Best of the Web Today - February 4, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Bye-ku for Joe Lieberman
Butterfly ballots
And Jews for Buchanan can't
Explain this goring
(Earlier bye-kus: Dick Gephardt, Carol Moseley Braun, Yasuhiro Nakasone and Bob Graham.)
Kerry's High Five
John Kerry is the all-but-certain Democratic nominee. The haughty senator, who by the way served in Vietnam, easily won three of five primaries yesterday, trouncing second-place Wesley Clark by 43% to 27% in Arizona, Joe Lieberman 50% to 11% in Delaware, and John Edwards 51% to 25% in Missouri. The French-looking Massachusetts Democrat also won deux caucuses, in New Mexico and North Dakota.
In South Carolina, Edwards comfortably beat Kerry, 45% to 30%, the North Carolina senator's only victory thus far. And Wesley Clark edged out Edwards to win Oklahoma by barely over 1,000 votes. Kerry was close behind at 27%, to Clark's and Edwards's 30% apiece.
Erstwhile illusory front-runner Howard Dean's totals ranged from 4% in Oklahoma to 16% in New Mexico. In the nine contests so far, including Iowa and New Hampshire, Dean has managed to finish third six times, fourth once and fifth twice. Oh well, maybe he'll do better in Tennessee, which votes next Tuesday. After all, he has the endorsement of favorite son Al Gore, the man who finished second there in the 2000 general election.
Joe Lieberman's withdrawal from the race, after finishing a distant second in the First State, prompts this observation from blogger Edward Morrissey:
Lieberman managed the unbelievable feat of having both sides of the Democratic party shaft him in its zeal to find the Next Big Thing in politics. First it was Dean and then Clark, and now neither of them are [sic] in the hunt; remember when people debated which one would be VP for the other? Their partisans (Gore and the DLC, respectively) made Lieberman the sacrificial lamb for absolutely no gain whatsoever. Too bad he was the most electable candidate they had for November.
And any fears (or, if you're a cynical Republican, hopes) that race hustler Al Sharpton would be a factor at the polls were allayed (or dashed) by his anemic performance in South Carolina, where, as the Washington Post notes, he "came in a distant third-place finish Tuesday, winning 10 percent of the vote and no delegates." South Carolina exit polls show that Sharpton managed a mere 17% of the black vote, far behind Edwards (37%) and Kerry (34%). In the Palmetto State Kerry, whose wife is African-American, did better among blacks than among whites, who gave him only 27% of the vote against Edwards's 52%.
The Post Web site also has exit poll results from Arizona, Missouri and Oklahoma. Where's mighty Delaware?
Edwards: Still Alive?
John Edwards is the closest thing to a serious challenger for Kerry remaining in the Democratic field. But how serious is he, really? Kerry has carried states in the Northeast (Delaware, New Hampshire), the Midwest (Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota) and the Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico). Edwards has carried a single state--his native South Carolina. As Michael Graham wrote in National Review Online yesterday morning:
When John Edwards wins [South Carolina] Tuesday, it will mean nothing--even when his margin over Kerry is an impressive 10 percent or more (my prediction). Where does Edwards go from here? Tennessee and Virginia? Sure, they vote in a week. But even assuming an Edwards sweep in those states, all that makes John Edwards is a southern senator who won three southern states. John Kerry is the senator who won everywhere else.
Indeed, Edwards couldn't even stave off defeat at the hands of wacky Wes Clark in the border state of Oklahoma. (Interservice rivalry notwithstanding, Gen. Clark has turned out to be quite helpful to Lt. Kerry's cause.)
Last week the Boston Globe reported that Kerry and Edwards were feuding over the importance of the South. Earlier Kerry had observed that a Democrat could lose the solid South and win the election, to which Edwards replied: "We've never elected a Democrat in the United States without winning at least five Southern states. If Democrats across the country want to take a risk that for the first time in American history that's a possibility, then they can do that."
Edwards is living in the past. True, assuming you count Kentucky as part of the South, it's true that no Democrat has won an election without carrying at least five Southern states. But doing so was a "possibility" in all of the past three elections. In both 1992 and 1996, Bill Clinton easily had enough non-Southern electoral votes that he could have won election without carrying any Southern state.
In 2000 Al Gore came within a hair's breadth of winning election with a single Southern state, Florida; and had he won any other Bush state, even tiny New Hampshire or West Virginia, he wouldn't have needed Florida. (Because of reapportionment, the Democratic nominee this year will need to win at least 10 electoral votes in addition to the Gore states. New Hampshire or West Virginia wouldn't do the trick, and both combined would result in a 269-269 tie, sending the election to the House.) The last time the South was decisive in a Democrat's favor was in 1976, when Jimmy Carter carried every Southern state save Virginia.
Times have changed. Back when the Democrats were the party of segregation, they owned the South. To put things in perspective, until 1968, no Democrat since Reconstruction had lost a presidential election without winning at least five Southern states.
The Democrats' embrace of civil rights made the region competitive; Harry S. Truman lost four Southern states to breakaway Dem Strom Thurmond in 1948; and 16 years later LBJ, fresh from signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, won a 44-state landslide, losing five Southern states and only one non-Southern one. Civil rights are no longer controversial, but the Democrats' turn to the hard left on national security and a host of social issues--abortion, homosexuality, religion in public life, racial discrimination in favor of minorities--has put them at a profound disadvantage in this most conservative part of the country.
Yet Edwards does have a point. If the Democratic nominee writes off the South, President Bush can count on 161 electoral votes. The GOP has a near-lock on 11 other states--Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming--with 53 electoral votes. (Bill Clinton lost all these states twice, except Montana, which he narrowly carried in 1992 owing to a large turnout for Ross Perot.) This brings the total to 214 electoral votes--nearly 80% of the 270 needed for victory. (This chart shows the number of electoral votes in each state for both 2000 and 2004.)
Assuming the Democrats are not buried in a GOP landslide--a far less likely prospect now that Howard Dean is assured of failing to win the nomination--they can more or less count on winning California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. That's 168 electoral votes--coincidentally, the same number the hapless George H.W. Bush won against Bill Clinton in 1992.
With a considerably bigger electoral base, the Republican candidate goes into a reasonably close election with a significant advantage. But if the Democrat is able to wage a credible campaign in at least some Southern states, he can force his opponent to divert time and resources from swing states to defend his base. Had Gore ceded Florida, Bush could have campaigned more aggressively in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania, and he might have won a more resounding victory.
Thus Edwards's presumed appeal to Southern voters would be an advantage that Kerry--who, like Bush, comes from a state his party can count on winning anyway--doesn't offer.
Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead
"Kerry Continues Campaigning After Wins"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 4
A Vietnam Flashback
John Kerry can't stop talking about his Vietnam service, and some party operatives, including Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, have been bad-mouthing President Bush for having joined the Texas Air National Guard and not serving in 'Nam. What a change from 12 years ago, when Bill Clinton, who did not serve in the military at all, was the Democratic nominee.
The Columbus Dispatch reports that in 1992 Kerry took to the Senate floor where he "assailed critics of President Clinton's lack of military service, saying, We do not need to divide America over who served and how' ":
Kerry compared Clinton's critics to "latter-day Spiro Agnews" by playing "to the worst instincts of divisiveness and reaction that still haunt America. Are we now going to create a new scarlet letter in the context of Vietnam?"
"The race for the White House should be about leadership and leadership requires that one help heal the wounds of Vietnam, not reopen them," Kerry said at the time.
The Washington Post published Kerry's speech as an op-ed on Feb. 28, 1992; it's not publicly available online, but we found it on Factiva. "I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into the campaign," Kerry said. "What saddens me most is that Democrats, above all those who shared the agonies of that generation, should now be refighting the many conflicts of Vietnam in order to win the current political conflict."
Explaining the Dean Bubble
In a very long post analyzing the "rise" and fall of Howard Dean, blogger Clay Shirky offers a fascinating insight into why the Dean boom went bust--or rather, why it was a mirage to begin with:
For many of us, the first time Dean appeared on our radar was when 300 people showed up for a Howard Dean MeetUp in New York City in early 2003. This was unprecedented, and Dean himself took note of it, coming down from Vermont to speak to his supporters.
We were right to be excited about this MeetUp, but wrong about the reason, because MeetUp was founded to lower the coordination costs of real world gatherings.
The size of the MeetUp in NYC was as much a testament to MeetUp as to Dean--it's a wonderful tool for turning interest into attendance, but it created a false sense of broad enthusiasm. Prior to MeetUp, getting 300 people to turn out would have meant a huge and latent population of Dean supporters, but because MeetUp makes it easier to gather the faithful, it confused us into thinking that we were seeing an increase in Dean support, rather than a decrease in the hassle of organizing groups.
I've seen this sort of effect before, as when written correspondence on letterhead stopped being a sign of a solvent company, thanks to the desktop publishing revolution, or with the way email to politicians matters less than telegrams, because email is cheaper and easier to send. As we get the tools to make such gatherings easy, we need to concentrate on the outcome of those gatherings, rather than assuming strength simply by looking at the number of attendees.
Likewise, Shirky argues, Dean's imaginative use of the Internet made it easier to connect like-minded people from geographically disparate regions, and to raise money. This made the campaign seem very successful, but none of it translated into real success--that is, votes.
Another Reason to Be Glad He Lost
"During a question-and-answer session at a Spokane, Wash., rally," the Chicago Tribune reports, Howard Dean "endorsed pushing Americans to embrace the metric system." Dean said he himself still uses the metric system: "I'm a doctor. I was trained and we do our calculations in meters. We don't use feet and inches and cubic inches and things like that." No wonder Dean's so full of rage; we'd be angry too if we had to use such an awful system.
You Don't Say--I
"Dean's Labor Backers Concerned"--headline, CNN.com, Feb. 3
Clueless at Cornell
"The National Organization for Women's action vice president Olga Vives introduced her speech at Cornell University Tuesday afternoon with a foreboding message," reports the Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal:
"Right now we're in very dangerous times," Vives said.
The danger Vives spoke of looms on the political front.
"We consider this administration to be one of the most anti-women, anti-civil rights administration in recent memory," she said. "It is an activist administration in the sense that it's inclined to turn back the clock. We haven't found one single instance where the rights of women have been advanced by the policies of this administration."
Uh, hey, Olga, did ya hear about the overthrow of the Taliban? It was in all the papers. Not surprisingly, she also spoke about abortion, which struck a chord with one student:
Maura Kennedy, who serves as NOW's student liaison at Cornell, was drawn to the organization's stance on reproductive rights.
"As the first generation to live with the Roe vs. Wade verdict I think we need to respect the work done by women before us," said Kennedy, a senior. "We need to show them that people are thinking about this issue and they care about it and we're going to stand up for this issue."
Apparently she's never heard of the Roe effect. In the first generation to be depleted by the Roe v. Wade verdict, there just aren't as many people available to think and care and stand up.
Canada to Bush: Make Like a Maple and Leave
President Bush is unpopular in Canada, the Canadian magazine Maclean's reports:
Only 15 per cent [of Canadians], according to an exclusive new Maclean's poll, would definitely cast a ballot for Bush if they had the opportunity. And if Americans remain almost evenly divided--some 50 per cent approve of his performance in the White House and he's running neck and neck with his likely Democratic challengers--there is no such dithering on this side of the border. Just 12 per cent of us feel Canada is better off since he took office, and only a third of respondents will admit to liking the world's most powerful man, even just a little bit.
Luckily for Bush, the Founding Fathers had the good sense to ensure Canadians would never get the vote.
Keep on Trucking
"The U.S. Secret Service intercepted a letter addressed to the White House in November that contained a vial of the toxin ricin, but never revealed the incident publicly and delayed telling the FBI and other agencies," the Washington Post reports":
The letter, signed by "Fallen Angel" and containing complaints about trucking regulations, was nearly identical to one discovered Oct. 15 at a Greenville, S.C., mail-sorting facility. It was accompanied by a metal vial that contained powdered ricin, sources said.
It's not clear if the ricin found in the Senate also comes from the truck-regulation opponent, since the letter in which it presumably arrived has not been found. Meanwhile, Reuters reports the ricin scare in Wallingford, Conn., was a false alarm. A suspicious letter found at a postal facility there tested negative for the stuff.
Our Friends the Pakistanis
"The founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program claimed responsibility Wednesday for leaks of nuclear secrets he said were made behind the government's back, begging forgiveness in an extraordinary televised address to the nation," the Associated Press reports from Islamabad:
Abdul Qadeer Khan's solemn speech followed days of negotiations with the government leading to an understanding that an apology would help him avoid a messy public prosecution, intelligence officials told The Associated Press.
The admission came amid widespread suspicion that the government, despite years of denials, played a role in Khan's sending nuclear technology to Libya and two countries that President Bush has called part of an "axis of evil"--Iran and North Korea.
Why is he apologizing to Pakistan for selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea? Seems to us he owes an apology to America, Iraq, Israel and South Korea.
What Would We Do Without Experts?
"Experts Worry Terrorists Have Nuke Plans"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 4
Strib: Jews Are Terrorists, Arabs Aren't
Two years ago today, we noted the Minneapolis Star Tribune's peculiar policy on the term terrorism: Unlike Reuters, the paper uses it to refer to al Qaeda, but not to groups that murder Jews in Israel. As assistant managing editor Roger Buoen told ombudsman Lou Gelfand at the time, "We . . . take extra care to avoid the term 'terrorist' in articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because of the emotional and heated nature of that dispute."
Except, that is, when they don't. HonestReporting.com, a pro-Israel media watchdog group, notes the following passage from a Jan. 31, 2004, article by the Strib's Kay Miller:
It was midday July 22, 1946. Ovikian was eating in the basement of the King David Hotel when Zionist terrorists struck.
Now, it's probably fair to characterize the attack on the King David Hotel as terrorism. But the question is at least somewhat murky. The Irgun, the group that carried out the bombing, selected the hotel as a military target, since it was the headquarters of the British military command. And, as the Jewish Virtual Library points out:
Irgun leader Menachem Begin stressed his desire to avoid civilian casualties and said three telephone calls were placed, one to the hotel, another to the French Consulate, and a third to the Palestine Post, warning that explosives in the King David Hotel would soon be detonated.
On July 22, 1946, the calls were made. The call into the hotel was apparently received and ignored. Begin quotes one British official who supposedly refused to evacuate the building, saying: "We don't take orders from the Jews." As a result, when the bombs exploded, the casualty toll was high: a total of 91 killed and 45 injured. Among the casualties were 15 Jews. Few people in the hotel proper were injured by the blast.
In contrast to Arab attacks against Jews, which were widely hailed as heroic actions, the Jewish National Council denounced the bombing of the King David.
If the attack on the King David was terrorism, surely Palestinian Arab massacres of bus passengers or disco revelers--whose purpose is to murder civlians--qualify for the term. It's hard to see how the Star Tribune's editorial policy is anything other than baldly anti-Semitic. |
