IPW Daily Report – Thursday, February 5, 2004

* QUOTABLE:

"We had a choice -- either take the word of a madman or take action to defend the American people. Faced with that choice I will defend America every time," said President Bush.

"Over the course of this campaign, the Democratic Party seems to have found its soul again," Howard Dean said. "Even the very Democrats who wouldn't stand up to the president a year ago are beginning to adopt the message of change."

"What I want to know is where is the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party?" Howard Dean asked campaigning in Washington. "I think it's in Washington state."

Dean said: "They had a headline today that implied I'd given up on Michigan. That's obviously not true since I'm now spending parts of three days in Michigan." So it wasn't the story, it was the headline? "Yeah, as far as I can tell. We're not giving up on Michigan. That's clearly not true."

“Number of times a presidential candidate has gone 0 for the first nine contests and received his party's nomination: 0.” -- writes ABC’s The Note.

"I think the General is about to meet Sitting Bull," said state Senate Minority Leader David Paterson, a Manhattan Democrat.

The Wall Street Journal notes that anti-Bush bankroller George Soros "said in an interview that Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's foreign policy best reflects his own global thinking."

"There's a live-and-let-live attitude out there," a Bush political source noted. "Strengthening marriage is great for us. But when you start talking about what you're going to do about it, your opponents will make it look like you're punishing gays, which isn't great."

… another Kerry adviser was more blunt. 'This is not the Dukakis campaign,' the adviser said. 'We're not going to take it. And if they're going to come at us with stuff, whatever that stuff may be, if it goes to a place where the '88 campaign did, then everything is on the table. Everything.'"

Ralph Reed, chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in the Southeast, said on Wednesday, "More important than labels is the fact that he has a voting record over 20 years in the U.S. Senate that is out of the mainstream, simply out of step with where the American people are, by consistently voting to weaken national defense, undercut our intelligence capability and massively raise taxes."

The Washington Post's Broder writes off Dean: "The Democratic presidential field has been narrowed to its serious center, a place where policy differences are minimal and the prospects of fielding a serious challenge to President Bush look best... So it comes down to Kerry and his two mainstream challengers, Edwards and Clark… If the Democrats can't form a competitive ticket by combining two of these three, then they're not smart enough to deserve the White House."

* TODAY’S OFFERINGS:

*Kerry gathers delegates & trouble

* Kerry and gays

*Remaining Candidates moving on

*Who’s the real Southerner?

*Edwards responds to Clark attack

*Lieberman says goodbye

* Dubya is on the defense

*On the hunt: Cheney/Scalia

 

* CANDIDATES & CAUCUSES:

Kerry gathers delegates & trouble

DELEGATES:

Kerry won 119 delegates on Tuesday to take a lead in the delegate race with 262. Dean is in second overall with 121, while Edwards has 97 and Clark 80, according to tabulations by MSNBC. Here's the ABC News Political Unit tally of the 269 delegates that were parceled out for the Feb. 3 election:

Kerry: 128

Edwards: 61

Clark: 49

Dean: 7

Sharpton: 1

ABC has the count at: Kerry: 246 (roughly 11 percent of the total delegates needed to secure the nomination) -- Remember: 2,161 is the number needed for the nomination:

Dean: 118

Edwards: 100

Clark: 81

Sharpton: 4

Kucinich: 2

Kerry also won the teachers union endorsement. The union represents 1.3 million-members in the  American Federation of Teachers. The union represents teachers from mostly urban schools as well as some public employees and health care workers.

Kerry is also likely to pick up a lot of the 128 delegates in Michigan as well. A Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby

Michigan poll found Kerry with 47 percent, Dean with 10 percent, Edwards with 8 percent, Clark with 4 percent, civil rights activist Al Sharpton with 2 percent and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich with 1 percent. Twenty-three percent of likely voters were undecided. Kerry has won the endorsement of Gov. Jennifer Granholm in that state as well. One thing to remember is that many ballots have already been cast in Michigan and they are allowing Internet voting.

Kerry’s momentum is so overwhelming that it seems to trump money and organization and with it pulls those two ingredients into it. The LA Times puts it this way:

The wave propelling Kerry is so powerful that it threatens to overwhelm one of the most reliable laws of modern presidential campaigns. Since 1984, the candidate who raised the most money in the year before the voting has won each major party's presidential nomination. But Dean now appears a long shot despite collecting about $41 million in 2003 — the most by any Democrat in the year prior to primary season.

TROUBLE:

Documents obtained by Associated Press detail Kerry's effort as a member of the Senate Commerce Committee to persuade committee chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., to drop legislation that would have stripped $150 million from the Big Dig project and ended the insurance funding loophole.

In 1999, Transportation Department auditors discovered that Big Dig managers had overpaid $129.8 million to AIG for worker compensation and liability insurance that wasn't needed, then allowed the insurer to keep the money in a trust and invest it in the market. The government alleged AIG kept about half of the profits it made from the investments, providing the other half to the project.

American International Group paid Kerry's way on a trip to Vermont and donated at least $30,000 to a tax-exempt group Kerry used to set up his presidential campaign. Company executives also donated $18,000 to his Senate and presidential campaigns, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

McCain's legislation said, "Any refunds of insurance premiums or reserve amounts, including interest, that exceed a project's liabilities shall be immediately returned to the federal government."

The line of attack will most certainly be Kerry the Senator of Special Interest. Dean has already been using the line that Kerry was the top beneficiary of special interest money for the last 15 years. The story broke in the NY Times.

Edwards remains a threat. ABC’s The Note reports that Edwards’ strengths are Kerry's weaknesses: Southern roots, likeability, and an absence of Washington insider-status, and humble origins.

The NY Post columnist affirms that Kerry is no populist:

ONE of the surest ways to get the phones ringing on any Massachusetts talk-radio show is to ask people to call in and tell their John Kerry stories. The phone lines are soon filled, and most of the stories have a common theme: our junior senator pulling rank on one of his constituents, breaking in line, demanding to pay less (or nothing) or ducking out before the bill arrives.

The tales often have one other common thread. Most end with Sen. Kerry inquiring of the lesser mortal: "Do you know who I am?"

And now he's running for president as a populist. His first wife came from a Philadelphia Main Line family worth $300 million. His second wife is a pickle-and-ketchup heiress.

There were of course the years when he was not married to someone worth $300 million:

Of course, in 1993 he was between his first and second heiresses - a time he now calls "the wandering years," although an equally apt description might be "the freeloading years."

For some of the time, he was, for all practical purposes, homeless. His friends allowed him into a real-estate deal in which he flipped a condo for quick resale, netting a $21,000 profit on a cash investment of exactly nothing. For months he rode around in a new car supplied by a shady local Buick dealer. When the dealer's ties to a congressman who was later indicted for racketeering were exposed, Kerry quickly explained that the non-payment was a mere oversight, and wrote out a check.

The column relates about a caller to a station:

The caller, Jay, said he began heckling Kerry and his wife as they attempted to enter the theater. Finally, he said, the senator turned to him and asked him the eternal question.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yeah," said Jay. "You're a gold-digger."

The NY Post has a story that shows that the NY State’s Attorney General might not know who Kerry’s contributors have been:

Spitzer, who endorsed Kerry earlier this week for the nomination, has crusaded against financial shenanigans on Wall Street. And some of his investigations have targeted the same firms that made big contributions to the Kerry campaign.

Citigroup, which gave Kerry $71,500, paid $400 million in penalties as part of a settlement with regulators. Goldman Sachs, which gave Kerry $62,600, and Morgan Stanley, which gave him $40,000, were party to a $1.4 billion settlement with Spitzer over charges that their analysts gave investors bad advice to win investment banking business. FleetBoston Financial, which gave $32,050, suspended a trader last April when the New York Stock Exchange launched a probe.

Kerry and gays

Sen. John Kerry is going to have trouble with a capital T with his state’s Supreme Court ruling for gay marriage. Kerry has been trying to have it both ways on gays. His position has been very similar to President Bush’s --  civil unions could be all right, but marriage is for the churches to decide. Now, as the NY Daily News reports, he will have to make a more definitive statement:

White House strategists, however, say yesterday's ruling makes it harder for Kerry to have it both ways politically.

"He'll be explaining how he voted one way but actually believes another way, and he'll look pretty craven," a senior GOP strategist said, adding that Kerry will now be forced to say whether he supports an amendment to his state's Constitution undoing the ruling.

Even if Kerry wiggles off the hook, Bush strategists are counting on the court's support for same-sex marriage - which polls say is opposed by two-thirds of Americans - to energize millions of Republicans who did not vote in 2000.

Moving on

The race moves next to Michigan, 128 delegates and Washington state, 76 delegates on Saturday, then on to Maine, 24 delegates on Sunday, and Virginia, 82 delegates and Tennessee, 69 delegates both on next Tuesday.

Clark squeaked out a victory in Oklahoma, allowing him to stay alive for a while longer. Sen. Joe Lieberman should have heeded his staffs’ advice after New Hampshire and quit then. The race is beginning to look like it will be a battle between Senators John Edwards and John Kerry.

Howard Dean never made it into the top two in any of the Super Seven states. Dean is facing a big challenge Saturday in Washington where he hopes he can find the Democrat wing of the Democrat Party. Dean is not expected to do well in Michigan, making Washington state all the more important before Wisconsin, 72 delegates, Tuesday, Feb. 17.

Wisconsin is the only race on that Tuesday and the Southerners will have to show up in the North as well. Howard Dean has put his campaign future on the line in Wisconsin.

"This entire race has come down to this: We must win Wisconsin," the former Vermont governor said in a memo to supporters. "A win there will carry us to the big states on March 2 -- and narrow the field to two candidates. Anything else will put us out of the race."

Dean is asking supporters for $50 contributions so he could raise $700,000 by Sunday to pay for advertising in Wisconsin.

The Associated Press, Bloomberg, Fox News, CNN and others have reassigned their top Dean reporters to cover Kerry, Edwards or Clark."

Edwards announced that his campaign will begin running the 30-second television ad "Two Americas" in Wisconsin on Thursday. The campaign also announced that Senator Edwards will stop in Milwaukee on Saturday, February 7.

The ad "Two Americas" renews Edwards' pledge to create an America that works for all of us. Under George Bush, America has become divided-with one America that is doing well and another that is living paycheck-to-paycheck and struggling to get by. Edwards will create one America by taking on the insiders and big corporations and strengthening the middle class and helping working families.

Script for "Two Americas:"

"It seems today, we have two Americas. With two health care systems...one for the privileged; another rationed by insurance companies. Two public school systems...one for the haves: and one for everybody else. Two tax systems...where the wealthy and corporations pay less; working families pay more. Two governments one for powerful interests and lobbyists; the other for the rest of us. I'm John Edwards. And I approved this message because together you and I can change America and make it work for all of us."

Edwards was in NY hoping to raise $200,000 - half at a Fifth Avenue party with actress Glenn Close and the other half in Hasbrouck Heights, N.J., before doing the "Top Ten" list on Letterman.

Who is the Southerner?

With Senator John Edwards and Wesley Clark still both in the race, the question of who is the person who can win in the South remains contested. They are both concentrating on Southern states. So, we will know which one stays in the race and which one is out of the race soon. The best bet is that Clark is already done and doesn’t know it.

However, Edwards cannot have a chance at winning the nomination with another pretender to the throne dividing the vote in the South. Kerry could be perceived as not being electable in the South. This could provide Edwards with votes he needs to challenge Kerry for the nomination. Edwards needs to defeat Clark in two upcoming states.

Clark has become more strident in his campaigning. His latest statement expresses his tone:

"I'm not part of the Washington problem. I'm part of the solution," Clark said during a stop in Jackson, Tennessee. "There are some people in this race that are part of the problem. The people I am talking about are John Kerry and John Edwards."

"General Clark is not a Washington politician, but it's questionable whether he's a Democrat either," replied Kerry

Edwards responds to Clark’s attack

Edwards’ Tennessee campaign spokesman Colin Van Ostern today issued the following statement in response to the negative attacks launched by Wesley Clark earlier today:

"It's sad to see General Clark making these negative attacks. The fact is, Senator Edwards voted against Bush's tax cuts and has proposed rolling back his tax cuts for the wealthy, he has a plan to fix and fund No Child Left Behind, and has been a strong advocate for more international involvement in military action and reconstruction in Iraq."

Lieberman says goodbye

Dear Friends,

Tonight our journey comes to an end. I want to first and foremost thank everyone that has supported me over the past months. Without you we never would have been able to take part in this amazing adventure.

We have waged a campaign of which we can all be proud. We have strived to stay true to ourselves, true to our beliefs, and true to what we believe is best for this great country. I have always believed in working across party lines to get things done, and putting the national interest above special interests or partisan interests.

Our campaign has been about vision, and while the door on our campaign has closed, a window opens tonight for us to continue fighting for what’s right. I pledge to support whoever the Democratic nominee may be to deny George Bush a second term.

Though this campaign is ending tonight, our journey of purpose will go on. I will continue working hard on behalf of the people of Connecticut. I will continue working hard to secure a Democratic victory in November. And I will continue to be a national leader who works to give all Americans the opportunities I have had -- the chance to live the American Dream.

I am honored to have received the support and encouragement that you have shown me in these final months. I thank you for everything you've meant to me, my family, and this great country.

* ON THE BUSH BEAT:

Bush on defense

President Bush has begun appointing and expanding independent commissions that are investigating this nation’s actions before and during the War on Terrorism. Today Bush made another speech in which he affirmed invading Iraq was the right action to take, according to the Associated Press:

"We have not yet found the stockpiles of weapons that we thought were there," Bush said in a speech at the port of Charleston, South Carolina, in his clearest acknowledgment of problems with prewar intelligence on Iraqi weapons.

However, he said, "Knowing what I knew then and knowing what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq."

Laura Bush has also begun a campaign to make women aware of the problem of heart disease. The disease kills more women than cancer. In undertaking the campaign, she is more visible in the media.

* NATIONAL:

Cheney/Scalia

In a twist of irony the Vice President and a Supreme Court Justice are being questioned by an environmental group about their duck hunting trip. Two years ago, the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch sued Cheney, seeking to learn whether the vice president and his staff had met behind closed doors with lobbyists and corporate officials from the oil, gas, coal and electric power industries. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide that case.

Antonin Scalia took a ride on Air Force Two to duck hunt on an oil executive’s game preserve with the Vice President, according to a story in the LA Times. The question is whether the Justice will sit in on deciding the case. It looks like he will not:

"In my view, this further ratchets it up. If the vice president is the source of generosity, it means Scalia is accepting a gift of some value from a litigant in a case before him," said New York University law professor Stephen Gillers.

"It is not just a trip with a litigant. It's a trip at the expense of the litigant. This is an easy case for stepping aside."

Tomorrow

IPW will explore the drive to censure and impeach President Bush and how real it is.

 

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