Monday, July 26, 2004
Get in While You Can, If You Can
Make no mistake: The people who were The Enemy in the Summer of Howard Dean, the gutless centrists of the DLC, the people who seem to think that the Democrats' best hope is to nominate Bush Lite and hope people vote for him by mistake, are in control of the Democratic Convention. If you want evidence, check this: Michael Moore has been denied credentials to attend the convention's official events. God forbid anybody should be let into the damn building who would upset the decorum with unseemly passion or progressive ideas.
A story appeared over the weekend regarding F9/11's potential impact on the election. The headline was "Voters Seen Little Swayed by Fahrenheit 9/11," but if you read the story, you can see that it's not much of a story--certainly not the vindication conservative critics of the film will make it out to be. A small percentage of the total population has seen it, the vast majority of viewers were Democrats, and the tiny percentage of Republicans who saw it were largely unswayed. None of this is especially surprising, given how polarized the electorate is, and given the number of people whose minds are irrevocably made up about the election. Reuters finally concluded that the film's major effect will be to energize the liberal Democratic base. If so, that's far from proving the film is meaningless in terms of the race. This election is going to be won by the candidate who best energizes his base and gets them to turn out. And the election is going to be razor-close anyhow--so despite the Reuters surmise, it's seems possible that Fahrenheit 9/11 could provide the margin of victory for Kerry if he wins. Neverthess, Moore gets no love from the official Democratic apparatchiks, and will have to be content with attending other events surrounding the convention, and not getting into the Fleet Center itself.
Of course, knowing what I know about Boston, it'll be half a miracle if any of the delegates actually get into the convention. One of the standard stories in the runup to any political convention is the one about how bad the traffic is around the convention site. That's especially true this year, when security is so tight. Yet when it comes to the traffic being worse than usual in Boston this week, I wonder how they can tell. On a normal day, Boston has the most hideous traffic of any major city I've ever visited. Off the main thoroughfares downtown is a rabbit warren of narrow, traffic-choked, one-way streets. And the main thoroughfares are no picnic--for the last several years they've been burying a major central expressway (a project which is well on the way to completion now). The last time we drove in Boston, the detours necessitated by the project were as counter-intuitive as any I've ever seen, and it took us three laps around one of them and nearly an hour to find a hotel that would have been, under normal circumstances, maybe two minutes from the expressway. Worst of all is getting out of Logan Airport--which is on a landfilled area that used to be ocean. The only way out is via a tunnel, and there's no such thing as a quick exit. So the last time we visited the family on Cape Cod, we flew into Providence, Rhode Island--and we were halfway to our destination in the time it would have taken us to reach the expressway from Logan Airport. It's a good thing local boy John Kerry is the nominee--at least he won't get lost on the way to the Fleet Center. Somebody better keep an eye on John Edwards, though.
This morning on The Hits Just Keep On Comin': Taxicab Confessions.
Make no mistake: The people who were The Enemy in the Summer of Howard Dean, the gutless centrists of the DLC, the people who seem to think that the Democrats' best hope is to nominate Bush Lite and hope people vote for him by mistake, are in control of the Democratic Convention. If you want evidence, check this: Michael Moore has been denied credentials to attend the convention's official events. God forbid anybody should be let into the damn building who would upset the decorum with unseemly passion or progressive ideas.
A story appeared over the weekend regarding F9/11's potential impact on the election. The headline was "Voters Seen Little Swayed by Fahrenheit 9/11," but if you read the story, you can see that it's not much of a story--certainly not the vindication conservative critics of the film will make it out to be. A small percentage of the total population has seen it, the vast majority of viewers were Democrats, and the tiny percentage of Republicans who saw it were largely unswayed. None of this is especially surprising, given how polarized the electorate is, and given the number of people whose minds are irrevocably made up about the election. Reuters finally concluded that the film's major effect will be to energize the liberal Democratic base. If so, that's far from proving the film is meaningless in terms of the race. This election is going to be won by the candidate who best energizes his base and gets them to turn out. And the election is going to be razor-close anyhow--so despite the Reuters surmise, it's seems possible that Fahrenheit 9/11 could provide the margin of victory for Kerry if he wins. Neverthess, Moore gets no love from the official Democratic apparatchiks, and will have to be content with attending other events surrounding the convention, and not getting into the Fleet Center itself.
Of course, knowing what I know about Boston, it'll be half a miracle if any of the delegates actually get into the convention. One of the standard stories in the runup to any political convention is the one about how bad the traffic is around the convention site. That's especially true this year, when security is so tight. Yet when it comes to the traffic being worse than usual in Boston this week, I wonder how they can tell. On a normal day, Boston has the most hideous traffic of any major city I've ever visited. Off the main thoroughfares downtown is a rabbit warren of narrow, traffic-choked, one-way streets. And the main thoroughfares are no picnic--for the last several years they've been burying a major central expressway (a project which is well on the way to completion now). The last time we drove in Boston, the detours necessitated by the project were as counter-intuitive as any I've ever seen, and it took us three laps around one of them and nearly an hour to find a hotel that would have been, under normal circumstances, maybe two minutes from the expressway. Worst of all is getting out of Logan Airport--which is on a landfilled area that used to be ocean. The only way out is via a tunnel, and there's no such thing as a quick exit. So the last time we visited the family on Cape Cod, we flew into Providence, Rhode Island--and we were halfway to our destination in the time it would have taken us to reach the expressway from Logan Airport. It's a good thing local boy John Kerry is the nominee--at least he won't get lost on the way to the Fleet Center. Somebody better keep an eye on John Edwards, though.
This morning on The Hits Just Keep On Comin': Taxicab Confessions.
