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Iowa 2004 presidential primary precinct caucus and caucuses news">
Iowa 2004 presidential primary precinct caucus and caucuses news, reports
and information on 2004 Democrat and Republican candidates, campaigns
and issues Iowa
Presidential Watch's
IOWA DAILY REPORT
* QUOTABLE:
“Journalist/wife/mother/genius Susan Feeney has
long taught us: if someone can't run a smoothly
operating presidential campaign, how can they be
expected to run the country?”
-- ABC’s The Note.
Debate quotes: "Never forget. Never
forget pundits and polls don't pick presidents.
People pick presidents, and that's what's going to
happen," Hillary
Clinton said. "We need to offer
answers, not just anger,"
said John Kerry.
"Solutions not just slogans. Don't just send them
a message, send them a president." "If all we are in 2004 is
a party of anger, we can't win,"
John Edwards
said. "I'm the only person up here who
hasn't spent most of his adult life in politics." "Now we're stuck in a
quagmire that's going to take more than duct tape
to fix," said
Carol Moseley Braun. "Every candidate is ready
to go forward to create a new America,"
said Dennis
Kucinich "Like father, like son,
four years and another Bush is done,"
said Dick
Gephardt. "I think the country is
beginning to change on this issue. I think the
country is now realizing the price we're going to
have to pay for a very rash decision,"
said Howard
Dean. "We have to do more than
criticize, we have to have a vision of where we
want to lead this country. He has no vision for a
future that will make America safer and stronger
and smarter and richer and better and fairer,"
said Hillary
Clinton. "George Bush thought he
could play dress up on an aircraft carrier and
stand up in front of a sign that said 'mission
accomplished.' He thought we wouldn't notice that
the troops are dying,"
said John Kerry.
"Senator Clinton's
ability to outshine and overshadow the Democrats
running for president in the Iowa caucuses is
further evidence of the weakness of the Democrat
field,"
Republican National Committee spokesman David
James said. You know, the real motto
for this Administration should be “no special
interest left behind.” America, it’s time to get
real. Instead of George Bush’s raw deal, we need a
real deal that stands up to the powerful
interests. That’s built on people and products not
privileges and perks. And that closes every
loophole for the Benedict Arnold companies that
ship jobs overseas,”
said John Kerry.
* TODAY’S
OFFERINGS:
They came to the big show
The Doctor was in
Dean’s no Southerner
Kerry pushing in New Hampshire
Clark in depth
Candidates beat up corporate agriculture
Gephardt goes international
Edwards the lawyer
No Florida straw poll
Sideshow
Democrats win Louisiana
* CANDIDATES &
CAUCUSES: The Iowa Democrat Party’s
Jefferson Jackson Day Dinner has been a big deal
since Gary Hart made it so with then-candidate
George McGovern. It still is. The nation and the
world’s media came to the show that featured the
ultimate star of the Democrats’ -- Hillary
Clinton. The event ranks as the end of the
preliminaries to the winnowing process. After Iowa
there will not be as many candidates as before
Iowa. After New Hampshire, there will be even
fewer. The whole thing is likely to be over by
March and the Democrat presumptive nominee will be
recognized. The fear was that Hillary would
make the Democrat candidates look small and the
fear was justified. Despite the Democrats’ best
efforts -- from being macho playing hockey with
firefighters (John Kerry) to handling a medical
emergency (Dr. Howard Dean) -- they failed to
resuscitate any political oxygen into their own
campaigns. Interview after interview had
Democrats attending the event saying that if
Hillary were in the race that they would support
her over the current candidate they were working
for. Hillary’s appearance -- rather than affirm
the quality of the Democrat candidates -- affirmed
that they are all second-rate choices. Sen. John Kerry may have lost
the most from the event because he is the
candidate in the most desperate need to make gains
before he falls off the charts and leaves an
opening for John Edwards to move up to third
place. Kerry’s performance was calculated to gain
attention and make him stand out. Kerry’s problem,
as most agree, is that he voted for the war and he
shares the same constituency as Howard Dean who
has captured the anti-war sentiment. Kerry, who
even staged a photo opportunity by playing hockey
with firefighters whose union has endorsed him,
tried to attack the President’s war performance
and bring attention to his war hero status. His
reference to mission not accomplished in his
speech was just one such example. However, he did
not move to center stage in the nation’s or Iowa’s
attention despite his best try. There is a photo in the Des
Moines Register showing Howard Dean in the middle
of the street in downtown Des Moines waving to the
camera as 47 yellow school busses make a line
behind him. Iowans filled 43 of the 47 busses
headed to the event. John Edwards has been trying to
move ahead of Kerry, but his point of attack at
the event was Dean and the Dean-crowd’s anger.
This from the candidate who says what Americans
want is a positive candidate. Edwards must remain
viable before he gets to S. Carolina where there
now exist tangible efforts by both Al Sharpton and
Wesley Clark to cut into the black and Southern
mantle of Edwards’ claim to the South’s
representative. Dick Gephardt remains the person
who is shaping up to be the alternative candidate
to Dean. This is in part because they both pull
from different spectrums of the Democrat Party
unlike Dean and Kerry. However, the question is
whether the other candidates such as Kerry and
Kucinich, et al, can stay in long enough for
Gephardt to be able to whittle away at Dean
without all of those who share Dean’s slice of the
philosophy of the Democrat Party to coalesce
behind Dean. Gephardt took a different
approach to the event his supporters were
encouraged not to attend this year's Jefferson -
Jackson dinner. Rather, they were encouraged to
stand outside. It was part of the campaigns
door-to-door campaign in the neighborhoods of
Iowa. Their goal is to knock on over 100,000
doors. Then, supporters rallied outside the
auditorium prior to the dinner. "I have differences with some of
the other candidates on trade, on health care and
on Medicare, and I have talked about some of those
in the past," Mr. Gephardt said. "Tonight, I am
going to stay to the themes that I have been on,
that I can beat George Bush, why he must be
replaced and the big ideas I have." Howard Dean came upon a scene
that made his true profession kick into gear.
Dean, showing up for a rally before last night’s
Jefferson Jackson Day Dinner, was greeted to the
scene of Jake Edwards, 49, of Spencer, who
collapsed and was having a seizure. The good
doctor helped stabilize Edwards (who is a Dean
field staff worker) before attending the rally at
Des Moines Central Campus. Edwards was taken to
the hospital and released. The Washington Times has a story
that affirms the fears expressed by Sen. Zell
Miller concerning Howard Dean not playing well in
the South. The story interviews a number of state
Democrat Party chairs:
"I don't think he plays that well in North
Carolina. I don't think he will play well in the
South, period," she said in an interview. "I'm
speaking personally, but I don't think he knows a
lot about the South. His remark about going after
voters in pickups with Confederate flags rubbed
people the wrong way here."
Mrs. [North Carolina Democratic Chairwoman
Barbara] Allen, who is supporting North Carolina
Sen. John Edwards, says she thinks the party needs
to pick a "more centrist" candidate for its
nominee. The Manchester
Union Leader story tells of how Sen. John
Kerry is going to be spending more time in New
Hampshire: Kerry has spent more than 17 days in
New Hampshire in the past month, and plans another
seven days in the state in the next two weeks,
according to his campaign. The story also
speculates about how this will mean more negative
attacks by Kerry on Dean. The
Boston Globe is running an in depth profile on
Wesley Clark in its Sunday edition:
Clark made a crucial decision midway through his
West Point education. He quit the swim team to
join the debate team, which offered him not only
an intellectual avenue he craved but also a way to
get off campus on many weekends. His debate coach,
William Taylor, vividly recalls receiving a
complaint one day from Captain Norman Schwarzkopf,
then a West Point instructor who would go on to
command the first Gulf War.
"I don't like what you are doing with cadet Wes
Clark," Schwarzkopf said, according to Taylor. "He
is not competing with varsity athletics. He is not
socializing with the rest of his classmates. He is
off doing debate tournaments. You are undermining
the professionalism of this young man."
"I don't know who you are," Taylor told
Schwarzkopf, and after defending the virtues of
debate, hung up the phone. Schwarzkopf could not
be reached for comment, but Taylor said the
incident illustrates the tensions that would
follow Clark throughout his career. The Democrat candidates
attending an agricultural forum sponsored by the
League of Rural Voters, the candidates urged a
federal ban on the ownership of livestock by large
meat-packers and touted their plans to bring back
jobs to small towns Dick Gephardt has been running
ads in Iowa for some time announcing his
opposition to packer ownership of livestock. "If
we lose the individual farmer and all of
agriculture ends up in the hands of two or three
corporations, we're going to lose this country,"
Gephardt said. Howard Dean used the fact he was
Governor of the small state of Vermont to make his
connection with the group. "Agriculture is not
just about farming, it's about small-town rural
life," said Dean. John Kerry staid on the theme
that everything is going to the rich and it has to
be stopped. “Two-thirds of farm subsidies that go
to the four largest agriculture firms instead of
individual farmers.” He also said that subsidies
couldn’t continue to be the answer to low
commodity prices. Dick Gephardt is offering his
approach to Globalization and it’s a lot like a
government union regulated economy. With jobs
being the most important issue before the voters,
we are sure to hear more about his proposal.
Anyone wanting to learn more can go to his
website and go through several documents and
links. Here is the brief version: How It Works:
·
The IMW would be different for each
country based on development level and ability to
support that standard of living. Clearly, the
level of the minimum wage in Pakistan would be
different than that in Spain. The goal is to
promote the growth of the middle class, rising
wages and living standards, not to undermine them
by making nations un-competitive. The IMW
represents a floor below which companies will not
be able to operate.
·
Negotiations for the IMW will take
place at the World Trade Organization in close
consultation with the United Nations International
Labor Organization (ILO). The WTO is the
appropriate venue for negotiations because
adoption of the IMW is a trade issue and will have
enormous impact on member nations. Additionally,
the WTO has enforcement leverage that the ILO does
not and it is vital that the IMW be enforced.
·
In conjunction with negotiations at
the WTO, the various international financial
institutions (IFIs - World Bank, International
Monetary Fund and other organizations) will be
integrated in the process of developing the
necessary infrastructure to support the IMW. For
example, a nation must increase the education
level of its workforce to support an increasing
standard of living. Accordingly, support for
enhancing a nation's education system must go
hand-in-hand with the maintenance and gradual
increase in that nation's IMW. Other
"infrastructure" needs such as health care, must
also be part of an overall development approach.
The United States, one of the largest contributors
to the IFIs should use its voice, vote and
substantial leverage to promote the development
of, agreement to, and implementation of the IMW.
·
The benefits of further trade
liberalization should be tied to the development
of the IMW and its enforcement. The promise of
trade is to raise standards of living - that means
not only the quality of life, but also helping to
create consumers who will purchase the products of
all nations. Right now, the United States is left
holding the short straw - our trade expansion
efforts have disproportionately aided our
competitors at the cost of jobs and our standard
of living. The
NY Times has a story on John Edwards’ new
book, "Four Trials," to be published by Simon &
Schuster on Dec. 1. The Times article highlights
Edwards’ problems of running for office and being
a lawyer:
The accusation that he is sympathetic to a special
interest is particularly irksome to Mr. Edwards,
who has staked much of his campaign on being a
Washington outsider. He has rejected donations
from lobbyists and political action committees,
though he accepts them from the relatives of
lobbyists and from the employees of lobbying
firms.
But Mr. Edwards has had a lot of practice
responding to assertions that he is simply a
greedy lawyer. His opponent in his 1998 Senate
race, Senator Lauch Faircloth, the Republican
incumbent, said in one attack advertisement that
Mr. Edwards "makes millions suing people." Florida Democratic Party leaders
on Sunday rejected the suggestion of a
presidential straw poll in exchange for a
commitment from all nine candidates to attend next
month's state convention. "One person is going to
love it and eight people are going to hate it,"
Florida Chairman Scott Maddox said. "It is costly,
it is expensive, and it takes them out of the
delegate race that they're currently in. And if
they lose at this stage, it is the death knell for
several."
* THE CLINTON
COMEDIES: The one person who almost
received more attention than Hillary Clinton
Saturday night at the Jefferson Jackson Day Dinner
in Iowa was Bob Kunst, the Florida man who has
launched the www.hillarynow.com website. He had
some of the best lines that he delivered outside
the Jefferson Jackson Day Dinner. He said he wants
to "shake things up all the way to the rafters"
and get Iowans to vote for Hillary Clinton in the
Iowa Caucuses. Kunst says he formed the online
effort because he feels "our country is in great
danger and she's the only one that can get Bush
out of there." Lots of cameras and reporters
covered this sideshow.
*NATIONAL: Republicans’ hope for a
triffecta were dashed again in Louisiana. History
repeated itself when Democrat Kathleen Blanco
defeated Republican Bobby Jindal to become
Louisiana's first woman governor. During the
midterm elections last year (after sweeping the
country in the 2000 elections) the Republicans
lost the runoff in Louisiana for the Senate seat.
Now, after winning most of the Southern Governors
races, they once again lost in Louisiana. Jindal worked for Republican
Gov. Mike Foster as secretary of health and
hospitals. Davis could not run for re-election
because of term limits. Blanco scored points in
the campaign's final days with attacks on Jindal's
performance as health secretary. His policies, she
said, caused 65,000 people to lose Medicaid
coverage. This, plus Blanco’s Cajun heritage,
contributed to her 52 percent victory.
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