Not a good week for Bush

What I felt like doing today

Now I freely admit that I like TV. Nothing wwrong in that, but between the trolls infesting the site, like I care if some of Glenn Reynolds fans don't like soccer and the obvious lies about John Kerry's record, I was in a pretty foul mood. Which I took out by playing Grand Theft Auto Vice City on the desktop, while I post on the laptop. I'll get into my wireless experiences in another post.

Whoever would buy that game for a kid is a fucking idiot. The game should be called predator training. You beat the shit out of people for money, shoot cops and shoot whomever gets in your way. The game is amoral and anti-social and every other phrase you can come up with. It's also a lot of vicarious fun. Whereas Call to Duty is a lot scarier.

Anyway, if I'm grumpy, Karl Rove must be sweating his balls off.

I usually leave economics to the good professor Atrios and let Paul Krugman explain this stuff.That's what people pay them to do. But today's jobs numbers are a disaster. While the number of jobs created have fallen sharply during the summer, a time when people usually add jobs, summer work and all, creating 32,000 jobs a month may mean no jobs are created this month. You need to create about 150,000-200,000 a month just to keep pace with the population. There was a break in the spring, but now things seem to be getting worse and the oil prices keep rising.

Simply put, higher oil prices are an invisible tax. Americans bought larger cars in the 1990's and now the bill is due. It isn't chesp to fill up that SUV. And with gas pushing $50 a barrel and $3 a gallon, people just don't have the money to spend to keep the economy going. The White House was trying to spin that unemployment was down, but the two numbers don't jibe unless you realize that people who lose unemployment or stop looking for work are no longer unemployed. So sure, the rate could go down, but the number of people working doesn't have to go up.

Rove is hoping that he can use evangelicals to drive Bush to victory, but even evangelicals have to eat. A Wal-Mart job doesn't replace a factory job.

But this whole week has been bad for Bush.

Kerry tossed 9/11 in Bush's face, straight out of F9/11. Now, the White House response was lame, but they couldn't deny the fact that Bush froze. He just sat there. And as one of Atrios's posters poited out, his presence at the school could have endangered the kids. Bush can't reply because he did freeze.

The terror alerts are turning on Bush. Ridge's plug for the President was an opening for the Dems to cry wolf. Amazingly stupid.

Kerry is not playing with Bush. He's known the man for 40 years and does not like him. Unlike McCain, who remains loyal to the GOP despite the ratfukcing (A Nixon term for dirty tricks) he got from Bush, Kerry is going to destroy Bush, mock him in public. The lies are flying so fast that it's impossible to keep your head above the bullshit. Kerry only served four months in Vietnam-lie, the Swift Boats were his second tour. He didn't deserve the medals he got-lie, he got them because ALL wounded sailors got them. He wasn't brave-lie, some of the men now attacking him signed the recommendations which got him those medals. Now, you can argue all you want about Bronze stars, but he got one with a V for Valor, and a harder to get Silver Star. The next medal up is the Navy Cross and people take the Silver Star very seriously.

It's enough to make you want to smash the TV.

But Rove's campaign is imploding like a car in GTAVC after a couple of crashes. Why would Bush bring up Vietnam? Kerry has been cool about it, but Bush's desertion/AWOL/UA whatever is going to come back up. Kerry is all smiles and manners, but his heart is that of a MacArthur or a Sherman. He is cautious, except when it's time to be audacious. Kerry's language is aggressive, more than Clinton's ever was, who would get angry, and there is a differene, and he is challenging Bush. Not on policy, but on subtext of his manhood. Kerry is going to thrust up in Bush's face as long as he can.

By implying there was something less than honorable in Kerry's military service, Bush invites a stinging attack, and it may come from Kerry himself. This is the rawest of subjects for him, the one which ended his first marriage by many accounts. Bush keeps picking at this scab, he might not like how Kerry responds.

I think the Rove machine have been so accustomed to dealing with wimpy liberals, people who wouldn't fight, that Kerry's aggression was something they cannot readily handle. The Swift Boat folks are cranks who won't come clean about why they dislike Kerry, which is that he protested the war and they feel, as a Naval officer, he broke faith with them. Which would be honorable, but would get them laughed off the screen. So they lie and embarass themselves.

Kerry fights, more importantly, he likes to fight. Not like a drunken soccer hooligan or Balkan paramilitary, but in a serious, studied way, like a Nimitz or a MacArthur. He will wait to pick his battles, but when he fights them, he fights to win. What I think Rove is thinking is that people still trust his man, that he can get them back in August, that it will be tight down the road. But it isn't tight now, Kerry is pulling away from Bush by 5-7 points in the all important state polling.

Using the gay friendly adulterer Giuliani to counter Kerry is a mistake, because you squash him with one question: why did you have to be forced to meet with black officials in New York? Were they not worthy of your time? Giuliani is stopped cold. Because we're not just talking Sharpton, who he made the most powerful man in New York politics, but elected officials. He had every right, even if it wasn't smart, to tell the unelected Sharpton to piss up a rope. But not duly elected officials.

Now, in a very different New York, it's not the anarcho-kiddies coming, as they did in Boston, but the working class who voted for Reagan, cops and firefighters. Every person with a real grieveance is coming to the RNC party and New York's reception will not be friendly. We feel that the GOP doesn't like us, and the feeling is mutual. They wanted to run on the dead of Ground Zero. But Bush played the first responders for too long, lots of talk, little action as Bush got his war on. Now, it's reckoning day. Unlike Menino, who could cut a deal with his unions, Bloomberg has no such power. They have no interest in a smooth convention. They want to be heard and to apply pressure.

You csn see the growing tension in Bush. He's ill at ease in his handpicked crowds, while Kerry is at ease being heckled. Bush seems tense on stage, uncomfortable. Kerry seems at ease.

This has to be scary for Rove because it's that easethat Bush has, that informality, which is his asset. Bush was popular for a moment, but the electoral reality is that Bush was a minority president who acted like he had a mandate and this is going to bite him in the ass. A lot of he wanted wasn't popular and now they are reduced to manufacturing issues,like gay marriage, to have any hope of reelection. But the problem for Rove is that the real world is crashing down on Bush. In the past, someone saved him, mostly from himself.

March was Bush's last good month. Since then, he's been getting hammered by events. Now, their planned coronation might become the Chicago of the working class.

But now, there is no one who can rescue him from himself. He listened to the wrong people, and he made his mistakes. Now, for the first time in his life, he may have to pay for it.

posted by Steve @ 8:09:00 PM