November 08, 2003
Profile in Courage
You do read some humbling things online. Here’s one:
Impressive as this is essay is, I wonder if the non sequitor with which it concludes is correct: Is it wrong to think that, on average, politicians who have served in the military may be more sensible in their use of force than those for whom combat is an abstraction? And even if that is wrong, does it follow that it’s wrong to suspect draft-evaders, again on average, of middle-aged over-compensation?
History is an uncertain guide. For example, both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon served in the Navy, and both escalated in Vietnam. Clinton had a draft deferment and built a great big military. Current events, however, strongly suggest a conclusion.
Employment Numbers Demystified
It’s good that a little bit of the defict-pumping tax cut is trickling down to working people. What’s surprising is not that employment is up, but how little. What’s even more surprising is how ineptly the numbers are being reported in the newspapers.
Comes now MaxSpeak to draw a picture and set us all straight. “OH PROMISE ME …” has a nice simple picture we can all understand, comparing the jobs the Administration promised its economic plans would create to the jobs actually produced. Worth more than a thousand words, easy.
Reproduced with permission from Max Sawicky.
The Harris Scenario in the Florida Senate Race
Harris turns eyes toward Senate suggests that if Katherine Harris runs for the GOP senate nomination and gets it, her presence on the ticket will energize Democratic voters. There’s a lot to that. Being as amazingly inept as she is, she may turn off Republicans too.
But there is a scenario in which she gets elected. It goes like this: the primaries don’t have run-offs — whoever gets the most votes wins. The Democratic primary is going to be crowded, and may become ethnicized, with votes split up between one Hispanic (Miami’s own, tarnished, Alex Penelas), one Jewish candidate, Rep. Peter Deutsch, one Afro-American, Rep. Alcee Hastings, and several Anglos. If either Penelas or Hastings were to win the nomination, Harris might win the general election.
Hasting’s negatives are being Black, unabashedly liberal, and too smart. I’ve met him. Boy, is he smart. Very, very impressive, but I don’t think that will play well upstate.
Penelas’s negatives are complex, and not strictly racial: he’s widely considered to have sabotaged the Gore campaign in 2000, and there are also allegations of fundraising irregularities. Worst of all, from the point of view of a state-wide election, Penelas said he would not support the operation of the ordinary legal process in the Elian affair.
Just from an electablity perspective, Harris would be an awful candidate for the Republicans, yes. But, don’t underestimate the Florida Democrats’ ability to nominate an even less electable candidate.