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Skywatch
Ensign
Joined: 22 Aug 2004
Posts: 74
Location: Michigan
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 Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 4:29 am Post subject: What if they held a rally and nobody showed up? |
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Turn it in to a press conference that's what!
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/31/politics/campaign/31dems.html (must register to view)
| Quote: | Democrats Turn to Art of Possible
By JODI WILGOREN
Ten minutes before the Democrats' rebuttal rally was to start yesterday, the platform provided for news cameras had no news cameras. Union men in black-and-gold campaign T-shirts began folding up the plastic chairs for lack of sitters. The high school color guard at the base of a bunting-bedecked Grant's Tomb practiced on a barren stage.
The veterans whom Democrats had expected to fill the plaza at 122nd Street and Riverside Avenue never showed up, apparently diverted to a downtown march planned by firefighters. Upon learning that no bus would be coming, organizers redrew their game plan: the rally would become a news conference, no crowd required.
"The truth of the Bush-Cheney record is that the mission was not accomplished!" Gifford Miller, the speaker of the New York City Council, declared as the few dozen people holding placards echoing that message mustered what applause they could.
It is not easy being the opposition, even when playing on what seems to be your home court. With most of the news media focused on either the Republicans convening at Madison Square Garden or the protesters parading outside it, the Democratic Party is doing what it can to get noticed.
There is a war room filled with Democratic workers who are rapid-responding via phone, fax and e-mail to whatever is said at the Garden party up the street. There is a tiny television advertising campaign, $25,000 in 15-second spots strategically placed on New York City news programs. There is a daily public event to provide journalists some pictures; the Democrats are hoping for a better turnout today at a "stroller brigade" at Madison Square Park.
And there is the daily 10 a.m. briefing by the Democratic national chairman, Terry McAuliffe; the governor of Iowa, Tom Vilsack; and a roulette wheel of other prominent figures.
"They were up in Boston - we have to be here in order to keep the record straight," Mr. McAuliffe said yesterday morning as he left the Democratic National Committee's makeshift headquarters, on Seventh Avenue seven blocks to the Garden's south, where a 25-by-75-foot banner blares from the brick wall, "Save America - Defeat Bush."
At Grant's Tomb, after the rally plans there were buried, a squadron of veterans picked up the message of the day: that John Kerry, a decorated combat veteran, would make a better commander in chief than George W. Bush, who served stateside with the National Guard. Like other Democrats for days on end, Speaker Miller and Charles B. Rangel, who represents the surrounding neighborhood in Congress and served in Korea, tried to tie Mr. Bush to a group of veterans that has been attacking Mr. Kerry's war record.
"Why do we have such blanks in this National Guard service?" Mr. Rangel said of questions about Mr. Bush's attendance record in the Guard. "Why is it at the end of his enlistment he was not allowed to fly? What outrages us is that a man with this kind of record, for lack of a better word, can hire people to attack real heroes and real veterans."
The Bush campaign has denied any connection to the anti-Kerry group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (though the two entities shared a lawyer and some financial backers). But that did not stop Mr. Miller.
"This is a president who didn't have the courage to serve himself in Vietnam, sent others to fight for him and now sends others to question Senator Kerry's valorous service," he said to the four video cameras (one from Mr. Rangel's office) and a few tourists who had stopped to see the spectacle. "He doesn't even have the courage to come out himself and do his own dirty work."
Downtown, the Democrats have stationed 82 people, a third of them volunteers, in a 15,000-square-foot warren of borrowed union offices with a terrific view of the convention site (even better with the binoculars they keep on hand).
Behind one of the dozens of pale-pink doors framed in baby blue, Kerry supporters are being booked to appear on talk radio programs around the country. ("Conservative!" is scrawled at the top of some of the sign-up sheets for fair warning.) There is a small television studio down the hall to tape satellite interviews for swing states. Inside the war room, the walls are decorated with editorial cartoons, bad photographs of Vice President Dick Cheney and message reminders like "Average family paying $580 more in gas prices," "Family income down by $1,400" and "Weakened America in the World."
But even the opposition has opposition. Outside the Democrats' offices yesterday morning, three Republican volunteers in gray fuzzy Flipper costumes paced for an hour holding placards denouncing Mr. Kerry as a flip-flopper. |
_________________
US Army 75-78
FRONT TOWARD ENEMY |
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neverforget
Vice Admiral
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
Posts: 875
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| Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 4:40 am Post subject: |
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| Once again, F-102's were returned from Vietnam and then taken out of service. That's why he didn't fly, Rangel. And he got an early out just like thousands of our military did in the early '70's. Rangel can be honored for his service in the Korean War, but after that, he gets zippo from me. |
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