Centerfield

Dean The Demagogue

There's a good article in the NY Times entitled Worried Democrats See Daunting '04 Hurdles. What leapt out at me is this quote

"John Ashcroft is not a patriot," he said, referring to the attorney general's advocacy of the Patriot Act. "John Ashcroft is a descendant of Joseph McCarthy."

Harsh or not, Dr. Dean's attacks on Mr. Bush have heartened Democratic audience, and the pitch of attacks on Mr. Bush by other Democrats has increased with each new sign of Dr. Dean's success.

I'm not a fan of Ashcroft, and I particularly fault him for his prudish draping of the statue of Justice. But while many liberals, and some conservatives are up on arms about excesses in homeland security, as a centrist, I wonder what all the fuss is about. The only impact on my life is the inconvenience of emptying my pockets when I go through airports. I appreciate the fact that there has been no repeat of 9/11 to date, and while I'm not sure if the Patriot Act is responsible, I regard the preservation of my life as essential to the preservation of my liberty.

Joe McCarthy was famous for irresponsible charges which wrecked lives. I'm not sure whom the innocent people are whose lives Howard Dean believes Ashcroft has ruined. Let him name names.

Dr. Dean is the demagogue here, riling audiences with overstated rhetoric. Dean has the ability to speak in simplistic terms that connect with certain audiences. But that audience will never reach 50% of the voting population.

With his advocacy of weakness abroad and weakness at home, I cannot foresee any circumstance under which I would vote for him. Rather, I would close my eyes and vote for Bush.

Regarding the other Democrats, were the election held today, I would also vote for Bush over Kucinich, Braun, and Sharpton. I am undecided regarding Kerry, Graham, Edwards, Gephardt. I would cast votes for Lieberman and Gen. Wesley Clark over Bush.

As someone who voted for Bush in '88, Clinton twice and Gore in 2000, I feel in touch with the swing voters who will decide the 2004 election. Dean is a demagogue, and a loser.

Bananization

Former Labor Secretary Bob Reich writes that we're turning into a banana republic

One of the things that distinguishes advanced democracies from banana republics is that winners and losers accept the results of elections. Losing candidates and parties don't initiate coups. Winners don't kill off the losers and their supporters. The winning party has an opportunity to govern. Both sides go back to their respective corners -- winners take office, losers take other jobs -- and wait until the next election to do battle again.

Reich points to the Clinton Impeachment, the Florida shenanigans in 2000, and now the California recall as evidence of bananization. And of course, the Republicans are responsible.

I would point to two more case where traditions and precedents have been broken in order to gain political advantage: the last minute substitution of Frank Lautenberg for Robert Toricelli in the New Jersey senate race when it was clear that the latter was going to lose, and the attempt by Republicans to redistrict in Texas for the second time in a decade.

So the Democrats are not above banana ethics, though as one expects of a partisan like Reich, only the sins of his opponents come to mind. It does seem to me, however, that Reich is correct in saying that the Republicans have lately been more aggressive in exploiting legal technicalities. Expect the Democrats to follow.

Religious Centrism

I stumbled across an essay on centrism in Anglican Church Politics

There is bound to be formed a solid right that is determined to live in a world that no longer exists. There is bound to be formed a scattered left, captivated by now this, now that development . . . But what will count is a perhaps not numerous center, big enough to be at home in both the old and the new, painstaking enough to refuse half measures and insist on complete solutions even though it has to wait.

Drafty Around Here

This blog has previously suggested drafting Andrew Northrup as a needed, entertaining voice of moderation

One thing that continually energizes the right and left are the presence of prominent figures in the media who offer some kind of ongoing entertainment centered on their political views.

Thus, the right has Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Dr. Laura. The left has Bill Moyers, Jon Stewart, Al Franken, Michael Moore, and Harry Shearer.

These guys take politics into the entertainment realm -- making it palatable, at a minimum, to a core audience of receptive viewers/listeners, and probably exposing millions of other casual listeners as well.

Now, Andrew, aka The Poorman, is a lending his edgey voice to the effort by the Clarksphere to draft the general.

Center Of Gravity

Jeff Lemieux at the Centrist Policy Network makes an interesting point about the nonpartisanship of the California recall election

The two apparent front runners, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger are probably too moderate to win a primary election among their respective parties' core voters. Bustamante may be too pragmatic and insufficiently anti-business for California's left. Schwarzenegger is probably too moderate on social issues to satisfy the religious and cultural right. Maybe this weird election will have a silver lining, showing that many voters gravitate toward moderates not usually seen on the ballot.

Clark Will Run If...

The NY Times reports General Is Said to Want to Join '04 Race

Wesley K. Clark, the retired four-star general who has been contemplating a run for president, has told close friends that he wants to join the Democratic race and is delaying a final decision only until he feels he has a legitimate chance of winning the nomination.

It's safe to say he wants to run," said a longtime friend who has had frequent political conversations with General Clark. "But he approaches this like a military man. He wants to know, Can I win the battle? He doesn't want to have a situation where he could embarrass himself, but I'm absolutely certain he wants to run."

Here are reasons why Clark has a legitimate shot.

1. Some liberal activists, inspired by the way conservatives laid the groundwork for the 1980 Reagan victory in the 1964 Goldwater campaign, are looking for victory by the year 2020. Most Democrats, however, don't want to wait that long.

2. Several of the Democratic candidates know little more about national security than the average person in the street. The world is too dangerous now to have a President (like the incumbent) who needs on-the-job training in national security.

3. The rise of Howard Dean reflects poorly on the other declared candidates in the race. There may soon be a need for an ABD (Anyone But Dean) candidate to jump into the race.

4. Having no positions on domestic issues is a terrific asset. Just figure out what's popular and commit to it (maintaining some degree of internal consistency). Actually, Clark could even be up-front about this, focusing his own attention on national security while running a "national unity" government of Democrats and Republicans on the domestic side.

5. Clark is better-looking than a lot of the Democrats now running. That counts for a lot.

Perot Pops Up

Nathan Newman sees the Perot factor returning

Perot opened up a breech in GOP voting in a period of fears over mounting deficits and lost jobs-- sound familiar? Perot himself is making noises about getting back into the political fray, but the Dems are much better positioned this time to attract these voters. Unlike the almost pure free trader Clinton, the present candidates range from hard core "fair trade" legislators like Gephardt and Kucinich to just tough pro-labor politicians like Dean, Edwards and Kerry.

According to Salon, Perot wants to get back in the saddle.

Is Ross Perot plotting a return to the national stage in time for the 2004 elections? Judging from a well-written 95-page book proposal making its way through the New York publishing circuit, a copy of which arrived unbidden in my e-mail, the crazy aunt in the basement wants to sing again.

I myself participated in the campaign of Perot 1A, by which I mean, the first incarnation of the Perot campaign in 1992, before he dropped out and dropped back in again, showing what an eccentric he is.

I was in Hoboken, New Jersey back then, and got to meet some really interesting, smart people who'd been politically disengaged up till then, sick of both parties really, and inspired by a centrist candidate who was both patriotic and able to reach out to the common man and woman. I am still grateful to Perot for placing the deficit squarely on the nations agenda.

The energy I'm seeing around the movement to Draft Wesley Clark is reminding me of that initial Perot phase. Clark is a bit of a maverick too, without, one hopes, crossing over into eccentricity. I assume that he wouldn't have been given command of NATO without having demonstrated solidity to go along with brilliance.

Rogue Nukes

So, yes, it's an even bigger issue than we thought:

North Korea startled a six-nation conference in China on East Asian security by announcing its intentions to formally declare its possession of nuclear weapons and to carry out a nuclear test, an administration official said Thursday.

North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il also told the gathering that his country has the means to deliver nuclear weapons, an apparent reference to the North's highly developed missile program.

Read the rest of the article. It looks possible, now, that the North has simply decided it needs a nuclear arsenal as a deterrent, and that it won't negotiate them away.

Bipartisan Centrism

Perhaps it's a small matter, but it's also unusual and quite promising.

Centrists.org has become the first centrist think tank to associate itself explicitly with moderates and centrists in both major parties. Up to this point, most politically active moderates have organized in separate groups in the two major parties. The Democratic Leadership Council and the Republican Main Street Partnership are the two largest centrist groups, both having grown into vibrant centers of policy inquiry, exploration, and exchange between leading moderate public officials.

There's always been some level of appreciation for one another. The DLC, for example, recently published a flattering farewell piece on outgoing EPA administrator Christine Todd-Whitman, a leading moderate Republican.

Now we have Centrists.org, a think tank started by folks from the Progressive Policy Institute and the New America Foundation. They may have stronger Democratic connections than Republican ones, given the PPI's association with the DLC. But they explicitly embrace a cross-partisan approach to centrist politics:

There is a longstanding reform movement within the Democratic party. The “New Democrats” of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and its affiliated think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), generally favor market solutions, trade, and government reform within progressive politics. The New Democrat Network (NDN) is a PAC for New Democrat candidates. Conservative Democrats in the House have formed the Blue Dog coalition, which is especially active and successful in budget dealings.

Moderate Republicans have also organized a coalition and PAC, the Republican Main Street Partnership. It was successful recently in trimming the size of the Administration’s latest tax cut plan.

These centrist political movements have great potential. But they need help, especially in policy matters. So far, centrists on both sides of the aisle have had difficulty finding common issues and practical policy proposals to unite behind.

This is a serious bunch, with detailed and carefully constructed proposals on health care, budget and tax policy, and social security reform.

Theirs is one of two places I'm inclined to visit, now, when I wonder what a serious, informed, and balanced person would recommend on a specific issue. (The other is the Committee for Economic Development.)

Clark's Critics

With the Clark boomlet going on, we can expect some negative stories. But this from the Weekly Standard is hardly cutting

Aping Eisenhower, Clark would like to appear nonpartisan. But the truth is Clarke's a moderate Democrat. This isn't too hard to figure out: Speculation about a presidential bid started when Clark met with some Democratic fundraisers in New York City last October. Clark has encouraged Howard Dean's insurgency. And he's voted in Democratic primaries in Arkansas--an act that requires him to be a registered Democrat.

Clark's refusal to admit he's a Democrat points to his biggest liability. He's a slippery character whose public statements remind you of a fellow Rhodes scholar from Arkansas. It turns out that Clark's supporters compare the general to the wrong president. Clark is more Clinton than Eisenhower.

National Review's Rich Lowry faults Clark for misjudgement

Clark thought he had Slobodan Milosevic figured out, and that the mere threat of NATO bombing — and perhaps a day or two of the real thing — would bring him to the negotiating table and force him to be reasonable. When this turned out not to be the case, Clark had no Plan B, because President Clinton had ruled out ground troops from the outset.

So, NATO continued with a limp air campaign that was inadequate to stopping Milosevic's ethnic-cleansing campaign, that appalled other members of the military brass who thought Clark had helped drag the U.S. into a near-fiasco, and that led to such ill-feeling toward Clark in the Pentagon that he was fired at war's end, launching his career as a TV pundit.

In my view, Clark's handling of the Kosovo War doesn't put him in the military Valhalla with MacArthur and Patton, but at least it concluded successfully, and he gained a lot of on-the-job training.

Tacitus provides a link to a nastier attack coming from the far-left Counterpunch which is so anti-NATO that it favored Milosevic in the Kosovo War.

While he regards his junior officers with watchful suspicion, he customarily accords the lower ranks little more than arrogant contempt. A veteran of Clark's tenure at Fort Hood recalls the general's "massive tantrum because the privates and sergeants and wives in the crowded (canteen) checkout lines didn't jump out of the way fast enough to let him through".

As far as I can tell, none of these complaints seem to be more than the normal bitching and moaning on hears about the brass. Counterpunch, however, also tries to connect Clark to the fiasco at Waco involving the Branch Davidian cult. It seems pretty scurrilous.

On February 28, 1993 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms launched its disastrous and lethal raid on the Branch Dividian compound outside Waco, Texas. Even before the raid, members of the US Armed Forces, many of them in civilian dress, were around the compound.

In the wake of the Feb 28 debacle Texas governor Anne Richards asked to consult with knowledgeable military personnel. Her request went to the US Army base at Fort Hood, where the commanding officer of the US Army's III corps referred her to the Cavalry Division of the III Corps, whose commander at the time was Wesley Clark.

They'd Prefer To Lose

New Hampshire Democrats prefer to lose the 2004 election, if the latest Zogby poll is to be believed.

The likely Democratic primary voters are realists who acknowledge that Bush is a formidable foe: Almost two-thirds -- 64 percent -- said they think the president likely will win re-election in 2004.

Dean, who trailed Kerry in polls earlier this year, led the Massachusetts senator 38 percent to 17 percent in the Zogby International poll conducted Aug. 23-26 and released Wednesday.

When asked whether it was more important to have a candidate willing to stand up for what they believe or a candidate who can win in November 2004, voters said they preferred the former by a 2-to-1 margin.

I wonder if they'll feel the same way in February.

Clark Blogs

I've done a little googling, and I'm amazed to see how many blogs devoted to Wesley Clark come up when one enters the term blog Wesley Clark. Contrast this to a google search of blog Lieberman, where most of the entries that come up are negative, and not one is devoted to Lieberman, as far as I can see.

Clark is way ahead of Lieberman among centrist candidates in blog appeal. (which does not mean that the bloggers supporting Clark are themselves centrists. He may prove to have a McCain-like cross-over appeal)

The Wesley Clark Weblog ("not affiliated with the General") quotes radical-turned-conservative David Horowitz saying "Clark worries me the most."

The Clarksphere would like Clark to be more partisan

Despite the fact that Clark campaigned for many Democrats around the country in 2002, many are personally offended that Clark hasn't declared as a Democrat. They think that he is either spurning their ideals or that he is not willing to fight as a Democrat. Perhaps Clark just falls for the 'uniter not divider' rhetorical disconnect put forth by Bush, and believes that only by cooperating with reactionary Republicans and not being that different from them can we win in 2004. That is equally and decisively untrue.

The Wesley Clark Conversation has lots of links to Clarkophiles organzied by state. Some of them are under construction, but the Nevadans For Clark have been busy.

I'll be happy to link to blog entries about Lieberman is anyone will email me at blog@centristcoalition.com

Bigger than Iraq?

Russian and Chinese diplomats are pessimistic about the talks starting this week with North Korea. They're probably correct in concluding that North Korea will take a tough line, and that any negotiated settlement will only take shape over the long term.

"The chances of reaching agreement in this present round of negotiations in Beijing are, unfortunately, very poor," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov was quoted by the Russian news agency Interfax as saying in Beijing.

Russia's Interfax news agency earlier quoted diplomatic sources as saying no quick breakthrough should be expected and noted the previous North Korean nuclear crisis in 1993-94 took nearly 18 months of negotiations to resolve.

This crisis has received a lot of press attention -- but probably quite a bit less than it warrants. The underlying reality is that the timing of all this is wrong. We're trying to negotiate an end to the North's nuclear program, but intelligence estimates suggest that they're actually building these weapons now. Any reasonable timeframe for the negotiations leaves them enough time to complete their current round of weapons production.

So what are we doing, exactly? Negotiating to end the program, only to find at the moment we sign the agreement that they already have 8 or 10 nuclear bombs? Do we expect them to turn over completed weapons at the end of all this?

The unworkable timing of it all means this crisis is probably quite a bit bigger than it appears. Bigger, I suspect, than what we've faced in Iraq.

A Horse Named Wesley

Encouraged by draftwesleyclark.com, Wesley Clark may indeed enter the presidential race

Worried about the leftward lurch of Democratic frontrunners, pundits are beginning to swoon over Clark. A fawning feature in Esquire raves that Clark is "smart, handsome, well-spoken, personable, driven, organized, disciplined, passionate, courageous, fair-minded, loyal, and fairly well-known from his job as a commentator on CNN's war beat." And to top it all, "He looks good on TV." The American Prospect dubs Clark "Mr. Credibility." The New Republic's Franklin Foer declares, "Clark's shot at beating Bush is exponentially better than those of any of the other contenders," thanks to his military resume and "centrist maverick" style.

I hope he runs. There's no downside to having another choice, and I believe he would improve the tone of the Democratic contest, and make the other candidates really come to grip with security issues instead of simply taking potshots at the President.

Make no mistake. We remain at war, and as Lincoln warned in 1864, it may be dangerous to change horses in midstream.

I'm still on the Bush horse right now. I'm skeptical about most of the Democratic field, and while I like Lieberman, I don't really expect him to be the nominee. Clark may be the first Democratic horse that I can visualize myself riding.

Dean Invites Criticism

Howard Dean is inviting criticism from the furthest left elements within his party

Privately, Dean's supporters say that the opposition of activists such as proponents of Palestinian rights can only help Dean by drawing a bright line between him and the other candidate competing for the hardcore anti-war vote, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio. To a certain extent, their argument goes, a backlash from the left will aid Dean when he needs to tack more to the center in some of the more conservative primary states. Dean's rhetoric is already moving right: In an August 15 speech to Iowa's Hawkeye Labor Council, he touted his support for balanced budgets and the first Gulf War.

Premature Defeatism

Bob Herbert's prediction in the NY Times today that the Iraq war is "unwinnable"

How long is it going to take for us to recognize that the war we so foolishly started in Iraq is a fiasco — tragic, deeply dehumanizing and ultimately unwinnable? How much time and how much money and how many wasted lives is it going to take?

is an example of defeatism that is premature, to say the least. The analogy to Vietnam is characteristic of many of his generation, but not at all fitting

Senator John McCain and others are saying the answer is more troops, an escalation. If you want more American blood shed, that's the way to go. We sent troops to Vietnam by the hundreds of thousands. There were never enough.

Beefing up the American occupation is not the answer to the problem. The American occupation is the problem. The occupation is perceived by ordinary Iraqis as a confrontation and a humiliation, and by terrorists and other bad actors as an opportunity to be gleefully exploited.

While I regret any loss of life, to be ready to give up after 60 combat deaths in the 3 months since major operations terminated shows is not decision-making, but panic.

I do not totally disagree with Herbert's conclusion, because I do believe that we should get the United Nations more involved,

The U.S. cannot bully its way to victory in Iraq. It needs allies, and it needs a plan. As quickly as possible, we should turn the country over to a genuine international coalition, headed by the U.N. and supported in good faith by the U.S.

but the deadly attack on the UN headquarters in Iraq demonstrates that the U.N's standing as a humanitarian organization will not guarantee the cooperation of the Iraqi people. Additional troops from other countries would be welcome to share the burden of policing Iraq, but the involvement of the UN could also lead to paralysis.

The United States is in a long-term conflict with certain radical elements in the Muslim world. The wisdom of choosing Iraq as a battleground in this war is debatable. Having made that choice, we do not have the option of withdrawing, or being anything other than the leading player in an international coalition.

Americans are an optimistic people. Political candidates who embrace Herbert's defeatism can only look forward to their own defeat.

Update: On the left, blogger Maxspeak goes even further than Bob Herbert

In a sense the Iraq situation is now like the Congo and Liberia, in and around which murderous armed conflicts evidently claiming hundreds of thousands of fatalities have raged for a decade or more. Africa is out of sight, out of mind, of course, because it does not have the strategic importance of Iraq to the U.S. imperial mindset. But creating peace in West Africa seems no more feasible than planting a garden of tolerance and democracy in Iraq.

All we can do is cut our losses by pulling out, UN or no UN. The only question is how much loss the country is prepared to absorb in the meantime. You heard it here first. This conflict will destroy the home of its most ardent advocates, the Republican Party. In light of the costs, I'd just as soon forego the pleasure of that particular outcome.

Lieberman's Strategy

The Washington Post has an article analyzing Lieberman's strategy

By openly challenging the political adage that a Democrat must run to the left to win the nomination, Lieberman is pressing the case that only an unapologetic centrist strong on national defense such as him can beat Bush. Although many Democrats agree with much of his analysis of what it will take to defeat the president in a nation divided almost evenly between the two main political parties, others are angered by his decision to run hard against key Democratic constituencies. Some fault him for hurting the party to help himself.

So far, it does not look like this strategy is working for him. But I still value it as a sanity check on the temptation for other Democrats to stake out positions far to the left. They'll still do it, but perhaps to a lesser extent than if Lieberman's voice was not there.

Al Qaida in Iraq?

A suicide truck bomb ripped through the hotel housing the U.N. headquarters on Tuesday, U.S. officials said. At least 15 people were killed and 40 wounded, including the chief U.N. official in Iraq, who was trapped in the rubble, U.N. officials said.

This latest incident may or may not be Al Qaida. But you have to wonder if they'll end up with a greater presence in post-Saddam Iraq than they had before the war.

Which suggests a few inconvenient possibilities.

The administration insists that Iraq had WMDs, and David Kay says he's finding all the documentary proof we could want. But we haven't found any actual weapons and obviously don't have control over them.

If Al Qaida has a growing presence, and if WMDs are there somewhere, who says Al Qaida won't get hold of them?

Centrist davis turns left

Now that he's desperate, Gray Davis is trying to appeal to core Democrats

Davis' early promises to govern down the middle have not always served him well, according to a recent poll. Some 58 percent of voters who describe themselves as "middle of the road" politically want to see him out of office, according to the most recent Field Poll. People who describe themselves as "liberal" oppose the recall by 78 percent to 18 percent.

Arnold - A Liberal Republican?

National Review has condemned Arnold Schwarzenegger as too moderate a Republican.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's Tonight Show campaign announcement brought the recall to a boil, but Schwarzenegger, it seems clear, does not merit conservative support. In his multiple careers he has shown himself to be persistent and cunning. He surely believes in his Austrian-immigrant rags-to-riches story, and this seems to have prompted in him at least a curiosity about libertarian economics (he has attended functions sponsored by Reason magazine, and hobnobbed with Milton Friedman). But Schwarzenegger is pro-abortion, pro-gay rights, and pro-gun control. If he has any thoughts on illegal immigration, or the crushing rates of legal immigration from Mexico and points south, he has not revealed them. His campaign utterances so far have been bromides about California's children. (When politicians speak of children, count the spoons.) Rudy Giuliani was a liberal Republican who was a hard-core conservative on one salient issue — crime. Schwarzenegger appears to be simply a liberal Republican.

It's likely that Schwarzenegger could not win the Republican nomination in a traditional primary, where conservatives hold sway. But in a recall election, he doesn't have to. It is possible he may win this year by running up the center.

A Conservative Foreign Policy

George Will does something in his recent columns that's becoming kind of rare.

I get the increasingly uncomfortable feeling these days that a lot of commentators, and a large swath of Americans, are defining their views and perspectives on highly individual terms. They identify with a trusted leader, or a leading commentator, and they pretty much accept the specific statements, views, and arguments of that trusted person.

It's almost like ideology were a manifestation of what a certain group of people do, rather than a set of principles to think about and apply consistently.

In his latest column, Will asks if the foreign policy views currently floating around and increasingly identified with conservatism are really all that conservative:

Bush and Blair and many people called neoconservatives believe that moral objectives in politics are universally applicable imperatives. If so, then either national cultures do not significantly differ, or they do not matter or they are infinitely malleable under the touch of enlightened reformers. But all three propositions are false and antithetical to all that conservatism teaches about the importance of cultural inertia and historical circumstances.

Blair followed ... with these words of Lincoln's: "Those that deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." Lincoln's subject was Americans' complicity in American slavery. But Blair's muddled implication is that a nation that refuses to use force on behalf of all unfree people is denying them freedom.

The premise -- that terrorism thrives where democracy does not -- may seem to generate a duty to universalize democracy. But it is axiomatic that one cannot have a duty to do something that cannot be done.

Watching cable news, you'd be excused for concluding that "conservatives" are the militarily aggressive camp who want to export democratic values to rogue nations, and that liberals are the ones holding up anti-war picket signs.

But conservatives have long felt distinctly uncomfortable with nation-building exercises, or anything that relies on dramatic reversals in existing social or political structures.

There's an uncomfortable coexistence of fact and principle in the soul of conservatism today. Will gives us a nice overview of it.

Centrist vs. Centrist

California Governor Gray Davis is a centrist, but not a successful one, at least according to this cartoon. Arnold may run as a centrist too. Will he have what it takes to govern?

But, as the Schwarzenegger-as-android figure has so often promised us, he's back. And this time, he is much better positioned for the final assault on the governor's house in Sacramento. California is angrier and ready for an outsider to run against politics-as-usual. The rules of the recall vote mean that he does not have to compete in a primary, and so does not have to convince Republican activists, who might not appreciate his liberal position on social issues and his marriage to John F Kennedy's niece Maria Shriver.

Instead, that record will help sell him as a centrist and bring over floating voters. The last Republican to be elected governor in California, Pete Wilson, took the same liberal stance on abortion and guns. A 30-strong team of political fixers who used to work for Wilson are now running the Schwarzenegger campaign.

Except Lieberman

According to Common Dreams

Anyone who has spent much time on the 2004 Democratic presidential campaign trail is familiar with the phrase "Except Lieberman." When grassroots Democrats gather to talk about the crowd of candidates for the party's nomination, there is plenty of disagreement about the merits of the various contenders, but the activists invariably come around to saying, "Of course, I'd support anyone against Bush." Then, as an afterthought, they add, "Except Lieberman."

In reality, most Democrats who attach the "Except Lieberman" qualifier are so angry with Bush that they probably would vote for Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman if he won the party's nod. But not all. And that reality should be a serious concern for leaders of a party that cannot afford to suffer slippage from its base in 2004.

Dean: I Am In The Center

Howard Dean told Larry King

"I am in the center," he said. "I balanced budgets. The president hasn't done so. I believe that states have the right to make their own gun laws, after enforcing the federal laws vigorously. There's nothing that's not centrist about me."

Dean, who was Vermont's lieutenant governor in 1991 when Gov. Richard Snelling died, balanced the state's budget for 11 consecutive years -- although Vermont is the only state in the union that does not require a balanced budget.

"They all say, 'He's so liberal,'" Dean said. "Well, if liberal is balancing budgets, please do call me a liberal. ... If you want jobs and investment in the country, you're going to have to have a Democrat because the Republicans simply can't handle money."

Can Dean zig to the left in the primaries, and then zag to the center if he is nominated?

A lot may depend on his personality. I've always felt that Ronald Reagan was elected despite his conservatism, not because of it. Perhaps Dean can pull it off, but I'm skeptical.

Lieberman Warns Democrats Against Turn to Left

Lieberman is in a fighting mood

Saying he is in a fight for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, Lieberman said policies rooted in the "vital center" of the political spectrum, not what he termed the antiwar and big government policies of his rivals, provide the only hope of defeating President Bush. He warned Democrats that abandoning the policies that helped elect Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 would result in a terrible setback for the party.