ARNOLD & DEAN'S POLITICAL REVOLUTION (Dick Morris on the power of the internet, etc.)

The New York Post ^ | 8-13-03 | Dick Morris

[jocon307]

August 13, 2003 -- THE surges of former Gov. Howard Dean in New Hampshire and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California are taking place 3,000 miles apart, but reflect the same phenomenon: Voter disgust with the state of American politics.

The signs are everywhere for those who are not so obsessed with partisan advantage to see. Half of the nation's voters stay home. Bush's job approval has fallen one point every three days for the past two months. Last year, Minnesota voters were so disgusted by Democratic attempts to use the funeral of Sen. Paul Wellstone to elect retread Walter Mondale that this die-hard Democratic state voted Republican.

[jocon307]

Well, he's all over the park in this piece, but I thought he made some good points amidst the blather, so here it is, for your consideration.

[goldstategop]

He's more wrong than right. Liberals are now near as organized on the Internet as conservatives. And to compare the Left's hatred of President Bush with the revolt of California's masses against the liberal elite that runs their state - methinks Dick Morris reads too much into the comparison.

[Jimmy Valentine]

Notice that the little dwarf just couldn't pass up the opportunity for another slam on the 2000 elections, stating that the Supreme Court voted on "party" lines.

Twerp

[G.Mason]

I never thought I would say this, but the "toe sucker" is right, on all counts, in this one.

[Gabrielle Reilly]

Read later.



(Please ignore link).
http://www.gabriellereillyweekly.com/full/statedepartment.html

[At _War_With_Liberals]

"The line between legality and bribery has been so blurred by recent Supreme Court decisions as to make payoffs almost impos-sible to prosecute. So explicit must be the linkage between the donor's bribe and the recipient's actions that even a reprobate like Bob Torricelli can't be convicted. Bill Clinton can exchange a pardon for a million-dollar donation to his library and Hillary can swap one for 1,400 block votes from upstate Hasidic Jews and neither gets prosecuted. "

So true.

[goldstategop]

Translated, its OK to be a liberal crook but if you're a conservative crook expect prison time.

[liberallarry]

Usually, I like your comments but you're blinded by partisanship on this one. Morris's point is that the Internet has permanently changed politics by making mass communication vastly less costly (all else is illustration and side show). How can you dispute that while reaching an audience of several hundred thousand for pennies?

[tcostell]

Voter disgust with the state of American politics.

I can understand Arnold, but Dean? He's just another bubble headed new englander who thinks populism is about pandering to the extreme left. How is that something new?

Give him a tie dyed shirt and some birkenstocks, tuck a flower behind his ear and he'd be right at home in the humanities department of any university in the country.

He's the same meal that the left has been serving up since the 60's, he's just warmed over one more time.

He's a sort of next century McGovern. And his supporters can't think of any working policy that doesn't rhyme with "Hey Hey, Ho Ho < insert policy here>."

[yoe]

Blather is right!...... In 2000, the supposedly nonpartisan United States Supreme Court voted, almost along party lines, to deny the voters a chance for a recount in the presidential election.

The US Supreme Court HAD to step in as the Florida Supreme Court blatantly misused the Florida Constitution and the US Constitution. The vote was recounted and recounted...what am I missing here? The Democratic party denied a large block of military votes. Fraud was rampant in that state:

VOTE COUNTING FRAUD IN PALM BEACH COUNTY

"Explicit Statistical Evidence of Massive Ballot Tampering in Palm Beach, FL"

This was received from a highly places official in the Florida State government. I am not at liberty to identify him but this analysis speaks for itself.

The statistical evidence is clear.

These statistics indicate that one or more of the individuals who had access to the Palm Beach County ballots deliberatedly tampered the ballots in an attempt to make Al Gore and Joe Lieberman the winners.

Only a handful of individuals had such access.

Ordinarily, forensic evidence such as fingerprints could have been used to quickly identify the culprit(s) but the canvassers immediately went into the hand-count mode. Thousands of ballots were handled by everyone on the board thereby comprising the forensic evidence.

However, the tampered ballots were rejected by the machines for "over votes"(votes for two or more candidates for the same office). THESE ballots may not have been handled by the canvassers ( who were intent upon finding votes for Gore/Lieberman among the dimples, zits, pregnant chads etc among the "ambiguous" ballots.) These OVERVOTE ballots should be impounded immediately and the room in which the counting took place as well as contiguous closets and rest rooms should be sealed off and a thorough search made for the spindle, coat hanger wire, or other tool that may have been used to illegally punch out chads.

Editor's Note: The following statistical analysis was sent to me by Robert Cook, PE, a nuclear engineer, with an MS in statistical quality control, a software testing specialist and QA manager, who has a track record for analyzing and correcting trends, errors, and mistakes in heavy construction projects (ships, power plants, nuclear reactors, military and aerospace vehicles, etc. for more than twenty years.)
Robert Cook presents here a remarkable statistical analysis of the Palm Beach presidential ballot controversy that deserves serious investigation. He says that the controversial 19,120 Presidential race ballots at issue there were "destroyed by deliberate double-punching ballots in Palm Beach County FL with a 'second punch' for Al Gore or Pat Buchanan. (In 1996, an additional 15,000 Dole and Perot ballots were destroyed by double-punching presidential ballots in Palm Beach County, FL. *)
"It uses simplified but wide-ranging statistical comparisons to establish beyond doubt that democratic operatives "stole" by double-punching ballots approximately 15,000 Bush votes in Palm Beach County; and approximately 3,400 additional Buchanan votes."

[sirchtruth]

In 2000, the supposedly nonpartisan United States Supreme Court voted, almost along party lines, to deny the voters a chance for a recount in the presidential election.

I am so sick of hearing this buncombe I could sream and all the windows would shatter.

How many illegal recounts did gore get? The SC did not deny anything to the "voters."

There are very few things that PMO more than this shannanogential (cs) falsehood.

I noticed lately that Morris has been WRONG on virtually everything !

[alwaysconservative]

Why are voters so cynical, apathetic and downright surly? Count the reasons. In 2000, the supposedly nonpartisan United States Supreme Court voted, almost along party lines, to deny the voters a chance for a recount in the presidential election.

Once again, scratch a former 'toon supporter, find the simmering resentment there. These people, such as Morris, Gore, and the 'toons, don't even realize how hilarious they sound when their real feelings show through! LOL! Morris, who voted for Gore in 2000, shows his true colors here. And his comparison between Mean Little Dean and Arnold Schwarzenegger is misplaced: AS's popularity has nothing to do with the corrosive anti-patriotic hatred that fuels Dean's supporters.

[x1stcav]

I think this article reinforces a point that Hugh Hewitt made the other night on his radio show: Morris cannot be relied on as a guest commentator because his own hidden agendas compromise the objectivity of his opinions. It was for this reason that Hugh stated he never would want him as a guest on his show (at least I think it was Hugh).

Some one else on this thread made the comment that he seems all over the place. I agree. Many of his theories about how the Internet, etc. is revolutionizing politics, etc. seem to my ear to be contrived and stretched.

Could this be due to Morris' own interest in his web-based political voting and polling company, Vote.com? His comment about voters wanting to return to direct democracy (since when did we ever have direct democracy in this country?) is too self-serving, escpecially when he did not include the standard disclaimer any pundit would have in an article of the nature of this one.

Hugh (if it was him) is right. The guy's a hack.

[PGalt]

The message of Dean's surge, Bush's slippage and Schwarzenegger's candidacy is the same: This is a revolutionary era we are entering.

The toe sucker is wrong. Dean is surging to nowhere. The red tide is receding and Morris doesn't like it. The Information Age will crush the parasitic propagandists, like Morris, who have run cover for The Democratic Crime Syndicate for decades.

[George W. Bush]

He's more wrong than right. Liberals are now near as organized on the Internet as conservatives.

We'll never get the free run of the Internet again after FR won the Battle For Floriduh and played such a key role in the impeachment.

When we got on the radar, they finally noticed. Our advantage was they just couldn't believe it was happening and, especially, that we could do as much as we did. But now they know. And they're responding. The liberals are determined to fight a battle for the Internet so that it doesn't become the lost cause that talk radio has become for liberalism.

I suspect that the Internet will not be as difficult for liberals to penetrate as talk radio is. I expect them to improve in their online activism and their ability to campaign. They've come a long way in the last few years. To some extent, they were asleep before when Clinton was in office and we were more fired up. Currently, we have Bush in office so we're lower profile and they're more activist.

Given that the Year Of The Woman in politics has never shown up at all, I don't know that this is the Year Of The Internet. But I think online activism and fundraising will find an increasingly larger role in politics. So from Morris' standpoint as a political consultant, he's certainly right that something of a political revolution is underway as far as the mechanics of getting someone elected.

[Alberta's Child]

I suspect that the Internet will not be as difficult for liberals to penetrate as talk radio is.

I suspect that the Internet will be just as difficult for liberals to penetrate as talk radio is, but for different reasons.

The problem these liberals face is that they insist on tailoring their message to two distinct groups: left-wing elitists, and voters who occupy the lowest rungs of this nation's socio-economic ladder. The first group is too small to make any real difference in terms of generating votes, and the second group is filled with too many people who can barely use a pocket calculator, let alone buy and use a personal computer.

The most compelling evidence in support of this view of mine can be seen in the sales figures for various books that are currently in publication. Conservative books such as those by Ann Coulter always rank substantially higher on online best-seller lists than they do on general best-seller lists. Conservatives (and reasonably intelligent people in general) are simply using the internet far more than your typical Democratic voter ever will.

[George W. Bush]

You may be right.

Limbaugh's theory is that liberalism is visual (television) and that the spoken word is more rational and less emotional which he thinks explains why conservatives dominate talk radio.

The same thing may be true of the written word. But given that the Internet is multimedia, the libs should be able to assemble a compelling set of images/video to convince the weak-minded. As bandwidth gets cheaper and cheaper, their success via Internet becomes more possible. But not quite yet.

[Alberta's Child]

Limbaugh might be right, but I think there is an even more simple reason why radio is generally more conservative than television.

One of the major differences between radio and television is that most people who listen to the radio are also doing something else at the same time. You can't work or drive a car while watching television, but you certainly can do these things while listening to the radio.

This also explains a very interesting phenomenon in the talk radio business. People who are familiar with the talk radio business will tell you that the typical caller is not representative of the radio audience at all. The typical caller is more likely to be unemployed, retired, or working a job with odd shifts (police officers or warehouse workers, for example), while the typical listener is often a white-collar worker in a high income group who listens to the radio while driving or for part of the day in the office.

[.cnI redruM]

Arianna Huffington represents noone but herself. Morris is wrong on that one, but we'll count it as a one offer.

His point on Dean is more cogent, however, I approach it from a different aspect. Dean's emergence was no more spontaneous than his carefully scripted stump performance.

Dean has risen rapidly because he as organized a very effective fascism. His organization reaches out to the resentful and gives them an artificial sense of purpose and belonging. Dean has given an army of cyber p---ants a virtual mound from which they can urinate.

As Eric Hoffer eloquently points out, this is how political movements gain prevalence. Dean has successfully organized his "Deanie-Weenies" more rapidly than his foes. That, not waves of voter cynacism that are nothing new under the sun, explain his rise to the front of a psuedo-sapient Democratic field.