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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (6207)	11/7/2003 10:35:30 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

Paul Greenberg The Confederate from Vermont newsandopinion.com \| I see where Howard Dean has aroused the ire - and sheer political opportunism - of his Democratic rivals by claiming that he can talk real folks' language: "I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pick-up trucks." First a lesson on language in these parts, Mr. Dean: That should be Confederate flags on their pick-up trucks; it's the shotgun rack that goes in the truck. Sir, if you're going to have much truck, literally, with the Good Ol' Boy vote, you need to brush up on your prepositions. But, don't you know, if any Yankee could appeal to Good Ol' Boys, it'd be a Vermonter. That state is known for its character and characters, its Green Mountain Boys and fearless individualism - in short, for its Southernism. But does that legendary Vermont still exist? Or, like much of the South, has it been Americanized, too? Just look at what's happened to its neighbor New Hampshire, which is rapidly becoming indistinguishable from (shudder) Massachusetts. No wonder Howard Dean thinks he can talk to "guys" - he means folks - "with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks." The Vermonter of the storybooks - freedom-loving, plain-dealing, contemptuous of fashion and riches - sounds a lot like the classic Southern yeoman, aka Redneck. And before all the angry letters begin to arrive, I emphasize that I use the word Redneck without the pejorative connotations. It's a damned good word - damned by political fashion and by Yankee correspondents who've used it as a synonym for ignorant racist. Howard Dean is to be commended for talking about folks with Confederate flags on their pick-ups as if they were real people worth talking to, even appealing to. His problem is that he himself is so slick and modernesque - an amalgam of glib one-liners - that he doesn't sound enough like a real Vermonter to have much in common with an old boy in a pick-up. Naturally no expression of good will goes unpunished. For extending the hand of friendship across class divisions and regional divides, the former governor of Vermont immediately drew fire. His mention of the Confederate flag set off a Pavlovian reaction among various of his rivals. Sensing an opportunity to gain some political points, they started yelping. Dick Gephardt, who's from Missouri - Bootheel and Little Dixie and all - knows better, but he accused his opponent of appealing to the kind of people "who disagree with us on bedrock Democratic values like civil rights." John Kerry - from Massachusetts, of course - accused Howard Dean of pandering "to lovers of the Confederate flag." John Edwards of North Carolina used the same line I'd first heard when the Freedom Riders were trying to teach Southerners the error of our ways: "The last thing we need in the South is someone like you coming down and telling us what we need to do." It was like old times. Al Sharpton piled on, too, of course. There's no issue he can't demagogue, but race leads his list. I kept wondering when he would sic Tawana Brawley on poor Mr. Dean. All these pols are sophisticated enough (a) to know what Howard Dean meant and that it was well-intentioned, and (b) to pretend that it wasn't, so they can accuse their opponent of waving around a racist symbol. Some student of the semi-science of semiotics (the study of symbols) ought to be able to get a master's thesis out of this little blow-up. Because what we have here is a classic case of one symbol meaning two different things: To some of us, the Confederate flag symbolizes the courage and chivalry of the Lost Cause, the gallantry of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, the Dixie of song and story . . . and all those Early on a Frosty Morn feelings. Let it be noted that in Europe, the Confederate emblem has no racial connotations; it symbolizes the South itself, especially Southern rock 'n' roll bands. Which is the way it ought to be in an ideal world. But to others, because that flag has been hijacked by racist mobs, it has become a hateful thing. The same, degrading trick was played on the perfectly sound principle of States' Rights when it was reduced to a cover for racial oppression; it has yet to regain its respectability. Supporters of states' rights now have to call their principle Federalism in order to escape the old shibboleth's unwholesome connotations. So too was the Confederate flag abused by the haters that used it for cover. It, too, acquired unwholesome connotations. And that's what Howard Dean's opponents seized upon. They rushed to beat their opponent about the head and shoulders - with the Confederate flag. It was a low thing to do, but it's not the first time that proud banner has been used for low purposes.

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (6207)	11/7/2003 12:46:02 PM
From: John Carragher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

"Mark Brewer, a DNC vice chairman and the Michigan Democratic Party chairman, contended that Tuesday’s election results were a mixed bag for both parties. He noted that Democrats made gains at the state and local levels in key battleground states like Michigan" I believe Fred Barnes mentioned the other night on Fox that Michigan was one state where according to exit survey polls the republicans gained 2 or 3 % more voters switching over from democratic.

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (6207)	11/7/2003 11:33:25 PM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10965

Flags Versus Dollars November 7, 2003 OP-ED COLUMNIST By PAUL KRUGMAN Howard Dean's remarks about the need to appeal to white Southerners could certainly have been better phrased. But his rivals for the Democratic nomination should be ashamed of their reaction. They know what he was trying to say - and it wasn't that his party should go soft on racism. By playing gotcha, by seizing on the chance to take the front-runner down a peg, they damaged the cause they claim to serve - and missed a chance to confront the real issue he raised. A three-sentence description of the arc of American politics over the past 70 years would run like this: First, Democrats and moderate Republicans created institutions - above all, Social Security and Medicare - that provided a measure of financial security to ordinary working Americans. The biggest beneficiaries of these institutions were African-Americans and working-class Southern whites, and both were part of the moderate-to-liberal coalition that dominated American politics until the 1960's. But the right opened an increasingly effective counterattack, with a strategy that included using racially charged symbolism to get Southern whites to vote against their own economic interests. All Mr. Dean was saying was that Democrats need to understand and counter this strategy. I know these are fighting words. But the reliance of modern Republican political strategy on coded appeals to racism is no secret. Controversies over efforts to remove the Stars and Bars from the top of the South Carolina Statehouse, and to reduce its size on the Georgia flag, played a significant role in Republican victories in 2002. And the evidence that race is still a crucial factor is as fresh as Tuesday's election. The big story in that election was the victory of Republicans in Mississippi and Kentucky. The secondary story, however, was a string of victories by Democrats in affluent suburban areas in the Northeast. In my state, New Jersey, Democrats took firm control of the state's Legislature. What this tells us is that some people - either in New Jersey, Mississippi or both - voted against their economic interests.For whatever you think of Bush's economic plan, it's clearly much better for New Jersey - a rich state, which gains a lot from tax cuts tilted toward the affluent -than for a poor state like Mississippi. Consider, for example, the effects of estate tax repeal, a central feature of the 2001 tax cut. Almost nobody in Mississippi pays the estate tax. In 2001 only 249 estates in Mississippi paid any tax at all; raising the exemption to $5 million, which some Democrats suggested as an alternative to full repeal, would have reduced that to a couple of dozen. By contrast, New Jersey, with three times Mississippi's population, had almost 10 times as many taxable estates. Or consider the 2003 tax cut. It was also heavily tilted toward the affluent, and therefore toward rich states. According to Citizens for Tax Justice estimates, the typical New Jersey family got a $409 tax cut. In Mississippi, the number was only $165. So did Mississippi voters support the Republicans, even though they get very little direct benefit from Bush-style tax cuts, because they - unlike New Jersey's voters - understand the magic of supply-side economics? If you believe that, I've got an overpass on the Garden State Parkway you may be interested in buying. Now maybe New Jersey voted Democratic because of irrational Bush hatred. But I think it's a lot more likely that white Mississippi voters, unlike their counterparts up north, are still responding to Republican flag-waving - and it's not just the American flag that's being waved. Yet the fact is that Mississippi, being relatively poor, will lose disproportionately if the right wins on its full agenda, which involves a big rollback of New Deal and Great Society programs. (I'll explain in a future column how Republicans are using the prescription drug bill to lay the groundwork for later Medicare cuts.) Mr. Dean wasn't suggesting that his party adopt the G.O.P. strategy of coded racial signals, and by and large African-Americans - my wife included - understand that. What he meant by his flag remark was that Democrats must make the case to working Americans of all colors that the right's elitist agenda isn't in their interest. And he's right. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company nytimes.com

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (6207)	11/8/2003 6:07:02 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

AL GORE Foreign Policy Speech, This Coming Sunday: From email and FYI -- Dear MoveOn Member, In June, twenty thousand MoveOn members interviewed each other by phone to help us explore the values underlying our work together. One striking theme emerged: the deep concern Americans have with the Bush administration's attacks on our cherished liberties, in the name of security. Since June, we've been looking for a powerful way to respond to this clear mandate, and when former Vice President Gore asked us to co-host a policy address on Freedom and Security, we jumped at the chance. You are invited to view this important speech on Sunday, November 9 at 2pm EASTERN by web cast, or on Link TV. In Washington DC, this event will be attended by local MoveOn members and by members of our partner in this effort, the American Constitution Society. Unfortunately, all seats for the event are filled. But we encourage you to tune in this Sunday, at 2pm Eastern, by going to: moveon.org The program will be broadcast live on Link TV, the national television network available on DIRECTV (channel 375) and DISH Network (channel 9410). C-SPAN will likely broadcast the speech as well, as long as another news event doesn't supercede the speech on Sunday. In this, his third major speech on the Administration's response to terrorism, Mr. Gore will describe the Administration's assault on our civil liberties as un-American and will charge that the Bush/Ashcroft attack on the Constitution is actually a smokescreen that obscures the Administration's fundamental failure to meaningfully protect our national security, and that their efforts have weakened rather than strengthened America. In August, Mr. Gore delivered a speech sponsored by MoveOn that opened a space for other leaders to speak out against the Bush Administration's deliberate use of false impressions to mislead the nation on war, taxes, the economy and the environment. That speech did nothing less than shift the terms of the national debate, and we expect this speech to have as big an impact. Again, here are the details: Al Gore Speaks on Freedom and Security Sunday, November 9, 2:00 pm Eastern Webcast: moveon.org Broadcast: Link TV and possibly C-SPAN See you there.