Bush Seeks to Stem Damage From Spain

White House Spars With Kerry Over Foreign Support

Richard C. Holbrooke, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration, came to Kerry’s defense last night. ”The Republicans are just having fun with this,” he said. ”They know it’s correct. . . . The overwhelming majority of foreign leaders and leadership want a change in American leadership.”

Holbrooke said Kerry ”committed candor” and Republicans were jumping him because of it.

Spousal Benefits for Gays at U.N. Challenged By Colum Lynch, Washington Post

A bloc of more than 50 Islamic states, backed by the Vatican, sought today to halt U.N. efforts to extend spousal benefits to partners of some gay employees.

The initiative came less than two months after U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan moved to award benefits to partners of gay employees who come from countries where such benefits are provided, such as Belgium and the Netherlands.

The same group is also preparing to oppose a resolution, sponsored by Brazil and supported by the European Union, at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva that calls for nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, diplomats said. The Vatican and other conservatives maintain that the Brazilian resolution and Annan’s new benefits policy would provide gay people with protections never envisioned in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This struggle is an international one. Please notice who is with Bush and who is against him. Bin Laden and Bush probably agree on more than one issue. mjh

Candidates Narrow Focus to 18 States
Battle Has Begun In Most-Contested Areas of Nation
By Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers

The election-night mapmakers created an indelible image of political America in 2000: red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats, and a handful of states, crowned by disputed Florida, that remained competitive until the very end. Campaign 2004 begins where 2000 left off. …

Four years ago, red and blue states were so finely balanced that Bush was declared the winner with 271 electoral votes, one more than required. Five of the 50 states, led by Florida’s dead-heat 537-vote outcome, were decided by less than a single percentage point.

In 18 states, the winner’s margin was 6 percentage points or less, and at the start of the 2004 general election, at least 17 are seen as competitive battlegrounds, as the campaigns’ initial advertising strategists suggest. …

Judging from interviews with strategists on both sides and with outside analysts, 10 of the closest states from four years ago are seen as the most competitive as the campaign begins. Bush and Gore split them five-five. The Bush states that may be most vulnerable to Democratic takeover are Florida, Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire and Nevada, while the five Gore states eyed by the GOP are Pennsylvania, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and New Mexico.

The results of 2000 underscore the electoral parity between the parties in both the competitive and noncompetitive states. In the 32 states and the District that were decided by more than 6 percentage points, Republicans won 21 while Democrats captured 12. But when measured in electoral votes, the two parties’ bases are more even: The GOP states account for 179 electoral votes while the Democratic states, including California and New York, total 168.

The same equilibrium holds for the 18 closest states: The nine Republican states now account for 99 electoral votes, and the nine Democratic states add up to 92. …

Four years ago, the loss of one more state of any size would have cost Bush the election. That is no longer the case because of reapportionment after the 2000 Census. If Bush were to win all the states he won and Kerry won all of Gore’s states, the electoral count would be 278 to 260, an advantage of 18 electoral votes for Bush rather than four. …

with the exception of Florida, where a recent poll showed Kerry ahead of Bush, the South looks more forbidding to the Democrats in 2004 than it was in any of the past three elections, when southerners Clinton or Gore or both were on the ticket.

This is a more thorough, thoughtful analysis than the one I quoted a few days ago (see link below). In particular, note that if Bush wins exactly what he won (or was given) in 2000, he gets MORE electoral votes than 4 years ago, thanks to the census. mjh

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: How Kerry Wins

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Gloves come off early in race for president By Mark Silva, The Orlando Sentinel

It’s possible that ”the public is going to get burned out over this,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Center for Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Yet, she said, the issues that Bush and Kerry are battling about — terrorism, taxes, jobs and health care — are critical enough to keep voters engaged.

”We’re seeing a new model of campaigning,” Jamieson said. ”The assumption has always been that you don’t engage seriously at the general-election level until at least summer. You are now down to the specific case against each side at a very early time.”

It’s going to be a long, hard campaign. Ask yourself who benefits from voter burnout? mjh

dump get rid of George Bush political commentary links

”To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” — President Theodore Roosevelt

[Thanks, LivingBeing.com!]

Dump Bush – 2004 Projected Electoral Map

Print this one:

Buy this one:

BUSH GUTS THE FACTS AGAIN – WILL THE MEDIA LET HIM? by Matt Miller

So what was Bush’s attack about? There are two ways to look at it: as a measure of how dumb the White House thinks we are and as a measure of how anxious the White House is a full eight months before November. …

This is not about facts. It is about planting seeds of mistrust [of Kerry]. Which brings us to Bush’s flip-flop strategy. …

Is this rubbish supposed to be the way to lead a nation in a time of ”war”? This from the man who always boasts that he’s ”plainspoken”? …