Policy bombshell! He's for a single-payer health care plan.

Instapundit actually thought about buying  a new Nissan 350Z, so how bad could the blogging/law professing/music producing biz be? … I tend to think the new "Z" is forced and overly architectonic, lacking the grace and fluidity of, say, the 1991 300ZX, which happens to be the used "Z" I could afford, and which is also the car I'm currently driving across the country. (Why? To get to the other side!)  … One thing I've noticed on this trip so far is that heavy (and welcome) police presence on the highways that was evident after 9/11 hasn't dissipated. In Arizona, for example, all the traffic on Interstate 10 was diverted by construction onto a single lane exit ramp – with a squad car at the bottom looking over the queue and another cop at the top eyeballing every single driver. In El Paso, there was a flashing-cruiser roughly every 100 yards. …But you can't help but wonder: Where did all these cops come from?  Are they new recruits? The states haven't had time to train that many. So what were they doing before? Were they all lounging around at desk jobs?  Are they all working overtime and racking up huge paychecks? Are non-terrorist crimes going unsolved and undeterred? All of the above, probably …. 4:50 A.M Central

Friday, November 15, 2002

Ann Coulter has  five suggestions  for reviving the Democrats in a sarcastic swipe that is clarifyingly vicious (e.g. "[T]here is still plenty of room to curry more favor with the teachers' unions"). The Democrats may actually take her up on point  #4. ... While I can almost never agree completely with a Coulter column -- she's not really trying to convince anyone -- there is also some truth in the following:

Of the three Democrats arguably responsible for the election fiasco – Terry McAuliffe, Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt – surely the least culpable was Gephardt, the original phony "NASCAR Democrat." But picking up on the Clinton strategy of blame the innocent and promote the guilty, only Gephardt resigned.

Necessary disclaimer: I don't think she should have made that joke about Timothy McVeigh and the New York Times. [Still, canny of you to wait until Media Whores Online had closed down before posting this item-ed] 10:57 P.M.

Thursday, November 14, 2002

Faster Football! ... 10:09 P.M.

In an earlier post, I noted Eric Black's point that Minnesota GOP candidate Norm Coleman was able to communicate publicly what it might have been illegal (under campaign finance laws) for him to communicate privately -- namely that he really didn't want the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee to run negative TV ads against Mondale... But, as alert kf reader B.B. points out, this public/private distinction is a little more subtle now than it used to be, no? What if Coleman had just had a blog, where he routinely hinted at the kinds of new ads, media buys and other free speech activities he hoped other concerned citizens might undertake against Mondale? ... And what if the URL for this "public" blog wasn't all that widely known? ... Maybe most candidates would decide that the safer course is to be as public as possible, as Coleman in fact was. But the blog route might allow pols to "publicly" communicate more detailed instructions to those "independent" campaigners they aren't allowed to "coordinate" with. ...(e.g.:"Our campaign is doing really well in the St. Paul area. Duluth is coming around and we certainly hope and expect to be where we want to be in that area by election day. They are really worried about high taxes up there, aren't they?")  1:32 P.M.

The Note gets some actual  news  that nobody else has: Al Gore has flip-flopped and now supports a single-payer national health care system like Canada's. ... Not only does the Note get the news, it astutely analyzes it. It's the first-day and second-day stories rolled into one. Talk about Faster Journalism! There's nothing left for the Washington Post and NYT to write. ... Actually, there is. Here's a ramification The Note missed: Gore's endorsement of single-payer opens up a huge opportunity for Hillary Clinton to stake out a position on the centrist (i.e. right) side of the Democratic spectrum by opposing the single-payer solution. Presumably, Hillary! -- who can get much of the left vote just because she's Hillary! -- is looking for such opportunities. She rejected single-payer when she was in charge of her husband's health proposals, of course, a long time ago in a galaxy far away (1993). ...

More Faster Journalism: Howie Kurtz is already naming and mocking the just-emerged rebaked CW about the Democratic presidential candidates being "seven dwarves." ... This means that any journalist who doesn't want to look like a CW hack will now have to come up with something different, which means a new CW will emerge all the more rapidly. ...We could be ready for the 2004 election by Thanksgiving! ...11:01 A.M.

I've finally read Eric Black's justly-celebrated "tick-tock" account of the Coleman-Mondale campaign. No throat clearing, no billboard paragraphs. Just the key details.. ...  It's also a textbook study of the Feiler Faster Thesisin action (as alert reader T.M. points out). The 13 days from Wellstone's death to the election packed in most of the ups and downs of a full-length old-style campaign. Black offers some clues as to why things nowadays have speeded up:

1) Cell phones: People hear the awful news of Wellstone's crash immediately. Instantly, GOP strategist Vin Weber tracks down old Ashcroft aides to find out how they handled the similar Missouri situation;

2) Feedback: Ashcroft had longer to recover after his opponent's death produced a wave of sympathy -- but Ashcroft never recovered completely. Coleman is able to quickly learn the lesson of Ashcroft's campaign -- Don't Drop Out of Sight -- and mount an effective comeback.

3) NEXIS: Mondale meets with aides for the first time to consider entering the race, but "National Republicans have already generated a book of 'opposition research'" on him.

4) E-mail: Weber is able to stoke outrage after the Wellstone memorial service by "sending an e-mail to a Star Tribune political reporter. The subject line says: "I've never been angrier in my whole political life . . ." Weber's quote gets used. ... Why wait for them to phone you?