It's time to return to machine politics

The kids on this board probably think "machine politics" refers to the products of Diebold. Not so.

We've all heard of "smoke-filled rooms." Back in the day, the assorted party bigwigs would gather at a hotel somewhere, lock themselves into a room, light cigars and start arguing. When the cigars ran out, they had a candidate. That's a machine.

The Republicans still do this: in 2000, when there was no incumbent on the ticket, the GOP faithful picked Dubya Bush as their standardbearer. After shrugging off McCain, he cruised to an easy primary victory. They then preloaded him with a mere handful of policy issues to run on, and broke them down into easy-to-understand soundbites. As a result, the average voter knew what Shrub planned to do on the six things he announced plans to do things on. (Needless to say, they left out the parts about invading Iraq, spending a third of his time in Texas, and raiding the treasury.)

On our side, we let nine or ten guys battle it out in the primaries. What's it give us? John Kerry may be a certifiable genius, but ya gotta be one too if you want to figure out what the hell his plan entails.

Ever since we got out of the Machine Politics business, we have put two men into the White House--Carter and Clinton. Carter won because he wasn't tied into the Nixon Administration, and he didn't win by much (his percentage of the vote was a little lower than Shrub's). Clinton won because GHWB was a certifiable nightmare, but none of the Democratic heavyweights dared run against Bush. Until Clinton entered the race, we were prepared to write off 1992--the Gulf War was going to sweep GHWB to victory no matter how badly he fucked up the economy--and wait until 1996 to field someone like Daschle. Essentially, we had eight years of peace and prosperity because some crazy bastard from Arkansas looked at Bush and said, "I can beat him."

If we go back to machine politics, we'll put one or perhaps two candidates before the primary voters. We'll have an understandable, achievable platform, and we might actually start winning a few of the elections we should be winning now. Because right now, there is no fucking way we should be debating which BBV states we can pull to Kerry--we should be talking about who would be good as Secretary of State.

Until we solve that problem, we could run the real Jesus Christ and we would lose.

Yes it was stolen, and even the blue states show evidence of it.

The excursion seems to be eight percent. Example: Kerry led the exit polls by five percent in Nevada; Bush won Nevada by three percent. In Pennsylvania, there was a clear eight-percent shift toward Bush, but it didn't change the final result: winning by one voter gets you the same EV as winning by 100,000, and the final vote was enough to keep the state on our side.

This suggests that the Republicans feel an eight-percent rightward shift is as much as they can get away with.

Therefore, the solution is that until we can get back to some sort of auditable voting (paper ballots, DRE systems with printers, anything) we have GOT to be able to pull down at least a nine-percent lead in any battleground state.

Someone voting for Bush could walk into the booth secure in the knowledge of what Bush planned to do. Okay, half of what he planned to do requires one to own a 400-gallon tote full of Astroglide because you know you're gonna get fucked repeatedly over it, but the way the Dems put things, do you buy a 330-gallon tote? A 55-gallon drum? Two tubes? Who knows?

We show up with one solid candidate with one solid message, we'll get those 10-percent pre-BBV margins.

but I agree that machine politics is the answer to deciding the candidate. With the field so large during the Iowa caucus the money was spread thin and the candidates attacked each other and then the RW used those attacks against Kerry.

the 'smoke filled' room days and the days of real conventions. The primaries and the Iowa caucus only tears down the candidates. Before the current rabid coverage by the media and the invention of video tape, candidates could go out in the hinterland and talk to voters at the beginning of thier candidacy and be allowed to make some mistakes or missteps. Not anymore. The exposure provided by the primaries is only used as fodder to smear the candidate later.

I don't want to see another stageful of Democrats tearing each other apart. Ever. We have three years to come up with a better selection moustrap than the system we're using now.