Slime-o-rama

Note: sorry for the long post. It also might be the only post until this evening, as I'm caught up in Louisiana bureaucracy for the afternoon (need to renew my expired driver's license, and, for reasons I won't go into, cannot do this on line. Damn).

In the case of Bush, with over a hundred mil in the bank that he apparently MUST spend before the convention, plus another seventy-five million that he hopes to raise, the shit will come wrapped in some mighty expensive, re-sealable plastic containers--at least for the masses. For the Rangers, Pioneers, Cash Cowboys, or whatever you want to call them, the payback will be contained in something quite a bit more--uh, since the values are Texan, maybe I don't want to go into that.

On the other hand, Kerry can expect the shit that comes his way to be fired from a howitzer. Already, idiots like George Stephanopoulis are working hard to establish their credentials--George was on Nightline last night gleefully offering his own strategery for defeating the "inevitable" nominee: Bush will brand Kerry as a hypocrite, and, the old standby, a liberal.

For that matter, Elizabeth Bumiller did just that in the Sunday debate between the FOUR remaining candidates for President (at the time of the debate). God, she's awful. The other two clowns (Dan Rather and some local-to-NYC CBS reporter) merely made the "journalist" component a three ring circus.

The Angry Arab News Service pointed out that NONE of the candidates posessed enough spine to come out against the wall Israel is building as part of a land-grab/bantustan strategy for the Palestinian war. Of course, with the sizable support New York gives Israel, and the fact that it was the silver medal on Super Tuesday, this is hardly surprising...

But the news on the election front is that it's now a "two-man" race--which itself is a bit of a misnomer. Sure, the election will be between Kerry and Bush come November. But the race is now to see who can gather together the winning coalition. Bush is busy shoring up his "base," namely, the yahoos and religious wackos. Hence, he'll come out in favor of God and Guns--and, of course, against gays. More important, his henchmen will be using all the ammunition at their disposal to brand the Massachusetts Senator as--well, a Senator from Massachusetts. Down here, that ought to be enough.

The problem, of course, is that Bush has so little to run on. Talkingpointsmemo linked to a Dick Cheney in Wonderland quote regarding job growth. So, expect the Rethughlicans to opt for the equivalent of a magic act--pay no attention to the chaos behind the curtain--look over there!

Last night, Koppel's show confirmed one thing I've been concerned about: Kerry is out of money, but he can't use DNC funds until the nomination is his. McAuliffe's strategy of getting the nominee "selected" early could backfire if Kerry is in the Dole-drums until the convention.

And don't believe a word about Americans supposedly disliking a negative campaign: in a system that almost guarantees a lesser-of-evils slate of candidates, negative campaigns might as well be required. John Edwards managed to stay mostly "positive," but, in the end, he also went mildly negative (see the transcript of the debate linked to above).

To say most Americans don't like negative campaigns is akin to saying most Americans despise pornography--and then you see the statistics that say the X-rated stuff outsells just about anything--except for drugs.

But I digress. I do see that Edwards and Kerry are both being conciliatory, which is a good sign, and I'd like to see Sharpton and Kucinich continue long enough to pull in a decent number of delegates. As the reverend himself noted, the idea will be to arrive at the convention with enough strength to demand a hearing, and that's a good thing. Because the Democrats MUST now deal with a Kerry candidacy.

In my book, the Democratic Party is, broadly defined, a coalition consisting of: the DLC elites, who are the conservative, monied wing, who hold the leadership positions and the national offices, people of color, who recognize that the lesser of two evils is slightly better than the greater of two evils, the moderate to strong progressives, and organized labor. Additionally, there are plenty of folks who've been outright appalled by the thuggery and corruption that has defined Bush II. Now, the factions must unite, even if Kerry is anything but inspiring, and chop the head off of the Rethuglican monster that's working it's damndest to alienate the world while they line their pockets.

The DLC is disgusting, if you ask me, but I'll swallow my pride this time and mark my ballot for Kerry. He'll get no slack should he win, but defeating Bush is more important. To that end, it's time for the DLC'ers to realize that the other factions in the party can't be told to wait at the back of the line. We need to pull the PNAC'ers off the ladder, and stomp on them after they've hit the ground. Ideally, I'd like to see a Kerry-Edwards ticket, which I think would be exceptionally strong--and I'd also like to see some REAL attention paid to issues affecting people of color, labor, and progressive minded folks of all types.

My strategy, for all it's worth, would be to fight fire with fire: for every mention of a Kerry vote in the eighties/nineties that Ed Gillespie thinks is rancid enough to throw to his base, the Democrats must fight back with stories about Bush at the time: recall, Bush was a drunk who never worked a day in his life, has engaged in at-best questionable business practices, he's brought corruption to a new low with his no-bid military contracts in Iraq, which itself is a mess, and he's presided over the train wreck that is the "new" American economy. Hell, if I had control of the advertising budget, I'd devote plenty of air-time to Gregory Mankiw's now infamous statement praising the outsourcing of jobs. Throw in Kenny Boy Lay, the Enron disaster, the World Com con, hell, the entire slag heap that is big business, and you might find an electorate that's sick of being dumped on. Add in accounts of those who've been downsized, outsourced, and/or told that they don't matter in Bush America, which means just about anyone who could actually afford to take a few years off work, and I think the public will decide that Son of Bush is like any other sequel--badly made, unworthy of the big screen, and only suitable for late night cable.

It's gonna be a war. I'll give Kerry an ounce of credit, though: his slogan at present is 'bring it on.' If Al Giordano is right, that means Bush will be in real trouble. And I can live with that.