Dean is done.
Welcome aboard, MB! Yes, you can "put a fork in him." Taranto has the overnight numbers, and he is sinking out of sight. His disappearence will probably mean that the Dems will hold a couple of Senate seats they would have lost with him at the head of the ticket.
Best of the Web Today - January 22, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
All Over Including the Shouting?
If the polls are to be believed--and can anyone doubt that they are?--Howard Dean is fading fast in New Hampshire. John Kerry has a 10-point lead over Dean, 31% to 21%, in a new Boston Herald poll conducted Tuesday and yesterday. Slipping Wesley Clark has 16%, while surging John Edwards manages 11%. Joe Lieberman, with 4%, looks like a strong candidate for our next bye-ku.
Everything's coming up Kerry in the American Research Group's daily tracking poll. The latest three-day results, which go from (pre-Iowa) Monday through yesterday, show Kerry taking the lead over Dean for the first time, 27% to 22%, with Clark at 19% and Edwards at 9%. But a look at the single-day results suggests the daffy doc's decline is drastic:
Tue Wed Chg
Kerry 29% 29% 0
Clark 18% 21% +3%
Dean 24% 17% -7%
Edwards 10% 10% 0
Take these numbers with a grain of salt; single-day results from tracking polls are based on comparatively small samples and thus have a big margin of error. But if these numbers show a trend, it is that Wesley Clark is beginning to cut into Dean's support among the hard-core Angry Left.
It seems clear that the endless repetition of Dean's bizarre "concession" speech Monday night is sorely hurting the current front-runner. Lee Harris makes the case that it should:
The real purpose behind the superficially bizarre rituals of an American election--caucuses, primaries, televised debates, concession speeches--is not to provide an exercise in democracy; it is to test the inner resources and character of the candidates, and to do this by exposing them to a grueling series of artificially induced crises that simulate those that he will ultimately have to face as president. The American electoral process is, in a way, like the simulated testing done by the manufacturers of automobile tires--we want to know which ones are reliable before we put them on our cars, rather than afterwards, and that is why the American people tend to respond so harshly to those candidates who fail to make the grade during this our national period of candidate testing.
Iowa was Dean's first crisis--and he blew it; and in doing so he lost far more than the Iowa caucus: he lost the reputation as a man who could be trusted to act calmly and rationally in the midst of adversity. And that is a lesson that the American people will not quickly forget. We do not live in a world where we can afford to.
How will Kerry stand up under the pressure of being the front-runner? There's a candidates' debate airing tonight (8 p.m. EST) on Fox News Channel; it should be fascinating to watch.
I Yam What I Yam
Howard Dean's explanation for his Monday outburst seems to be that he suffers from multiple-personality disorder. "Dean said Wednesday he is going back to 'who I really am' in a nomination contest now dominated by John Kerry," USA Today reports:
Dean said he would "hark back to the real values of the campaign" here--his experience as governor, his record of balancing budgets and providing health care to nearly all children in his state, and his willingness to stand up to President Bush on issues such as tax cuts and the war in Iraq.
"It's who I was as governor for 12 years," he said. "I might as well go back to being who I really am."
It's not clear exactly when Dean plans to revert to the role of dull but worthy budget-balancing governor, but he'd better hurry; the New Hampshire primary is in five days, and if anything, Dean seems to be getting nuttier and nuttier. "Dean unleashed a new line of attack yesterday by hinting at Republican corporate conspiracies to steal elections," reports the New York Post:
Discarding his old stump speech, slipping-in-the-polls Dean took an Oliver Stone-ish shot at the GOP hierarchy, telling New Hampshire voters about his fear that new high-tech voting machines will be programmed to steal ballots from Democrats.
The former Vermont governor warned the head of Diebold, which makes electronic voting machines, may rig his equipment so that ballots from Democratic voters are not counted.
Oliver Stone-ish? It's worse than that; it Paul Krugmanic. Maybe Dean is angling for a job as an Enron adviser once his campaign ends.
You have to laugh, meanwhile, at Dean's proposals for campaign finance. According to the Associated Press, he "wants to lower the limit of individual campaign contributions from $2,000 to $250." That limit was just increased, from $1,000, in the McCain-Feingold law's only bow to reality. And then there's this:
Dean said for every $100 that someone donates to a presidential campaign, the government should match it with $500 and give the donor a $100 tax credit.
This is so blatantly self-serving, it's hilarious. Dean, of course, has raised loads of money in small sums from thousands of individual donors. No one should begrudge his success, but here he is floating a "reform" that would effectively outlaw any other approach to fund-raising and that would offer a massive government subsidy to campaigns like Dean's. It's as if John Kerry were proposing to increase benefits for Vietnam veterans, but only those who are haughty and look French.
What's more, the match-and-tax-credit plan belies any claim Dean has to fiscal responsibility. Under his plan, anyone would be able to cause the government to spend $600 of taxpayers' dollars just by temporarily parting with $100. If the campaign is as technically savvy as Dean's, the entire transaction can be conducted in seconds over the Internet. Point, click and waste.
A Defender of the Cheering Section
Our item yesterday on Democrats who inappropriately applauded when President Bush mentioned in his State of the Union Address that the Patriot Act was expiring, prompted an unattractive display of sanctimony by libertarian blogger Matt Welch:
You know, if there's anything uglier than the sight of one political party dominating all branches of government (the Republicans in Washington, and until recently, the Democrats in Sacramento), it's watching the partisan press egg them on. If you're against Bush = Hitler or Republicans = Nazis, and in the next breath say Democrats = al Qaeda or the BBC = Ba'athist (or vice-versa on all that), you are not against "moral equivalence," you are only against your own political opponents.
Welch's specific complaint is about our headline, "The al Qaeda Cheering Section." But was our characterization really unfair?
Let's say you're at the stadium watching the Super Bowl. It's late in the second quarter, and the Patriots are driving toward the end zone, but time runs out before they can score. The guy sitting in front of you begins clapping and cheering wildly. What do you make of his behavior?
Sure, it's possible that there's some complicated explanation. Maybe he's a devotee of the Patriots who thinks the team's clock-management strategy is disastrous, and he's applauding the Pats' failure because he believes it will spur the team to shape up in the second half. Or perhaps he doesn't like football at all and is clapping in anticipation of the halftime show.
But a normal person would assume he's simply rooting for the other team. Now, again, maybe the reason he's doing so isn't entirely straightforward. Possibly he doesn't care one way or the other about the Panthers but is a Dolphins or Bills fan and is cheering the bad fortune of a divisional rival. (Blogger Steve Sturm suggests--righly, we'd say--that this is the best explanation for the behavior of the cheering Dems.)
Welch's charge of "moral equivalence" is simply bizarre. Of course Democrats do not "= al Qaeda," any more than our Panther fan = Jake Delhomme.
What Would We Do Without Panelists?
"Panelists: Bush Speech Was Full of Politics"--headline, Finger Lakes Times (Geneva, N.Y.), Jan. 21
This Just In
"Lobbyists Are Major Players in the Process: Special Interests Raise Funds, Wield Influence"--headline and subheadline, Washington Post, Jan. 20
What Would We Do Without Powell?
"Powell: At Times, the French Are Annoying"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 22
Weasel Watch
Buried in an Associated Press dispatch about Colin Powell's annoyance with the French is this bit of hilarity:
Last week, in a speech in Washington, French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie criticized "certain radical, neoconservative ideas" in the United States as harmful to U.S. relations with Europe. She singled out what she called American aspirations for economic supremacy.
Oh yeah, Michele, we aspire to supremacy. That's like saying the French aspire to produce fine cheeses.
The Great Iranian Crack-Up
"Iran's worst political crisis in years deepened Wednesday, with the government saying most of its ministers and vice presidents have submitted resignations to protest the barring of thousands of would-be candidates from upcoming elections," the Associated Press reports from Tehran. On the other hand, "political analyst Reza Mahmoudi said most Iranians don't expect the officials to follow through on their resignation threat." Is regime change in the offing? Stay tuned.
An al Qaeda Retreat?
"The large number of Muslim deaths caused by al Qaeda terrorist attacks in Iraq has created p.r. problems for Osama bin Laden, who now appears to be having second thoughts about his holy war against coalition forces there," reports the New York Post:
New articles in al Qaeda's biweekly Internet magazine Sawt al-Jihad, or "Voice of Jihad," are urging al Qaeda supporters to stay out of Baghdad and concentrate on hitting U.S. military targets in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, according to terrorist expert Rita Katz, whose SITE Institute monitors al Qaeda propaganda on the Internet.
"My instructions to the people of the peninsula [Saudi Arabia], young as old, men as women, is to fight Americans in their homes and the people of Yemen should fight the Americans in their bases, battleships and their consulates," wrote an al Qaeda propagandist named Muhammad bin al-Salim in an article titled "Do Not Go To Iraq."
If true, this is excellent news. It would make far easier the goal of a stable Iraq, the linchpin of a transformed Middle East. Of course, having al Qaeda in Iraq, where there are tens of thousands of American troops, is more convenient from the standpoint of killing them--but al Qaeda in countries like Saudi Arabia also puts pressure on the rulers of those countries to shape up and cooperate in fighting terror.
Our Friends the Saudis
"A Saudi prince has accused his government of kidnapping him in Switzerland after he spoke out in favour of reform in Saudi Arabia," the BBC reports. "Prince Sultan bin Turki bin Abdel-Aziz says he was lured to a meeting in Geneva, where he was drugged before being flown back to the desert kingdom." He says he's now under house arrest and in poor health.
The Blind Leading the Blind
Agence France-Presse reports that a controversy has erupted in Saudi Arabia over unveiled women at the Jeddah Economic Forum:
A delegation of Islamic sheikhs led by a blind cleric attended Wednesday's audience with the crown prince and petitioned him against the events in Jeddah.
The mufti had railed that not only did newspapers splash the women on page one, some portrayed their conduct as "the beginning of the liberation of Saudi women--as if they were being constrained by Islamic law."
A blind cleric? That explains a lot. He can't look at women, so he won't let anyone else do it, either.
The Clothing of the European Mind
"Upset by a street preacher who was waving a sacred Mormon garment during the church's general conference session in October, Jose Basilio tried to grab the clothing away--actions that landed him in court on charges of misdemeanor battery and attempted theft," the Salt Lake Tribune reports. Now Basilio has reached a plea bargain, pleading no contest to disturbing the peace and agreeing to perform 10 hours of community service.
Naturally this got us to thinking: Will the French ban on religious attire apply to Mormon garments too? And since they are worn beneath the clothes, just how aggressive will the French be in enforcing the ban?
Meanwhile, it turns out even secular garb isn't safe from the European fashion police. The Associated Press reports from Davos, Switzerland, that the World Economic Forum "decided to ban neckties" at its annual meeting so as to make it "more 'human.' "
Babble-rella
Jane Fonda was just 34 when she went to Hanoi to support America's enemies in 1972; it's hard to believe she's already in her dotage. But check out this profile in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Troy Garity, Fonda's actor son (from her marriage to Tom Hayden), also has been at numerous V-Days. "He is a vagina-friendly young man. When people say, 'Imagine a world where there was no violence against women,' I always say, 'Men would be like my son.' "
Fonda became involved after attending her first "Vagina Monologues.'' "I had resisted it. You know with my kind of controversies, I don't need to add vaginas and c -- . But it changed my life. I began to own my vagina, and I realized the extent to which I hadn't owned it before.''
Huh? Of course, such incoherent, sexually explicit babble is better than communist propagandizing, but still, this is kind of sad. We especially feel sorry for her son.
You Don't Say
"Pedophile Film a Hard Box Office Sell"--headline, Reuters, Jan. 21
What Would Broiler Chickens Do Without Scientists?
"Scientists Demand Better Conditions for Broiler Chickens"--headline, Independent (London), Jan. 22
Hugs Are for Arming--II
Yesterday's item on National Hug Day prompted a reader to call our attention to a discussion thread on the Web site Packing.org, on the awkwardness of hugging someone while carrying a concealed gun:
Keeping discrete while carrying is key. But even if you have a permit to do so, having a close friend or family member discover that you are carrying a handgun in a holster is a tough situation. I get hugs from good friends every now and then, especially from female friends or family. For a while I switched to a Ken Null City Slicker to carry my 2" .38 revolver under my left armpit. I found that if I was quick enough, I could give a hug with my left arm dropped and my right arm higher so that the person receiving the hug would go over my left shoulder with the right arm. But other systems of carry can be easily given away. Any ideas out there on how to deal with this? Strange topic, I know, but is there such thing as Carrying Etiquette?
Here's one of the replies:
I especially like when female friends find out I'm packing and ask me in very public places why I feel a need to carry a gun. My favorite is when we are in a crowded restaurant/mall etc., give me a big bear hug, get a wierd [sic] look on their face and then open my jacket to expose the gun. Then they almost shriek, "My God! Why do you have a gun?!" This causes anyone within earshot to either turn and look, or duck, or scream. By the time you ask them very sternly to please keep their voice down, usually a security guard or manager is asking me to see my CCW, while at the same time calming down the other patrons. Some people just don't get it.
Why don't these guys say, "I'm just glad to see you"?
We Accept Your Apologyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
"Britain's biggest-selling hiking magazine apologized Wednesday after its latest issue contained a route that would lead climbers off the edge of a cliff on Britain's tallest peak," the Associated Press reports from London.
Monkeyfishing With the Angry Left
Today the Chinese ring in the new year--a little late, or maybe a little early, since the year on the Chinese calendar is 4702, the Year of the Monkey. It's sort of fitting that President Bush should face re-election in the Year of the Monkey, since Bush-haters often liken him to a monkey or related primate. (From bushorchimp.com: "This is a little project I decided to start once I realized how much George W. Bush looks like a chimpanzee. . . . Several of you out there have been emailing and signing in the guestbook about how it is cruel to the chimps to compare them to George W. Bush.")
Yet according to Primatestore.com, "Monkeys are fun and loving persons who are always cheerful and energetic. They are very clever. Give a monkey a boring book to read and he'll turn it into a Musical. Better yet, he'll invite everyone to see it free! That's how talented, creative and generous monkeys usually are."
Then again, monkey are also French-looking, at least when they eat cheese and surrender. |
