Month: August 2004

Democratic Party compassion was on prominent display in Boston, but one large group of people was left out:

Edwards spoke only hours after at least 70 Iraqis had been killed by a car bomb, a particularly gruesome new atrocity against a population liberated from dictatorship by American troops. Yet Edwards, in a speech replete with tributes to U.S. losses and sacrifices, did not mention that tragedy and referred only in glancing terms to the price that Iraqis are paying in what must be seen as a joint struggle.

Kerry — who in his unspoken subtext accused Bush of being a liar, a coward and a subverter of the Constitution — spoke authoritatively on national security, if in general terms. But he and the Democratic platform also largely neglected the fate of the people of Iraq, who are being progressively lost in the shuffle of electoral politics — as are Britain, Poland, Italy, Japan and the other nations that are helping in what the Democrats insist on calling the “go-it-alone” U.S. presence in Iraq. Kerry’s stinging shot at the Saudi royal family will also not ease his self-described task of bringing allies to America’s side if he wins.

In New York, when the Republicans gather in a month’s time, the Iraqis and the coalition partners are not likely to be ignored. The danger there will be that they will be used as props and symbols for the wisdom and resoluteness of the president. That kind of attention would be as bad as neglect. Neither party should leave the people of Iraq behind in fighting this election.

Let’s hope that doesn’t happen in New York.

David Brooks nails Sen. Kerry:

What the Democratic Party is going through is not yet a genuine muscular centrist revival. As a friend joked, from the voters of Iowa to the delegates in Boston, there’s been a vast left-wing conspiracy to present a candidate who looks like a muscular moderate, but they picked someone who is not in his heart of hearts a muscular moderate, or anything else.

Indeed.

Josh Marshall says Republicans are planning to use humor to ridicule and diminish Sen. Kerry in the coming month:

The more discussion-worthy point, however, is the use of humor as a political weapon — mockery, derision, diminishment.

Republicans are very good at this. And it can be a tool that is deceptively difficult to respond to or combat. Effective mockery is ‘sticky’, hard to shake off, hard to parry. And it appeals to people’s appetite for fun and humor.

Indeed, it’s not just contemporary Republicans who have a knack for this. There seems to be something intrinsic to the reactionary or right-leaning mentality that gravitates toward this method of political combat. Think of the Tory pamphleteers and essayists of the 18th century in Great Britain or others of a more recent vintage in the US.

This is potent stuff. And Democrats would do well not only to be on their guard but consider applying this approach to the current president, who is more than a bit ripe for such treatment.

Can he really be so naive? The Democrats have Michael Moore packing the faithful into the movie houses for a humorous (and fundamentally false) takedown of the president, Bill Maher attacking the president for an hour a week on HBO, and an entire radio network made up of failed comedians ridiculing him 24 hours a day. Is Marshall really so stupid that he doesn’t realize that Republicans are actually stealing a page from the Democratic Party’s playbook?

This USA Today poll shows Kerry actually losing ground from his convention:

In the survey, taken Friday and Saturday, Bush led Kerry 50%-46% among likely voters. Independent candidate Ralph Nader was at 2%.

The survey showed Kerry losing 1 percentage point and Bush gaining 4 percentage points from a poll taken the week before the Boston convention.

The change in support was within the poll’s margin of error of +/-4 percentage points in the sample of 763 likely voters. But it was nonetheless surprising, the first time since the chaotic Democratic convention in 1972 that a candidate hasn’t gained ground during his convention.

Negative bounce is downright hilarious, but what you should expect from a campaign whose theme song is Let’s Get Retarded:

Let’s Get Retarded, in here…

And the base keep runnin’ runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’, and…

In this context, there’s no disrespect, so,
when I bust my rhyme, you break your necks.
We got five minutes for us to disconnect,
from all intellect collect the rhythm effect.
Obstacles are inefficient, follow your intuition,
free your inner soul and break away from tradition.

Coz when we beat out, girl it’s pullin without.
You wouldn’t believe how we wow shit out.
Burn it till it’s burned out. Turn it till it’s turned out.
Act up from north, west, east, south.

This is the tune that the Peas performed after the Edwards speech, but some of the lyrics were modifed to suit the NBA playoffs.