The Senate Republicans that face challenging races in 2006, for the sake of their Senate careers, are hoping that John Kerry wins. And it works the same way for the Democrats, since Bush will likely implode after a 2004 victory…

No. Strike that. Because even if they lose, they’d easily find their way into powerful lobbying jobs, which is where the real action is.

If Clinton, or for that matter Gore, had been the one rumping us to war in Iraq, the Democrats would more or less fall in line (even further during, and not run estranged after), and there would be more Republican dissension.

But, the nature of the foreign policy debate more or less bunches itself up with the Lugar-Biden axis being the “moderate center”.

Where does this get us?

I once read speculation that if President Johnson had picked Eugene McCarthy for veep, as was on his shortlist, we’d have had McCarthy as the pro-war establishment candidate in 1968 and Humphrey would’ve weaved his way into the anti-war establishment.

New slogans instead of “Clean for Gene” and “Dump the Hump” would’ve had to have been made.

This goes back to how upstanding a citizen Bob Kennedy was… look carefully to what he was up to with his buddy Joe McCarthy.

#1: If the echo-chamber effect from that wacky new Liberal Media of the radio airwaves is correct, this speech was being reaired on C-SPAN 2 as airplanes were flown into the World Trade Center.

It is worth mentioning, that Biden does not actually mention Al Qaeda or Islamic Terrorists, which is the “revelation” that Condi Rice is facing in regards to her scheduled speech.

Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware … September 10, 2001
Defining Our Interests in a Changing World:

Yesterday, Dr. Rice, on Meet the Press — she and I were on Meet the Press — she talked about how ubiquitous these long-range missile systems were. I don’t know what she’s talking about. We’re getting briefed by two different groups of CIA people, I guess, because none of these rogue nations have that capacity yet. They may get it. It is maybe within their reach, but it does not exist now.

[…]

Last week, the Foreign Relations Committee began hearings on how to build a so-called “homeland” defense and to protect our military from bioterrorism pathogens and chemical attacks; on how we can deploy a missile defense system that doesn’t trade off conventional modernization of our military for a fantasy of some system that remains more flawed than feasible; on how we can jump-start the destruction of Russia’s massive chemical weapons stockpile and secure all our nuclear materials.

The very day they send up a budget that tells they are going to increase by 8-point-some billion our missile defense initiative, they cut the program that exists between us and Russia to help them destroy their chemical weapons, keep their scientists from being for sale and destroy their nuclear weapons.

[…]

And I ask you, you want to do us damage, are you more likely to send a missile you’re not sure can reach us with a biological or chemical weapon because you don’t have the throw weight to put a nuclear weapon on it and no one’s anticipating that in the near term, with a return address saying, “It came from us, here’s where we are?” Or are you more likely to put somebody with a backpack crossing the border from Vancouver down to Seattle, or coming up the New York Harbor with a rusty old ship with an atom bomb sitting in the hull? Which are you more likely to do? And what defense do we have against those other things?

Watch these hearings we’re about to have. We don’t have, as the testimony showed, a public health infrastructure to deal with the existing pathogens that are around now. We don’t have the nvestment, the capability to identify or deal with an anthrax attack. We do not have, as Ambassador to Japan now, Howard Baker, and his committee said, the ability to curtail the availability of chemical weapons lying around the Soviet Union, the former Soviet Union and Russia, because they don’t know what to do with it.

#2: On Condelleza Rice’s speech, scheduled to be delivered on 9/11:

The text also implicitly challenged the Clinton administration’s policy, saying it did not do enough about the real threat — long-range missiles.

“We need to worry about the suitcase bomb, the car bomb and the vial of sarin released in the subway,” according to excerpts of the speech provided to The Washington Post. “[But] why put deadbolt locks on your doors and stock up on cans of mace and then decide to leave your windows open?”

………………………………

AND

The White House has con firmed the existence of the draft of Ms Rice’s speech from September 11, first reported by the Washington Post, but refused to release the full text.

A spokesman said that one speech focusing on missile defense did not mean the White House was ignoring the terrorist threat.

[…]

The Rice speech argued for the need to confront “the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday”, and then went on implicitly to criticize the Clinton administration’s preoccupation with terrorist groups at the expense of building defenses against ballistic missiles.

He added that missile defense and counter-terrorism were not “either-or choices”.

……….

Actually, there are a lot of very fascinating tidbits that appeared in the papers on 9/9 9/10 and the morning of 9/11 that instantly vanished into the netherworld when the terror strikes happened.

For example: a headline I distinctly remember: The Department of Defense was unable to account for $1 Trillion.

All in all, it’s always a good idea to chunk some things back from the memory hole…

UPDATE 4-6-04: Off in Right-wing Land, much has been made of the Washington Times story that “al qaeda” wasn’t mentioned much, nor Bin Laden. To wit, I say, as per various bloggers: take a deeper look at the damned document and read some context into what’s being addressed.

About “Democrats for Landon”…

Alfred Smith, the Democratic Party’s 1924 and 1928 nominee for president, was the most prominent Democrat opposed to the then current Democratic party leadership, and the most important Democrat who voted for Landon in 1936.

To quote Al Smith, “The regulars were out on a limb holding the bag, driven out of the party because some new bunch that nobody ever heard of in their life before came and took charge and started planning everything.”

And he was trotted out by various Republicans and Business leaders to make speak out against FDR.

Parallels with Zell Miller? Well, there is one key difference: In Smith’s case, there was a shift in the Democratic Party that one could easily oppose or support. In the case of Zell Miller, it’s hard to tell what Miller’s beef with Clinton is.

Turn down the sound. Just stare at the visuals.

#1: Get off and running with I Like Ike. A simpler time, I suppose.
#2: Because we’ve seen the “Daisy Ad” one time too many. Besides, I think this ad is much more direct.
#3: We’ll Bury You. And we’ll bury you in return.
#4: This theme will re-emerge in 1988.
#5: Nixon’s indulging in some Psychadellics, ain’t he?
#6: Toy soldiers.
#7: Throw them together in one pot, and calvacade
#8: Sideshow Bob did a better job with this ad.
#9: There’s that Tank. Worth noting is Dukakis’s rather lame response.
#10: Paging Dan Quayle.
#11: A glitch in the program. A Clinton ad follows a Bush ad… try to find the split second where they change. Pretty rotten weather over there in Arkansas, eh?
#12: Time Magazine cover … or at least before the photograph was developed…

How long, O’ Lord … How long? Where willl it end? The only possible good that can come of this wretched campaign is the ever-increasing likelihood that it will cause the Democratic Party to self-destruct.
— Fear and Loathing ’72

Sixteen years is plenty of time for even dumb people to learn just about anything they need to, especially when the difference between winning and losing is usually a matter of life or death, professionally, in the business of big-time politics. It is a question of enlightened self-interest — learn quick or die.

But there are exceptions, as always, like Joan of Arc, Lyndon LaRouche, and even Gary Hart — which is not really fair in Gary’s case; it was not that he couldn’t learn, he just had different priorities. They jeered and called him crazy when he quit, but polls taken immedieately after the election had him as the Demo front-runner for 1992.

It was the kind of news that nobody wants to hear, like having your pre-marriage blood test handed back to you in a lead bag or getting a job as the next sherrif of Sicily … Richard Nixon might handle a horror like that , or maybe William Burroughs, but no other names come to mind. Some things are too ugly to even gossip about.

Gary was unavailable for comment on the ’92 poll, and his former campaign manager, Bill Dixon, has long since moved to Bangkok. Other Democrats wept openly at the news, but most just stared blankly. “The front-runner for ’92?” one asked. “Are you crazy? I’d rather have a truckload of pig entrails dumped in my front yard by some of those tattooed guys from Yakuza.”

It is an ancient and honorable method of colleting debts in Japan, but not yet chic in this country. The Yakuza, however, are said to be infiltrating American cities at a rate that will soon make them the second most powerful political organization in this nation, behind only the Republican Party.

The Mafia ranks No. 3 — followed by the Roman Catholic Church, the IRS, the U.S. Congress, and American Marijuana Growers’ Association.

Indeed. There are many rooms in the mansion. James Angelton said that back when the CIA was still a ranking power. …

The Democratic Party is not even listed in the top twenty, despite a number four ranking two years ago. It was a shocking plunge.

“The Democrats shouldn’t even be listed in the top forty,” said political analyst Harold Conrad. “They have become the party of losers.”

That is probably wishful thinking — but at ten to one it might float, even in Las Vegas. The last time a major political party self-destructed was in 1853, when the Whigs went belly-up despite the leadership of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Quincy Adams. They had ceased to stand for anything except pure politics.

“They refused to learn,” said Conrad. “they became the New Dumb, and then they died.”

If that is the only issue, the Democrats appear to be doomed. They have not learned anything about presidential politics since 1960, and have lost five out of the last six elections despite a consistently powerful showing in state and local elections. While Dukakis lost in forty states, the Democratic Party added to its control of Congress with a net gain of five seats in the House and two in the Senate.

The dumb are never with us for long, and there is a lot of evidence to suggest that Republicans learn faster than Democrats. … Consider the crude learning experience that fell like a huge snake around the neck of the national Republican Party in 1964, when they were forced to go public as the party of Dumb Brutes and Rich People, and then see themselves flogged in the general election by 16 million votes.

When Goldwater was forced to wallow in the horror of public defeat, many experts said he was not wallowing alone, that the whole Republican Party was wallowing with him. The GOP was doomed, like the Whigs, to a cheap and meaningless fate.

But not for long. Four years later, Richard Nixon came back from the dead and ran the Democrats out of power with a 500,000 vote victory over the wretched arch-liberal, Hubert Humphrey. …

It was 1969 — the Death Year — and this time it was Democrats who ran amok. If the campaign had been conducted under the Rules of War — which it was: a civil war — thousands of hate-crazy young Democrats would have been tortured to death by their own kind, or killed in the streets like wild animals. Both Johnson and Humphrey would have been executed for treason.

We were all crazy, that year, and many people developed aggressive attitudes. When I packed my bags for Chicago, there was nothing unusual about including a Bell motorcycle helmet, yellow ski goggles, a new pair of Chuck Taylors All-Stars, and a short billy-club. Packing for Chicago was like taking off for Club Med.

The Democratic Party has never recovered from that convention. It is a wound that still festers, and these people are not quite healers. They have blown five out of six presidential elections since then, and their only victory came after a criminal Republican president was dragged out of the White House in a frenzy of shame.

It was no big trick to beat Gerald Ford in 1976. He was clearly Nixon’s creature, and the GOP was massively disgraced. It was a friendly preacher from Georgia against a gang of crooks. … And even then Carter blew a big lead and won by only two points.

Four years later he was crushed by Ronald Reagan, a goofy version of Goldwater, who ruled for two terms and then anointed his successor while Democrats embarrassed themselves once again.

Party Chairman Paul Kirk should be whipped like a red-headed stepchild, and the others should be deported to Pakistan. Any major opposition party dominated by shaggy whores and failed dingbats not only cripples the two-party system but insults the whole democracy.

Found in Generation of Swine and found in Songs of the Doomed.

Speaking of coups (and I was just a few days ago…):

Supposedly, FDR was slated to be the victim of a coup. but the would-be puppet-leader of the new regime shot it down (Smedley Butler). And he supposedly later shared the details to the forerunner of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.

A bit too convenient, perhaps. But throw it in the “hm” category.

(list created, probably on election eve 2000):

It was a stupid presidential campaign. Here’s the Top 12 Moments from it anyway.

12. I’ll think of a #12 later. Maybe any of Nader’s corporate-parody ads.

11. The inane meme that “Gore invented the Internet”.

10. I meet my local Heuristic Mantic Mystic at a local Gore rally.

9. Bush wonders if global warming even exists. And other great Bush gaffs.

8. The Republicans release a pro-Nader advertisement, showing Nader dumping on Gore. Nader- advocates are annoyed because it doesn’t show the next part of the speech: Nader dumping on Bush.

7. Bill Clinton marches through a narrow and winding hallway to the pulpit to speak at the Democratic convention. (Also note the Esquire magazine cover.)

6. John Hagelin supporters march out of the Pat Bucchannan proceedings. In one building, Hagelin is announced as the winner of the Reform party candidacy. In the other, Buchannan is announced as the winner of the Reform party candidacy.

5. Gary Bauer accidentally falls while flipping a pancake in some midwestern state.

4. Browne’s campaign spot, showing a wrecking ball run down the IRS building, asking the question “Can America survive no IRS?”, and showing some business-guys’ celebrations -fists clenched in the air and ties flying upward. Amusing.

3. Alan Keyes mosh-pits to the music of Rage Against the Machine. A Must!

2. Dan Savage licks Gary Bauer’s doorknobs. Or something to that effect.

1. George Bush calls a NY Times (or was it Washington Post) reporter an asshole. Cheney agrees.

(Partly-understood, partly I’m thinking “He’s not going to accomplish anything here), Conniption fits abound with regards to Ralph Nader’s announcement that he is running for president.

Electorally, Ralph Nader’s 2000 run for president wasn’t the most successful of presidential runs. Nader claims that his 2004 campaign will attract disgruntled Conservatives — who he’s trying to fool I do not know. It will be interesting to split up a hypothetical scenario figuring he claims a Democratic pollster had his candidacy do in Florida in 2000: (20% of his voters would’ve gone to Bush; 34% to Gore; the rest wouldn’t have voted) — Figures I will calculate in a later post.

What follows is a list of United States presidential elections with a third party of any consequence campaigning. High-lighted are those where a third party candidate had better electoral success than Ralph Nader did in the year 2000. Italicized are the examples where a third party beat one of the major two parties: Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull-Moose and of course the Whig Party throwing in the towel allowing the Republican Party to emerge.

The criteria for “of any consequence” is malleable, but generally (though not always) the threshold is two percent. Electoral success does not always translate into lack of consequence, however. The Prohibition Party kicked around for a time, and had success in getting their platform enacted into law. The Green-back Party fused quickly fused with the Democratic Party. The Populist Party endorsed William Jennings Bryan for his runs at president.

The third party candidacies of (Trent Lott’s mentor) Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace weighed heavily on Truman’s campaign strategy. He misjudged the Southern Democrats revolt in his electoral calculations, but ultimately overcame it. With regards to Wallace to his left, his campaign strategy was to send out Eleanore Roosevelt, among others, to belittle the party, and practice a little bit of red-baiting.

The fear of the Socialists, and even the fourth placed Communists, weighed heavily on Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency. (Anti-capitalist sentiment was, understandably, in the air. “The Revolution Must be Stopped.”)

Millard Freedman was the reluctant candidate of the No-Nothings in 1856.

The Nation article linked above tells the story of the third party dynamics of 1844.

2000
Democrat Albert Gore: 48.38% … 271 50.37%
Republican George Bush: 47.87% … 266 49.44%
Green Ralph Nader: 02.73% … 000 00.00%

1996:
Democrat William Clinton: 49.24% 379 70.45%
Republican Robert Dole: 40.71% 159 29.55%
Reform Ross Perot: 08.40% 000 00.00%

1992:
Democrat William Clinton: 43.01% 370 68.77%
Republican George Bush: 37.45% 168 31.23%
Independant Ross Perot: 18.91% 000 00.00%

1980:
Republican Ronald Reagan: 50.75% 489 90.89%
Democrat James Carter: 41.01% 49 9.11%
Independant John Anderson: 6.61% 00 0.00%

1968:
Republican Richard Nixon 43.42% 301 55.95%
Democrat Hubert Humphrey 42.72% 191 35.50%
American Independant George Wallace 13.53% 046 08.55%

1948:
Democrat Harry Truman 49.55% 303 57.06%
Republican Thomas Dewey 45.07% 189 35.59%
States Rights Strom Thurmond 02.41% 039 07.34%
Progressive Henry Wallace 02.37% 000 00.00%

1932:
Democrat Franklin Roosevelt 57.41% 472 88.89%
Republican Herbert Hoover 39.65% 059 11.11%
Socialist Norman Thomas 02.23% 000 00.00%

1924:
Republican Calvin Coolidge 54.04% 382 71.94%
Democrat John Davis 28.82% 136 25.61%
Progressive Robert LaFollete 16.60% 013 02.45%

1920
Republican Warren Harding 60.32% 404 76.08%
Democrat James Cox 34.15% 127 23.92%
Socialist Eugene Debs 03.41% 000 00.00%

1916
Democrat Woodrow Wilson 49.24% 277 52.17%
Republican Charles Hughes 46.12% 254 47.83%
Socialist Allen Benson 03.19% 000 00.00%

1912
Democrat Woodrow Wilson 41.84% 435 81.92%
Progressive Theodore Roosevelt 27.40% 088 16.57%
Republican William Taft 23.17% 008 01.51%
Socialist Eugene Debs 05.99% 000 00.00%

1908
Republican William Taft 51.57% 321 66.46%
Democrat William Bryan 43.04% 162 33.54%
Socialist Eugene Debs 02.83% 000 00.00%

1904
Republican Theodore Roosevelt 56.42% 336 70.59%
Democrat Alton Parker 56.42% 336 70.59%
Socialist Eugene Debs 02.98% 000 00.00%

1892
Democrat Grover Cleveland 46.02% 277 62.39%
Republican William Reid 43.01% 145 32.66%
Populist James Field 08.51% 022 04.95%
Prohibition John Bidwall 02.24% 000 00.00%

1888
Republican Benjamin Harrison 47.82% 233 58.1%
Democrat Grover Cleveland 48.62% 168 41.9%
Prohibition John Brooks 2.19% 000 00.0%
Union Labor Alson Streeter 1.29% 000 00.0%

1884
Democrat Grover Cleveland 48.50% 219 54.6%
Republican James Blaine 48.25% 182 45.4%
Greenback Benjamin Butler 01.74% 000 00.0%
Pohibition John St. John 01.47% 000 00.0%

1880
Republican James Garfield 48.27% 214 58.0%
Democrat William Hancock 48.25% 155 42.0%
Greenback James Weever 03.32% 000 00.0%

1860 (a unique case to say the least, so nothing highlighted.)
Republican Abraham Lincoln 39.82% 180 59.4%
Southern Democrat John Breckenridge 18.10% 072 23.8%
Constitution Unionist John Bell 12.62% 039 12.9%
Democrat Stephen Douglas 29.46% 012 04.0%

1856
Democrat James Buchannan 45.28% 174 58.8%
Republican John Fremont 33.11% 114 38.5%
No-Nothings Millard Freedman 21.53% 008 02.7%

1852
Democrat Franklin Pierce 50.84% 254 85.8%
Whig Winfield Scott 43.87% 042 14.2%
Free Soil John Hale 04.91% 000 00.0%

1848
Whig Zachary Taylor 47.28% 163 56.2%
Democrat Lewis Cass 42.49% 127 43.8%
Free Soil Martin Van Buren 10.12% 000 00.0%

1844
Democrat James Polk 49.54% 170 61.8%
Whig Henry Clay 48.08% 105 38.2%
Liberty James Birney 02.30% 000 00.0%

1832
Nat’l Democrat Andrew Jackson 54.23% 219 76.0%
Nat’l Republican Henry Clay 37.42% 049 17.0%
Ind. Democrat John Floyd 0.00% 011 03.8%
Anti-Masonic William Wirt 7.78% 007 02.4%

I hear that the star of John Adams is rising these days. I’m not sure why this would be the case. Is it the desire to see the wisdom of the Patriot Act as being in the grand tradition of the Alien and Sedition Act? (Sort of the way Woodrow Wilson’s star rose when the United Nations Charter was enacted… though in that case, Wilson was risen from the mud — unlike Adams who, if pressed, Americans would nod and say “Founding Father. Good!”) Or is there something in the current American zeitgist that I am missing?

Oddly enough, I read an editorial in the Oregonian yesterday that placed the current president in the same company as John Quincy Adams and FDR. John Quincy Adams, he of “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy” quotation fame.

(The editorial does deserve a little attention, btw. Maybe I’ll give it some later.)

Oregonian Letters to the Editor. This is a stupid letter:

Which is the real John Kerry?

Bernard F. Verbout
North Portland

#1: “Vietnam Hero” and “Vietnam Protester” are not mutually exclusive.

#2: His connection to Jane Fonda?: Sitting in the same crowd. More or less it. More importantly, he distanced himself from them. After all, HE HAD A CAREER IN POLITICS THAT HE WANTED TO PURSUE.

#3: Let’s play a little game, courtesy of the folks at Snopes.
Thie photograph is real:

This photograph, floating around cyberspace for the miscreants to foam at, is fake:

And this photograph may possibly be the only photograph which includes both Jane Fonda and John Kerry in the same shot:

John Kerry is sitting there, 3 or so rows behind Jane Fonda. Drift your eyes to the bearded dude, and compare him to the style of John Kerry. Recall the movie Forrest Gump. There was a reason Gump was cut to the top of the line to speak.

#4: Fascinating thing, though. A google search pairing the words Fonda and Kerry will bring up any number of items of fascination:

http://www.grouchyoldcripple.com/cgi-bin/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=777

The great lesson of Vietnam being that we could’ve “won” had we just clamped down hard enough on those unruly kids. Of course.

Burrow over to Rush Limbaugh’s site. I didn’t stay long enough to complete my mission of figuring out whether or not Limbaugh has the fake photograph on his site. But, I did notice the line “Do we really want to go back to the 60s?”

Which has me scratching my head, wondering what the hell he is talking about, and pondering, even if the culture is shifting toward whatever items of the 60s [one-dimesnional thinking that] that he’s railing against (that is late 60s/ early 70s), whether or not it would matter one iota whether the modern day equivalent of a Lyndon B Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, or Dick Nixon is sitting in the White House.