Category: Politics

Land-o-Links – 7/25/2006

On By Frank the TankIn Chicago White Sox, Land-o-Links, Major League Baseball, NBA Basketball, NFL Football, Politics, Random Thoughts, Sports4 Comments

About a week-and-a-half ago on a Saturday, a small fire occurred in the building next door to my company’s offices in the Loop. On the following Monday, every store and restaurant on the floor where the fire occurred, which includes Bank of America, Dunkin’ Donuts, Nestle Toll House Cookies, and Gateway Newsstands, was closed with the glaring exception of one right in the middle of it all: Starbucks. God forbid that the zombie-like addicts don’t get their caffeine crack during the Monday rush-hour. The point here is that whatever you think of Starbucks, they obviously have such a well-tuned disaster plan that they ought to be put in charge of running FEMA. Anyway, on to today’s links:

1) Welcome, All Chorizos! (Deadspin) – Usually, “South of the Border” to people from Wisconsin means FIBs.

2) 2008: The Case for Barack Obama (Washington Post) – If I were Barack, I’d be running for President right away. Out of the 5 Presidents that we’ve elected over the past 30 years, the only one that had any substantive national experience was George H.W. Bush. If anything, the more time that you spend in the U.S. Senate, the worse presidential candidate you become (see John Kerry, Al Gore, and Bob Dole).

3) White Sox Acquire MacDougal (South Side Sox) – For all of the Alfonso Soriano rumors, acquiring Mike MacDougal from the Royals to shore up a less-than-stellar bullpen was the move that the White Sox really needed to make before the trade deadline. Even South Side player-hater Minneapolis Red Sox approved of the move! Of course, it would help if we started winning again.

4) Chicago Bulls’ New ‘Bench Seat’ Runs $125,500 Per Season (Crain’s Chicago Business) – While this might sound expensive, the cost of this seat for an entire year is almost $60,000 less than what Ben Wallace will be making per game from the Bulls during the life of his new contract. From that standpoint, this is a steal, right?

5) Camp Starts Thursday (Da’ Bears Blog) – I don’t know about you, but Bears training camp, which opens up tomorrow, has completely snuck up on me.  This is noteworthy because I usually start counting down the days to the opening of training camp by around the Fourth of July, particularly when the Bears are coming off of a playoff run as they are this year.  However, with everything that has been going on with the Sox and Bulls over the summer plus an even worse than average season for the Cubs, we’re in a rare period where the Bears aren’t dominating the Chicago sports scene.  That being said, I’m starting to get the annual football itch.

And finally…

6) New Monopoly Version Uses Debit Card (Yahoo! News) – No word on whether we need to pay $1.50 for each time that we pass “Go”.

More Thoughts From Minneapolis Red Sox and Frank the Tank on the Daily Illini

On By Frank the TankIn Politics, Random ThoughtsLeave a comment

The controversy at the Daily Illini and how the press has handled the publication or non-publication of the Danish cartoons has certainly caused a firestorm where reasonable people can disagree.

Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune shares my view of the situation, where he called it a “dark day for journalism in Champaign.”  He also levied some heavy criticism last week at his own newspaper for not publishing the cartoons in question.

On the other side of the aisle on this issue is Don Wycliff, the public editor of the Tribune (i.e. the guy who responds to people who complain to the paper), who defended the paper’s decision last week as a sign of respect of the Muslim faith and expanded on the subject in a column today by explaining how publishing offensive photos of Abu Ghraib is different than the publication of the Danish cartoons.

I wanted to get the opinion of my best friend from high school – hereinafter referred to as “Minneapolis Red Sox” and who happens to have a great new blog called “Siberia, Minnesota” – since he is a former journalist that used to be the editor of his college newspaper and generally shuns political correctness (and I seriously mean that as a high compliment).  His views on the media’s general refusal to publish the Danish cartoons surprised me.  We ended up having a heated, fascinating, and honest discussion by email yesterday, which is transcribed verbatim below:

Frank the Tank: I don’t know if you’ve seen my posts over the last couple of days, but the flap over the Daily Illini publishing those Danish cartoons is really pissing me off. As a former journalist, I’m interested to know what you think.

Minneapolis Red Sox: I think they suck, so they weren’t worth the space in the first place. I also think that if people are that interested they can look them up online. Screw sensitivity, I want to keep bricks out of my window at the office.

Actually, the online idea has merit. You link to it (which is a smart marketing move anyways) and that way you can lock them down a bit – i.e. don’t click if you really don’t want to see them. Might keep the bricks away, too.  Let me ask you this: Aside from the shock value at this point, what does publishing the cartoons get you? The people who want to see them saw them on day 2 or 3 of the Danish fiasco. By printing now, really what do you gain other than a little sensationalist sizzle?

Frank the Tank: Isn’t that what the danger is, though?  Yes, the cartoons did suck. However, the press didn’t publish the cartoons because they thought they  sucked – papers publish pictures and stories that are offensive to particular religions, races, and other groups all of the time.  Instead, they didn’t publish the cartoons because they were afraid of the backlash,  which is a lot more troublesome.  If the members of the press want to pass themselves off as the enlightened beacon of freedom, then they can’t cower and not publish cartoons because they’re scared of a negative reaction. Honestly, I’m unbelievably disappointed in how the American media has handled this.

Plus, I don’t think it’s shock value. It’s one of the most important stories so far this year and the cartoons are the entire basis of that story. If I hear are that a bunch of people are getting killed over some cartoons, I’d think that the only way I could ever come close to understanding why that’s happening is to see the cartoons myself.

What bothers me is that the press loves to use the “freedom of speech” card and stating that is has an obligation to the public to report the truth, whether good or bad, yet they decided not to run the cartoons because they were afraid of a backlash in this particular instance. Would these papers have published these pictures if they had replaced the image of Muhammad with Jesus, a rabbi, or the Dalai Lama? I’m almost positive that the answer would be yes. That means that the press wasn’t worried about being perceived as intolerant toward the Muslim faith, but rather how they thought people of the Muslim faith would react. Isn’t that an even worse stereotype in assuming one religious group is going to act differently than other religious groups?

Minneapolis Red Sox: Then be angry that they didn’t weigh in when the whole thing started in Denmark – just saying that a week after the fact it doesn’t pay to print them. And while they print things that are offensive they are at least topical. A week after the fact, it makes no sense to publish the cartoons. And once the big papers passed, none of the second or third tiers would touch it because then they’d catch hell for being sensationalists.

Frank the Tank: The riots are still going on and 3 more people got killed in them yesterday- I think it’s still topical.  Just because the papers didn’t fulfill their obligations from the beginning doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t correct that mistake.  Of course, they’re not going to do it after publishing a bunch of gobbley-gook editorials about how sensitive they want to be toward people’s religious beliefs and seeing that a couple of college paper editors got raked over the coals for actually standing up for journalistic integrity.

Look, the New York Times defied a Supreme Court order a few months ago regarding Valerie Plame documents which put one of its own reporters in jail.  Yet, that paper won’t print some cartoons that one of its peers from Denmark published where the fallout is going to cause a huge chilling effect on the press internationally?  Is any paper going to be willing to stand up the leaders of a religious faith after this, even when it is necessary? Would you want the Tribune to stop reporting on abuses in the Catholic Church and criticizing Cardinal George because they’re scared of how the city’s large Catholic population is reacting?  That’s unacceptable to me.

Minneapolis Red Sox: You’re confusing religion with the offensive content portion here. You must be forgetting how many TV stations will air alternate content (especially in the Midwest) when controversial episodes are shown on television – i.e. reruns of 7th Heaven when there’s a big lesbian kiss on in prime time – and people get all up in arms and say that Jesus is crying and then everyone gets over it. To this day, you cannot say God damn it on television. In a day and age where ‘douchebag’ is used on national television and God, damn and it are all passible as long as they aren’t used in succession, you’re concerned about newspapers that choose not to show crappy, week-old cartoons that were designed to elicit the same response they received.

You putting too much behind why papers should show these cartoons and not enough to the fact that no one is stopping them. That’s part of the First Amendment, too. Free speech also carries the option (and sometimes responsibility) of no speech and while you get worked into a lather about why these papers aren’t adding fuel to the fire, you’re missing the fact that the White House can’t tell the Washington Post to print them to drum up some Arab furor to help them out in the polls on Iraq.

You are also forgetting that every day hundreds, literally hundreds of photos are left in darkrooms. Burnt corpses, mangled bodies from car and other types of accidents, and good ole heat and cold are left out of the papers because it’d be in poor taste and serves no real purpose. If people really want to see a dead body/these cartoons they will have no trouble finding pictures of a dead body/copies of these cartoons. Every afternoon, editors make suggestions, amendments and out and out cuts from stories and from editorials in the interest of the paper as a whole while trying to maintain a balance and work out the most truthful issue they can.

You want to know why there are no cartoons? Because it’s not in any US paper’s best interest right now. Once the big ones took the duck, everyone else was in the clear. Now anyone who does is being painted as a sensationalist – I hate what they did to the Daily Illini editors, but I’d all but guarantee you they weren’t acting on behalf of the First Amendment, they were looking to cause a stir. The suspensions that followed are probably more because they broke rank to do so.

It’s not like they were sitting on the Pentagon Papers here, dude – they were re-printing week old comics that are readily available on-line. It’s not a First Amendment fight at the DI anymore, it’s a spanking for running against policy.

Frank the Tank: Absolutely, it’s not a First Amendment issue – that only deals with government restrictions on speech, which isn’t the issue here.  Each media organization has the right to print or not print what they want.  Sure, the networks get scared when dealing with the loud complainers in society (look at all of the crap that happened after the Janet Jackson fiasco).  I know full well that media companies are businesses.

But there’s also a difference between the entertainment division of a company and the news division.  I simply believe that the cartoons were an integral part of the story (if not the most important part of the story) and the major papers in this country gave reasons for not printing them that seemed cowardly considering what they’ve been willing to print before.  The fact that one can find any of these cartoons online doesn’t excuse this behavior and the fact that none of the large organizations chose to print them so the smaller guys didn’t print them is an even worse excuse – no wonder why people hate the media as much as lawyers and politicians.

Are papers in the business of printing pictures of dead bodies?  No.  Are papers in the business of offending large groups of people?  Of course not.  But I do believe that papers are in the business of presenting accurate and comprehensive coverage of the news, and while it might not be necessary to accompany a story that someone is dead with a picture of that person’s dead body, I don’t believe that any American or Westerner could possibly understand what’s going on in the Middle East without seeing those cartoons.  Without seeing those cartoons, all the average person is going to think is that all of those people in the Middle East are crazy and willing to kill people over stupid crap like this.  This is an instance where no amount of description with words is going to come close to accurately depicting why people were so outraged.

The press was scared to present the full story because they were afraid of the reaction of a particular religious group.  I fully believe that they would not have done the same thing if it were any other religious group.  That’s the ultimate sign of being intimidated from presenting the facts.  The press just willingly succumbed to chilling effect that they have always stated that it wanted to avoid.  Think of it now – this is going to be used by every Christian group from now until the end of time whenever there’s a negative depiction of that religion (“It was okay to protect Muslims, but not us?”).  That’s an awful precedent.

Minneapolis Red Sox: From CNN today:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/02/15/abughraib.photos/index.html

I think that because these are illustrated images and not photos, their publication isn’t as important. Let me take this on two-fold. (1) I think the major papers ducked this for political, keep their advertisers reasons, but by doing so backed into a situation I’m fine with and (2) It’s not protecting Muslims, it’s being afraid of them.

1) I can see printing photos of prisoner abuse, monks on fire in Vietnam and little Vietnamese girls who have been napalmed. I can also see why papers in Tulsa and other have pulled The Boondocks, Doonsbury, Outland, etc. at times with things they’d deemed offensive to their readers. In doing so, they keep advertising dollars and maintain the status quo. This is where the liberal media arguement usually sputters out. For as liberal as many reporters and editors are, the people making the decisions are largely conservative and make safer decisions. As much as someone might want to put any of those cartoons in there someone always has a better idea of why thye shouldn’t. That’s just life.

Now, I think illustration vs. photo is a distinction here. It’s hard to decribe a photo in any detail. For most Americans, we need to be told why it’s offensive anyways. Plus, there are varying degrees of outrage here, based on all sorts of things. I wouldn’t know by looking at one of those what was offensive, etc., so seeing the actualy cartoon doesn’t help much.

The story is not the cartoon, the story is what the cartoon represents. The story is not the cartoon, the story is what the cartoon represents. The story is not the cartoon, the story is what the cartoon represents.

I don’t feel offended, but I can understand just as much by being told Muhammad is portrayed like so, as I can from seeing Muhammad being portrayed like so. In the meantime if it doesn’t ignite a furor in Cincinnati, even better. Cost/benefit analysis.

2) America is scared by brown people. They don’t care if they are offended – only if they break shit because they are offended.

The Daily Illini Needs to Apologize for Something Else

On By Frank the TankIn Politics, Random Thoughts1 Comment

I spent yesterday’s post giving credit to the Daily Illini for standing up for the ideals of the American press by printing the controversial Danish cartoons that have spurred violent protests and killings by radical Muslims in the Middle East.  Well, as my sister pointed out today, it turns out that the Daily Illini is now running scared by suspending the 2 editors that made the decision to run the cartoons.

The act itself by the newspaper the remove editor Acton Groton and opinions editor Chuck Prochaska is an abomination.  The fact that the Daily Illini then published an editorial calling Groton a “renegade editor” that engaged in a “blatant use of power” (I’ll link to this editorial once the paper posts it on tis website) has turned my high respect for the newspaper’s actions into absolute disgust.  Groton and Prochaska were thrown under the bus for doing something that every other major newspaper in the United States should have done if they actually wanted to protect the ideals of journalistic freedom.  The Daily Illini has turned what should have been one of its proudest moments into a point of shame.

No Need for an Apology from the Daily Illini

On By Frank the TankIn Politics, Random Thoughts2 Comments

There are few things I believe America stands for more than being the world’s greatest marketplace of ideas.  This is distinct from “freedom of speech” and the First Amendment, which deal with the government’s restrictions on speech.  Instead, the marketplace of ideas comes from encouraging the private citizens of this country express themselves and challenge others without being chilled by the forces of group thinking.

More than anyone else, the American press is supposed to carry the torch of this concept.  I assumed that when the riots by radical Muslims over cartoon depictions of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper escalated over the past week, every news organization in the United States would publish those cartoons so that we could understand exactly why this was happening (or at least put it into some type of context).

What subsequently happened was shocking.  The New York Times decided not to publish the cartoons.  The Associated Press, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post didn’t do it, either.  The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Miami Herald, the Dallas Morning News, and the Denver Post?  Nope.  The Los Angeles Times decided to print one example of a cartoon.  Other than that, no other major media organization published any of the cartoons that have sparked one of the most important news stories of the year.  Each news organization justified its decision upon some variation of how it did not want to show images that would be offensive to one’s religious beliefs.  Of course, all of these organizations were fine in the past with publishing the infamous “Piss Christ” photo or statements by terrorists advocating violence against Jews.  So, not offending the religious beliefs of readers is a convenient and shallow excuse to me.

What news organization had the intestinal fortitude to actually educate Amercians about what was happening across the world by publishing the cartoons?  Well, I’m proud to say that it was the student newspaper of my alma mater, the Daily Illini.  In the face of the group think of the mainstream American media, the Daily Illini published the cartoons in this past Thursday.

The backlash was predictable, with the Daily Illini accused of being insensitive.  Rather than the general public shaming the mainstream media for leaving a student newspaper out to dry, the Daily Illini has been forced to make an apology today where it emphasized that the decision to run the cartoons wasn’t made by the paper’s entire editorial board.

The last thing that the Daily Illini should do is apologize for its actions.  Instead, the paper ought be commended for showing that a handful of college students have the ability to carry forward the marketplace of ideas even when the powerful voices in this country decide not to speak up.  Are the images offensive or worth having people killed over?  I urge you to look at the cartoons and decide for yourself.  That’s the American way.

Might As Well Face It, You’re Addicted to Oil

On By Frank the TankIn PoliticsLeave a comment

In terms of long term importance, last night’s State of the Union Address was only the #3 story in politics yesterday following Alan Greenspan’s final meeting as Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the Senate’s confirmation of Samuel Alito.  Still, it’s always interesting to dissect a major political speech.  So, grading President Bush’s performance purely on political effectiveness as opposed to my personal views, I’ve got to give him a B.  There was not much new in terms of initiatives.  However, the speech was better than average and ended up highlighting Bush’s strengths.

1) Strong Points – The one strength that Bush has amid his tepid approval ratings is that he’s perceived to be strong on national security.  Bush played up that portion of his record now by dedicating the first half of his speech to Iraq and the war on terrorism.  If there’s one thing you can say about Dubya, no matter what you believe, it’s that you know where he stands.  Bush is clear that he believes that it’s the duty of the United States to use its military power to promote democracy across the world.  Whether he ought to be using our young men and women to achieve this goal even if there’s not an immediate military threat is another question, yet the Democrats continue to fail to present an alternative vision (more on that in a moment).

The President also displayed the Republicans’ great understanding of the power of language (i.e. it’s not the estate tax – it’s the “death tax”) as he turned “domestic spying” into a “terrorist surveillance program.”  What looked like a highly unpopular illegal intrusion on private citizens a couple of weeks ago has morphed into a successful program that vigorously roots out Al Quaeda operatives to prevent more attacks on American soil.  I’m wary about the impact that Bush’s actions in this arena could have on civil liberties, but from a political standpoint a “terrorist surveillance program” is simply brilliant.

Bush also had a “Nixon goes to China” moment when the former oil hound stated that the United States was “addicted to oil.”  Whether he is truly committed to alternative energy sources remains to be seen.  For now, though, Bush at least gets points for saying something new for him.

2) Weaker Points – As strong as Bush is on the subject of national security as a whole, he resorts to ineffective declarative statements about the War in Iraq.  The average American is extremely wary about our presence in Iraq, so Bush repeating old statements that we’re “making progress” and containing the insurgents without presenting more concrete evidence that those things are actually happening isn’t enough.

Details about Bush’s domestic initiatives for health care and education were scant, but that was not surprising given that the speech was clearly focused on national security.  Bush doesn’t seem to get high marks from the public for his performance on the economy.  The irony to me is that I believe he’s done a great job at driving overall economic growth while being suspect in the national security area where he garners the strongest public approval.  It’s also interesting to see how every presidential candidate seems to campaign on how we need to focus more on domestic issues – Dubya, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan all did this in their respective initial presidential campaigns – yet foreign policy almost always consumes them once they’re elected to office.

Anyway, Bush clearly backed off from domestic initiatives after the inability to get Social Security reform passed last year (I have a lot of thoughts on that subject, but that’s for another day).  Not surprisingly, with the exception of the alternative energy proposal, there wasn’t much memorable on the domestic side of the speech.

3) Democratic Response – First off, the opposing party “response” needs to be eliminated.  I have never seen anyone, Republican or Democrat, present anything other than a poorly canned talking point list.

At best, the opposing party response can give a bare bones complaint of the sitting President’s policies.  At worst, the opposing party response can highlight the reasons why that opposing party isn’t winning elections, which is exactly what happened last night.

Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine was a good choice on paper to give the response.  As I said a couple of weeks ago, the Democrats need to move to the center if they expect to win and the newly installed centrist governor from a southern state fits that bill.

However, I also said in that same post that it was even more imperative for the Democrats to have a coherent and cohesive message on national security issues that presents a real alternative to the Bush Doctrine, rather than just criticizing all of Bush’s actions.  Mere critiques without alternatives would doom the Democrats to 49% near-misses in elections.

Yet, even though President Bush had just spent over half of his speech speaking passionately about national security, Gov. Kaine muttered a couple sentences buried in the middle of the response to say that there had to be a “better way” than what Bush was doing in Iraq.  Then, nothing else was said about the issue that Americans are most likely to vote on.

Hammering away at domestic issues might have made sense for Clinton against Bush Senior back in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union, but the Democrats are digging their own graves again by not addressing national security head-on in the wake of September 11th.  As dumb as Democrats may believe Bush is, they have only themselves to blame on being such dunces on how to present a message regarding national security.

Supreme Crutch of the United States

On By Frank the TankIn Law, PoliticsLeave a comment

The U.S. Senate is in the midst of another Supreme Court justice confirmation hearing, which means, yet again, we’re going to endure several more days of politicians grilling a nominee on issues that they are too scared or lazy to resolve themselves.  Indeed, current nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. spent most of yesterday getting hammered on questions regarding abortion and presidential powers.  These are certainly important potential issues that the Supreme Court may need to review over the coming years, but only because the politicians on both sides of the aisle who supposedly make our nation’s laws are deferring their role as advocates for their constituents on the tough issues to the court system.

The American public has been subjected to several years of predictions of apocalyptic scenarios from both political parties about how one vote change on the Supreme Court could completely alter the landscape regarding issues such as abortion, presidential powers, civil liberties, gay marriage, corporate ethical obligations, the teaching of evolution and intelligent design in public schools, etc.  Even if this were the case, and I really believe that the doomsday scenarios are overblown (by all accounts, the overall lack of interest in the hearings outside of partisan interest groups shows that most Americans agree with me), the politicians willingly allowed this to happen through their actions or, more commonly, their collective inaction.  The two major political parties let this happen because if they actually backed up their words with legislative action, they wouldn’t have an easy judicial bogeyman to blame to score votes and fundraising dollars from their respective bases.

Take the Democrats, for instance, on the issue of presidential powers.  They overwhelmingly supported the Patriot Act the first time around, yet now claim during the Act’s renewal process that President Bush has overstepped his bounds and that government agencies are trampling over civil liberties.  Even worse, a number of Senate Democrats like Ted Kennedy and Patrick Leahy, who supported the bill originally, are now blaming Dubyah for “ramming through” the provisions of the Patriot Act.  Wait a second – didn’t these guys actually read an act that many people believe (for the record and in case you were wondering, I don’t personally believe this) was a clear trampling of people’s rights before they gave it their full-fledged support?  And now they’re worried about some memos and speeches Samuel Alito wrote supporting a more expansive view of president’s authority under the Constitution.  Ignorance of the text of the law should never be an excuse for voting for it in the first place.

At the same time, the Republicans could have made substantive moves for its social conservative wing by advancing a partial-birth abortion bill that actually passed constitutional muster.  By constitutional muster, I mean that any ban on partial-birth abortion had to have an exception to law where the procedure was medically necessary to protect the health of the mother.  If the Republicans had simply done this, there would be a partial-birth abortion ban in place today.  Instead, the Republican Congress (along with a whole lot of Democrats from red states and districts), knowing full well that it wouldn’t survive a Supreme Court challenge, passed a bill banning partial-birth abortion without the medical exception.  Like the Democrats regarding presidential powers, the Republicans used the Supreme Court as a crutch by stating that the judiciary had made the definition of a medically necessary too broad.  As a result, the Republicans were able to milk another election year’s worth of campaign donations to fight liberal “activist” judges.

So, when politicians from both parties trumpet over the coming days on how Samuel Alito will be the deciding vote on a plethora of issues, they may be right, but they have only themselves to blame for putting America in this situation.  Legislators have shirked their responsibilities to make the laws in the midst of the fervor over the judges are merely charged with interpreting those laws.

Note to Dems: Forget Abramoff and Remember Clinton

On By Frank the TankIn Politics5 Comments

With prominent GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff entering into a plea agreement yesterday that could embroil significant numbers of Republican Congressmen in scandal (plus Bush’s anemic poll numbers), the national Democratic Party seems poised for a rebound in 2006. However, this also seemed to be the case with a revved-up Democratic base in 2004, yet we all know how that turned out.

If you’ve read my Political Persuasion page, you know that I’m a self-identified Republican (although I’m of the libertarian stripe as opposed to the book burning stripe). Thus, you might wonder why I’m about to provide advice to the national Democratic Party. Here’s why: I believe that there is a “Third Way” in politics – one that combines free market principles and smaller government with progressive social ideas. The political party that truly gets there first will get my vote.

What’s amazing to me is that Bill Clinton created an incredibly successful game plan for Democrats to win by moving to the center in the 1990s, yet the current Howard Dean-led Democratic regime has completely thrown it out the window in order to be a loud liberal counterweight to George W. Bush’s neocon administration. As shown in the 2004 election, that’s a great way to get a really passionate 49% of the vote, but a bad way to win elections. Thus, here’s how the Democrats can win in 2006 and beyond by breaking back open the Clinton playbook:

1) Remember the Soccer Moms – Some K Street minion decided at the beginning of 2004 that the hot swing voter group for the year would be “NASCAR Dads.” This guy (obviously a male – a woman wouldn’t be so oblivious to the obvious) must have thought NASCAR fans were the American equivalent of sophisticated upscale European Formula One racing fans. If he had taken five minutes to watch a NASCAR race on television, much less attend one, he would have realized that the only group of people more likely to vote Republican than NASCAR Dads is the membership of the Kansas State Board of Education. Thus, John Kerry could have avoided wasting a whole lot of time and money on a segment of the population that would never vote for him.

Amazingly, the Democrats forgot about the group that propelled Clinton to two landslide victories: Soccer Moms. These are women who are typically pro-choice but want to protect their own school-age children while living an affluent lifestyle in the suburbs. This profile makes Soccer Moms possibly the last large group of swing voters in the country. Why was Clinton able to attract this group so well? He combined a sense of social responsibility while avoiding the standard Democratic rich bashing – remember that Soccer Moms are an affluent group. The so-called gender gap is more of a problem for Democrats than Republicans right now since the Republican Party’s advantage with men is larger than the Democratic Party’s advantage with women. Democrats cannot afford to ignore the Soccer Moms if they want any chance to win.

2) Don’t Bash Corporations – The stock market used to be reserved exclusively for the upper echelon of society. However, a seismic change occurred in the 1980s and 1990s – regular folks started putting money in the stock market. At this point, the majority of American households have money invested in Wall Street. When do stock prices go up? That’s pretty easy – when corporations are profitable.

Thus, if the majority of American households obtain an economic benefit when corporations are profitable since they own stock of said corporations, it makes little sense to bash those companies for making money. If people think they’re going to lose money if you’re in office, they have a clear and tangible incentive to vote for your opponent. Clinton understood this and avoided the usual Democratic rhetoric. In contrast, Al Gore and John Kerry resorted to populist rhetoric about “Benedict Arnold corporations” and, not surprisingly, ended up losing.

3) Stand Up to the Labor Unions and Promote Free Trade – It seemed like Clinton and Al Gore were making great progress with getting the Democratic Party to stand up to the labor unions and impressing upon the importance of understanding fundamental economic principles that people should have learned in high school. As much as I might have had problems with the Clinton-Gore administration, I give them immense credit for taking a stance against the Democratic labor union machine and getting NAFTA passed. The opening up of trade across North America propelled the U.S. to unprecedented prosperity in the 1990s.

Since then, however, the Democrats have slid backwards on the free trade issue in order to keep their union base happy. They have resorted to emotional populist arguments about how certain American jobs will be transferred overseas while losing sight of the fact that a protectionist economy will shut down the future job growth of the country in information age tehcnologies. Even though labor unions have historically done a good job of turning out the vote, they are also shrinking in numbers. At the same time, the general public has an increasingly negative view of labor unions. It is bad economics and bad politics for the Democrats to continue to tow the line of this special interest group.

4) Avoid the Blood in the Water – The Jack Abramoff plea bargain, the indictments of Tom Delay and VP Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, Karl Rove’s big mouth and the Plame/CIA leak investigation… Republicans are embroiled in scandal everywhere you turn and Democrats are understandably licking their chops. Of course, this looks a lot like 1998 with the shoe on the other party’s foot, when the Whitewater investigation was at its zenith and Bill Clinton was caught with a cigar he didn’t smoke.

The important thing to remember is that outside of the Beltway, no one really cares about how corrupt politicians are because everyone believes that all politicians are corrupt in the first place. The Republicans foamed at the mouth for years about the shady dealings of the Democrats while Clinton focused on growing the economy and using our military to bring about regime change in Kosovo. By the end of 1999, Clinton was more popular than ever and Republicans were avoiding Newt Gingrinch like the plague. Today, Democrats are foaming at the mouth about the shady dealings of the Republicans while Bush is focusing on growing the economy and using our military to bring about regime change in the Middle East. If the Democrats forget about the real issues facing this country and just blabber on about scandals few people care about or understand, which party is going to be better off by the end of 2006? This brings me to the final and most important point…

5) Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow – It’s ironic that for all of his bumbling policy speeches, George W. Bush was able to master “the vision thing” that his father thought was irrelevant in 1992. As a result, it was the underachieving son that was able to win two terms as President instead of the more accomplished father.

Bill Clinton, who soundly defeated Dubya’s father, was great at “the vision thing.” He conveyed that there was a sense of purpose to the presidency and that there would be a better tomorrow for the country. In contrast, the Democratic Party of today has completely conceded the vision ground to Dubyah and the Republicans. Even if you can’t stand the Republicans, you have a pretty clear picture of where they stand as a party on the economy, national defense, and taxes, which happen to be the issues that voters care about the most.

The Democrats, though, are split on Iraq. They are split on the level of taxation in this country. They are split on the Patriot Act. They are split on free trade. So, instead of trying to convey clear positions on the issues that Americans really care about the most (as opposed to issues infused with religious fervor such as abortion, which are low on the list for the average voter – anyone who tells you “values” voters won the election for Bush in 2004 is a crock since Republicans are the ones divided on those issues, not Democrats), they have rallied around the Dubyah bogeyman for the past 6 years. The Democrats spent the entire first term complaining about hanging chads in Florida and how a right-leaning Supreme Court “highjacked” the election. After getting beaten fairly in 2004, the Democrats have turned their attention to accusing the Bush administration of promoting bad intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction in the days leading up to the start of the current war in Iraq and focusing on the aforementioned inside-the-Beltway scandals.

Bad intelligence on WMDs would be an important issue… if this were March 2003. This isn’t to gloss over the Bush administration’s use of possibly sketchy intelligence. However, the point here is that the Democrats have not once presented any viable alternative vision to what America ought to do in Iraq. For all the times that John Kerry stated that he “had a plan” for this or that, the only issue that he clearly differed from Dubya on last year was that he wanted to raise taxes on the top 1% of American income earners. If the only discernible difference from your opponent is that you want raise taxes (even if it would supposedly be only on the rich), you’re going to lose.

As much as a large proportion of the population hates Dubya, the inability of the Democrats to articulate a coherent vision in terms of the economy and national defense will continue to be the party’s Achilles’ heel. The Democrats found out last year that Bush-bashing with little else will get them 49% of the vote. They had better start getting some ideas instead of harping on the past if they actually want to win elections. Bill Clinton knew this, which is why he’s the only Democrat since FDR to win two terms in office. The Democrats would be well advised to follow the steps of the one winner they’ve had over the past sixty years.