Town of Braintree

Frontload Democratic primaries



Terry McAuliffe didn't expect this. When McAuliffe, the Democratic National Committee chairman, decided to frontload the Democratic primaries, he was convinced that an early nominee would unify the party. He and his fellow Democrats were sure that hatred of President Bush was widespread and that any nominee with party backing ?– especially a nominee with appeal to swing voters ?– would be able to defeat the incumbent. If only the Democrats could grab an early nominee and keep him undefined until the Democratic National Convention, the White House would fall into Democratic hands.

The early primaries were a dangerous tactic. The early passion of primary voters meant that they defined the party. At first, that meant a strong Howard Dean candidacy. But then, the primary voters revealed their main agenda: getting George W. Bush out of office. It didn't matter who replaced him. And that is why Democrats chose John Kerry.

The Democrats who voted for John Kerry must be crying into their beers at this point. The slim lead he took away from the early primaries immediately dissipated, and the campaign became a dogfight, even as President Bush did little to defend his name or define his opponent.

. A Los Angeles Times poll in June 2004 showed that a full third of voters ''didn't know enough about Kerry to decide whether he would be a better president than Bush.'' The train was still running smoothly.

Kerry, who had avoided all attempts to categorize himself in any way, branded himself a Vietnam veteran candidate. He made his service in Vietnam the focal point of his White House run ?– and still, he could not pull away. He got virtually no bump from the convention.

And everyone remembered that, in wartime, all the misdirected vitriol in the world won't protect Americans from attack.

. Famous baseball star George Brett once stated that the first thing he looked for in the papers every Sunday was to see who was below the ''Mendoza line.'' He was referring to Mario Mendoza, an infielder with a career average of .215; if a player hit below that average, he was flat-out terrible. To score below Michael Dukakis as a presidential challenger is very much akin to breaking the Mendoza line ?– call it ''breaking the Dukakis line.''

So what went wrong for McAuliffe? After all, he got everything he wanted: an early nominee, a nominee with possible swing support, and a nominee who remained largely undefined until the convention. The McAuliffe strategy went south for two reasons: First, John Kerry is imperious and arrogant. Second, Kerry didn't have to define himself ?– his backers defined him.



And so when Kerry finally defined his candidacy at the convention, he had already been defined as a far-left candidate. Even his bloviation about Vietnam couldn't mask the radicalism of his supporters. That was the biggest problem with the McAuliffe strategy: The primary voters defined the party candidate.


By Democratic Committee chairman,

Smith had been dead and cremated

Thousands Of Dead People Remain Eligible To Vote
JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) -- It should come as no surprise that Frank C. Smith Junior -- a truck driver who believed wholeheartedly in civic participation -- would show up to vote last year. Except, of course, that Smith had been dead and cremated for more than three years. The Joplin Globe reports today Smith was one of a number of people who had votes cast under their names after their death. In Smith's case, authorities believe it was a mix-up, not voter
fraud. But with at least eleven-thousand-700 dead people still on the voter rolls for next month's election, that leaves open the possibility of illegal votes.
Officials say a new election system to be implemented in Missouri next fall should ease the problem. That system will link all county election authorities to a central database that instantly reveals if an individual is registered in another county, dead or in prison.



By I ain't got no body

Provisional Ballot Don't Count

Supreme Court: Provisional ballots in wrong precinct don't count

People who cast a provisional ballot at the wrong precinct aren't entitled to have their votes counted, the state Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday, rejecting an argument by labor unions that the rule wrongly disenfranchises voters.

The court said that the law clearly states that provisional ballots must be counted only if the person was entitled to vote ''at the precinct,'' and that the constitution gives the Legislature the authority to dictate voting rules.

Under Florida law, if a voter shows up at a polling place but officials there have no record of them being registered, they are given a provisional ballot. That ballot is then held until officials determine if the person was entitled to vote at that precinct and hadn't already voted.

If they should have been allowed to vote, the ballot counts; if not, it's thrown out.




But a group of labor unions sued over the ballot law, saying that it unconstitutionally disenfranchised voters who may not know their polling place. They argued that many people have new polling places because of redistricting, may have moved, or may have been displaced by a hurricane.

The court disagreed, saying that requiring provisional voters vote at the correct precinct is no more unreasonable than requiring that everyone else vote at the right polling place.


By Who Didn't Know,Dumb Try Lib.

North Korea Has nuclear weapo



Japanese official says North Korea holds nuclear weapons: report


North Korea has already completed the development of plutonium-based nuclear weapons with the help of Pakistan, a senior Japanese official said in comments published Sunday.
The remarks by Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda represent the first time a Japanese official has confirmed North Korea's claim to have manufactured nuclear weapons, the Sankei Shimbun said.

''North Korea is near finalising development of nuclear weapons,'' Hosoda told a ruling party meeting in the western town of Shimane on Saturday, the Sankei said.

Pyongyang has not finished developing uranium-based nuclear weapons, but has completed the development of a plutonium bomb similar to the one dropped by the United States on Nagasaki at the end of World War II, Hosoda said.

''It is urgent to make (North Korea) abandon them,'' Hosoda said, without giving any evidence to back up his claims.

Hosoda said North Korea and Pakistan had cooperated in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. ''It is disgraceful,'' he said.

Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan publicly confessed in February to leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Pakistan has refused to allow he International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's atomic watchdog, to interview Khan to discuss the international nuclear black market he used to run.

A North Korean foreign ministry spokemsan said last month the Stalinist state would never dismantle its nuclear weapons unless the United States drops its ''hostile policy'' towards the country.

Six-nation talks aimed at convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programs have failed to make concrete progress so far.



By Japanese officialsays North Kore