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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (491071)	11/11/2003 6:57:43 PM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769669

As When John Kerry goes Belly-up are you going to admit defeat?

To: American Spirit who wrote (491071)	11/11/2003 7:20:48 PM
From: Sidney Reilly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769669

This shakeup doesn't sound good.

To: American Spirit who wrote (491071)	11/11/2003 7:27:13 PM
From: SeachRE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769669

Nobody from Mass can win nationally EVER. Deal with it, but love is never h...

To: American Spirit who wrote (491071)	11/11/2003 7:33:32 PM
From: Sidney Reilly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769669

Is anyone else having trouble posting a large post tonight?

To: American Spirit who wrote (491071)	11/12/2003 7:34:23 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769669

Now, with Mr. Kerry's campaign battling for survival in New Hampshire and embroiled in turmoil and infighting — his press secretary and deputy finance director walked out the door on Tuesday, following the abrupt dismissal of his campaign manager — the talk is less about Mr. Shrum's gifts and more about what some are acidly describing, in this toxic environment, as the Shrum curse. nytimes.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (491071)	11/12/2003 7:43:20 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769669

WAR hero:the thinking of Mr. Lehane's faction was that Mr. Kerry could not rely solely on his Vietnam War heroism to prove his mettle as a politician and provide a retort to Dr. Dean's red-meat Democratic appeal. "If you're going to be the candidate running about courage, then you actually have to show some courage," the adviser said. "You can't just be running on the courage you showed 30 years ago." Mr. Shrum has many friends in Washington, and his own supporters say he is being made a convenient scapegoat for Mr. Kerry's troubles.

To: American Spirit who wrote (491071)	11/12/2003 7:49:44 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769669

Dean has an unexpected development going for him: because his basic pitch has been to deride Iraq's liberation, he is the one Democrat not ensnared in the now-embarrassing denunciation of Bush economic policy. Every Democratic candidate, Dean included but not most loudly, has been hammering at the rising deficit and the loss of new jobs, blaming both on Bush tax cuts. But that ground is crumbling under them; if prosperity continues to make its comeback, their biggest complaint would become Bush's greatest boast. Then Dean would make a bumper sticker out of what we have already begun to hear: "It's the War, Stupid." He would echo the McGovern slogan, "Come home, America," and if the war is going badly in a few months, Dean would blow Clinton and Kennedy and the other old-timers away. But both Democratic power centers are surely considering the other possibility: that Bush is lucky. What if the war on terror begins to succeed by next summer, casualties decline, Saddam is found or Osama is killed? In that case, Bush would campaign on both growing prosperity and impending victory. nytimes.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (491071)	11/12/2003 7:51:01 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769669

Both power centers of the Democratic establishment — the Kennedy left and the Clinton middle — are frantic at the prospect of losing control of their party to Howard Dean. They fear a McGovernesque debacle that would hand the G.O.P. a super-majority in the Senate. Clintonites were first to take the Dean threat seriously. As reported gleefully in this space (full disclosure: I'm rooting for Dean's candidacy in hopes of the debacle), the Clinton crowd surrounded ex-Gen. Wesley Clark with Clinton managers, spinmeisters, pollsters and fund-raisers and marched him into battle against Dean. The Clinton political strategy was, as usual, astute: let Dick Gephardt slow Dean down in Iowa, then push Clark hard enough to upset Dean in New Hampshire, or at least attract enough of the isolationist vote from Dean to let John Kerry squeak through. Of course, if the national economy had gone south, Hillary would have gone South with Clark on her ticket to take on an unemployment-ravaged Bush herself. But with the economy surging and Democrats robbed of their central issue, Hillary can wait till 2008. It is in the Clintons' interest for the 2004 Democratic nominee to lose respectably, not in a landslide, laying the basis for a 2008 comeback that would be impossible if Dean were in the White House. But what of the other power center of the Democratic establishment — who would be its logical stop-Dean candidate? Not Gephardt, who — although an ardent tax-raiser and entitlement maven — has been a stalwart supporter of winning the war and peace in Iraq. Not Joe Lieberman (too centrist and moralist), not Wes Clark (property of the Clintons), not John Edwards (too light). So the Kennedy Left moved in to resuscitate John Kerry's campaign. Kerry is a war hero who led Vietnam Vets Against the War and has long been a Kennedy Senate ally. Some liberals believe he expunged his sin of having voted for this year's resolution to overthrow Saddam by recently joining Kennedy in voting against paying for it. The Kennedyization of the Kerry campaign was carried out by Jeanne Shaheen, the former New Hampshire governor. She prevailed on the candidate to fire his longtime manager, Jim Jordan, and replace him with Mary Beth Cahill, Ted Kennedy's chief of staff. Cahill has impeccable far-left credentials, from Emily's List fund-raising to Representative Barney Frank's staff. She is an ideological soulmate of the superb writer and Kennedy Boston braintruster Robert Shrum, who has been battling Jordan to yank Kerry's moderate position over to the demonstrative dovecote. nytimes.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (491071)	11/12/2003 8:13:55 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769669

Clark then caught his eye. "We saw Clark as a distinct possibility in terms of competing directly with Bush, particularly on the terrorism issue," he said. "We had many meetings with him. We had him go over to the AFL-CIO and meet with the political committee. But then we got, I guess you would say, somewhat disturbed by his organizational infrastructure." The fatal blow for Clark came when his campaign team decided last month to pull out of Iowa. The night the news was breaking, Clark called McEntee to tell him. McEntee told him he was making a terrible "strategic mistake." Last week, a Clark campaign official told another labor official that no one on the campaign had known how important Iowa was to AFSCME and McEntee -- further proof to AFSCME leaders of the weaknesses inside Clark's operation. Clark campaign spokesman Matt Bennett said that by the time the Iowa decision was made, campaign officials were well aware of the importance of Iowa to McEntee. But campaign officials decided that the costs of competing in Iowa and possibly finishing badly outweighed the costs of not getting AFSCME's endorsement. As he began shopping for a new candidate, McEntee had a positive meeting with Gephardt, leading the former House Democratic leader to believe he might get the support of Iowa's most powerful union. But McEntee had also asked two top advisers, executive assistant Lee Saunders and political action director Larry Scanlon, to go out and look at the headquarters operations of the campaigns. When they got to Dean's Burlington headquarters in late October, they found energy, innovative use of technology, fundraising prowess and a clear strategy for winning. "They were blown away in Burlington," McEntee said. By early last week, McEntee was ready to hatch his surprise plan. As Gephardt and Dean were going through a final audition before Iowa AFSCME officials, McEntee and Stern were working out the choreography of the dual endorsements, and McEntee was calling his board to a special meeting here today. McEntee knew the SEIU was planning to endorse Dean last Thursday. He asked Stern to hold off formally announcing the endorsement. "Gerry is very instinctual," Stern said, "and his instincts were that, if we were both going to do this, it would be better to both do it together, for us, for Dean, for the importance." With today's endorsements will come not only more publicity for the Dean campaign, but the kind of institutional muscle his grass-roots campaign has so far been lacking. McEntee summed up the dividends this way: "We bring money, we bring boots on the ground, and we bring blood and treasure to the process." washingtonpost.com