Saturday, October 30, 2004
Josh Marshall Slaps Me One Upside the Head
The State Department reportedly asked the government of Qatar, which finances the Al-Jazeera channel, not to release the Bin Laden tape yesterday. No reason is given as to why, which is pretty interesting. You might think that the administration would want the tape out if they thought it would help them politically, but remember that the State Department has been on the outs with the rest of the administration practically from the beginning. In that light, their request to Qatar, if it was an attempt to keep the tape from roiling the presidential election, is one of the more statesmanlike acts we've seen from the Bush Administration.
Many of the commentators who examined the tape yesterday cautioned against assuming it was automatically good for Bush and bad for Kerry. However: Billmon, making a rare appearance back in the blogosphere, is one who was not sowing caution.
Quote of the Day: Remarking on the wars his administration has fought so far, Dick Cheney says, "Afghanistan and Iraq will be studied for years for their brilliance." And they call Kerry an airchair general?
The State Department reportedly asked the government of Qatar, which finances the Al-Jazeera channel, not to release the Bin Laden tape yesterday. No reason is given as to why, which is pretty interesting. You might think that the administration would want the tape out if they thought it would help them politically, but remember that the State Department has been on the outs with the rest of the administration practically from the beginning. In that light, their request to Qatar, if it was an attempt to keep the tape from roiling the presidential election, is one of the more statesmanlike acts we've seen from the Bush Administration.
Many of the commentators who examined the tape yesterday cautioned against assuming it was automatically good for Bush and bad for Kerry. However: Billmon, making a rare appearance back in the blogosphere, is one who was not sowing caution.
By plastering his face over every TV in America for the next couple of days, [Osama has] given Bush a priceless gift--a boogeyman with which to frighten that last sliver of undecided voters into rejecting change. Al Qaeda, it seems, has evolved into one hell of an effective 527 organization.I'm afraid that's what I think, too--but Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo would like to smack Billmon and me as follows:
Whether this OBL tape represents no-bump, a bump, or something more damaging than a bump, I don't know. But reactions can dictate and shape outcomes, especially in such a context as this where perception is the essence of the matter. . . .Recommended Reading: Kos on vote trading, which some voters are doing in safe Kerry states to allow Nader voters to vote their consciences by proxy. His advice: Don't. To win the post-November 3 battle for legitimacy, we need every Kerry vote we can get. Friends don't let friends vote for Nader, anyplace.
The Bush campaign is trying to use the OBL tape to slap the Kerry campaign around, knock them off their stride, and argue that for Kerry now even to mention anything about the president's failure to bag bin Laden is the height of shamefullness. . . .
If the Kerry campaign falls for this it would be the height of foolishness. In itself the bin Laden video is not a matter of controversy. What the president's campaign is trying to do is either goad the Kerry campaign into three days of passivity in the run-up to the election or fuss up a debate about the supposed outrageousness of Kerry's faulting the president for allowing bin Laden to remain at large. The Kerry folks should not play into that trap. The answer is to keep to the game-plan and remain on the offensive.
The foreign policy focus of the Kerry campaign has long been the president's failure to maintain the focus on al Qaida, as evidenced by his failure to capture bin Laden and dismantle his network. To abandon that message now would be insanity.
If you're a Democrat and you notice your fellow Democrats dipping into these spasms of fecklessness and weak-kneedism, as I've described above, I strongly encourage you to slap them around a few times and tell them to get a hold of themselves. If you're experiencing such spasms, by all means, slap yourself a few times and tell yourself the same thing.
More than 95% of the electorate has already made up its mind. This is all about how those last few percentage points of the electorate break. And that will be determined by which campaign holds the initiative, stays on the offensive for the next three days and who can mobilize their forces to win this on the ground.
Kerry, the candidate, must be forward-looking in these final days. But his surrogates should be hammering the president for his failure to capture bin Laden at Tora Bora and pressing the factual case that his campaign has tried so hard to deny. On hitting the indisputable failures of the president there should be no let up.
At every turn, toughness and fight has been the subtext of this election. Who has it and who doesn't. The Bush message is that all of the president's mistakes pale in comparison to the fact of his toughness and steely resolve. The conceit of the Kerry campaign and the Democrats is that they're every bit as tough as the president and his party, and more.
Now's the time for them to show it.
Quote of the Day: Remarking on the wars his administration has fought so far, Dick Cheney says, "Afghanistan and Iraq will be studied for years for their brilliance." And they call Kerry an airchair general?
