Arianna Huffington was very, very wrong

I heard something recently that reminded me of something that happened in the 2008 presidential race. During those last few weeks, Arianna Huffington (of Huffington Post fame/infamy) seemed to be appearing on every lefty radio talk show and news show to offer her opinion that Democrats were making a terrible, terrible mistake by focusing on Sarah Palin. They were taking the bait, so to speak. I don't want to listen to all those interviews, but here's an editorial she wrote:

Every second of this campaign not spent talking about the Republican Party's record, and John McCain's role in that record, is a victory for John McCain.

Her critics like to say that Palin hasn't accomplished anything. I disagree: in the space of ten days she's succeeded in distracting the entire country from the horrific Bush record -- and McCain's complicity in it. My friends, that's accomplishment we can believe in.

Then Huffington would go on to say that Democrats are only making themselves appear petty and perhaps sexist by focusing on the many, many shortcomings of the eleventh hour VP nominee that McCain shoehorned into his train wreck of a campaign.

But she was absolutely wrong. Focusing on Sarah Palin was awesome. Making the campaign all about Sarah Palin and the terrible error of judgment that McCain made in drafting her was much better than running a campaign against the perceived heroism of McCain himself. They exposed an obvious weak spot. And after all this time, it's become all the more clear that Sarah Palin just wasn't qualified for the job.

I hardly even think that's a matter of opinion anymore. After Sarah's hee-larious book tour in which she was caught reading crib notes off of her hand, popular perception of her has plummeted, to the point where a new poll shows that 55% of Republicans do not now think she is qualified to be president.

55%. Of Republicans. And the question wasn't "Is Sarah Palin the best candidate?" or "Would you vote for Sarah Palin over Barack Obama (or some other candidate). It was "do you think Palin is or is not qualified to serve as president?" And most Republicans don't think she is.

Look, there are not always two sides to every story. Sometimes an individual person just obviously is not up for the job. Sarah Palin appealed to a very narrow demographic which only got narrower, as fewer and fewer people were comfortable with aggressively defending this clueless loon as their future president, no matter how much she appealed to their jingoism. It's simply not a reflection on any broad category she belongs to (i.e., women) to point this out.

I take full credit

Last night at 8:46, a good friend instant messaged me, saying simply, "This is almost better than sex."

Yesterday morning I spent a couple of hours logging into my.barackobama.com and making about 50 phone banked calls from home to undecided voters in Florida and Minnesota. (I've encountered another brief patch of unemployment, but I'm interviewing like crazy so don't worry too much.) Obama won big in Florida and Minnesota. You're welcome. I also persuaded a friend to do the same for New Hampshire. Obama won big in New Hampshire. You're welcome again.

I am still suffering from severe cognitive dissonance at this point... I'm simply not used to presidential election nights being FUN. Right now I should be sweating, recovering from a near all-nighter, and obsessively clicking for more news about Ohio or Florida. Reaching further back in memory, even in the Clinton elections, my enjoyment was a bit marred by being surrounded by a bunch of complaining Republicans in my college residences. Last night, instead, I was hanging out with my sister and a good friend, gleefully running back and forth between the Daily Show / Colbert electionstravaganza, and my upstairs computer (my laptop chose last night to stop responding to wireless, although it's better now) to check on messages, emails, and live updating interactive maps. Getting or making calls several times an hour.

Just a few tiny clouds in the midst of all this silver lining: Republicans still hold enough seats in Congress to effectively filibuster legislation, and you bet they will. Al Franken, who was running the most important Senate race for me personally, is a bit behind at this time, and I have no faith in recounts delivering good news. And my friends in California are mourning the passing of gay marriage. For this year, anyway.

But even in the midst of all this... what a night! What a classy concession speech! What a killer acceptance speech! God Bless Jon and Stephen, every one!

It's too bad I don't smoke.

Vote?

I already reposted something long about voting on the Atheist Experience blog, so I'll keep this one to the point.

Have you voted yet?

No?

THEN WHY ARE YOU SITTING AROUND READING BLOGS? Go vote!

Biden-Palin debate at the Alamo Drafthouse

Keryn and I watched the debate last night at the Alamo Drafthouse, an Austin movie theater chain that serves food and beer. Since, as I expected, the theater was mostly full of cheering and heckling Democrats, the evening was a fun one. There were a few scattered Republicans, and we happened to be sitting near some of the loudest -- a young couple, looked about college age, the girl was wearing a Palin shirt which my sister noticed immediately. Keryn apologized in advance for the expected rowdiness, and they said "No problem, you get used to it as a Republican in Austin." They acknowledged that everyone can yell as loud as they want without anyone's feelings being hurt.

I had pizza, Shiner Bock, and pecan pie a la mode. We also got a large bowl of popcorn, which we would have liked to throw, but there were too many people in the theater of course (it was sold out). We also received free bingo cards when we came in, with randomized spaces saying things like "Ahmadinejad," "Promise not to raise taxes," "Fannie and Freddy," "Hand chopping other hand gesture," and "Palin cries." I didn't expect that Biden would be the only one to cry, but he was.

The screen was tuned to CNN, so we got the little graph showing instant feedback about how undecided voters said they were feeling. I found it kind of mesmerizing on the giant screen, like one of those screen savers you can't stop watching. Biden got very positive results.

Anyway, there was lots of shouting and applause -- when Biden said something good most of the theater erupted, and when Palin said something quasi-Reaganesque there was a little smattering of claps. People audibly groaned every time Palin said "Nukular" or "Maverick," so there was an awful lot of groaning. At one point when global warming came up, the Republicans were shouting at Biden "That's not true! Read a science book!" and I said "There's scientific consensus that he's right in all the peer reviewed journals!" I think that was the closest I came to a brawl. The Democrat on my left started picking up on the way that Palin says "also" all the time, and starting repeating the word in the same accent every time it was said.

I managed to finish the Bingo game pretty near the end, with the square "Biden tries to tell a joke but fails badly." I didn't actually think he had done that, but Palin SAID -- I'm quoting from the transcript -- "In my comment there, it was a lame attempt at a joke and yours was a lame attempt at a joke, too, I guess, because nobody got it. Of course we know what a vice president does." I thought that was good enough to count for the bingo.

My assessment: Palin did not fall down or visibly injure herself. She parroted a lot of lines that Republicans love, including numerous ripoffs from Ronald Reagan. By virtue of this, Palin did better than expected. You can't judge how well she did based on my biased audience, but the voters being graphed on screen also seemed to favor Biden by a lot.

At the end, obviously the little reaction machines got turned off, because the line dropped all the way to the bottom of the negative scale. At least that's what it probably meant, but I also like to pretend that the audience just really hated it when Wolf Blitzer started talking.

In a few years, this woman could be president

Sarah Palin enlightens us about the financial crisis.



Ow. Ow. My ears are bleeding. Make it stop. I'm sure John Stewart is going to do a much better job with this than I am, but let me take a few stabs at it right now.

0:30:

Sarah Palin: "(Some completely nonsensical platitudes about how everything's fine.)"
Katie Couric: "(Factual information that entirely contradicts the above statement.)"
Sarah: Long pause... "Again, my understanding is that, uh, uh, (Repeats platitude with no indication that she just heard what was said)"

2:04:

Sarah: "Americans are waiting to see what John McCain will do about this. They are not waiting to see what Barack Obama will do. Because everybody knows John McCain has the track record and the leadership."
Katie (dumbfounded): "Yeah, but polls show that Obama has gotten a boost from this news, because more Americans trust him to handle this correctly."
Sarah: "Ya know, I'm not lookin' at poll numbers. I just think Americans think like me."

Yeah! We mavericks don't think about silly things like "polls!" We just SAY what the American people think, and we're always right!

Christ. It's one thing to pretend that you don't care what popular opinion says. Quite another thing to actually say that popular opinion is lying about what they really think.

5:00:

Katie: "You've said John McCain will reform the way Wall Street does business, but in 20 years he's almost always sided with people who want LESS regulation, not more."
Sarah: (gears grinding) "He's also known as 'THE maverick,' though, takin' shots from his own party. "
Katie: "I'm sorry, answer the damn question, can you give me one example of him pushing for more regulation EVER?"
Sarah: "I'll try ta find some and I'll bring 'em to ya!"

That is one tasty electoral map

This makes me happy.


In particular, Obama is winning the electoral vote handily while losing both Ohio AND Florida. (Ohio is currently neutral, but Obama wins even if it turns red.)

In 2004 I looked over the early electoral maps and concluded that Kerry could win if and only if he could carry either Ohio OR Florida. Kerry lost both, and sure enough, he lost the race. Either state flipping would have won it.

It's too early to say that things won't change, but right now, unless McCain has another ace up his sleeve, he looks pretty screwed to me.

John McCain makes Adam go "sproing"

As far as I know, not very many people are readers of Adam Cadre's regular articles.  His site is not really a proper blog, and I only know of him originally through his great work writing offbeat interactive fiction.  I am a big fan of Adam's writing.  He's blunt, atheist, liberal, and has great taste in entertainment styles, ranging from comics to games to movies to food.

So I want to wave a hand in the general direction of Adam's latest article about the presidential race.  I'll qualify this endorsement with apologies to my friends who live in red states and love them.  Hell, I love Austin, but only because it's not part of the "real" Texas, and I've long ago learned to abandon all hope when it comes to my vote personally influencing a national race.  However, quite a few things Adam says ring true for me.

Every election in my adult lifetime has played out the same way: Republicans argue that Red America is better than Blue America, and Democrats cry that, no, we're not so different! Republican political ads spew insults — or at least epithets thatRepublicans think are insults — while Democrats hold out their hands and coo that"There is no them — there is only us." I am so sick of this. There's a reason the guy who said that moved to New York after his presidency instead of back to Arkansas: New York is better than Arkansas. Massachusetts is better than Texas. Chicago is better than Wasilla, Alaska. Saying so might mean losing votes in Arkansas and Texas and Alaska, but those states are lost causes (in more ways than one); Republicans certainly show no compunction about slamming San Francisco and Boston and Vermont, and they're the ones winning elections.

...
Democrats can avoid saying that the red states are inferior to the blue ones as much as they like. But the red staters will continue to hear it. They'll hear it because the voices inside their heads are saying it. And those voices are correct. This makes them angry, and they lash out. Ten years ago, I was floored when a direly unfunny SNL alum named Adam Sandler suddenly scored a massive hit with a movie called The Waterboy, in which he played a mouth-breathing loser who becomes a star linebacker, fueled by uncontrollable rage at the thought of people making fun of him. At the time I couldn't understand why anyone would watch that, but now I get it. It spoke to people. After all, it's what vast numbers of American voters do at the ballot box.

...
What kind of people do places like Wasilla grow? Well, for one thing, it's hard to get off to a good start in life when your drunken stepfather is tasing you, bro. Child abuse happens everywhere, but some cultures foster it more than others. When parents exert total hegemony over the household without any kind of societal check, it opens up the potential for a real horror show — as the Palin family has demonstrated. Barack Obama tried to provide that societal check in Illinois with a program to teach schoolchildren how to avoid sexual abuse — and a McCain/Palin ad this week actually slams him for it. But given that an Anchorage judge ruled in 2005 that Sarah Palin herself was guilty of child abuse, I suppose it's not so surprising that she and her ilk are so afraid of daylight: it makes it that much harder for "our small towns" to keep their ugly little secrets.

Much more... please read.

More on Sarah Palin

I got a bewildering comment from a Republican, on the last post about Sarah Palin. First thing he said was: "Well layed out. Even more Hillary supporters will go for McCain now."

The reason it's bewildering is because, while he's entitled to his opinion, it has no apparent bearing to what I actually said in the post. So the question is, was Sarah Palin a good pick to woo former Clintonites?

Probably not...

Among Democratic women — including those who may be disappointed that New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton did not win the Democratic nomination — 9% say Palin makes them more likely to support McCain, 15% less likely.

Republicans pray for rain... and get it

Mmmm... I love the smell of irony in the morning.



Two weeks ago, some smug, smirking representative of Focus on the Family smarmily asked in a YouTube video, "Would it be wrong to ask people to pray for rain? Not just rain, abundant rain, torrential rain" -- in order to ruin Barack Obama's speech at Mile High Stadium last Friday. Just to give the world a demonstration about how mad God is about gay marriage, you see.

Careful what you wish for.

It ALMOST makes me wish I believed in their God. :P

Barack Obama's convention speech

Last night I went with a friend to join the Great Hills Democrats at Baby Acapulco's watching Barack Obama's speech. There was a fajita buffet, and four TVs facing outward from the center of the room.

The speech was absolutely sublime, that's all I can say. I already know Obama is a good speaker, but I was very impressed even with my high expectations. He hit most of the right notes, didn't pull any punches on McCain, and had a lot of well received jokes. Watching Obama work the crowd, I was very much reminded of seeing Bill Clinton live at UCSD at my graduation. I continue to be impressed by his qualities as a speaker, and desperately wish to again have a president who can string coherent thoughts together.

Because Bush sucks so much at public speaking, Republicans make the mistake of dismissing this ability as "He's good at reading a teleprompter." Nonsense. Certainly being a good speaker doesn't automatically make one a good leader; the skill of demagoguery can be used for either good or evil. But as someone who enjoys public speaking, I am adamant that the ability to read is a necessary but not sufficient skill. You have to really grasp what you're saying in order to emphasize the right stuff at the right time. Anyone who thinks otherwise is making a claim similar to believing that you can be a great comedian by going out and reciting someone else's jokes.

Like comedy, it's all about timing, and timing is one thing Obama has in spades. For instance, there's the way he worked the applause. When he first came on, the crowd kept cheering for several minutes. Obama acted sort of exasperated, pretending to speak and then looking like he couldn't get them to shut up. But he was clearly in complete control, it was all showmanship. When he really wanted to talk, they shut up. And I loves me some good theater.

The crowd of about 30 people watching the speech with me was mostly older; in fact at one point I wondered if my friend and I were the only attendees under forty. But they were full of energy, cheering, laughing, and shouting regularly.

After the speech, we somehow wound up getting in a discussion with with three marginally drunk, marginally right wing, off-duty Austin cops. The topics ranged from the situation of the homeless in Austin to property taxes to the war (even Republican cops are against it now, it seems). I don't feel like any of them will switch up their vote to Obama, but I may have perhaps depressed one or two of them enough to keep them home on election day. >:D That's a useful accomplishment, although in Texas it probably doesn't amount to much. Although drunk, they were all friendly, thought we made some good points, and said they enjoyed the discussion. And I got out without getting punched -- so hey, an evening well spent.

Since you asked: my take on Sarah Palin

Hank the Tank says:

Waiting with baited breath for your take on John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin for VP. I've already put mine up on my blog.

You know, the guy has actually won back my vote. Hey Russell, you've got quite the brainpower, come on over to the Good Side of the Force (pardon the Star Wars jingo).
Cost you less to fill up your tank as well.

So fine, here's what I think...

Eh. She's not terrible. I never heard of her but that doesn't necessarily matter. Picking a woman was a good move. It may pick up a little of the disaffected Hillary vote, but probably not as much as you think, since Hillary has been so effective in throwing her support behind Obama. Her speech and Bill's at the convention were both pretty impressive.

On the other hand, this choice signals that he's pretty much abandoning the line of attack that Obama is weak because he's "inexperienced." In Palin, you have a one term governor of one of the smallest states (population-wise). Daily Kos is humorously referring to her as "Sarah Quayle Palin." Plus, she's a creationist, and you know how much I love THAT. ;)

Nevertheless, I think countering McCain's "old white guy" persona with a young woman is a good call, and it kind of takes some of the "historic moment" exclusivity out of Barack Obama's hands, by providing Republicans a chance to vote for the first woman veep. And considering some of the much worse choices I HOPED he might make, this seems to be dodging a bullet. I was picturing Giuliani (one of the most universally hated political figures of our time) or perhaps Lieberman (Hey, let's alienate both Democrats AND Republicans!!). So all in all, this was probably one of the least bad choices he could have made.

But I will say this: I am dying to see the VP debate between Biden and Palin. That's going to be way fun.

Joe Lieberman, then and now

Then:

"I want Democrats to be back in the majority in Washington and elect a Democratic president in 2008. This man [Ned Lamont] and his supporters will frustrate and defeat our hopes of doing that."
07/06/06, Connecticut Primary Debate

Now:

Lieberman will deliver a speech when Republicans gather in St. Paul, Minn., to nominate McCain for president, a party official told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The official requested anonymity because a formal announcement had yet to be made.

Whew! As a Democrat, I thank my lucky stars that we dodged the bullet of getting Ned Lamont elected to the senate, and frustrating our hopes of electing a Democratic president. Good thing we have Joe-mentum working for us.

John McCain's energy solution: free labor!

McCain Proposes a $300 Million Prize for a Next-Generation Car Battery

“I further propose we inspire the ingenuity and resolve of the American people,” Mr. McCain said, “by offering a $300 million prize for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”

He said the winner should deliver power at 30 percent of current costs. “That’s one dollar, one dollar, for every man, woman and child in the U.S. — a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency,” he said.

If a corporation were to dedicate genuine effort to build this miracle battery, it would assign a director to the project, who would allocate a certain number of man-hours to the problem. The people who worked on the project would all have access to one another's research, and they would all get paid regardless of whether they arrived at a solution. Big companies, like governments are common pools for a lot of money, which is why they can afford to invest large sums up front to achieve a desired solutions.

Imagine a company instead saying "Okay, all of you employees start coming up with crazy ideas to design your own battery. Whoever pulls it off gets a gigantic bonus. Everyone else gets paid nothing." That's essentially what John McCain's proposal is. He's not fronting ANY of the money to generate this research. He's not proposing to absorb any of the risk, since if no engine gets built, no prize gets awarded. All he's offering to do is buy a finished product which does not yet exist.

I have to conclude that John McCain is not in the slightest bit serious about actually funding a solution to the problem. R&D is risky, therefore the cost of doing it is far higher than developing an actual product using known techniques. In any case, anyone who was capable of creating the miracle battery using only the funds available to an unfinanced individual would be able to make so much money from it that being bought out for $300 million in the end would most likely be insulting.

If McCain thinks the free market is so darn awesome, why hasn't the magic battery been produced already? This is a man who has no ideas.

Obama is beating McCain

CBS News:

Presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama holds a six point lead over his Republican counterpart John McCain, a new CBS News poll finds. Obama leads McCain 48 percent to 42 percent among registered voters, with 6 percent of respondents undecided.

Okay, so it's one poll. It's also one day (give or take) after Barack Obama became the official Democratic nominee. (Oh, you hadn't heard that yet?) He hasn't even started campaigning against McCain yet, who's had the benefit of being the declared Republican for couple of months.

Now on the one hand, I'm sure the Rovish knives will come out in full force at this point. On the other hand, I (perhaps naively) think the negatives about Obama have pretty much been aired out already. People who think he is simultaneously a Muslim, and atheist, and a scary black Christian, already think that at this point. This isn't going to change much, and the current numbers probably reflect this.

Is it okay to be cautiously optimistic yet?

Thoughts on the primary, and on playing nice

I said earlier that I was bored with politics, but I had a long exchange with my dad about it anyway. Some of the things I've said in the past about political strategy are rehashed here.

Oh yeah, and Clinton and Obama each won another primary yesterday. Yawn.

The fact that recent news cycles have been obsessively dominated by such astoundingly dull trivialities such as Jeremiah Wright highlights an ongoing problem with the traditional media. (I prefer to use Kos's term rather than "mainstream media", for reasons explained here.) It's not that the media is either "liberal" or "conservative"; it's simply that they're frequently driven by laziness and a lack of interest in either learning or teaching. The reason this seems to disproportionately help Republicans is because they've learned to navigate and manipulate this media landscape, to an extent that Democrats mostly have not.

As I've said before, "Liberal Media," is largely a fabricated catch-phrase. It has been such a successful meme that traditional media organizations such as the New York Times now delude themselves into believing that someone like William Kristol is a Very Serious Pundit who actually has something valuable to say. Even though he says something objectively, factually wrong nearly every time he opens his mouth. NYT appears to worry that if they don't take the guy seriously, they will be accused of being "too liberal."

Well, of course they will. That's because Republicans know how to intimidate and embarrass the New York Times, and Democrats don't. When a Very Serious Pundit says something like "Gosh, I think that voters care a whole awful lot about what Barack Obama's former pastor said several years ago, and we should all be covering that," there is no organized movement to say "What are you, stupid? Of course voters won't care about that." There is a DISorganized movement, in the form of blogs and other scattered voices in the wilderness. But the Democratic Party hasn't learned how to harness and amplify this.

When I embarked on my Master's Report to compare the popular media focus to the interests of Digg users, this is partly what I had in mind as a motivation for possible mismatch. Of course the media is driven by a profit motive, but that doesn't mean they have to react to what all consumers want. They also have to react to differences between mostly quiet, apathetic consumers, vs. loud, strident consumers. The strident consumers are largely on the right, and can be treated as a large bloc of people who will boycott something. Or alternatively, for media they like, they will pour investment money into something that has no hope of making a profit. See Rupert Murdoch with Fox News, or Sun Myung Moon with the Washington Times (which has never turned a profit, but has been a goldmine in terms of "mainstreaming" far right conservative thought).

As distasteful as it may be, I think Democrats should figure out how to use intimidation and embarrassment as effectively as Republicans do. They should shame the media away from talking about Jeremiah Wright, while at the same time, shaming them into saying some of the obvious negative stuff about John McCain, instead of fawning all over him and bringing him donuts.

No, seriously. That happened.

Compare that to the kind of treatment Barack Obama received at the last debate, and you begin to see what the problem is.

I have a philosophy, which I've blogged about before, that has developed after years of playing strategy games. It is that nothing is inherently "unfair" in politics (or any other game) unless it actually breaks the rules. If one side is playing a strategy, and they are winning as a result, then by definition they have a winning strategy. Faced with losing, the other side has two choices: 1. Change the rules, and/or aggressively enforce the rules which are currently in place; 2. Adapt to the strategy.

When you regard legally accepted tactics as unfair, it hamstrings you. To repeat the analogy from before, if you are playing rock/paper/scissors, and you somehow arbitrarily decide that rock is unfair, then you are playing a different game from your opponent. You have a game in which scissors always wins or ties, and paper always loses or ties. In that game, it is a rational strategy to always play scissors. But if your opponent plays rock and beats you, you might want to say that it's "unfair."

It isn't. Unless the two of you agreed in advance to play "paper/scissors," your opponent is playing the real game and you are playing with artificial rules that only you are bound by.

I don't, of course, mean that Democrats should should do things like appealing to homophobia, racism, and theocracy. That would not, in any real sense, be "winning," any more than if Republicans won by running on a platform of peace, social programs, and respect for atheists. I mean that the Democrats should recognize that being divisive and grabbing the bigger half has been a winning strategy with Republicans for a long time.

For the time being, at least, Democrats should be a little less concerned about "Bringing everyone together" -- you can't anyway, since there are a lot of people who get off on calling everyone else a traitor. Instead, they should learn how to draw the battle lines so that the majority of people are more scared of extreme conservatism than of extreme liberalism. Highlight people like Larry Hagee and Pat Robertson. Make most Americans feel smart and special because they are not as dumb and flat-out crazy as some of the scary folks who support Republicans.

On the whole, Barack Obama has played this election very much like a shrewd politician. Sure, his language invokes the idea that voters are tired of divisiveness. But at the same time, his language makes it clear that we should pin the divisiveness on Republicans, which is in itself a redefinition of whom to flee from. I'm impressed with that, while at the same time being wary of his policies, as I think it remains to be seen how much he'll "reach out" by taking some Republican talking points to heart.

I enjoy the race more when Obama goes after Republicans on the issues, as when he hammered home the message that McCain doesn't understand economics. Every time he does that, I think he gains some popularity. I don't think he does it nearly enough.

Anyway, yes, be open and welcoming. Divide people, but make sure that the division leaves Republicans with as small a group as possible. The most effective message will convey the following: "John McCain is a huge jerk. I know that you're too smart to vote for a jerk, you smart voters you."

Or: "Look at what a low approval rating Bush has. Wouldn't you feel stupid being one of those 28% who is out of step with the rest of the country? And McCain says he wants to be just like Bush."

I'd say it's a deliberate exploitation of the argumentam ad populum fallacy, but also it takes rhetorical skill to successfully define the two sides in a way that is most advantageous to your party.

Barack Obama should just act like he's the nominee

I'm tired of the primaries now. Barack Obama is far enough ahead in delegates that he is pretty much the guaranteed nominee. Unfortunately, he's not far enough ahead that he can be declared the actual winner any time soon. Today he's ahead by 122 delegates: a very substantial lead, but small enough that the result could IN THEORY be reversed.

As I understand it, this could happen only if either most of the remaining primary states buck the current trend and vote for Clinton, or most of the undeclared super-delegates decided to go for Clinton over Obama. The gulf between them is so large that neither is a particularly realistic scenario, yet the Clinton campaign is publicly acting like it is, and therefore they claim that Hillary is not under any pressure to drop out. So what it looks like, at this point, is that the nominee will not truly be determined until the Democratic Convention at the end of August, when the superdelegates officially declare their votes.

This is a problem for the Democratic party. Howard Dean, the president of the DNC, has said repeatedly in interviews I've heard, that August is much too late. John McCain is already the candidate for the Republicans (so sorry, Ron Paul fans) and while I think he's kind of a pathetic candidate, McCain is truly running unopposed right now. Obama's got just over seven months to make the case that John McCain would make a terrible president. In late August, it will be just over two months. And as Dean says, that's just not enough time for a proper campaign.

In the meantime, both Clinton and Obama are spending time and money on tearing each other down, rather than tearing down McCain, as they should be. Probably the best advice I've seen so far comes from a letter to the campaigns by Oregon Representative Pete DeFazio. DeFazio wrote:

"You both claim to be better suited than the other to take on the so-called Straight-Talk Express, so prove it. Run the next six weeks of your campaign against McCain, not against the other Democrat. Go after McCain for his policy positions, not the other Democrat for theirs. Allow the Democratic voters to believe in a campaign that can provide a new direction for this country and stop McCain from continuing the failed policies of the Bush Administration. In the end, it is the candidate who can take the fight to McCain and win that deserves my support and, most importantly, the support of the Democratic Party."

DeFazio wrote this to both Obama and Clinton. At that point it may not have been clear that Obama was going to win, but I think it's pretty clear now. That's why I think Obama should just forget that Clinton is still in the race and act as if he were running solely against McCain. No more talk about how much better he is than her. No more nitpicking about her revealing her tax returns. The opponent is McCain.

In doing this, he'll be mirroring a strategy adopted by Bush in 2000 and 2004. In both years, the election results were still open to interpretation and recounting; yet Bush immediately started talking to the press as if he were already the (re)elected president. By doing this, he made his opponent look like the unreasonable one for not conceding. This worked particularly well in '04, when Kerry pretty much folded without a fight where Ohio was concerned.

By confidently acting as the presumed nominee, Obama would accomplish several things:

1. He would probably confuse the media, who aren't all that sharp anyway, and might pick up on the narrative that Hillary is out.
2. He would free up his efforts to fight McCain, which he needs to do ASAP anyway.
3. He would be playing focused offense, instead of defending himself over dumb stuff brought up by two different opponents.
   
4. Hitting McCain right now would probably improve his standing in the eyes of the voters far more than squabbling with Clinton right now anyway. Hence, this would probably seal his victory over her in reality as well as in rhetoric.
   

Why your vote matters

It happens every four years at about this time: some people (and I won't name names here) start proudly announcing the fact that they don't see any point in voting. Why? Well, a variety of reasons, generally including several of these points:

1. No candidate has exactly what I'm looking for. I don't respect any of them, and I conscientiously refuse to vote for someone whom I don't respect.
2. The two candidates both suck. I won't vote for the lesser of two evils.
3. If I refuse to vote, then maybe politicians will get the message that they should offer better candidates, because there aren't any that I can get behind now.
   
4. One person's vote is so inconsequential that I have a greater chance of being struck by lightning on election day than I have of personally affecting the outcome of the election.

I'm going to hit each of these points in turn.

1. No candidate has exactly what I'm looking for. I don't respect any of them, and I conscientiously refuse to vote for someone whom I don't respect.

As Donald Rumsfeld might have said, "You go to the polls with the candidates you have, not the candidates you might want or wish to have." Let's say you've decided to sit out every election until you finally encounter the candidate who's a left-handed green-eyed atheist libertarian who will institute the flat tax and can sing classical opera. I can guarantee you that you, my friend, will be sitting out every election of your entire life.

But let's say a candidate finally comes along who's a right-handed green-eyed agnostic libertarian who will institute some kinds of tax reforms (not the exact ones you want) and plays the tuba. And let's say the other guy in the race is George W. Bush. Are you really telling me that you're going to sit out on principle because you only like southpaws?

There are a lot of people in the world who could be running for president, but only a few of them are. The stronger you make your qualifications that are required to get your vote, the more you are guaranteed to be disenfranchised from the process. Which brings me to...

2. The two candidates both suck. I won't vote for the lesser of two evils.

Oh, I see. Then you won't mind if the greater of two evils wins. Suppose you've been kidnapped and imprisoned by a sadistic dictator, and he gives a choice between being punched once in the face or being slowly and painfully flayed alive for four hours. Would you say "Ah, who cares? Both things are evil, so either way I'll get hurt. Pick whichever one you want." I don't know about you, but in that situation I'd be saying "Punch me in the face, please!"

In the first place, I don't buy the fact that both candidates are evil. Like committing to a lifelong relationship with a person of the opposite sex (or same, if that's your thing), I guarantee that you will never find a person who is without flaws. When confronted with these flaws, you can either say "Sorry, imperfect match detected; no votes for you" or you can take the bad with the good and pick the person who is clearly the best available, warts and all.

In the second place, even if both candidates represent a net dislike for you, that still doesn't mean that your choice is irrelevant. Again, do you want to get punched once or flayed for hours? Easy choice: pick the outcome which is best for me.

3. If I refuse to vote, or write in "Mickey Mouse" on my ballot, then maybe politicians will get the message that they should offer better candidates, because there aren't any that I can get behind now.

Yes, of course they will. And then everybody will magically receive a million dollars and a pony from the sky.

Look, I hate to say this, but a vote is not a treatise on the state of our nation. If you want to send a message, start a blog. A friend of mine likes to say that voting has very low bandwidth: each person gets to transmit only one bit every four years. There's not a lot to resolve there about what your vote "means."

Most people in this country don't vote most of the time. There are countless reasons why somebody might not vote. Maybe all the candidates are too liberal. Maybe all the candidates are too conservative. Maybe the voter only supports left-handed green-eyed atheist libertarian candidates who will institute the flat tax and can sing classical opera. Or maybe the voters just couldn't muster the energy to get off their lazy asses and transmit their one bit this year.

When you're looking at election results, do you hear those messages? No. The ONLY information transmitted in the election is: "X voters voted, one candidate won by Y percentage points." That's it. Maybe you get more information out of news coverage and interviews, but that is true regardless of whether people vote or not.

If the greater of two evils wins, what's the strongest message that got sent? "Most people prefer this candidate to the other one. He must have done something right." Then, guess what happens four years later? Both candidates try to be more like the guy who won. Over time, the landscape drifts in the direction that people push it. Not voting, and even voting for somebody that you already know isn't going to win, rarely has an effect other than that of bolstering the person who wins.

I'm talking to YOU, Ralph Nader and entourage.

4. One person's vote is so inconsequential that I have a greater chance of being struck by lightning on election day than I have of personally affecting the outcome of the election.

Sure. This one is true. But there's a significant fallacy involved.

Clearly there is little chance that the margin of victory will be a single vote, so the chance that YOUR vote is going to make the difference is very, very remote. Conceivably if you just stayed home on election day and didn't mention it, your influence on the election would be pretty much invisible.

But that's not all that people do when they announce "I'm not voting because my vote doesn't matter." They're not only choosing not to vote; they're also proclaiming that not voting is a better option. In doing so, they are, to some extent, influencing others who might agree with their own positions to do the same. And by convincing like minds to also not vote, this is spreading a "don't vote" meme across a broad population. The act of not voting may not influence the outcome, but the meme certainly does.

This isn't an academic issue; the use of memes that say "do vote" or "don't vote" has been used very effectively by special interest groups. For instance, one of the reasons that the religious right has been so successful at gaining disproportionate influence in government is that they have organized communication channels, mailing lists and church announcements and such, which mobilize their congregants to vote. This is a big message that DJ Groethe of the Center for Inquiry drove home for me once, showing materials such as Mind Siege, which end-times crackpot Tim LaHaye uses to frighten fundamentalists into voting (and also sending money). The basic message is that if YOU PERSONALLY don't take action IN THIS ELECTION, then the fags will make gay marriage mandatory for everyone and the evilutionists will jail all dissenters.

Strictly speaking, this isn't the truth. But the effect that this message has is very real. And likewise, sending the inverse message to people -- that voting is stupid and a waste of time -- ALSO has a genuine effect on overall turnout. Memes have a ripple effect. Maybe your vote won't sway the election, and maybe your message about not voting won't sway the election either. But people who are persuaded not to vote also have this tendency of replicating the meme and encouraging other people not to vote.

So, in fact, I choose to believe that my attitude about voting -- in addition to my vote -- makes a difference. It's a straight up Prisoner's Dilemma decision: "cooperate" and vote for the best alternative you can locate, even if it's inconvenient, or "defect" and stay home. Though your vote may not count, everyone who agrees with you and stays home will practically translate to one half of a vote for whoever they believe to be the worst candidate.

On the other hand, few things delight me more than hearing somebody say "I voted for Bush twice, but I don't think I'm voting in this election." Sure, I'd prefer that they decide to vote for Obama (or even Clinton) instead, but given that this is a semi-rare event, I want to encourage them to continue "protesting" the Republican by not voting for him. "Go, dude!" I say. "Keep registering that protest and not voting! Refuse to vote Republican because there's not a crazy enough apocalyptic dominionist left in the bunch! That'll show those jerks who's boss! And if necessary, I hope you continue to not vote for as long as it takes, even if it's your whole life, until you get exactly what you want."

So in conclusion, don't just vote: convince those with whom you agree to vote. And make sure that the people with whom you disagree are good and surly about their candidates this year.

Inspiring candidates

Slow updating this blog, but I thought this video was funny.



10,000 more years in Iraq! Yaaaaaay!

Congratulations to Obama and Huckabee

So, in case you haven't heard yet:

Obama 38%, Edwards 30%, Clinton 29%, Richardson 2%, Biden 1%, Dodd 1%.
vs.
Huckabee 34%, Romney 25%, Thompson 13% McCain 13%, Paul 10%, Giuliani 3%

I'm cheerful about last night's outcome. Before leaving work yesterday, I was chatting with a coworker who leans somewhat more liberal than most Texans, but she likes Ron Paul and hates Clinton. I told her that since Ron Paul didn't have a prayer (and I was right) I hoped Hillary wouldn't be the nominee so that would guarantee that she'd vote Democratic for president.

My favorite candidate, Edwards, didn't win, but he came in second and Clinton came in third. I think Obama is a solid candidate who might pull it off in November, and I know many people who love him. I disagree with a few of his positions, but on the whole I think he can win and I believe the mood of the country is with him.

On the other side, I'm delighted that Mike Huckabee won. Not because I want him as president, but because out of all the candidates, I think he has just about the least chance of being elected.

This isn't a case of sunny optimism, of the same variety some of us applied when we thought "George Bush will never be (re)elected, he's too dumb." Nope -- this is a very divisive nomination. The religious Republicans like Huckabee, but they're the only ones. Many other Republicans HATE him. He's not part of the "old boys' club" like Giuliani or Thompson; and he's got some distressingly quasi-liberal views on law enforcement, social programs, and immigration.

Now, the religious right may have a strong influence on Republican politics, but I don't believe for a minute that they can win an election by themselves without support from the huge political cash machine.

I can picture three things happening in the event of Huckabee continuing to win states:

1. Republicans eventually grit their teeth and fall in line, with the full force of the Republican noise machine finally backing him. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh will, as Rush said before, continue carry the water for people he doesn't really believe deserve it.
2. Float a third party candidate they can support. I don't know who the hell it would be at this point (Gingrich?) but either way I think that would be AWESOME and guarantee an Obama victory.
3. Largely not vote. Sure, the fundamentalists will turn out in droves, which will give Huckabee pretty big final numbers. But not enough, that's my guess.

Giuliani sat this one out, and time will tell whether that was a good move. He's skipping Iowa and New Hampshire, and going straight to Florida. It's possible he'll win Florida, but I think his pathetic 3% showing in Iowa is really going to hurt him. Maybe coming in third with double digits would have left him still viable, but it's hard not to see him as completely hopeless now. Which is great, considering how much everybody hates Giuliani and all.

I think McCain has the best shot at winning the general election, but Huckabee just creamed him 2-1.

Obama on the Rise

I'm mainly posting this for the benefit of my sister-in-law Lynn, who I know is a huge Obama supporter. This is a remarkably positive article about Barack Obama by Matt Taibbi, who is usually incredibly cynical regarding both sides. Yes, he throws in a healthy dose of skepticism in describing the "well-oiled political machine" that Obama actually has at his command. But the ending is pretty upbeat, at least for Taibbi:

"So maybe it's OK to let the grandiose things that an Obama presidency could represent overwhelm the less-stirring reality -- i.e., Obama as more or less a typical middle-of-the-road Democrat with a lot of money and a well-run campaign. Maybe it's OK because it's not always about the candidates; sometimes it's about us, what we want and what we want to believe. And if Barack Obama can carry that burden for us, why not let him? Seriously, why not? The happy ending doesn't always have to ring false."

Disclosure: My ranking is Edwards, Obama, Clinton. Maybe stick Chris Dodd in before Clinton due to his recent filibuster stunt, which I thought was pretty awesome. One the whole, I'd rather have Edwards in office due to the fact that he's selling himself more on his positions on the issues than on his personality; I feel that he has stronger positions on economics and the environment than Obama does.

But that doesn't mean I'd have any qualms about voting for Obama; I think he's a solid and charismatic candidate, and that may matter more in this race. For that matter, based on the current front runners, I feel pretty confident that whichever Republican wins is going to be a complete train wreck in one way or another. Hillary Clinton may not be my ideal candidate, but compared to Huckabee, Romney, or Giuliani? No contest.