Historical analogy for IWR vote. Eleanor Roosevelt on JFK:

[AP]

When JFK was running for president, he ran as a bigger anti-communist than Nixon. His feeling was that the only way to run against the Republican advantage on the issue of national security and foreign policy was to totally remove from their arsenal the issue of the Republican advantage on being anti-communist.

Kennedy was drawn into a debate about (I believe) criticizing McCarthy, which Kennedy wouldn't do. Because of his reluctance to do so, Eleanor Roosevelt said about Kennedy (paraphrasing) "perhaps the junior senator from Mass. should show a little more courage and a little less profile."

If I have that quote right, it was very funny, but packed with hurtful criticism. It took his attractiveness and tried to turn it into a liability, it made fun of his book, which was his biggest professional accomplishment up to that point in his life, she noted that he was very young, and it was about him not standing up to the right wing.

But JFK was convinced that not being sufficiently anti-communist would result in a Nixon victory. It's impossible to say if he was wrong about this, but he was able to squeak out a victory. And did he govern as an anti-communist? Well, his government did some awful things in Africa (continuing Eisenhower policies), but he probably prevented a nulcear war with Russia by not attacking Cuba during the missile crisis (against the advice of his entire cabinet -- would Nixon have done the same?), he wouldn't give air support to the Bay of Pigs invaders, and he didn't want to escalate troop deployment in Vietnam. In fact, Castro recently said that Kennedy was his favorite American president.

Now, I think that smart people should have been able to figure out during Kennedy's campaign what he was up to. Why is this a big mystery? Why shouldn't people be able to realize what the big picture really is? Why do we have to wait for 40 years to hear Castro say that Kennedy actually was a pretty good president and seemed to be more interested in allowing countries around the world build up wealth for their citizens than he was in the American impearialist project? (What was Kennedy's SA policy called? The Alliance for Progress?)

It really should be more obvious.

[andym]

1. JFK was wise to try to take away the Republican's strength

JFK was wise to try to take away the Republican's strength. Back then it was anti-communism. Today it is anti-terror/national security.

That's why Clark was potentially such a good candidate, he tried to take away national security/terrorism, and he further tried to take away
"family values" and "patriotism."

Of the remaining candidates, perhaps Kerry can take away anti-terror/national security, though it's unclear to me if he effectively can. None of the remaining candidates can really battle Bush on his own ground.

Btw, Clinton did the same thing in the 90s, taking fiscal conservatism away from the Republicans.

[Tweed]

3. Excellent point! Cut them off at the knees

As oppose to play right in their hands

[goobergunch]

7. I suppose

that this is how Clinton's signing of the Welfare Reform Reconciliation Act of 1996 will be defended?

It is better to do what is right than what is popular, IMHO.

[andym]

8. The key is to take their issue and change it to reflect your own values

The key is to take their issue and change it to reflect your own values.
To be really effective with this, you have to understand your core set of beliefs. In other words, you need to know your goals, but be open to using whatever tactics will be most effective.

Btw, IMHO, at times, Clinton was a master (fiscal conservatism), at times, he was not (welfare reform).

[Taeger]

20. RIGHT AND POPULAR

That is the winning formula. A process must occur BEFORE the election to make RIGHT things popular.

[AP]

10. JFK took away the anti-communist issue, and moved on to caring about

people. He didn't ONLY talk about being anti-communists. He dismissed it in a sentence and then talked about optimism and hope and working together. Clark wasn't able to get people to think about much more than terrorism. He couldn't take people minds off the issue. He was playing on their home field.

[Tweed]

2. The 2004 election will not be decided by history

Especially since most of the American population doesn't know the history you always throw on Edwards

[AP]

11. So?

That's not my argument. You don't need to know history to see who's going to win this year, and to know how the Republicans are going to campaign and what will and won't work.

History just shows us that a lot of this shit has gone down before.

And you can bet the REpublicans aren't ignoring history.

[flpoljunkie]

4. Illuminating, AP. All DUers would benefit from reading your post.

Don't get mad. Get even. Outsmart the bastards!

[yowzayowzayowza]

5. Political Triangulation...

a fact of life.

[DaisyUCSB]

6. Or maybe some people here are afraid to say it was the right thing to do

Just because Ted Kennedy voted against it and a few other liberals doesn't necessarily mean it was the right thing to do. Almost all of congress, outside of a few people like Kucinich, wanted to get the United Nations on board to put pressure on Iraq. Although hindsight is 20/20, and the UN never did get on board, Edwards had no way of knowing that they wouldn't, but his vote was in support of that attempt, not support of rushing into a war.

[RafterMan]

9. Bah.

If Edwards won't even try to excuse is support for the war, I'm not going to let you do it for him with the old "Don't you people see what he's *really* up to?"

What's *really* going on is that Edwards has shown he has no understanding of the damage this war has done to America. I'll vote for someone who supports 9/11 before I vote for someone who supports the Iraq war.

And spare me the Kennedy bit. No, Nixon would not have started a nuclear war. And if Kennedy wanted to prevent one, he should have done so by not putting the missiles in Turkey in the first place. And ask the Diems about his anti-imperialism. While it's good to look at the idealistic side of Kennedy's foreign policy as a model, at this point in time we cannot afford to whitewash his recklessness.

[anti-NAFTA]

12. What Kennedy was up to

was pandering to lowest common denominator voters who thought the USSR was going to take away their beer and porn; the same voters who flocked to Reagan.

You're saying that we should out-Republican the Republicans on national security, but I think that once you legitimize fear, then that fear will stay engraved in the American Zeitgeist for decades later.

And as far as Nixon is concerned; he happens to be my favorite Republican president since Lincoln. He continued Great Society programs and was a great diplomat as far as China and the USSR were concerned.

edit: And he saved Israel from annihilation.

[AP]

14. Once Kennedy said where he stood, there was no more discussion.

The debate moved on to one about how people felt about the direction of America. Once you stopped having people think the world was a scarry place, they voted on hope and optimism and middle class opportunity, and Kennedy won that debate.

Repbulicans wanted to scare Americans into voting Republican. Kennedy said, 'what's to be afraid of? You're safe with me. Now let's talk about what matters: looking forward and spreading the wealth fairly."

[AP]

15. Nixon was great on American labor issues, but he was evil to foreign...

...countries and planned on making Wall St rich by siphoning off the wealth of other nations.

Kennedy was a bastard, but, as Pallast says, what Chavez is doing down in Venezuale would have fit right into Kennedy's Alliance for Progress -- it wouldn't have fit into Nixon's vision of the world.

[Mairead]

13. How many were killed as the result of JFK's 'anti-communism'?

The IWR vote has already killed thousands and torn to bits tens of thousands more. That feels like a big difference.

[AP]

16. How many lives were saved by not have a Republican in office until '68 and

how many died once Nixon did get in power, and not just Americans in vietnam, but chileans in Chile, and Africans in Africa, etc?

And that's what this battle is about. If Bush wins, It'll be a blood bath around the globe way worse than what's happened in Iraq so far.

[anti-NAFTA]

18. Johnson started the Vietnam War.

It goes to show that we shouldn't be beaten into complacency. Just because you have a Democrat in office doesn't mean he's not going to be just as evil as a Republican.

[AP]

22. Kennedy wanted to keep US out. LBJ changed that policy. Nixon escalated.

The point is, out of those three, the US would have been alright with the dem who ran as a hawk on vietnam, and the worst with teh Republican whom he beat after taking the anti-communism weapon from the aresenal.

Incidentally, I'm not convinced that Johnson didn't have something with JFK's death. And at the very least, he didn't like Kennedy very much.

[Toucano]

17. A few minor points to consider.

The Kennedy's and McCarthy had always been close. Joe McCarthy, a fellow Irish-Catholic who had dated Pat and Eunice, privately supported Kennedy during his Senate race.

McCarthy's rein of terror did enormous damage to the leadership on the left. However, I don't think JFK alone could have stopped him, just as John Edwards alone could not have stopped Bush's march to war. John Kennedy was taking his orders from his father, who was still stinging from his scandalous and unpopular service in England.

In 1956, JFK did issue a statement in support of the censure of Joe McCarthy. It had become politically necessary for JFK to split from McCarthy once the tide had turned against him. I don't see how that had any bearing on the issue of anti-communism in the race with Nixon in 1960. That race, you'll recall, was extremely close and rumors of electoral fraud still cast shadow on the victory.

However, a candidate didn't have to be pro-communism to be anti-McCarthy because McCarthy's anti-communism was anti-American. The real issue is about allowing the right to DEFINE and FRAME the issues.

Reagan whooped Carter by capitalizing on every single shortcoming of the Carter administration. He succeeded by being the anti-Carter, not Carter-lite.

I conclude that Eleanor was right in criticizing JFK. She understood that with each step to the center, the left becomes the right. When the left loses it's sense of identity, it ceases to exist. That's the complaint you hear so frequently here.

Just as in the McCarthy era, we've got them by the short hairs on their Iraq war misdeeds. We can bring them to their knees and keep them there if we pull hard rather than letting go. Why? Because we're right! You compromise when you might be wrong. When you're right, you fight.

[anti-NAFTA]

19. What state was Joe McCarthy from?

[Toucano]

21. Wisconsin

I believe