Month: July 2006

Bill Nelson: Victim of Not-Perfect-Enough Syndrome

Trish

Poor Bill Nelson. The Democratic U.S. Senator from Florida is either being damned with faint praise, or jinxed by favorable early polls.

Over and over, good Democrats lose because they are not perfect enough for other Democrats to support.

As PR Editor in Chief Jon noted recently, a new poll gives Nelson a 35 percent lead over U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris (R) in his race for re-election. In the post’s comments, PR Editor Buck agreed with the rosy assessment, predicting, “It basically does not matter who ends up with the Republican nomination, Nelson’s gonna win unless he sleeps with [fellow U.S. Senator] Mel Martinez.”

But other comments revealed a much larger problem for Nelson.

shellynm: “Who cares! Nelson votes with the Republicans a great deal of the time on VERY IMPORTANT ISSUES.”

spencer1: “shellynm is absolutely right! I can’t vote for Nelson, I guess I’ll write in, NONE OF THE ABOVE”

Stephen Kriz: “If Nelson is the best that the Dems can do, I’m goin’ Green!”

That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Here’s what Democrats do: They look at all the candidates, assess their positions, and pick the one who most closely agrees with their most strongly held views. Factors like electability, party affiliation, and the big picture are tossed aside. They are perfectly willing to vote for Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, John McCain, or any other kook out there, particularly if they feel it will send a message to Democratic candidates that they should think more like them in the future if they want their vote.

Here’s what Republicans do: They look at all the candidates, locate the one with an “R” after his or her name, and send that person a check. When time comes to vote, that’s who they cast their ballot for. They are not distracted by third-party candidates like Libertarians who favor ending government (and especially taxation) as we know it — even if they agree with that idea — because they realize this will only split their voting power and a Democrat will end up with the office.

Over and over, good Democrats lose because they are not perfect enough for other Democrats to support.

The most significant part of the poll Jon cited was the answer to this question.

Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Bill Nelson?
Favorable: 48 percent
Unfavorable: 14 percent
Undecided: 38 percent

That’s 38 percent who haven’t decided if Nelson is perfect enough, and 14 percent who say he’s not. On the other hand, Harris — or Orlando personal injury lawyer and Karl Rove special friend Will McBride — has what 100 percent of Republicans want, an “R” after the name.

Nelson is perfect enough for me. I hope my fellow Dems agree by election time.

Quote du Jour

Trish

Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one-half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82

Carter Urges Support for End to Excessive Government Secrecy

Jon Ponder

President Carter:

The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) turns 40 tomorrow, the day we celebrate our independence. But this anniversary will not be a day of celebration for the right to information in our country. Our government leaders have become increasingly obsessed with secrecy. Obstructionist policies and deficient practices have ensured that many important public documents and official actions remain hidden from our view.

The events in our nation today — war, civil rights violations, spiraling energy costs, campaign finance and lobbyist scandals — dictate the growing need and citizens’ desire for access to public documents. A poll conducted last year found that 70 percent of Americans are either somewhat or very concerned about government secrecy. This is understandable when the U.S. government uses at least 50 designations to restrict unclassified information and created 81 percent more “secrets” in 2005 than in 2000, according to the watchdog coalition OpenTheGovernment.org.

Moreover, the response to FOIA requests often does not satisfy the transparency objectives or provisions of the law, which, for example, mandates an answer to information requests within 20 working days. According to the National Security Archives 2003 report, median response times may be as long as 905 working days at the Department of Agriculture and 1,113 working days at the Environmental Protection Agency. The only recourse for unsatisfied requesters is to appeal to the U.S. District Court, which is costly, timely and unavailable to most people.

MSM Shows Signs of Life, Starts to Fight Back

Jon Ponder

Arriana Huffington and others have been crying foul for the last year or so about the ideological imbalance on the “Meet the Press” roundtable on most Sundays. Today’s show was particularly egregious. Can you find a liberal in this group of panelists:

  • Guest moderator Andrea Mitchell
  • Reagan era drug czar and gambleholic Bill Bennett
  • Wall St. Journal reporter John Harwood
  • Washington Post reporter Dana Priest
  • New York Times columnist William Safire, who was a speech writer for Richard Nixon

Even if Priest and Harwood are flaming lefties in real life, they are on the NBC set as reporters and therefore prohibited by the rules of journalism from discussing their personal political views.

The main subject was the rightwing’s new assault on the freedom of the press. Bill Bennett hounded Dana Priest about her reporting on the CIA’s off-shoring its torturing of terror suspects.

Priest is no patsy, however, and she got off a good one at Bennett:

MS. MITCHELL: Dana, let me point out that The Washington Post, your newspaper, was behind the others but also did publish this story. And a story you wrote last year disclosing the secret CIA prisons won the Pulitzer Prize, but it also led to William Bennett, sitting here, saying that three reporters who won the Pulitzer Prize—you for that story and Jim Risen and others for another story—were, “not worthy of an award but rather worthy of jail.” Dana, how do you plead?

MS. PRIEST: Well, it’s not a crime to publish classified information. And this is one of the things Mr. Bennett keeps telling people that it is. But, in fact, there are some narrow categories of information you can’t publish, certain signals, communications, intelligence, the names of covert operatives and nuclear secrets.

Now why isn’t it a crime? I mean, some people would like to make casino gambling a crime, but it is not a crime. Why isn’t it not a crime? Because the framers of the Constitution wanted to protect the press so that they could perform a basic role in government oversight, and you can’t do that. Look at the criticism that the press got after Iraq that we did not do our job on WMD. And that was all in a classified arena.

Poll: Bush Approval Slips

Jon Ponder
Bush’s approval rating slipped to 35 percent in a TIME poll taken this week, down from 37 percent in March.

This is bad:

A spate of good news at home and abroad has so far failed to boost how Americans feel about President Bush’s job performance. Bush’s approval rating slipped to 35 percent in a TIME poll taken this week, down from 37 percent in March (and 53 percent in early 2005).

And it gets worse:

Only 33 percent of Americans in the survey said they approved of Bush’s handling of the situation in Iraq, vs. 35 percent in March, and 47 percent in March 2005. His management of the U.S. economy lost supporters, too, as 36 percent approved, compared with 39 percent three months earlier.

Finally, after all the “cut and run” skullduggery Karl & Co. cooked up in the Congress recently, this:

Bush’s handling of the war on terror saw a slight gain in support, from 44 percent to 45 percent.