Sunday's NY Times Op-Ed's

Frank Rich's

"White Male GOP"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/opinion/17rich.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

: Basically a feel good article for New York liberals, particularly Obama supporters, but it is amazing to reflect back upon the last two months:

"The 2008 primary campaign has been so fast and furious that we haven’t paused to register just how spectacular that change is. All the fretful debate about whether voters would turn out for a candidate who is a black or a woman seems a century ago."

The question though, is will any of this actually make a difference in the general election? Rich gets a bit ahead of himself when he writes that "I almost had to pinch myself when Mr. Obama took 52 percent of Virginia’s white vote last week." This is 52% of Democratic primary vote. I think the most interesting subtext of the article is the need to see what happens. We don't really know whether Obama can win. But by god, we have to see what happens.

Nicholas Kristof's

"The Poor Panderer"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/opinion/17kristof.html?hp

: I wonder whether Kristof actually wrote this article four years ago and then just dragged it out today because he blew the deadline. I think this article totally misses the point. This was a narrative we saw at the beginning of the primary when McCain visited Liberty University and tried to smooth things over with Jerry Falwell. That was poor pandering. Voting against an anti-torture bill, the language of which has consistently echoed McCain's own opposition to torture, is decidedly more than pandering. If there is a narrative today, it is that McCain's poor pandering has resulted in an actual transformation of his legislative action.

Maureen Dowd

"Captive to History's Caprice"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/opinion/17dowd.html?hp

: She strives for objectivity between Obama and Clinton...and she fails. Its a good idea for an article, similar in its excitement to Rich's. The truth is that we have even less of an idea about which candidate will be the better, more ambitious president than we have about which one is more electable. But then she only focuses on the uncertainty of Clinton presidency. In short, she imprisons both candidate in her prison of historical caprice, but Obama gets early parole, without any real scrutiny. As an Obama supporter, I don't know whether this sort of stuff double standard helps, although I'd certainly love for it to continue in the general election if Obama is the nominee.

Pollsters! Emerge From the Shadows

A recent poll by Quinnipac University has Clinton slightly ahead of Obama, in general election matchups with McCain in the big swing states--Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania. Given the last two elections, the basic consensus has been that a democratic candidate cannot win the general election without carrying either Ohio or Florida.
That assumption is--at least with Obama--entirely false. Consider the following: George Bush won the presidential election in 2004 with 286 electoral votes to Kerry's 251. Bush carried Colorado, a state with 9 electoral votes that looks be trending democratic this year, particularly if Obama is the nominee (a recent Rasmussen poll had him beating McCain by 7%, with Clinton losing to McCain by 10%). Lets assume Obama manages to carry all of Kerry's states from 2004. Its not a great assumption, but useful for the purposes of this analysis. A win in Colorado brings Obama's total electoral votes up to 260 and McCain's down to 277.

Lets also assume that Obama wins Iowa's 7 electoral votes. Iowa was one of the only states in 2004 to vote for Bush after having voted for Gore in 2000. Obama has spent lots of time there. The voters know him and like him, as evidenced by his solid margin of victory there January 3rd. There are also a large number of evangelical Christians there (remember Huckabee's blowout) a group that McCain has real problems with. So chalk up a hypothetical victory for Obama in Iowa, bring the electoral totals squeakingly close; 267 for Obama, 270 for McCain. If this is how the electoral map actually looks late into the night on November 2, 2008, heaven help us. McCain would barely win, but all hell would break loose.

But there are other states that look to be trending democratic and this is where the pollsters--shamed by their lack of clairvoyance in New Hampshire and numerous other states following--could really influence Obama's electability argument. How does Obama do head to head against McCain in Virginia? What about Missouri? Any of these would all put Obama over the top.

Right now a presidential race is going on and the voice of pollsters is surprisingly absent. This is at a time when many democratic voters--despite their affiliations with either Obama or Clinton--are trying to decide who is more electable. Lets be clear: national head to head matchups between a democratic and a republican candidate basically mean nothing. Obama's using them to make his electability case, and it may work, but we've learned in 2000 that popular vote does not equal electoral victory (especially when the Supreme Court gets involved). Head to head match-ups in individual states, however, have quite a bit more relevance. For example, what if--god forbid--a poll showed Obama losing a head-to-head matchup with McCain in California? That would be cause for concern. But what if head to head matchups showed Obama beating McCain in a number of typically red southern states due to unprecedented black voter turnout and a lackluster showing for McCain among hard right voters?

I am not a pollster, but right now I kind of wish I was. Because there is a field of un-mined polling territory that is emerging in this election and pollsters are too afraid to touch it.

Sifting through the results

None of the major news networks can agree on the delegate count for the Democratic party. However, MSNBC appears to have the most comprehensive details. In terms of pledged delegates, Obama is up 838 to 834. That includes the results from Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, which means that Clinton actually did squeak out a victory of for pledged delegates on Tuesday, because Obama was up by 15 delegates prior to February 5th (mostly from his win in South Carolina). The reason why a number of networks show Obama down by close to 100 delegates is because of Superdelegates. Clinton has about 100 more than Obama. However, these delegates can switch their support if they so choose and probably will to whomever is the eventual nominee, unless it actually goes to a brokered convention. Again, as I mentioned in my last post, the Democratic party should strongly consider a winner-take-all system, at least in certain states. This partly for the reasons I mentioned previously, but also because the delegate system is, quite simply, meshugah.
At any rate, the primary race goes on. Louisiana (67 delegates), Nebraska (31) and the big prize Washington (97) are all going to be decided this Saturday. Maine is the following day (34), and District of Columbia (37), Maryland (99) and Virginia (103) are all happening on the 12th, this coming Tuesday. I'll be down in Maryland campaigning for Barack this weekend, so I may blog from there.

Reluctantly Crouched at the Starting Line

One thing we have definitely learned this election cycle is that the Republican party is better equipped to handle a broken field than the Democratic party. This Tuesday, when 22 states vote in both races, at the end of the day McCain will likely emerge the winner on the Republican side, whereas the Democratic primary may very well extend further. Yesterday, Howard Wolfson told reporters in a conference call that he thought the Democratic primary might go to convention. So while the heads of Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh are collectively exploding at the likely prospect of McCain as the nominee, they will probably have several months to warm up to the idea while the Democratic struggle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continues indefinitely. If the the Democratic contest goes to convention, it will to put it bluntly, not be good. The last primary is sometime in June. While the Democratic party is slugging it out, McCain can begin to consolidate his conservative base, a base clearly uneasy with his candidacy. While polls show that McCain does well nationally against both Clinton and Obama, these are basically misleading. The Democratic candidate, whoever it is, once he/she starts engaging McCain on the Iraq war, the economy, healthcare, they will be at a decided advantage. McCain, by his own admission knows little about economic policy. But given how things are shaping up, he'll have to catch up. Hell, if it goes on long enough, he could take a semester-long Macro-economics class with Alan Greenspan. My point is that despite all the ballyhooing that goes on about McCain's electability in the press, this is a man who needs a head start. And it looks like he very well may get it.
Compare the circumstances of both primary races at the start: A slate of candidates on the Republican side with the absurd prospect of trying distance themselves from Bush without actually opposing any of his significant policies (except immigration). None of them satisified both the fiscal and socially conservative wings of the party, except Fred Thompson who didn't seem to want the job much anyway. The mainstream media got into the habit of annointing a front runner, only to have one side of the conservative coalition tear him down.
By contrast, the Democratic party began with a clear front runner, but even more striking was how satisfied Democratic voters seemed with their choices. Unlike the Republican side it was not a question of finding a candidate sufficiently edible for enough voters across the the country "swallow" .
Given these two scenarios, one would assume that the party dissatisfied with their slate of candidates would have a more difficult time settling on a nominee, than the party enthusiastic for their candidates. Yet judging strictly on the basis of speed, it looks like the Republican candidate may come to the starting line much sooner. Why?
Three words: winner-take-all. In states that vote rather than caucus, the Republican party operates on a winner take all system. That was the case in South Carolina where McCain beat Mike Huckabee by a mere 3% and in Florida, where McCain beat Romney by 5%. By contrast, none of the Democratic primary states are winner-take-all. They alot delegates to the candidates proportionally, based on the voting percentages in specific districts.
Consequently, McCain can win all 55 of South Carolina's delegates with just 33% of the vote, whereas Barack Obama can lose the popular vote in a state like Nevada to Hillary Clinton but actually end up with more delegates. Neither system seems particularly well-designed, but one seems to have performed the service of nominating a candidate by simply killing off all the others, whereas the other system has given us an epic political battle...except that IT IS NOT FOR THE GENERAL ELECTION.
One has to give the Republican National Committee credit. They designed their nominating bylaws precisely to AVOID, the prolonged battle that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appear ready to engage in. Is winner-take-all fair in a primary? Probably not. Does it discourage the sort of upstart candidacy that Barack Obama has fashioned for himself against the Clinton establishment? Absolutely.
Look. I'm an Obama supporter. I'm voting for him today, and if he survives Super Tuesday within 150 delegates of Hillary Clinton I will most likely campaign for him in Maryland this weekend. If all 22 states today were winner-take-all, he probably wouldn't survive, so in a sense I'm grateful thats not the case. But I also do not want to see this thing go to convention. Part of it is that the longer this process goes on, the greater chance there is for something to happen that causes an irreparable rift in the Democratic party. This could happen, especially if Bill Clinton fails to rein in his inclination towards subtle mendacity. But more importantly, if this primary season has taught us anything, it is that time is of the essence. I believe that the more time the Democratic candidate has to make their argument against McCain, the stronger they will be come election time. McCain does not strike me as a candidate who functions well as a front runner. Right now it doesn't matter because he's the last man standing in the Republican nomination. But come election time, when he has to defend his support of the Iraq war, when he has to communicate some solid ideas for improving the economy, when he has to propose solutions for the health care crisis, all while at the same time pandering to a skeptical Republican base on immigration, he will have a tough trail to navigate. I don't see him being able to stay consistent over the course of a general election, in no small part because he's 75(?) years old. But if he's given time to rest, that could change. If he is not pressed to defend his case for the presidency until less than five months before the general election, that will help him a great deal.

Some Thoughts on the Democratic Debate

-Tim Russert looks like The Penguin from Batman. Someone should set his hair on fire.

-I missed the first half hour or so of the debate, but from reading other blogs it doesn't seem like I missed much in the way of substance. Basically questions designed to allow candidates the opportunity to attack each others' character in petty, stupid ways, which no takes the bait to because they don't want to look like an asshole.

-The economy is not a great area of confidence for Barack Obama. I love the man, but its just a fact. He sounds more hesitant when he speaks about the possibilities of a recession, as though he's afraid of saying something that isn't true. By contrast, he knows exactly what he wants to say when talks about foreign policy. He is, perhaps, at his best when speaks about his plans for the educational system. Edwards talks about the fight for the working man being "personal" to him. For Obama you can see his deepest convictions showing forth when he discusses education.

-The candidates have a very substantive discussion about Iraq. It is substantive BECAUSE it is a discussion. They have differing viewpoints, but rather than arguing with each other they actually try to find common ground. In terms of public image this is good stage-setting for the national election. Any voter, regardless of their viewpoints, when watching both parties debate cannot avoid the gaping asymmetry between them. It is true that the primary process helps to "vet" the nominee. That being said, when a clueless viewer sees the democratic candidates debate, he will see a group of individuals who, while pointing out their disagreements, project an image of unity. As we have seen for the last thirty years with Movement Conservatism, the image of a unified party can speak to a voter's mind in ways that the "issues" have trouble doing.

-Hillary Clinton is a military hawk. No doubt about it. "We haven't talked much about national security in these debates." She also implied that a new president would be more likely to face a terrorist attack because of what happened in England when Gordon Brown took over. Never mind that it was a half-baked terrorist plot that the police were all over before it got off the ground. Never mind that it was foiled rather easily. I'm not a Hillary hater, she scares me a little in the general election because of her divisiveness, but I think a Hillary Clinton presidency would actually be better than a Bill Clinton presidency. Which wasn't that bad when you look back on it. No one is talking about it now, but back when Bill got elected it was pretty clear that she was more progressive than he was. And yet, like the Republicans, she shows a discomforting comfortability with scaring the shit out of the American public by invoking global threats of terrorism.

-Redundant statement of the night. Tim Russert: "The leading cause of death among young american men is guns, death, homicide."
He's speechwriter Bush always wanted but never had!


-Amazing coincidence: When asked about when they decided to run for the presidency, all three candidates said in late December 2006. What a wacky world! Its so spontaneous that it almost feels contrived!

Bring out ya dead

"John McCain, campaigning in a funeral home, hoped for a large turnout by the living Tuesday as Michigan voters judged the Republican presidential pack in a snowy primary."

Am I the only one who finds the symbolism of John McCain campaigning in a funeral home a lot more hilarious than the deflated glibness of the Associated Press? I know that he's become something of the front-runner again in GOP race, but is anyone running his campaign right now? Is this a micro-trend of voters McCain has spotted? People who like to "get away from it all" by hanging out in the embalming laboratory? Forget post-modern candidacy. This is a post-mortem candidacy.

Still not an Obama fan

I refuse to smear Krugman because he's against my guy. We Obama supporters are a passionate bunch. Barack Obama is something of a vessel for the hopes and dreams of many, which people should probably be taking responsibility for themselves rather than projecting them onto him. One of the less attractive aspects of Obamania is the vitriolic retaliation that one sees in the comments page of any blog that offers a perspective of Obama that paints him in a less-than-angelic light. I ultimately think Krugman is wrong about Obama being less progressive on domestic policy and I will offer a defense of this in the coming days. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that his critique doesn't make me uneasy. I hope Obama is reading Krugman's article and taking it serously. I hope that Obama realizes that domestic policy is, by its very nature, more polarizing than foreign policy. Significant numbers of Republicans acknowledge that global warming exist and that it requires urgent address. Plenty of Republicans agree that the Iraq war has been badly managed and, I suspect, privately think the war in Iraq was misguided and unnecessary. Similarly, the word globalization has become less of a dirty word in the progressive movement, and more of an inevitable phenomenon with real consequences for American workers to which there are no easy answers. But there is much less crossover when it comes to domestic issues. Getting a mere three to five GOP senators to support a plan for universal healthcare does not, at this moment, appear possible (although I suspect there will be a small breakdown in the ranks after Bush leaves office and a democratic candidate is elected--even the divisive Senator Clinton). The point is that progressive ideals on the domestic front (especially healthcare and unionization) are still an anathema to the vast majority of Republican poiticians. That does not mean that the democratic party should not probe the ranks for defectors from such hegemony. But calls for bi-partisanship on the domestic front have simply not been paying attention to the mainstream conservative agenda.