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Bush-McCain
The Dems should count themselves lucky that the Bush team is devoid of imagination or wit, native and otherwise. Under normal circumstances, the incumbent would be seeking to anoint his successor. Replacing the irascible and ailing veep is not possible this time, however (leaving aside the question of who'd be running the country if Cheney stepped down), because the desired candidate is the president's brother Jeb. Even the Republicans know it would be unseemly to run siblings simultaneously for the top jobs.

Senator John McCain offers the perfect solution. Extremely popular with the independent voter who has been chosen to decide this election, he would enhance the GOP's likelihood of being returned to office; too old to run himself in 2008, he wouldn't get in the way of restoring primogeniture as a factor in succession in these United States at the next turn of the election wheel. John Edwards' most obvious advantages would be neutralized if he wound up debating Grandpa Walton instead of Darth Vader.

Fortunately for Kerry and Edwards (and the nation), the Bush Leaguers are too mired in their ways to contemplate a Bush-McCain ticket. Even if it becomes necessary to replace Cheney, whether for health reasons (it's damp and drafty down in that bunker) or because he is indicted in one Halliburton mess -- Iran, Nigeria -- or another, and the royalists follow the same logic pursuant to Jeb's inheritance, they'll probably elevate some presentable but undistinguished backbencher -- Orin Hatch would do the job nicely -- to keep the seat warm.

We'll be told that Bush and McCain don't like each other. But personal enmity rarely stands in the path of victory. Did Jack like Lyndon? Dick want to hang out with Spiro? Did Ford (what the heck was his first name anyway) care for Nelson? Did Ronnie have any respect for George? Nah. But McCain is another story. The senator won't be selected not because he and Junior don't get along, but because he is perceived by the Bush team as outside the box, and outside the box is not a place they like to be.

The country dodged one bullet when McCain turned down Kerry's offer of the vice presidency, a move that had it succeeded might have reassured a few independents but would have further irritated many in his already itchy base. It will dodge another when the Republicans reject an opportunity to make their ticket stronger by picking McCain.
:: posted 12:27 am 2004/06/29

Wanted: A Republican Nader
While Republican pundits and apparatchiks* make gleeful sport of the opposition for venturing another presidential campaign with an independent progressive poised to nip off with the margin of victory, many Democrats are not entirely unhappy to have an alternative at hand should their nominee tack too far to the right in the name of electability.

Ralph Nader stands ready as a reminder to John Kerry that a passionate embrace of corporatism may not be what every Democrat expects of the party's champion. It can be hoped that the sight of Nader's admonitory finger will be a sufficient brake on Kerry's apparent eagerness to trade favors for contributions.

Democrats unfazed by Nader's quixotics argue that there is little risk from his candidacy. No Democrat will vote for the consumer advocate, they believe, if so doing might result in four more years of Bush and Cheney. They have a point: though he may be as inspiring as one of those 508 varieties of American dirt on the endangered list (and what, by the way, is he proposing to do about that?), and though there may be an issue or two in which he is not quite in step with his party, Kerry is in no danger, as apparently Al Gore was, of being mistaken for the cozener currently garrisoned in the Oval Office. If we have nothing else to thank George Bush for, at least we can be grateful that his presidency has had the effect of putting to rest forever the contention that all politicians are created equal.

On the other hand, Nader's self-serving argument that third party candidates draw mainly from the incumbent party's vote doesn't hold water. The happy circumstance of Ross Perot's siphoning ballots away from Bush I in 1992 will not be repeated this year, the more so without a charismatic like Bill Clinton on the Democratic line. And, while he is correct in saying that many conservatives are dissatisfied with Bush and might look favorably on a suitable replacement, Nader is being disingenuous to suggest that he is it.

Republicans need a Ralph Nader of their own.

It's not as though conservatives don't have plenty of reasons to be unhappy with Bush. From the Medicare drug "giveaway" through "reform" of agricultural policy to amnesty for illegal aliens and "No Child's Left Behind" -- to say nothing of the Mother of All Deficits, there is plenty to rue for Republicans young or old. What better way to keep the president from straying too far from GOP scripture than to provide the party's fundamentalist base with a palatable alternative. The intention of such a candidacy will not be to defeat the president, of course, any more than Nader really wishes to help elect him; rather the purpose will be to inject the fear of, well, God into him, or at least the fear that the party faithful will transfer their allegiance to a different shepherd should the president's sermons become too larded with heretical celebrations of diversity and compassion.

The Republican Party was once the roost of birds who wished to be both Right and right. A Democrat, used to watching his leaders accommodate power, could envy the conservatives their commitment to principle. Even now, despite the outward display of unity, you suspect that only by the imposition of Prussian discipline on reactionary backbenchers and neocon intellectuals does the White House keep a challenger from rising from their midst.

Who might this paladin be? In truth, there are plenty of choices. It is forty years since the Right began systematically training intellectual gunslingers behind the ramparts of Cato and Free Enterprise and sending them in posses to hunt down and string up any candidate of either party who expresses doubt that protecting the power and profits of big corporations is the lord's work. And while you or I might find it vexing to be forced to choose one Republican we prefer above all others, surely those who have accepted Alan Greenspan into their hearts would jump at the chance to anoint a pastor more eloquent than the president at preaching the gospel of limited government and an unfettered marketplace. Four years ago, did you imagine missing Allan Keyes and Gary Bauer? And where is Patrick Buchanan when he might finally serve a purpose?

Taxing though it may be to audition possible alternatives to Bush, it is a job that must be done if the Right is not to lose ground to centrist promises during the campaign. If it didn't seem so obvious, an outsider wishing to be helpful might be moved to offer a suggestion: Rush Limbaugh.

The talk show host is the ideal casting on the right for the role Ralph Nader is so ably filling on the left. Like Nader, Limbaugh would be taken just seriously enough along the party's margins to keep the leading candidate in some kind of check without attracting a single vote from the undecided and moderate middle that will choose the next president. Again like Nader, Limbaugh has no stature or position within the party to lose; he is not a Bill Frist, say, or a Tom DeLay, who, however much they covet the job, know they would risk their already considerable influence over policy if they were to make a grab for the presidency at the wrong moment. Finally, and alas unlike Ralph Nader, when preaching to the choir Rush Limbaugh is a forceful and articulate spokesman for the positions he advocates.

Would he do it? After his drug bust, the talk show host could use a little rehabilitation; "former presidential candidate" makes a more positive resume item than "former drug-abuser" or "ex-con." Besides, if Rush Limbaugh won't die for our sins, by golly who will?

* Although, pace A.Coulter et al, is that better rendered apparatchicks?
:: posted 12:19pm 2004/06/21

John Edwards for President
On Tuesday, Democrats -- in California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, Georgia and Minnesota -- will decide whether George Bush will be returned to office in November. The party rank and file has a rare opportunity to nominate a candidate who is not only committed to progressive ideals, especially to the struggle for economic justice, but to choose one who is also undeniably electable.

John Edwards is the best campaigner in the Democratic Party: Bubba is back, but without all the personal baggage.

Electability alone might provide justification enough for supporting Senator Edwards; it's all the reason that most Kerry supporters offer to explain their choice. For anyone looking for more than the un-Bush, however, Edwards has demonstrated the political savvy to have devised a brilliant primary strategy and the toughness of mind to have stuck with his plan through the ups and downs of a grueling campaign, a contest that at one time or another caused every other leading candidacy to fall at least temporarily into disarray.

Is he the greatest thing since croutons? Of course not. But he has a core of optimism that is remindful of Democratic heroes like Franklin Roosevelt and Hubert Humphrey, a characteristic that one FDR biographer called "a first class temperament."

Edwards is right to say that economic justice is the most important issue facing this country. And, though he may be lucky that his sunny disposition matches his program, he is also right that Americans are ready for a leader who can simultaneously communicate pride in his country and the determination to make it a better place.

What, on the other hand, aside from the untested assertion that he can win, has made John Kerry's nomination "inevitable?" Can he really beat Bush in November? If various Democratic constituencies are holding their collective noses as they pull the lever for a candidate for whom they feel no passion, how likely is it that come November the voter who is less single-mindedly anti-Bush will do the same? And while we'd like to think that on election day no one in his right mind will hesitate to choose any Democrat over Bush, why the rush to settle on Bush's replacement now? We have several months until the convention to decide what kind of leader we desire in his stead.

Does labor, for example, really wish to stand behind a candidate who favors free trade? Do gun control advocates really support a hunter who resists the idea of registering and licensing handguns? Will citizens worried about corporate greed and corruption really find their champion in the Senate Democrat who has never been happier than when sucking at the corporate teat? Do voters who think that economic injustice is our most fundamental wrong really believe that he and they are reading from the same account book? Will blacks warm to him? Will Hispanics? Will gays, if he continues to equivocate on the equity issue?

Even the groups who should be happiest with Kerry, environmentalists and death penalty opponents, must wonder in their darkest hours whether the Senator's rambling, passionless addresses and careful middle-of-the-roadism will best advance their causes.

Will peace advocates really feel properly represented by a candidate who offers as the chief guarantee of his electability the fact that he personally has killed people? Do those who favored Dean because of his pugnacity and his unequivocal position on the war in Iraq really see Kerry as the man to lead the battle against militantly right-wing majorities in Congress? For that matter, do they and others most aggrieved by U.S. militarism really look to Kerry to rein in Pentagon spending and bring the boys and girls home?

Although Kerry holds a substantial lead in the delegate count, the race is far from over, or it needn't be if progressive Democrats use their power to extract stronger commitments from the Massachusetts Senator on the issues they care about. Even though he faces an immeasurably tough fight against Bush, Kerry is already exhibiting a Mondale-like caution. When forced to, for example by the initial eruption of enthusiasm for Dean's anti-war rhetoric, Kerry can be made to take a strong position. Mostly, though, since winning in Iowa and New Hampshire, he has kept his nose to the yellow stripe down the middle of the road, the final destination of dead skunks and most Democratic presidential nominees.

You also have to worry whether, despite his vaunted war record and his undeniable courage in opposing the Vietnam war when he returned home, Kerry has the grit to stand up to the current strain of GOP ruthlessness and cynicism. In Wisconsin, he allowed mild criticism from Edwards to unsettle him. How will react to whatever Karl Rove has up his dirty sleeve?

The Kerry campaign naturally hopes the race will be wrapped up with a big win on Tuesday. But is this really the best potential outcome, for the party and especially for progressives? One benefit of the longer-than-usual primary campaign, especially now that the negative Dean, Clark and Lieberman candidacies have been silenced, has been to encourage the news media to focus, however reluctantly, on Democratic alternatives to Bush. The longer the race is undecided the longer before television news can turn its mondaine eye fully to errant nipples and car chases. With the two leading Democratic candidates concentrating their fire on Bush instead of on each other, the President is not getting the free ride usually afforded the incumbent at this stage of a campaign. And the longer the Democrats take to decide on the target they will offer, the longer will it take the Republican artillery to concentrate its fire.

Some progressives, especially those most galled by the war or gulled by his New Age palaver, plan to vote for Rep. Dennis Kucinich. Ironically, this "protest" vote will be cast by many of the same illuminati outraged that a few apostate Democrats might "throw their votes away" on Ralph Nader. Others, disheartened by Dean's withdrawal, are planning to cast their ballots for the former Governor anyway. All to the good. Non-Kerry delegates to the convention are more likely to fight hard for strong planks in the party platform on issues such as economic justice, militarism, minority rights, health care, corporate responsibility, gun control, etc., than are either cautious Kerry or the party regulars who by the time the donkey-train arrives at South Station will surely once again have the party machinery gripped tightly in their dead hands.

There'll be plenty of time after the convention to unite behind the nominee. Now is when we have the final chance to make the party understand that it must be the embodiment the nation's aspirations if it is to prevail.

More than votes for Kucinich or Dean, an endorsement of Edwards will secure real change in the party. If he wins even a few states, the campaign goes on. Were he to win a lot of them, the race would be transformed. A negative, fearful throw-the-bums-out undertone would be replaced by the upbeat cadence of a political crusade, marching into battle for a better America, not just for one that's less bad.

Even though the likelihood of Edward's overcoming Kerry is slim, the chance remains alive and should not be casually abandoned. Win or lose, a vote for Edwards sends to the Kerry campaign the message, as would ballots cast for Kucinich and Dean, that this time Democrat voters want more than business-as-usual.

Come November, we can vote against the President. Tuesday we still have time to voice our support for a leader, one who has made economic justice the center of his endeavor, a great campaigner who can make the most hardened observer of our political enterprise believe in a better, fairer America, who connects with something in each of us that makes us feel good about ourselves as Democrats and citizens, and...and we all agree this is the crux of the matter..who can win.
:: posted 02:42 am 2004/02/28

Some primary recommendations
President: John Edwards
LA County DA: Steve Cooney
Judges:
Office 72: Judge David Wesley
Office 95: Judge Dan Oki
Proposition 55: No
Proposition 56: Yes
Proposition 57: No
Proposition 58: No
John Edwards: As long as the media see the primaries as a horse race, they will continue to cover the contest, giving the Democrats more opportunities to make their case against Bush. While votes for Dean, Kucinich or Sharpton might be emotionally satisfying, only a vote for Edwards will keep the campaign alive.

Prop 55 is the $12.3 billion school bond issue. While the goal is admirable, this is the wrong time. If it fails tomorrow, it automatically reappears next November when the state's financial picture will be in better focus. Wait until then. Vote no.

Prop 56 is the most important item on the ballot. The so-called "budget accountability act" is just that. It restores functionality to a failed system that has resulted in chronically late budgets, huge deficits and finally now borrowing on a unprecedented scale to meet operating costs. The current process gives a proportionately bigger vote to the legislator who wants to disrupt the deliberative process than to those trying to make it work; it's undemocratic, a classic model for the tyranny of the minority. Before Prop 13, tax increases passed or failed by majority vote, as they do in all but two other states. The system worked fine. Now we have a nutty system that, for example, allows a tax loophole to be created by a simple majority but requires a two-thirds vote to get rid of it. It is time to make all the legislators equal again. Also, for 14 out of the last 17 years, the state began the fiscal year without a budget. Prop 56 requires the Governator and the members of the Legislature to forfeit their salaries and expenses every day the budget is late, and the legislature won't be permitted to go home until a budget passes. And the referendum creates a "rainy day" reserve that can't be tapped to increase spending. The two-thirds rule hasn't stopped ballooning deficits and it has caused malformed budgets, lowered credit ratings, and unnecessary and costly borrowing. Vote yes.

Props 57 and 58 ought to be the "incumbent bailout act." Under 57, the state goes into hock to the tune of $15 billion to meet current operating expenses. This is not borrowing for capital improvements; this is taking on massive debt in order to avoid making hard choices about what to cut from the budget and what to keep and raise taxes to pay for. 58 requires a balanced budget, again hamstringing legislators. If 57 fails, it won't be the end of the world. For one thing, there is already in place a fallback loan that is smaller and pays off sooner at a lower rate. For another it will force the state's political class to straighten out the mess now rather than drive us deeper in debt. Vote no.
:: posted 11:09 am 2004/03/01

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