The sad thing is that Nader had capital he really could have invested more wisely and usefully, if he'd just moved out of DC and run for a state Congressional seat as a Democrat. Or, hell, even as a Republican - in some states, back in the day, that would actually have seemed normal. And I think he could have won, and every time a real progressive wins, the Dems do have to think about that stupid fantasy they have that they just aren't right-wing enough.
Instead, Nader has drawn progressives out of the Democratic Party and made it that much more likely each time that the more right-ward candidate will win, and thus convinced the party that they aren't far enough right yet. *sigh*
And yes, I do put the blame for the 2000 outcome on the press more than anyone, given that Gore was headed for a landslide right up until the smear campaign after the first debate. That is, he didn't need those Nader voters if the press had just held back on the lies about the debates. But still, if Gore had had those Nader voters in Florida, or even a quarter of them, he still had it in the bag. Always assuming Ms. Harris would have allowed him to collect them, of course.
"A mirage is an optical illusion in which atmospheric refraction by a layer of hot air distorts or inverts reflections of distant objects."
I think this is the group of images you wanted for that.
Completely evading the topic of the movie, I just want to point out that when someone has already written everything you wanted to say, and you can link to it instead of writing it all again, that's not laziness, it's just an effort to avoid redundancy.
No, Josh has done the same damn thing with his interviews, dammit.
Buzz, straight HTML is a whole lot better than a .pdf.
All I know is that being quoted makes it that much more likely that someone will pick your book up if they have a chance, so I'm delighted by the idea that there is an increased chance for cross-fertilization by people who are two lazy to type a few paragraphs. Just aside from the fact that it makes it easier for me to reference, say, p345 to the top of p346 of American Gods (Headline pb) if I wanted to....
I'm not happy with machine calculation at all. I want the voting machines to do no more than print out a clear ballot after the voter has made out her selections, so that she can drop it in the box to be hand-counted afterwards. If the ballots are later run through a machine for verification of the counts, fine, but I want them hand-counted first.
Alternatively....
I do find it astonishing that the Democrats still haven't learned the lesson that was already manifest (and in the papers!) in the '90s, which is that when one side makes use of both the Internet and it's most geekily ardent supporters, it outpaces the other side. The Republicans used everyone, including the whacked-out freepers, throughout the '90s, and it worked. To this day, even fairly reasonable people believe a lot of the lies about Clinton and Gore (secrets handed to China, intimidation of Willey, fundraising at a temple, etc.) that were pushed or kept alive on the 'net.
adamsj is right about one thing: The Democratic Party leadership really does come across as hating its base. That's a mistake the RNC quit making a long time ago.
I fault Gore for a certain amount of naivety, but I think too much is made of his not having "used" Clinton more in the campaign. From inside the Beltway, he could see that the press was never going to forgive Clinton for not caving in when they called for his resignation and that they were going for a strategy of getting revenge on Clinton by trying to tie him to Gore, and he ran from it. That may or may not have been a mistake, but let's not forget that Gore received far more votes than Clinton did. He also won the election. His real mistake wasn't so much not using Clinton, it was not using the Rev. Jackson in Florida to counteract the bourgiose rioters from the RNC.
But aside from that, there were literally dozens of elements that went into keeping Gore out of the White House in the 2000 election, only a couple of which can be laid at Gore's doorstep. The astonishing bias of the media was the most powerful. And despite that, right up until the morning after the first presidential debate, Gore was headed for a landslide - which means his failure to use Clinton really wasn't hurting him. The media had to spin the first debate for all they were worth to make Gore "look" bad in a debate he had won handily. His numbers were still high after the debate - until the media spent the week inventing lies they could pretend he told.
It's ironic that Al Gore, of all people, did not recognize the danger from the RNC geeks, but it wouldn't surprise me to know he has learned that lesson now, just as his speeches during the last half of 2000 and the ones he has given this year show his views have been radicalized as well - he has been sounding much more like a progressive liberal than even Ralph Nader has, lately. And I expect he knows now where to go for people who will pay attention and work hard - he did, after all, invent the Internet.
As to voting Green - I'm sorry, but if you think the Democratic Party leadership's arrogance is a bigger danger to our country than George Bush's, you really, really need to re-evaluate your priorities. Letting these maniacs continue to ruin our country and destablize the whole world just because the DLC has hurt your feelings is a special kind of arrogance in itself.
That chart would be so helpful if it said things like "To Haliburton at well above the market value" on it.
And anyway, maybe stuff had English labelling on it because it was purchased from an English-speaking country. Remember, one reason reason why a lot of people thought Cheney & Bush knew something the rest of us didn't know about Saddam having WMD was, "Because we have the receipts!"
Before Bush took office:
Let's not forget that during the 2000 campaign when Bush was complaining that Europe should send troops to aid the US peacekeeping mission, most of the troops still on that mission were European.
I think it's a combination of what Lydy says and, y'know, James Watt. I think the one reinforces the other.
It also differs from Nixon's enemies list in that their ability to travel wasn't being curtailed.
I think this story suggests it is something other than an accident of name similarities, by the way.
Then there's the 100% tax on disability costs for vets. Then there's the schools for military kids. Then there's the raise Bush promised during the campaign but decided on 20/1/01 he couldn't afford. And so on, and so on, and so on. Support our troops.
Surely you jest, Bill. None can match the incisive intellectual style of a man who refutes the statements of his guests by shouting, "Shut up! Shut up!"
Tim Russert was noticed in Florida during the attempt to get the ballots counted wearing a Bush campaign button on the back of his lapel. During the campaign itself, he regularly phoned the Bush campaign - but not Democrats - for oppo research. His non-partisanship is somewhat suspect. Whatever he used to be, he's no more a Democrat than Strom Thurmond was for the last few decades. And some of us still haven't forgotten this.
I've just had a look at the editorial Randolph mentions above. It is, of course, less than flattering to Bush. However, it falls far short of coming out and admitting that the administration - and not our intelligence agencies - is the heart of the problem. The objective fact is that our intelligence agencies were not the point of failure; anyone who is still unwilling to say this is demonstrating a bias toward protecting the White House. That's not objective, and it's not liberal.
For the record, The Washington Post no longer has a stake in The International Herald Tribune, and IHT content now comes wholly from the NYT and the distinct IHT contributors.
Newspapers in both the US and the UK went to cutting staff during the '80s - they went lean and mean like everyone else, and like everyone else, that means they lost quality. Some of them really did seem to think that you could replace editorial judgment with a spell-checker. Murdochization has not helped, in either country. Nor has the prevailing fashion that says youth is a more valuable trait than a proven track-record in accuracy and good writing.
For my money, the most accurate newspaper in Britain is the Financial Times. Unfortunately, they don't cover much ground. As ordinary daily broadsheets go, the Telegraph is probably the best for coverage of important news. The Guardian is more enjoyable, though.
The criticisms of the NYT for bias toward conservative or liberal positions are not the same kind of criticisms. The modern right, which is mostly whacky, hates the very idea of "objective" reporting - by which I do not mean they hate the mainstream press for claiming to be objective, but rather they hate the fact that they try to be objective by doing what you and I actually hope newspapers will do; check the facts; present what is, and not just the spin; get both sides and try to get to the truth. The claim by Fox that they are "fair and balanced" is an intentional spit in the face to those of us who really believe in trying to get the truth.
Newspapers in the United States have always been conservative, and are increasingly so as they become more corporatized and the advertising department bleeds into the news coverage more and more. This is a fact. It is simply blind to claim that this bias is not there; it always has been. I worked for a liberal newspaper in a liberal city and it was visible to me all the time I was there - you can see it in what gets left out.
But the NYT and the WashPost were the best of them for a very long time, and these days I'd say the WP has fallen too far to be in the same league. However, it was the NYT that started using Matt Drudge as "news"; they certainly have a lot to answer for, there, even leaving aside the problem of Gerth et al. mentioned above.
Until Gerth and Isikoff went insane, I would have said the big US dailies had it all over the British press. That's no longer true.
Yes, reporting is hard work, and yes, the NYT has a lot of good people doing that work well. Even during the insanity of the anti-Clinton offensive, the NYT was publishing intelligent, well-researched articles that closely examined the illegal and indefensible activities of Ken Starr, for example.
Nevertheless, it says something about the biases of the NYT that Gerth was allowed to get away with what he did. An able editor would have at least looked at the basics of the Whitewater story and then would not have failed to see that there was nothing in it. The NYT did not do this; Gerth was not sent off to write obituaries. If someone like me, who did not like Clinton, could figure out that something was wrong, surely any objective, unbiased editor could have seen the same thing. That the NYT's editors did not speaks to either incompetence or bias, or maybe both - but certainly not liberal bias. Their very willingness to even discuss impeachment over such a trivial matter certainly does not speak to a lack of conservative bias.
Correction: We put the president in charge of the military to ensure that the military answers to civilian authority, which comes from the consent of the governed.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 1 |
| 2003 | 21 |
Total: 22 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Avedon:
Show all comments by Avedon.