I know, I know, but this one is process related as well. It's yet another disturbing result, again from Rasmussen. Their newest survey from New Mexico (September 8, 700 LV) shows McCain ahead in a state Obama is pretty much counting on:
McCain (R) 49 (+5)
Obama (D) 47 (-3)
As most of the surveys this year show Obama with a lead, this one result may simply be an outlier. The large Hispanic population in New Mexico should give Obama the advantage in this electoral climate, so in any case this might be a place to dump the cash he should be pulling out of North Carolina and Montana. But what do I know?
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
The Lipstick Smear
As anyone who follows the day-to-day news cycle is no doubt aware, nearly all of the 54th to last day of the 2008 campaign was spent dissecting the sexist intent an aphorism that Obama used in exactly the same manner that McCain did last year. It was clear in, in context, that Obama was referring to either John McCain or John McCain's policies. He was not talking about Gov. Palin at this point in his remarks. In fact, it's several more minutes into the speech before he mentions or even alludes to her.
This did not stop the McCain campaign from putting out another web ad running the video of the comment over a caption that read "Barack Obama On: Sarah Palin." I have neglected to link to this video, not because it is trash, which it is, but because YouTube has pulled it due to complaints from CBS about copyrighted material that is included. It seems they did not give the McCain folks permission to take Katie Couric's on-air editorial about Hillary Clinton and sexism WILDLY out of context. Funny how that riles people up.
There has indeed been some press backlash regarding this wholly created dustup, but even a negative press reaction benefits McCain, in that it's just another day we're not talking about issues and policies. You can be certain that McCain's strategist, Steve Schmidt, has a "message calendar" covering his wall, listing in order no less than thirty ways to create days like today in the next two months. We've got gay marriage and William Ayers, Reverend Wright and Kindergarten sex. Maybe there's even a brain-dead woman in Poughkeepsie that needs the American people to save her.
The motive behind this strategy is clear. In a generic election year, between a generic Republican and a generic Democrat, the Republican always wins. It is, for the time being, the nature of the American electorate. But after eight years of Republican rule, with a collapsing economy, a failing war, and a climate run amok, the odds should be tilted so far toward any Democrat that it's not even a contest.
The only way McCain could win is if he ran in a different year, and that's exactly what Schmidt is trying to do. If he can reignite the culture war, if he can make Americans forget for sixty days, hell, for ONE DAY, what year this is, McCain will be the next president.
What we need is for the news media to refuse to cover these non-stories. We need them to ask why they haven't had the opportunity to elicit from Palin any answers at all, why if she's so prepared to be President tomorrow, she's so unprepared to be a candidate for Vice-President today. They need to ask McCain if he is against teaching children the difference between good touch and bad touch, or if he really believes that Barack Obama is such a sick, perverted man that he relishes the idea of going through the details of coitus with five-year olds.
If the media allows the Republican Party to determine what this election is about, if they play the next seven weeks like they played the last seven days, Obama is going to lose and it's that simple. That is a deeply troubling reality.
This did not stop the McCain campaign from putting out another web ad running the video of the comment over a caption that read "Barack Obama On: Sarah Palin." I have neglected to link to this video, not because it is trash, which it is, but because YouTube has pulled it due to complaints from CBS about copyrighted material that is included. It seems they did not give the McCain folks permission to take Katie Couric's on-air editorial about Hillary Clinton and sexism WILDLY out of context. Funny how that riles people up.
There has indeed been some press backlash regarding this wholly created dustup, but even a negative press reaction benefits McCain, in that it's just another day we're not talking about issues and policies. You can be certain that McCain's strategist, Steve Schmidt, has a "message calendar" covering his wall, listing in order no less than thirty ways to create days like today in the next two months. We've got gay marriage and William Ayers, Reverend Wright and Kindergarten sex. Maybe there's even a brain-dead woman in Poughkeepsie that needs the American people to save her.
The motive behind this strategy is clear. In a generic election year, between a generic Republican and a generic Democrat, the Republican always wins. It is, for the time being, the nature of the American electorate. But after eight years of Republican rule, with a collapsing economy, a failing war, and a climate run amok, the odds should be tilted so far toward any Democrat that it's not even a contest.
The only way McCain could win is if he ran in a different year, and that's exactly what Schmidt is trying to do. If he can reignite the culture war, if he can make Americans forget for sixty days, hell, for ONE DAY, what year this is, McCain will be the next president.
What we need is for the news media to refuse to cover these non-stories. We need them to ask why they haven't had the opportunity to elicit from Palin any answers at all, why if she's so prepared to be President tomorrow, she's so unprepared to be a candidate for Vice-President today. They need to ask McCain if he is against teaching children the difference between good touch and bad touch, or if he really believes that Barack Obama is such a sick, perverted man that he relishes the idea of going through the details of coitus with five-year olds.
If the media allows the Republican Party to determine what this election is about, if they play the next seven weeks like they played the last seven days, Obama is going to lose and it's that simple. That is a deeply troubling reality.
Call This A Boondoggle
Congratulations are in order for the fine men and women at CERN. At 4:27 a.m., Eastern time, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was successfully activated and a proton beam made the entire 17 mile circuit unhindered. The real stuff won't come for another month or more, as numerous tests of both the super-conducting torus and the massive particle detectors continue.
But for the time being, we can all get together and recognize the fact that in one of the few scientific projects joined by all the world, mankind has yet again achieved a victory and opened a door to our own future. Kudos, particle-physics dorks; you have made this political junkie proud.
But for the time being, we can all get together and recognize the fact that in one of the few scientific projects joined by all the world, mankind has yet again achieved a victory and opened a door to our own future. Kudos, particle-physics dorks; you have made this political junkie proud.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
In Defense of Public Opinion Polling
There have been a whole slew of state polls out in the last few days, and while most of them show little that is surprising, there are a couple worth mentioning. First up are the latest SurveyUSA (September 6-8, 671 LV) numbers from North Carolina:
McCain (R) 58 (+9)
Obama (D) 38 (-7)
Next we have the most recent Rasmussen Report (September 8, 700 LV) from Montana:
McCain (R) 53 (+6)
Obama (D) 42 (-5)
I tend to get a lot of crap (largely from my father) for closely following the polls, and in fact for buying into the whole horse-race aspect of elections in particular and politics in general. That's just fine; most days it embarrasses me too. I would now, however, like to take this opportunity to point out some of the possible uses of this much derided tool.
Ever since Obama's 2004 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, he has cast himself as a post-partisan uniter, the kind of guy who can win in states both red and blue. He sold himself to the Democratic electorate as the kind of candidate who could put so many states in play that it wouldn't just be another replay of 2000 and 2004, where we're sitting around for way too long waiting for some obscure precinct in Jefferson County, Colorado to turn in their ballots.
The fifty-state strategy isn't a bad one in terms of either PR or long-term party vitality, and for awhile, it looked like it might be the ticket this year. But then came Sarah Palin and the reemergence of the Culture War, and if these latest numbers hold, places like Montana, North Carolina, and even Missouri may suddenly be out of reach. Obama has a lot of time and money invested in those states, in those communities, and it's going to be very hard to pack it in.
But pack it in he must. Obama still has the edge in financial resources, based upon his decision to forgo public financing. As a result, if he closes ranks around Ohio and Florida, while maintaining a large presence in Colorado and New Hampshire, he is still very likely to eke out a win. But failing to note the direction-change of the prevailing winds could result in disastrous consequences.
Polling doesn't necessarily tell a politician what to say; sometimes, it tells them how to play. It's instructive when it comes to maximizing both resources and advantages, while minimizing liabilities an handicaps. Bad candidates win because of good public internal polling and accurate analysis, and if politics is to be treated at times like a sport (a forgone conclusion in this country), this fact cannot be ignored.
So there.
McCain (R) 58 (+9)
Obama (D) 38 (-7)
Next we have the most recent Rasmussen Report (September 8, 700 LV) from Montana:
McCain (R) 53 (+6)
Obama (D) 42 (-5)
I tend to get a lot of crap (largely from my father) for closely following the polls, and in fact for buying into the whole horse-race aspect of elections in particular and politics in general. That's just fine; most days it embarrasses me too. I would now, however, like to take this opportunity to point out some of the possible uses of this much derided tool.
Ever since Obama's 2004 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, he has cast himself as a post-partisan uniter, the kind of guy who can win in states both red and blue. He sold himself to the Democratic electorate as the kind of candidate who could put so many states in play that it wouldn't just be another replay of 2000 and 2004, where we're sitting around for way too long waiting for some obscure precinct in Jefferson County, Colorado to turn in their ballots.
The fifty-state strategy isn't a bad one in terms of either PR or long-term party vitality, and for awhile, it looked like it might be the ticket this year. But then came Sarah Palin and the reemergence of the Culture War, and if these latest numbers hold, places like Montana, North Carolina, and even Missouri may suddenly be out of reach. Obama has a lot of time and money invested in those states, in those communities, and it's going to be very hard to pack it in.
But pack it in he must. Obama still has the edge in financial resources, based upon his decision to forgo public financing. As a result, if he closes ranks around Ohio and Florida, while maintaining a large presence in Colorado and New Hampshire, he is still very likely to eke out a win. But failing to note the direction-change of the prevailing winds could result in disastrous consequences.
Polling doesn't necessarily tell a politician what to say; sometimes, it tells them how to play. It's instructive when it comes to maximizing both resources and advantages, while minimizing liabilities an handicaps. Bad candidates win because of good public internal polling and accurate analysis, and if politics is to be treated at times like a sport (a forgone conclusion in this country), this fact cannot be ignored.
So there.
Nice.
The McCain campaign, responding to an ad about McCain's voting record on education, released a television ad claiming that the only education reform Sen. Obama enacted during his time in the Illinois legislature was teaching, I quote, "comprehensive sex education to kindergartners." Watch if for yourself:
Maybe the sickest part of the whole exercise to me is the nursery music that's running in the background. This on the same day that McCain accuses the Obama camp of achieving a new low regarding funding for special education. Just amazing.
Maybe the sickest part of the whole exercise to me is the nursery music that's running in the background. This on the same day that McCain accuses the Obama camp of achieving a new low regarding funding for special education. Just amazing.
I'm Back!
The Washington Post reported this morning that Alaska Gov. and Veep nominee Sarah Palin billed the state for 312 nights that she spent at her Wasilla residence as part of a per diem arrangement that allows her to turn over expenses incurred when traveling on official business outside Juneau. The article also indicated that she had asked for and received reimbursement for over forty thousand dollars worth of airline tickets for her husband and children. While family members of Governors are permitted to bill the state for expenses relating to “official state business,” it's hard to imagine what official business seven-year old Piper Palin might have been engaged in that caused her to run up an $11,000 airline bill in the first nineteen months of her mother's governorship.
These revelations, coupled with the emerging fact that Palin was a strong supporter of the much-derided “Bridge to Nowhere” before it became a politically inexpedient albatross, are beginning raise doubts about the “maverick reformer” image McCain finally settled on for his fall message. While it was a well-known fact that Mayor Palin hired a lobbyist to obtain $27 million in earmarks during her tenure in that office, it is just now being revealed that she brought in close to a $750 million as governor. Her first year alone, she obtained $550 million in federal earmarks, or more than $800 per Alaskan, almost thirty times the national average. She even penned an editorial in one of Alaska's largest newspapers defending federal earmarks and describing their procurement as “incredibly important.”
There's nothing wrong with any of this. There's nothing illegal, lascivious, dangerous, immoral, or even particularly unique about the game she was running. But it's patently ludicrous to somehow paint her as the mortal enemy of pork and earmarks. Obama and his campaign have recently attacked her reformist assertions as misleading, and even deceitful, but the McCain campaign has issued this response over and over:
“Barack Obama's hysterical reaction to Sarah Palin's hard work as governor, combined with the vicious assault visited upon her family by his friends in the elite media, belie the contempt he has for ordinary Americans and the profound extent that he is willing to belittle America's working mothers.”
Ok, so I'm paraphrasing a bit. The point is that as long as the mainstream media are willing to cover the debate about Sarah Palin's record in the “he said – she responded” mold of tired journalism, Palin can keep re-issuing this statement and it will never lose any effectiveness. It won't gain any either, but it doesn't have to. It keeps us talking about the media and the “elite,” and prevents any honest, probing, or otherwise useful questions about her record in elective office.
This is another one of those cases that we desperately need the news media to help us, rather than hurt us, and just eight weeks from election day, it's hardly clear that this will happen.
UPDATE: Just saw this on HuffPo. He put it much better than I did:
So what is this house advantage the Republicans have? It's the press. There is no more fourth estate. Wait, hold on...I'm not going down some esoteric path with theories on the deregulation of the media and corporate bias and CNN versus Fox...I mean it: there is no more functioning press in this country. And without a real press the corporate and religious Republicans can lie all they want and get away with it. And that's the 51% advantage.It's a pretty passionate piece about how and why we're going to lose. Interesting reading if you're looking for nauseous sweating.
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