Author: cecil

Looking at Clark’s schedule on his campaign web site, it’s clear that the general is hunkering down. Hunkers he where? No surprise there. He’s hunkering in New Hampshire. There are at least two things we can extrapolate from all this: (1) it’s yet still even more so, another interesting aspect of Web Election 2004 —…

A new national poll puts Clark at 20% (up from 12%), Dean at 24% (down from 27%), with a 5% margin for error. National polls don’t mean all that much right now, and Dean still has by far the strongest overall state-by-state numbers. But as expected, this is another indication that the story now starts…

After tripping over themselves a few times right out of the gate, the Clark campaign is starting to look downright professional. Here are a few of the top stories from the last couple of weeks: Kerry, Gephardt, and Lieberman attack Dean’s electability. Dean strikes back. Clark testifies against the war criminal he bagged and gets…

1. Saddam is captured. 2. There’s much rejoicing. Yay! Yay! 3. Then less then 10 days later we go to Orange Alert — “high risk of terrorist attacks.” Yikes. They’re planning something even bigger than 9/11, we’re told. And Osama OKd this attack personally. All while Saddam sits in a small room somewhere, after spending…

Interesting multi-page interview with Dean up on ABCnews.com, including a suggestion by the interviewer that Bradley might be a VP consideration. No real response from Dean of course, but that’s the first I’ve heard of a Dean/Bradley pairing, even as a hint of a whisper of 2/3 a piece of gossip. I hadn’t even considered…

There’s a fascinating insta-article from Time covering Saddam’s first day as a prisoner. (Mad props to the always excellent Talking Points Memo for the link that sent me there in the first place.) The whole article is worth a quick look if only to be amazed, as I was, to see that Time already has…

There’s a lot of talk lately about the Democrats’ Southern problem — how Bush swept the South last time around, how the Democrats can’t win without the South, and how the South is sure to find any of the Democratic candidates repellent. Why all this concern for the Democrats from big-hearted conservatives like Trent Lott…

Here’s a sideways counter-point to Xian’s earlier post: The newsmedia has a vested interest in keeping these things entertaining. That’s not conspiracy-talk. It’s just capitalism. Year in, year out, the one constant is, there’s always a tussle — a moment of drama. No drama from the Republicans this year, so you can bank on some…

Turns out, the “F.” in John F. Kerry doesn’t stand for “friggin.” If you know what I mean. And in case you don’t, let me spell it out for ya: John Kerry is a big-time potty-mouth — big-time. This story must make the Kerry folks so happy — after all these months of hearing about…

In Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, Matier & Ross help get us into the Halloween spirit by reporting on two extremely creepy moments in California politics. Extremely Creepy Moment Number One At a bipartisan post-election party, M&R write: “The 70 or so people at the party also included a number of lobbyists, one of whom went…

1. Finished the Franken book. That chapter on the Wellstone memorial is amazing. If you read nothing else in the book, read that one chapter. Angry. Honest. Uplifting. 2. Listened to Steve Martin off Fresh Air/NPR. I taped this the other day on my boom box. The tape had Simon and Garfunkel on it and…

owie.

The people at NBC want to make you think. You can learn more about life from five minutes of Ed, for example, or Scrubs, than you can from, like, 15 minutes of ABC’s According to Jim. This is all the more especially true for NBC’s news shows. Take, for instance, Tim Russert’s “Meet the Press.”…

Christian suggested I share my top-ten ranking of the Democratic candidates…. It’s a rich field, with a whole generation’s worth of 50-60 year-olds taking their best shot. You could make the case that this is the most top-heavy collection we’ve seen from either party in three decades. There are five I like (Clark, Dean, Edwards,…

My fellow Democrats: When Arnold wins in California next week, there will be lots of talk by the national party that this was a successful plot by the Republican Right to subvert the will of the state’s Democratic majority. But really, that’s missing the point. Arnold didn’t need the recall to beat Gray Davis. In…

Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan made an interesting observation on the TV tonight. Instead of calling General Clark an outright flip-flopper, she hit a related but distinct theme, saying: never trust a man who tells you he’s on a journey. Her concern is that Clark doesn’t appear to have a fixed political philosophy. He’s learning and…

One of the conservative critiques you’ll be hearing about General Clark is that he’s awfully indecisive for a general, that he’s guilty of muddy thinking, and of course, that he’s flip-flopping. The Right takes flip-flopping very seriously. Bill Clinton was a draft-dodging, pot-smoking, super-slick flip-flopper. Gore was a big-fibbing, sweat-streaming, sore loser of a flip-flopper.…

Back in the 2000 primaries, one of Bush’s trademarks was his ability to deliver an entire speech without once accidentally making eye contact. These cautious, close manuscript readings came in striking contrast to Bill Clinton’s free-wheeling, sometimes seemingly improvised shtick. Around the time of the Republican convention, something changed. Bush began to look up from…

I was struck over the weekend by the enthusiasm the folks at Fox News have shown for a Hillary Clinton presidential bid in ’04. Even though (almost) all evidence points against a last-minute Hillary run, they look at her numbers in the primary polls and say, “C’mon now, you can do it! Believe in yourself!…