Democratic (Party) Direction

Begala told a great Bill Clinton story -- Begala and Carville were going on about how awful they thought the 2004 Dem Convention was, largely because the Kerry campaign insisted on "nothing negative" in the speeches.

Well apparently Bill Clinton didn't much buy this idea, and prepared a pretty strongly anti-Bush speech anyway. At the last minute, he's waiting to go on, Begala at his side, and this "dweeby kid" from the Kerry campaing comes up and says "Mr. President, you can't give this speech. It's too negative." Begala is fuming, but Clinton just calmly says, "That's alright son, I think it'll work out just fine. Run along now."

My own point that I like to add is that you have to make sure you have people other than your candidate do all the dirty work and savaging. Bush himself always came across as comfortable and positive. He might jab at Kerry, but he'd do it with a smile. It was everyone else who did the real savaging. And admittedly it was a brilliant move to get a Democrat (as it were) to deliver the harshest speech of all.

Meanwhile, Kerry was inconsistent -- sometimes trying to play "positive" and then sometimes attacking Bush but falling flat and coming off as cranky.

Considering that political campaigns are nothing but marketing I think the major players are stuck in a button-down 1960s ad agency frame of mind. Where are the Chiat/Weiden/Saachis (not to mention the Putney Swopes)?

Yeah, if only Saatchi could work some of the magic for the Dems that he worked for Margaret Thatcher in the UK.

It wouldn't be hard.

to the extent the 'Dem leadership' did anything about Dean, they mostly helped rather than hurt him - the CLintons threw Clark into the mix so he could have a Veep who would reframe 'crazy' as 'crazy like a fox', then Gore endorsed him giving him some measure of legitimacy (which you can argue hurt rather than helped him)

that's completely nuts.

why?

1. clark didn't help dean, not even "mostly help"
2. gore /= clinton, possibly even gore /= "dem leadership"

"Last year I was appearing on a Boston TV show... This was about the same time that Harriet Miers was nominated for the Supreme Court role for which Judge Alito just completed his audition. Preceding me on the show were two women who were involved, mostly behind the scenes, in the Democratic Party. They were there to discuss the nomination. As we were chatting in the green room, one of the two mentioned that she had been one of Vice President Gore's key staffers.

"Hold on," I said. "Were you involved in preparing him for his first debate with Bush?" She replied in the affirmative. I was practically salivating now. "I have been waiting five years to ask this question. In that debate, the first question to your man was, 'Is Governor Bush qualified to be President?' At that moment, experience was a key issue in the race. Gore had been in the Congress, had spent eight years as VP doing all kinds of high-profile stuff, while the other guy had the reputation as being a naïf. It was a big advantage for your side. So," I said, nearly shouting now, "when the moderator throws you a gimmie like that, an obvious chance to score points, WHY DID GORE SAY 'YES?' DON'T YOU REALIZE YOU LOST THE ELECTION RIGHT THERE?"

The women glanced towards each other while I wiped the spittle off of my shirt. "No, no, no," they said, nearly in unison. "Saying 'no' would have looked petty and mean. You let proxies do that for you. You stay above it."

I was nearly speechless. "People liked the other guy because he seemed honest and direct," I said in a high, airless voice. No answer. They were still in denial. They had learned nothing from the tactics that had been used against them for roughly six years, if not since Joe McCarthy. In today's New York Times, Maureen Dowd had a column about how the Republicans have consistently succeeded in casting the Democrats as effeminate wimps.

It's actually kind of a simple bit of reasoning: people don't like you personally, and fair or not there is no way of convincing them to like you. As such, you might as well go down stressing your objective qualifications rather than subjective ones that no one believes anyway."

http://www.yesnetwork.com/yankees/pinstripedblog.asp

(Jan 18 entry)

i'm talking about intentions, not results. and neither of us knows for certain what their intentions were. but i would dispute you on results - the Dean/Clark ticket became an instant talking-point.

2. gore /= clinton, possibly even gore /= "dem leadership"

that's because there's no such thing as the "dem leadership", but gore has as much claim on it as the Clintons do. and i see no reason to assume that their tactical intentions diverge significantly.

i meant no, of course

rahm (sorry, still smiling about that one)...gabbneb, you don't actually pay for that echo chamber, do you?

I fully admit this is my own paranoid conspiracy theory - but its not the yelp and ensuing media frenzy, it was the way Gephardt fell on his sword in Iowa, running extremely negative ads and basically savaging Dean at every opportunity, simultaneously shooting his own campaign in the foot by looking like an asshole. But it def. damaged Dean's credibility and upped the stakes of the primaries - and Gephardt is too much of a party loyalist for me to not to suspect the hand of the Dem leadership (ie "ohmigod who can we get to stop this brushfire - lets throw Dick Gephardt at it, he's not gonna win anyway). The yelp and the media hoohah was more a case of Dems standing idly by and pointing and laughing - note that no one came to Dean's defense. The Dem leadership at large was happy to see him fail, and more than willing to fan the flames by calling his outburst "unpresidential", etc.

But yes, this is pretty much just a crank theory of mine.

Oh yes, political genius - hostility to the person who brings you your audience.

I pay for the Times to be thumped against my apartment door.

you also have to recognize that 80-85% of voters are 30 or older

tracer mostly OTM (re the part about the dems being "left"). OTH, it wasn't as if truman, lbj, or fdr pulled punches when punches needed to be thrown.

xpost

because I've often thought of him when reading your posts.

Echo chamber? Aside from Krugman, they're all bad, but in pretty different ways don't you think, don?

very few of them ever challenge the Editorial page's dogma--although admittedly the only time I acknowledge by glancing at it read the OpEd is on Sundays anymore (that's the only time I ever actually buy the paper.)