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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mph who wrote (2387)	12/11/2003 4:19:20 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

Sounds like Dean is lying this time: "I never said Saddam was a danger to the United States, ever," he added. The Kerry camp seized on this statement, circulating a memo citing Dr. Dean's remarks on the CBS program "Face the Nation" in September 2002: "There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States and to our allies." Dr. Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi, dismissed the issue as semantic. "I know for absolute fact that he has never said Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat," he said. "There's a difference between imminent threat and threat." Vaguely reminiscent of the debate over what "sexual relations" means. It's not the semantically dissected wording that matters - it's the message he was conveying at the time. If an objective listener reasonably concludes that Dean was agreeing with the political consensus at the time that Saddam was a threat, then leaving out the word "imminent" doesn't change a thing. And adding it now doesn't either. Same as when most Americans reasonably concluded that Clinton meant he had not engaged in sexual activities of any kind with "that woman", not just intercourse. The fact that, according to Webster's, he didn't lie is irrelevant. OTOH, I'd add that one would also need to look at the context of Dean's statement. If he said something else to indicate he was distinguishing between threat and imminent threat at the time he said this, then that does change things. But if that were the case, I'm sure his campaign manager would have taken a different tack in his response. Of course, Kerry is deliberately misleading people, too, by arguing that his "yes" vote last fall wasn't "really" a yes vote. So they're both liars. I'm shocked! ;-)

To: mph who wrote (2387)	12/11/2003 4:23:32 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Lizzie on electoral geography: Looking at the last election from the CNN website, it appears that these states, outside of the south went Bush but were within 4 points: Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Tennessee (I guess TN is the hard south? not sure). There was an 8 pt Bush victory in AZ. I would start with those states if I were Dean. NV and AZ are very environmentally conscience with the whole Los Alamos history, I'll bet there is some weakness for Bush there. Message 19583269 Comments: 1. Tennessee is a Southern State. The ground there is about as hard as in other places. It was always in the South on the maps I learned in school, and the last ten times or so I visited there it was still in the same place. It was part of the Confederacy. It's the home of Jack Daniels. Most tellingly, Tennessee favorite son Al Gore ran for President in 2000 and would have been elected had he carried his home state. Which he did not. So how a non-Tennessee candidate will succeed where Gore failed is an interesting question. 2. "NV and AZ are very environmentally conscience with the whole Los Alamos history, I'll bet there is some weakness for Bush there." Los Alamos is in New Mexico, a state which was so close in 2000 it took several days to figure out who won. Los Alamos is not in Nevada or in Arizona. 3. Arizonans may be environmentally "conscious" (conscience is a different word altogether), but they don't tend to vote for Democrats very often in Presidential elections. Quick: who was the last Democrat for whom a majority of voters in Arizona voted in a Presidential election? The answer is Harry Truman. Clinton won the state narrowly in 1996 due to the Perot vote. Percentage of votes won by Democratic candidates in Arizona in past elections: 2000: Gore 44.7 1996: Clinton 46.5 1992: Clinton 36.5 1988: Dukakis 39 1984: Mondale 32.5 1980: Carter 28.2 1976: Carter 39.8 1972: McGovern 30.4 1968: Humphrey 35.0 1964: Johnson 49.4 1960: Kennedy 44.4 1956: Stevenson 38.9 1952: Stevenson 41.7 1948: Truman 53.8 4. New Hampshire and Nevada are closer to being true swing states, but they too lean heavily Republican. The last time either state voted majority Democratic in a Presidential election was 1964. Nixon won New Hampshire three times. It may be true that New Hampshire, Arizona, and Nevada are key to the Democrats' fortunes in 2004, but if it is true they start out with a very difficult hill to climb. It is hard to imagine Howard Dean winning any of those states except maybe neighboring New Hampshire. .