Beware.

[politicasista]

In GD that is. Looks like once again the stolen election thing is dominiating the news again. And it's from a fellow peep that usually defends Kerry. I always like reading the OP's posts until I saw that one. Be nice if Kerry could just come out and really say what's going on and what happened when he was talking with MCM. So many are taking his side now.

It's been ugly here. sad.

[karendc]

1. Here is what I understand...

...from those close in:

He did NOT say he thought the election was stolen, because he has never said that to those closest to him.

And I have met MCM, and I was not impressed. And I am being kind.

[politicasista]

2. The campaign should have talked more about disenfranchisement

It's just disappointing because I always like the poster. People are continuing to pin RW talking points on him.(flip flopper, threw the election to Bush, etc). Even worse, it has brought out the bashers.

He needs to say something about this ASAP otherwise, people may remember that "he didn't fight for our votes" if he runs again.

[LittleClarkie]

4. He has said that he suspected however

which isn't enough for him to come out on.

The exchange according to Miller.

My exchange with Kerry
Kerry's statement was not planned. He did not expect to see me. His sister, Peggy Kerry, purposely invited me to that fundraiser so that I could hand the senator a copy of my book. (She too understands the urgency of getting the top Democrats to push the issue of electoral reform.)

So I spoke briefly with him just as he arrived, and handed him the book, saying, "You were robbed, Senator." He said, "I know!" with a clear gesture of extreme frustration, and then said that he can't get any of his colleagues on the Hill to face the issue. Said that he had lately had an argument about it with Chris Dodd, who didn't want to hear about it. Kerry tried to tell him about all the problems with the electronic touch-screen machines, but Dodd refused to listen, saying that he had looked into it, and that "there's nothing there." (In bringing the subject up with Dodd, Kerry was not influenced by the GAO report, which he didn't even know about until I mentioned it to him. Indeed, he seemed mightily impressed that the GAO had come out with a strong report.)

I urged him to spearhead a major senatorial investigation into what went down last year, in the spirit of his best work in that chamber, when he led inquiries into Iran/contra and BCCI. He said that, given his position, he doubts that he can be the one to go out front about the issue, because of the "sour grapes" factor. I appreciate his dilemma, but still think that he must embrace the issue of electoral reform, for the country's sake. (I also think that it would be the only way in which he might redeem himself for his deplorable concession just a year ago.)

Believe me, I understand, and share, your feelings of impatience at the senator's long silence (which, again, he certainly would not have broken if I hadn't happened to bump into him). But if he'll champion the issue of electoral reform, we stand to gain much more than we can get from merely cursing him for his timidity. I therefore would advise you all to shower him with strong encouragement ASAP.

I'm not reading alot of respect for Kerry in his comments.

What did you find "unimpressive" about the man, if I can ask? I suspect Miller is in his mind a champion of election reform, but that this role has somewhat gone to his head. He comes near to calling Kerry a liar, and then to me at least he said we need to focus on the elections.

God forbid folks should disagree with him.

[karendc]

7. Miller is...

...a champion of his own career and that is all I will say about him.

[ProSense]

3. Why are

All these people so concerned about whether the election was stolen or not and who said it was or not? They can't stand Kerry so why do they give a damn? If it's not about Kerry, then why link his name to every post about the stolen election? Do they want him to speak up and take his rightful position or shut up and go away? Check how many threads are started about Kerry by non Kerry supporters, then tell me if this isn't bitter obsession.

[karendc]

5. The campaign...

...talked about disenfranchisement from the legal perspective--there were, literally, thousands of lawyers out there looking after people disenfranchised in the USUAL ways.

What no one realized was the need for COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS to be observing the process.

And THAT is because the Gore campaign people did not do THEIR job in 2000--and not because the staffers did not WANT to do their job.

This all began because the voting fraud that occurred in 2000 was not investigated appropriately.

And the correct answer to all the numnuts who blame JK is:
READ THE GAO REPORT.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05956.pdf

And ask why the media is not ALL OVER this?

[_dynamicdems]

12. Every board attracts idiots just as every dog attracts fleas. It is the

nature of such boards. People on these boards go negative because they can hide behind the anonymity while making themselves feel powerful and important.

Senator Kerry is a target because he's a threat. Why should be take these people at face value? Why should we assume these are "friends" and that this is "friendly fire?" Boards are anonymous. We don't know these people and we don't know their motives. Mixed in with the brain dead are undoubtedly instigators. People on message boards are easily inflamed. It is easy to start a "war."

If you don't believe me, make up a wild accusation sometime and test it out. See how many "morAns" you can get to jump on the bandwagon. Then tell them, "Sorry, folks...just conducting an asshole test, and guess what? You all passed."

[Mass]

6. I dont think it is worth it - Most people have no idea who MCM is.

However, Kerry has been very active in promoting bills that insure voting rights for all, and I hope he will find a way to promote that.

The last bill he co-sponsored with Obama about intimidations seems very important, as was the previous one, sponsored by Clinton and co-sponsored by others.

Also, he could probably (co)-sponsor the bill for paper trail in the Senate.

I think all that is more important than MCM promoting his book. He will be forgotten in a few weeks (this came back only because CSPAN re-aired his interview).

[karendc]

8. I agree..

Let people know what he has been doing about voting reform.

[ProSense]

9. Here's an interesting book review

Don't get "Fooled Again"
In his new book, Mark Crispin Miller tries to prove that Republicans rigged the 2004 election, but his evidence is thinner than a butterfly ballot.
By Farhad Manjoo

Nov. 14, 2005 | On Nov. 4, Mark Crispin Miller, the New York University media studies professor and longtime Bush critic, appeared on the lefty radio show "Democracy Now!" to promote his new book, "Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them)." As part of an on-air debate with the investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard, who recently criticized Miller's book in Mother Jones magazine, Miller let slip a dramatic piece of news about last year's Democratic nominee for the presidency. "On Friday, this last Friday night, I arranged to meet Senator Kerry at a fundraiser to give him a copy of my book," Miller said. "He told me he now thinks the election was stolen."

Now, this was big news. If what Miller said about Kerry was right, it would have signaled a momentous shift in thinking for the senator. For a year now, partisans on the left who say that Bush stole last year's presidential race have had a hard time making their claim stick precisely because Kerry, the man they allege was the main victim of the fraud, had so quickly conceded the election and so thoroughly ignored any suggestion that it had been rigged. But if Kerry now thought that these people were right -- if Kerry now believed Bush didn't actually win the race -- well, that would change everything. Suddenly the year-long online barrage of half-baked theories and misreported election data that some people say proves a massive, successful Republican conspiracy to install Bush in the White House would have found a very prominent, aggrieved backer, someone to finally make the case to the world that Americans had been cheated of their rightful president.


snip...

I say that Miller claims to prove this because that's pretty much all he does. In his introduction, Miller promises to prove that Republicans rigged the race, and then at some point in the middle of the book he begins talking like he already has, and the reader is left to leaf through the volume in a daze, wondering if perhaps some kind of typesetting or bookbinding error caused the explosive section of Miller's tome to be left out of this one copy. But not so; my book is intact, and though I searched the contents, the index and the voluminous endnotes, I found no proof of Miller's theory. Like his claim that Kerry now believes he was robbed, Miller's many suggestions of fraud dissolve under close scrutiny. By the end, the only fraud you're sure of is the one perpetrated upon you, the reader, into bearing with this book.

In an ideal world, one wouldn't feel compelled to review -- nor to say much of anything about -- a book like "Fooled Again." In an ideal world, books like these -- vacuous, tendentious collections of pseudo-journalism that promise 10 times as much in their titles as they deliver between the covers -- would die quietly off in the media distance, ignored by everyone, inciting nobody, collecting dust and a heap of embarrassment for their overheated authors.


more...

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/11/14/miller/



Where's the evidence? Kerry is a smart man.

[karendc]

10. Exactly

The issue is truly that there is no proof, no pattern that repeats, no smoking memo.

The GAO Report, the GAO Report...please. It's not proof, but it is essentially directive. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05956.pdf

There IS a part of the discussion with Miller that rings true to me; so I believe he did have a discussion with him. The part about not being able to go out in front on the issue sounds like him; sounds like someone who just heard someone ranting to him about a stolen election, and who is calmly stating his reasons for not going public with any concerns he may have.

The part about having a fight with Chris Dodd sounds adolescent and unlikely. The "I KNOW" is completely out of character.

[TayTay]

26. The part about Chris Dodd is senseless

Sen. Kerry would never say this. It defies common sense. Let's say, for argument's sake, that he had a private conversation with Sen. Dodd about election fraud and the need to get the machines hack-proof. Kerry would never, ever casually reveal this to MCM. It just defies reason. (No one would reveal a work-in-progress discussion like this in public and certainly not in terms that put another Sen. in a very bad light.) If it even happened at all.

MCM is pushing away people who might help him if he wasn't so self-promoting and belligerent. It's too bad that he has framed this as a 'you're with me or against proving election fraud' debate. That's sad and so unnecessary. This is why the MSM finds it so easy to dismiss the GAO and the other claims of funny-business with the machines. The people who promote it don't think about how they come off. They swing wildly at everyone and have no strategy besides, I'm right and everyone else is an enemy of democracy. Geez.

[WildEyedLiberal]

27. See my post below re: self-promoting whores

It rather sums up how I feel about careerist prostitutes such as our dear DU guest of honor, MCM.

[LittleClarkie]

41. And that is the very review that MCM himself took exception to

As I said, God forbid someone should disagree with the man. Some would discount what Salon says, though I find them a good source, because they consider MCM unimpeachable.

Is it because he says what they want to hear? He is almost on a similar pedestal to Cindy Sheehan. They are sacrosanct. God forbid a person should have even a vague criticism of either.

[_dynamicdems]

11. GD is like a war zone.

This is getting extremely tiresome. You kill one of these threads with logic (in combination with dogged persistence) and another springs up.

[fedupinBushcountry]

13. Extremely

I asked today if posting crap to bash Kerry made them feel all good inside and if they got a climax out of it.

Of course someone else answered my post calling me a Kerry cheerleader, lol, as in their subline they have a Dean quote. Do they realize how hypocrital they are?

[Mass]

14. I liked particularly the thread about electability that seemed

fairly innocent until in the middle of the OP, the person started to say Kerry was a mediocre senator (without any proof of it, of course). Amusingly, the OP had a big sign supporting his guy, and the sign was more or less stealing Kerry's slogan "Keeping the American Promise".

I think this week-end was low in news and people felt they needed to keep busy.

[karynnj]

22. Not to mention his ONLY claim to fame is electability

Because he's a Southern Governor. Kind of ironic given the thread.

I posted that there were only 2 Democratic Southern Governors. If Kerry would have won (and it was close), you could argue as seriously that the only Senators that can win have to be from MA, have nice hair and the initials JFK. There really aren't enough data points. Warner seems not ready for prime time.

Someone else is proposing a Warner/Kerry ticket - to get the foreign policy experience.

[_dynamicdems]

15. You know, I think the Repugs use Dean. I've suspected that for a

while now. Yes, the irony of a Deaniac calling a Kerrycrat a cheerleader is the proverbial pot calling the...

And besides, you can call me a Kerry cheerleader anytime you want, just as long as I don't have to wear one of those skimpy outfits. Actually, I'd prefer the term Kerry guerrilla, but that might be misinterpreted in DU as war-mongering. How about the Kerry SWAT team? Or maybe the Kerry bullshit eradicators? Or how about the Kerry myth busters?

Seriously, are these people even old enough to vote?

[WildEyedLiberal]

17. Most of them are middle aged ex-hippies

Most of the shrill Kerry-haters in GD are 60 year old hippie leftovers from the sixties who clearly took too much acid. There are a few young Deaniacs (I dated one... :scared: ), but the really nasty ones are mostly older.

[_dynamicdems]

18. Oh, the age comment was just sarcasm: Real Age V. Maturity level. n/t

[Mass]

19. Some Kerryhaters are NOT Dean supporters. They are good old

DLCers seeing Kerry as a threat to whoever they support. And they are the ones who scare me more. They see Kerry as a danger and will do everything to attack him, except they will do it carefully, so that they cannot be casted as flamebait.

In one sense, I prefer those who are flamebait because they lose all credibility.

[WildEyedLiberal]

16. Mark Crispin Miller, I have come to believe, is a self promoting whore

He DOES NOT sound at all like a professional with a Ph.D. His style of writing is akin to a frothing blogger - high on hysterics and hyperbole, low on lucidity and fact.

I read somewhere that he refers, in his book, to Bush's cronies as "Busheviks." What the HELL? That sounds dumb coming from an irreverent blogger, let alone a supposed academic who we are told we should take seriously.

His comments about Kerry have never been kind, and it's highly curious to me that he chooses to come to a large left-wing web board to promote this supposed "conversation with Kerry" on the eve of the release of his new book. And of course, the thoughtless dittoheads here jump on the bandwagon like good little lefty lemmings.

The stench of whoredom and hypocrisy is so rank in GD right now that you can't enter with a full Hazmat suit.

[politicasista]

20. True

I am just tired of my peeps (OP "ff") dumping on Kerry. If he is collaborating with Obama on voter reform, good for him.

[globalvillage]

21. Maybe it's habit.

I don't know the context of this exchange, but this is not the first time MCM has been publicly accused of word twisting.

Alterman on Miller:
I am deeply disappointed to see Mark Crispin Miller sullying his good name with this attack on my character and my work. It is filled with angry assertions for which he has no evidence, and he deliberately twists my words and actions to the point where no fair-minded observer would recognize them...
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030714/exchange

edit for weird spelling error.

[WildEyedLiberal]

25. I trust Eric Alterman FAR more than MCM. n/t

[globalvillage]

32. Or maybe his book just sucks.

And he's creating controversy to counter some less than stellar reviews. Has anyone read it?

Also this month on the same radio program, Mark Hertsgaard—who investigated Miller’s work in the liberal Mother Jones—politely dismantled many of the details of electoral chicanery that Miller uses as smoking guns. More recently, Farhad Manjoo, whose reporting Miller cites throughout Fooled Again, came out against Miller’s embellishments in the equally liberal internet magazine Salon.com.
Miller dismisses Hertsgaard’s critique as “pedantic over-analysis” that misses the larger point. The problem is that Miller does not prove any larger point. What he provides is a catalog of questionable, often deplorable, and not necessarily illegal tactics used by various Republican operatives. That it was all governed by a Christian plot is endlessly asserted but never proven.
There is a case to be made against Diebold and other touch-screen voting machines controlled by corporations openly committed to the victory of a particular candidate (“Future Vote,” Dec. 11, 2002). There is an argument to be made for broader electoral reform and, indeed, there is a book to be written about what went down in Ohio, Florida, and the rest of swing-state America in 2004. Even Vanity Fair’s Christopher Hitchens, a journalist as unlikely as anyone to throw in his lot with tinfoil hat types, is skeptical about the irregularities at Ohio’s polls.
Sadly, Fooled Again is not that book. Not unlike the theocrats he detests, Miller’s own febrile certitude hurts his credibility. Members of the “Bush = Hitler” crowd will surely delight in a fresh dump of conspiratorial ammo—though Plamegate, Delaygate, and the rest have likely worn their blogging fingers to the bone. If anyone outside the cathedral of ultra-left orthodoxy can make it through these pages without perpetual winces, well, that would be shocking.
http://www.citypaper.com/arts/review.asp?id=4945

Just sayin'.


I don't know this writer, but the point is that this review lists three separate opinions (including the author's own) that say Miller's assertions do not back his claim.

(WTF on the Plame, Delay references, though. They're pretty mainstream.)

[MH1]

31. Aaargh. I remember that exchange.

I thought at the time that it was just a train wreck, but I ended up siding with Alterman.

I just revisited it and it's still a train wreck. But there's this interesting part, from Alterman's original article (emphasis added):

"Well, it's a fact of life in our scandal-besotted culture that it does not take much in the way of evidence to publish charges that can ruin a man's life."

Hmmmm....Alterman is debunking a scandal because it isn't supported by evidence...and MCM attacks him.

Do I sense a pattern here?

[globalvillage]

33. Who needs evidence

when you've got a keyboard?

[karynnj]

24. He's in the media department

which has a good reputation. He is way out of his area of expertise.

[GRLMGC]

23. Ugh, that thread was such crap

Yeah Kerry is a politician and Mark Crispin Miller is trying to sell books? What gives him more credibility over the pol? GRRRRR

[wisteria]

28. As soon as I read that MCM was on C-Span I figured this was going

to happen. I bet it is from the same group of people who started this before. How many times and in how many ways do we have to tell them that MCM is an opportunist and they shouldn't believe everything they hear, especially from someone selling a new book.

[WildEyedLiberal]

29. They'd rather believe a sleazy salesman pitching a book ...

... because it reinforces their imagined reasons for hating Kerry.

[politicasista]

30. I agree

Somewhat disappointed in the OP, but I like this post.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5461214&mesg_id=5463047

[ProSense]

34. At one point

he says he's not a Democrat, he's an independent, but he's less a Democrat since Kerry concede.

:crazy:

[jillan]

35. I didn't see it. But I have a question about it.

Did MCM provide any concrete evidence? Or was it all hearsay?

Until there is some concrete evidence, Kerry has nothing to go on.

[LittleClarkie]

42. The guy on Salon.com didn't think so

but then he must be wrong, figure some people, as their MUST be concrete evidence. They trust Miller as if he is in line for sainthood, and Kerry the nasty ol' politician merely for being a politician.

Ponderous.

[Mass]

36. and now, a thread by ProSense is being turned against Kerry as well

I know ProSense did not want to start a flamebait thread about Kerry, but some Edwards' supporters have decided to accept any rumor that make their guy look good, however unsubstantiated it was, as absolute and divine truth.

[WildEyedLiberal]

37. They missed the WHOLE POINT of that thread

It wasn't even about Kerry or Edwards or conceding - it was about MCM's penchant for contradiction, spreading rumors and hearsay, and dishonesty. Of course, that was much too subtle for most DUers to get, so they just let the irony sail *RIGHT OVER THEIR HEADS* and started attacking Kerry.

ProSense, you're way too clever for them! Next time you need to spell it out carefully in simple, childlike language they can understand! :spank:


:P

[Mass]

38. They stopped at the title - Why read further if you can write something

about the title? Very typical of some people.

The best quote of the interview

.I don't think they have a stellar record of winning campaigns, and I don't really understand how it is that they were hired to do this, but they persuaded him up in Martha's Vineyard that he should pull out, otherwise, he told John Edwards in his call, Kerry said, “They say that if I don't pull out, they are going to call us sore losers,” as if there’s –

May be MCM could spend some time reading about where Kerry was on election night and the day after, if he does not want to be ridiculous. As somebody on GD noted, Kerry was in Boston that night, and why would he be on Martha's Vineyard anyway. His house on the Islands is at Nantucket.

[karynnj]

44. Seeing that the media has referenced the story

that Edwards didn't want to concede, which seems based on his comments on the 2nd (when Kerry didn't concede either), have any of these diligent people directly asked Edwards. I seriously doubt that he would have been any more likely to refuse to concede if there were no good evidence.

It is funny they placed Kerry on Martha's Vineyard.

[ProSense]

39. I hear what you're saying, like

use a crayon!

:rofl:

[Mass]

40. and spell it out.

[WildEyedLiberal]

43. Yes

Maybe draw a very simple, preschool diagram for them to follow, and make sure you offer snacks and naptime.

:rofl: