A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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December 09, 2003Glide PathAl Gore's impending endorsement of Howard Dean makes words like "inevitable" come to mind in considering a Dean nomination. But is Dean a sure loser in the general election? Scott Rosenberg doesn't think so.
It's true that Dean is showing a flair that is a great asset in a candidate. Certainly, a lively liberal makes a better candidate than a wooden centrist. But I wonder now if Bush's window of vulnerability, which opened this summer, is starting to close. It appears to me that Bush is back on the glide path toward re-election. The productivity numbers suggest that hiring will finally pick up, and that the "jobless" recovery will finally be "jobful." The public has absorbed the fact that the Iraq War is not a glorious victory, but it's not nearly as bad as Vietnam, and that didn't stop Nixon in '72. A thriving economy and a muddled foreign policy should be good enough to allow him to slide into a second term. What could stop Bush is another major terrorist event. He doesn't get blamed for 9/11 because it was early in his term. But if another one were to happen on his watch, he'd have no excuse, particularly if people felt the Iraq War has distracted from the country's ability to pursue the War on Terror. The rally round the President instinct which happened after 9/11 would be unlikely to repeat. But excluding that, Bush looks like a winner over all the Democratic candidates. Posted by rickheller at December 9, 2003 08:31 AMComments
Even tho I was the one who brought up that idea that a domestic terrorist event in the run up to the election would be bad for Bush, i do think it's something of an open question as to whether or not people would rally round Bush in these circumstances. Unless the event were preceded by a strong Dean message that we need to re-prioritize to focus on domestic security, i doubt he'd get much bump. My personal opinion is that if there are in fact undetected sleeper cells in the US, it would be nearly impossible to stop them from executing an attack if they are clever and creative. There are just too many targets. And I think that a series of strategically small but socially disruptive events would have more impact on the American psyche than a large symbolic target. because of this, I think we're a bunch of morons if we hold Bush responsible should terrorists successfully attack. i just don't see how we can protect every bridge, powerline, water supply, power plant, dam, etc. By the way, Jonathan Rauch at Reason makes a compelling case that Dean is more like Clinton than McGovern. My sense is that there's a strong effort to taint Dean with the odor of Mcgovern, but that it doesn't stand up especially well to scrutiny. BTW, I've expected HC to run in 2008 for some time now, she's as cagey as one who learned from the master can be expecedt to be, and I think she wants to run against a non-incumbent to give her her best shot. Posted by: bk at December 9, 2003 12:50 PMHmm I posted the rauch url (http://www.reason.com/rauch/120803.shtml) inside html and it simply disappered. Anyone have any tips on how to embed links into hypertext. It doesn't do so automatically, does it? Posted by: bk at December 9, 2003 12:52 PMThere are two options in Movable Type. One is not to permit HTML tags. If so, you can have it automatically turn URL's into links. But if you do allow HTML tags, it won't do that automatically. You have to do the html coding by hand. I can't even show an example, because MT cleans it up Posted by: rickheller at December 9, 2003 12:56 PM |
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