Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Final Day- a Good Day:
1) Two separate judicial rulings in Ohio that the Repubs couldn’t do their intimidation thing.
Two federal judges on Monday barred political parties' challengers from polling places throughout Ohio. State Republicans planned to appeal.
An order by U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott of Cincinnati found that the application of Ohio's statute allowing challengers at polling places was unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge John Adams of Akron said poll workers are the ones to determine if voters are eligible.
"In light of these extraordinary circumstances, and the contentious nature of the imminent election, the court cannot and must not turn a blind eye to the substantial likelihood that significant harm will result not only to voters, but also to the voting process itself, if appointed challengers are permitted at the polls," Adams said. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/politics/10069015.htm
2) Zogby Speaks: After predicting a Kerry win last week, his final poll had a deadlock, but his auxiliary cell phone survey revealed had a 55-40 Kerry ‘split’.
3) Reports as to the early voters indicates high turnout and high motivation; that despite long lines, people are persevering, even if they must return the next day…and the next.
4) Republicans sound more downbeat. Talk show host Jay Severin was especially downcast after viewing the long lines of minority voters and again predicted a Bush loss. The exception: Neocon Bill Kristol who predicted that Bush would get 348 electoral votes.
Though: Suppression and other Cheating. The Repubs are trying their stalling techniques, where possible, and the touch screen machines have been problematic. One Florida caller to NPR noted that she had talked with “8 or 10” voters who had voted for Kerry, but (as it does) in the final stage, the machine announced that they had voted for Bush. Similarly, more phony letters, this time from the NAACP in South Carolina that “alerts” voters that they’d be arrested if they had unpaid parking tickets or were behind in child support.
So, more signs point to a Kerry win.
Secrecy. Kerry said next to nothing about this issue... and others An op. ed. (Dorothy Samuels) allows for something other than the 'election proper'.
… I hereby confess to feeling disappointed over Senator John Kerry's failure to home in hard on one of the more worrisome domestic policy developments of the past four years - namely the Bush administration's drastic expansion of needless government secrecy.
President Bush's antipathy to open government continues to garner only a trivial level of attention compared with the pressing matters that seem to be engaging the country at the moment, including, in no particular order, the Red Sox, Iraq, terrorism, taxes and the mysterious iPod-size bulge visible under the back of Mr. Bush's suit jacket at the first debate. But the implications for a second term are ominous.
Beyond undermining the constitutional system of checks and balances, undue secrecy is a proven formula for faulty White House decision-making and debilitating scandal. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/opinion/01mon4.html
Fraud and the NY Times. Media Matters criticizes
An article in the November 1 edition of The New York Times passed along Republican accusations of voter fraud without making any apparent effort to verify them, even though journalists at other newspapers have raised serious doubts about the accusations…
The New York Times' Zernike and Yardley also uncritically passed along claims by an unnamed "official of the state Republican party" in Pennsylvania that 10,000 of 130,000 letters sent "congratulating newly registered voters" were returned. No proof was offered that 10,000 letters were actually returned; in fact, when reporters for the Philadelphia Inquirer asked for a list, Republicans provided only six names, as an October 31 article noted. http://www.mediamatters.com/
China Blasts Bush. Now? Does this help Bush? Nah; no one’s listening.
China has accused the administration of United States President George W Bush of having "opened a Pandora's box, intensifying various intermingled conflicts such as ethnic and religious ones''. The accusation has raised questions why Beijing is doing it a day before the US election. http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Front_Page/FK02Aa02.html
Charles Pierce on Character. I give him the last word on the pre-election period.
Once, in Iowa, Kerry dropped in on a group of Vietnam veterans. Some of them liked him. Some of them didn't, largely because of the whole VVAW thing. (And, trust me, this was my first beat at the Boston Phoenix, and I discovered that the politics within the various Vietnam veteran's groups were desperate and bloody.) Kerry dismissed the staff, locked the door, blew off the rest of the schedule, and sat there and talked and argued with these guys until they were all exhausted. He wanted to talk to the people who disliked him more than he wanted to talk to anyone else. He gave them the respect of open debate.
Imagine the incumbent doing that. Imagine him sitting down in a room where half the people truly loathe him and everything he stands for, him and his ticket-only rallies, and his coddling staff, and his use of the Secret Service as cheap sidewalk bouncers. Imagine him hearing them out, debating them, giving them the respect of his knowledgeable disagreement. It is inconceivable. One can more easily imagine C-Plus Augustus's flapping his arms and flying to the top of the Washington Monument. Imagine that "character" is even at issue between these two men.
Somebody who was there in Iowa told me that story, and told me I couldn't use it, but that's too damn bad today. I am voting for John Kerry because it is a time for serious people who are strong enough in their heart to listen to anger and slander and calumny and to respond to it, not with the tinny bombast of an unearned office, and not with the cheesy legerdemain of concocted eminence, but with the strength to stay long enough to try to redeem it. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
As to the post-election, in his first days, Kerry can’t be a sweetheart. He must challenge, investigate, prosecute. People to his Left must hold him to account… and PUSH him.
Paul Krugman gets it; His advice: (Texas Observer interview)
Do not be magnanimous in victory. I hope the people around him understand that this is not politics as we know it. It’s not, “OK, well, we won an election. After the election we’ll get together and work in a bipartisan way to help the country.” They didn’t work in a bipartisan way when the United States was attacked. They immediately saw it as a way to achieve political dominance. Kerry has got to understand that he has a window of opportunity to expose what’s going on and to rock these people back to the point where we can try to reclaim the normal workings of democracy. Unless there’s a true miracle and the Democrats take the House—which is extremely unlikely—it’s going to be very bitter political civil war from Day One. The House leadership will try to undermine Kerry. I’m sure they’ll try to impeach him almost immediately. On anything. We can go on and on about Tom DeLay, but the point is Tom DeLay is not an aberrant thing. He’s not an accident. The whole thrust of where we’ve been going for a couple of decades in this country has been towards putting someone like Tom DeLay in a position of great power. So, my column to Kerry, my open letter to him if he wins, will be: Do not be magnanimous. You need to expose and dismantle this machine. http://texasobserver.org/showForPrint.asp?IssueDate=10%2F22%2F2004&IssueFolder=zur%5F041022&ArticleFileName=041022%5Ff2%2Ehtm&Title=Right+on+the+Edge
-R
1) Two separate judicial rulings in Ohio that the Repubs couldn’t do their intimidation thing.
Two federal judges on Monday barred political parties' challengers from polling places throughout Ohio. State Republicans planned to appeal.
An order by U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott of Cincinnati found that the application of Ohio's statute allowing challengers at polling places was unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge John Adams of Akron said poll workers are the ones to determine if voters are eligible.
"In light of these extraordinary circumstances, and the contentious nature of the imminent election, the court cannot and must not turn a blind eye to the substantial likelihood that significant harm will result not only to voters, but also to the voting process itself, if appointed challengers are permitted at the polls," Adams said. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/politics/10069015.htm
2) Zogby Speaks: After predicting a Kerry win last week, his final poll had a deadlock, but his auxiliary cell phone survey revealed had a 55-40 Kerry ‘split’.
3) Reports as to the early voters indicates high turnout and high motivation; that despite long lines, people are persevering, even if they must return the next day…and the next.
4) Republicans sound more downbeat. Talk show host Jay Severin was especially downcast after viewing the long lines of minority voters and again predicted a Bush loss. The exception: Neocon Bill Kristol who predicted that Bush would get 348 electoral votes.
Though: Suppression and other Cheating. The Repubs are trying their stalling techniques, where possible, and the touch screen machines have been problematic. One Florida caller to NPR noted that she had talked with “8 or 10” voters who had voted for Kerry, but (as it does) in the final stage, the machine announced that they had voted for Bush. Similarly, more phony letters, this time from the NAACP in South Carolina that “alerts” voters that they’d be arrested if they had unpaid parking tickets or were behind in child support.
So, more signs point to a Kerry win.
Secrecy. Kerry said next to nothing about this issue... and others An op. ed. (Dorothy Samuels) allows for something other than the 'election proper'.
… I hereby confess to feeling disappointed over Senator John Kerry's failure to home in hard on one of the more worrisome domestic policy developments of the past four years - namely the Bush administration's drastic expansion of needless government secrecy.
President Bush's antipathy to open government continues to garner only a trivial level of attention compared with the pressing matters that seem to be engaging the country at the moment, including, in no particular order, the Red Sox, Iraq, terrorism, taxes and the mysterious iPod-size bulge visible under the back of Mr. Bush's suit jacket at the first debate. But the implications for a second term are ominous.
Beyond undermining the constitutional system of checks and balances, undue secrecy is a proven formula for faulty White House decision-making and debilitating scandal. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/opinion/01mon4.html
Fraud and the NY Times. Media Matters criticizes
An article in the November 1 edition of The New York Times passed along Republican accusations of voter fraud without making any apparent effort to verify them, even though journalists at other newspapers have raised serious doubts about the accusations…
The New York Times' Zernike and Yardley also uncritically passed along claims by an unnamed "official of the state Republican party" in Pennsylvania that 10,000 of 130,000 letters sent "congratulating newly registered voters" were returned. No proof was offered that 10,000 letters were actually returned; in fact, when reporters for the Philadelphia Inquirer asked for a list, Republicans provided only six names, as an October 31 article noted. http://www.mediamatters.com/
China Blasts Bush. Now? Does this help Bush? Nah; no one’s listening.
China has accused the administration of United States President George W Bush of having "opened a Pandora's box, intensifying various intermingled conflicts such as ethnic and religious ones''. The accusation has raised questions why Beijing is doing it a day before the US election. http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Front_Page/FK02Aa02.html
Charles Pierce on Character. I give him the last word on the pre-election period.
Once, in Iowa, Kerry dropped in on a group of Vietnam veterans. Some of them liked him. Some of them didn't, largely because of the whole VVAW thing. (And, trust me, this was my first beat at the Boston Phoenix, and I discovered that the politics within the various Vietnam veteran's groups were desperate and bloody.) Kerry dismissed the staff, locked the door, blew off the rest of the schedule, and sat there and talked and argued with these guys until they were all exhausted. He wanted to talk to the people who disliked him more than he wanted to talk to anyone else. He gave them the respect of open debate.
Imagine the incumbent doing that. Imagine him sitting down in a room where half the people truly loathe him and everything he stands for, him and his ticket-only rallies, and his coddling staff, and his use of the Secret Service as cheap sidewalk bouncers. Imagine him hearing them out, debating them, giving them the respect of his knowledgeable disagreement. It is inconceivable. One can more easily imagine C-Plus Augustus's flapping his arms and flying to the top of the Washington Monument. Imagine that "character" is even at issue between these two men.
Somebody who was there in Iowa told me that story, and told me I couldn't use it, but that's too damn bad today. I am voting for John Kerry because it is a time for serious people who are strong enough in their heart to listen to anger and slander and calumny and to respond to it, not with the tinny bombast of an unearned office, and not with the cheesy legerdemain of concocted eminence, but with the strength to stay long enough to try to redeem it. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
As to the post-election, in his first days, Kerry can’t be a sweetheart. He must challenge, investigate, prosecute. People to his Left must hold him to account… and PUSH him.
Paul Krugman gets it; His advice: (Texas Observer interview)
Do not be magnanimous in victory. I hope the people around him understand that this is not politics as we know it. It’s not, “OK, well, we won an election. After the election we’ll get together and work in a bipartisan way to help the country.” They didn’t work in a bipartisan way when the United States was attacked. They immediately saw it as a way to achieve political dominance. Kerry has got to understand that he has a window of opportunity to expose what’s going on and to rock these people back to the point where we can try to reclaim the normal workings of democracy. Unless there’s a true miracle and the Democrats take the House—which is extremely unlikely—it’s going to be very bitter political civil war from Day One. The House leadership will try to undermine Kerry. I’m sure they’ll try to impeach him almost immediately. On anything. We can go on and on about Tom DeLay, but the point is Tom DeLay is not an aberrant thing. He’s not an accident. The whole thrust of where we’ve been going for a couple of decades in this country has been towards putting someone like Tom DeLay in a position of great power. So, my column to Kerry, my open letter to him if he wins, will be: Do not be magnanimous. You need to expose and dismantle this machine. http://texasobserver.org/showForPrint.asp?IssueDate=10%2F22%2F2004&IssueFolder=zur%5F041022&ArticleFileName=041022%5Ff2%2Ehtm&Title=Right+on+the+Edge
-R
