John Kerry is getting ready to speak in New Hampshire. He looks less craggy than usual… perhaps it’s the lighting, or someone has coated him with embalmer’s wax. We’ll see if Kerry is as deadly boring this time as he was in Iowa.
The Democrats have traded Dean’s McGovern for Kerry’s Dukakis. Neither one has much of a shot against the President – they’re both arrogant and liberal New Englanders who represent the liberal establishment. Kerry has the gravitas that Dean lacks, and his gaffes are less pronounced, but he still has the same baggage.
Kerry’s voting record betrays his liberal credentials. His conduct after the Vietnam war slandered the brave actions he took during the war. He has already said that he has all but given up on the South, and his views on foreign policy are nothing short of atrocious.
Kerry is fond of telling Bush "bring it on". Believe me, that’s exactly what will happen…
Wesley Clark’s speech is a massive testament to his own arrogance – Peggy Noonan is right about him. The Democrats were looking for Eisenhower in Clark, what they got was Dr. Strangelove. The only think Clark truly believes in is his own ambition – hopefully his campaign will fade away over the next few races. Clark is the type who belong nowhere near any position of power.
It’s too bad that the only person who could beat Bush, Joe Lieberman, probably won’t survive much beyond this primary.
Here’s the reason why the Democrats are so uninspiring. In every speech we get a litany of problems. Edwards rails against a country that has "two economies". Clark can’t even contradict someone who accuses the President of being a deserter. Dean might as well have the patent on blind political rage.
So what the hell do any of the Democrats believe other than George W. Bush is a big fat poopy-head?
Who knows, because coming up with actual ideas doesn’t seem to be the forte for this group. What would John Kerry do in the war on terrorism? (Other than let Jacques Chirac and Dominique de BlaireauxVillepin run everything…) If North Korea decides to do some nuclear saber-rattling, how would Howard Dean respond? If the mullahs in Iran threatened to nuke Tel Aviv would Wesley Clark respond or wait for Europe to decide what they think we should do?
This is a serious time that requires serious policies. The Democratic field is profoundly unserious about everything except they should be in power. As I’ve said before and will say again, it’s petulance above policy.
Howard Dean is speaking now. He’s down but not out. Unfortunately this time I suspect we won’t get quite the performance we got after Iowa.
His speech is a bit more subdued than his usual stump speech, but still had the same fire that Dean is known for. At the same time it’s more of the same old tired Democratic rhetoric.
For all this talk about how Bush has divided America, a campaign based upon anger and partisanship isn’t the way to unify this country. A campaign based on dividing the country up into "working people" and &qout;the rich" (as though a small-business owner making $200,000/year doesn’t work for every cent of it) isn’t a campaign about unifying the country.
It’s anger, resentment, jealousy, and partisanship that runs nearly all of the Democrat’s campaigns. When your platform begins to resemble the Seven Deadly Sins you know you’ve got a problem.
It’s kind of asinine to print that you don’t think Kerry has much of a chance against Bush when, less than a week after the SOTU, Kerry outpolled Bush 49% to 44% in a head-to-head done by (I believe) Newsweek. If Bush can’t maintain a better lead than that after only one state selected delegates, imagine how much fun he’ll have once the candidates get to enter more and more battleground states for Primaries.
Compared to the last two administrations at the 3 year mark, Bush is seriously hurting. I’m not passing any judgements about Bush’s campaign, though, since I know he’s just sitting on a huge war chest waiting for a good moment to begin full force campaigning. But to be down to a Senator from Taxachusettes in matchups at this stage of the game is a sign of weakness. Declaring at this point that the Dems have no chance is reminiscent of a screaming teeniebopper wildly yelling for a band of little musical consequence–the cheerleading could be a matter of personal preference, but it is hardly deserved. Right now, the worst mistake any Conservative Republican dedicated to four more years could do would be to overestimate Bush’s position.
Personally, I think the Newsweek poll isn’t all that accurate. Bush’s numbers aren’t great, but they aren’t that bad either.
Could Bush lose? Certainly. Is it likely? No.
The fact is that whoever ends up as the Democratic nominee will almost invariably represent a position that is dramatically at odds with the rest of the country – which is never a recipe for electoral success.
Remember also that Dukakis had a large lead in the polls for quite some time, and look how his campaign turned out…
Another totally point-free comment…
I have not even read any of Jay’s posts here (I am slightly on the drunk side of life right now, and concentrating on a foreign language is kind of hard…) but anyways:
You seem to comment on 40-something percent on the Bush side and 40-something on the Kerry side. In my precious home of Germany, the figures read like this:
Gerhard Schröder and his obnoxious gang (aka Social Democrats): 24%
Conservative obnoxious gang: 50+%…
And you think things are “clear cut?”
Janek – I will have another beer now.
I think it’s asinine for Jay to claim that the Democrats have no policies beyond Bush-bashing when each one of the candidates has a website chock-full of their detailed plans for the country.
The fact that Jay doesn’t know what their plans are is not evidence that they don’t have them. It’s evidence that he’s too damn intellectually lazy to find out anything he can’t get from Fox News soundbites.
Let me explain something that perhaps is a dirty little secret in politics.
Platforms don’t mean a thing.
The candidate doesn’t draft the platform, a group of flunkies does. The candidate almost never reads their platform, and usually ends up contradicting it more than once in a campaign. It’s essentially boilerplate written by committee.
What does matter is what the candidate actually says in their speeches – which are far better indications of a candidate’s selected policy positions than their platform ever is.
The reason why I say the Democrats are berefit of ideas is that they can’t say a single sentence without an overt or tacit criticism of George W. Bush – which is an indication of a reactive rather than a proactive line of thinking.
which is an indication of a reactive rather than a proactive line of thinking.
Come on, Jay. When there’s an elephant in the living room – or an idiot in the White House – it’s rather hard to talk about anything else.
Bush is the problem. Therefore any kind of plan or solution to the problems of this country are naturally going to start with “first we get rid of Bush, then…”
Frankly, Jay, I’m even more cynical than you. I don’t even think campaign speeches are any more a prediction of a candidate’s actions in office than anything else.
And that proves my point – the Democrats are as fixed on Bush as Ahab was fixated on Moby Dick – and look how he turned out…
Well, if Bush’s policies are flawed, and he displays no sign of being amenable to reason in regards to changing them, what else would you call him besides “a problem?”
Not all Bush criticism is unjusitifed “Bush-bashing.” I realize that maybe it’s hard for you neo-cons to realize that there’s plenty of reasonable, intelligent people who don’t agree with the president. Even harder to realize that a lot of them are in your own party.
Obviously you haven’t read my criticisms of Bush’s spending habits…
Not all Bush criticism is unjustified… but most is.
Not all Bush criticism is unjustified…
Ah, I see now. Jay gets carte blanche to criticize Bush because he’s going to vote for him anyway. The rest of us will the balls to put our opinions into actions, however, that’s just Bush-bashing.
Perfectly sensible, for neo-cons, anyway.
Jay has a good reason to believe that Presidential campaign platforms don’t mean a thing. Hell, Bush campaigned on a tax cut for “those at the bottom” and on never committing troops to a mission without a clear exit strategy.
And, other than the fact that it says something you’d rather not believe, what makes you doubt the Newsweek poll? Moreover, since no other national polling shows Bush getting the traditional SOTU bounce, where are you getting this confidence? From the fact that he got less votes than the other guy last time and still got the job?
So, now that CNN has weighed in, are you still doubting that Newsweek poll, or are you harboring the last shred of credibility for later?
j/k. Everyone makes mistakes (cough*WMD*cough)