs and I stand by them. Governor Romney can't say that. In every campaign he ran up in Massachusetts, he was pro-choice down the line, 100%. Now he's running for President in (name of red state) he's 100% pro-life. What does that say about his convictions? What happens when he's President and he has to do something that's right but it's going to be unpopular?"

There is a danger in overestimating the competence of the Administration, thinking that the permanent bureaucracy will do the bidding of their political masters. The color-coded system is a pointless joke, in terms of making us more secure. But it’s not supposed to make us more secure—it’s supposed to save senior civil service jobs in case of a successful attack.

This is much sadder, and in a way less comforting than The Awe-Inspiring Bush-Cheney-Rove Machine Did It to Scare Us. If the Evil Empire did it, then the Evil Empire is at least powerful, and organized, and could maybe protect us if they felt like it. Homeland Security did it to Cover Their Asses. When you are covering your ass, you are considering what happens if you fail. Which is very, very close to planning to fail.

I’ve blogged about why the August 8 Presidential Daily Briefing flak is overblown. (Sometime I’ll fisk the PDB, but not right now.) Shorthand—There is Always a Korlian Death Cruiser. There are always threats on the horizon and potential threats to the US. Post-9/11, every time the NSA intercepts an inflammatory email, there is as much cause to panic, and as much specific information, as was in the PDB. And, post-9/11, “Who could have predicted this?” is not going to be enough to save anyone’s job. The Orange Alert means that “the government heard something somewhere about an attack, real or imagined, at some time in the near future in some part of the US.” If prevention fails and the attack comes off, Don’t Blame Us—We Raised the Threat Level.

The threat level was “white noise” because There is Always a Korlian Death Cruiser. Homeland Security “raised the threat level” every time something happened, or might have happened. I’m sure it was based on real information. But, in intelligence, even “real information” is sometimes wrong or useless. Where the movie’s MIB were wrong is in estimating human psychology. In the MIB world, if the existence of the MIB and the aliens did become public knowledge, then humanity would not panic. OK, they would panic in the short term, but only until they got used to the idea of aliens are here, the MIB exist, and the crazies were right. They wouldn’t be paralyzed with fear of the Korlian Death Cruiser or of the Andromeda Plague. Human psychology adapts and copes. People would follow the interstellar news obsessively for a while, until they didn’t. Ordinary folks would get used to it, just like people during the Cold War got used to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Most people didn’t stay up all night reading Kremlin memos to determine if they would drop the bomb or not. Either they will, and I can’t stop them, or they won’t, and then I’ve got to get up in the morning and go to work.

Topics to argue about. Let's have the Esteemed Audience pick five and we'll go from there.

1. Given the information available at the time, Bush should have done something differently about terrorism in the first eight months of his Administration.

2. Islamic terrorism is a problem that cannot be substantially reduced but only prevented and kept at a manageable level. Any project whose aim is the radical transformation of the Middle East is either doomed to fail or to make matters worse.

3. Kerry’s war statements and votes have displayed a consistent framework, responding differently to different circumstances; or have been driven by political expediency.

4. Kerry’s Vietnam War and antiwar record gives useful information as to whether he would have been a good Commander-in-Chief fighting against the global jihad. (This, while still as much fun as a root canal, says important things about the anti-Vietnam
war left and American national security policy.)

5. Social Security reform.

6. After 9/11, the Administration would have been unwise to rely on the CIA to confirm the existence of threats before acting.

7. In 2002, Saddam was/was not a significant threat.

8. Our attempt to create democracy in Iraq while under American military protection is doomed to failure.

9. If the Clinton-Gore Administration had remained in power, boy howdy they were just about to get around to taking care of Osama.

10. The Administration is usually not as in control of the federal bureaucracy as many, especially conspiratorialists, assume. (RE: Orange Alerts)

11. Randy Orton should immediately change his theme music to a remix of Kid Rock’s “[I Want to be a] Cowboy”, as it would fit perfectly both with his father’s legacy and his own position as the young, arrogant chosen one destined to dominate the business. (If you don't believe me, ask him.)

Something that both me and my Esteemed Audience can both be horrified by.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1383832&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

Infuriating quotes:

Officials said a 50-year-old Egyptian man was stopped a week ago at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport. Sources said he had a suspicious pair of shoes that tested positive five times for the explosive substance TATP on the interior of his shoes between the heel and sole.

Three paragraphs later:

After holding him overnight, airport security in New York released him. The FBI was notified after he was released and put out a nationwide alert. FBI officials confirmed that the man's story was true and that he was not a threat.

The FBI was notified after he was released? After he was released? AFTER he was friggin RELEASED? He was held overnight, and no one had time to contact the FBI?

And exactly what was this joker's story about how explosives got between the heel and sole of his shoes? How does that happen innocently?

I mean, I don't think I'm stupid. I know that the Homeland Security Department is a massive boondoggle, a bureaucratic shuffle to make it look like someone is doing something. I know that the TSA is a massive waste of government resources and people's time. Our airport security problem was pretty much fixed by the time the plane in Pennsylvania went down--people figured out that a successful hijacking meant a death sentence, not a 1970's-style hostage ordeal. We didn't need any fancy Homeland Security types to stop the original shoe-bomber--the passengers and crew beat the living hell out of him and hogtied him.

But Jesus Tapdancing Christ, an Egyptian national with explosives in his shoes is detained and RELEASED? And they couldn't even hold him until someone at the FBI could pick up the phone? Or, to put that another way, isn't there anyone at the FBI at night to answer the phone?

I have a suggestion to my audience. I submit that the Listen to Franken/Scrawl notes/Blog/Comment/Respond to 25 different posts and growing is about to get completely out of control. I suggest that my audience select 5 or 10 topics to go back and forth on. If we reach resolution on a few, then maybe move on to others.

I suggest we set aside a few things as resolved.

Rove's campaign tactics are very, very sleazy. Spreading lies about your opponent in a way that indicates it wasn't you spreading them is indefensible. We can still argue about A) Whether certain groups were campaign surrogates and B) Whether a specific charge is in fact a lie.

Bush in 2004 didn't win a mandate for anything except continuing his policies in the War on Terror. His razor-thin majority was and is held together by the War on Terror and pretty much nothing else.

Democrats have a large and growing political problem with churchgoing white people.

In 2001 (and maybe still), the Bush Administration foreign policy team didn't respect the Clinton foreign policy team.

The Clinton foreign policy team didn't say nearly as much about terrorism before 9/11 as they now claim to have said/known.

If we can set those five item aside, we can pick five items of disagreement, and start arguing productively. Or at least more productively.

This isn't working. I'm skimming the posts, and the blog displays symptoms of borderline schizophrenia--this is the Moulin Rouge of blogging. The method of listening to book on CD, scrawling notes while at stoplights (or while on a straightaway) and then frantically blogging and trying to get through a half-hour's notes in before I get in the car again and take another page of notes on a half-hour ride is not working. It creates an incredibly chaotic read, where the reader is getting a footnoted transcript of my half of a not-very-structured conversation.

I might have to get a copy of the actual book, and drastically reduce the breakneck pace. 15 pages in a week produced under these conditions is incomprehensible. I have printed out the blog, and will reorganize some bits into longer, more coherent formats.

I actually fell asleep in front of the computer last night, so my bit on Kerry, Miller and the weapons systems didn't make much sense. In Kerry's first Senate campaign, he opposed every major weapons system in the Reagan buildup--or to be concise he opposed the Reagan buildup. Kerry was a member and a leader of the nuclear-freeze, pro-Sandinista, Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador left, trying to make sure that American foreign policy in Central America would fail just as it had in Southeast Asia, and Communist dictatorships sprout in Nicaragua and El Salvador just as they had in Vietnam and Cambodia. (This is overstated by about 20%.)

BArak Obama is OK by just about everyone. Phony robocalls are bad. (Political dirty tricks are a very old story. They're either roguishly clever or should be felonies, depending on whether they're played on you or not.)

For any abortion legislation, the "exception for the health of the mother" has been a huge loophole that negates the ban. "Health" gets re-read to mean mental health, and having a baby you don't want is stressful, which is bad for your mental health. Every player in the game knows this.

The question of political churches is real. One of Clinton's (very white) aides in 1992, when asked their religion, said, "I don't know, I guess AME Zionist lately." No one in REpublicanland wants to deal with the $#!+storm of trying to take away a black church's tax exemption, but they want to level the playing field. As a heathen arch-infidel, I'm not happy about it, but that's the state of play.

As they said, the Roman Catholic church is not a democracy, never has been. [Esoteric qualifiers about early Church Councils deleted] As for the claim that this has never been done before, BS. This pops up all the time in the Northeast.

As for Casey, Begala is as shameless a hack as Rove, but the account sounds plausible. {PAuse to Google} The New Republic is not a hack organ. Research rules. For what it's worth, there are more visible pro-choice Republicans than pro-life Democrats, but I think that local factors explain that. (Republican leaders in California and New York are automatically national figures without having to run a southern, conservative Christian gauntlet.)

I'm sympathetic to three strikes and you're out marriage. Pennsylvania archconservative Senator Rick Santorum might be, too.

W's flip-flops. This is an excellent point, and if the Democrats had deployed this during the campaign, it would have helped. (Provided that they had a different candidate, one without Kerry's and Clinton's addiction to playing both sides of every street.)

Franken asking for Oxycontin for the road was funny.

Democrats really don't have to run many negative ads—their watercarriers in the media pick up their talking points well enough that the Democrats don't have to pay.

When Kerry said "We have to get back to where terrorism is a nuisance" he did reveal a sharp distinction between himself and Bush (and most of the American political class.) Most of the American political class sees the war on terrorism, and thus Islamic terrorism, as something that will eventually end. Thus they want to fight an actual war, with tanks and bombs and enemy states, etc. Kerry says that terrorism requires a law enforcement approach, which is exactly the approach that didn't work in the 1990's. Indicting Bin Laden in 1998 didn't do much. Special Forces chasing him around the Afghan-Pakistani border have done more to limit his effectiveness than any indictment. One analogy would be to a health complaint—is Islamic terrorism more like a cancer or like an ulcer?

Political conventional wisdom is that swing voters like nice and react badly to shows of "meanness." This is what doomed the impeachment of Clinton. After Dean's flameout, the Democrats didn't want a mirror image of Pat Buchanan's 1992 "culture wars" speech.

Kerry did vote to kill most of the weapons programs on Miller's list. In 1984, running for Senate he pledged to kill them.

Trying to enable comments.................

The infamous $87 Billion which Kerry voted for before he voted against it.

You can't say "I don't oppose A. I only oppose it if (impossible) condition B is not met." In reality, or as the old Marxists used to say objectively, you oppose A. You could say that Bush, in threatening to veto the Iraq appropriation if it was linked to tax cuts, took both our military and our economic future hostage. I won't even argue that that's an especially unfair thing to say. But Kerry, once his amendment failed, decided to take the US military in Iraq hostage to his opposition to Bush's tax cuts.

Or, even more unkindly, you could say that Kerry is a spineless weed who shifts with every wind, bowing to a pro-Bush, pro-war wind in 2002 and then bowing to a pro-Dean, anti-war wind in 2003.

If you google "Hannity and fisting" you deserve whatever you get.

Kerry on the Patriot Act. This is actually an example of a non-flip-flop--in this speech Kerry takes responsibility for his vote, despite its flaws, and suggests a way to fix it. (BTW, I highly suspect that Kerry's statement about the Patriot Act being abused by Bush and Ashcroft is BS. The most hyped provisions haven't been actually used. I am sure that some prosecutors have used Patriot Act provisions as convenient tools in non-terrorism cases, though.) Here, Kerry doesn't try to play both sides at once.

Disc 3 Begins.

The MainStream Media never treated the Swift Boat attacks as a he said/she said issue. The MSM stayed true to the line that the SBVT charges were all 100% unsubstantiated, groundless lies. In fact, some of the charges (Christmas in Cambodia) turned out to be true, some false, some impossible to determine with certainty.

Franken watches too much Fox News Channel.

The German/Jewish bit was funny.

Longer note--the reason that the Swift Boat attacks attained such prominence was that Vietnam and Vietnam Veterans Against the War is Kerry's entire resume. In twenty years in the Senate, there was no Kerry-PAckwood Act, no Nunn-Kerry Bill, etc. In 2004, Kerry campaigned on the plank that he was a war hero, and his old Swift Boat crew backed him up. That opened him to the counterargument that the other Swift Boat commanders, the previous and next commander of his boat, etc. thought he was a glory-hound out to get as many medals as he could as quickly as possible so as to get back home and continue emulating his hero, initials JFK, who parlayed his medals into a political career which you might remember. Overall relevance of the SBVT charges (even the true ones) to 2004: 2. Relevance of the charges to KErry's campaign themes 7-8. As Franken said, the Democrats brilliantly made their convention theme "Reliving the Vietnam War." Kerry led with his chin here, and the Swifties handed him his head. (FWIW, the Bush-Rove '04 operation treated the Swifties as radioactive, which is probably one reason that the MSM didn't bother to investigate--their designated Republican contacts didn't push them at all. The campaign did not want time spent on discussions of Kerry's Vietnam record. Shooting a naked, wounded VC in the back still beats flying jets in Texas. The campaign wanted "I voted for it before I voted against it" windsurfing footage, and Kerry speaking 24/7.)

I didn't know Rove had reached any lower than using McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter. But I'm not surprised.

Kerry usually has 3 Iraq positions per sentence, never mind six since 9/11. "We should have gotten our allies on board"--the French were on Saddam's payroll. They haven't been on board since 1996 when they pulled out of enforcing the no-fly zones. "We should have given inspectors more time"--they wouldn't have proven anything, and the longer we maintained that mobilization, the more time we give Saddam to strike convenient concentrations of US troops in Kuwait with his chemical weapons. (Remember, nobody knew he was bluffing then). And, if you're position is that you got played by George W. Chimpy McHitler Halliburton Bush as your guys call him, you're disqualified from any national office where you have to play poker with the big boys--dictators have fifty to eighty years experience in hoodwinking democratic leaders.

You vote, and you take responsibility for the vote. There's no voting with fingers crossed. You're either on the Yes side or the No side. And the Defense of Marriage Act was a gay marriage vote. Vote however you want, for whatever reason you want, but you voted how you voted. Why? Because politicians can always come up with reasons afterwards why they didn't mean that vote back then. There's a phrase, "Stand up and be counted." That's a politician's job, especially a backbencher like Kerry.

Kerry has always wanted to have it both ways. He wanted political credit for his medals to show off during campaigns, and he wanted the attention he got by throwing medals in the Reflecting Pool. He made his political career with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, but he wanted to run for President as the Good Soldier, Reporting for Duty. He voted for the war because the war was popular, and then voted against the $87 billion because Dean was creaming him in the polls.