Surprise! Surprise!  In his appearance here, Harold Ford was too frightened to use it, the "I" word. Yet, as many TPMC regulars have insisted, the only way that Democrats can win in '06 is to nationalize the election, and the only way to do that is to address, at long last, the issue that brought Bush a second term, and two years later, in Amy Walter's words, numbers the likes of which "no Republican has ever seen before".

 Well, maybe now the Democrats will wake up and smell the coffee for the Democracy Corps has weighed in on the side of the Democratic Wing of the Democratic party and the overwhelming majority of the American people

June 9, 2006 (Emerging Democratic Majority)

DCORPS: Dem Challengers Must Nationalize Election

Democracy Corps has an important new study directed to Democratic congressional candidates challenging GOP incumbents. The survey is available here, and the analysis by Stan Greenberg and James Carville can be read here.

Carville and Greenberg say their survey numbers indicate hat Democrats must “nationalize” the election to recapture the House or the Senate.

Disillusionment with Bush has grown so strong that our tests show that a Democrat who runs against Bush and the Republicans performs better than one who runs only against the Republican incumbent.

They stress the importance of Democratic challengers stating clear, strong positions in confronting GOP “wedge” issues, such as immigration, national security and Iraq, while advocating equally lucid policy alternatives regarding energy, American jobs, drug prices and congressional pay raises. The DCorps survey also shows that proposals to make college tuition tax deductible and to inspect 100 percent of containers coming into the U.S. also inspire broad support. They urge Democratic challengers to reassure voters that they oppose “precipitous withdrawal” from Iraq (to avoid GOP “cut and run” accusations), and articulate instead a more credible option, such as “phased redeployment over the next 12 months.”

Greenberg and Carville urge challengers to make a strong effort to engage and turn out African American and Latino voters, and especially unmarried women who tend to support Democratic congressional candidates by a large margin (29 percent in the survey), but who also have an unusually low turnout rate. There are many other interesting recommendations in the DCorps study, backed up by solid opinion research.

Posted by EDM staff at 04:54 PM | link

You know who you are. From the New York Times report today, it looks like the War Party's going to have to revise talking point "We destroyed the Taliban"

Just as Bill Lind predicted...Wait for the Spring hunting season to begin

As Lind put it "Afghans just run on a slower clock"..Another BushSh*t Talking Point bites the dust in the Kush



Taliban Surging in Afghan Shift From U.S. to NATO

May 9, 2006
The Other War

By William S. Lind
As rising U.S. and NATO casualty counts attest, the war in Afghanistan is heating up. It is doing so on Afghan time, which is to say slowly. When you have all the time in the world, why hurry?

An April 7, 2006 study by the London-based Senlis Council, “Insurgency in the Provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Nangahar,” paints a somewhat alarming picture. I do not know who or what the Senlis Council represents, or what axes it may grind. The style of the report suggests English is not the first language of those who wrote it. But facts are still facts, and its report tracks with what I’ve seen elsewhere. The study states,

The Insurgency Assessment Report collates notes, evidence and facts gathered during a field visit of the three provinces…during the months of February/March 2006.

The visit was conducted by an independent field team, which met with civil, military and religious leaders in each of the provinces but also gained access to farming communities and other grassroots actors, with whom interviews and group meetings were conducted.

Speaking of all three provinces, the study says in its Executive Summary,

government control over the Pashto Belt, even at a limited level, is rapidly diminishing, with political volatility now reaching urban areas.

Volatility indicators – such as the free movement of insurgent groups in daylight and in the main cities – reveal that increasingly large areas of the South are falling under the influence of non-state actors.

At the core of this failure by the U.S., NATO and the Afghan government is a common and often fatal military phenomenon: conflicting objectives. On the one hand, the U.S. and its allies want to defeat the Taliban and other “terrorists.” But at the same time, they also want to stop opium production. If the Senlis Council’s analysis is accurate, attempts to pursue the second objective are pushing us away from attaining the first.

Looking at Helmand province, the report says,

In eliminating the sole survival strategy of many of the farming families, eradication in Helmand is fueling the insurgency. Anti government forces are winning over the dilapidated farmers by offering economic assistance including the cancellation of debts and providing military protection from eradication.

The Coalition forces mandate covers counter insurgency and support to counter narcotics activities. It is being widely reported that eradication activities are being supervised by the US and British military…
Eradication is blunting counter insurgency efforts by pushing the local population toward the extremists…

The local population has now come to identify international troops with eradication activities rather than with reconstruction efforts.

The situation in the other two provinces is similar. Speaking of Kandahar province, the report states,

The majority of the Kandahar population are farmers living in rural areas. The farming communities of Kandahar are very actively involved in the cultivation and production of opium. The soil, weather patterns and limited water supply make opium one of the few viable crops in the region, and Kandahar farmers admitted that (they) would rather die than forgo their families’ only means of survival…

According to many farmers, the US and Canadian alternative livelihoods plans are farcical…

Determining strategic objectives, and ensuring that those objectives are not contradictory, is the job of the most senior level of command, in this case the White House. By demanding that U.S. and allied troops pursue two conflicting objectives simultaneously, the Bush administration has created a no-win situation. Efforts to defeat the Taliban only work if they can gain the support of the rural population, but poppy eradication pushes the rural population toward the Taliban and its allies. (One could add a third incompatible objective, promoting women’s rights in a conservative Islamic culture.)

President George W. Bush likes to say, “I’m the decider; I decide.” The role of being the “decider” includes making sure that decisions are logically consistent. Mr. Bush is, from that perspective, a failed “decider” in Afghanistan. He failed similarly in deciding to invade Iraq as part of a global war against “terrorism,” when the destruction of the Iraqi state proved, predictably, to work in favor of the “terrorists.” He is failing yet again in picking quarrels with Russia and China when we need an all-states alliance against anti-state forces.

President Harry S. Truman said, “The buck stops here,” in the Oval Office. When it comes to deciding on strategic objectives, President George W. Bush has torn the buck into confetti and tossed it to the winds of chance.

The Financial Times interviewed the head of the Badr Corps militia. Cole's comment follows the lead:

The Americans can “leave Iraq with dignity” by quickly handing over security to Iraqis with the necessary experience, a leading Shia Muslim official has told the FT.

I suppose you'd call that an "exit strategy". Everybody has one these days it seems, save Bush

Required reading: Gareth Smyth's excellent interview with Muhsin al-Hakim, 33, the son of Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim (who is both the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the head of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance coalition in parliament). Muhsin has long been a political spokesman for the Badr Corps, the paramilitary of SCIRI. I knew that SCIRI dominated the provincial governments of several southern provinces of the Shiite south, and that the deputy governor of Najaf, e.g., is from the Badr Organization (the Badr Corps ran as a party in its own right in both local and national elections!) But Muhsin here lets it drop that the governors of five provinces are Badr. He says that these are the most orderly and secure provinces in the country. And it is true, that in contemporary Iraq the choice may be between having law and order with militia rule, or having chaos with ineffective government forces. Better yet would be law and order with effective government forces, but in June 2006 that just is not where we are at in Iraq

“51 percent of Americans disapprove of gay marriage, but 70 percent disapprove of the president, so gay marriage is actually more popular than Bush." -- Jay Leno

Josh noted at the Mother Ship.  Cole posted at comment today.

Yale Affair

I am not going to talk about the Yale affair per se.

But I did want to clear up some misimpressions I've seen here and there.

First, it should be remembered that senior professors are sort of like baseball players, and other teams look at them from time to time, as recruitment prospects. It goes on constantly, formally or informally. Such looking is never taken very seriously by anyone unless it eventuates in an actual offer.

Second, it is important in interpreting these things to know who initiated the looking. I am not actively seeking other employment, and did not apply to Yale; they came to me and asked if they could look at me for an appointment. I am very happy at the University of Michigan, which has among the largest and oldest Middle East Studies programs in the United States. It is like Disney World for a Middle East specialist. To its credit, the University invested tens of millions of dollars in creating positions and building library and other resources in this field at at time when it was considered marginal by many other universities. Michigan also has among the very best History Departments in the country, characterized by diversity of area specialization and innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship. It is a nurturing and congenial intellectual environment. Many fine departments in the US have a North Atlantic focus or bias, but Michigan for decades has had a global emphasis.

The press has some out of date impressions about our major research universities, imagining that the old hierarchy of Ivy League versus the rest is still meaningful. It is not. Research universities, whether state (Berkeley, the University of Michigan) or private, are much more similar than they are different. Were I ever to go to another place, it would likely be as a pioneer in a less well-developed Middle East Studies program, for the purpose of building up something that we already have at Michigan. That is, it would be a personal sacrifice for some purpose, and not a decision easily made.

I was extremely fortunate to have been hired at the University of Michigan right out of graduate school. I moved from UCLA to the pinnacle of my profession at a young age. I am doing what I enjoy doing, which is studying and teaching the Middle East and South Asia, and communicating about it to various publics. I have not, and short of foul play cannot be stopped from doing what I am doing, and what I enjoy. I welcome critiques of my work. There are obviously some critics, however, who go rather beyond simple critique to wishing to silence or smear me. In the former, at least, they cannot succeed by mere yellow journalism. So I have what I want, but they cannot have what they want. I win, every day.

Transcript follows:

GWEN IFILL: Voters went to the polls in eight states today, casting ballots in primaries for senators, and governors, and members of the House. The backdrop for all this voting: these numbers.

In early 2005, 50 percent of Americans said they approved of President Bush; that figure is now down to 33 percent.

For members of Congress, the decline has been even more steep. In 2005, 43 percent thought lawmakers were doing a good job; that's now dropped to 23 percent.

What does any of this bode for this fall's mid-term elections? For analysis, we turn to Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center for the People and the Press, and Amy Walter from the Cook Political Report.

Andy Kohut, yours are the latest numbers about the president's disapproval ratings. What does this slide mean?

ANDREW KOHUT, Pew Center for the People and the Press: It means that people are mad at Washington; they're mad at the president; they're mad at the Congress; they're mad at the Republican Party, because they control both.

And the consequences are three things. We see a very high rate of people telling us they will be thinking about national issues when they go to vote in congressional elections, a record number of people saying that they will be voting against the president, 34 percent. We haven't had anything that high since that question started being asked in 1982.

We have a very high percentage of people saying that they will be thinking -- that they care which party controls Congress. So there's nationalization.

There's a surge of anti-incumbent sentiment. We now have 29 percent of people saying they don't believe their congressperson deserves re-election. It hasn't been that high since 1994. And the Republican Party is taking it on the chin as the party that controls Washington.

GWEN IFILL: Amy Walter, you've been following these House races, competitive and not-competitive, as they unfold. Is Andy right? Are congressional ratings sliding because of this national anger?

AMY WALTER, Senior Editor, The Cook Political Report: Well, absolutely. And I think the congressional polls are more of a lagging indicator. The leading indicator were some of these numbers that you put up on the screen, the president's approval rating.

I think another important one is the right direction-wrong track question, where you have 70 percent of voters now saying they think the country is headed off in the wrong direction. So I agree with Andy that what voters are saying, in the big picture way, is we're not happy with the status quo.

What we're seeing in the individual House race polling right now is that it's taking a toll on almost every single Republican candidate, that it is almost like a weight that's just pushing them down. So if you are a Republican incumbent that is used to getting polling back that shows you in the mid-50s, maybe now you're only in the mid-40s.


AMY WALTER: Well, here's what I think the big difference between 1994 and today, when we look at all the empirical evidence before us. The one number that doesn't add up from where we were in 1994 is that Democrats not seen as positively today as Republicans were seen in 1994.

Both sides that are coming in right now -- voters are saying of both parties, "We don't really particularly like either one." Democrats are only doing better in that they're less disliked than Republicans, but they're not better liked.

Now, I think what that suggests is that Democrats still have to make their case. They don't have to make the case for why people want change; voters are right now saying, "Yes, we're not happy with the status quo." But I think where they're sitting right now is they're saying, "But I don't know if I feel like Democrats are the party that's going to take me there."



AMY WALTER: Well, and this is what we're going to really test in this election, which is just how strong is the seawall that incumbents have built around themselves? The other issue is redistricting has helped them, too, right, so they've created districts that help to protect them, along with all the other incumbent advantages.

This is where Republicans point to and say, "This is why things are going to be different than 1994." There were many open seats, Democratic open seats in 1994. Republicans don't have as many to defend; they don't have as many freshmen to defend.

These are tried, true, tough campaigners who've been through tough election before. They know what they're doing. They're going to be able to withstand this.

Of course, as we pointed out, no Republican who has been in Congress has ever seen numbers that looked like this, with their president in the White House.

ANDREW KOHUT: There's a lot of anger among independents in their views about their incumbents. This 29 percent that I referenced, "my member does not deserve re-election," that's driven by frustration among independents. And we haven't seen...

Complete Transcript

So says Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report.  Think of low barometric pressure in approoaching hurricane. Walter says the Bush collapse is registering in just about every race in the country dragging republican candidate numbers down almost exclusively. The underlying poll numbers she thinks driving - Bush approval/ Rt direction wrong track - numbers the lowest they've ever seen. The only question for the Democrats at this point, it that they don't see them as much of an alternative...

Amy's message: Democrats need to explain in clear terms what a Demo Congress would mean (transcript not up yet - will post).

Here's a start from Teixeira.

Dems' Challenge: The How and When of Leaving Iraq

Adam Nagourney's article in today's Gray Lady, "War Handicaps Senators in '08 White House Race" discusses the political fallout facing Senators who voted for President Bush's Iraq War initiatives as they struggle to navigate their way through the current Iraq quagmire. There may be some drama here and there in the upcomming presidential primaries about different Senators' votes on Irag. But it's more likely that American voters will be less interested in votes that helped get us in Iraq, than how and when a candidate is going to get us out. Two years from today, in the heat of the '08 presidential campaign, no one who doesn't have "loser" tatooed on his/her forehead will be defending open-ended US military occupation of Iraq, regardless of their earlier Senate votes supporting the war.

Rummaging" through my files and I suppose our liberal "heritage". I found a 2002 article in the LRB by someone who actually does get it.

 The younger intelligentsia meanwhile has also been stripped of any real knowledge of the outside world by academic neglect of history and regional studies in favour of disciplines which are often no more than a crass projection of American assumptions and prejudices (Rational Choice Theory is the worst example). This has reduced still further their capacity for serious analysis of their own country and its actions. Together with the defection of its strongest internationalist elements, this leaves the intelligentsia vulnerable to the appeal of nationalist messianism dressed up in the supposedly benevolent clothing of 'democratisation'.

Twice now in the past decade, the overwhelming military and economic dominance of the US has given it the chance to lead the rest of the world by example and consensus. It could have adopted (and to a very limited degree under Clinton did adopt) a strategy in which this dominance would be softened and legitimised by economic and ecological generosity and responsibility, by geopolitical restraint, and by 'a decent respect to the opinion of mankind', as the US Declaration of Independence has it. The first occasion was the collapse of the Soviet superpower enemy and of Communism as an ideology. The second was the threat displayed by al-Qaida. Both chances have been lost - the first in part, the second it seems conclusively. What we see now is the tragedy of a great country, with noble impulses, successful institutions, magnificent historical achievements and immense energies, which has become a menace to itself and to mankind.

 

The Push for War

Anatol Lieven

London Review of Books October 2002

Be nice if Marshall asked Steve Clemmons to ask Anatol Lieven if he had a few days to spare at the Cafe

ATTENTION CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATS...

I had assumed that our WarParty Senator did not draw an opponent. OH HAPPY DAY she drew two!

My personal recommendation -

MARTIN LUTHER CHURCH! His father Frank C was a fine Senator

KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE!

Pd for by the Kinky Friedman for Guvnuh campaign

Kinky Friedman Unveils Political Reform Agenda

AUSTIN, Texas -- June 5, 2006 -- Calling his independent bid for governor an opportunity for Texans to get the politicians out of politics, gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman today unveiled several key political reforms he plans to enact as governor of Texas. Read More...

Also near Baqubah, heads of 8 persons were sent to the police, including 7 cousins and a Sunni mosque preacher, in empty banana cartons (-al-Hayat]. The preacher, according to a note found with the head, stood accused of having arranged for the assassination of 4 Shiite physicians in the area. Cole

Meanwhile back at 30 Rock, network war correspondents are wondering one, two, three, four, what're we dying for?

 

The idea that the Brangelina baby or some salacious trial might trump coverage of the war is just stunning to me," said Cori Dauber, a University of North Carolina researcher who has criticized television coverage from Iraq for its emphasis on violence.

Sean Aday, an assistant professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, reviewed all of the nightly news for NBC and Fox News in 2005 and found that they did not report most U.S. military deaths. Both news outlets also covered an even smaller fraction of violence against Iraqis, he found.

Aday attributed what he called the under-reporting in Iraq to multiple factors, including the danger faced by journalists reporting the story; the fact that random violence typically occurs outside a camera's view; the sense among news executives that continuing attacks were no longer "news"; and, finally, political pressure on the networks

Seems that the cowed media honchos don't want to cover the Iraq War any longer. Too little new violence. MSNBC devoted, literally, most af an entire day covering the "bomb" at the Rayburn Building save breaks for Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise spawn stories.

Yesterday, the Producers dragged the parents of the poor murdered Clemson co-ed before the cameras. The grieving father thanked MSNBC for its coverage but complained that 2-3 networks had added detailed speculation about rape and other such that were not true. The family was not pleased.

If only, they had footage of those boxed heads, maybe they'd have been spared.



I am not sure whether it is a result of the recent CBS news crew bombing or what but I have heard several comments on various networks, reporters lamenting the grotesque failure of the media to live up to its democratic and professional values in its Iraq coverage, indeed from the very start of this the Greatest Strategic Disaster in US History. One went so far as to absolve the Democrats against the widely held charge that the party aided and abetted this four years long malfunction of US democracy.

The thrust of the self-criticism "To hell with the politicians, democrat or republican, it is not their job to report the truth, God knows, but ours"

I wonder what Media Boy Wonder Peter Beinart thinks.  I am sure he has an opinion. Everyone does. but unlike us he gets paid for his, first for his warmongerig, then for his apologias and revised warmongering.

Maybe someone will ask.

At least he's a pretty NeoCon.. Might even marry him if Bush would only let me try!

Door Gunner: Git some! Git some! Git some, yeah, yeah, yeah! Anyone that runs, is a Bushevik. Anyone that stands still, is a well-disciplined Bushevik! You guys oughta do a story about me sometime!
Private Joker: Why should we do a story about you?
Door Gunner: 'Cuz I'm so fuckin' good! I done got me 157 dead NeoCons killed. Plus 50 water buffalo too! Them's all confirmed!