Politics

Given the current state of the Ukraine, it is enlightening to look back on the history of Ukrainian nuclear weaponry. The Ukraine doesn’t have nuclear weapons because Senators Nunn and Lugar worked hard to convince Ukrainian leaders not to have nuclear weapons, backed up by government funding. Funding for Cooperative Threat Reduction peaked under Clinton in 2000 at $475.5 million. In 2001, it dropped to $433.4 million. In 2002, it dropped to $403 million. More on this here (original) (PDF).

So in the previous post, I debunked the draft rumor going around. I figured I’d do a little more poking and find out who was running Congress.org, the origin of the rumor. They do pretty shoddy research, whoever they are. No big dramatic reveal here, alas. Congress.org is owned by a company by the name of Issue Dynamics Inc.. They’re a political consulting company that focuses on liberal causes; they’re big on grassroots, which explains why they’re running Congress.org. It’s presumably an effective means of encouraging people to generate letters to Congressmen. ...

The talk on the Dean campaign wasn’t all that interesting — Keri Carpenter talked about how the Dean campaign was shaped by the people, and Tom Limoncelli talked about how it was a great experience and touched on the technology some. Nothing deep. Keri Carpenter did say, at the end, that clearly great netroots wasn’t enough but she didn’t really volunteer any ideas on what would have helped. Tom Limoncelli said he thought Dean lost because he was anointed the front-runner early and everyone teamed up to bring him down. That latter seems kind of self-defeating to me, since netroots takes some time to build. You wouldn’t want to use a strategy that puts you ahead early if being the front-runner leads to failure. ...

What, then, are the fair expectations? How do I judge the next four years? Things I do not expect of Bush: Peace in Iraq. Not because I think he’s incapable of it, but because I think it’s an incredibly difficult problem. I wouldn’t have expected Kerry to make Iraq work either. Things I am willing to judge him on: North Korea. He needs to make progress. I define that as North Korea reducing the number of nuclear weapons on hand without actually using them. He said he could do this with his approach, and he needs to follow through. Iran. See above. If Iran gets nukes in the next four years, I’ll count that against Bush. High school graduation rates. They need to be better, over the next four years, than they were during — let’s be fair, let’s say Clinton’s second term. Homes. 7 million new, occupied homes within the next four years. It’s part of his platform. No new draft. Reduction in terrorism. More US citizens died in terrorist attacks in 2003 than died in 2004. On the other hand, fewer people overall died in terrorist attacks in 2003 than in 2002. I’m gonna use two numbers as the benchmark, as reported by the State Department — overall deaths and overall number of people wounded. US military personnel will be filtered out. Deficit halved by 2008. Again, it’s part of his platform. Robot probes on the Moon by 2008. This is kinda cheaty of me, but hell, he promised and I’d like to see it. A national election in Iraq in January 2004 with 60%+ turnout and 90%+ of the country able to vote. ...

Ashcroft has resigned (original). That’s good.

If anyone was paying attention to my list of criteria for judging Bush’s success, it’s been updated.

Probably not my last note on this, but quite possibly my last for today: Kerry was not a bad candidate. There was not a magic candidate who would have gotten the Democrats 51% of the vote. Clinton didn’t win because he was from Arkansas, he won because he was an incredibly good campaigner. He might not have won this election. It’s not as if there’s any evidence that a more moderate candidate (and Kerry’s fairly moderate) would have done better. ...

Regarding new directions, I recommend to you David Neiwert, who remembers that the American progressive movement started both inside and outside the cities. But we have terminology issues here. At present, progressive is used as a substitute for liberal. I’m not entirely sure that’s accurate, considering that Teddy Roosevelt wound up a progressive in the end. My personal current bet is that within ten years we’ll have a moderate party and a conservative party. I hedge this by saying that I don’t think civil liberties are a liberal or a conservative issue — see also William Weld and (odd fellow traveller, here) Bob Barr. I think there’s a small chance that neither of these parties will be the Democratic Party. It’s possible that one of them will be progressive. ...

Well, that was unexpected and I have no explanation. Ohio is within the polling margin of error, so I’m disappointed but not shocked. The 5% margin in Florida is surprising. Possibly I should have been paying attention to Gallup. The interesting question for me, right now, is how the pollsters failed to catch a chunk of Bush voters, cause Florida wasn’t even close. And Zogby’s not gonna have quite as many clients next cycle. Ah, the perils of being a celebrity pollster. Then again, I seem to have made similar mistakes. ...

They won’t let me turn on the webcam. Pout. But that’s OK; it’s still an intensely fun night over here at the Tatro-Kaplan household. If anything you can’t find out anywhere else happens, I’ll post about it in this post. For example, I can report a strong Kerry lean in his household.