Punditchick

4 More Years Dead in Ohio?

As a Bush partisan,  I am a little (ok, a lot) apprehensive about the election. And it's not just the Skins score telling me to worry.

I hope the Steelers blowout of the Pats is a better pigskin indicator for the election.

Uber-pollster John Zogby's latest findings are somewhat terrifying.  Thank God he is so in the tank for Kerry that he can be largely dismissed.

On the other hand, Jim Geraghty is sounding more and more like a man in a cocoon rather than a man in the know. 

And Dick Cheney's midnight plane to Hawaii doesn't look like a sign of strength to me. It has a Hail Maryish quality to it.  Don't get me wrong, I would cheer if we got 4 EVs from the land of Don Ho, but I'm really hoping the Reagan Democrats in MI, PA, and OH vote GOP on Tuesday.

Will the backlash from  Eddie Rendell's jailhouse Rock the Vote scheme possibly turn Pennsylvania for Bush?

Are Kerry's young, antiwar, mobile phone talkers for real or a hyped voter bloc that won't show up at the polls? Didn't they let down Dean in Iowa?

Did Bush's pandering help get him a larger chunk of the hispanic vote?

Is Michigan an electoral illusion like California was in 2000?

Will Soros, Ickes and Moore look like New Media geniuses or will they be blamed for alienating the middle?

Most polls suggest that the race is a push. This late in the game, a push should mean that Kerry will win.

I have trouble believing that the GOP's ground game in the Upper Midwest is anywhere as good as the Dem's. Unfortunately, this election is close enough to steal. And steal it they will.

I hope I'm wrong. I wish I was as big a positive thinker as the fellas at CrushKerry.com, but I think Kerry is 44.  Shrummy wins!!

*** Update: Ohio is so awesome. I want to have 10,000 of Ohio's babies. Our ground game, of which I was a small part in Florida, was freaking phenomenal.  Rove, Mehlman and Huges are all bad asses. God is Great!!! 

Fuck Soros, fuck Ickes, fuck Garafolo, fuck Franken, FUCK MOORE, fuck Maher, FUCK DAN RATHER, fuck Tad Devine, fuck Kos, fuck Springsteen, fuck Bon Jovi (fuck Richie Sambora for G.P.), fuck Ben Affleck, FUCK FRANCE, fuck Vote or Die, FUCK VIACOM, fuck the Dixie Chicks, fuck the Left Coast, fuck Chris Matthews, fuck Sean Penn, fuck Sarandon, fuck Tim Robbins, fuck Eminem,  fuck the MSM, fuck Sy Hersh, fuck Graydon Carter, fuck David Corn, fuck all y'all and you know who you are.

Go Texas!!!  It's your birthday, it's your birthday!!

'The Politics of Kindness'

Garrison Keillor from his book Homegrown Democrat: 

I am a liberal  and liberalism is the politics of kindness. Liberals stand for tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit, the defense of the weak against the powerful, love of learning, freedom of belief, art and poetry, city life, the very things that make America worth dying for. The people who call themselves conservatives stand for tax cuts, and further tax cuts, the only policy they know. Cut taxes. Use the refund to buy a gun and an attack dog to take when you drive your all-terrain vehicle through the barricades of Republicanville to make a foray into enemy territory to purchase supplies. They are leading this great land toward a Lost New World where Social Security and Medicare will be dim memories and America will be a series of malls connected by interstates, and people will live in walled compounds with moats, like in the Middle Ages.

Of course, this rant would make more sense if it had any relationship to reality. I've had occasion to visit  one of those "Republicanvilles" Keillor describes and there are a lot of Democrats behind the moat.  On one block alone, there was a Hummer with a "Defend America, Defeat Bush"  sticker manufactured by the Moveon.org PAC and a Land Rover with a sticker declaring "Mission Nothing Accomplished!"

It's satisfying for the Left to believe that everybody on the Left is driving a Prius, listening to NPR and living in funky urban centers, but it's not the case.  Apparently, you can blast the "neocon-petrol" based foreign policy of the Bush Administration and still park your gas guzzler in the driveway of your big house in your nearly monochromatic suburban outpost.

And don't the Heinz-Kerry tax returns reveal a certain parsimony usually attributed to Republican meanies? Should Keillor feel good that his guy is married to a tightwad billionaire heiress? Aren't the five posh Heinz-Kerry cribs situated safely behind the barricades?

And hasn't the politics of kindness lost its way? Surely, Kerry's deployment of Mary Cheney's lesbianism wasn't the kind thing to do.  And Mrs. Edwards comment that Lynne Cheney was "ashamed" of her gay daughter wasn't exactly Bess Trumanesque. 

In "Homegrown Democrat," Keillor traces his liberalism to his kindly aunts and saintly parents who believed in self sacrifice and maintaining the social compact, not the self absorbed 1960s hippies. He argues: " the descendants of the narcissist New Agers are the narcissist Republicans." 

I wonder what Keillor thinks about Terayza's recent dig on Laura Bush. I suspect the Keillors of Anoka, Minnesota think being a public school teacher and librarian are real jobs, and that being a stay at home Mom is important work.

How has it come to the point where self styled for-the-little-guy liberals have gotten themselves in the business of defending a tax loophole using, five mansion owning, mean-mouthing, self absorbed  billionaire twosome?

Keillor also rails against the "shrieking midgets of AM radio"-- of course he doesn't mean Al Franken, he means Hannity and Limbaugh. What must he think of the blogging giant-killers of the New Media? 

Keillor's shrillness is best understood when one considers the Right's growing appeal in Lake Wobegon.

The Northern Alliance  is making measurable gains against the Talibanic domination of the Upper Midwest by the Left. 

Keillor can't like the fact that WI, MN and IA appear to be gettable for "Bush Inc."  this November. 

The Battlegrounders blog at NRO is a great place to go to check out the developments in the Swing States. Compared to the KerrySpot and Battlegrounders, The Corner is Kerry-league. (Hat tip:  Curt Schilling)

In Wisconsin, per Kaus per a reliable source, Kerry is looking good because Milwaukee County and laughably liberal Madison are unusually galvanized against Bush.  We don't yet know if Crack has anything to do with this.

 

Silky Gets Pretty

The Left has had fun with Wolfie's creepy hair care, but watching Silky Pony get pretty for the camera is far more chilling. After 9-11, will the country want Kerry's Little Pony as Veep? I want to believe it won't.

I find Shearer's unmasking of Silky far more frightening than Halliburton.

Silky Pony Carter

This Kaus dropping doesn't surprise me at all:

"A surprising number of Democrats I meet don't like John Edwards."

Silky Pony doesn't wear well. His "Bush is Lex Luther; John Kerry and I will make you walk again" pitch was creepy demagoguery. It was so Benny Hinn... sooo Lady with the pink hair.

And Silky Pony was awful last night on Leno. The definition of un-Pennsylvanian is elusive, but Silky seemed to embody it last night. He was such a catty bitch-- he came off like the Secretary of the Harper Valley PTA.

And Silky isn't that dreamy. The more I look at him, he looks like a member of the Carter Family-- and I don't mean A.P. and Maybelle, I mean Jimmah, Amy, Chip and Billy.

Doesn' Silky Pony look like The Swan version of Chip Carter?

Down and Out in Ohio

RCP shows Bush is down in Ohio. For a Republican to be down in Ohio this late in the game is real bad news. Dick Nixon's it-voters were the housewives of Dayton, Ohio. He knew he needed them to win the election. I think the housewives of Dayton aren't with Bush right now.

How could they be? They are being blitzed by Left-leaning 527s. And the Bushies, in the debates and in the air wars, have let so many attacks go unanswered.

No one can say that Harold Ickes is just a stooge for Hillary-- his baby, the Media Fund, is killing Bush in the swing states.

Now reports suggest that BC04 is ceding PA to Kerry-- I hope that isn't so. If they lose OH and stop contesting PA, BC04 is going to have to run the table in the Upper Midwest-- not a likely outcome-- to win.

If Bush loses, it will be because he failed to communicate and failed to mount an effective counter-insurgency-- not just in Iraq, but in the swing states. The Swiftees and Sinclair don't seem to me to be enough. But maybe it is, Hugh Hewitt , who may or may not be Bush's Baghdad Bob, thinks things are going well.

Here's Hugh on the state of the race:

It is not correct to say the election is 20 days away. The election has begun. I voted for the president this morning by absentee, and all across the country and indeed the globe, people are already voting. Which is why defining "the choice" in bold terms and simple declaratory sentences matters a great deal. The debate tonight matters more than the first three because it occurs as the absentees begin to arrive and get returned. The president's many advantages can probably not be undone except for a massive mistake, so I expect an energetic but nevertheless defensive approach to tonight's exchanges which will once again disappoint the base. If Kerry makes the mistake of believing the polls that show him closing, he'll also play defense. If, as I suspect, he comes out swinging because of the monumental error of "terrorism = nuisance", that will telegraph that the real polls --the ones the campaigns do for themselves-- continue to tell a terrible picture for Kerry.

What's the best indicator of Kerry's troubles? He and Edwards are campaigning and advertising almost exclusively in blue states, except for Florida and Ohio, and while recent polls in Ohio (though not in Florida) show good numbers for Kerry, the president's coming blitz through Ohio will get the state right back to where it was when the Columbus Dispatch poll had Bush up 7. Bush, on the other hand, is in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota etc.

Is Hugh cocooning or right to be this upbeat? God, I hope he's right.

Wonkette Sells Out

I can't believe Wonkette did Topic A with the Tina Brown. It's kind of like the guys at RatherBiased having sofa talk with Dan.

But I don't blame Ana Marie for becoming Tina's friend--Tina's clique can make bitchin ad buys on her site and getting invited to Tina's "serious Manhattan dinner parties" might be fabulous.

Tina has called the blogosphere the mujahadeen, it's kind of sad to see the muj be co-opted by her. It's like Al-Sadr eating Matzo ball soup at Richard Perle's house.

Clearly, AMC resolved some high school angst by getting close to Tina. Lots of us believed that AMC's snipes at Tina came from a good place, a place that said, "Eat shit, Tina" but now we know, it was all about "Like me, Tina." There's something tragic about that. AMC was Ally Sheedy in all this. Tina was Ringwald.

I must confess, Tina is so awful, she's fabulous. She's so self absorbed; she actually appears generous. I love her relationship with Jim Wolcott, a meaner and rougher Tom Shales, whose blog is wonderfully hideous and ping poor. But Tina and Jim have a tender, fabulous thing going.

I also love when Tina and her sofa posse give us their hot picks-- you just know it's all bullshit.

And I love when Tina gets the hot picks of the red carpet divas-- it's so predictable, arty shit to make them look deep and anti-Bush shit to make Harvey Weinstein like them better.

Ok, I, like Ana, like Tina Brown, but I have maintained my street cred because I still fucking hate Gail Sheehy's guts.

The State of the Race

Silky Pony, in the wake of Christopher Reeve's death, is all, "Bush is Lex Luther." And I'm sure Molly Ivins is all, "Shrub killed Superman." And John Kerry, who humped the Gipper's corpse while it lay in repose in Simi Valley, is doubtless gearing up to hump CR's corpse later in the week.

This is all not good news for Bush, white suburban women -- Security Moms-- think curing diseases is a part of keeping their families safe. Bush has allowed Kerry to paint him as a big fan of debilitating diseases. There is no ban on embryonic stem cell research, but kerry has convinced a plurality of voters that Bush has instituted such a ban. Bush's angry smirk strikes me as not a good enough answer to Kerry's mountain of bogus charges.

Bush's inability to make his case --on both the domestic and foreign policy side-- is why Kerry, an awful candidate, is doing so well. Gallup and Zogby have Kerry up.

Bush did so badly in Miami, his partisans over estimate how well he did in St. Louis. Bush wasn't a slouching bumbler in MO, but he wasn't that good either. Kerry deployed so many reasons not to vote for Bush-- stem cells, outsourcing, no WMDs found, Halliburton, and on and on. The only thing Bush had was the vote on the $87 billion-- a vote that I think should make Kerry's candidacy unviable-- but I suspect Bush has won as many votes as he can on it.

The Bushies need something new. At the very least they need to make the "Kerry sold out the troops in Iraq" charge new. It's easy to do. Joe Biden has said that Kerry was "dead wrong" not to vote for the money for the troops. Why can't Bush say that this Wednesday when Kerry repeatedly uses Hagel, McCain, and Lugar against him?

Kerry's defense of that vote is very thin and highly attackable. He says he did it because he was dissatisfied with the administration's prosecution of the war --particularly its inability to get "meaningful" international help-- and because he didn't want to give Halliburton a blank check. Why doesn't Bush explain that Halliburton has deployed with America's armed forces for forty years? Why doesn't Bush say that Halliburton was in Bosnia under the Clinton administration? Why doesn't Bush use Feingold against Kerry? Why doesn't Bush Frog and Kraut bash when Kerry mentions Halliburton? That's a proven winner with the American electorate. Why doesn't Bush mention the heroics of Tommy Hamil and the KBR guys who died in the line of duty in Iraq? Even Cheney, who destroyed Edwards in Cleveland, fumbled on Halliburton.

Bush will have to do very well Wednesday night in Tempe-- chances are that he won't. Judging from the first two debates, Bush might be unpreparable. In addition, his preparers aren't that great either. Hughes has never been a favorite of mine.

I tend to believe David Frum-- another guy I don't think a lot of-- when he said that Hughes "loathed risk and abhorred ideas . . . rarely read books and distrusted people who did." Maybe it's just me, but I think the President's go-to-girl should be very idea friendly.

Bush is a likable guy. His instincts can be really good. His "Need wood?" quip was a winner, but not enough to get him re-elected. There is a compelling case against Kerry, it just seems that Bush can't make it.

Why hasn't there been lots of hay made about the Heinz-Kerrys' "Leave no loophole behind" approach to paying their taxes? Isn't John "liveshot" Kerry the millionaire dufus chilling by the pool that Silky Pony railed against in the Veep debate? Can't the Bushies amend that to windsurfing in Nantucket and hit one out of the park? What the Hell is the Club for Growth doing with their cash on hand?

CFG might just be remembered in this cycle for torpedoing the very beatable Dean in Iowa and not laying a glove on Kerry in the general.

My sense is that BC04 is in trouble. I live in a critical swing state and had the occassion to visit a part of my state that is a little bit country and a little bit rock n' roll, next to me at a long red light was a a young couple (probably no older than 19-- kinda a Jack and Diane or Billy Joe and Bobby Sue couple) in a Ford pickup (people in Ford pickups are generally bullish on Bush) with an anti-Bush sticker (like these) on it.

I'm thinking it's probably not a good sign that cornfed kids, who don't want Mumia freed, who live in a place that's more of a town than a city, a place with a rodeo arena that's well attended, are that hostile to Bush. How has Rove allowed this to happen? We have twenty days to fix it.

What Should Cheney Do?

Bush's fumble in the first debate means Cheney has to do a lot tonight.

Captain's Quarters will be live-blogging the Veep debate. He thinks we should be concerned about Edwards' Grisham-like appeal.

CQ's concerns are well well founded. KE04 routinely wins the "cares about people like me" question in presidential tracking polls. Edwards, who talker Laura Ingraham accurately calls Silky Pony, is the reason for that. He looks like he cares. Cheney's funny lip shape and the Halliburton tag have hurt BC04 in the "We care" department, but this doesn't have to be the case.

The Veep should hammer away at Kerry's "global test" gaffe from the first debate, but he would be wise to bring up that there is a local test that Edwards has failed.

John Edwards has failed the local test in North Carolina-- had he run for reelection, he would have lost. Silky Pony voted like he was the third Senator from Massachusetts , not the senior Senator from NC, and the swing states are more like NC than Massachusetts.

Cheney should point out that Edwards voted against body armor for the troops in Iraq despite the fact that he was the Senator from North Carolina, a state with a large active duty military population. When Edwards and Kerry voted against the money and equipment for the troops, they had a four letter place that starts with the letter "I" on their minds, but it was Iowa not Iraq. That vote was about, well, it should have been about, providing the troops with what they need to make it out of Iraq alive, Edwards and Kerry chose to use the vote to get tickets out of the Lefty dominated Iowa caucuses. Cheney should mention that.

If I were Cheney, I would say to Silky Pony: "You grew up in North Carolina. The people over in Iraq weren't abstractions to you. They are the folks from your Church, your neighbors and the people you see at the supermarket. You should've put what was good for you politically aside and stood with them while they were in harm's way."

Cheney was Wyoming's sole representative in the House. In a small state like WY, the Representative in Congress matters. They sent Cheney back to Washington again and again--he passed the local test every two years with flying colors.

When the good folks in WY sent Cheney to Washington, Cheney chose to live in Northern Virginia because it was more like back home. Silky Pony decided to move into a Georgetown mansion so he could go to the elite cocktail parties in the Beltway bubble. The vote against the money for the troops in harm's way was a cocktail party pleaser, but it was the wrong thing to do. Edwards broke faith with the people back home, Cheney should go after Edwards on that hard.

The Veep should use Russ Feingold's record against Silky Pony and Live Shot. Feingold is a liberal's liberal, but a good guy. Feingold voted against the War Resolution, but he voted for the money for the troops. Why did he vote that way? Because he knew the sons and daughters of Wisconsin were in harm's way and his conscience wouldn't permit him to sell them out.

In addition, Joe Biden, darling of the the MSM, said that Silky Pony and Live shot were "dead wrong" for voting against the money for the troops. Cheney should mention that.

Zeroing in on KE04's dreadful voting record on Iraq is a good thing to do. It sends the message to the American people that there was an honorable way to differ with the adminsitration on Iraq, but KE04 didn't do it honorably or responsibly.

Cheney should also point out how KE04 cannot begrudge every cent the administration pays on first responders in Iraq and then argue that they would secure Iraq faster. Kerry has blasted the money spent on cops and firehouses, but I suspect most Americans think Iraq could use more cops.

And if Edwards goes after Halliburton, all Cheney has to do is remind the American people that Halliburton has deployed with America's military for over forty years. And Dick could play the France card too. The Veep should say unapologetically that the adminstration thought an American company with American workers, not French and German corporations, should get taxpayer money. That passes the local test. Dick should also mention that a number of Halliburton workers have died in the line of duty in Iraq. Halliburton could backfire badly on Silky Pony if the Veep plays it right.

The energy issue could also be a boon for BC04 if they play it right. They should point out how labor and the folks in Alaska were behind drilling in ANWR. Had drilling in ANWR gone forward, there would be 100,000 more good paying jobs today then there are now. Mentioning in Cleveland that KE04 stood in the way of 100,000 good union jobs is a smart thing to do. The administration's comprehensive Energy Bill, had it been passed, would have meant jobs, jobs, jobs for Reagan Democrats. Kerry should pay for blocking it.

What Cheney must avoid is coming off too hardcore. A couple of years ago, I caught him at the Al Smith dinner on C-SPAN, and he came off too grim. When they panned the crowd, the women in their gowns look petrified by Cheney unplugged. I know that Peggy Noonan is working for BC04, I just haven't seen much proof of it. I thought Cheney's speech at the RNC convention was Noonanesque in parts, I hope she is on his debate prep team. Edwards is going to be Silky Pony, we can't afford to have cut away shots of Cheney looking like a guy who just participated in a canned hunt.

Debating the Debate

There is no question that John Kerry did well tonight. The podium gotcha lights actually aided him-- he was crisper and not his usual ponderous self.

Bush look exhausted and the cutaway shots of him were brutal. Bush didn't make any argumental gaffes-- Thank God for that-- but stylistically it was rough going. Bush slouched over the podium, blinked a lot and was victimized by several long pauses.

Bush's strength was his authenticity. He came off like a decent, committed fellow who is doing everything to keep America safe. But is that enough?

Jay Nordlinger, no soft Bush voter he, has so far provided the most remarkable and nervous-making punditry of the post-debate period. If Nordlinger is spooked, Bush could be in serious trouble.

In retrospect, I should have pretended like I was a swing voter when I watched the debate.

Did Kerry or Bush make the sale with the swing voters? I picture a twenty something single white woman in Ohio who hasn't been Hannitized, is uneasy about Iraq and outsourcing and not particularly aware or put off by what Kerry did in '71. I bet she wants an America that is secure and liked in Western Europe. And I bet she likes that Kerry looks and sounds more Presidential than Texan. I think Kerry might have gone a long way to getting her vote tonight.

But all is not lost-- Hugh Hewitt thinks Bush won decisively and all of New York knows Kerry's full of shit.