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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (20881)	6/22/2003 11:15:10 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Democratic Hopefuls Denounce Bush in Chicago Sun June 22, 2003 09:04 PM ET CHICAGO (Reuters) - Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman told an audience here Sunday that he was "the Democrat who can win" by defeating President Bush in 2004. One of seven candidates for the party's presidential nomination in attendance, Lieberman said he can match Bush where he is strong, on national defense and values, and attack him where he is weak, on economic policy and a divisive social agenda. Lieberman said the administration has done "what's easy and unfair" in locking up Americans suspected of involvement in terrorism without access to counsel, without charging them and without telling anyone. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean told the Rainbow Push Coalition's annual conference that Democrats cannot simply mirror Bush. "We are not going to beat George Bush with 'Bush light,"' he said. The candidates spent much of the time denouncing Bush as a divisive leader and agreed they would repeal his tax cuts if elected president in 2004. They said the money would be better used for education spending. "The one person in America who deserves to be laid off is George W. Bush," Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry said told a predominantly black audience. "We're selecting somebody who is going to guarantee that we don't divide people," Kerry said. "We're united in a single goal, which is to get rid of George Bush," former Illinois Sen. Carol Mosley Braun said. "We're witnessing a failed presidency." Civil rights activist Al Sharpton criticized Bush for what he called divisive policies. Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich called such urban problems as joblessness and poor health care the real weapons of mass destruction hurting the United States. Concern about weapons of mass destruction was a reason cited for the war with Iraq. The candidates agreed that more funding for teachers and funding for training and equipment for schools were needed. Dean, Kucinich and Braun said universal health care is affordable, a position Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt has been pushing. asia.reuters.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (20881)	6/22/2003 11:46:27 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Graham: Bush deceived the public over threat in Iraq ______________________________________ BY FRANK DAVIES The Miami Herald Posted on Wed, Jun. 18, 2003 WASHINGTON - Sen. Bob Graham Tuesday appealed to centrist Democrats with a low-key call for fiscal responsibility and a hard-edged critique of President Bush that included an incendiary word: impeachment. Graham, a Florida Democrat running for president, said he recently had seen ''Impeach George Bush'' buttons on the campaign trail. He was asked in New Hampshire if Congress would impeach the president ''if in fact it was found there was manipulation of intelligence in order to create public support for the war'' in Iraq. ''My answer was no, but the American people will have an opportunity to collapse both steps -- impeachment and removal from office -- on the first Tuesday of November 2004,'' Graham told a couple hundred members of the New Democrat Network meeting in Washington. Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, did not see an impeachable offense in the buildup to war, but accused the administration of ''deception and deceit'' in its foreign and domestic policies. ''We were sold on war with Iraq because of an imminent threat to the United States of weapons of mass destruction,'' he said. 'Now we can't find `Osama Bin Forgotten' or Saddam Hussein or those weapons.'' Democratic activists also heard Graham use a bit of generational history in his call to trim Bush's tax cuts in order to reduce growing deficits. He said when his father was born in 1885, each American's share of the national debt was $35. When one of his grandchildren was born in 2000, Graham said, her share of the debt was $25,000. ''We have to speak out against the immorality of our generation passing along these expenditures to the next,'' he said. The New Democrat Network raises money for moderate Democrats and has several links to Graham. He heads the New Democrat Coalition in the Senate, which includes about 20 Democrats. The group also heard candidates Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who has also had strong centrist credentials; and, on tape, Sen. John Kerry and former Gov. Howard Dean. miami.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (20881)	6/24/2003 12:42:55 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

POLL: MORE AMERICANS ARE LOSING PATIENCE WITH BUSH OVER IRAQ Losing Patience More Americans Call the Level of Casualties in Iraq ‘Unacceptable’ By Gary Langer ABCNews.com June 23, 2003 abcnews.go.com The number of Americans who say the United States is sustaining an "unacceptable" level of military casualties in Iraq has grown sharply, a trend that could signal limited patience for a long and violent occupation. While 51 percent of Americans in a new ABCNEWS/Washington Post poll call the current level of U.S. casualties "acceptable," that's down from 66 percent in early April, when Baghdad fell with little organized resistance. And the number calling casualties "unacceptable" has jumped by 16 points, to 44 percent. While a yellow flag for policy-makers, rising concern about casualties hasn't greatly altered basic support for administration policy. Considering its costs vs. benefits, 64 percent say the war was worth fighting, down modestly from 70 percent at the end of April. And President Bush gets 67 percent approval for handling Iraq — down from 75 percent when the main fighting ended, but still a sizable majority. Bush's overall job approval rating stands at 68 percent, compared to 71 percent in late April. That, too, remains very high, particularly in a time of economic discomfort. It reflects huge and long-running approval of Bush's response to terrorism: In the seven months up to Sept. 11, 2001, he averaged 58 percent approval. In the 21 months since, he's averaged 73 percent. Weapons of Mass Destruction In a similar vein, a majority continues to give the administration a pass on its so-far fruitless effort to locate Iraq's alleged store of chemical or biological weapons. Sixty-three percent say the United States can justify the war for other reasons, even if it doesn't find weapons of mass destruction. That's slipped by six points since early April. That the majority doesn't demand hard evidence of weapons of mass destruction shouldn't be a surprise; most Americans long have desired Saddam Hussein's removal from power for broader reasons — as a suspected supporter of terrorism, source of regional instability and all-around despot. Even years before the 9/11 attacks, majorities favored his forcible ouster. Getting Bogged Down? The question, with Saddam gone from power, is how long Americans are willing to stay in Iraq — and their response if the going stays rough, or gets rougher. Clearly there's disquiet about a long stay — 72 percent are concerned about the possibility the United States will get bogged down in a long and costly peacekeeping mission in Iraq. Yet this has not grown since the end of April — and neither has the much smaller number, 32 percent, who are "very concerned" about it. As long has been the case with this war, many of these views are highly partisan; the level of concern is largely premised on faith in, or suspicion of, the administration. Compared to Republicans, Democrats are 46 points more likely to say the war was not worth fighting, 39 points more likely to call the level of casualties in Iraq unacceptable, 34 points more apt to be very concerned about getting bogged down there, and 29 points less apt to say the war can be justified without finding weapons of mass destruction (see next table). There's a similar partisan division on the possibility of U.S. military action against Iraq's neighbor, Iran. Fifty-six percent of Americans would favor striking Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear arms; that includes 72 percent of Republicans, compared to 45 percent of Democrats. Is It Worth It? All Dem. Ind. Rep. Gap Dem-Rep gap War not worth figting 33% 56 39 10 46 points Casualties "unacceptable" 44 60 53 21 39 Bogged down: "very" concerned 32 51 31 17 34 War can be justified w/out WMDs 63 48 62 77 29 Support striking Iran 56 45 47 72 27 The Limits of Opinion Polls It's worth noting that independents — the ultimate swing group in political support — are more closely aligned with Democrats than with Republicans in their views on the level of casualties in Iraq and on the notion of striking Iran. There's also a striking difference between men and women in their view of the level of casualties. While 60 percent of men call it acceptable, just 42 percent of women agree. Democratic women are 11 points less likely than Democratic men to call the level of casualties acceptable, and there's a similar gap between Republican men and women. And there are differences by age: Acceptance of casualties is highest among younger adults, and lowest among the oldest. Older Americans also are substantially less apt than others to say the United States can justify the war without finding weapons of mass destruction (but 52 percent do hold that view.) Many of these divisions also show up in overall approval of Bush's job performance. It's huge — 95 percent — among Republicans, and less than half that — 42 percent — among Democrats. (A third of Democrats disapprove "strongly" of Bush.) His approval rating is much lower among nonwhites than among whites. And it's lower among older Americans — a possible impetus for his push for expanded prescription drug benefits for the elderly. Finally, this poll included a knowledge question asking respondents whether, based on what they know or have heard, they believe Iraq used biological or chemical weapons against U.S. troops during the war earlier this year; 24 percent said yes. That could reflect any number of factors — erroneous information, bad guesses, an inclination to expect the worst from Iraq, and others. But probably more than anything, it underscores the limitations of opinion polls as a tool to measure knowledge. Methodology This ABCNEWS/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone June 18-22 among a random national sample of 1,024 adults. The results have a three-point error margin. Sampling, data collection and tabulation were done by TNS Intersearch of Horsham, Pa.

To: American Spirit who wrote (20881)	6/26/2003 6:11:29 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Economy Downs Bush's Re-Election Support _____________________________ The Associated Press Wednesday 25 June 2003 President Bush basks in high approval ratings, but when potential voters are pressed about giving him a second term, the numbers drop, a reflection of worries about the struggling economy and a general wait-and-see attitude so far ahead of the election. Bush's overall approval ratings have remained at 60 percent or higher in most polls since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But now that the electorate is turning to thinking about Bush's handling of the economy and wondering who the Democrats will nominate, the president's re-elect numbers are at 50 percent or lower in several polls. In a recent CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll, 50 percent said they would vote for Bush and 38 percent backed the unknown Democratic candidate, with the rest undecided. Those numbers aren't very different from those garnered by Bush's father in June 1991, when the commander in chief was praised for the U.S. success in the Persian Gulf War and the Democrats were scrambling for a candidate. Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush in the 1992 election. "With job approval, you're asking how they feel right now," said Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup poll. Bush's job approval ratings won't accurately reflect his potential until March or April next year, Newport said. The current poll also found that 37 percent of Democrats approve of Bush's job performance, but only a third of those Democrats who approve would vote to re-elect him. Among independents, the re-elect numbers weren't as high as the approval ratings. "What this means is that Democrats and independents who lean Democratic still want to consider other choices," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. "Bush will still have to convince swing voters that he's the right person for the job once a Democratic candidate emerges. "It also says the public wants an election campaign and wants to see what the Democratic candidate will say," Kohut said. Bush's re-elect numbers are even lower in the Ipsos-Cook Political Report tracking poll, which showed a drop for the president from April to June, a time when the nation's focus shifted from the U.S.-led war against Iraq to the economy, Medicare and tax cuts. In June, 42 percent of those polled said they would definitely vote to re-elect Bush, and 31 percent said they would definitely vote for someone else. Bush had a 19-point advantage over an unnamed opponent in the April survey by the Ipsos-Cook Political Report. Thomas Riehle, president of Ipsos Public Affairs, said the reason was simple: It's the economy. For Democrats, struggling with a field of nine candidates and facing a Bush fund-raising machine that has raked in millions, the numbers provide some hope _ and a challenge. Veteran pollster Warren Mitofsky said who the Democrats pick will influence the support for Bush's re-election. "The real question for the Democrats is will they choose a candidate who's as good as people are looking for?" Mitofsky said. Pollsters also point to an inherent problem in asking people whether they favor the president or a hypothetical opponent. "People can pick their favorite candidate, or they could pick someone who's not even in the field," said Doug Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac University poll. "People can pick their own fantasy candidate." truthout.org

To: American Spirit who wrote (20881)	6/26/2003 7:11:38 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

In Bush We Trust? ______________________________ by John Moyers Published on Wednesday, June 25, 2003 by TomPaine.com George W. Bush is a liar. There, I said it -- the "L" word. Someone in Washington had to. Thanks to AWOL WMD, people all across America have the "L" word on their lips, but here in D.C. it's still a hard one to mouth. Few Washington-based commentators and fewer politicians have done so. On Sunday, June 22, The New York Times had a chance to be the first big-league outfit to say it plainly. But the headline on Washington-based reporter David E. Rosenbaum's story, "Bush May Have Exaggerated, but Did He Lie?" was a tip that the story would pull up short. Rosenbaum considered a narrow question -- whether Mr. Bush has told any neat, tidy, obvious lies -- and concluded he has not (a couple of fibs and distortions, maybe, but no lies). Whether the president twisted intelligence on WMD "can probably be answered conclusively only by historians when all the evidence and consequences are known," Rosenbaum wrote. (So, our kids get to pay the debt for our imperial aspirations and our tax breaks, and someday they'll be the first to know how it all happened. Great.) Distance seems to make criticism easier. The Times' Princeton-based columnist Paul Krugman has written that the administration "systematically and brazenly distorts the facts" and is "choosing and exaggerating intelligence" and "misleading the public." Close, but still no "L" word. Boston-based William Rivers Pitt isn't daunted: The administration "lied us into a war," writes the high-school teacher who moonlights as a columnist for Truthout.org. "Trust a teacher on this. We can spot liars who have not done their homework a mile away." A full-page ad in The New York Times last week by MoveOn.org and Win Without War, groups with members across the nation, put it plainly and hoisted the president on his own pointed WMD -- words of mass distortion. Under the headline "MISLEADER" the ad stacked up five of Mr. Bush's pre-war whoppers and noted, "It would be a tragedy if young men and women were sent to die for a lie." (Full disclosure: TomPaine.com liked the ad so much, we paid to run it in the June 30 issue of The Weekly Standard.) Harley Sorensen, writing on SFGate.com, gets the prize for directness: "Why mince words? These are the facts: 1) President George W. Bush is a liar. 2) Secretary of State Colin Powell is a liar. 3) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is a liar. 4) National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice is a liar." No mincing there. So the word is out there in different forms -- lie, lies, lying, liar. When will Mr. Bush's putative opponents in government, the Democrats, decide it's time to tell it like it is? Democrats have accused the president of "a pattern of deception and deceit" (Sen. Bob Graham), said he's not been "entirely truthful" (Howard Dean), and led us to war based on "unfounded assertions" (Rep. Dennis Kucinich). Strong stuff, but no "L" word. Opposition worthy of the name would push the GOP-controlled House and Senate hearings beyond the question of what the intelligence community knew about WMD, where it seems stalled. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, could invoke committee rules that would allow his minority party to launch a full investigation. But he won't -- reportedly for fear of being seen as partisan. If this isn't the time for partisanship -- after all, we're talking about manipulations that led the nation into war -- when is? Rockefeller's timidity is allowing committee Republicans to cover what looks more every day like a lie of literally global magnitude. Perhaps Dems fear the day when WMD are found (and they will be found, by hook or by crook). But they needn't worry -- even if misleading the nation to war weren't an issue, Mr. Bush's record is full of lies. The president says he supports our troops -- but he proposed cutting veterans' benefits and sidestepped a law meant to protect the health of soldiers headed for combat. His "leave no child behind" pledge is a fraud -- he's vastly underfunded his own education plan, and he signed the recent tax bill even after his GOP minions sneakily removed provisions benefiting low-income families. Mr. Bush says he's a "compassionate conservative," but only a hard-hearted radical would push his Robin-Hood-in-reverse tax policies. He says he wants to expand national service programs, but he's presiding over a huge cut in AmeriCorps programs. Candidate Bush promised to be "a uniter, not a divider," but his foreign policies have profoundly divided the international community, isolated America and devalued her stock in the eyes of world. Mr. Bush's administration is built on lies, which means the granddaddy of them all is his promise to restore "honor and integrity" to the Oval Office. Presidential Brain Karl Rove must be worried. Rove knows that any president's popularity rests more on whether voters think he's a believable and admirable leader than on the substance of issues. George W. Bush has that going for him -- people might not like his policies (if they understand them at all), but they like his swagger and certitude, and they trust him to do what he says. But that trust could crumble if questions linger about whether the White House deceived us into war. Few of the president's allies could or would defend that -- even GOP-TV (a.k.a. Fox News) would have trouble explaining away that one. __________________________________ John Moyers is Editor-in-Chief of TomPaine.com. Copyright 2003 TomPaine.com commondreams.org

To: American Spirit who wrote (20881)	6/27/2003 4:45:20 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

The Man To Beat _________________________ Howard Dean, despite a bad showing on ‘Meet the Press,’ is still bringing in the bucks msnbc.com NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE June 27 — The phone rings in the background. It’s one of the Democratic candidates calling for money. The lobbyist lets the call go into voice mail. “I can’t tell you how many phone calls I’m getting,” he says. “I feel like that beautiful girl in college who has everybody calling her.” IT’S NEARING THE end of the second quarter filing period, and Democrats will measure who’s up and who’s not by how much money they raised in the last three months. The buzz is that Howard Dean will post over $4 million. Two rival camps privately predict that Dean will come close to $6 million. There is panic in the air. Democrats on Capitol Hill see Dean and his anti-war populist campaign as “McGovern Redux.” They worry he’ll lead the party into a repeat of Democrat George McGovern’s 49-state loss to Richard Nixon in 1972. It’s not that the war in Iraq was that popular with Democrats. If the congressional resolution empowering President Bush to invade Iraq had been a secret vote, many more Democrats would have voted no. But lawmakers fear the unknown, and they don’t know Dean the way they know the other contenders in the race. Plus he’s running a campaign against them, and the way they have accommodated a popular president. Democrats have won the White House only twice in the last thirty years. Both times it was by somebody who was not part of Washington. Governors don’t speak Washingtonese. Whatever you think about Dean and his cranky assault on the Establishment, you can’t avoid the fact that he fits the pattern. Thanks to a little strategic thinking and a lot of luck, the former Vermont governor is positioned as the only outsider in the race at a time when Democrats have given up on insider politicians. Dean says that when he travels around the country, he finds that Democratic voters are almost as angry at Democrats in Washington as they are at Bush. Dean appeals to the idealism in the party. His theme — “Let’s take back the country” —echoes Jimmy Carter’s campaign call a quarter-century ago for a government as good as its people. Like Carter, Dean is not someone you would immediately peg as charismatic. But his edgy personality is reminiscent of John McCain, and his blunt talk gives him a Trumanesque appeal of the little guy who fights back. When Dean first spoke out against the war in Iraq, he did so in a political climate of 70 percent support for the war. Analysts saw it as political suicide. “How many electoral votes are there in Iraq?” Dean was asked at one political gathering. “None,” he fired back. “They’re in Iowa.” The centrist wing of the Democratic Party is fighting hard to head off Dean. In the upcoming issue of the “New Democrat” magazine, an editorial headlined “Why we fight” lays out the case against a Dean candidacy. Without having read the piece, which is embargoed, I presume it rests on Dean’s opposition to the war as exposing the party’s longstanding weakness on national security. Not long ago, the Democratic Leadership Council, the Vatican of the New Democrat movement, pointed to Dean, a fiscal conservative, as an example of a successful governor in the DLC model. The DLC’s change of heart appears principally based on differences over the war with Iraq. After siding with Bush, the DLC and the pro-war Democrats have a lot at stake in defending that position regardless of the deteriorating situation on the ground in Iraq and the growing concerns about whether Bush misled the country in the run-up to the war. What Dean’s critics find especially galling is how he is weathering his poor showing on “Meet the Press,” the premiere Sunday talk show. Host Tim Russert quizzed him on U.S. troop strength around the world, caught him in Gore-style exaggeration on an anecdote about a teenage girl seeking an abortion, and questioned whether he had the “temperament” to be president. Dean appeared uncertain even when his facts were OK, and he seemed annoyed at being grilled. By all accounts, it was a terrible performance. “If he was Gephardt, he’d be out of the race,” says a Democratic strategist. But the next day Dean presided over a hokey official announcement of his candidacy, which drew a large press contingent and got him on all the news shows. “The rules don’t apply to him,” says the strategist. “He operates in a different universe. His supporters say, ‘That mean Tim Russert,’ and they send him another $200 on the Internet.” The terrible logic of the Democratic nomination is that anybody who runs left enough to get the activists can’t win a general election. Dean has the centrist credentials to maneuver his way back to the center, where he’s probably more comfortable anyway. His health care plan is relatively modest, and he supported the carrying of concealed weapons in Vermont. But Democratic officeholders have a fear of the unknown, and when they look at Dean, they see an angry liberal who will send them into the wilderness for another 25 years. Savior or spoiler, Dean has gone from a second tier candidate to the man to beat. © 2003 Newsweek, Inc.