Monday, January 29, 2007

Women Troubles and Other Musings on Voting Behavior

I’ve been out of town for the last few days, so I’m just getting to the Sunday papers, but it appears that Linda Hirshman, a retiring women’s studies professor, has an interesting piece about the female vote and Hillary. In her decidedly unscientific sample, she noted the surprising number of women who say they are dependent on their husbands for political information and guidance, and the discrepancy between the amount of women who express an interest in public affairs, compared with men. And this is among beltway Washington-area, educated women!

Will women voters carry Hillary into the White House? My guess is that women voters, when confronted with a historic opportunity will judge a female candidate in the same way that they judge a male candidate. Women as solidly Democratic voters may be overblown – there has been no change in support among women since the election of FDR. Rather, the discrepancy is among men who abandoned the Democratic Party in droves following the New Deal.

If any Democratic coalition will jump at a chance to make history, it will be African-Americans (though polling puts Clinton ahead of Obama among black voters). Being easily the most solidly Democratic voters since the New Deal, they will be more than happy to support the candidacy of one of their own in the Democratic ranks.

As for Hispanic voters and the Richardson candidacy, there have been recent polls, which suggest a slight lean Democratic (except among Cuban expatriates). Rove tried very hard to include Hispanics in Bush’s governing coalition but the nativist tendencies of the Republican Party prior to the election made that difficult.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Today, In Washington

John Kerry’s announcement that he will not seek the 2008 Democratic nomination probably brought him more headlines across the Internet and blogosphere than anything else in the last few months. I can’t help but feel a pang of regret for the man, who came so close yet so far away.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a non-binding resolution condemning the so-called surge. The measure is a bi-partisan bill, co-sponsored by venerable Republican Olympia Snowe and is an attempt to put Republicans in a political awkward spot, giving them the choice between defying the public opinion polls or defying the increasingly lame-duck Presidency of G.W. Bush. Some, like Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee found ways to weasel out of the bind, saying “he could not support the resolution because it was not binding on Bush and "will have absolutely zero affect on the administration." But Corker said he was ‘not persuaded’ the troop surge is ‘the right thing to do.’”

Monday, January 22, 2007

Unity?

As if the 2008 President race isn’t groundbreaking and historic enough, there is another twist. Being out temporarily out of the country, I get my copy of the Atlantic Monthly a little later than everyone, so this might have been covered by others, but an intriguing concept has been profiled here by The Atlantic’s Joshua Green – a centrist National unity third party founded by old political insiders of both parties who cannot stand the direction that elections in this country have gone. Called Unity08, they are dedicated to holding an online primary, qualifying for the ballot in all 50 states, and then allowing Internet users to nominate a Democrat and a Republican in a truly centrist, national unity ticket.

For a long time, I’ve been thinking about the American party system is in flux and could be ready for a major re-alignment. The traditional winning Republican alliance of Libertarians, social conservatives and business was doomed from the start, and the Democratic coalition of liberals, soft-leftists, labor and interests like Nursing and Teachers is an equally tenuous combination.

Then again, historian Richard Hofstadter wisely noted that “Third parties are like bees: once they have stung, they die.” Indeed, Unity08 is not meant to be a permanent realignment, but merely a shot of venom into the political system to force politicians away from the political fringes, and back towards the moderate center. Unity08 may not provide a massive electoral shakeup, and new political cleavages, but it may provide the sting that the American political system so desperately needs.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

"I sit at the foot of the master"

The much-vaunted Colbert-O’Reilly/O’Reilly-Colbert gag did not play well. Colbert thrives on a loyal studio audience and his otherwise funny material came across as flat without anyone to laugh. That’s no slight against him as a comedian – during the New York power outage, Conan O’Brien broadcast from New York from a pitch-black studio without an audience – the level of humor simply wasn’t there. Both appearances lacked something – the fact that Colbert is both mocking and imitating O’Reilly makes both interviews awkward. O’Reilly really hammers on the point of Jon Stewart – almost counter-taunting Colbert.

As for O’Reilly on the Colbert Report, Colbert’s usual routine went over better, but O’Reilly was distant and rude. The best part was the opening with O’Reilly and Colbert saying the same thing. The other amusing part was the “30% off” sticker cover O’Reilly’s head. The clips of both appearances are below.



Saturday, January 20, 2007

All Not Quiet On the Presidential Front

In a shocking, shocking move, completely unanticipated by political observers, Hillary Rodham Clinton has announced her intention to pursue the 2008 Nomination.

2008’s field of candidates is shaping up to be truly historic: a young black candidate with Muslim ancestry, a former First Lady and the first serious female contender, and in the days to come, a Hispanic governor of a western state.

My prediction is that Edwards, Biden and the rest will have a difficult time among the liberal activists in the party who want to force the diversity issue: being the first to party to nominate a woman, a Hispanic, a African-American, etc.

Senator Clinton’s campaign website site was poorly launched this morning. I understand the Google algorithms involved, and Hillary Clinton.com was an appropriate choice but it's glaringly absent as a cross-link from her official Senate.gov page. Thus, anyone looking to find the site this morning using Google was treated to several “Draft Hillary’ and unofficial sites, as well as her official Senate Site, which makes no mention whatsoever of a Presidential Announcement.

Interestingly, just a few hours after Clinton’s announcement, she was bumped off the top AP headlines at sites like Yahoo by the far lesser known Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who began his campaign with such rhetoric as “"Search the record of history. To walk away from the Almighty is to embrace decline for a nation… …To embrace Him leads to renewal, for individuals and for nations."

Brownback is, of course, making a play for the social conservative Republican base. It will be interesting to watch the fight between Romney and Brownback over who can turn furthest right, and still be a contender in the general election.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Is YouTube Part of the Liberal Media?

The Boston Globe has slyly pointed out this clip on YouTube, calling it “a hit.”



Romney is shockingly moderate and reasonable, compared to the way he has governed Massachusetts with his shrill, divisive rhetoric and positioning to win over social conservatives. Romney is going to find himself in increasing trouble. To win the primary he has to make a strong play at the Conservative base, and beg them to forget about his relatively liberal and middle-of-the-road positions from 12 years ago. Then, assuming he can pull that off, he’s going to have to try to win over moderate voters in the general election. It’s a dilemma that every candidate must face, but Romney is particularly finds himself in a bad position.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

An Announcement

Of course, the big political news today was Barack Obama’s quasi-announcement of the formation of an exploratory committee, which should come as no shock to anyone. The story is also front page news at The Post, The Fix, The Globe, The Tribune, and with the AP. Why, its even making an international splash in Canada and in Britain.

The AP story notes the Clinton camp reaction – canceling a Hill appearance – and further notes that a Clinton announcement of a candidacy is a few days away, which is the first I’ve heard that her announcement is forthcoming, but we’ll see, I suppose.

The intense media coverage of the Obama announcement – try this for an experiment: Go to the website for any major newspaper and its front-[web]page news right now – should do much to introduce him to the bulk of the American people. Clinton, and to a lesser extent Edwards, who need no introduction, have a different mission – countering the sense of inevitability among many of the Democratic faithful that Obama is endowed with a certain sense of destiny and purpose.

Character is Electoral Failure

“It is your character,” John McCain (allegedly – who knows the level of ghost-writing that modern politicians employ) wrote in his 2005 book, “that will make your life happy or unhappy. That is all that really passes for destiny.” Unfortunately, this week, John McCain showed the world that he doesn’t really have any. Character, that is.

McCain, who once called the most despicable elements of the Christian Right “agents of intolerance” and who once stood as a symbol of a maverick Senator who was willing to buck his party line (though some have questioned how true this image was), and who was even considered for the Democratic ticket in 2004, has decided to cozy back up next to the Focus-on-The-Family theocrat types.

McCain’s 2000 campaign was bitterly opposed by Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and other televangelist demagogues, who backed Bush. Recently, Dobson expressed the desire that McCain should not be the Republican nominee, presumably intending to back Brownback or Romney.

Thus McCain, the presumptive front-runner in both polls and the invisible primary, in order to form an effective governing coalition and to head off potential problems down the road is seriously engaged in an high-profile effort to court Christian conservatives, instead of sticking his truly personal instincts that the right-wing theocrats, or Christianists as Andrew Sullivan would call them, are intolerant bigots at best. I am not so naive to think that politicians do not make compromises with their values in order to win elections. Then again, not all politicians write high-minded tracts about “Why Character is Destiny” or “Why Courage Matters” either.

Monday, January 15, 2007

What Shamu Taught Me About the Intelligence of the Average NY Times Reader

I really would like to know what this sexist, travesty of an article is doing back on top of the NY Times Most-Read? It wasn't amusing, or witty come the first time. It was mildly offensive, but it made a big splash and had a long reign on most-read board. But now it returns!

The Imperial Presidency Strikes Back

The big news on the Executive Power front this week is the debacle over the FBI, and to a greater extent, the CIA, using so-called national security letters to investigate the bank activity of American citizens. The New York Times states flatly “Banks are not required to hand over the information, but Pentagon officials said that financial institutions usually complied.”

Cheney paints the issue in a slightly different light, saying

There’s nothing wrong with it or illegal… …It doesn’t violate people’s civil rights. And if an institution that receives one of these national security letters disagrees with it, they’re free to go to court to try to stop its execution.”


Which is it? Are the banks under no true obligation to turn over the information, or is the information considered quasi-subpoenaed, and institutions must go to court if they disagree with the request to turn it over?

What really irked me about the whole situation was Cheney’s invocation of the troops to defend such searches. “Mr. Cheney,” writes the Times, “said yesterday that the letters were valuable for protecting American forces stationed at hundreds of bases in the United States.” It’s a constant Administration scare tactic – any questionable constitutional action they take is merely in the defense of American lives, particularly American solidiers, despite their oaths to uphold constitutional principles above all. I personally don’t see the direct connection – bank records might be valuable in seeing who might be funneling money to terrorists, which in turn might lead to a breakup of a foreign terrorist cell, however unlikely. More likely, the information would be useful in rooting out American citizens who are funneling money to terrorists – not that this is a negative thing, but merely that it does not seem to hold that bank records will be useful in protecting American troops, merely prosecuting American citizens.

This week’s Jurisprudence Column in Slate sees an all-around conspiracy to rebuild the executive, post-Watergate.


The true purpose [of Gitmo, Jose Padillia trial] is more abstract and more tragic: To establish a clunky post-Watergate dream of an imperial presidency, whatever the human cost may be.

Daydream Believer: Obama, King and Oprah

On Meet the Press yesterday, the show ran a retrospective clip on Dr. King’s last appearance on the show, 40 years ago.


Interviewer: Dr. King, do you believe the American racial problem can be solved?

MLK: Yes I do. I refuse to give up, I refuse to disband in this moment, I refuse to allow myself to fall into the dark chambers of pessimism because I think, in any social revolution, the one thing that keeps it going is hope, and when hope dies, somehow the revolution degenerates into a kind of nihilistic philosophy which says you must engage in disruption for disruption’s sake. I refuse to believe that. However difficult it is, I believe that the forces of goodwill, white and black in this country can work together to bring about a revolution of this problem.”


I can’t think of any better testament to the progress made in the social revolution that King, Parks, W.E.B DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, Charles Houston, James Farmer and others began so many decades ago than the fact that a young, vibrant African-American candidate has a decent shot at both the Democratic nomination and the White House.

In other Obama news, both Political Wire and Daily Kos are reporting that an announcement may come this Wednesday, on January 17th, on the Oprah Winfrey show.

I’m not sure if I linked this here, yet, however this was one of the better academic papers that cracked the mainstream media recently. Entitled The Oprah Effect: How Soft News Helps Inattentive Citizens Vote Consistently, it addresses how inattentive voters can gain a general portrait of a candidate simply from brief appearances on non-news or soft-news shows like “Today” or “Oprah.” With this in mind, Obama’s strategy is deliberate and conscious – millions of Americans (many of them women, a key cornerstone in any Democratic coalition) will form an opinion of the still-relatively unknown outside of political circles Obama from his dual Winfrey appearances.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Massachusetts, Please!

While the news cycle has moved on, I keep dwelling on Mitt Romney. Recent news on his front was his massive $6.5 million netting in just a one-day fundraiser. Mitt Romney emerged to run against Senator Kennedy in the 1994 Senatorial election.

If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, the contest might well resemble Romney’s 2002 campaign for Massachusetts’ corner office, against Shannon O’Brien, whom he went on to trounce. O’Brien fought an aggressive campaign, but ultimately took a beating. She was perceived as liberal and out of touch, while Romney came off as moderate, and charming.

More on Trophy and Raytheon

A blogger named Taylor Marsh makes a similiar case about the Raytheon-DD contract and the NBC news report on Trophy

My own take is here.

Where's Morgan Spurlock When You Need Him?

The big Congressional news of the day is, of course, the minimum wage increase by the Democrats that passed the House. It must still win in the Senate, where Republican lawmakers are already taking aim at it.

Senator Grassley of Iowa had this to say:

"First, most minimum-wage earners are not trying to support a family," the Iowa lawmaker said. "Those who are can receive substantial government benefits to supplement their income. Thus, no one has to rely solely on the minimum wage to support a family."


I’m not sure how intellectually honest that is, from a party that constantly derides America’s very limited welfare state as subsidizing lazy individuals. Is this an admission by a top Republican that our welfare and Medicaid dollars may actually be supporting hard-working Americans who simply cannot make ends meet?

Grassley’s critique does invite the idea of two-tiered minimum wage – namely that all workers who cannot claim dependent status on an income tax form must be paid a reasonably high living wage, while teenagers, young adults, and other tax-dependents receive another, lower minimum wage. However, in the American context, this raises 14th Amendment problems of equality under the law. However, does it really pose any more of a problem than a graduated income tax?

Lost Cause: What the Democrats Don't Want You To Know

Slate’s Emily Bazelon offers her take on the options that Congress has in ending the war, or at least preventing the surge. In typical Slate fashion, she nails it down to four options, presented in a list format.

1. Unauthorization
2. Cut off Funding
3. Set Conditions on Funding
4. Set a Time Limit

In principle, I agree. The Democrats do have a fair amount of leeway and creative solutions could be found to force Mr. Bush’s hand on the war. On Meet the Press, Joe Biden expressed that his hands were constitutionally tied in preventing Bush’s surge. However, later in the week Congressional leadership floated the threat of cutting off funding. What’s emerging now is that that appears to be a threat to bone up their anti-war bona fides, before they allow the surge anyway. The Democrats are throwing up a hollow protest, because they know the surge is unlike to make a difference in the situation in Iraq.

Meanwhile, when the withdrawal does occur, they Democrats will be in a political advantageous position – having protested the escalation, while all the while insisting that they were powerless to stop it. I withdraw my earlier critique that opposing the escalation is a politically unsound move. Rather, it may be a politically brilliant move, albeit one that does not help the condition of the Iraqi people. The Democrats may be the ones now playing political hardball on the war – isolating the Republicans on the war. They do not want their share of responsibility in the quagmire. It must be a Republican problem come 2008.

In a way, the Democrats want a big loss by the Republicans. They are being genuine when they say that they do not want any more Americans to die in vain. But they are being insincere when they say they are powerless to do anything about it.

The Universal Health Care Debate, Round 1000

While California’s efforts to achieve near-universal health care coverage are noble, this state-by-state approach is fast becoming ridiculously inefficient. The big problems are the insurance companies – companies which would all but cease to exist in their present form should the status quo evaporate, and a universal single-payer system be enacted.

Polling on the issue is beyond confusing, with Americans simultaneously desiring the status quo, asking for major changes, saying that health care is either “good” or “only fair” and saying that it is the responsibility of the Federal Government to provide health care for all.

Massachusetts’ “Commonwealth Care” near-Universal Health Care program just went into effect a few days ago, and it was a bundle of political compromises to satisfy every possible lobby involved. A similar fight will undoubtedly take place in California. However, these piecemeal systems involving subsidized private insurers, the nursing lobby, the hospital lobby, the state Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the hundreds of other disparate interest groups with a stake in health care are simply inefficient. Though this piecemeal system of private insurers, public health care for the old and the poor, and uncompensated care pools, America already spends a much greater percentage of their GDP to cover just the elderly and the poor than Canada spends covering everyone from birth to death. Our system is notoriously inefficient and it’s the insurance companies that are to blame.

A single-payer system would be ideal – with sliding co-pays based on income to discourage overuse and abuse of the system. Of course, this is all politically untenable. When the Clinton policy team, including Hillary, sat down to accomplish health care reform, the insurers stood in their way, producing misleading ads that torpedoed the whole project. A more modest goal? Extend Medicare to cover children and young adults under 25 – it would alleviate the burden of family coverage that insurers and employers now face. I believe John Edwards offered something along those lines, however.

Nevertheless, I still hope for some near-universal coverage legislation out of California – it is a worthy project to tackle.

Defense Department Hedges on Life-Saving Technology - Politics As Usual?

I don’t usually watch television news, but I caught tonight’s NBC report about a defense technology called “Trophy,” developed by an Israeli firm. From what I can tell, it’s a countermeasure-type defense technology designed to protect armored vehicles from rocket-propelled grenade attacks. The Army refuses to deploy the technology, giving a string of excuses, which the Israeli Army and the technology’s manufacturer quickly debunk – that the device may not be safe, does not provide 360 degree coverage, and does not have an auto-reload mechanism. Also, they state that the IDF, or Israeli Defense Force, has not started to implement the technology in their armed forces, which NBC demonstrates is patently untrue.

So what are the politics involved? The NBC report only hints at this, but a contract with defense contractor Raytheon to develop its own version of a similar technology may have played a large role in the Pentagon’s hemming, hawing and stalling on the technology. Raytheon has always been a large campaign contributor to both parties, but has been trending towards supporting Republican candidates. Raytheon’s technology is not expected to be combat ready until 2011. Is the Pentagon taking a pass on a crucial defense technology that could save American lives in the field right now and instead awarding the contract to an American defense company, whose technology won’t likely be ready for another four years?

In politics, it’s unavoidable that contracts will be awarded unfairly and based on favor, and past campaign contributions. Or, the Pentagon instinct to give the contract to an American firm may simply be out of patriotic interest. However, when it comes to the safety of troops fighting on the ground in an ever-dangerous quagmire, a reasonably safe technology like Trophy should not be subject to the traditional cronyistic Military-Industrial Complex shell game of awarding contracts. The American people must ask important questions - is the Pentagon playing games with American lives? And was this contract awarded for political reasons and was the pass on trophy a ploy simply to give Raytheon the project?

Monday, January 08, 2007

For a Smarter, Saner Democratic Party

Now, I was the first to cheer when Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress in November, but I feared something akin to what is happening now. It seems that Reid and Pelosi are trial-ballooning a plan to refuse to fund any new troop surge. Hopefully, it will fizzle as quickly as when John Kerry trial-ballooned offering the VP slot to John McCain (not that that was a bad strategy, merely that it fizzled quickly).

Any effort to “cut off funding” to the troops can and will easily be framed by Republicans as dishonest, disloyal and unpatriotic. Granted, they are only talking about refusing to fund an “escalation” or “surge” of the war, and not the troops already fighting. However, such subtleties rarely work well in the battle for press headlines.

The Democrats have been on the wrong side of this war each time, all because of their perpetual fear of defying the polls. When the majority of the public was in favor of the war, they hemmed and hawed and ultimately most of them voted to approve the authorization to use force. Imagine if they had adamantly refused to condone any action in Iraq, and came out strongly against it. They would be heralded as visionaries and the Republicans would look even more foolish than they do now. Then, come 2008, the Iraq quagmire would be an albatross around the Republican’s necks and the Republicans’ necks alone. Instead, as in 2004, Republicans will be able to paint certain Senate Democrats as complicit in the war (e.g. Hillary Clinton).

Now they’re prepared to allow the headline “Democrats consider cutting off funding for Iraq War.” I agree that the surge is probably far too few soldiers to make any real impact, no matter what renowned military historian John Keegan says. At the same time, it might be better than the status quo, and withdrawal under the guise of “redeployment” still stinks of a betrayal of the Iraqis, at least the Kurds and to a lesser extends the Shi’ites.

Mr. Bush will probably have his surge no matter what, and this foolishness about cutting off funding will put the Democrats in a politically perilous position.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

On Conscience

To anti-war critics, pro-war hawks and anyone else who is engaged actively in the Iraq War debate, I tip my hat. At this point, it’s a difficult situation and anyone willing to intellectually tackle such a quagmire respectfully and honestly earns at least my begrudging respect. And I have nothing but acrimonious scorn for the Bush Administration’s conduct in both the run-up to the war, and the occupation itself. My sympathies lie halfway between the anti-war movement’s denunciation of the needless loss of human life, and the McCain-esque arguments against withdrawal because of the responsibilities we have. I have less sympathy for those who have enlisted in the military and now refuse to deploy on principle. Yahoo!’s globetrotting Kevin Sites sat down for an interview with one of these young men, a commissioned officer named Ehren Watada, facing charges for refusing his deployment orders.

Watada joined the military voluntarily, and was trained, but slowly came to the realization that the American people were duped by a politically incompetent and overly hasty administration, if not outright deceived. September 2005 was a turning point for this young man and he refused to deploy in Iraq on the grounds that the war was illegal.

While Watada is an eloquent young man, and one who could have led a successful career in politics or journalism, his position is unfortunately flawed. As a solider, especially an officer, he should realize that it is not his responsibility to judge the conduct of higher powers, nor is it within his duty or jurisdiction to determine the legitimacy or illegality of a particular military engagement. Rather, it is his duty to obey the chain of command, and avoid entering the political fray as a martyr for the anti-war movement, or as a symbolic protest. It is Congress’s duty to check the Executive, not the military.

When asked if President Bush should be criminally charged, Watada replied “That's not something for me to determine. I think it's for the newly-elected congress to determine during the investigations that they should hold over this war, and pre-war intelligence.” However, it is equally not-up Watada to violate the chain of command and refuse deployment orders because of his nebulous understanding of complex international law and constitutional theory. I refuse to take the position of Thoreau in this matter, and I find myself on the side of Socrates before his death – one has a duty to obey the laws of the nation, upon voluntary consent. This is not necessarily to say that Conscientious objector status should not exist, but we as a nation are not under any general conscription – we are currently an all-voluntary military and those who have taken an oath to the constitution are pledging their loyalty to the chain of command and the government structure put in place by the constitution. This does not give them license to interpret the Constitution, or pass judgement upon higher ups in the chain-of-command.

Watada’s points are valid, but his duties as a military officer under voluntary enlistment supercede the largely symbolic objection he is making. If proven guilty by a jury of his peers, a six-year prison term would not be unjustified.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Auld Lang Syne

I’m not sure what to think about today’s looming procedural fight in the Massachusetts legislature over gay marriage. On one hand, I think there is a lot of credence in the argument that people’s rights should not be subject to a popular vote. On the other hand, I think Massachusetts would be an excellent place to end the “Liberal Activist Judges!” cry once and for all. I don’t remember polling on the issue, but last I checked a slim majority of Massachusetts denizens supported continued gay marriages. An electorate, even a liberal one like Massachusetts, enshrining same-sex marriage rights by popular vote would be a powerful symbol, and an excellent rebuttal to the cry that liberal justices are hatching ways to bring down traditional society.

The problem is that issues like same-sex marriage are wedge issues, and a popular vote in Massachusetts could galvanize die-hard opponents into turning out in droves, while the average citizen, who doesn’t feel particularly affected by the issue stays home, leading to the defeat of such a measure.

Update: About.com’s Lesbian Life Page has some polling, with sources. 62% of Massachusetts residents.