Edgewise

Crumlish to Kerry: Do the right thing

First, some disclosure: I support Howard Dean for President, have donated to his campaign, and am supporting him as an unpaid grassroots volunteer. I am obviously biased. However, I have resisted and still resist the whole stampede to Dean's aura of inevitably.

Yes, he does seem to have finessed the whole field. He has won the money primary in which very wealthy interests get to do an initial weeding process and designate frontrunners by divining a philsophical humor known as "electability."

He is currently making his way through the "character" primary, in which the media takes its own stab at winnowing the field, floating a sequence of damaging or potentially unpopular revelations about leading candidates, as a kind of unofficial test of how each handles adversity.

Dean can be awkward and doesn't respond well to criticism, but he seems to be talking around the media, much as some earlier Teflon presidents have done, and rising above each successive "gaffe" (confederate flag) and "vulnerability" (opted to be a ski bum instead of going to Nam).

The media means well (kinda), and this gantlet can inoculate a successful candidate against the risk of the same damaging stories coming out late in a campaign, but risks weakening the candidate as wel if the stories return in the hands of their opponents and manage to stick

So, Dean is not a sure thing, but he is winning right now. He is leading in Iowa and is considered dead sure to finish at least second there, a state that was intended to be a Gephardt stronghold.

He has a strong lead in New Hampshire, and - along with Clark - is taking all the air out of Kerry's campaign. Democrats worry about nominating a New Englander but they worry more about nominating a politician from Massachusetts who seems out of touch with ordinary people.

Gephardt seems to have toughened up and can still make the case for a hawkish midwestern strategy, but the wind is against him among the primary electorate.

Edwards has been a stealth candidate thus far, but may play a role in South Carolina. At this point I'd say he's running against Graham for vice president. (Interesting to note that Graham's daughter just joined the Dean campaign.)

Clark seems to be the great white hope for a pro-military campaign. Dean ought to be harping on the shabby treatment the veteran's are getting, not to mention this war's dead and wounded. My father is a military man and though he was initially impressed with Rumsfeld's apparent candor and poise, he is now worried that the Pentagon is screwing over the men in the field once again.

The show's not over yet, but if Dean takes Iowa and New Hampshire and performs adequately in South Carolina, he will be very tough to beat. His grassroots campaigners, I can attest, are in a fighting mood. His official campaigners have their eyes on the prize.

Any of the Democrats could still surprise us, but it is looking more and more likely that Kerry can't win. Pretty soon, for the good of the party, Kerry should drop out and close ranks with the eventual nominee.

I don't know how to convince him to do this. I'm sure he is getting an analysis very different from mine. So I'll just start the chorus now:

John Kerry, your record as a warrior, a peace activist, and a senator are impressive. You are clearly a man of high intelligence, nuance, style, and wit. Your many qualities suggest that you would make a good president, but this is not your year. Give Gephardt and Clark a clear shot at Dean and minimize the amount of unnecessary flak the eventual winner will receive.

If the handwriting is really on the wall, don't drag things out needlessly. Please withdraw from the race.

The world's one remaining superpower still needs friends

When we won the cold war we entered a period of change and risk in some ways as perilous as the nuclear threat of the previous forty years. Bush the first understood this, and even his kinder, gentler New World Order concept of multilateral cooperation scared the bejeesus out of the militia types who ultimately took down the Murrah building in Oklahoma City.

The danger is precisely in polarizing the rst of the world against this. The various "second superpower" these have touchedd on exactly this. The point is that even the world's only superpower needs friends. We can't rule with a steel fist or an iron hammer. We can't expect to always get our way, we can't go it alone, we won't always be right.

Do we have unprecedented power? Yes! Should we use it to secure ourselves and our liberties? Yes! Is this power unlimited? No! Can we get more accomplished through marshalling the reserves of good will we can still draw on as probably the world's most liberal, commerce-oriented empire (relatively speaking) in history?

I think we still can. There is a strain in the American concept of ourselves that is incredibly arrogant. As Zafar Sobhan, wrote recently in Lebanon's Daily Star:

Ever since 9/11 Americans have been asking themselves why so many people around the world seem to hate them. But for the likes of [Charles] Krauthammer, the answer is simple:

The fact is that the world hates the US for its wealth, its success, its power. They hate the US into incoherence. The search for logic in anti-Americanism is fruitless. It is in the air the world breathes. Its roots are envy and self-loathing - by peoples who, yearning for modernity but having failed at it, find their one satisfaction in despising modernity's great exemplar."

That's it. That's his analysis. That's his considered judgment on the subject. I don't need to embellish a thing - his words speak for itself. Krauthammer quite simply oozes arrogance and contempt for the rest of the world.

He dismisses out of hand the notion that anyone could conceivably have a legitimate grievance against the US or have a problem with the way it conducts its foreign policy. The only possible reasons he can see for dislike of the US are the envy and self-loathing of all those losers in the world who are just sick with jealousy that they have failed where the US has succeeded.

We dismiss the objections, the reservations, the feedback, the friction, the protests of the rest of the world at our peril.

What's 'sacred' about marriage?

Now that the Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional in that state for marriage to be restricted to opposite-sex couples, the Republicans have the culture-war wedge issue they were planning to run on in 2004 served up to them right over the middle of the plate. It perfectly divides the electorate for them, marginalizing progressives and attaching cultural moderates to the conservative side of the debate. Despite the fact that the debate disadvantages Democrats, I think it deserves a full airing.

The one thing that troubles me about the President's reported statement yesterday is that he called marriage "a sacred institution between one man and one woman" or words to that effect. It's not the one man, one woman part I mind. This is a legitimate position to take on marriage and there are clearly arguments, mostly from tradition to support it. No, what bothers me is a president declaring anything to be "sacred," whether it be a sacramental institution such as a marriage or the flag of the United States.

Sacred means holy, and the president is not a pope or pontifex maximus. I frankly don't want him talking about what's holy except perhaps in the rhetorical sense that Abraham Lincoln used the concept when he declared that a battlefield has been sacralized by the sacrifices of the men who died there. That is clearly a metaphor and it deals with death, something that turns even the least religious among us mystical from time to time.

Frankly, I think the church/state divide goes to the heart of this issue. As far as I'm concerned, it is entirely within the purview of religious institutions to declare what sorts of unions between people they are prepared to honor as a sacrament and which they will not. Already the Catholic Church, for example, is on record as supporting only the traditional male/female form of marriage, while some Protestant sects have been performing same-sex unions as well.

The state also has the right to decide which relationships it will formalize and recognize with statutory benefits and responsibilities. This delineation might happen to match the same boundaries as recognized by this or that religion, but it should in no way be determined with reference to any religion. That is to say, I suggest that we start distinguishing between marriage, a religious ceremony and institution, and something akin to civil union, a legal status of two people.

It's fine with me if conservatives want to argue that the state's form of marriage should be limited to opposite-sex pairs, but the arguments mustered to support that position should not rest on religious convictions. The gray area comes when we begin to talk about tradition, natural law, or the "values" (a smoodgy word in the best of circumstances) on which our civilization was founded.

Let us first have separation of church and state, allow the churches to make their own rules about what sorts of weddings they will host and sacralize, and permit the state to determine who can go stand in front of a justice of the peace and link up their fortunes financially and legally.

Why Dean can win

I just reposted an article by David Reinhard published in the Oregonian called Why Dean can win next November over at my new Oakland for Dean site.

It tackles the "unelectable" meme head-on.

Oakland for Dean launches

I've set up a site called Oakland for Dean and I'll be posting campaign news and opinions there. When I think something over there would be interesting to Edgewise readers I'll be sure to post a link here. I'm also going to add the headline feed from O4D to the sidebar of this blog, and I've already subscribed to Edgewise's headlines over there.

This will be an experiment in distinguishing advocacy from political analysis, but I think it's only for the good if people reading me here at Edgewise are aware of my support for a specific candidate.

'Roy Moore for President!'

I admit it, Roy Moore scares me. I live in my west-coast bubble and he lives in his Alabama bubble and we both believe we have self-consistent world views and that there is something seriously wrong with the people who tend to overrule us.

"What is he trying to do?" I asked B over breakfast, over the Times, this morning. "What did he think was going to happen?" You have to take seriously that he is trying to overthrow what he considers a tyrannical ungodly federal regime.

Is he aiming for something bigger? I asked myself. He only gets more popular with his core supporters, the more this David and Goliath thing plays out. Could he run for president.

Suddenly the idea of third-party challenge from the right, a George Wallace moment for George Bush, the ghost of Strom Thurmond haunting the Republicans, flashed through my mind. But no, I thought, more likely he plans to run after a George W.'s second term, when the religious right and other true believers are fed up with all the "liberal" compromises they see George as already having made, let alone the runaway spending, steel tariffs, PATRIOT acts, misuse of the military, and other shibboleths of the right.

Then we'll really see the millennium come on.

Jeffrey Gettleman's article in the Times today (I'd include a link but it will rot in a few weeks) helped me undertand what's going on. Moore in fact had a good chance of not being removed, since the nine-person ethics panel had to rule unanimously to oust him, and consists entirely of elected officials facing little chance of benefitting from being seen as "voting against the Ten Commandments."

"I have absolutely no regrets," [Moore reportedly] said. "We kept the faith. But the battle is not over. The battle to acknowledge God is about to rage across the country."

The crowd exploded in cheers and chanted, "Roy Moore for Senate! Roy Moore for President!"

It turns out he can be reelected to his chief justice job next time around. The panel can't ban him from retaking his position, so he may suffer no longterm harm from losing his job as a David to the federal court's Goliath.

Gettleman's description of the courtroom scene as the verdict was read is priceless:

The verdict stunned the hushed courtroom that he once presided over. As soon as it was read, Mr. Moore's shoulders drooped. His wife winced. His supporters let out a gasp. In the marbled corridors outside, shouting matches broke out between friends of the ousted judge and a handful of atheists.

"Thank you for destroying our country," one man said to Larry Darby, president of the Atheist Law Center in Montgomery.

"Go to Hell!" another man told Mr. Darby, bumping him.

"I can't" Mr. Darby said, straightening himself. "Hell doesn't exist."

Bedside reading

Just imagine the "Part of Tens" appendix.

What are they hiding?

Atrios makes a good point when he asks why the media isn't jumping all over the Bush administration's secrecy and evasiveness (when it comes to 9/11, energy commission, Plame, and so on):

Come on media, it's time to start framing the issue this way. Every time the Clintons failed to hand over Chelsea's stool samples to Ken Starr or Dan Burton there was an explosion of "WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?"

Isn't it about time you started to wonder? [Eschaton]

...and then there's Kenny Boy Lay.

What Dean meant

I've been toying on and off with commenting on the Dean/flag flap lately after seeing Zell "Why am I not a Republican" Miller on the Meet the Press this weekend deliberately misconstruing Dean's (admittedly "dangerous") statements about how he wants the votes of people who have confederate flags in their pickup trucks.

Miller responded as though Dean were using this segment of the population as a stand-in for the entire South. Putting aside Miller's own checkered political history regarding the confederate battle flag, he probably knew that this was not what Dean was saying at all. When attacked about this in the debate last night, apparently Dean stood his ground (refused to apologize) and tried to explain that he is making a class/poverty-related point, and that the flag is popular in the South because the Republicans have employed a deliberate strategy of dividing poor people by race in that region.

Having recently enjoyed reading my way through John Scalzi's very amusing series of posts about the Confederate "heritage" issues and the battle flag, I was wondering what his take on this issue might be. I was pleased to see that his analysis of the situation very closely matches my own.

Defining terrorism

Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine has chided others, including Josh Marshall (I doubt he's aware of this weblog), for making a PC landgrab of the term terrorism by arguing that some of the anti-coalition attacks in Iraq have been guerilla actions or insurgencies rather than terrorism. I made this same argument myself, noting that a military attack on soldiers is generally considered warfare and not terrorism.

However, when the enemy hides itself, doesn't fight under a flag or in uniforms, and so on, it may be reasonable to call all of its actions terrorism. Jarvis quotes some definitions of terrorism from the warbloggers' bête noire, the UN, to back up his point.

I think Jarvis makes some sense here, but I don't think the insistence on clarity of language reflects "PC" concerns. Instead, I'm wary of a policy that creeps into defining any enemy of the US as a terrorist.

Again, for the record, I will not my loyalty to the United States and my belief the her enemies are my own. I just like to be careful about language.

Now that's a headline

Quoting Atrios verbatim:

7 Men Smile and Laugh as They Take Control of Your Uterus

As members of congress look on, President Bush signs the Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2003 in Washington.

[Eschaton]

I should probably snag the photo and host it here, as I doubt Yahoo will keep it around forever.

The original EdgeWise

A fellow called scoffman just sent me a polite comment pointing out that his weblog, EdgeWise, has been around since May of 2003. While this blog has been around in one form or another since 2002, the fact is that we changed the name to Eddgewise just a month or so ago, without doing the diligent search for similarly named blogs that we probably should have done.

For what it's worth, the original EdgeWise spells the name with an intercap W and we don't. How's that for brand differentiation?

Anyway, my impression is that we both agree that there's little risk of confusion, but to be sure I'll add a link to the sidebar pointing readers to the original EdgeWise just in case they ever end up here by mistake. What else can I say, beyond "Great minds think alike?" (Of course, I have to give credit to Cecil Vortex for coming up with the new name for this blog.)

Are they all terrorists?

A National Review article quoted in Eschaton says, among other things, "if my information is correct, the terrorists now have anti-tank weapons, which we may see in action in the near future."

It seems to me that people wielding antiaircraft missiles and anti-tank weapons against soldiers may be called insurgents or guerillas or even soldiers, but what makes them terrorists? Terrorists target civilian populations, right?

Yes, there are terrorists in Iraq, clearly. Attacking the UN and the Red Cross/Red Crescent, and hotels in Baghdad clearly falls into the category of terrorism. But as far as I can gather, there seems to be a kind of transitive law at work here. If any of the people attacking us and opposing the US operation are terrorists then they all are, and if a terrorist does any kind of attack, then that attack is apparently terrorism.

To make it clear to the wingnuts out there, I deplore the tragic deaths of our soldiers in Iraq, as well as civilian deaths and any carnage at all, for that matter. I do not excuse any of it. I am just troubled by the way the term terrorism seems to be expanding to cover a wider range of anti-American military behaviors.

Clark pumpkin templates

update circa late 2004: with autumn upon us, a lot of people appear to be dropping by to read this entry on Clark Pumpkin Templates from late 2003.
1. Welcome!
2. Vote Kerry!
3. While you're here, I thought I'd take this opportunity to suggest that for up-to-date political content, you might visit us at Edgewise, for current musings on that spot where people and the internet connect, please visit The Power of Many, for poems, tunes, and general shtick, please visit Cecil Vortex.com, and for a wide variety of all-free, all-MP3 audio entertainments, please drop by Monkey Vortex Radio Theater.

OK, them's the plugs. Now on with "Clark Pumpkin Templates" -- an Edgewise Classic....
-Cecil
***************

I don't want to be too harsh here. And I should say up front that I'm still intrigued by Clark's candidacy.

But these pumpkin templates they're pitching on the Clark04 site are just plain goofy.

Scroll down and gasp at pictures of real, live (OK, probably dead) Clark pumpkins. Look closely.

One of them features a sign that reads "pumpkins for Clark."

PUMPKINS FOR CLARK.

Now I'll stipulate that carving goofy pumpkins can be a great way to make friends.

(And if you disagree, just look at this.)

But even so, and still, and furthermore:

PUMPKINS FOR CLARK?

Makes you wonder if someone in the Clark campaign might be just a few pumpkin seeds shy a full packet of pumpkin seeds. If you know what I mean.

Bush Knockout Punch?

This could be a Sleeper.

Just guessing, but a decisive blow to Bush's reelection may emerge, during the Spring and through the Summer, from devastating declines in reenlistment in the Guard, Reserves, and regular Army.

This will be very hard for him to defend against: It is hard facts, not interpretation. It will be a dramatic, progressive, relentlessly ongoing story. It will cut across pro-war and anti-war sentiments, perceived by _both_ sides as a marked decline in Security, Strength, and Readiness--and simply as a bungle.

It will set "Support Our Troops" _against_ "Support the President." And it will be dollar costly in the incentives required to recoup from the decline--not to mention the prospect of a resurrected draft.

Time will tell.