The Note
W A S H I N G T O N June 18—<br> -- Everyone knows there is only one way to look at the 2004 presidential race: if a candidate can win 3 out of 4 of Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, and Ohio, they will win the election.
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But before we can even get to that simple calculus, there is an intermediate question: no Democrat is going to even have a chance to beat President Bush unless he or she can talk clearly to the American people about how a new national economic policy would be better than what four years of Bush-Cheney have produced.
In today's Washington Post , Dan Balz has crafted a front-pager that is quite possibly the most important story written to date about the 2004 presidential election. LINK
Balz's first three paragraphs lay things out cleanly; finish them, and then go read the whole piece:
"President Bush's economic record should present an attractive target for the Democratic presidential candidates. Instead, it has become another source of division, disagreement and, so far at least, a missed opportunity to change public opinion."
"Under Bush, the U.S. economy has lost about 3 million private-sector jobs. The unemployment rate has risen from 4.2 percent to 6.1 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average, despite a recent rebound, remains more than 1,100 points below the levels of January 2001. The president's tax cuts and spending increases have turned budget surpluses into record deficits that some experts say amount to a long-term fiscal crisis."
"In the face of those figures, Democrats appear stymied. The party's congressional wing, operating in the minority, has neither the votes nor the megaphone to carry an economic message, party strategists acknowledge. The party's presidential candidates speak with nine voices, and they have failed to make the economy a consistent and coherent focus of their messages. Polls show that the public neither blames Bush principally for the state of the economy nor recognizes a Democratic alternative."
Of course, every presidential cycle for the last five, The Note always makes certain to be the first to mention the prospect of an October Surprise that completely remakes the election playing field. (Check out what the Googling monkeys found by doing a simple "October Surprise" search: LINK)
So while Balz is probably spot on that only a Democrat who figures out how to talk about the economy has a chance to win, President Bush is a divisive enough figure in the 51-49 Nation to allow the opposition party to dream big dreams right up until election day, no matter how the polls look.
And right now, you would have to say that the most likely October Surprise would involve Iraq or terrorism, and a strong New York Times ' pairing implicitly floats a possibility.
Displaying perfect pitch and some great reporting, the New York Times David Sanger and Carl Hulse write about the political stakes on the WsMD issue, and/but they find things (still) leaning Republican: LINK
"Despite growing questions about whether the White House exaggerated the evidence about Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons, President Bush and his aides believe that the relief that Americans feel about Mr. Hussein's fall in Iraq will overwhelm any questions about the case the administration's built against him, administration officials and Republican strategists say … ."
"One senior Republican Senate aide said Republican lawmakers are trying to protect Mr. Bush on the intelligence issue and that they consider it more of a possible problem for him than members of Congress who supported his appeal for authority to move against Iraq. But they are still skeptical of the intelligence matter's overall potency as a political weapon for the Democrats … ."
"The White House is betting that no Democrats will ultimately want to challenge whether ousting Mr. Hussein was a good decision. 'Every time the Democrats talk about this stuff, they run the risk of having it backfire,' Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster, said. 'Ultimately, voters don't believe that Democrats handle national security and the war on terror as well as they think the Republicans do.'"
Even with all the burdens on Mr. Bush of governing 7 notches right of center in a country that is probably no more than 4 notches right of center, the onus remains on the Democrats, and Knight-Ridder's Steve Thomma has a must-read about how the dizzying number of presidential candidates is causing donkey agita. LINK
"Democrats are starting to wrestle with a thorny problem: how to brush aside three fringe candidates for president who have no realistic chance of winning their party's nomination next year." LINK
"Several state Democratic Party chairmen think the national party should find a way to limit debates to the top six candidates and exclude the three widely considered to make up the bottom tier: Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, former Senator Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois and the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York."
"In interviews before this week's annual meeting of the Association of State Democratic Chairs, several suggested setting a threshold for candidates' admission to debates based on support as measured in public-opinion polls, fund raising or campaign organization in early primary states. They favored doing this even before the first votes are cast next January."
"Other state chairmen disagreed, saying they preferred to keep the debates and the race wide open until Democratic voters start winnowing the field themselves with caucus and primary votes early next year. Any effort to bar candidates would be undemocratic, they said, and would risk alienating rank-and-file party members. Notably, two of the bottom three candidates are African-Americans, one of the party's most loyal constituencies. All three are liberals."
"The desire to thin the field months before voting begins stems from a widely shared perception that none of the nine candidates has emerged as a front-runner. With an unusually large field competing for money and attention, particularly in debates where answers can be limited to 30 seconds, many state chairmen fear that no one's message can break through.
"'Hopefully, the field will thin,' said Mike Erlandson, the state party chairman in Minnesota and host of this week's national meeting. 'I'd like to drop our field to three or four. If we had it down to three or four by this fall, we'd be well served. Some of these candidates have to look at their candidacies seriously. . . . Either you're engaging the electorate or you're not. That's measured with donors and the grass roots.'"
"Florida Chairman Scott Maddox said he thought the bottom three candidates livened debates and energized Democrats. But he hopes there will be a way to exclude poorly performing candidates by early December, when candidates will troop to Orlando for the Florida state party convention. By then, he said, Democrats need to focus on possible winners and can't give precious debate time to those who can't win."
"'When you have nine people in a debate, it's very hard to get anything substantive across,' Maddox said. 'As we get closer, it should wind down to those who have a real shot at being president."
The president is meeting with Senators about Medicare today, and a gaggle of SAOs are speaking to the "grassroots activists" of the National Federation of Independent Business.
Commerce Secretary Don Evans spoke at 8:30 this morning; Homeland Security director Tom Ridge speaks in the early afternoon.
Today, Senator Kerry has two evening events in New Hampshire. Senator Lieberman is in Oklahoma. And Congressman Gephardt remains in California.
ABC 2004: Bush-Cheney re-elect, the money:The AP's Queen of No Nonsense Jennifer Loven gets right to the point, "Headlining the first event of his unannounced campaign for re-election in 2004, President Bush set in motion a two-week, cross-country fund-raising push that advisers expect will bring in as much as all nine Democratic presidential candidates collected in this year's first three months." LINK
The Los Angeles Times' Ed Chen Notes the wholly reasonable Ari-line:
"The expected record-shattering fund-raising drive 'is probably a good indication that the president has a strong amount of support throughout the country,' Fleischer said. 'Otherwise he would not be successful in this endeavor.'" LINK
In The Washington Times ' write-up of President Bush's "$4 million fund-raiser", Bill Sammon includes this item: "Mr. Bush is expected to produce campaign ads that will air next year, just as the Democratic attacks intensify." LINK
Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post 's Mike Allen that those Democratic strategists who think the image of the president raising money will mean more to Americans than the hard work he is seen putting in on the economy day after day are wrong. LINK
Or something like that.
The New York Times ' Dick Stevenson ends his round-up of last night's event with Blaising speed:
"Republicans involved in the Bush campaign said it was too early to decide how to use the money, though they suggested that a bigger portion would go to get-out-the-vote efforts and a smaller part to television commercials than is typical for a presidential race." LINK
"'We believe strongly in the ground game,' said one Republican who is involved in the campaign."
The Boston Globe 's Names column writes about the Monday "hush-hush" Bush fundraiser at the home of Richard Egan. LINK
ABC 2004: Bush-Cheney re-elect:Texas Monthly's Evan Smith has a wonderful interview with George H.W. Bush, 41st President of the United States. It is so worth your time (even if you just have a second now to check out the cover picture and then read it later). LINK
Smith writes, "When he ambles out of his private office, cup of coffee in hand, Mr. Bush seems relaxed and happy, in the mode of a carefree retiree, and he looks like an older version of his trim, preppy self (he turned 79 in June)."
More 41:
"What's interesting, I think, is that the press takes your silence as an indication of differences between you and the president. The fact that you're not speaking out supposedly says something. When a friend of mine like Jimmy Baker or Brent Scowcroft says, 'Well, we ought to do more about the Middle East,' the press says, 'It looks to us like they're reflecting what president number forty-one really feels but doesn't want to say,' which is all bullshit, if you'll excuse the expression."
Smith: We can edit that out.
"You can print it. At this stage in my life, I don't care." [Note to Jamie Gangel: start talking to those GE censors now!]
Smith: Okay.
"It's crazy. If I wanted to say something publicly supportive of the president or different from the president, I'd do it. There was a story recently in the New York Times that implied that there seem to be differences. They picked out some phrase I used [in a speech] up at Tufts. And they acted like, Hey, there's a little running room between the two of them. Well, there wasn't. It certainly wasn't intended that way, whether someone interpreted it that way or not. But that's the big game: What do I really think; what advice do I give our son. It's better to just stay out of that altogether, and I do. I'm not in the advice-giving business."
Note Note: 41 is supposedly not referred to as 41 around his office, but instead as "FLFW," which stands for "Former Leader of the Free World."
Harry Shearer now has enough material to last a lifetime. LINK
The AP's Ramer picked this out of White House Chief of Staff (or, as we like to call him, the SAO-in-Chief) Andy Card's visit to New Hampshire yesterday:
'''I'm not sure the president would agree with me, but one of the best things that happened to President Bush in his quest for the presidency was losing in New Hampshire,' Card said. 'Because out of that defeat he demonstrated real resolve to go forward.''' LINK
'''That resolve created a climate for victory in South Carolina and showed the American people what kind of president he would be. He has proven to be that kind of president.'''
For more, see our
Bush Administration strategy/personality:
section.
For whatever reasons, the White House seems ready to pick an environmental fight over the nomination of Governor Kempthorne to head the EPA, many (but by no means all) of the Washington Post 's sources believe. LINK
The Idaho Statesman's Rocky Barker reports, "Gov. Dirk Kempthorne´s environmental record is under the microscope as he remains on the short list of candidates for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency." LINK
More: "President Bush has not yet offered the job to anyone. Though Kempthorne met last week with White House officials to discuss issues about the job. Others considered in the running are EPA Midwest Administrator Tom Skinner, Utah Gov. Mike Levitt and Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers President Josephine Cooper."
The New York Times ed board wants the president to work harder on national service funding. LINK
ABC 2004: The Invisible Primary:
Adam Nagourney rounds up the Democrats day of proposals and speeches with the big emphasis on John Edwards. LINK
The Wall Street Journal 's Jake Schlesinger gets just a few paragraphs to do both Edwards and Lieberman, and/but it's nice to see Jake on the political beat!
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