Decision 2004

Howard Dean wants your help deciding which of three goofy TV spots to air in Wisconsin, a state he must win to stay in the race.

Your choices are Mike ("I'm a stockbroker and frankly I'd like to take back my country."); Max ("I'm a claims adjuster and I'm taking back my country."); or
Steve ("I just got laid off two weeks ago. I'm taking my country back.")

Comments

[Jason Ligon]

Thoreau,

It comes from the basis of Democratic platforms. The planks of the platform are redistribution and stronger central government. They argue that stronger central government is needed for the good of all, but if you abandon redistribution, I don't think you are really a Democrat.

The essence of being a Democrat is using the power of government to elevate people, right? I think that Dems have painted themselves into the Statist party, with or without help from libertarians.

[Jason Ligon]

asdf:

What is your take on 're-regulating the economy?'

[The Wama]

Highway,

Yes, Dean's campaign is floundering, but he still is preferable to Kerry, in my mind anyway, for reasons I won't waste my time repeating. Anyway, I'm a bit relieved, as I would have had to do the awkard Vote Dean OR Libertarian pitch, now I can focus on supporting the LP.

By the way, your Apple insult is ill-informed as well. Virginia tech just built the 3rd fastest supercomputer in the world out of PowerMac G5s, extremely inexpensively, relative to the other top performers. IBM chips are making Apple quite a performer. Oh, and don't forget the iPod either.

[garym]

Regarding adsf's rewrite of history: Dean made his comments about the national ID in 2002, not 1997. Dean made what he called a "call to action," declared that "STATES must lead" (his caps), and stated that "I strongly support" increased federal funding to promote the development of state "smart cards."

But in asdf's world, one need only say that Dean is "identified with blogging" to prove that he's "pro-cyber-privacy" and refute such details as facts and direct quotations.

[asdf]

jason:

politically, my take on re-regulation is that it was a disaster for dean, just like rescinding "every dime" of the bush tax cuts. being pro-regs was even more poisonous because he identified big media as a target. big media promptly responded by taking the piss out of his campaign.

as a policy, i'm anti-regs, but that opinion, informed only by my having self-identified as libertarian, is i think only as nuanced as the anti-public-education position of a member of the christian right.

i have faith that "the economy" would perform better in a free market, but i don't believe we'll ever acheive anything approaching that in my lifetime -- without an intervening nuclear holocaust, which would ostensibly wipe the slate clean.

in the meanwhile, i don't personally identify with the fortunes of any potentially-regulable entities (i'm not invested), and i try to enjoy the products of the non-evil, non-soul-crushing, non-corporate economy, which for the most part escapes "regulation" simply by being small.

reality is that the economy IS regulated. deregulation of certain industries is tantamount to government subsidy of those industries, as against all other players.

in any minimalist-government picture short of the state of nature, there will inevitably be government-run courts of law settling disputes between individuals (investors) and collectives of individuals (corporations), where the individual claims to have been defrauded out of his money in some get rich quick scheme concocted by the collective. whether the government adjudicator rules for the corporation ("caveat emptor") or the investor ("thou shalt not bear false witness"), there will be some involvement of the governmental authority, and government coersion in the enforcement of its decision.

[asdf]

you know, there's a reason i advocate on dean's behalf anonymously. ahem.

okay, garym, you got me. it was more recent than i thought. i'm embarrassed, but i would suggest that perhaps dean has come around. an excerpt from his most recent speech, critical of the bush administration:

"When they push efforts to slice away further at the Bill of Rights, threatening a woman's right to choose, rolling back civil rights, and giving government greater power to search our homes, read our mail, monitor our Internet use, who will stand up for you and for American values?"

so obviously the guy has backed away from the pro-big-brother stance, right?

[p mac]

I supported Dean early, because he was saying many of the right things.
On health care: "Can't afford a Cadillac"
On Iraq: there's no decent strategic reason for this war.
On the defecit: Maybe we need to threaten a balanced budget amendment just to force "Washington" to do the right thing.

Then the Dean campaign actually started making advertisements, and we got incredible junk like this.

I mean, never mind the details; why would you want to compare yourself to a brand with 3% market penetration? I guess that's what it means to be Governor or Vermont in the first place...

[Robert Hutchinson]

an excerpt from his most recent speech, critical of the bush administration: [...] so obviously the guy has backed away from the pro-big-brother stance, right?

When making a list of things that help one identify what a politician's actual positions on the issues are, "what he says his positions are" is neck and neck with "random samples of background radiation".

[Overlord]

XRay;

Sad, but true.

[garym]

Perhaps he should run his "Privacy is the new urban myth" persona, telling us why he wants everyone, including kids, to be issued a "Smart Card" for identification?

[Jean Bart]

Dean is America's Pol Pot? 🙂

[mk]

JB:

Dean=American's going to pot.

[Jason Ligon]

asdf:

Is Kerry's platform to the left of Deans?

[Highway]

I dunno, I couldn't deciding between the Ellen Feis ad and the Janie Porche ad. She did save christmas, after all.

No, I think it's pretty fitting that Dean is ripping off Apple ads, since Macintosh is the complete waste of time underdog of the computer world. Fits right in.

[mtc]

That has to be the oddest music ever played in the background of a campaign ad. Like highway said, what the fuck are they trying to sell us? A Mac? Or maybe a Saturn? Certainly not the potential leader of the free world. Its design seemed to be to get us feeling whimsical, so we'd go out on a limb and vote for howard, in an impulsive, why-the-hell-not, caucusing frenzy.

[bigbigslacker]

I like how in the "Mike" commercial the guy (Mike?) says he likes Dean's position on gun control, without actually stating what that position is. Pretty smart, eh? The average joe democrat may not already know that Dean's position is pro-gun, so why spill the beans. I wonder if Mike likes Dean's position on mandatory euthanasia for those over 59?

[asdf]

jason:

i'm not totally up on every angle, but, from what i've read, it appears that yes, aside from the fact that kerry served in the military (which some people (democratic voters, especially, banking on this perception as proof of kerry's "electability") read as "not liberal"), kerry is further left than dean.

based on his tenure as governor of vermont, dean is a bona fide "fiscal conservative," whatever that means. (when he makes universal health care a priority, he admits that means either higher taxes or budget cuts elsewhere, or else it won't happen. (which means, given a hostile republican congress, it won't happen.) kerry, on the other hand, seizes on the democratic zeitgeist of universal health care and just promises it, along with a middle class tax cut, free college tuition, peace on earth, etc.)

dean is against any further federal gun control laws, and talks about guns as "a state issue." kerry attacks dean (way back when dean was front-runner, and kerry didn't need to come off as "above the fray") for having been given a high rating by the NRA.

if we're using "left-right," as opposed to "libertarian-statist," as our dichotomy, then on marijuana kerry can be characterized as further left too. kerry follows the popular breeze of medical marijuana initiatives and favors it, while dean's position is something you'd expect from a doctor-politician: remove testing restrictions so the FDA trials can go ahead and test its efficacy as a drug, sans political taint.

someone above referenced the ID card thing. i read about that too. it was an idea dean is guilty of not having dismissed out-of-hand as privacy-invasive. but to say dean is "for" national ID cards is a mischaracterization. that was way back in 1997 or something, when politicians were trying to get a grip on this whole "information superhighway" thing, and lots of dumb ideas were bandied about. dean would i think have to be one of the most pro-cyber-privacy candidates, given his identification with blogging and such.

[Joe Majsterski]

That's funny bigbigslacker, I was totally thinking that about the gun control. I know the Dean's record is pro-gun, but I've been wondering if he'd given that up for his national campaign. That commercial is basically all I've heard about it from his camp this whole election season, and yes, it certainly doesn't offer any real information on the subject.

[thoreau]

asdf-

You are hereby ordered to report for reprogramming. You tried to suggest that one Democrat is less statist than another. It is a matter of doctrine here that all Democrats are equally statist, and all Democrats are more statist than Republicans. Anybody saying anything even remotely positive concerning a Democrat is to be reprogrammed.

[Larry]

According to an AP Q&A about what gun laws should be changed Dean favors reauthorizing the "assault weapons" ban (that doesn't ban assault weapons) and closing the "gun show loophole" (which doesn't exist). After that he'd let states make whatever laws they want.

Of course the real question is whether, when Feinstein, Kennedy, et all pass gun control laws, would he veto them.

And Dean is the most pro-gun Democrat. The average position seems to be "I believe the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms, but I have just a few more restrictions to put on it."

[MALAK]

Who the f--- is Howard Dean?

[asdf]

malak:

he's the democrat's version of the guy with the blue skin

[kevrob]

Dean's "last stand" in the Badger State is probably going nowhere. Subtract the Milwaukee metro area, and America's Dairyland isn't that different from Iowa. Farmers here are not fond of the idiotic dairy price support system that benchmarks the price of milk on the border region centered at Eau Claire, with prices increasing as one gets farther away from that point. The Northeastern dairy compact is not popular. Now which cow-filled, boutique-ice-cream-producing state is the beneficiary of that piece of regulatory pork? VT, maybe?

Kerry is rolling over everybody else, like Merkt's spread on rye.

Kerry 45%, Clark 13%, Dean 12%, Edwards 9%, Others 3%, Undecided 17%. Error = +/-4%. See:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/gen/feb04/206353.asp

The only fun will be if Republicans cross over in the famously open primary and create mischief.

Kevin
(Behind the Cheddar Curtain)