|
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:
"I'm not going to let them steal the concept of
patriotism like they stole the election in 2000,"
said Wesley
Clark about the GOP ad.
“It is time to take back America from this
anti-worker, anti-family, anti-democracy president
and his fat-cat friends. Bush has got to go, and
(our union) will show him the door,"
said Gerald W.
McEntee, AFSCME's international president at an
Iowa Howard Dean rally.
"I think he did a good job in the debate when he
exposed Howard's underbelly. No one else had done
that," said Iowa
Governor Tom Vilsack about John Edwards.
"There is only one word for this: disgusting. But
also all too typical for the Bush administration,"
said John
Edwards about the Energy and Medicare bills.
“Perhaps most importantly, the [McGovern-Fraser]
commission changed the rationale for choosing
presidential nominees: Picking a candidate who was
likely to win became less important than choosing
one who represented the views of primary voters
and special-interest groups. Today the legacy
lives on in the insurgent candidacy of
quintessential "blue-state" candidate Howard
Dean,” writes
Mark Stricherz in the Boston Globe about the
origins of today’s divisions in American politics.
The best summary
of the real political test posed by Iraq in the
campaign was offered by Dean himself recently:
"Trying to have it both ways demonstrates neither
strong leadership nor good judgment."
“Now that Gephardt is up on the air with a
response to Dean's baloney, I have a suspicion
that Iowans who have a record of disliking this
kind of campaigning will take Dean up on this
point,” writes
political columnist Thomas Oliphant.
"You seldom get a second chance at this level of
politics," said
Andrew Smith, a political scientist at the
University of New Hampshire. "And a lot of
Democrats were disappointed with how [the 2000]
campaign was run."
Observations on
why Joe Lieberman is not catching on in New
Hampshire.
"As long as George W. Bush is president, the front
lines of the war on terror will be Baghdad and
Kandahar, not Boston and Kansas City,"
Ken Mehlman,
Bush Cheney campaign manager said.
* TODAY’S
OFFERINGS:
*Debate and Medicare in doubt
*The battle for Michigan
*Iowa rally *Dean cuts poor
*Clark not on *Clark can’t win?
*Unlikely help *Likely help
*Dean’s back *What to do?
*Blue and Red states *Old Virginia
*NY Times in depth on Clark
*Edwards by the Times
* CANDIDATES &
CAUCUSES: While the national political
spotlight turns once again onto Iowa as the
Democratic National Committee sponsors a
presidential candidate debate in Des Moines
tomorrow, that spotlight has succumbed to the
shadow of the Senate debate on Medicare. John
Kerry has already announced that he would not
attend the debate -- scheduled for 3 p.m. Monday
at the Polk County Convention Complex -- in order
to join his fellow Mass. Sen. Edward Kennedy in
the Senate debate. According to the
Associated Press, Kerry called the legislation
"a boondoggle for the pharmaceutical industry and
a raw deal" for the nation's elderly.
"That is why I am going to join Senator Ted
Kennedy to lead the filibuster of this
legislation," said Kerry. "Unfortunately that
means I will miss the debate in Iowa. But I think
the people of Iowa will understand that potential
harm of this bill is worth the effort." In addition, Sen. John Edwards
may miss the Iowa debate for the Washington debate
as well. “We hope we won't have to miss the
debate, but we may have to," said Edwards campaign
spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri. The real focus of the debate
will undoubtedly be the exchange between Howard
Dean and Rep. Dick Gephardt. Wesley Clark is sure
to tackle the new GOP ad knocking them for
knocking Bush’s war on terrorism. Kerry has made sure that his
point will be made on the GOP ad in his absence by
putting up an ad in Iowa that starts airing on
Monday. The ad starts with the announcer saying,
"No, Mr. President, America's united against
terror. The problem is, you declared 'mission
accomplished' when you had no plan to win the
peace and handed out billions in contracts to
contributors like Halliburton." Then Kerry appears
onscreen and says: "We can't go it alone in Iraq
We have to share the burden. We shouldn't be
cutting education and closing firehouses in
America while we're opening them in Iraq." The Iowa debate will be carried
live on WHO-TV 13, and rebroadcast at 8 p.m. on
MSNBC. NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw will moderate
the two-hour debate. Six of the nine Democrats in
the race are firm in their participation: Former
Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, retired Army
Gen. Wesley Clark, former Vermont Gov. Howard
Dean, Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, U.S. Rep.
Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and the Rev. Al Sharpton
of New York. Howard Dean and service unions
backing him waved the flag in the heart of the
Motor City state where the founding of America’s
industrial unions happened – most of which support
Rep. Dick Gephardt. Union leaders from SEIU, the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees and the International Union of Painters
and Allied Trades promoted Dean's agenda and
bashed the Bush administration. The three unions,
which have at least 100,000 members in Michigan
and more than 3.1 million nationally, have all
endorsed Dean. Gephardt is making a third round
primary stand in Michigan following his second
round stand in S. Carolina. Dean has yet to create
a strong effort in S. Carolina. Dean’s strategy
may well be to bypass most of the South and look
for a running mate from that region to deliver any
shortfall of delegates to make up the needed
delegates to win the nomination. More and more
Dick Gephardt’s dual appeal from the Missouri
boarder state and Midwest makes him the greatest
threat to Dean’s gaining the Democrat nomination. Gephardt received a setback in
Michigan however, when the Democrat National
Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee rejected
the argument on a 23-2 vote that Internet voting
in Michigan would disadvantage poor and minority
voters in the state’s Feb. 7 primary. Dean’s
campaign is noted for its Internet savvy skills.
Gephardt’s campaign is more noted for its
grassroots efforts in the old style union shoe
leather get out the vote style. Michigan could be
the real testing ground for the old methods of
political campaigning and the new technology
methods of Dean’s campaign. Arizona Democrats used the
Internet in the state's 2000 presidential primary.
The voter turnout was more than double the
previous record with about 40 percent of the
ballots cast by Internet. The Dean Union road show also
visited Iowa where the resolve of American Federal
State & Municipal Employees showed their muscle
according to Reuters:
"We know how to organize," said Jan Corderman,
president of AFSCME Council 61, which encompasses
Iowa. "We know how to mobilize and we know how to
get our candidates elected."
Dean told union members they were a crucial
component of his campaign in Iowa, and drew the
loudest crowd response when he promised not to be
a "Bush Lite" candidate. Dick Gephardt is opening a new
front in his battle with Howard Dean. Gephardt is
accusing Dean of cutting programs to the poor
while governor of Vermont according to the
Des Moines Register story:
"Time after time, when faced with budget
shortfalls, Howard Dean's first and only instinct
was to cut," Gephardt said in an advance copy of
the speech provided to the Des Moines Sunday
Register.
"There is no place for governance without
compassion," the speech said. Wesley Clark has made big
comebacks on national shows from Meet the Press to
Late Night with Dave Letterman but when he showed
up on Face the Nation Sunday he did not pass
muster. He started out fine but fell down when
host Bob Schieffer began asking him about his
differing statements before he began to run for
office and after. Clark bumbled around on how he
could praise President Bush as brilliant for
selecting Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense
and then recently say he would not have hired
Rumsfeld. His best excuse was that he would have
figured out when he interviewed Rumsfeld that he
would not hire him. On a campaign visit to Iowa,
Clark then came up with a fourth reason why
that he was unclear about his position on whether
he would support going to war in Iraq. It was not
a good showing for Clark…
Lee Enterprises Iowa papers are running a
story that analyzes whether Clark made a fatal
mistake in not competing in Iowa. Iowa Sen. Tom
Harkin, who competed against Bill Clinton for the
nomination, believes that it is fatal for Clark:
"I think it was not only a big mistake to skip
Iowa, I think it dooms his campaign," Harkin said.
"It's that serious. I think he made a terrible,
terrible decision, and I told him so."
"Iowa would have been a good testing ground for
him to get out and get his views more
crystallized, more clearly enunciated, and get a
message out there that is consistently strong, and
that won't happen now," Harkin said. "I mean,
there are a lot of questions about Clark and these
flip-flops, the things he's said. There are a lot
of questions."
"If Dean wins Iowa, and Dean wins New Hampshire,
it's over with," Harkin said. "Clark doesn't
understand that." Clark’s response seems to show
his naïve understanding of Presidential politics.
His response was that the Democrat party had the
opportunity to nominate a national candidate
instead of one who won regional support. Sen. John Kerry is getting help
from unlikely places. However, family is family.
Chris Heinz, the 30-year-old son of Kerry's wife,
Teresa Heinz Kerry, has quit his job as a venture
capitalist to work as a fundraiser and surrogate
speaker for his stepfather's campaign for the
Democratic presidential nomination. The
Boston Globe reports that Chris has some
political interests of his own:
Should he run, Heinz said, it would probably be
for a congressional seat in his family's
stronghold in Western Pennsylvania. And it would
be as a Democrat. That would be a switch from his
father, the late Senator John Heinz, a Pittsburgh
Republican who was killed in a collision between
his airplane and a helicopter in 1991. But it
would be in line with his mother's decision this
year to register as a Democrat after concluding
that the GOP had become too conservative and
intolerant. Sen. John Kerry’s wife is on the
campaign trail and the
Boston Globe says she’s impressing the folks
with her abilities to be an interloper and
interlocutor for her husband. She caught one
staunch Republican off guard when he told her not
to bother, he was supporting the guy in the White
House and was a Republican. Teresa Heinz Kerry
replied that she was, too, until December. The
person did not know that she was formerly married
to Senator John Heinz who died in a plane crash
before marrying Sen. Kerry. Her fluency in five
languages as a former interpreter at the United
Nations is also serving her well:
Greeting a man at the counter in Spanish, she is
rebuffed in accented English. Recognizing a native
of Haiti when she hears one, Heinz Kerry switches
seamlessly to French. The disarmed diner smiles
and shakes her extended hand. Howard Dean is back to answering
questions about his back. His campaign released
the following statement regarding the NY Times
article that covered Dean’s controversial medical
deferment from Viet Nam service:
"I was a young man with an unfused vertebrae in my
back that had been diagnosed during high school.
At the time of my military physical, I presented
army doctors with x-rays and a letter from my
physician explaining the condition. On that basis,
the army determined I was ineligible to serve,
classifying me as 1-Y. This injury didn't keep me
from leading a normal life, but it did prevent me
from serving in the Army. Like many Americans at
that time, I was opposed to the war. However,
while I did oppose the war, I fulfilled my
obligation and I told the truth." The
LA Times has a story that details Sen. Joe
Lieberman’s dilemma in efforts to spark his
campaign -- especially in New Hampshire. It is a
sad story of a campaign that is loosing from the
bottom, and the top can’t seem to figure it out.
“It's tough. We're out here day after day, in the
cold, trying, but nothing seems to help," a young
supporter who identified herself as Sandy said at
recent rally. "We don't really know what else to
do." Many have become familiar with
the blue for Democrats and red for Republicans map
that highlighted the election of George Bush. Mark
Stricherz writes in the
Boston Globe about the reasons and offers
discussion of the regional divide that has so
deeply polarized our nation. Those of you who read IPW
on a regular basis will remember our article
following the Iowa Democrat Jefferson Jackson Day
Dinner. That article, as does the Boston Globe
article, discusses the importance of the McGovern
Commission that redesigned the methodology of
choosing presidential candidates. The Globe
article points out:
The McGovern commission, chaired first by Senator
George McGovern and then Congressman Don Fraser of
Minnesota, ended the old boss system of choosing
presidential nominees and helped create the modern
presidential primary system. This led to a class
shift in each party, as affluent liberals gained
more power in the Democratic Party while
working-class conservatives won more say in the
GOP. The
Globe article is an excellent short-course
examination of the intricacies of how the current
system came into being and its effect of
polarizing the Democrat party, making the
Republican party the party of growth and the
Democrat party the party of special interest:
A final effect of the McGovern commission was to
change the rationale of the party's presidential
nomination process. The old boss system focused on
selecting candidates who would win. As John
Bailey, DNC chairman from 1961 to 1968, often
said, "I go with the bird that can fly, not with
the pigeon that can't get off the ground." But the
new primary-based system ends up producing
candidates who appeal not only to primary voters
but also to various ideological interest groups --
not to mention the TV camera. The grand state of Presidents
has a new role in choosing Presidents, according
to the
Washington Post story:
Virginia's primary normally is held too late to
matter, but state party leaders were able to
persuade the General Assembly to schedule it much
earlier this year, and it has quickly become a
battleground.
It is now part of a second wave of states whose
primaries come after the initial contests in Iowa
and New Hampshire. The campaigns turn south and
west from there, with contests in South Carolina,
Oklahoma, Arizona and other states on Feb. 3. A
week later comes Virginia and Tennessee, two
moderate southern states that strategists said
either could coronate a candidate or halt the
momentum of an early winner. If candidates split
the handful of states before the Virginia contest,
which many say is likely, the focus of everyone
would turn to Virginia and Tennessee, party
leaders and campaign strategists said. Most of the major campaigns have
a presence in the state, but Dean has opened a
campaign headquarters and receives the best marks
from the state’s Democrat handicappers. The NY Times has a lengthy
5-page online story on Wesley Clark. Most of it is
familiar by now. However, you have to have
something new in 5 pages:
Always, he thought unconventionally. General
Scales, his classmate, offered this: "They say in
the military that you bring to your boss three
solutions: one that's too hot, one that's too cold
and one that's just right. That's called the
Goldilocks solution. You have an answer and you
steer him to it.
"Wes doesn't recognize the Goldilocks solution.
He'll say: `Well maybe we shouldn't eat any
porridge. And why are there bears in here? And who
is this Goldilocks character wandering around? And
by the way, what is the whole purpose of fairy
tales?' And this drives some people nuts." The
NY Times has a long piece on John Edwards in
its magazine section. Its focus is on Edwards
being timid and patiently waiting for a fight.
Worth reading, if you are fascinated by Edwards. The
Associated Press has a story that has Edwards
listening to his own press releases and believing
he can win the nomination. He sees himself as
being the firewall in the South against Dean. He
has to do better than fourth in Iowa for that to
work:
Edwards does not draw the big crowds that Dean
does, but he also does not make the party elite
nervous with an indignant message against the
Democratic establishment. Edwards is trying to
become Dean's firewall in the South and is subtly
stepping up his case against Dean often without
saying his name.
"We have to have both a candidate and a message
that is inspiring to the American people," Edwards
told voters gathered at a small-town Italian
restaurant west of Des Moines. "All of us are
upset with George Bush. I feel it. My wife turns
the television off whenever he comes on." Howard Dean in a Boston Globe/WBZ-TV
survey of likely voters that has a 5 percent
margin of error show Dean locked at the top with
Sen. John Kerry in his home state of
Massachusetts. In fact poll numbers have Dean at
27 and Kerry at 24. How embarrassing.
* ON THE BUSH
BEAT: The Campaign Manager Ken Mehlman
for Bush Cheney says the campaign is about
security and money in our pockets. Mehlman made
the remarks at the Republican Governors Conference
in Florida, according to the
LA Times:
"Eleven months from now, we will choose between
victory in Iraq or insecurity in America," he
said. "Eleven months from now, we will choose
between more money in the pockets of America's
families or more money in the coffers of the
federal government in Washington. And 11 months
from now, we will choose between a leader of
principle or a politician of protest, of pandering
and of pessimism."
* NATIONAL: While Sen. John Kerry is missing
the debate to be in Washington to fillibuster the
Medicare bill, latest out of Washington is that
the bill being debated Monday will be the Energy
Bill according to
Reuters:
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said he planned
to take another run at a vote on Monday to end the
filibuster. Republicans must persuade at least two
more lawmakers to support ending debate before the
legislation can go to a vote.
Likely targets for arm-twisting included
Midwestern Democrats Evan Bayh of Indiana, Carl
Levin and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and Herbert
Kohl and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, lobbyists
said.
Midwestern Democrats were also under pressure from
farm groups to change sides because the energy
bill promised to double U.S. consumption of
corn-distilled ethanol, a rival fuel additive.
Ethanol is popular among farmers, who see it as a
way to increase their incomes.
Republicans said they were mulling other options.
For example, much of the energy bill might be
tacked on to a massive, catch-all government
spending bill that Congress must pass before it
adjourns for the Thanksgiving holiday. Speaker
of the House Dennis Hastert was on Fox News Sunday
with Tony Snow and asked about the Senate passing
the energy bill:
…I'll tell you what's happened in the Senate,
trial lawyers have held that bill up. You know,
they've filed 135 suits, I think, against MTBE.
Now, MTB is a federally mandated program to reduce
pollution. It also has some problems. But they
were forced to create that product to put into
gasoline. You know, it's another tobacco thing all
over again.
There was a thing in there to hold harmless those
people who were forced to create that product.
Now, I'm not -- I don't have any of those people
in my district, that's not my thing, but there was
a hold-harmless. The Miami Herald reports that
the Republican Governors attending the conference
were not as positive as Bush’s campaign manager
Ken Mehlman who addressed the group:
Even as President Bush's reelection campaign
manager laid out plans for a GOP landslide in
2004, some Republican governors and strategists
worried aloud Saturday that the White House is
underestimating the political dangers of job
losses and the increasingly bloody war in Iraq.
Wrapping up a three-day gathering of the
Republican Governors Association in Boca Raton,
the group's new chairman, Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, said
Bush could have trouble winning his state again as
growing numbers of manufacturing jobs are lost and
moved abroad.
Assessing the nine Democrats vying to challenge
Bush, the two GOP strategists told the governors
that front-runner Howard Dean, the former Vermont
governor, would be a weak opponent.
They said U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri
could pose the greatest threat to Bush by eating
into his Southern base.
[Larry] McCarthy, the consultant, predicted that
Dean would be painted as ``a flaky liberal from a
flaky state.''
click here
Paid
for by the Iowa Presidential Watch PAC
P.O.
Box 171, Webster City, IA 50595
privacy
/ agreement
/
/ homepage
/
search engine |
