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IOWA
DAILY REPORT Holding
the Democrats accountable today, tomorrow...forever.
Clinton Comedies
PAGE 1
Tuesday,
July 29, 2003 Quotable I:
“If Hillary Clinton suddenly expressed some
interest in the race, the biggest potential
loser is Kerry."
– Boston Herald pollster R. Kelly Myers,
commenting on survey indicators in New
Hampshire Quotable II:
"If you take their comments to their logical
conclusion, they're essentially calling our
commander in chief Benedict Arnold.”
– House Majority Leader Tom DeLay,
reacting to Dem criticisms of the president Quotable III:
"We're in the middle of a global conflict
between good and evil, and they're in the
middle of a Michael Dukakis look-alike
contest.” –
DeLay on the Dems again Quotable IV:
“Kucinich is not yet a household word; I
understand that.”
– Kucinich, speaking at Harkin-sponsored
forum in Ottumwa on Sunday
GENERAL
NEWS:
Among
the offerings in today's update: DLC that claims credit for
electing Clinton (Bill, not Hillary)
says Dems will lose in ’04 unless they win
suburban voters who believe the party has
become too liberal. In other words – if
the DLC is right – Bush should be good for
another term Graham – in new role of the
“deranged moderate” – may be taking himself
out of No. 2 on the Dem ticket…Graham
– in an apparent effort to reaffirm his
credentials as a “deranged moderate” –
defends his assertions about GWB’s Iraq
actions meeting the standard for an
impeachable offense Smokin’ Joe Lieberman still
fighting to get back in the wannabe ring,
swings at all comers – GWB and Dem prez
rivals.
Joe
concerned about “disquieting zeal” of
opponents seizing on Iraq intel issues New Hampshire poll: Boston
Herald finds Kerry would be
“seriously threatened” if Hillary
gets into Dem contest. The Herald says NH
battle could become a Hillary (27%)-Dean
(23%) race with Kerry (16%)
falling to second tier Kucinich
says
election “about deep, fundamental change”
and calls for New Deal type programs to
kick-start economy Apparently forgetting the ’84
Mondale disaster, the Washington Post
writes, the Dem hopefuls “following the
politically risky strategy” of embracing tax
increases. Report notes only
Lieberman has deliberately tried to
avoid the issue. Edwards chimes in too Columnist Novak writes of the
“omnipotence of the Bush White House,”
the “pitfalls of arrogance” and two key
House votes before the August recess Smokin’ Joe Lieberman
gets smoked out by home state media for
being AWOL from Senate during key votes last
week Republicans intensify
efforts to defend against Dem attacks on GWB
– just as Iowa Pres Watch has been doing for
months, too State – Daily Iowan (University
of Iowa) editorial says IA Supreme Court
justices “taught the wrong lesson” on locker
search ruling Iowaism: Lewis and Clark
Expedition to be recalled at Sergeant Floyd
Encampment in Sioux City next month All these stories below and
more. Weekend Roundup: ...
Today’s
Daily Report includes a few weekend items,
primarily because of the volume of material
produced during the past few days that
resulted in lengthy Reports on Sunday and
Monday. Iowa Pres Watch continues to deliver
current, comprehensive coverage of the Dem
candidates, but some days – like today – there
are not a lot of stories about the individual
candidates when they appear at joint
appearances such as yesterday’s Urban League,
where seven of the nine showed.
Morning reports:
… Morning
news reports say a western Iowa woman has West
Nile virus, the second reported case in the
state this summer. Officials said the woman is
in her 40s, but withheld her name and other
information
… Radio Iowa reports this morning that an
elderly care facility in North Liberty
has been declared a fire hazard and must be
evacuated by Friday. Fourteen residents are
cared for at the Liberty Country Living home.
…
Lieberman defends his support for Iraq
military action – but blasts Bush for
mishandling postwar situation and takes on Dem
rivals because “they don’t know a just war
when they see it.” Headline from last
night on Washington Post online -- “Lieberman:
Bush Mishandled Postwar Iraq” Excerpts:
“Democratic presidential candidate Joe
Lieberman on Monday faulted President Bush
for a lack of planning for a post-Saddam Iraq
while he assailed his rivals for opposing the
conflict, saying, ‘they don't know a just war
when they see it.’ Critical of his foes for
the party nomination but reticent to name
names, the Connecticut senator defended
his strong support for U.S.-led military
action, arguing that 12 years of Saddam
Hussein's brutal regime warranted the military
campaign to oust him. ‘Congress did the
right thing in authorizing the war,’
Lieberman said in a Capitol Hill speech.
He expressed concern about his foes
‘disquieting zeal’ in seizing on questions of
shaky U.S. intelligence that Bush used to
justify the war and the inability of coalition
forces to find weapons of mass destruction,
particularly those who supported the war and
then have forgotten. But he also
criticized the Bush administration for its
lack of preparedness in dealing with postwar
Iraq and its distortion of intelligence.
Earlier, in an appearance on NBC's ‘Today’
show, Lieberman said the U.S. military
didn't move quickly enough to secure sites
where weapons of mass destruction were being
made. ‘Some of them may have been moved
out on the market and may be moving around,’
he said. ‘We did not prepare to bring the
Iraqis into control of their own government
more quickly.’ Another Democratic
presidential aspirant, Sen. John Edwards, said
he thinks the administration has failed to
sufficiently involve the international
community in the reconstruction of Iraq.
The North Carolina Democrat, who supported a
resolution in the Senate backing the war
effort, said the United States should
‘re-engage with the international community’
by seeking assistance from NATO, the European
Union and the United Nations. ‘All these
things are good ideas,’ Edwards said on
CBS' ‘The Early Show,’ because such among
other things would relieve ‘some of the
burden’ on America's fighting men and women.
Lieberman also said he thought the
administration's decision to send a retired
American oil company executive to run the oil
industry and to send American officials to run
the country ‘gave the impression that we were
an occupying power, not a liberating power.’
He, too, said that the administration should
overcome its anger at European allies who
opposed the war and moved quickly to recruit
NATO forces to help secure Iraq after the
initial military success. Some of
Lieberman's Democratic rivals, especially
Howard Dean, have taken a strong
anti-war stance that has excited party
activists. But some Democratic moderates fear
that anti-war stance may not play well in the
general election.” … Just
what the Dem campaign needs – as aspiring FDR.
Kucinich urges New Deal-like programs to get
economy going, but concedes his name is “not
yet a household word.” Headline from
yesterday’s Quad-City Times: “Kucinich
calls for new New Deal” Excerpt from
report – datelined Ottumwa -- by Times’
Todd Dorman: “Democratic presidential hopeful
Dennis Kucinich said Sunday he would
use New Deal-style programs to kick-start the
U.S. economy while also slashing defense
spending to pay for universal day care.
‘This election is really about, and should be
about, deep, fundamental change,’ said
Kucinich, a congressman from Ohio, during
the latest in a series of ‘Hear it from the
Heartland’ forums sponsored by U.S. Sen. Tom
Harkin, D-Iowa. ‘As you can tell ...
I’m not talking about trimming around the
edges, oh no,’ he said, arguing that his
campaign’s hopes hinge on his ability to draw
sharp contrasts with President Bush’s agenda.
He appeared before a crowd of about 150 likely
Democratic caucus-goers on the Indian Hills
Community College campus. Many wore
Kucinich stickers and T-shirts. ‘Kucinich
is not yet a household word; I understand
that,’ he said. …Kucinich said that if he
is elected, he will slice the Pentagon’s
budget by $60 billion, or what he said amounts
to about 15 percent, to provide
pre-kindergarten day care to all American
children. He said he would slice the
defense budget, in part, by canceling plans
for what he contends are an unproven missile
defense system and unnecessary new nuclear
weapons systems. Kucinich also is
championing the creation of government
programs that would provide health care and a
college education to all Americans. ’People
will say, well, that’s going to cost a lot of
money. Yes it is,’ Kucinich said. ‘I’ll
tell you where I intend to get the money. ...
This defense budget has just gone through the
roof.’ Kucinich also argues that
efforts he would mount to ‘rejoin’ the
international community would make those new
weapon systems unnecessary. ‘As we do that, we
don’t have to be worried about being armed to
the teeth,’ he said. Kucinich said he would
fire up the economy by pursuing a massive New
Deal-style public works initiative to rebuild
and repair the nation’s highways, railroads,
bridges, public schools and water systems.
He argues such an effort, which he compared to
the Depression-era Works Progress
Administration, would create millions of jobs
and revive an ailing industrial base,
particularly steelmakers. The congressman also
blamed the loss of industrial manufacturing
jobs on treaties such as the North American
Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. He argues
those pacts have made it easier for large
corporations to move jobs abroad and crush
unions at home. Kucinich said he would cancel
NAFTA and pull out of the World Trade
Organization if elected.” …
Relentless –
and sometimes ridiculous – Graham continues
defending his comments about Bush’s Iraq
conduct meeting the standard for an
impeachable offense.
Headline from
CNN.com: “Graham
defends argument for impeachment…
Durbin: ‘Evidence doesn’t support’ Florida
senator’s comments” Excerpt from the CNN
report: “Sen. Bob
Graham
defended his assertion that President Bush's
actions in making the case for the war in Iraq
reach the standard of an impeachable offense
set by Republicans against former President
Clinton. ‘Clearly, if the standard is now
what the House of Representatives did in the
impeachment of Bill Clinton, the actions of
this president [are] much more serious in
terms of dereliction of duty,’ the Florida
Democrat and presidential hopeful said on ‘Fox
News Sunday.’ Graham also charged that Bush
‘knowingly’ misled the American people
about the reasons for going to war in Iraq --
both by claiming that Iraq was trying to buy
uranium in Africa and by withholding
information about the length, danger and
expense of postwar reconstruction. ‘This
president failed to tell the American people
what he knew about the consequences of
military victory in Iraq,’ Graham said
on NBC's ‘Meet The Press.’…Graham said on
Fox that his comments about impeachment amount
to ‘a very academic discussion’ because
Republicans control the House, which would
have to initiate any impeachment proceedings.
‘Tom DeLay and the other leadership of
the House of Representatives are not going to
impeach George W. Bush,’ Graham said.
‘The good news is that in November of 2004,
the American people will have a chance to both
impeach and remove George W. Bush in one
step.’ But another prominent Democratic
critic of the Iraq war, Sen. Richard Durbin of
Illinois, said Sunday that ‘the evidence
doesn't support’ Graham's comments about
impeachment. ‘There is absolutely no
evidence that the president knowingly misled
the American people,’ Durbin said on CNN's
‘Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.’ ‘I've never
made that charge, nor have I heard it made
from any credible source.’” … Dem
wannabes apparently believe the ’84 Mondale
disaster was just a fluke as they promote a
tax-increase agenda. Headline from
yesterday’s Washington Post: “Democrats Not
Shying Away From Tax Talk…Candidates
Discuss Raises, Not Cuts” Excerpt from article
by the Post’s Jonathan Weisman: “Democratic
presidential candidates are following the
politically risky strategy of embracing tax
increases as key parts of their economic
agendas, hoping to make mounting federal
deficits and President Bush's economic
stewardship major issues in the 2004 campaign.
When Bush signed his third tax cut into law
last month, the legislation was supposed to
put Democratic candidates in a political bind.
They could no longer say they favored delaying
or canceling future tax cuts, because the
legislation put those planned cuts into law
immediately. But the candidates have shown
little reluctance to reverse tax cuts already
in force. Although they couch it as
‘rolling back’ Bush's tax policies,
virtually all the major Democratic candidates
say they would raise taxes on some or all of
those who pay income tax. The proposals
range from repealing all the tax cuts enacted
in the past three years to raising taxes only
on the wealthiest Americans…The new tack on
taxes is a switch from recent years, when
Democrats countered widespread Republican tax
cut proposals with modest tax reduction plans
of their own. Democratic candidates have
been wary of tax increase pledges ever since
Walter F. Mondale's tax promises proved
disastrous in his 1984 campaign against
President Ronald Reagan…This time around,
Democratic candidates believe they can frame
the debate in the broader context of Bush's
economic and fiscal stewardship, and can
convince voters that some tax increases are
necessary to reverse the government's rising
tide of red ink and revive job growth. Jim
Jordan, who manages Sen. John F. Kerry's
campaign, said Kerry (Mass.) does not
relish making tax increases a fundamental
piece of his platform, but the senator's
attacks on Bush policies made taxes an
inevitable issue…Some Democratic
candidates, such as Dean and Rep. Richard
A. Gephardt (Mo.), have called for repeal of
all the cuts, a move that would raise tax
rates for all income-tax payers, reinstate the
‘marriage penalty’ on joint filers, and
shrivel the popular child tax credit for
middle-income taxpayers. Both candidates frame
the issue in terms of choices, and both have
pledged that they would use the tax revenue
to provide universal health insurance coverage
and rev up the economy. ‘At this point,
it's hard to come up with any money to do
anything to fix the economy,’ said Steve
Elmendorf, Gephardt's campaign director. ‘The
whole thing has to go.’…In contrast,
Democrats running as moderates have proposed
raising taxes only on the wealthy, while
cutting them elsewhere, and they plan to make
middle-class tax increases an issue in the
Democratic primaries. Sen. Bob Graham
(Fla.) would move the highest tax bracket --
35 percent -- back to the 38.6 percent that it
was before this year's tax cut, while
instituting a "millionaire's tax bracket" of
40 percent. Graham would also repeal
the capital gains and dividend tax cuts signed
into law last month. Sen. John Edwards
(N.C.) has taken a similar approach,
calling for the top two tax brackets to be
returned to their pre-Bush levels of 39.6
percent and 36 percent from the current 35
percent and 33 percent. He would scrap the 15
percent tax on dividends created this year,
treating dividends once again as taxable
income. And for people making more than
$250,000 a year, Edwards would raise
the capital gains rate up from the new 15
percent rate and even higher than the 20
percent rate Bush inherited, to 25 percent. He
would also retain taxation on large
inheritances, scuttling the law that would
repeal the estate tax in 2010.Though less
specific, Kerry and Sen. Joseph I.
Lieberman (Conn.) have suggested raising the
top two income tax rates -- which begin
for couples at $174,700 of taxable income --
to pre-Bush levels and retaining taxation of
very large estates. Only Lieberman has
deliberately tried to avoid the issue.” … Minority
in the Dem Party – otherwise known as the
centrists (who prefer Liberman and Graham) –
say Dems will lose in ’04 if nominee can’t
appeal to suburban voters. Excerpt from
coverage in Philadelphia by Reuters “ A group
of centrist Democrats who helped elect Bill
Clinton to the White House warned on Monday
that the Democratic Party will lose the 2004
presidential election unless it can win over
suburban voters who feel the party has become
too liberal. In language critical of
left-leaning positions, the Democratic
Leadership Council urged party leaders to
avoid policies that voters may associate with
big government and special-interest groups,
including labor unions. The Democratic
Party is at risk of being taken over from the
far left,’ U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, the
group's chairman, told reporters at a two-day
DLC convention here. ‘If we want to govern, we
have to offer the American people more than
just nostalgia and more than just criticism.’
The council released the results of a survey
by former Clinton pollster Mark Penn
that showed President Bush as vulnerable on
domestic issues including the economy, health
care, the federal deficit and education. But
the poll of 1,225 ‘likely 2004 voters’
conducted June 20 to July 1 also said
Democrats faced a huge challenge attracting
voters from suburban families -- clear
majorities of whom were seen to criticize the
party as too liberal, beholden to special
interests and out of touch with mainstream
America. ‘The poll is very clear for those
who think that if the Democratic Party just
lurched to the left and showed a higher flash
of anger, that they would somehow win the next
election,’ Penn said. ‘This poll puts a
laugh to that theory.’ The DLC has tried for
years to push the party away from the liberal
agendas of past nominees such as George
McGovern in 1972, Walter Mondale in 1984 and
Michael Dukakis in 1988.”
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Quotable
V:
“It
makes you wonder if at their next presidential
debate, the Democrats are all going to show up
wearing aluminum-foil helmets to protect their
brain waves from the mother ship.”
– DeLay, one more time (but check out
more below).
…Under the
subhead “Deranged moderate,” Greg
Pierce reported in his “Inside Politics”
column in yesterday’s Washington Times: “’Florida
senator Bob Graham seems to be carving out a
new niche for himself: that of the deranged
moderate,’ National Review says in an
editorial. ‘Graham is supposed to be a
great asset to the Democrats. He has a
moderate record, foreign policy experience,
and popularity in a state rich with electoral
votes. He has often been discussed as a vice
presidential nominee. But he hasn't been
getting much attention in the presidential
primaries, and so he keeps turning up the
volume,’ the magazine said. ‘In his latest
eruption, he suggested that Bush's alleged
deceptions in the run-up to the Iraq war
warrant impeachment. (Graham, of
course, voted against impeaching Clinton for
breaking laws.) Graham's strategy does not
appear to be working: The fire-breathers have
settled on Howard Dean. What Graham
may be doing is talking himself out of the
number-two slot.’”
… From the
weekend, headline from Hartford Courant: “With
Lieberman Away, Homeland Proposals Fail
…Candidates Miss Several Key Votes”
Lieberman’s campaign woes continue as home
state media exposes his Senate absences.
Excerpt from report by David Lightman, the
Courant’s Washington Bureau Chief, on
ctnow.com: “The Senate [last] week rejected
a series of Democratic-led efforts to boost
homeland security funding, with some proposals
losing on close votes in which Joe Lieberman
and some other presidential candidates could
have made the difference. A bid to provide
more grants to high-threat urban areas, for
instance, lost on a 48-48 tie. Lieberman,
D-Conn., who was touring a Sikorsky Aircraft
plant in Stratford, did not vote, nor did
Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and John
Edwards, D-N.C. Democratic Whip Harry
Reid, D-Nev., announced that Kerry
would have voted yes, and said Lieberman
and Edwards were absent. A proposal to
restrict lobbying activities by former
homeland security employees also failed on a
tie vote. Losing on a 50-44 vote was a plan to
increase public transportation security, a
measure that needed 60 votes. Lieberman was
absent for all of those, and for the vote on
fellow Connecticut Sen. Christopher J. Dodd's
plan to add $15 billion for ‘first
responders,’ such as emergency medical
technicians, firefighters and others.
Dodd's effort lost, 54-41; Edwards was
present and sided with Dodd. Reid announced on
all the votes that Kerry, though not
present, would have voted with the Democrats,
and that Lieberman was ‘necessarily
absent.’ Dodd would have paid for his
initiative by rolling back some of the tax
cuts that people with salaries and other
compensation of $1 million or more are due to
get this year. ‘I think people here have left
themselves vulnerable politically,’ said Dodd,
clearly annoyed, after the vote. ‘And they've
also exposed the vulnerability of the
country.’ Lieberman, whom Dodd did not
criticize, was one of the original authors of
legislation to create the Homeland Security
Department. In February, he made a major
speech in Washington urging lawmakers to
approve a sizable increase in the Bush budget
for first responders. Lieberman aid
Friday he was ‘doing my best to coordinate my
campaign activities with my work in the
Senate.’ He said his staff keeps him informed
of impending votes, and he tries to be present
when ‘my vote will make a difference.’ But, he
said, ‘unfortunately, in the Senate it's
not always possible to know when a vote is
going to be close.’”
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