Once Again, Americans Doing Their Bit for Blair

[ECH1969]

The Americans are taking polls, conducting focus groups and helping to shape and refine the Labor message. They have advised Labor officials on techniques for targeting and mobilizing voters, drawn from the intensive ground war in last year's presidential campaign. They have applied expertise gained from the presidential campaigns of Sen. John F. Kerry and former Vermont governor Howard Dean, and from the activities of MoveOn.org, on how to turn the Internet into a potent weapon in political campaigns.

A year ago at this time, Zack Exley was burrowing into the Kerry campaign as the newly recruited director of online organizing and operations. On Wednesday, he was at Labor's online headquarters pushing out massive numbers of e-mails urging Labor voters, many of them unexcited about Blair, to get out and vote on Thursday.

Karen Hicks spent the day in Rochdale, near Manchester, mobilizing a get-out-the-vote operation in a district where a Labor member of Parliament faces a stiff challenge. Last fall, she directed the ground war operation at the Democratic National Committee after assembling Dean's highly praised but ultimately unsuccessful grass-roots operation in New Hampshire.

Pollster Stan Greenberg spent the morning analyzing the last public and private polls, continuing a relationship with Blair and Labor that began with Clinton's 1992 campaign, which became a template for Blair's victory in 1997, down to the creation of a war room patterned after the one Clinton had in Little Rock.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/04/AR2005050402092.html

[FlemingsGhost]

1. Those are Democratic movers and shakers, folks.

Don't anyone ever tell me that the Democratic Party is even remotely interested in ending the war. Ever. DLC Democrats are looking to save one of their own: a war criminal.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

2. Yes, we need more tories in the house of commons. n/t

[FlemingsGhost]

3. Those are the breaks, in politics.

Next cycle, chase THEM out.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

4. Chase who out and replace them with what, exactly?

Michael Howard is a creepy pervert. Tony may be an asshole, but at least he's *just* an asshole, and not insane.

[FlemingsGhost]

6. And those corpses are *just* poor folks and Arabs.

"Just" an asshole is responsible for making that happen.

Good thing he's "sane," though.

[sonicx]

7. There's no benefit to giving power to right wngers

They are for the Iraq War and would destroy their country at the same time.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

17. Right.

We'd be trading a government that has unfortunately decided to cast its lot with Bush for a government that would grovel at the feet of bush, destroy the british system of amnesty and immigration, and kill many many more brown skinned people. That's just great, right?

[Anarcho-Socialist]

5. No liberal or progressive will benefit from a conservative victory in U.K.

This is why the Democrats are cooperating with the Labour Party.

Believe me, the Conservatives are about class war, racism and xenophobia. As bad as Labour are on the foreign policy front, they're nothing like the Tories.

Also in terms of economics Labour is closer to the U.S. Green Party than the Democratic Party.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Labour using Republican advice

Ironically, Blair's team has used its ties to the Bush White House to gain insight into the Republican Party's targeted get-out-the-vote operation that was so successful in 2004, although a Bush adviser said no proprietary information was ever discussed, nor was there any effort to offer advice to Blair's team. When it was suggested in jest that Blair's team had drawn as much from the Republicans as from the Democrats, one Blair adviser laughed. "Well, they won," he said.

ie "Of course we have - we'll sleep with Satan if it gets us re-elected. Bush didn't offer us advice - we asked him for it instead".

[AP]

19. That's pretty vague when compared to the OP. I see actual names of Dem-

ocorats working with Labour and descriptions of concrete, productive activities in the OP. Your article looks like it's trying to blow a little smoke where there's no fire.

[saigon68]

9. BLAIR is a Thug and A War Criminal

But he's OUR Thug and War Criminal.

[funflower]

11. Better than being a thug, a war criminal

and a fascist.

[magellan]

10. Well, this is just so sweet

Our Dems helping Labour, whose leader lied about why and when he decided to involve the UK in Bush**'s illegal war. And is still lying about it.

I hope a lot of voters go LibDem.

[Robeson]

12. Me to. They do have more than two choices over there.....

...coming from a country that only has two choices, I would hope they would appreciate that a little more.

[magellan]

13. Oh God, this is disheartening

I just heard from a friend over there that she voted CONSERVATIVE because that candidate stands a better chance of unseating her Labour MP. It was a purely tactical vote, nothing to do with her general politics. She detests the Tories. She just feels strongly about getting rid of Blair.

If too many think this way, the Tories could take it.

[Robeson]

14. She "detests" the Tories,...

...so she voted for them......? Wow, that makes sense to me.:crazy:

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. Some Labour candidates are almost indistinguishable from a Tory

If you look at www.politicalcompass.org , you can find a 'historical plot' for the UK parties - New Labour is now further right, and more authoritarian, than the Tories were in the early 70s (ie just before Thatcher). Faced with a choice between a New Labour yes-man, and a Tory (a few of whom did actually vote against the war), or a Lib Dem in a constituency where they don't stand a chance, it might be tempting to try to get one less New Labour clone into Parliament. Personally, I'd vote Lib Dem in that situation, as a protest vote, and to increase the overall Lib Dem vote to bolster the moral case for voting reform.

[magellan]

16. She said the Tory candidate had a better chance

...of unseating her Labour MP than the LibDem or UKIP candidates, that's why she voted Tory. I can't defend her decision -- I certainly wouldn't have done it knowing Howard's ties to Thatcherism and his assertion that "Even knowing what we know now, yes, I would have gone into Iraq".

I would hope that Brits who aren't willing to vote Labour because of Iraq have the sense to vote for the LibDems instead. Voting Tory is self-defeating on every front, IMHO.

[AP]

20. People can be so easily manipulated to vote against their best interests.

[AP]

18. I think Tony Blair should be telling American Democrats how to win.