Monday, Nov. 15

1. A bad election for old media: It was a bad election for Old Media. More than in any other election in the last half-century, Old Media -- The New York Times and CBS News, joined often but not always by The Washington Post, other major newspapers, ABC News and NBC News -- was an active protagonist in this election, working hard to prevent the re-election of George W. Bush and doing what it could for John Kerry. The problem for Old Media is that it no longer has the kind of monopoly control over political news that it enjoyed a quarter-century ago. And its efforts to help John Kerry proved counterproductive.
   
   Kerry would have been better served, it turned out, by apologizing early on for his 1971 testimony that besmirched all troops in Vietnam. He could have done so in the spring when questioned by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press," but decided not to. Memo to future Democratic nominees: You can no longer rely on Old Media to hush up stories that hurt your cause. Your friends in Old Media don't have a monopoly any more.. (Michael Barone, townhall)
2. Arafat's legacy: Ambivalent? Nonsense. Yasser Arafat was supremely decisive and single-minded. He was not complex and, regarding Israel's fate, never conflicted. Indeed the reason for his success, such as it was -- creating the Palestinian movement from which he derived fortune, fame and reverence -- was precisely his single-mindedness. Not about Palestinian statehood -- if that was his objective, he could have had his state years ago -- but about the elimination of Jewish statehood
   
   Bill Clinton was astonished when Arafat rejected the offer of a West Bank and Gaza state, turning down the opportunity to be its George Washington. Americans never understood that Arafat saw himself completely differently: as an anti-imperialist revolutionary in the mold of Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro. Like them, his motto was "revolution unto victory." Total victory. No half loaf. And given Israel's stubborn refusal to die, Arafat's cause became sustaining the struggle -- the revolution -- indefinitely, almost as an end in itself.
   It is for this reason that, while Arafat's death does open a first chance for peace since he took over the Palestinian movement four decades ago, that chance remains remote. Why? Because the revolution continues. Arafat made sure it would survive him. He created Palestinian nationalism and shaped it in a revolutionary mold that will take years, perhaps decades, to undo. (Charles Krauthammer, wapo)
3. On the trail of Kerry's failed dream (boston globe)
4. The Swift Boat Veterans gather to assess their impact on the campaign. Now, I must confess: My own view is that Jesus would probably not vote at all, given the organized corruption that passes for modern American politics. But the idea that Christ Himself might sit out the 2004 election was apparently not under consideration, so I accepted the invitation--much to the pastor's avowed surprise. As an active Baptist who grew up in the Baptist church, I had no illusions that most of my co-religionists were ardent Democrats, but I rarely turned down any chance to make the case for my own candidacy and that of my fellow party members. After all, wasn't Daniel blessed for braving the lion's den? (brad carson, tnr)
5. NRO summary of campaign: The latest issue of NRO is worth buying for the cover alone. But it also has a look back at the Bush campaign, a story on the impact of the Swifties, Zogby-Bashing, secular-liberal-bashing, Euro-weenie-bashing, lying-liberal-media-bashing… Just buy it already.
   The basic conception of the campaign never changed. Early on, Bush pollster Matthew Dowd explains, “we realized that 90 to 92 percent of the country were aligned, and only about 7 to 8 percent were swing voters or independent voters. That was a big thing for us to notice and model the campaign on.” It dictated two strategic insights. One was that there would have to be an emphasis on the Republican base. After 9/11, the Bush team saw that levels of GOP support for the president were going to stay at historic highs, which would allow them to maximize turnout. “He has stronger support among Republicans than Reagan,” Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman says, “and the Republican base is 10 points bigger than it was then.” Dowd says a presidential campaign traditionally spends 85 to 90 percent of its resources chasing swing voters. The Bush campaign instead roughly split its resources between the base and swing voters. “We knew if we turned out our base, we could split independent voters or lose them slightly, and still win,” Dowd says. (polipundit)
6. "Redneck vote" is a liberal myth: Ten years and another Democratic defeat later, and liberals are at it again. The Angry White Male has been transmuted into the Bigoted Christian Redneck.
   In the postelection analyses, the liberal elite just about lost its mind denouncing the return of medieval primitivism. Maureen Dowd of The New York Times achieved the highest level of hysteria, cursing the GOP for pandering to "isolationism, nativism, chauvinism, puritanism and religious fanaticism" in its unfailing drive to "summon our nasty devils."
   Whence comes this fable? With President Bush increasing his share of the vote among Hispanics, Jews, women (especially married women), Catholics, seniors and even African-Americans, on what does this victory-of-the-homophobic-evangelical rest? Its origins lie in a single question in the Election Day exit poll. The urban myth grew around the fact that "moral values" ranked highest in the answer to Question J: "Which ONE issue mattered most in deciding how you voted for President?"
   
   This does not deter the myth of the Bigoted Christian Redneck from dominating the thinking of liberals and from infecting the blue-state media. So once again they angrily claim the moral high ground, while standing in the ruins of yet another humiliating electoral defeat. (nydailynews)
7. Exit Ashcroft - abused, maligned, but right after all: Remember the hoopla about Ashcroft ordering those topless statues to be covered up? The immediate reaction from the entire press corps, late night comics, and all other "enlightened" people was that Ashcroft was proving he was a prude, a square, a Comstock. I think, in fact, he is probably all of those things. But for reasons that still elude me, many people apparently think we need a real hepcat serving as America's chief law enforcement officer.
   Anyway, the statues were covered up because news organizations just thought it was hilarious to frame pictures of Ashcroft from just the right angle so that he was always depicted alongside a giant bronze boobie or two. Of course, doing such a thing to Janet Reno would have been outrageous, but with Ashcroft the assumption was he should lighten up. So an aide ordered the statues covered because that was the only way to stop it. Politically it was a dumb move, but Ashcroft's prudery wasn't what caused it. The press' giggling obsession with it did
   
   By conventional standards, Ashcroft was among the best attorney generals in American history. Violent crime dropped 27 percent on his watch, reaching a 30-year low. Federal gun crime prosecutions rose 75 percent, and gun crimes dropped - something that should please liberals. By unconventional standards his service was heroic. There hasn't been a single terrorist attack since 9/11, despite all predictions by experts and efforts by terrorists to the contrary. Ashcroft was willing to take gross abuse to do what was necessary. Indeed, even the 9/11 commission certified that the Patriot Act was absolutely necessary to fix many of the problems that led to that awful day. (jonah goldberg, townhall)
8. The Architects of Defeat: Twelve days before the election, James Carville stood in a Beverly Hills living room surrounded by two generations of Hollywood stars. After being introduced by Sen. John Kerry’s daughter, Alexandra, he told the room — confidently, almost cockily — that the election was in the bag.
   “If we can’t win this damn election,” the advisor to the Kerry campaign said, “with a Democratic Party more unified than ever before, with us having raised as much money as the Republicans, with 55% of the country believing we’re heading in the wrong direction, with our candidate having won all three debates, and with our side being more passionate about the outcome than theirs — if we can’t win this one, then we can’t win shit! And we need to completely rethink the Democratic Party.”
   Well, as it turns out, that’s exactly what should be done. But instead, Carville and his fellow architects of the Democratic defeat have spent the last week defending their campaign strategy, culminating on Monday morning with a breakfast for an elite core of Washington reporters.
   
   But shouldn’t it have been obvious that Iraq and the war on terror were the real story of this campaign? Only these Washington insiders, stuck in an anachronistic 1990s mind-set and re-fighting the ’92 election, could think that the economy would be the driving factor in a post-9/11 world with Iraq in flames. That the campaign’s leadership failed to recognize that it was no longer “the economy, stupid,” was the tragic flaw of the race.
   In conversations with Kerry insiders over the last nine months, I’ve heard a recurring theme: that it was Shrum and the Clintonistas (including Greenberg, Carville and senior advisor Joe Lockhart) who dominated the campaign in the last two months and who were convinced that this election was going to be won on domestic issues, like jobs and healthcare, and not on national security.
   As Tom Vallely, the Vietnam War veteran whom Kerry tapped to lead the response to the Swift boat attacks, told me: “I kept telling Shrum that before you walk through the economy door, you’re going to have to walk through the terrorism/Iraq door. But, unfortunately, the Clinton team, though technically skillful, could not see reality — they could only see their version of reality. And that was always about pivoting to domestic issues. As for Shrum, he would grab on to anyone’s strategy; he had none of his own.”
   
   Just how misguided the campaign’s leadership was can be seen in the battle that took place between Vernon Jordan, the campaign’s debate negotiator, and Cahill and Shrum. “They were so opposed,” someone close to the negotiations told me, “to Jordan’s accepting the first debate being all about foreign policy, in exchange for a third debate, that Jordan and Cahill had a knock down, drag out argument. It was so bad that Jordan had to send her flowers before they could make up.” It was a familiar strategic battle with Jordan siding with those who believed that unless Kerry could win on national security, he would not win period.
   Behind the scenes, former President Clinton also kept up the drumbeat, telling Kerry in private conversations right to the end that he should focus on the economy rather than Iraq or the war on terror, and that he should come out in favor of all 11 state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage — a move that would have been a political disaster for a candidate who had already been painted as an unprincipled flip-flopper. Sure, Kerry spoke about Iraq here and there until the end of the race (how could he not?), but the vast majority of what came out of the campaign, including Kerry’s radio address 10 days before the election, was on domestic issues
   
   As at almost every other turn, the campaign had chosen caution over boldness. Why did these highly paid professionals make such amateurish mistakes? In the end, it was the old obsession with pleasing undecided voters (who, Greenberg argued right up until the election, would break for the challenger) and an addiction to polls and focus groups, which they invariably interpreted through their Clinton-era filters. It appears that you couldn’t teach these old Beltway dogs new tricks. It’s time for some fresh political puppies. (ariannaonline)

Humor

• Blue State Blues as Coastal Parents Battle Invasion of Dollywood Values: "I'm not sure where we went wrong," says Ellen McCormack, nervously fondling the recycled paper cup holding her organic Kona soy latte. "It seems like only yesterday Rain was a carefree little boy at the Montessori school, playing non-competitive musical chairs with the other children and his care facilitators."
  "But now..." she pauses, staring out the window of her postmodern Palo Alto home. The words are hesitant, measured, bearing a tale of family heartbreak almost too painful for her to recount. "But now, Rain insists that I call him Bobby Ray."
  Even as her voice is choked with emotion, she summons an inner courage -- a mother's courage -- and leads me down the hall to "Bobby Ray's" bedroom, for a firsthand glimpse at the psychic devastation that claimed her son.
  She opens the door to a reveal a riot of George Jones CDs, reflective 'mudflap mama' stickers, empty foil packs of Red Man, and U.S. Marine recruiting posters. In the middle of the room: a makeshift table made from a utility cable spool, bearing a the remains of a gutted catfish.
  "This used to be all Ikea," she says, rocking on heels between heaved sobs. "It's too late for us. Maybe it's not to late for me to warn others." (iowahawk.typepad)