If you don't understand the Electoral College you don't understand Presidential politics. If you do not understand what is going on in the struggle for Electoral College votes you do not understand what is happening in the race...In 2000, the LNS team boiled the race down to Minnesota, Missouri, Tennessee and Michigan. Not Floria? That's right, we assumed that Florida would become Fraudida, as it did. We knew that if Gore could take three of these four states, he would cancel out the theft of Fraudida (we knew he would win Fraudida, but not get to collect the votes -- although we also assumed that would be more discrete about how they stole Fraudida, the overwhelming Democratic and African-American turnout wreaked havoc on their schemes). Alas, Gore only took two, Michigan and Minnesota. We had more hope for Missouri (now renamed Misery by the LNS) than for Tennessee (the demographics of Gore's home state had turned very ugly for progessives, even a native). Missouri was probably stolen, like Fraudida (African Americans in Missouri had their polls shut down by court order while they waited on line, etc.)...Zogby and Barron's does a pretty good job of handicaping the Electoral College. Right now, JFK has 226 votes, the _resident has 176 votes, and there are 136 votes hanging in the balance in 12 states, 8 of those 12 states are Red (i.e. Expanded Confederacy) states -- West Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Tennessee. How does JFK break open those states? The propapunditgandists will try to spin the race down to Fraudida and Ohio. Well, of course Fraudida and Ohio are major states in the struggle over Diebolic black box voting. Do not let them twist the plot in this direction. Any combination of two or three of these red states could clinch it for JFK. States like West Virginia, Colorado, Arkansas (the _resident is ahead there, but Clark could change that), New Hampshire (JFK is ahead in this state that went red last time) could swing this election...The Electoral College is one of the two keys, its the Math, the other key is a Myth, something larger than life for people to resonate with and be motivated by to fight their way through the Stepfordian mist of the "US mainstream news media" and its propapunditgandists to actually go vote...Kerry has the Myth, he *is* a hero and he really does run with a "Band of Brothers." Now, JFK and Mary Beth Cahill have to do the Math. The selection of the VP candidate can help or hurt or really do nothing either way, depending upon how well you choose, how lucky you get and of course who there is to choose from...The LNS has suggested Wesley Clark (D-NATO) -- who not only underscores the Myth, but is an expert witness on 9/11 and Iraq and someone who came up from the poor side of town on his own brillance and character -- and Sen. Mary Landreuix (D-LA) -- Catholic, conservative, Southern, woman, daughter of a tough N.O. politician -- as our first and second choice respectively. We believe either one would run strong in the South, deliver their own native red state, i.e. Arkansas or Louisiana, but also run strong in the Expanded Confederacy, i.e. other red states outside the South, i.e. Oklahoma (which Clark won in the Democratic primaries), Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, etc. as well as among Independents and Republicans nationally. Yes, Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), according to "conventional wisdom," is the one but the LNS has a hunch that he support though broad is shallow and that he does not have what it takes...Meanwhile, here is another Sunday editorial from one of America's best newspapers, the Berkshire Eagle...
Berkshire Eagle: Well, all's fair in love and politics -- if Mr. Bush wants to run as a war president, let's discuss his performance. How could we have blown our chance to kill Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora? If, as the president has acknowledged, Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, why did we invade Iraq? Why does Saudi Arabia, home of 15 of 19 hijackers, Osama bin Laden and most of his money, continue to enjoy a free pass? Why, when all our intelligence services said there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, did the president invade anyway?
Restore the Timeline, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/Stories/0,1413,101%7E6267%7E1999906,00.html
The bloody shirt
President Bush's campaign commercials showing images of the wreckage of the World Trade Center and firefighters carrying a stretcher through the rubble have angered some relatives of the victims of the terrorists attacks, who object to the crass political use of what for them was a personal tragedy. Last January, the president said he had "no ambition whatsoever to use this as a political issue," but the political exploitation of 9/11 is clearly the centerpiece of his re-election campaign. Why else would the Republican Party have its convention in New York City -- a city it openly despises as a liberal Gomorrah -- the week before the third anniversary?
Mr. Bush is waving the bloody shirt, the way Shakespeare has Mark Antony hold up the murdered Caesar's bloody toga to inflame the Romans against the assassins. The advertisement is not so much an argument as an emotional appeal -- the sight of the wreckage will make voters recall how vulnerable they felt after the attack and plays into the president's fear-based campaign strategy. It also serves to shift the debate from Democratic issues like health care and jobs to national security, which Mr. Bush sees as his strongest suit.
Well, all's fair in love and politics -- if Mr. Bush wants to run as a war president, let's discuss his performance. How could we have blown our chance to kill Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora? If, as the president has acknowledged, Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, why did we invade Iraq? Why does Saudi Arabia, home of 15 of 19 hijackers, Osama bin Laden and most of his money, continue to enjoy a free pass? Why, when all our intelligence services said there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, did the president invade anyway?
Will we see a campaign ad soon in which the president attends the funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq? How can a president who wants to build his campaign around 9/11 justify his stonewalling of the 9/11 commission?
In his new book, the influential scholar and arms peddler Richard Perle candidly asserts that the war in Iraq is not an end in itself, but rather part of a grander strategy in the war against Islamic fundamentalism. The army has been planted there to threaten the terror-sponsoring regimes in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The Bush Doctrine calls for a new militarism and realpolitik that will not be constrained by our caviling former allies.
Is this really the plan, even after the disaster that is Iraq? If Mr. Bush is going to wave the bloody shirt, the president's opponents should call upon him to explain his real war policy to the American people.