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.

A Pundit's Guide to Telepathy

What makes voters vote the way they do?  This is the question pundits ask their audience. It was the question they asked after Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee won Iowa, and it was certainly the pressing question when Hillary Clinton leaped ahead of polling numbers to steal a close victory in New Hampshire.  Huge demographics are sucked up into the rhetorical vacuums of Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer and host of other bloviators of the mainstream media narrative.   Age groupings, gender, urban vs. suburban vs. rural.  What does it matter whether what you say is true or not, so long as it sounds categorical and dramatic? An interesting fact: traditional Christian Evangelicals--conventionally know as the Christian right--vote 70% republican and 20% democratic.  Who are these 20% of traditional evangelicals voting for the Kerry's and Gore's of recent elections?  I have no idea.  In the eyes of the mainstream media they have not existed, although Mike Huckabee is changing that.
But the question of voter motivation itself is interesting, the attempt to visualize a collective voting consciousness, to imagine thousands of citizens all simultaneously blazing their decisions along the same logical track is oddly thrilling. I don't entirely agree with Arianna Huffington that we should ban polls because even when they are innacurate they tell us something. In the case of New Hampshire, thrillingness may have been part of problem. Especially this year.

Lets call it Sulzman's Law: The more dramatic and interesting an presidential contest = the inverse of accuracy amongst pre-voting polls.

I was in New Hampshire campaigning for Barack Obama this weekend, knocking doors, talking folks up, trying to change minds. I spoke to a woman who liked Barack Obama the best out of all the candidates but had decided to vote for Edwards purely out of an ever-diminishing but nevertheless firm loyalty to John Edwards from 2004. I only met her, but I am forced to assume that she was not the only one to make a similar decision. And it is a fascinating realization to realize that one person's voice, however idiosyncratic in its reasoning, represents the same conclusions of many more. Each voice speaks for many others although they may not realize this. The woman I spoke to was convinced that Obama would win easily, he did not need her vote. What she overestimated was the uniqueness of her thought process, as most of us tend to do.