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Monday, November 08, 2004
http://mediamatters.org/items/200411040009
Media echoed conservative claim on Bush "mandate"
Following President George W. Bush's victory over Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election, conservative media rushed to declare that the election was a decisive mandate for Bush's agenda, and mainstream media outlets have followed their lead.
Their pronouncements echo Vice President Dick Cheney's November 3 claim that "President Bush ran forthrightly on a clear agenda for this nation's future and the nation responded by giving him a mandate." But such pronouncements neglect important facts that suggest Bush's narrow victory is far from a decisive endorsement of his agenda:
• With the exception of the 2000 election, Bush's popular vote margin of about 3.6 million votes (out of approximately 115 million total votes cast) was the smallest since 1976, when then-Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter (D) defeated President Gerald R. Ford (R) by about 1.7 million votes.
• Though Bush won more votes -- 59.2 million -- than any presidential candidate in U.S. history, Kerry's vote total -- 55.7 million -- was still greater than any U.S. presidential candidate in history prior to 2004. That means more Americans cast their vote against Bush than against any other presidential candidate in U.S. history.
• As Wall Street Journal Washington editor Albert R. Hunt pointed out (WSJ.com subscription required) on November 4, "It was a GOP sweep, but it also was the narrowest win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916."
• Percentage-wise, Bush's victory was the narrowest for any wartime incumbent president in U.S. history. (For the purpose of this calculation, Media Matters for America counted the following presidential elections as wartime incumbent elections: 1848, 1864, 1900, 1944, and 1972. Popular vote data for 1812 is unavailable.)
• A Gallup poll conducted just after the election found that 63 percent of voters would prefer to see Bush pursue policies that "both parties support" compared to only 30 percent who want Bush to "advance the Republican Party's agenda."
Yet many conservatives in the media ignored or downplayed Bush's extraordinarily narrow margin of victory and the unprecedented number of voters who expressed opposition to Bush's agenda by voting for Kerry:
• The Wall Street Journal: "The voters did [decide the election] -- including millions of conservative first-timers whom the exit polls and media missed -- emerging from the pews and exurban driveways to give President Bush what by any measure is a decisive mandate for a second term. ... Just because an election is close doesn't mean it isn't decisive. ... We do already know ... that Mr. Bush has been given the kind of mandate that few politicians are ever fortunate enough to receive." [Wall Street Journal editorial, "The Bush Mandate," 11/4/04]
• William J. Bennett, conservative author and nationally syndicated radio host: "Having restored decency to the White House, President Bush now has a mandate to affect policy that will promote a more decent society, through both politics and law. His supporters want that, and have given him a mandate in their popular and electoral votes to see to it." [National Review Online, "The Great Relearning," 11/3/04]
• CNN host Tucker Carslon, co-host of CNN's Crossfire: "[N]obody has done it since 1988. The president wins reelection with a majority of the vote. It is a mandate. What will he do with it now? [CNN, Crossfire, 11/3/04]
• The New York Sun: "[I]t was hard, at 3:35 a.m., when these words were written, to see much point to the quest that Senator Kerry has undertaken in Ohio other than to indulge a certain kind of bitterness, to poison American politics for the coming term, and to seek to dilute the extraordinary mandate Mr. Bush, if not yet in the Electoral College, has received among Americans from coast to coast." [The New York Sun editorial, "The Popular Vote," 11/3/04]
• Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal contributing editor: "He [Bush] has, I would argue, a mandate now. You can bet he's going forward boldly. He announced it today in his victory speech. He said, 'Honey, I'm not just going to lower your taxes. I am transforming the tax system.'" [FOX News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, 11/3/04]
• Pat Buchanan, MSNBC political analyst: "There's no doubt about it, this was a vote against, by the red-state folks who gave the victory to George Bush, it was a rejection of blue-state America. It was a rejection of their values, their attacks on the president. ... And the idea, it seems to me, that somehow the folks who won should now surrender part of whatever mandate they have to the folks who lost -- I can tell you, what we're hearing on this panel, people out there in red-state America are finding it very offensive." [MSNBC, Hardball with Chris Matthews, 11/3/04]
• William Kristol, Weekly Standard executive editor: "The hair-pullers and teeth-gnashers won't like it, of course, but we're nevertheless inclined to call this a Mandate. Indeed, in one sense, we think it an even larger and clearer mandate than those won in the landslide reelection campaigns of Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1984, and Clinton in 1996." [The Weekly Standard, "Misunderestimated," 11/15/04 issue]
Mainstream media outlets followed conservatives' lead in trumpeting Bush's narrow victory as a mandate:
• Tony Karon, TIME magazine columnist and senior editor: "George W. Bush took the reins of power with the confidence and certainty of one who had carried a landslide mandate to implement his own agenda. This time, of course, his claim of a popular mandate is incontrovertible. His party has strengthened its grip on both branches of the legislature, and freed of any first-term restraints that might be thrown up by reelection concerns, President George W. Bush is well positioned to even more vigorously pursue his agenda." [TIME, "Victorious Bush Reaches Out," 11/3/04]
• Dan Chapman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution global economics and business reporter: "Bush, buoyed by a popular mandate and a more Republican Congress, will probably receive the financial and military wherewithal to fight the insurgency and rebuild Iraq." [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Bush gets voters' nod on Iraq, but outlook risky," 11/4/04]
• Keith Miller, NBC News correspondent: "Bush, who won by more than three and a half million votes, has a solid mandate that will force the attention of America's enemies and allies." [NBC Nightly News, 11/3/04]
• Rafael Lorente, Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL) Washington bureau: "Americans not only gave President Bush a mandate, they also gave him the necessary tools in the form of more Republican House and Senate colleagues to push through his conservative agenda." [Sun-Sentinel, "Bush now has the tools to energize his priority programs," 11/4/04, syndicated by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services]
• Doyle McManus and Janet Hook, Los Angeles Times staff writers: "Four years ago, George W. Bush won his first term with fewer votes than his opponent, but governed as if the nation had granted him a clear mandate to pursue conservative policies. This time, Bush can claim a solid mandate of 51% of the vote, which made him the first presidential candidate to win a clear majority since 1988 -- a point Bush aides made repeatedly Wednesday." [Los Angeles Times, "Majority Win Could Make Second Term More Partisan," 11/4/04]
— G.W.
Posted to the web on Thursday November 4, 2004 at 5:11 PM EST
Posted at 01:53 pm by blog swarm
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Posted at 01:50 pm by blog swarm
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My response to the DNC
by sphealey
Mon Nov 8th, 2004 at 10:16:14 PST
Yesterday evening I received a follow-up survey via e-mail from the Democratic National Committee, presumably as a result of donations I made. I question whether this type of thing is taken any more seriously than the "quality surveys" at your local auto dealer, but just I case I took some time to set out my thoughts...
Q: Do you have any other thoughts or comments [for the Democratic National Committee]?
My answer:
There are going to have to be some significant changes in the Democratic Party leadership and structure before I will assist again (and, I suspect, before a Democratic candiate for President wins again).
Basically, the entire current leadership needs to be replaced - they are too comfortable in Washington DC, too comfortable in the halls of power, do not have any strong message or vision, and in general give the impression that they are content to hold nice $200,000/year jobs at the top of the losing party. Unfortunately, out here in flyover country we are going to feel the real effects of the Bush Administration II, and we don't have cushy party jobs to hold us over.
Perhaps it was necessary to run Howard Dean off the road during the primaries; I don't know. Perhaps John Kerry really was "electable". But from where I sat the Democratic Party leadership ran a good, solid 1950s-style campaign. Unfortunately, we aren't in the 1950s anymore and there is no base of union organizers and whips to draw on. The Democratic candidate must have strong positive ideas and a single, strong positive message.
I suggest you call in Markos Moulitsas and Duncan Black and have a long, hard, difficult discussion about what went wrong, why, and what can be done differently next time. A discussion in which the (new) party leadership does most of the LISTENING, not talking.
And one specific point: don't even think about Hillary Clinton in 2008. Someone has to have the hard talk with the Big Dog and give him the bad news; perhaps Terry could do that on his way out.
sPh
Posted at 01:23 pm by blog swarm
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http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=284
November 6th, 2004 6:53 pm
Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
by Thom Hartmann / Common Dreams
When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat.
"It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me.
And evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004.
The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling.
While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios matched the Kerry/Bush vote, and so did the optically-scanned paper ballots in the larger counties, in Florida's smaller counties the results from the optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking - seem to have been reversed.
In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.
In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.
The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the smaller counties where, it was probably assumed, the small voter numbers wouldn't be much noticed. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.
Yet in the larger counties, where such anomalies would be more obvious to the news media, high percentages of registered Democrats equaled high percentages of votes for Kerry.
More visual analysis of the results can be seen at http://ustogether.org/election04/FloridaDataStats.htm, and www.rubberbug.com/temp/Florida2004chart.htm.
And, although elections officials didn't notice these anomalies, in aggregate they were enough to swing Florida from Kerry to Bush. If you simply go through the analysis of these counties and reverse the "anomalous" numbers in those counties that appear to have been hacked, suddenly the Florida election results resemble the Florida exit poll results: Kerry won, and won big.
Those exit poll results have been a problem for reporters ever since Election Day.
Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news stoically," noted the AP report.
But then the computers reported something different. In several pivotal states.
Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit polls were rigged.
Dick Morris, the infamous political consultant to the first Clinton campaign who became a Republican consultant and Fox News regular, wrote an article for The Hill, the publication read by every political junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a couple of brilliant points.
"Exit Polls are almost never wrong," Morris wrote. "They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state."
He added: "So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points."
Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry sweep, as the computerized vote numbers began to come in from the various states the election was called for Bush.
How could this happen?
On the CNBC TV show "Topic A With Tina Brown," several months ago, Howard Dean had filled in for Tina Brown as guest host. His guest was Bev Harris, the Seattle grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org from her living room. Bev pointed out that regardless of how votes were tabulated (other than hand counts, only done in odd places like small towns in Vermont), the real "counting" is done by computers. Be they Diebold Opti-Scan machines, which read paper ballots filled in by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners that read punch cards, or the machines that simply record a touch of the screen, in all cases the final tally is sent to a "central tabulator" machine.
That central tabulator computer is a Windows-based PC.
"In a voting system," Harris explained to Dean on national television, "you have all the different voting machines at all the different polling places, sometimes, as in a county like mine, there's a thousand polling places in a single county. All those machines feed into the one machine so it can add up all the votes. So, of course, if you were going to do something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it be more convenient to do it to each of the 4000 machines, or just come in here and deal with all of them at once?"
Dean nodded in rhetorical agreement, and Harris continued. "What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer."
"So," Dean said, "anybody who can hack into a PC can hack into a central tabulator?"
Harris nodded affirmation, and pointed out how Diebold uses a program called GEMS, which fills the screen of the PC and effectively turns it into the central tabulator system. "This is the official program that the County Supervisor sees," she said, pointing to a PC that was sitting between them loaded with Diebold's software.
Bev then had Dean open the GEMS program to see the results of a test election. They went to the screen titled "Election Summary Report" and waited a moment while the PC "adds up all the votes from all the various precincts," and then saw that in this faux election Howard Dean had 1000 votes, Lex Luthor had 500, and Tiger Woods had none. Dean was winning.
"Of course, you can't tamper with this software," Harris noted. Diebold wrote a pretty good program.
But, it's running on a Windows PC.
So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS software, go back to the normal Windows PC desktop, click on the "My Computer" icon, choose "Local Disk C:," open the folder titled GEMS, and open the sub-folder "LocalDB" which, Harris noted, "stands for local database, that's where they keep the votes." Harris then had Dean double-click on a file in that folder titled "Central Tabulator Votes," which caused the PC to open the vote count in a database program like Excel.
In the "Sum of the Candidates" row of numbers, she found that in one precinct Dean had received 800 votes and Lex Luthor had gotten 400.
"Let's just flip those," Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. "And," she added magnanimously, "let's give 100 votes to Tiger."
They closed the database, went back into the official GEMS software "the legitimate way, you're the county supervisor and you're checking on the progress of your election."
As the screen displayed the official voter tabulation, Harris said, "And you can see now that Howard Dean has only 500 votes, Lex Luthor has 900, and Tiger Woods has 100." Dean, the winner, was now the loser.
Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, "We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds."
On live national television. (You can see the clip on www.votergate.tv)
Which brings us back to Morris and those pesky exit polls that had Karen Hughes telling George W. Bush that he'd lost the election in a landslide.
Morris's conspiracy theory is that the exit polls "were sabotage" to cause people in the western states to not bother voting for Bush, since the networks would call the election based on the exit polls for Kerry. But the networks didn't do that, and had never intended to. It makes far more sense that the exit polls were right - they weren't done on Diebold PCs - and that the vote itself was hacked.
And not only for the presidential candidate - Jeff Fisher thinks this hit him and pretty much every other Democratic candidate for national office in the most-hacked swing states.
So far, the only national "mainstream" media to come close to this story was Keith Olbermann on his show Friday night, November 5th, when he noted that it was curious that all the voting machine irregularities so far uncovered seem to favor Bush. In the meantime, the Washington Post and other media are now going through single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how the exit polls had failed.
But I agree with Fox's Dick Morris on this one, at least in large part. Wrapping up his story for The Hill, Morris wrote in his final paragraph, "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play."
Posted at 01:18 pm by blog swarm
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Thanks to Mathew Gross:
The Politics of Victimization
[Mel Gilles, who has worked for many years as an advocate for victims of domestic abuse, draws some parallels between her work and the reaction of many Democrats to the election.-- Mathew Gross]
Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality. Watch them awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the new language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, “Why did they beat me?”
And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before.
They will tell you, every single day.
The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.
As victims we can’t stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can’t seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating.
Listen to George Bush say that the will of God excuses his behavior. Listen, as he refuses to take responsibility, or express remorse, or even once, admit a mistake. Watch him strut, and tell us that he will only work with those who agree with him, and that each of us is only allowed one question (soon, it will be none at all; abusers hit hard when questioned; the press corps can tell you that). See him surround himself with only those who pledge oaths of allegiance. Hear him tell us that if we will only listen and do as he says and agree with his every utterance, all will go well for us (it won’t; we will never be worthy).
And watch the Democratic Party leadership walk on eggshells, try to meet him, please him, wash the windows better, get out that spot, distance themselves from gays and civil rights. See them cry for the attention and affection and approval of the President and his followers. Watch us squirm. Watch us descend into a world of crazy-making, where logic does not work and the other side tells us we are nuts when we rely on facts. A world where, worst of all, we begin to believe we are crazy.
How to break free? Again, the answer is quite simple.
First, you must admit you are a victim. Then, you must declare the state of affairs unacceptable. Next, you must promise to protect yourself and everyone around you that is being victimized. You don’t do this by responding to their demands, or becoming more like them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying to persuade them that you are right. You also don’t do this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up your ears and eyes and covering your head and submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and hurts less is you don’t resist and fight back. Instead, you walk away. You find other folks like yourself, 56 million of them, who are hurting, broken, and beating themselves up. You tell them what you’ve learned, and that you aren’t going to take it anymore. You stand tall, with 56 million people at your side and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of the abuser and you tell him to go to hell. Then you walk out the door, taking the kids and gays and minorities with you, and you start a new life. The new life is hard. But it’s better than the abuse.
We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are trying to break free and we don’t know how.
Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don’t let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he’ll win, not because he’s right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it failproof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, “loose”, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.
Even if you do everything right, they’ll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education. And they don’t even know they are being hit.
Posted at 12:34 pm by blog swarm
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Just imagine those words sung by Hank Williams Jr. (the disgraceful fat one) to the tune of his immortal ABC jingle, "Are You Ready For Some Footbaaaaaaal!?!?"
I feel like that would make a strong soundtrack to an intro graphics package for FoxNews at the moment, as the ariel and artillary bombardment has commenced. This is dirty, ugly fighting. We blew up the hospital.
Marines along with (presumably) the most well trained, equipped and (hopefully) loyal Iraqi National Guardsmen will soon assault the insurgent stronghold of Fallujia. The Pentagon hopes it will be a decisive victory paving the way for elections in January. Kofi Annan says the assault could undermine the elections by sparking widespread anger and further damaging the credibility of the US occupation force and the interem Iraqi government in the eyes of the people.
I honestly hope it goes quickly without too many deaths, but I'm not very optimistic. The Marines -- backed by the Air Force and their own helocopter gunships -- are almost certainly capable of winning the battle, but if they "destroy the city in order to save it," or end up in a standoff around the Mosque or end up killing a bunch of kids and women and old people, the siege will be a net loss.
If it should come to house-to-house urban combat, we can also expect a substantial number of US casualties, another thing no one hopes for.
On a personal note, my one personal friend in the service left yesterday for his seventh (7th!) rotation in the Middle East. He'll miss Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years in order to airlift things into Baghdad, and carry wounded people out. It's not pretty, but he's going career so he follows orders. He says after this rotation he can get a training position, but there's no such thing as a sure thing in the armed forces.
War is hell. Why are we doing this again?
Posted at 12:15 pm by blog swarm
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Conclusions I just don't buy
by kos
Mon Nov 8th, 2004 at 08:43:03 PST
We must nominate a southerner to have a chance to win
Bullshit. We should nominate the best candidate, irrespective of geography. Did John Edwards get us anything? He couldn't deliver his home state, and nothing indicates that it would've been any difference had he been at the top of the ticket.
We lost the South on message. The video of Kerry windsurfing alone probably cost us 5-10 points in the region, and several Senate seats while we were at it.
Next time, we should also consider nominating the candidate who has the best message, rather than the one whose entire primary campaign consisted of "I'm the most electable". Kerry's lack of message in the primaries was never rectified. And ultimately, in hindsight, we know that ABB wasn't enough.
We must win Southern states to win the White House
Again, I call b.s. While we cannot abandon the South, it is becoming increasingly hostile territory. On the other hand, the Mountain West is trending our way. We made stunning gains at the state level in Colorado and Montana. The libertarian ethos, states rights inclination, and environmentalism of the region is increasingly more in tune with modern Democratic orthodoxy than the Big Brother autocratic tendencies of the Modern Republican Party.
Remember, even in ultra conservative Wyoming a Democrat won the governorship in 2002 (mainly on environmental grounds). The state is in no danger of turning Blue in a federal election anytime soon, but it's further proof of a resurgent Western Democratic Party.
Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, and Nebraska will swing our way before Alabama, Kentucky and Georgia will.
We lost on "values"
Given that "values" is a euphenism for anti-abortion, anti-gay, I would rather lose than compromise on those issues. Even a cold-hearted realist like me has his limits. Individual Democrats are free to compromise on those ideals, but our presidential nominee should not.
In so far as "values" are a determining factor in federal elections, the problem is our inability to frame the issue. Not just redefine what "values" means to something other than hate and discrimination, but also effectively communicate the GOP hypocrisy on values -- divorces, spousal abuse, and othor "immoral" behavior. We have the ammunition. We have been remiss in using much of it by Democrats squeamish about veeing off the high road. Times for such niceties are past.
Posted at 12:12 pm by blog swarm
Political News Permalink
by Jerome Armstrong
After the election, the money trail tells no lies, and holds no secrets. The graph below is of the cumulative independent expenditures for the DCCC and NRCC from October 1st through the election.
Here's how they break down:
NRCC Number of IE's Expenditures % of Numbers % of total $
Against Candidate 611 $40,435,187.13 76.00% 89.50%
For Candidate 193 $4,741,391.33 24.00% 10.50%
Total 804 $45,176,578.46
DCCC Number of IE's Expenditures % of Numbers % of total $
Against Candidate 31 $4,822,996.44 9.12% 17.57%
For Candidate 309 $22,622,874.58 90.88% 82.43%
Total 340 $27,445,871.02
The Republican Party, having seen the "right way - wrong way" poll numbers in the negative, as well as low re-elects for a lot of their endangered incumbents, were forced to tear down everything in order to to hold on to power. This was a well-coordinated attack by Bush, the RNC, and the other Republican organizations to drive up the general Democratic Party negatives, as well as each Democratic candidates negatives.
That's a 10:1 ratio in terms of dollars spent in negative advertising of the NRCC over the DCCC.
Seven cycles in a row now, the Democrats in the House have gotten their teeth kicked in by the thugs in the NRCC, and what does the DCCC do? Play nice, and expect that the historical cycles and poll indicators will propel them into the majority. Democrats in the House continue to wait, while the Republicans find ways to beat the polls, make history, and gain more power.
If the Democrats in the House want to regain the majority before the next historical cycle gives them a break in 2012, they will start picking a fight. Not in the halls of Congress, but out in the street, out in the CD's.
Start now, by going into the potential swing districts and reminding the people that Republicans have to negative in a nuclear way to survive, because they can't really talk about what they're going to do might be effective. Create the mindset that the Republican Party is going to go negative right off the bat for 2006. This gives the electorate a "there they go again", mindset off the bat, and diminishes the attack and gives local, and congressional candidates a culturally accepted defense.
Rep. Matsui is a nice guy, and a terrific fundraiser, but isn't there a fighter among the Democrats in the House that wants to wage guerrilla-like politics on the Republican Party and it's House incumbents? These political battles that are fought every cycle in November for control of Congress are like 16th Century wars. The two parties spend 23 months lining up on opposite sides and storing away resources, then the month of October, they clash and spend everything they've got, and whomever wins, wins. The two sides go back and do it again and again. There are rules of the game, and a time for the fight, and then when it's over, those defeated talk about how much they want to work with the other party; while each party goes back to storing nuts and bullets for the next battle two years ahead.
The DCCC has got to change tactics. For starters, they've got to step outside the mindset that allows the Republican Party to have total dominance; engage in attacks without even having a candidate there in opposition for the Republicans to return fire; hit harder than you thought was acceptable (Musgrave, 51%, give you a clue?). Yea, right now, 2005. Figure out ways to locally go after the incumbent Republicans with coordinated efforts around the nation, and never stop.
Posted at 12:10 pm by blog swarm
Political News Permalink
The Sunday Talkshow Breakdown
A weekly feature of LiberalOasis
(posted Nov. 7 10:45 PM ET)
On Nov. 4, 1992, the day after Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush by 5 percentage points and 202 electoral votes, this was the first thing out of Sen. Bob Dole's mouth:
57 percent of the Americans who voted in the presidential election voted against Bill Clinton, and I intend to represent that majority on the floor of the US Senate.
He finished his remarks with:
I think [Clinton] got some good news and some bad news last night...
...The good news is that he's getting a honeymoon in Washington. The bad news is that Bob Dole is going to be chaperone.
With that fighting attitude, the GOP stymied the centerpiece of Clinton's agenda, health care, and took over Congress in two years.
Compare that attitude with what was displayed by the lone Dem on the Sunday shows, Sen.-elect Barack Obama. From NBC's Meet The Press:
...one of the things I told the president was that we all have a stake in seeing him have a successful presidency.
I don't think that the Democrats succeed by rooting against the president in office.
But we have to be honest where we disagree with him and he's got to make his case where he's presenting issues that we're skeptical about.
It's not just Obama showing softness. This is the party line.
Here's House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, in the weekly radio address:
I hope that in this term President Bush will fulfill his promise to be a uniter, not a divider.
A new term is indeed a new opportunity to bring America together.
House Democrats stand ready to work with the President.
Despite our divisions, there are many places where we should be able to agree.
Granted, both Obama and Pelosi went ahead to explain some areas of potential disagreement.
But the overarching tone and message of conciliation is just wrong, wrong, wrong.
Whereas the only remotely conciliatory remarks in Dole's post-election remarks was, "Obviously we'll cooperate with the new administration, if it advances the best interests of our nation," though that was quickly coupled with, "but we will stand up against bad policy."
Another Senate Dem, Nebraska's Ben Nelson, was quoted by NY Times' Nick Kristof saying, "The first thing we have to do is shake the image of us as the obstructionist party."
Kristof also chimed in that it is "lethal" to be seen as obstructionist.
Tell it to Bob Dole.
What is potentially lethal is to be obstructing because of craven politics and not noble principle.
And what is also potentially lethal is ceding fight after fight, because then you clearly don't stand for any principles at all (and that's what happened in 2002).
Obama and Pelosi had the opportunity this weekend to tell the nation what our noble principles are, and how those principles will be guiding the fights that lie ahead.
They didn't.
Unless leading Dems to do so, quickly, it will much harder to win those fights.
Posted at 12:08 pm by blog swarm
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Consumer Protection for Elections
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
CONSUMER PROTECTION FOR ELECTIONS
Donate. PayPal, credit card, Wish List, address are at this link. Our mailing address is Black Box Voting, PO Box 25552, Seattle WA 98165.
If you have signed up to volunteer for Help America Audit you will receive instructions by tomorrow morning. E-mail crew@blackboxvoting.org
Media calls: 206-335-7747
E-mail
If you are concerned about what happened Tuesday, Nov. 2, you have found a home with our organization. Help America Audit.
BREAKING -- SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: Freedom of Information requests at http://www.blackboxvoting.org have unearthed two Ciber certification reports indicating that security and tamperability was NOT TESTED and that several state elections directors, a secretary of state, and computer consultant Dr. Britain Williams signed off on the report anyway, certifying it.
Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history.
SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: We’re awaiting independent analysis on some pretty crooked-looking elections. In the mean time, here’s something to chew on.
Your local elections officials trusted a group called NASED -- the National Association of State Election Directors -- to certify that your voting system is safe.
This trust was breached.
NASED certified the systems based on the recommendation of an “Independent Testing Authority” (ITA).
“Whuuut?”
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What no one told local officials was that the ITA did not test for security (and NASED didn’t seem to mind). |
The ITA reports are considered so secret that even the California Secretary of State’s office had trouble getting its hands on one. The ITA refused to answer any questions about what it does. Imagine our surprise when, due to Freedom of Information requests, a couple of them showed up in our mailbox.
The most important test on the ITA report is called the “penetration analysis.” This test is supposed to tell us whether anyone can break into the system to tamper with the votes.
“Not applicable,” wrote Shawn Southworth, of Ciber Labs, the ITA that tested the Diebold GEMS central tabulator software. “Did not test.”
This is Shawn Southworth, in his office in Huntsville, Alabama.
He is the man who carefully examines our voting software.
Shawn Southworth “tested” whether every candidate on the ballot has a name. But we were shocked to find out that, when asked the most important question -- about vulnerable entry points -- Southworth’s report says “not reviewed.”
Americans want to know:
Ciber “tested”whether the manual gives a description of the voting system. But when asked to identify methods of attack (which we think the American voter would consider pretty important), the top-secret report says “not applicable.”
Ciber “tested” whether ballots comply with local regulations, but when Bev Harris asked Shawn Southworth what he thinks about Diebold tabulators accepting large numbers of “minus” votes, he said he didn’t mention that in his report because “the vendors don’t like him to put anything negative” in his report. After all, he said, he is paid by the vendors.
“Hmmmm.”
Shawn Southworth didn’t do the penetration analysis, but check out what he wrote:
“Ciber recommends to the NASED committee that GEMS software version 1.18.15 be certified and assigned NASED certification number N03060011815.”
Was this just a one-time oversight?
Nope. It appears to be more like a habit. Here is the same Ciber certification section for VoteHere; as you can see, the critical security test, the “penetration analysis” was again marked “not applicable” and was not done.
Maybe another ITA did the penetration analysis?
Apparently not. We discovered an even more bizarre Wyle Laboratories report. In it, the lab admits the Sequoia voting system has problems, but says that since they were not corrected earlier, Sequoia could continue with the same flaws. At one point the Wyle report omits its testing altogether, hoping the vendor will do the test.
Computer Guys: Be your own ITA certifier.
Here is a copy of the full Ciber report (part 1, 2, 3, 4) on GEMS 1.18.15. Here is a zip file download for the GEMS 1.18.15 program. Here is a real live Diebold vote database. Compare your findings against the official testing lab and see if you agree with what Ciber says. E-mail us your findings.
TIPS: The password for the vote database is “password” and you should place it in the “LocalDB” directory in the GEMS folder, which you’ll find in “program files.”
Who the heck is NASED?
They are the people who certified this stuff.
You’ve gotta ask yourself: Are they nuts? Some of them are computer experts. Well, it seems that several of these people suddenly want to retire, and the whole NASED voting systems board is becoming somewhat defunct, but these are the people responsible for today's shoddy voting systems.
If the security of the U.S. electoral system depends on you to certify a voting system, and you get a report that plainly states that security was “not tested” and “not applicable” -- what would you do?
Perhaps we should ask them. Go ahead. Let's hold them accountable for the election we just had. (Please, e-mail us their answers) They don't make it very easy to get their e-mail and fax information; when you find it, let us know and we'll post it here.
NASED VOTING SYSTEMS/ITA ACCREDITATION BOARD
Thomas R. Wilkey, Executive Director, New York State Board of Elections
David Elliott, (former) Asst. Director of Elections, Washington State
James Hendrix, Executive Director, State Election Commission, South Carolina
Denise Lamb, Director, State Bureau of Elections, New Mexico
Sandy Steinbach, Director of Elections, Iowa
Donetta Davidson, Secretary of State, Colorado
Connie Schmidt, Commissioner, Johnson County Election Commission, Kansas
(the late) Robert Naegele, President Granite Creek Technology, Pacific Grove, California
Brit Williams, Professor, CSIS Dept, Kennesaw State College, Georgia
Paul Craft, Computer Audit Analyst, Florida State Division of Elections Florida
Steve Freeman, Software Consultant, League City, Texas
Jay W. Nispel, Senior Principal Engineer, Computer Sciences Corporation Annapolis Junction, Maryland
Yvonne Smith (Member Emeritus), Former Assistant to the Executive Director Illinois State Board of Elections, Illinois
Penelope Bonsall, Director, Office of Election Administration, Federal Election Commission, Washington, D.C.
Committee Secretariat: The Election Center, R. Doug Lewis, Executive Director Houston, Texas, Tele: 281-293-0101
# # # # #
THURSDAY Nov. 4 2004: If you are concerned about what happened Tuesday, Nov. 2, you have found a home with our organization. Help America Audit.
Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history.
We need: Lawyers to enforce public records laws. Some counties have already notified us that they plan to stonewall by delaying delivery of the records. We need citizen volunteers for a number of specific actions. We need computer security professionals willing to GO PUBLIC with formal opinions on the evidence we provide, whether or not it involves DMCA complications. We need funds to pay for copies of the evidence.
TUESDAY Nov 2 2004: BREAKING NEWS: New information indicates that hackers may have targeted the central computers that are counting our votes.
Freedom of Information requests are not free. We need to raise $50,000 as quickly as possible to pay for records and the fees some states charge for them. We launched one major FOIA action last night, and have two more on the way, pell-mell. Now is the time. If you can't donate funds, please donate time. E-mail to join the Cleanup Crew.
Important: Watch this 30-minute film clip
Posted at 01:10 am by blog swarm
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