Guest Blogging at The Carpetbagger Report

[Dr Ron]

I'm going to be guest blogging at The Carpetbagger Report this weekend as one of three bloggers covering for Steve Benen. Even before I saw that JK was going to be on tv this weekend I had planned to have one of my posts on him in light of his endorsement of Obama, but now I'll probably also tie it into the interview.

Besides covering current news (the interview and endorsement) I am planning to get into the overall topic which is very near and dear to all of us--the frequent negative and unfair attitudes of liberal bloggers towards JK.

Obviously this is a topic I've been writing on since the days of the original Kerry blog but it is such a broad topic that I'm sure that Kerrycrats here might have additional ideas to throw in. One thing which might be helpful is any evidence of Kerry's endorsement helping Obama, or evidence of Kerry's popularity beyond the blogosphere.

As there is a limit to how long such a post should be, and the flow of the post might alter what I feel fits in well, I will probably address some of the main attacks on Kerry such as his position on the war, why it made sense in August 2004 to hold off on responding to the Swift Boat Liars, and the nonsense about him not fighting back after the election results.

[whometense]

1. Congratulations!

Steve Benen is one of my favorite bloggers.

[Democrafty]

2. Cool!

Thanks for the heads up.

[karynnj]

3. Nice

This maybe too vague, but here's a link to a NYT op-ed. The thesis being that the Republican candidates doing well have been those not throwing vitriol. The op-ed is on whether HRC can win a "nice" campaign. Kerry's casting the endorsement as Obama being the only one who can unite the country fits very nicely with the last 2 paragraphs answering that Obama is the one best suited to do that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/opinion/12wilkinson.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

(Reading that op-ed, I could readily think of someone called "too nice" or "too gentlemanly" in 2004 who combines change and experience. Had he not run in 2004, he would be perfect.)

[Dr Ron]

4. We'll have to be careful with that

I totally agree but I fear that tying in Obama with Kerry as running a nice campaign will bring out arguments about not fighting back, and some might question if Obama would then fall into the same trap.

While Kerry has the edge in experience and would be my preferred choice as president, Obama does have the edge on charisma and would make the better candidate. (Personally I have no problem with Kerry's speaking style, but we know that far too many voters did, even to the point of voting for someone like Bush because he sounded more like them when.)

[Dr Ron]

5. Mixed reviews of op-ed

One of the others covering at Carpetbagger Report had an awful review of the op-ed. I tried to turn it around to concentrate on Obama's pluses but starting where I agreed with the criticism, but moving on to where he does have a point. This leads to Obama's strengths. The post is both at Carpetbagger Report and Liberal Values:

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14215.html

http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=2703

(Based upon the numbers of the post, it is clear whose blog has been around longer!)

[dwahzon]

6. Congrats Dr. Ron

way cool.

[MarjorieG]

7. Ghost of stolen elections past

In case you're again asked/confronted, I repeat that with what we know, and believe, it clearly was, but proving it after Bush v Gore, in an unfriendly state, was always the problem. Only after time did we realize that the Ohio election was on a server in Tenn, along with the RNC. That they pre-planned to have a security alert in Warren, at 11pm, to count in secret. That's the current problem, as speculation about NH surfaces.

Hillary's ground game was good, the establishment in Manchester and Nashua solidly behind her, but if there was any switching, in the 80% of votes that are secretly and privately counted by a company with a boss convicted of narcotics trafficking, on a new purchase of Diebold machines with a known vulnerability to insider fraud, we'll never find it without a secure chain of custody, now broken. The issue is counting votes in secret, and the insider ability to change results. The real issues are whether the public can see the chain of custody and whether the public can see the counting.

The exit polls were off by 8%, and strangely, based on the official results on the New Hampshire Secretary of state web site, there is a remarkable relationship between Obama and Clinton votes, when you look at votes tabulated by op-scan v. votes tabulated by hand:

Clinton Optical scan 91,717 52.95%
Obama Optical scan 81,495 47.05%

Clinton Hand-counted 20,889 47.05%
Obama Hand-counted 23,509 52.95%

The percentages appear to be swapped, and seem unusual. Generally, Obama got more votes when hand-counted, and Hillary when machine counted, but none of that are same precinct counts with both systems. Since NH has a liberal recount law, anyone doing anything would surely be prepared to hide it effectively. A recount that doesn't go anywhere, like the Nader recount in 2004, where he was suckered on the precincts he counted, would convince more people of no problems, when we need to be more vigilant with electronic counting, by parallel testing and audits before results are announced.

Ron, we have disagreed before, but I thought I'd forewarn you, as Kucinich is asking for a recount. I agree that there was nothing Kerry could do, without evidence, as a prosecutor, and no other Democrat in support. And with the Clinton team actively in non-support (Woodward's book that Carville has never been asked to defend or deny).

Good luck with the hosting, and Happy New Year.