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The Internet, Media and Politics
Several people submitted an interesting column on Davenet about the differences in methodologies of the Dean campaign and other primary campaigns. Of course, the analogy doesn't have to be strictly Dean - it can apply to any candidate who breaks from the traditional norms of campaigning. and while I think people have been saying since 1996 that this is the year of the Internet in politics, for me this is the first *real* use of the Internet in a meaningful way. In any case, the question of productization in politics is a very real one, and should be discussed.
Just wait until they start spamming us.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Internet was looking for a candidate
Really? I didn't know the Internet like to be anthropomorphised.
-Colin
It seems to me that Dean's Internet Angle really gave him the lead at first. It helped me to notice him, root for him etc. (Couldn't vote for him where I am though). Now it seems that Kerry etc. are returning to the traditional means as the race advances? Any views on this? Thanks! J
In other news, you should try this really great pill....
Those who used to research candidates before can now hit their website and get a quick summary instead of digging through newspapers and mass mailers.
Those who never really cared, pretty much still don't care, even if all they have to do is click on a website and read.
The biggest affect has been that communication within groups of like-minded individuals has been greatly increased. Between sites like meetup.com for live meetings and email discussion lists for ongoing meetings online, if you care about an issue or set of issues, you can coordinate with others who feel the same way.
It's gotten to the point where non-internet enabled members of political organizations are starting to feel left out because they miss 90% of what goes on in their group.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Yes, but that doesn't give perspectives on the candidate, and it sure as hell doesn't equal a LEXIS-NEXIS search.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Apart from the horrid word, it's hardly a new process. Every electable official since the days of... well, since there were elections, has been a product shaped to win a constituency.
Dean did well using the Internet was because his constituency was one that relies on the Net for news and views.
But he failed for the same reason: he still spoke to a minority. For the majority, presidents have to be Presidential. In todays' world this means good looks and charm and political skill.
Expect future party machines to use the Internet much more, yes, but don't expect future presidents to be any less chosen on their ability to look good on television.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
for me this is the first *real* use of the Internet in a meaningful way.
Not to get too off-topic here -- but I consider communicating with friends and family to be at least as important as political activism.
The coolest voice ever.
Howard Dean may have been the internet candidate. But i doubt it. Unfortunately, his campaign is parralleling the dot com bust of the late 90's. The internet is a great way for candidates to construct platforms,and for voters to learn of candidates. It just so happens Dean turned out to to have a self destructive, insane quality that turned folks off. Dean is toast. I just wish he would get out the race, because I feel pity for his futility.
Dean is now looks like he has an alein in his head and the alien has decided to binge on cheap wine, and LSD. He is out of touch with reality. Well at the least the architect of his campaign jumped of this ship before it went down.
me this is the first *real* use of the Internet in a meaningful way
Well the Blair Witch Project, back in 1999 used an internet-based marketing approach to rack up 140 million dollars. Not only that, it set the standard for how movies are marketed online.
Just because this is about entertainment and art and not politics doesn't make it less real. There's a lot of money in movies.
Before everyone starts jumping up and down claiming that "productization" of politics is a bad thing-- please realize it`s been happening since the inception of the US republic: the tracts coming out of Boston (Common Sense, Federalist Papers) were all "productization" of one form or another-- the idea that you must package a message in palpable and swallowable formats for the masses to recieve and understand that message.
Poets, Priests and Politicians use words for your submission. The Internet thrives on disseminating text. It's just taken a while for the campaigns to figure out the most effective ways of doing that. Looking back, it makes sense that this would only happen _after_ the hypsters of the dot-com era faded away. Now that all the Flash intros, goofy graphics and image maps have all evaporated, the Internet is (hopefully) getting back to what it does best: disseminate text and solicit commentary. Wikipedia, Slashdot, Fark, and Google all understand this.
davejenkins.com |
Looking at a candidate's website is a good way to see what THEY think is important.
I would agree that you should also plug their name into a decent search engine and see what else is out there. If there is anything significant out there, it will likely be online. Everything from ratings by various organizations to statements of their opponents.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Oh, and as a sort-of side note, that's the first time I've ever read Dave Winer's blog. Is his writing always that bad and his arguements that disconnected? I've been living in a non-English-speaking country for a few years, and I felt the English he used was as bad as mine is sometimes. What's his excuse?
"On the Internet, this card will confirm all the information required to gain access to a state (government) network--while also barring anyone who isn't legal age from entering an adult chat room, making the Internet safer for our children, or prevent adults from entering a children's chat room and preying on our kids...Many new computer systems are being created with card reader technology. Older computers can add this feature for very little money," Dean said.
Source. Scary... the man is looking to displace Bush, and he's more Orwellian in thought. Read the article.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
It wasnt always like this. Bill Clinton for example only sent three email address in his entire term in office ....
"In any case, the question of productization in politics is a very real one, and should be discussed."
In a couple of years or so, we should be able to bid for our representation, much as goes on with the corporate sponsors, although I think they should wear badges to make such things obvious.
As for Dean, he was doing quite well until Trippi advised him that big, nasty lockdowns on personal PCs was the way to go, coincidentally somethng that Wave Systems (Trippi's company) would have cleaned up on. Palladium/DRM from a Democrat?
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
I won't bother getting into a political shootout over this so here's my two ^*. The last place I would want to look towards when thinking of the pResidency, votes, voters* (and any variation of this) would be online. How many articles have you seen on Diebold, and all of the quirks associated with things political.
Wait before you shoot some quick response, I know this has little to do with voting so let me shift. Using the net in the fashion Dean has, is nothing new, he's probably the only one smart enough to publicize it though. Remember, many Americans aren't that literate when it comes to computing as it is, so think about this... Who are his real followers, and one has to know these numbers the Dean camp or whomever can be tweaked.
E.g.: Dean2004.com or whatever sites associated with them show 1,000,000 visitors for February. Oh really? How many unique visitors, etc. Don't throw out numbers without backing it. Secondly, when it comes to computing, for all you know, there could be some 13-17 (under the voting age) kids playing around with Dean & Co. No you say? Prove it. Who in Dean or any camp can say with a straight face "We've attracted 1,000,000 legal aged voters that live in America" that would be a flat out lie. Even if say "cache.bigcompany.com" (where Big Company was a Fortune 500 co.) connected to someone's party, how do you know it's not a misconfigured proxy allowing anyone to connect.
Dumb users spread viruses. Irrelevant? I definitely think not. I would not look to the net for the next best thing "politically" for a long ass time. Now when someone decided to post "this is the first *real* use of the Internet in a meaningful way" ... They should have thought up something more meaningful like medical studies or something similar. My personal "REAL USE" of the internet would be the sharing of information on the educational level a-la MIT's Open Course Ware, and other projects similar to that. However I think medically it's underdeveloped and could rock. Think distributed dna sequencing type stuff.
Oh well my ramblings for the day
MoFscker
As a platform for political wheedling, the net could change the dynamics of voter behavior very much, but only in conjunction with REAL online voting.
What happens when, like telephone proliferation in the US, reliable net access is in the hands of vitually all americans and unique, verifiable online identifiers are adopted for users? Online voting is just the first - and most obvious - step. Politicians (and PACS, grassroots orgs and radicals as well) could cheaply distribute and track effectiveness of their messages. Most importantly, they could more easily gather vote paydirt from the largest (and previously unreachable) voting majority in the US - the non-voter - who I argue is just too damn lazy and busy to walk to thier local elementary school and push a button.
What if there was a link from Dean's blog to a "voting proxy" system which would cast your vote online for you on election day - even if you forgot? take away unidirection persuasive material and physical polling places and you'll have voting weirdness the likes this country has never seen.
...for me this is the first *real* use of the Internet in a meaningful way.
Step back from the keyboard for a bit...you need a good slap.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
... and then we're going to take back the internet!!! YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!
---
Memo to Mr. Dean: When you say things like, "we're going to take back the white house", exactly *who* took it? The spanish inquisition?
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
I must agree with one point in the article, at least. The way to use the 'net in politics is to use it to the hilt, and assume that the traditional implements of power will act against you. Using it as just a nontraditional means of fundraising and then trying to spend the money with the people you just bypassed is not too bright.
Instead, go *completely* nontraditional. Don't buy into the claim that you have to spend big to win big. For very little money a candidate can now have what amounts to his own publishing empire, one that's very difficult for the entrenched interests to silence or drown out. Point out that the other guys are spending $100 million to win a job that pays $0.5 million a year, and ask if that seems fiscally responsible, or even sane. Publish *detailed analyses* instead of meaningless sound bites and vague strokes, for people who want to read 'em, and make a point of the fact that *your* thinking is always available for study while *they* seem to want to hide all their details. Dredge up the news that's important to you, and become known as a place where people can find the stuff that's kept out of the daily papers. Don't try to outspend 'em; try to out-write 'em.
Dean's fiscal policies are *far* more conservative that those of the current administration. Look at his Vermont voting record... the mas is less liberal than Kerry, for chrissakes.
What is stricklying missing is a sense of reality..
Dean is the only one not spammign People through email and it is yet ot have been mentioned..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
The most interesting note to the Dean campaign is the idea of using many small contributions as an alternate ( or more likely supporting ) fund raising technique.
That said I think Dave is still kind of clinging to this idea that the internet will somehow empower the people. I agree that it definitely connects like-minded folks.. but it connects all kinds of like-minded folks.. not just Dean supporters.
Take for instance, tailgaters. .
Viktor Kozeny, who is wanted by legal authorities for fraud both in Czech republic and in USA (and is living in Bahamas) has plagiarized Dean's campaign and is using it for EU parliamental elections this year.
SHE does throw dice.
How much of this is true, and how much Dean being an unattractive, unsympathetic dipshit of a candidate had to do with the lack of campaign coverage for him, we'll never know.
But for those of us cynical about politics, it's a good mini-conspiracy theory that campaign ad money could, in the worst of all possible worlds, buy news coverage for a candidate.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
There are two points to be considered here...
1. Internet Campaigning
2. Productization of politics/politicians
Its all well for us to be discussing why Dean has done so badly inspite of his Internet-campaign. But the fact is that with over 98% of American households owning television and with each American watching over 4 hours of television daily, on an average, its naive to underestimate power of the television and in turn, the power of the networks. Compared with that, under 80% of the households own a personal computer. While television is a mass medium, the Internet is still a personal medium. So it was foolish of Dean to ignore this simple fact.
But yes, he has shown that it is possible to bypass the big networks entirely and still make an impact!
Coming to the second issue... that of productization of politics and/or politicians, well, its a mutual thing! The politicians consider the voters as mere means to get elected. Moreover, the people are fed information, by the politicians, that they would find easy to accept. Productization of politicis is this method of putting a spin on everything. And its not a bad thing by default.
The biggest affect has been that communication within groups of like-minded individuals has been greatly increased. Between sites like meetup.com for live meetings and email discussion lists for ongoing meetings online, if you care about an issue or set of issues, you can coordinate with others who feel the same way.
For the most part I agree (or at least agreed) with your observations, but this post-mortems of Dean's run (by a Dean supporter no less) does, I think, a hell of a job pointing out some of the shortcomings of Dean's use of the internet. The Cliff Notes version: if it doesn't generate votes, it ain't worth squat.
Amazon.com is raising funds for Presidential candidates, and Gary Nolan, a Libertarian candidate for President has the second highest amount of donations ($12,600), Just behind John Kerry. He is beating John Edwards, Wesley Clark, and President Bush!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Dean's fiscal policies are *far* more conservative that those of the current administration.
That was the "old" Dean. The "new" one on the campaign trail proposed big tax inreases over that of the Bush administration.
With taxes clobbering the economy, and an increase in waste spending even greater than that of Bush, the defecit would get even bigger under Dean.
Sorry. This just isn't true. It's typical Apples to Oranges Spin. See how much he raised taxes? Also, look at the Vermont's economic growth rates over the entire time he was gov. If there was any growth in the state, it occured completely due to spillover from the other states.
because they hate that
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
In the last election in Sweden there was one new party called Fria Listan (the Free List). They were depicted as populist libertarians in the media. I think that had some truth in it, but at the same time I liked some of their ideas. They said they wanted to get away from the old party politics with lots of money spent on politicians going around the country holding speeches on public plazas and so on. Very 1950s...
This new party tried mainly to spread their ideas using the web and writing articles and letters in newspapers, both because they couldn't afford traditional campaigning and because they thought this was a more rational way in the modern age. They did generate some media attention, so I think a lot of people would at least have heard of them.
So how did it go? In Sweden we have many more parties represented in parliament, if you get more than 4% nationally or a certain percentage locally, you get a minimum number of seats in parliament. This makes voting for a small party more attractive unlike countries like the US where the winner get everything and therefore parties tend to be reduced to two mainstream, close to the center parties.*
Total number of votes for the Free List in the election? About 500, from a population of 8 million. Of course, their politics might influence this more than their method of communication, but I was still surprised at how incredibly small the number was. Joke parties like The Donald Duck party have been known to get more votes. Their web page (http://www.frialistan.st/) is now gone.
* Of course, the downside of our system is the tendency for weak coalition governments with lots of internal bickering, and special interest parties gaining disproportionate powers because they can tip the scale between bigger parties which are evenly balanced.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Hundreds of thousands of us protested, you know. People were harrassed, even arrested for speaking their mind
Don't spread the myth. The only ones who were harassed or arrested were the ones who engaged in violence, criminal trespass, or other actions which went beyond speaking their minds.
Yes, there were some innocent people caught up in the dragnets and mass arrests. However, they were harassed/arrested for being unlucky enough to be caught in a riot situation caused by violent protesters. Again, they were not being harassed for speaking their minds.
No, looking at a candidate's website is a good way to see what they want you to think they think is important.
0 83 5.asp
4 01 261431.asp
Take a look at John Kerry - http://www.johnkerry.com/about/
His dad was a volunteer, he was a volunteer, but he was in the wrong war! Then he went on to be a senate stud.
But that's not accurate, not really, and I think it's important to look around the web to learn what is important.
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york20040122
"The publication Congressional Quarterly examined 119 recorded votes held in 2003 in which the president had taken a position. CQ found that Kerry was present for just 28 percent of those votes. In contrast, Kerry's colleague from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, was present for 97 percent of the votes."
As for his voting for war, he voted against the First Gulf War, then voted for the Second Gulf War, but he claims he didn't really understand what power that vote was going to give the President. And in the 1990s he called for an end to the Iraqi government as it was.
http://www.nationalreview.com/document/kerry200
Speech by John Kerry, delivered on the Senate floor on Nov. 9, 1997, as recorded in the Congressional Record.
"Plainly and simply, Saddam Hussein cannot be permitted to get away with his antics, or with this latest excuse for avoidance of international responsibility."
"We must recognize that there is no indication that Saddam Hussein has any intention of relenting. So we have an obligation of enormous consequence, an obligation to guarantee that Saddam Hussein cannot ignore the United Nations. He cannot be permitted to go unobserved and unimpeded toward his horrific objective of amassing a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a matter about which there should be any debate whatsoever in the Security Council, or, certainly, in this Nation. If he remains obdurate, I believe that the United Nations must take, and should authorize immediately, whatever steps are necessary to force him to relent -- and that the United States should support and participate in those steps."
This is just a single example and I used a single source for my rebuttals. The point of this is, if you use the canidate's sites and ther suporters and organizer's sites, you won't learn anything real about the canidate.
I visited deanforamerica.com last week and got rewarded for my visit with a big nasty popup window that his site put on my screen (just like an X10 ad). If they knew anything about the Internet community, they would have known how much people hate these things.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Its really sad to see americans treat the word liberal like its a four letter word, I pity dean not, american I weep for.
I remember reading an article by Moore, right after the 9-11 attacks, in which he supported the attacks as justice: a justifiable reaction against the U.S. by the downtrodden poor peoples of the world.
His explanation was quite lengthy, listing a bunch of countries that the USSR trashed during the Cold War days, and falsely blaming things on the U.S.
It never occured to him that the actual 9-11 perps were quite rich (not downtrodden at all), and actually DID hate the U.S. for its freedom (they want the world under Islamic law, and resent the U.S.'s favoring of religious freedom).
- The Internet is not reality. Not yet, anyway.
The Cluetrain one hurts, I think, because so many on-line denizens thought it was real. But 95% of the US population, while using e-mail and occasionally surf the web, does not live its life on-line, and they probably don't want to.Cluetrain Manifesto is not reality, and probably never will be.
sPh
Yes, I'm sure all those scientists connected around the world were doing anything but advancing the knowledge of mankind. Much more imortant to campaign for leadership of what is admittedly the most influential country in the world...
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Fox News vs CNN This gives the news networks the appearance of political in-fighting, just like several of the democratic presidential candidates.
No exhaustive analysis to see here! Move along!
The second article quotes CBS pres Andrew Heyward, "Cable thrives on repetition and, let's be kind, exhaustive analysis, which has to constantly be freshened." Saying ANY of the news networks engage in "exhaustive analysis" is indeed charitable. They replay and replay without ever showing much success in giving context to the newsworthy items they cover. Almost any clip can be made to look wonderful or ridiculous if taken out of context.
The value of the Internet as news media is you can get the context you need to make sense of the news clips. Good print media is also useful for that, but it's often frustrating to wait for your weekly delivery of the Economist.
ANY media gains an advantage when the editors can help provide unbiased reporting AND context for the events they cover. The trick is finding editors you can trust.
From a CNN interview conducted by Wolf Blitzer:
Wolf: "Who are you looking for in a candidate?"
Mr. Internet: "I want Howard Dean. He makes my routers and hubs happy"
Wolf: "Do you have anything more to add, in our discussion of politics?
Mr. Internet: "I took the initative in creating Al Gore"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I've worked on several campaigns over the past few years, and in my opinion, Dean realized something that others haven't yet caught onto, including bush &co.
The old thinking is that you use a) volunteers, to promote that candidate with b) rich donors, who give you money for your promotions, making you popular with c) voters.
What dean realized is that a) volunteers, b) donors, and c) voters can all be the same people.
Jay
Proudliberals.com
how is exactly was my post a -1, Flamebait ? I was simply lamenting the fact that americans seem to treat the word liberal like its a disease. Is the preferred political landscape one made up of only "compassionate conservatives" and conservative democrats ? If so, the situation in america is much worse than I had originally thought :~(
r.a.s.
Looking at a candidate's website is a good way to see what THEY think is important.
Hmmm, sorry if this may come as a shock to you, but their site might include a list of the things that they think that might be usefull to get elected. As always in politics, don't trust what they say, look at what they are doing or did in the past. Look up their career, their major points, their accomplishments,...
"Now, I'm one of those who will believe to my dying day that Gore won the 2000 election, "
Belief in something that is not true is irrational. Gore did not win enough votes in enough states to win. In all counts of ballots with votes on then, he lost in Florida over and over.
"the main reason Bush is in the White House is a Supreme Court full of his Daddy's friends "
Gore asked for a specific redundant recount. The Supreme Court denied it to him (as the votes had already been counted). However, if the Court had decided for Gore, he STILL would have lost: this particular count was checked and he would have lost it also.
"So here's someone who's ugly, charmless, and demonstrably not skilled at anything getting the highest office in the land."
He didn't. Gore lost.
Until we can swing a big enough monetary stick around in a guided fashion, the corporate interests will continue to control US policies.
Thinking outside my Head
I have to agree, everyone here should be able to recognize that just because its on the web doesn't make it true. A website is no more valuable or reliable than a television commericial; its simply another way for the candidate to present themselves the way they want to be presented.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
I still have little to no idea exactly what he (or any other Dem) wants to *do*. And I don't mean "create jobs" or "give power back to the people" or some other vapid propaganda. What PRECISELY do they think will lead to those results?
F*ck the whole lot of them, on both sides. If you think any of them give a crap about you, you are seriously deluded.
--- Ban humanity.
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york20040122083 5.asp
"The publication Congressional Quarterly examined 119 recorded votes held in 2003 in which the president had taken a position. CQ found that Kerry was present for just 28 percent of those votes. In contrast, Kerry's colleague from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, was present for 97 percent of the votes."
Wyatt, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're not trying to dupe Slashdot, but the you've been duped by the National Review.
But whether you're a dupe or a Republican sock puppet, you're disingenuously misrepresenting Senator Kerry.
You mention that both Kerry and his dad were volunteers, but what you don't mention is that both Kerry and his Dad had prostate cancer.
Senator Kerry's father died from prostate cancer.
Senator Kerry's own prostate cancer was in -- surprise -- 2003. (He announced it a little less than a year ago today., on February 12, 2003.)
So yeah, he may have only been present for 28% of whatever subset of votes Congressional Quarterly was analyzing -- because he had cancer and at the same time he was running for his party's nomination for President.
In that light, I think showing up for more than a quarter of the votes sounds pretty hardworking, if not heroic.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
the corporate interests will continue to control US policies
They don't. The public interest is what tends to be served. Those who choose corporate interests over public interest tend to be voted out.
Dean's principal problem was not the hostile media. The media is hostile to all candidates--after all, when was the last time you heard a Campaign talk about how happy they are with the coverage of their candidate? Dean's problem was he got stuck in a feedback loop with his base--while his base loved everything he said, the rest of the electorate didn't, and the base was all that Dean's campaign managers listened to. The internet makes it much easier to for minorities to organize and be far more vocal than in the past, but a vocal minority is still a minority. The organization capabilities of the internet made it far easier for Dean to get crowds to his speeches, which made it appear his support was far broader than it was. It used to be three hundred people at a speech early in the campaign was indicative of far greater support, but in Dean's case is simply meant that there were three hundred people in that area who supported him.
All the things about Dean that his base loved--his irreverence, his red-faced speeches, his jokes--many other voters found annoying and un-Presidential. Some of Dean's policy proposals just made him look silly (like the campaign finance reform proposal where you give $100 to a candidate, the candidate gets "matching" funds of $500 from the Federal campaign funds, and you get to take a $100 credit against your next income tax bill. Net result: $600 flows to the candidate from the Federal coffers, and you don't lose a dime). It didn't help matters that his base could literally see no wrong with their candidate. I read the Dean Campaign blogs for a while, and they were a scary place. When a campaign becomes incapable of criticizing their candidate, a bad ending is almost ensured. Dean's decline in the polls came not so much from voters deserting him, but from all of the "undecided" voters who made up their minds right before the election all choosing other candidates, mainly Kerry.
I suspect Dean's die-hard supporters will find comfort in the "media assassination" and "Democratic Establishment was scared of us" theories to explain the collapse of their candidate, the fact is in elections, there are winners and losers, and it really doesn't matter how "right" you believe your candidate is, because the other candidates also have supporters who utterly believe they're "right" as well. In the end, the winner is the person who does the best job of persuading other people to support them, not the person who may be right. Just because Democracy doesn't produce the outcome you desire does not mean it isn't working. You win some, you lose some, move on to the next battle.
As you know, we just had our primary here in SC last week. Some of my friends said they had robo-call messages left on their answering machines from the Kerry campaign that said something like, "If you want to hear more about John Kerry's economic plan, press 1. If you want to hear about his military service, press 2..." and so on. I can't help wondering how many people stood there listening to their voice mail, hitting numbers on their phone and wondering "Why doesn't this dang thing work?"
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
You know what, I had cancer too, and I showed up for school. In fact over 5 years of chemo, the majority of it carried out either 90 or 550 miles from home, I only missed 30 days of class in 5 years. The worst year of my cancer I missed 4 days of school, now the Senate doesn't meet near as often as 5th grade does, but I'd expect he could make more votes, as he was able to campaign at the same time and his treatments took place in D.C.
The cancer card doesn't get my sympathies for Kerry, if he was really into serving the country and carred for his family, he would have retired from the Senate to get treated.
Agree. I'm the original poster, and I thought I was actually being objective. Calling it as I see it.
In reality, the true old-school definition of Liberal should be applied to Newt Gingrich Republican Revolutionaries because they were trying to rock the boat and change the status quo. Old-school meaning how Liberal was defined 100 years ago.
Today, Liberalism, has been usurped by Socialists. In America, there are enough people that associate Socialists with Communists. And slowly Liberal is being connected to Socialism, which is connected to Communism. Whether this be fair or not.
Simple fact, Liberalism basically means more state control of the economy. Who disagrees with that statement?
It's no secret that several of the more liberal leaning congressmen and women are members unapologetic socialists.
The Political Compass has a big error factor: their vertical axis is moved an inch or so to the left of where it should be.
Thanks to this error, a bunch of left-wingers (such as those running for the Democratic nomination) are falsely listed as right-wing.
Slashdot Moderators showing their true colors.
Any post pointing out Dean's Liberalism is getting flamebait.
Wow! I was looking for a "Fair and Balanced" review of John Kerry's record. Thanks! Next stop, Rush Limbaugh...
I doubt that it's an accident.
No, widespread candidate spam isn't going to happen. Here's why: when you get viagra spam and chuck it, you do no harm to the spammer. It's not like you're going to go out the next day and boycott viagra. But if you have a choice about a product you see heavily spammed and one you don't, the choice will be clear.
If anything, I'd expect candidates to spoof spam from each other.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The biggest affect has been that communication within groups of like-minded individuals has been greatly increased. Between sites like meetup.com for live meetings and email discussion lists for ongoing meetings online, if you care about an issue or set of issues, you can coordinate with others who feel the same way.
Of course, while that can be a great thing, it's also one of the biggest drawbacks to the internet. Why debate (politically or otherwise) when it's so easy for people to find a big group of people who all think X and thus feel good about how "everybody" agrees with them.
The only ones who were harassed or arrested were the ones who engaged in violence, criminal trespass, or other actions which went beyond speaking their minds.
You know, I have the loveliest bridge to sell you, over in Manhattan.
How's that kool-aid working out for you, now?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I liked the article and agree with a lot of the authors sentiments, but disagree with the overall analysis for a number of reasons:
1. Dean didn't have the kind of control over his Internet presence to force it to zig or zag. You're right, Dean didn't plan on being an Internet candidate he wandered into it, or rather it wandered in to him. The pissed off Internet masses were bubbling and looking for someone relatively mainstream to throw their support behind. This was a relatively large and vocal group that looked scary, but in the end was a mutual admiration society of bloggers and activists that was going to love Dean and/or themselves no matter what Dean did. However, as much as the zealots of this group have and will always love Dean, the realists in the group realized that ultimately he is unelectable. Right or wrong, he's been painted as angry and he vocalizes for a small section of society. These realists fled the cause for a more electable (and yes mainstream) candidate, come primary day.
2. The media is dumb. You said it yourself, look at the kind of crap that's on at any given time. Just look at the coverage that Jackson's Teatgate has received. There is no media conspiracy to prop up Kerry. On the contrary, the media bubble had been so Dean focused for so long, that he was bound to disappoint. Instead of being a solid contender now, he a washout, because the media had set such high expectations of his performance.
All I have time for. Discuss.
Dean has'nt won a primary yet. So what did this get him??? NADA ......... Kerry is cleaning house using traditional campaining??? I think this shows that the internet is still in it's infancy as a political medium.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Yep. Do that, and you'll be a smashing success... among the three percent of the population who cares enough to research their candidates and issues.
Real elections are won by masses of voters who probably didn't watch the debates, know who the front-runner is because the newspaper told them, and vote for the taller candidate no matter what.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
protesters engaged in such crimes as trespass or violence
protesters unlucky to be caught in the middle of a riot caused by the violent ones.
Can you?
The site includes lots of testimonials by left-wing academics about how great it is.
The dot com analogy is a lot closer to reality when you think about it.
Immense hype, mostly from the Internet. Lots of word of mouth. High expectations. Time goes by... nothing happens. Lots of "wait, just wait for it...". Top guy asks troops for salary freeze. Layoffs. Reorganize. Slow painful demise.
That not only describes what happened to Howard Dean's campaign; it describes many of the dot coms that went bust in the 90s.
Don't dismiss the internet as unable to support a political campaign just yet - I have begun my own political party here in Australia, based largely online:
www.neteffect.org.au (be gentle and mirror if you can; I have 8GB monthly quota right now and don't want to get it completely slashdotted)
Whilst it's early days for my idea, I'm hoping that I can generate enough support to get a senate seat in our upcoming federal election at the end of the year. We don't have the money politics you have in the States, nor do we have primaries and the like. The only stipulation to getting on the ballot here is to have 500 members. There are lots of disenchanted people out there who are fed up with the current climate of politics, and don't feel they have a say anymore. I hope to fix that by being truly representative of the people's choices.
As a party, we are aiming to be completely open in everything, from software, to policy formation, to financial disclosure etc. We have an active forum where we will hopefully gather ideas from all around the world on how to best serve the people of Australia (which can have flow on effects elsewhere). You are welcome to take our documentation and use it as the basis of your own political party - I want to encourage others to run for politics, so as to try to reduce the current two party system that operates here in Australia, as well as the US etc.
I've taken a hard line against the imperialist ambitions of the current US administration, but that doesn't mean I hate America. I've served with US forces in Japan and they are just as dedicated to professionalism as we are, with the same hopes and dreams for peace and prosperity. Sadly they're being told to do things they'd rather not do, in far off places around the globe, to serve the narrow interests of a few war-hawks in Washington.
Anyway, have a look if you are interested, and we'd especially like to hear from you if you think you can implement an open source secure online voting system we can use to allow members to vote on our policy formation. We plan on setting up such a system in an open framework so all democratic people may benefit from it in the future. If done correctly it could form the basis of 21st century representative politics - something that has been lacking for a long time now.
Visceral Psyche Films
I've taken a hard line against the imperialist ambitions of the current US administration
The US is strongly antiimperialist, so there is no imperialism to oppose.
"As someone once pointed out, it's a lot easier to document links between the bin Laden family and the Bushes than it is to document links between the bin Ladens and Saddam Hussein."
Note that you said FAMILY. The bin Laden family is quite large and successful. Osama, an ostracized black sheep of it, is just one member.
Wow. Using this silly logic of yours, let's condemn John Kerry for his connections with the Kennedy Family. He is a good friend of Ted and other Kennedy politicians. This is EVIL because there is a convicted murderer (a cousin) in this family.
"Quite a large number of people hate the US (mostly not Muslims, btw) and saying that it is because of freedoms or whatever, does not make it true"
The ones who hate the U.S. hate it because they are ignorant about it, or because they are bigots who hate it for its freedom. Such things are true because they are supported by all the evidence.
Al Queda went on record saying that they did hate the U.S. because it allowed too much freedom.
Why the obsession with kool-aid in your messages?
Everywhere Bush goes, when people turn up to demonstrate against him, local law enforcement are told by the Secret Service to move the demonstrators to a 'protest zone' (conveniently out of the line of sight of the media, in most cases).
This is done to protect the rights of free speech of ALL concerned. It is in response to the Seattle protesters who were trying to drown out or silence the meeting there.
The "line of site of the media" line is false: the media can go there, and it does. However, separating the protesters from their targets ensures that there aren't problems with the protesters infringing on their target's Constitutiuonally-protected rights of free speech and assembly.
While not depriving people outright of their freedom of speech, in my book this counts as harrassment, and is probably unconstitutional as an unwarranted infringment of the peoples right to free expression.
It isn't, as both sides' free speech is protected.
And in the UK, protestors going to Lakenheath to protest the B52s had their buses turned round under a provision of the Terrorism Act, thus denying them the right to protest.
No, they had a right to protest, and they still did. However, they did not have a right to block public transportation corridors and trespass.
In that light, I think showing up for more than a quarter of the votes sounds pretty hardworking, if not heroic.
No.
We're not talking about making cars or writing code or building houses or playing baseball. We're talking democracy.
Being elected Senator means it's your job to represent the people by voting. Yes, senators do a lot more than vote, but those are not the focus of the job. If Senator Kerry was unable to perform his duties because of cancer, I am certainly sympathetic and would wish him the best (not that he needs my wishes, since he's worth hundreds of millions of dollars). HOWEVER...he should have resigned.
Certainly, a resignation would have made it harder for him to advance his political career. It's clear to me that he chose personal advancement over representation of the voters.
I appreciate your input on this issue; I know who I'll be voting against.
You're the one spreading a myth, bud. A few minutes with Google puts the lie to your claim:
Every SINGLE one of your sources was an editorial from fringe extremists groups with a long repupation of making things up. Look for some objective news sources next time! Look past the lying kooks on the fringe.
The example about the veterans shows how rights were protected. A group organized a parade. Outsiders wanted to crash and insert themselves into the parade. Of course the government protected "rights to assembly" and kept the crashers out. If you want a parade, organize your own.
"I think Dave Winer doesn't give the media consumers any respect with his 'manufactured consent' argument."
I don't think it matters whether he does or not: Dave Winer is a hacker.
I don't consult Hollywood for its political views and, frankly, we need Dave Winer coding more and puniditing on politics less.
His web site was a favorite of mine for years (day 1, actually) but I have since banned him from my shortcuts bar and seldom look in on him. When I do (I'm an optimist), I'm always disappointed to see more political comentary each time.
Of course, it's his damn web site, but that's how I feel.
--Richard
In the United States, the Democrats are pretty comfortably to the left, consistently advocating an increase in state ownership and power at the expense of the people. They even use the tired left-wing lies about "give the government all your money. It will help the poor".
This guy is about as disconnected from reality as the "Dean is the frontrunner" belief turned out to be. How did the media networks defeat Dean, when *everything* up to Iowa was Dean Dean Dean Dean Dean. I never heard jack squat about any other candidate, ever. Unless Howard Dean tried to run television campaigns in Iowa and New Hampshire and was *refused*, then I don't see what their deal is.
Arguing that he was picked on by CNN and others after his Iowa concession speech may be correct, but that doesn't change the fact that he gave them the target to aim at, and it was HUGE. That was not "just being a normal person". The thing that lost Dean this election was Dean himself.
Howard Dean spent more money and had more visibility than any other candidate until kerry started winning. I have a pre-caucus Economist showing Dean and Bush as the candidates; To many, it seemed all but decided. There was always some doubt; every conversation I had about Dean moving towards the elections was "Sure he's winning, but could he beat Bush in a million years?". The answer, sadly, was no, and people realized this. Sure he opposed the Iraq war, and with today's data he can look back and be proud. But had the president/CIA/whoever not been lying/stretching the truth, who knows how acceptable that stance would be now.
I have been to the Dean site. I have read On The Issues. It's all "I will implement a plan..." with no real details. When there is some hint, it's something that flies in the face of 5000 years of civilized experience.
This is commonly followed by a laundry list of problems that are implied to be all Bush's fault instead of the millions of assholes in this country who possess life skills below those of a retarded squirrel.
--- Ban humanity.
pity he upset the Israelis by threatening to cut their aid if they didn't stop building settlements, or he might have been reelected.
So it was the evil Jews who kept Bush Sr from being re-elected? You are right! They control everything!
In any case, the question of productization in politics is a very real one, and should be discussed.
I disagree. However, I do think that people who use nonsense words like 'productization' should be bludgeonized.
I smell a Political Science major!
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
According to this article the internet played a major role in getting the South Korea president elected. According to the Guardian Internet participatory democracy is having major impact on South Korean policy as well.
One innovative use of the internet this time around is Wesley Clark's TechCorps. I don't see a lot mentioned about it, but it seems he's got a pretty good thing going on. It's not a new concept to those on /. to get together and write open source software, but I think it may be new in politics to get together and do this to benefit a candidate, especially when the project coordination is all done via the internet at http://clark04.com/techcorps/
And no, I'm not trying to push Clark. I'm not even a supporter. I just think it's a great idea. I like what they say on their page: "Democracy cannot function without openness and transparency. The Clark TechCorps represents a significant commitment to both these guiding principles."
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
for me this is the first *real* use of the Internet in a meaningful way
For me the whole "Dean as Internet candidate" thing pretty much confirmed what I already knew about the people using the Internet.
Most of us are fervent ideologues who will write pages and pages and pages of blogs for/against our cause de cour, will clog the bandwidth with our incessant ranting on subject after subject in forums and chatrooms, and will violently flame anyone who DOESN'T find such behavior appealing as a pathetic ignoramus.
However, when we actually have to leave our computer, get our fat bums OUT of our chair, and go outside (potentially in SUNLIGHT, and probably dealing with REAL PEOPLE (face to face!)) and take a half hour to go vote, we can't be bothered. Surprise, Mr. Dean, Iowa illustrated that you are supported by financially secure democracy-poseurs.
Internet voting? I say no, thank you very much. I prefer my democracy run by people who may or may not "give a shit" compared to your average blogger, but who WILL get off their ass and go vote (giant busloads of seniors, migrant laborers, and others voting because of a free meal or other inducement are NOT included in this!).
-Styopa
Being elected Senator means it's your job to represent the people by voting. Yes, senators do a lot more than vote, but those are not the focus of the job.... Certainly, a resignation would have made it harder for him to advance his political career. It's clear to me that he chose personal advancement over representation of the voters.
Most votes, as I'm sure you know, are nowhere near close, and in most cases when they are, it's known well ahead of time. A Senator's job is also to stand up for his principles -- and to challenge the President when the President is failing to lead. John Kerry is doing that. And when he stood up to run against Bush, all the smart money was that Bush would sail to an easy re-election. Kerry certainly wasn't "[choosing] personal advancement over... the voters".
So Kerry's in no way failing the people of Massachusetts, and they know it, and I know it, and you know.
It's a cheap bit of rhetoric.
But as long as we're comparing time off, let's note that the Republican controlled Congress is planning "the lightest legislative load in 40 years", even when compared to prior election years, according to a story in today's Washington Post.
And, As you also probably know, Dubya boasts the longest time spent on vacation of any modern president, at over a month per year. Only the French that Dubya also freely reviles get vacations like that. Americans -- normal, working Americans -- don't.
I know that Bush has been good enough to arrange even longer "vacations" for a lot of the work-force, but the key difference is that unlike those many Americans, Bush vacation doesn't consist of being laid off and watching his unemployment benefits run out.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/02/03/ex iting_deanspace.php
Whether we realize it or not, the Iraqi war represented a political watershed. Before it, I tried to rationalize the left's decades old support of murderous tyrants such as Stalin or Castro as a blend of ignorance and "the left doesn't criticize the left" dogmatism.
But ignorance doesn't explain the left's current opposition to regime change in Iraq. In 1998 the U.S. Senate voted 95 to 0 to remove Saddam from power and Clinton signed his agreement. Five years later and after 13 years of cruel (especially to children) sanctions, it was obvious that only military action could unseat the most brutal tyrant in the Middle East and start a much-needed process of "democratization" in the region. What Reagan did for Eastern Europe (over the protests of the European and American left) just might be repeated for the Middle East.
Why did American liberals abandon this well-established bi-partisan policy? The public rationale are absurd. Only work through the UN? Forgetting the UN's chronic incompetence, neither we nor our European allies sought UN sanction for intervention in the Balkans? Breaking with our European allies? Are countries like France, which built Saddam a nuclear reactor, really our allies? And if that's the reason, why hasn't the left protested when France, without UN sanctions, invades African countries merely to protect the assets of French corporations? France's foreign policy really is driven by oil and arms sales.
Clearly, the public rationale for opposing the removal of Saddam are inadequate. I shy away from the obvious, that many in the left simply don't think it was wrong for Saddam to murder several hundred thousand Iraqi citizens. The real reason is much shallower.
The Iraqi war is opposed because the credit for freeing the Iraqi people won't fall on a handful of vain, self-important liberals such as Kerry and Dean. It will fall on a President with the guts to quit talking (Clinton) and do something. It will fall on a President willing to take risks and not simply lob a cruise missile at a harmless pharmaceutical factory.
That is the reality. Liberal politicians don't care about seeing any good happen for which they don't get virtually all the credit. That's Dean, that's Kerry, and that's the whole lot of them.
--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle
Senator Kerry voted in the Senate when his vote could make a difference or was there to speak for the people who voted for him when it was appropriate. For the rest, Kerry naturally spend more time last year fighting cancer and fighting for the opportunity to be the one to get rid of the current administration.
Where did senator Kerry fail to perform his duty to his country again? It is not like Kerry has done an AWOL on his duty last year.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
Are losers! A while ago I did a little post about Dean and Clark both being whack jobs and I was immediately bombarded by a bunch of ultra liberal nutcases that actually thought these two fruit cakes had a snowballs chance in hell of getting the nomination.
You liberal looney tunes better thank your fucking lucky stars that Kerry will be getting the nomination. He is one of two candidates that actually has a real shot of taking Bush out.
Howard "Yeeeeeaaaaaaahhh!" Dean and Wesley "I would have been a Republican if Karl Rove would have returned my phone calls" Clark are both whack jobs. If you supported either I have but one question. What color is the sky on the planet you live on crazy fuck?
After all the hype, all the buzz, and all the "we're savvy on the Net" hyperbole, the plain fact of the matter is It-Didn't-Work. There have been some great and insightful posts here on why that happened, with lots of "if he woulda, coulda, shoulda" quarterbacking, but that doesn't disguise the fact that for whatever reason It-Didn't-Work. I suspect that the 'Net exaggerated the phenomenon, but it is not at all new or soley as a result of the 'Net. After all, though he may have gathered it there, Dean did not blow $40 Million on the 'Net.
Remember when Jesse Jackson was surging in the polls because of his "Rainbow Coalition" during the Mondale-Gary Hart fight? The hype was tremendous, and Jackson started to believe it. Amazed at the buzz Jackson, in a major speech, intoned, "There's somethin' happenin' in this land!"
Well, when push came to shove and people actually had to choose their candidate they 'came to their senses' (in quotes in case there are some Jackson fans out there) and voted in a middle-of-the-road, basically boring sort of guy who got himself trounced by....George (Herbert Walker) Bush!
Could it be, instead, that people took a good look at Dean, saw through the hype and bluster and said, "No, thank you."?
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
The media portrayed Gerald Ford as clumsy even though he had been an excellent athlete in college. There were comedy skits such as I believe on Saturday Night Live making fun of Ford's tripping while exiting an airplane. I recall browsing a book on left-handedness a few years ago--it might have been Stanley Cohen's "The Left-Hander Syndrome"--that claimed that Ford's problems were due to staff that was untrained for handling the protocols for a left-hander.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
"Dean may have had other problems, like you say, but the media killed him. The gun is still smoking"
That idiotic speech was of Dean's own doing. The media did not create it.
The police shot longshoremen who weren't even protesting. I guess being shot by the police is about as "unlucky" as you get.
These guys had quit their jobs, and were trespassers at these docks.
Henry Jenkins at MIT did a good review of the 2000 race where he went to the candidates web sites and looked at what they were talking about, particularly the fringe candidates.
Pat Buchannan was complaining that all the press were talking about was his immigration stance. Jenkins went to his site and all there was was his anti-hispanic rants. The Web site really did look like it was a KKK production. There was the Buchannan Youth, a bizare logo.
The way that candidates control their media coverage is they only say one thing over and over again. 3x3 = 3. 9x1=0 Three messages repeated three times get through, nine different messages do not.
But apply those rules to the web and you look like a monomaniac.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
[can you]Come up with any valid claims of protesters being harassed, other than:
* protesters engaged in such crimes as trespass or violence
* protesters unlucky to be caught in the middle of a riot caused by the violent ones.
Can you?
Yes. Easily.
I was there for all of the major New York protests and I can tell you firsthand that the police repeatedly slammed into crowds of peaceful protestors. No violent actions to be seen at all except for cops riding horses into packed crowds of peaceful citizens.
Same is true in D.C. The protestors were peacefully and lawfully assembling when the police blocked all exits to the park, trapping everybody within, and then pushed everyone into a too-small space. Then they started arresting people for "refusing to leave" (if they just stood there) or "assault" if they tried to get through the police lines to leave.
On Feburary 15th, as you can read about in my JEs, they also closed down the subway stations, blocked streets, and worked quite hard to force a confrontation by shoving us into ever smaller spaces and trying to force us into a clash.
Did I see anybody being flat out inciting? Yeah, two guys, both big, young, muscular, white guys in preppie clothes screaming at the people around them that we should get violent. One of them on top of a police van jumping up and down and yelling in his Long Island accent. In other words, undercover cops doing their illegal best to create violence.
The real protesters just avoided these guys, with some of us making loud comments about "agents provocateurs", assuming that they were either cops or crazy but either way they certainly were not part of any group *we* would ever support.
So yet again, I call bullshit. We were not violent. The cops were.
And frankly, from what I've now seen and read, chances are the whole damned thing was coordinated by Ashcroft's slimeballs exercising oversight from within local police offices.
Too bad, so sad; yet another right wing bit of disinformation falls in the face of actual facts. Got any Iraqi WMD documents to sell me?
-Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
Why is it on Slashdot that if you hold a minority viewpoint, you're automatically a "sock puppet?"
:(
I've been accused of being a Microsoft shill before simply for pointing out hysteria over some thing that Microsoft did which Slashdot was exaggerating in the past.
Everyone seems so polarizing all the time. Is it possible for someone to be a complete, 100% Democrat yet point out the flaws in Kerry (obviously, if you read my sig, you'll see I don't like the guy...the only one I like out of the group is Edwards, who seems so genuine)?
Kerry is YAWWP--Yet-Another-Wishy-Washy Politician. It's no wonder so many people are voting for him. Let's run down the list:
- Contradicting things he voted for in the past...check.
- Took special interest money while claiming to be against special interests...check.
- Very vague and never specific, speaks very slowly...check.
- Present for only 28 percent of votes...check.
- Reports coming out how arrogant he's been during his career, actually asking people at restaurants, "Do you know who I am?"...check.
- Shows no sign WHATSOEVER of being any different from any other corrupt, special-interest, money-taking politician...a big, fat check.
It's depressing. People always vote for the same guy in every election, no matter which party it is. You get the impression people are just sheep...but then you try not to be polarizing...
The real sock puppets are the candidates out there trying to become President.
"And frankly, from what I've now seen and read, chances are the whole damned thing was coordinated by Ashcroft's slimeballs exercising oversight from within local police offices"
Hahahaha. Talk about bullshit! Your whackjob conspiracy theories cost you any credibility you might have had. Based on this lie, you are probably making up the rest of your account.
Waiting now for your post about how Dean screamed like Fred Flintstone because Ashcroft secretly dropped a bowling ball on Dean's foot.
"Too bad, so sad; yet another right wing bit of disinformation falls in the face of actual facts"
No misinformation on my side: I'm not given to lunatic paranoia.
Never trust a man who looks like one of those mean trees in the "Wizard of Oz" movie.
The net just added to the hype. The novelty of the movie itself kept it going. That $140 million was because of the quirkiness and uniqueness of the movie at the time, not the hype that preceded it. I visited the Blair Witch website maybe once that year.
Dean also had the net hype. But nobody was as interested in the candidate as the hype wanted you to be.
...everything looks like a nail. The author of this article is one of "those people". You know, the ones who attach themselves to current fads and don't realize when they're dying or dead, and keep flogging the blog, er, I mean horse well beyond its death throes.
Whether Dean was or was not a potential candidate is beside this guy's point--he was arguing that the internet is an effete medium that cannot overthrow "big corporate" control. I've got news for him, the internet isn't media-controlled. If someone wants to find something, there are ample search engines and plenty of word-of-mouth via email. Over 70% of the American populace is logging on, so it's not like there's an accessibility problem. Fewer than that even bother to vote!
If people are gullible enough to believe what's on the TV, they're never going to choose the candidate that represents them. The internet isn't necessarily a more pure medium, but there are at least a lot of voices. The problem is, bloggers are bought the same way TV and radio spots are, so how does a change in media really matter? It doesn't. That's why Dean isn't the Democratic candidate: he didn't win.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
Care to cite a single, valid example?
Or are you talking about those protesters over in California who were blocking ambulance paths, and actually complained when they were told to leave?
Friggin' insane. I honestly don't know what to think about the war. Everyone agrees Saddam had to go. But a section of people don't agree with the way it was done.
But then I see the Iraqis discovering another hidden mass grave in Iraq and realize the world over there is better off with Saddam gone. Imagine if you were one of those Iraqis and realized your fellow citizens have been tortured and murdered for decades and you probably didn't even know about it.
You know, one of the things I find really annoying about our political class [both halves] is the way they dodge uncomfortable questions
If there is anything worse than that, it is people like you who can't find an example of their opponent doing such a thing, so they make up an entire interview from whole cloth to prove their point. Complete with fake titles for the participants.
I find this kind of slippery speech incredibly condescending and alienating
Of course you do. You created this speech to meet these criteria.
"I wish more people would vote for Edwards"
Edwards has gotten filthy rich from filing lawsuits, many of them frivolous.
If you like the idea of buying a ladder and having 1/4 of the price be for settling lawsuits from some idiot jumping off it, then Edwards is your man.
He also can't count. Whatever the problems with Bush ignoring some countries in the Iraq war, there is no way you can call something "unilateral" with 34 nations participating in the military operation, and a similar number besides that supporting it. Yet he insists on the "unilateral" lie.
I honestly don't know what to think about the war. Everyone agrees Saddam had to go
Not everyone. Ramsey Clark, a major figure in the "anti-war" movement, argued that Saddam was an innocent victim of a smear campaign, and that if left to his own devices, Saddam's Iraq would be a paradise of prosperity and respect for human rights.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters also argued againt Saddam being "made to go".
I'm a Democrat, and I have to agree with the other comments here - while Kerry has had his moments (like sponsoring a pretty good campaign finance reform bill with the late Paul Wellstone), he's mostly just a typical wishy-washy "Washington Politician". If he's the Dem nominee, he'll just lose to Bush.
Bush's polls are fading, so maybe Kerry would have a chance, but the people around Bush like to play dirty, and with Kerry I fear this will just be 2000 all over again. Edwards or Dean would be a much better candidate against Bush. Kerry is like Bob Dole against Clinton in '96. Repubs wanted to get Clinton out, they hated him, and Dole had the Senate reume, but he didn't have what it would have taken to beat Clinton. I don't think Kerry has what it takes to beat the Bush machine.
Besides, he looks like an animatronic Lincoln.
Addressed elsewhere in the thread. Here's a few Google searches to find more incidents:
Read the stories in the search results and you'll find plenty of cases of people being fired, suspended, or arrested for expresing their view on Bush's illegal aggression. Please stop pretending that this isn't happening.
Only if something significantly better replaces him, and the cost to do so was less than the cost to wait until he died on his own. Neither of these looks to be true; an illegal war (setting very bad precedent) leaving thousands dead to set the stage for Iraq to either fall apart into tribalism or be taken over by hard-line religious zealots.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"Oh, is that the same media that is controlled by right-wing corporations?"
Yes certainly! Ted Turner, Michael Eisner, Dan Rather, and the rest of them are card-carrying right-wing Nazis!
There are a few of them there. They are kind of hard to find, since the first one to come up involves someone arrested for vandalish. There are a lot more like this, including a protester who whined because he was arrested along with others for blockading a public street.
Read the stories in the search results and you'll find plenty of cases of people being fired, suspended, or arrested for expresing their view on Bush's illegal aggression
That shows your bias right there. What the Coalition did was quite legal. They reacted to stop aggression. They did nothing aggressive themselves.
Please stop pretending that this isn't happening
Only after you stop lying about what did happen.
"...and the cost to do so was less than the cost to wait until [Saddam] died on his own..."
Considering he was executing Iraqi citizens at the rate of 20,000 a year on average, and he would have lived at least 20 more years, the "cost" you are asking for is 400,000 Iraqi civilian lives. This is not counting the lives in countries he would likely have invaded, or the hundreds thousands more if the peace protesters had their way and Uday or Qusay took the throne.
But it does not matter to you. What do millions of middle eatern lives as long as you score some political point against Bush?
Sorry, but I try and hold public servants to a higher standard.
r ox y_voting.htm
Did you know that you can vote by proxy in the senate? Senator Kerry did not even have to be there. He could have voted on important issues from his campaign bus or from his hospital bed.
http://www.senate.gov/reference/glossary_term/p
Re Fox and your view of them: Well, at least now we *know* that you're clueless.
Re "facts not on your side": Funny, I've been providing confirmable details and links all along. You've just bullshitted.
Re "the unnamed agency": I left them unnamed merely because that was how they were described in the police and press statements. From context it's pretty clear that they were mostly Homeland Security [sic] with a few from the FBI and Justice [sic]. There has never been a coverup and I never said that there had been. Quite the contrary, the federal government has put out vast piles of open documents on this stuff. Our primary media outlets may not have given it much coverage but that's more a shortage of airtime then any "coverup".
Of course, in Seattle we simply don't know who some of them were but the most indicators seem to point to military folks planning for urban warfare. Let's hope that some of the result of that "observing" is making them a little less trigger-happy in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
You have ceased to amuse me. This thread is over.
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
please stop spreading misinformation. it is bad enough when big media does it, but there is no ecxuse on the internet. here is the truth
Did you know that you can vote by proxy in the senate? Senator Kerry did not even have to be there. He could have voted on important issues from his campaign bus or from his hospital bed.
Good point, and thanks for the useful glossary citation, but that's only for votes in committee, not votes on passage.
While I can't say for certain, the Congressional Quarterly report that "Wyatt Earp" quoted from The National Review almost certainly concerned votes for or against passage of laws; it wouldn't really be a fair comparison otherwise, as not all senators are on all committees, and so most wouldn't vote on any one committee matter.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Common Dream's case that "Gore won" is based entirely on counting ballots without Gore votes. These are called "undervotes". This a misleading term, since the ballots are really "no votes".
Turning voteless ballots into Gore votes involves using imagination at best or "this vote is what I want it to be!" at worst: turning stray marks and bumps into votes.
Besides this is the fact that stray marks and bumps are not legally votes (look at the instructions for these particular ballots).
It also involves automatically interpreting conflicting marks/bumps as Gore votes.
Doing such a thing accurately by this point was totally IMPOSSIBLE anyway: during previous counts, a lot of chads were punched out and detached. Basically, the ballots being checked were not the same ballots that came out of the polling places in November: they had been altered. These kind of ballots were not made for multiple recounts.
Count every vote? Gore loses. Add in everything that is not a vote? Maybe Gore would have won. However, in elections, you are supposed to count... that's, right.... actual votes.
From context it's pretty clear that they were mostly Homeland Security [sic] with a few from the FBI and Justice [sic]
As I thought, you rest your wild conspiracy [sic] theory on [sic] imagination.
Let's hope that some of the result of that "observing" is making them a little less trigger-happy in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc
Iraq was given 10 years to comply with reasonable cease-fire demands. Trigger happy? That took a long time. Also, Afghanistan was given a sufficient amount of time to turn over AQ terrorists. No trigger-happiness there either.
You have ceased to provide informed [sic] opinions. This thread is over [sic sic]
This [sic] intentionally left blank.
"Of course, there is always the liberal way to protect "free speech", which is of course to body slam anybody who says stuff you don't agree with"
Liberal or conservative, letting the N Y Post say anything it damn pleases IS free speech.
By the way, the NYPost is thought of typically as conservative. They have gone after Ted Kennedy in the past in a way a liberal newspaper would never have. If you want left-wing newspapers in New York, look instead at the Times and the Village Voice.
Re Fox and your view of them: Well, at least now we *know* that you're clueless.
No, all it means is that I respect centrist news organizations more than I do the outright biased ones.
With all the funds Roman officials spent on public works to assure a long stay in power, I'd say it's the politicians who "productize" the people, not vice versa. Julius Caesar threw massive parties with charioteers and gladiators. It's no wonder he became dictator for life.
Today, things really aren't much different. Bush throws out religion talk to satiate his fundamentalist electorate, some efforts for business, etc.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
he probably didn't gas the Kurds everyone "knows" he did.
It's pretty well known that he had the chemical weapons at this time: the U.S. government admits giving them to him.
"Human Rights Watch" is just the tip of the iceberg of organizations that have documented Saddam's use of these weapons against the Kurds.
Scumbag? Sure. Significant threat to other nations? Nope
He attacked many other nations: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, and others. He caused major damage to Kuwait and Iran. Significant threat? Of COURSE not! Just a little old puddy tat.
Oh, that is it? I thought his blog was called www.yyEEAAAARRGHHH!.com
"A mixed economy with heavily socialist leanings is the best mix for the real world."
Since socialism is all about empowering the rulers at the expense of the ruled, having a "heavy" degree of this is not good. A mixed economy with the government only involved in what is absolutely necessary is much better.
Sorry, this does not include football stadiums, health insurance for people who can afford it (and other "welfare for people of means" programs), mohair subsidies, or limousines for Congressional members.
The libertarians are also not near as bad as the communists. As the libertarians are at their worst selfish hermits, you don't get them organizing and killing tens of millions of people at a time in order to "better society" like the Communists do.
I'd much rather have Ayn Rand than Lenin as my next-door neighbor. If I accentally kick that football into her yard, that greedy old bat will keep it because "I violated her property rights".
Lenin, however, would come over, shoot my kids, take the football, and burn down my house "to help the working peoples".
When I had cancer, I had a choice. I could have gotten free Federal Health Care from the local BIA clinic and hosptial or I could use my insurance to go to the Mayo Clinic for treatment.
I went to the Mayo Clinic and lived, for the most part because I was able to take part in a Federally funded "windfall" drug program with a pharma company.
While I don't like the current system much, I sure as shit don't think any of the Democratic plans in the last 12 years would have done the country any better when it comes to a health system. In fact, due to my close proximity to Federal programs in Education, having attended a BIA/Dept Ed schooll I think the best thing we could do as a nation is for education is to limit the Dept of Ed's role to that of setting loose national standards for the states and maintaining the Title programs.
You don't HAVE to read an article at a newspaper to know that whenever a newspaper says anything, it is exercising its free speech rights.
It's also a product of nationalist (right) philosophy.
Strong, aggressive nationalism to the point of imperialist expansion and oppression of "non-nationals" within the borders is at least as common on the far-left as it is on the far-right: Cambodia, mainland China, the USSR, Cuba, the list goes on.....
I don't see much insight in this post. I'd say liberalism is simply giving the people power in their lives. To clarify, this means extending civil rights to all people, freeing people from discrimination in employment, ensuring all members of society have access to higher education and health care, etc. The specifics of how a liberal agenda, through significant government regulation and subsidies or a primarily private-sector economy, are not crucial to this. The key thing is that all people are free to pursue happiness as they see it as long as they don't harm others.
It just so happens that a conservative Republican agenda in result works against liberal ideals; this is why you can't call them liberal--unless someone can tell me what's so liberal about eliminating minimum wage laws and such so that fast-food workers (they're not just teen-agers looking for a summer/part-time job, try laid-off older people, mentally challenged, those from rough families, et ali.) can't even afford to rent a cardboard box in an alley downtown.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
"I'd say liberalism is simply giving the people power in their lives. To clarify, this means extending civil rights to all people, freeing people from discrimination in employment"
It is the liberals, actually, who most favor discrimination in employment and colleges. They stick up for affirmative action programs which explicitly deny individuals opportunity if they have the wrong skin color or gender. Typically, they oppose equal rights.
"someone can tell me what's so liberal about eliminating minimum wage laws "
It is not liberal. It is just good sense. Minimum wage laws have always caused people to be fired. By pricing jobs above the real value, they strongly encourage companies to do with less employees, outsource, or automate.
"...can't even afford to rent a cardboard box in an alley downtown.
They certainly can afford it a lot less when their income goes to $0 when the government forces firings due to minimum wage increases.
This is true. The real oppression and atrocity comes from large-scale abusive organizations, such as right-wing fascist or communist governments, or organized religion taken to an extreme. Libertarians are typically skeptical of submitting to and organizing in these groups.
My reply was to a post about looking at a Candidate's website as a source of information. If I'm reading on Kerry's site about something, then the otherside of the coin would be National Review now wouldn't it?
1 10004646
Here is something from the Wall Street Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=
Kerry on Service in the Military - 1992
"The race for the White House should be about leadership, and leadership requires that one help heal the wounds of Vietnam, not reopen them; that one help identify the positive things that we learned about ourselves and about our nation, not play to the divisions and differences of that crucible of our generation."
"We do not need to divide America over who served and how. I have personally always believed that many served in many different ways. Someone who was deeply against the war in 1969 or 1970 may well have served their country with equal passion and patriotism by opposing the war as by fighting in it."
As for using the NR, I didn't want to, but I was pressed for time and had recalled reading about Kerry's voting record there.
It would be a service to America and the world to change to any sort of health care plan that has the Mayo Clinic become a branch of the federal bureacracy. It would wreck it.
Kucinich, with his plan to stalinize health care, would do just this. Thankfully, even the Democrats recognize that this man is a joke.
I did, and have found some problems with it. It somehow automatically disables right-clicking on some screens (where it works as long as the toolbar is removed). Also, "msn hotmail" has found a way to make popup windows come up despite having the toolbar. This appears to be a very recent development.
Find your place on the political compass.
And compare yourself to this year's crop of candidates
Since the political compas is skewed badly so that many left-wingers are counted as right wing, you must move the vertical access an inch or so to the right before you try to make an assessment of where your "dot" is in the big picture.
You dodged the entire point of my post.
If I, as a young boy with cancer, actually cancer, a relapse and cancer again between the ages of 7 and 18, while going to chemo 3 times a week could make it to school, why couldn't Senator Kerry suck it up and go to vote in the Senate?
After all, I wasn't getting over a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year to do my job like Kerry was, and what I had was much worse on the sliding scale of howmuch cancer sucks than Kerry's prostate cancer.
Actually in my circle of hardcore cancer survivors we consider that to be about as bad as having the flu.
So then, explain why Kerry couldn't show for the Senate but he could fly around and give speeches.
One thing the Dean blog and forum have been very good at doing is generating a feeling of involvement. Self-involvement? Certainly, but unlike most political deals, there is rarely the sense that policy and positions are being handed down from on high.
It has been possible to get inside the mind of the campaign there. Not Dean's mind specifically, but the collective mind of everyone involved, to the point of knowing what the reaction would be to the events of the day, to the point of understanding the references Dean might make in his off-hand, "everybody knows what I'm talking about" manner.
In this way, the "inside" got a lot bigger, for anyone willing to pay attention. It's gotten big enough to include thousands of people, and there's no reason to think that it can't grow to include millions.
It's a way to do politics that goes beyond sloganeering and position statements, sound-bites and image. Maybe the campaign couldn't figure out how to do both, maybe it isn't possible, or maybe the process is there waiting for the right person to take advantage of it, but it's a powerful, positive thing.
Steam Powered Studio
You quoted yourself, not exactly earth shattering evidence. You claim that the only people who were violent appeared to you to be "agents provocateurs", AKA Cops inciting a riot. Then you say: "they certainly were not part of any group *we* would ever support" Sounds pretty cocky to me. So basically, cuz you're right, and all liberals are good people, no one who is unsupportive of the war could possibly be violent?
And you got modded interesting?
Discuss why it is an inherant contradiction to be in favor of murder after death
If there HAS to be murder, let it be after he victim is already dead by some other means.
Let me put it this way. You care that Kerry was in "Skull and Bones". The Real Conspiracy Kooks. Here's a golden Trilateral Commission ring for you!
"You claim that the only people who were violent appeared to you to be "agents provocateurs", AKA Cops inciting a riot."
Since the protests were all about peace, this means that if there was violence, it had to be from outsiders. Probably on the Halliburton payroll, just to make the peace movement look bad.
Is Productization even a word?
Dean's campaign vanished from the face of the earth after he fired the Trippi dude and hired an Al Gore lobbyist-stooge. And Trippi had spent all the money on Iowa and New Hampshire. But before that.....
1) He didn't control his volunteers. You don't let kids with pierced tongues try and persuade Iowa farmers to spend all day at your caucus. You don't let your gay volunteers kiss you with camerapeople present - however you might feel about it, gay rights is a loser issue except in a very few Zip codes. Did Karl Rove pay the guy to smooch him?
2) He didn't understand television. TV is a cool medium. When you are on TV you are a guest in people's living rooms. Dean vomited on the rug.
3) He didn't do damage control. After the New Hampshire speech, he should have gone on TV to apologize and show how levelheaded and non-angry he could be. Instead, nobody ever saw him on TV after that.
He didn't control his volunteers
Volunteers? Hell, it wasn't volunteers raging like Hulk Hogan during that speech.
What about his campaign memo that they didn't want to hire homosexuals because sleeping quarters were too tight to allow any?
Well, first of all, I linked through to my JE because that, in turn, *does* link to other sources. I'm pretty fond of my own writing, but I'm not under the impression that I'm a well-known news outlet ;-)
Now, again, if you had read my journal, you'ld know that:
A.) I loath the term "liberal", do not consider myself one, and have gone into exhaustive detail about leftists of any number of stripes who were not "good people".
B.) My conclusions about the nature of the two guys who were inciting violence came from quite a few variables, including clothes, behavior, and, oh, let's not forget, the fact that one of them was able to jump up and down on top of a police van with impunity while the cops were arresting people left and right just for crossing barricades.
(Ask any cypherpunk or 2600 habitue, far too many cops look like cops look like cops and "spot the fed" has long been an easy and satisfying sport any time public organized activities are going on that make law enforcement nervous. Chances are that there were plenty of cops there I didn't "make". But these two were obvious for reasons having nothing to do with their alleged ideologies.)
C.) I have, in fact documented examples of protesters being violent. Just not there and then.
As right-wingers do so love to do, you have grossly overbroadened a small group of very specific statements and then tried to condemn me on the basis of things I never said. I was responding to a specific challenge with a specific answer.
Cocky? Could be. Hard not to get that way when the people opposing me are so frequently such mental pygmies.
If the day comes that you learn how to read, or even, heaven forfend, exhibit reasoning skills, feel free to come back and you may find that when you provide coherent arguments connected to things that actually happened, I will be more then willing to take you more seriously.
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
From http://www.makethemaccountable.com/podvin/media/04 0201_TheScream.htm
2/1/04
By David Podvin
On December 1, 2003, Howard Dean was ahead by twenty points in the polls when he appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews and said, "We're going to break up the giant media enterprises." This pronouncement went far beyond the governor's previous public musings about possibly re-regulating the communications industry, and amounted to a declaration of war on the corporations that administer the flow of information in the United States.
It was an extraordinarily noble and dangerous thing to do: when he advocated a truly free press, Dr. Dean was provoking the corrupt media conglomerates that control what most Americans see and hear and read, and thereby control what most Americans think.
The media giants quickly responded by crushing his high-flying campaign with the greatest of ease. This time, they didn't even have to invent a scandal in order to achieve the desired result; merely by chanting the word "unelectable" at maximum volume, the mainstream media maneuvered Democratic voters into switching their support to someone who poses no threat to the status quo.
John Kerry is a member in good standing of the feeble Daschle/Biden/Feinstein wing of the Democratic Party, a group of politicians whose disagreements with the mercantile elite tend to be merely rhetorical. Any doubts about Kerry's level of commitment to his stated progressive beliefs were conclusively answered in 1994 when he proclaimed himself "delighted" with the Republican takeover of Congress. The media oligarchy knows that a general election race between Kerry and George W. Bush will insure a continuation of its monopoly, regardless of who wins.
The news cartel had always been hostile to Dean; independent surveys revealed that he had received the most negative coverage of any candidate except Dennis Kucinich (the only other contender who strongly favors mandatory media divestment). But after his statement on Hardball, reporting about Dean abruptly came to an end and was replaced by supposition. The existing conjecture in political circles about his ability to win was transformed into a thunderous media mantra that drowned out all other issues
By mid-December, the news divisions of the four major television networks were reporting as fact that Dean was unelectable. The print media echoed the theme; on December 17, the Washington Post printed a front-page story that posited Dean could not win the presidency. The Post quickly followed up with an onslaught of articles and editorials reasserting that claim. Before the month was over, Dean's lack of electability had been highlighted in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and every other major paper in the United States.
As 2004 began, Time and Newsweek simultaneously ran cover stories emphasizing that Dean was unelectable. In the weeks before the Iowa caucus, the ongoing topic of discussion on the political panel shows was that Dean was unelectable. National talk radio shows repeatedly stressed that Dean was unelectable. The corporate Internet declared that Dean was unelectable. And the mainstream media continued with the storyline that Dean was unelectable right up until Iowans attended their caucuses. Iowa Democrats could not watch a television or listen to a radio or read a newspaper or go online without learning that Howard Dean was unelectable.
It was the classic Big Lie. Through the power of repetition, the corporate media - which has been wrong about who would win the popular vote in two of the last three presidential elections - inculcated the public with the message that Dean could not win. Pollster John Zogby wrote, "Howard Dean was the man of the year, but that was 2003. In 2004, electability has become the issue and John Kerry has benefited."
The unexamined
... to Free Republic, where opposing viewpoints are deleted, and vanish without a trace. Until the Freepers don't have to silence---and I mean literally silence, not just mod down---any dissent, I'm going to bask on this here moral high ground.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
So, Dean was going to censor Big Media, and Big Media got mad. Good for them.
If Dean is so resilient that he fights his way back into contention, the Fourth Estate will be ready to batter him again
Of course. The media is pretty good watchdogs for the First Amendment. When someone wants to silence them, they get angry.
After the last presidential election, the corporate functionaries on the Supreme Court overrode the will of the people by empowering the man who had lost.
No, thanks to the Supreme Court, the man who won the election got inaugurated. Bush won all the vote counts.
No, Howard Dean isn't Ike, but it could be argued that the Internet, while superior to television in many ways, hasn't reached wide enough acceptance to be used as a campaign medium.
At 40, I am at the outer edge of the Internet revolution, and this only because I have a son who is nearly 15 and eats this stuff for breakfast. Wait another four years, or eight even, and all of us who came of age during the Reagan administration will be grandparents, driving big cars very slowly, and voting in large numbers. THEN you can mount a credible campaign online, especially when our then-grown children are still living at home because they can't find a decent job.
Republicans are idiots.
It is not strange at all, considering that the selection process rules out the operation of such conspiracies.
And as Oliver North learned the hard way, the White House backs-up all e-mail.
I don't mean this as a slur to Clinton (I have plenty of those); paper is a lot easier to shred. I don't blame Clinton at all for avoiding e-mail.
It's sad that a president can't count on private electronic communication.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you