Situation OK

Filed Under 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Domestic Politics, Hillary Clinton, In the News, Politics | Leave a Comment

Following the script of this primary season, or a professional wrestling match, Clinton devastated Obama in West Virginia yesterday. According to the Clinton campaign, victory in this tiny unrepresentative state signals Clinton’s invincibility in November. According to her campaign, no Democrat has both won the White House and lost West Virginia since 1916. Matt Yglesias notes that no Democrat has both won the White House and lost Minnesota since 1912. And since Obama won in the land of Keillor and Clinton won the Mountain Mama state, that must mean that McCain is a total shoe-in.

Situation OK. Clinton stays in. Obama stays in and more Democrats will register to vote in the last few primaries aiding in the general.

And I’m still on vacation.

“Most Dems Think the Race Should Stop and Most Think it Should Continue.” Fine Writing from the USA Today

Filed Under 2008 Election, Domestic Politics, Hillary Clinton, In the News | Leave a Comment

Just a quick note to let ya’ll know that Porch Dog is on vacation in the land of the reddest rednecks and the whitest white trash. I leave you to guess where that might be.

Nevertheless, I want to draw your attention to this re-freaking-diculous headline construction at today’s USA Today.

The internet version makes you read as far as the lede before you see the confusion I experienced while glancing at the paper version here at the hotel. The paper version has this sub-head:

“But More Say Clinton Should Quit, Poll Shows”

“Dems” do not in fact “say let the contest continue” as the headline says. Rather, “dems say the race should stop” while “some say let it continue.”  Or do they…? Stupid, honestly. The lede of the article puts the confusion into sharp relief.

On the eve of the West Virginia primary, most Democrats nationally say Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton should continue the campaign, but more now say that it’s time for Clinton to quit.

Well, most can’t say the race should continue and that Clinton should quit. Those are naturally exclusive choices. What the hell is happening here?

The answer is that “most Dems think the race should continue (55%) but more people say that Clinton should drop out, than used to say that (35%, up from 23%).

I know that in the world of Making Fun of Headline Writers is this small potatoes, but I don’t want to read horserace stories in the USA Today and so I’m a bit bitter that I had to read this one just to properly interpret this stupid stupid one.

Bad post? I know. I did say I was on vacation tho.

The Recantation

Filed Under 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Domestic Politics, Hillary Clinton, In the News, Iraq, Politics, Random | Leave a Comment

I said on Tuesday night that I would recant the wild not-liveblogging I was doing as the Indiana primary results crawled in from overloaded Lake County and here it is Friday and no recanting has yet to show up here at Porch Dog.

I’ve been very busy at work, starting a new blog there. And, while I love Porch Dog, the new bloggy is a lot of fun too and not at all political. Obviously, all of you should run over there right now and read all the great things I have to say about Indiana’s humanities world.

Also it turns out there’s not much to recant. Obama’s numbers in Lake County did not stay at the 3:1 level as I think anyone (myself included) could have predicted. As a matter of fact he didn’t even get the 60% which would have been minimally necessary to win the popular vote. Rather he only collected 56% of the vote from the NW county and he fell behind a mere 14,000 votes overall. Still it was a strong showing, substantially outdoing the polls and most prediction models (including the one posted here).

And Clinton stayed in the race.

Most commentators have begun referring to her candidacy in the past tense and beginning to focus on what “President Obama” will have to do once he’s in office in January. But despite the “dead in the water” rhetoric that follows her around now, the blogosphere buzz has been fairly positive. Many have stopped calling for her to sit down and have begun to talk about what a smart move it was for her to stay in. Indeed the benefits both to her and the party have been fairly substantial.

  • In each primary state new voter registration is up by the double digit thousads, most of them new Democrats.
  • Democratic participation in the primaries keeps getting higher–the mayor of Gary was talking about voter participation as high as 95% in some precincts.
  • While most of the debates of late have centered on inconsequential fluff like flag lapel pins and friends of friends who said bad things once–recent weeks have also seen the candidates diverge on a few important issues, most notably the gas tax snafu of Clinton’s. The best thing to come out of that is that it appears that Americans aren’t hungry for short-term non-solutions. That’s a good lesson for politicians who are desperate to do something real about our coming environmental doom.
  • While neither candidate has been able to go after McCain–McCain has barely been able to go after either candidate.

    Probably the most important negative effect of the prolonged primary is the growing number of Clinton supporters who are saying they won’t vote for Obama in November (and vice versa). Personally I don’t think that number is true. While Obama supporters want Obama and not Clinton and while Clinton supporters want Clinton and not Obama, those two candidates are still much, much, much closer in policies than either is to McCain. If you really want either candidate because of their economic, national security, health, environmental, or social policies –you’re better off voting for the other Democrat than you are voting for McCain. Right now people are saying they will switch parties. I doubt it. I think they’re just expressing their dissatisfaction and once the candidate is named the now disaffected will move behind the chosen candidate.

    And you can say what you will about that prediction. When I predicted that Republicans would start to stand behind McCain a lot of people said I was naive. But I was way right. Sure, there are a lot of unhappy Republicans, and they’ll be even more of them before November rolls around, but the majority of Republicans will be (happily or grudgingly) checking the McCain box on Election Day, just like all those sour Clinton supporters will be furiously filling in the oval next to Obama’s name.

    So, nothing really to recant. I’m still working on rectifying my horrible math skills and Clinton stayed in the race making sure that Wednesday’s view of the primary looked essentially the same as Monday’s. But Obama is firmly in the lead now and making money hand over fist. Clinton will sit down soon enough as party elders put more and more pressure on her. She may wait until the convention to take a seat but I think she’s going to be a lot more cautious with her money spending going forward since she must know by now her chances of earning the nomination are very, very slim. Eleven million dollars is a lot to invest in your own private ego-party–which is all it is now.

    PEHDTSCKJMBA!

    Filed Under Music, The Arts | Leave a Comment

    h/t Alterdestiny

    A Problem with McCain’s “League of Democracies”

    Filed Under Foreign Affairs Desk, John McCain | Leave a Comment

    Well, as a response to Tim Starks over at Across the Pond, I offer the only thing I have left to say on the subject of McCain’s League of Democracies.

    Other than the fact that it sounds like an idea ripped from the funny papers, that is.

    McCain came of age politically in an era that was markedly liberal internationalist on the one hand and realist on the other. There was great hope for both views and, as it turns out, they are not mutually exclusive approaches to foreign policy. It turns out that well-established institutions have known effects that can be studied and incorporated into the realists calculus.

    However, realist doctrine received all the credit even though it was a realist doctrine that relied on liberal internationalist theory. Organizations like the UN kept communication channels open with the Soviet Union during the Cold War which proved invaluable when perestroika and glasnost hit the stage. Meanwhile organizations like NATO helped fulfill Kennan’s containment strategy.

    Later GATT, (WTO etc) expanded western economies in a way that hastened the collapse of the isolated Soviet economy. These were all liberal internationalist institutions used as part of a larger realist strategy.

    McCain’s League of Democracies is almost exactly its opposite–a liberal “internationalist” organization used for neoconservative strategies. (The emphasis here is on “liberal” while “internationalist” receives the asterisk for being so selectively so. It might be better called and uber-liberal multinational organization).

    I’m not entirely against an organization like this, but I would like to see it done in a different way than McCain has proposed.

    America’s greatest threat right now stems directly from Bush’s “axis of evil” approach to global governance. Basic balance of power theory (one of the central realist doctrines) dictates that great powers will be equalized as lesser powers join against them. As western Europe and America marginalize specific powers, they are almost certain to join together. On the one hand, it is out of necessity. Countries need other countries to trade to. On the other hand there is an implicit security threat to  weaker states that stand alone while asserting their sovereignty.

    Suddenly we see Iran, Sudan, and North Korea trading fissile material and plans for nuclear plants like they were baseball cards or pogs or whatever it is the kids are trading nowadays. Iran is striking oil deals with Russia and both are working with China far more than we have been able to do.

    A “league of democracies” can only exacerbate this trend of marginalizing non-democratic powers. While the liberal democracies are by and large the richest nations, there are still more non-democracies in the world than democracies. As rich as the democracies are, we can’t afford to be in a new Cold War with over half of the world.

    McCain’s theory is designed not to promote democracy but to force it–which is part of the fundamental flaw that marks neoconservatism. It just doesn’t work that way.


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