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Holder's Defense: 'I was played for a sucker by a lobbyist!' From the NYT today, the lawyer for Attorney General nominee Eric Holder defends him in the Marc Rich Pardon scandal:
“There’s no question that [Marc Rich lobbyist Jack] Quinn played him and it was astute by Quinn because he did catch Eric unawares.”
Creative defense. Unfortunately, the NYT story makes it pretty clear that Holder knew too much about the case to have been unwillingly played. Seems more like the buddy system at work. ...[Thx to reader J.] 12:10 P.M.
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Undernews Alert: Rezko sentencing set for January 6. The Tribune story suggests this means he is not cooperating with prosecutors (if he was cooperating it would be delayed). ... [via NewsAlert] 11:47 A.M.
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On Warren Olney's To the Point, LAT veteran Doyle McManus says Robert Gates
is in the unusual position of being a cabinet member who can't really be fired because if the President and the Secretary of Defense were to end up at loggerheads on an issue, that could be politically very damaging for the president. [E.A.]
This seems astonishingly wrong. Obama can fire Gates more easily because Gates is a Bush holdover, no? Obama won an election by opposing Bush's policies. ... Maybe Sam Zell had a point about McManus. ... 2:14 A.M.
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Monday, December 1, 2008
'You should never have made those loans groups like us pressured you to make!' The National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a "community-based organization," is suing Wall Street ratings services for approving bonds backed by home loans to African American and Latino home purchasers with "insufficient borrower income levels."
The firms "knew or should have known" that subprime loans disproportionately were marketed to minority consumers -- a process known as "reverse redlining" -- and that those borrowers would ultimately default and go into foreclosure at high rates, according to the coalition's complaint.
Hmmm. Didn't community-based organizations push for exactly this sort of reverse-redlining? I think they did. It's one thing to argue that they maybe weren't the major cause of the subprime meltdown. It's another for them to pose as victims wronged by the very system they worked hard to set up (including the securitization that enabled banks to keep up "reverse redlining"). ... 2:21 A.M.
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Here's a Saturday Belfast Telegraph story about Sebastian D'Souza, the photographer who took a now-famous photograph of one of the Mumbai terrorists in the process of gunning people down in a train station:
But what angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back." [E.A.]
Here's a Sunday New York Times front pager about the "troubling questions" the attacks raised about India's "ability to respond":
[T]he most troubling question to emerge for the Indian authorities was how, if official estimates are accurate, just 10 gunmen could have caused so much carnage and repelled Indian security forces for more than three days in three different buildings.
Part of the answer may lie in continuing signs that despite the country’s long vulnerability to terrorist attacks, Indian law enforcement remains ill-prepared. The siege exposed problems caused by inexperienced security forces and inadequate equipment, including a lack of high-power rifle scopes and other optics to help discriminate between the attackers and civilians. [E.A.]
Read the Times story and you'll see a numbing litany of "systemic" problems with Indian security, including "Ill-paid city police [who] are often armed with little more than batons," and "little information-sharing among law enforcement agencies" and all that inadequate equipment, including "old, bulky bulletproof jackets" and lack of thosehigh-power scopes and "no technology at their disposal to determine where the firepower was coming from ..." [E.A.] It reads like the budget-increase proposal submitted by the Mumbai police bureaucracy--The Indian Omnibus Anti-Terror Funding Act of 2009. Nowhere in the NYT story will you learn what American blog readers learned a day earlier when Instapundit (among others) linked to the Belfast story: Police had lots of guns, and no problem seeing who and where the terrorists were, but they wouldn't shoot at them.
I'm used to a sort of Liebling-like hierarchy of news sources, with twitterers and bloggers being fastest, but maybe less reliable, while the grand institutions of the MSM weigh in later with more comprehensive and accurate accounts. But that's not what is happening with this Mumbai story. The "fast" sources are telling you what happened. The "slow" MSM sources are using their extra time to sanitize what's happened, to build euphemistic assumptions into their very reporting of the events themselves--in this case, it just so happens, liberal assumptions:1) the idea that there is no problem that can't be solved by greater funding for government bureaucracies and more interagency taskforces** 2) the predisposition to think widely-distributed small arms and a willingness to use them can never be a good idea and 3) an antipathy to any suggestion that an aspect of foreign culture is inferior to nasty American culture. (Maybe we Americans are trigger happy. But do we think that a handful of terrorists could have gone on a similar rampage in New York City without quite quickly encountering a fair number of cops who would have shot back--let alone armed civilians who did the same)? ...
**--Substitute "lousy test scores" for "vulnerability to terrorist attacks" and you have the stereotypical liberal MSM template for reporting on inner-city education failure: insufficient spending leads to ill-paid teachers who lack the latest technology! ... 1:27 A.M.
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Saturday, November 29, 2008
A friend of mine who occasionally visits the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai tells me that earlier in November the hotel bristled with security, including aggressively manned checkpoints--security that had been absent a few months earlier. Apparently the security was withdrawn before terrorists attacked the hotel this week. ...I don't know what to make of this, but it at least suggests that the attacks might not have been "a complete surprise," as the headline on Slate's home page (but not the article to which it links) claims. ... Maybe they were anticipated but on an earlier date? ... Maybe the extra security caused the terrorists to postpone them. ... If so, were they originally planned for before the U.S. election? ...
Update: Hotel's owner says "we did have such a warning, and we did have some measures," which were relaxed before the attacks. But he argues they wouldn't have made a difference because ... the gunman didn't go in the front door.
However, [Tata Group chairman Ratan] Tata said the attackers did not enter through the entrance that has a metal detector. Instead, they came in a back entrance, he said.
"They knew what they were doing, and they did not go through the front. All of our arrangements are in the front," he said.
Reminds me of the time I visited Hyannis Port when JFK was staying at the family compound there. The Secret Service was protecting it closely, except for a one-way street leaving the area, which was left unguarded--apparently on the theory that an assassin wouldn't go wrong way down a one-way street. ... More: kf's friend says that during the early-November high-security period the rear doors to the hotel were locked. Not that that would necessarily have stopped the terrorists. Still, they seem to have preferred low-security to high-security. ...1:21 A.M.
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Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Mazda has joined the ranks of Pixar cars and chosen an unfortunate new corporate face. Is it smiling or hurling? ... 11:04 P.M.
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Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Gird Your Loins: David Frum and Bill Bradley offer hard nosed, savvy explanations of why picking Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State makes sense for Obama. He looks magnanimous. He'll find out her secrets--then he has the goods on her. He can fire her. She'll work for him. Bill will be controlled. Now she'll have real trouble paying Mark Penn's bill! ...
Sorry, I'm not buying it. It seems simple to me: She can't do him much damage from the Senate, where she doesn't rank. She can do him a lot of damage through self-interested leaking from the State Department. (Here's Exhibit Z, if you needed it, from Elizabeth Drew.) If he fires her she can then run against him and make more trouble.
Even smart, well-advised people make mistakes. I think it's a mistake. Or else there is some other factor at work that we don't know about (e.g., Hillary has the real birth certificate! Joking!)... [How do you know her aides will keep leaking? That's just CW. The CW said Joe Biden would be a walking gaffe machine, remember--ed Joe Biden was a walking gaffe machine. Remember] 10:24 P.M.
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Jonathan Chait argues that Clinton made a political mistake by running up a budget surplus in his second term--because "all you ended up doing was just giving more money for George Bush to devote to tax cuts for the rich." I've never understood this argument. It would have been better if the money had been pissed away on veteran's programs, civil service salary hikes, agriculture subsidies and money for the failing education bureaucracy? In Democrats wouldn't have enacted universal health insurance in Clinton's second term after all. (The GOP controlled Congress.) They would have just larded up existing programs--programs that are then almost impossible to cut. Now, at least, the Obama administration has the option of raising money for health care by raising the taxes on the rich back to where they were before. If Chait's advice had been followed, Obama wouldn't have that option (because taxes on the rich would never have gone down). ... It's hard to raise taxes, but it's easier to raise taxes starting from a lower base. And it's easier to raise taxes than to try to finance health care by cutting government programs with powerful constituencies. ... A fuller version of this argument can be found here. ... P.S.: I'm not saying Bush's distribution of tax cuts was the right one. I'm saying that running up a surplus from 1996 to 2001 and then spending the surplus on tax cuts of some sort was way better for Democrats than not running a surplus in the first place (because the money was spent on the sorts of Democratic "priorities" that would have been funded at the time). Politics isn't a football game where Dems gain yards by spending on their "priorities" and GOPs gain yards by helping the rich. Some Dem "priorities" get in the way of other Dem "priorities." Some GOP "victories" set the stage for later Democratic achievements. ... 7:10 P.M.
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Wake Up Call: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tells the Detroit News that Obama and McCain reached an "agreement" to "move forward" on "comprehensive immigration reform" (i.e.: legalization) early in the next Congress.
Q: Will there be as much of a fight on immigration as last time?
A: We've got McCain and we've got a few others. I don't expect much of a fight at all.
Brian Faughnan has the details, and notes Sen. Menendez urging Senators to swallow the bitter immigration pill early, instead of close to the midterms when voters might remember. (That's because "comprehensive" reform is so popular!). .... 1) This is a stronger statement from Reid than I, for one, had expected; 2) The Senate has passed legalization before. They balked in 2007, but it's not clear that this year the biggest obstacle won't come in the House, where lots of newly-recruited centrist Dems ran tough-on-immigration campaigns. 3) Rahm? Rahm? Don't you maybe want to put a stop to this? 4) There are ample opportunities here for posturing and "make believe"--e.g., scoring points with Hispanic groups by voting for a reform that you don't think will actually pass. Of course, if enough legislators vote for a reform thinking it won't actually pass it might pass; ... P.S.: Note that Reid also pours cold water on hopes of fast Senate action on health care ("[T]hat's going to take a lot more time to do.") .... So voters don't get health care (which Obama made a central issue in the campaign) but do get illegal immigrant semi-amnesty (which was a selling point only on Spanish language radio)? .... 12:27 P.M.
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Monday, November 24, 2008
Mark Krikorian is not impressed with likely Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano's border-control credentials but concedes
[S]he's about as close as any Democrat governor can get to appearing hawkish on illegal immigration.
He speculates:
"It could mean that the Obama administration picked an immigration person for this job because they want to burnish their pro-enforcement credentials to make a more plausible case for amnesty down the road ...."
That would be shrewd. But I wonder--suppose it all miraculously works according to plan. That is, suppose Napolitano succeeds, against all expectations, in controlling the border. The ACLU sues to cripple enforcement in the workplace. It loses! Illegal immigration in effect ceases. The public feels soon confident enough to allow Congressional Democrats to legalize those illegals already in the country. No more living in the shadows. Celebrations in the streets! But because the border is controlled, no new illegal immigrants get in. Guest workers, including agricultural workers, do get in--perhaps with a "path to citizenship." But only in the numbers authorized. The question is: Would the Congressional Dems and their allies be happy?
I'm not sure. ... They'd get 12 million new, mainly Latino voters. Likely Democrats. But that would be it. I suspect there are a lot of Dem pols who would not-so-secretly be rooting for things to not go according to plan--for an amnesty to be accompanied by a breakdown in border control, as it was the last time it was tried, meaning there would be millions more illegal immigrants, mainly Latino, to legalize and empower in future years.. ...
I suppose the answer would depend on whether the new rules allowed existing immigrants to keep bringing in members of their extended families, thereby rapidly expanding the newly-arrived, legal electorate. ...
I'm not saying this scenario is likely to happen--it's a thought experment. The very forces that might be happy to see the border-control part break down (low-wage employers, pols hoping to surf the Latino surge, anti-nationalist libertarians) would try to make it break down. Which is why it probably would. ... 12:17 P.M.
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A job for Anna: New York is still in a state of intense speculation on the central policy question regarding Obama's transition: What does it mean for Vogue? Editor Anna Wintour's "rep" has denied gossip reports that she'll be joining the administration, but that hasn't stopped them. ... She raised some money for the campaign. What might she want? Ambassador to France would be a good fit, no? "The French would deal with her a lot better than the Iceberg Lettuce King of Salinas that W. sent over," says cosmopolitan kf reader Madame S. ... 10:50 A.M.
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Sunday, November 23, 2008
"Franken to Win Recount by 27 Votes": Give Nate Silver points for not playing it safe. ... Update: A new Silver calculation:
The various versions of the model project a Franken win by between 48 and 136 votes once all ballots are re-counted and all challenges are resolved.[E.A.]
There are some disclaimers about high "margins of error." Nobody will notice them if Silver's right. ...11:22 P.M.
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Richardson Vets! [You said this wouldn't happen-ed. Vets for Commerce. That's like being "Hot for D.C."] 1:45 P.M.
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The Mistake: What will Hillary Clinton bring to the Obama administration? British sourcing on this one--an unnamed "veteran" Obama "aide" tells "a friend"--but the ring of truth:
"He's making a mistake." As one of the [Obama aides] participants told a friend later that night: "She'll do a good job but she'll do it for herself, not for Barack. I can't bear the drama again." ... [snip]
The Obama aides who went for coffee on Wednesday discussed how the initial tentative talks between Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton were leaked by the Clinton camp, then how every twist and turn of the financial vetting found its way into the media. ...[snip]
They can't help themselves," the Obama aide told his friend, a fellow Democrat strategist. "Every event is a potential ladder up or a bullet to be dodged. They're positioning and spinning all the time. They lost. Now we seem to be handing them the farm." [E.A.]
Where is Gina Gershon now that we need her? ... [via Lucianne] 11:50 A.M.
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Saturday, November 22, 2008
More signs of the Gran Salida of Illegal Immigrants: Emergency room visits are dropping. In Arizona
In the Maricopa Medical Center in Arizona, the director of the ED commented that 45% of adults and 80% of children seeking ED care at the hospital emergency department are Hispanic. The economy in the area is getting worse and the hospital believes that many of the patients that usually come to the ED have left town
It's not just Arizona--a commenter from North Carolina notes:
Around NC, the poor economy has illegals leaving in droves…no work.
Our ED volumes are down. Most ED patients are those without insurance (lay-offs), so the family doctors won’t see them. Hospital census is down by my estimated guess, 10%. We have 3 ICUs, one is completely closed, the other two at about 60%. Hours being cut throughout.
P.S.: There's a less entrada too--"Mexican emigration has dropped 42 percent over the last two years ..." [Thanks to alert reader W.O.] 11:53 P.M.
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Friday, November 21, 2008
The New Plan? Cripple Honda! Save Detroit with Card Check! Eliminating the secret ballot and making it easier to organize U.S. Honda and Toyota workers (and imposing contract terms via binding arbitration) would "level the playing field," says Dem. Congressman Tim Ryan. ... Then when Honda and Toyota responded by importing more cars from abroad, we could have import quotas! Eventually the whole automotive sector could be planned by Congress in conjunction with existing business and labor interest groups. Red State has seen the future and it is corporatist. ...12:21 P.M.
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Mickey's Assignment Desk: 2000 words on "The Agony of Richard Holbrooke." He can't just be sitting still and patiently waiting for Hillary to make up her mind about whether she wants to be Secretary of State. ... Assigned to: Lloyd Grove. David Ignatius. Or someone young, who doesn't want a foreign policy job someday. (Michael Crowley?) ... Update: Reader emails that "[H]olbrooke WANTS hillary to take sec of state -- that's the only way he gets back into the state dept." OK. Bet he's still been in agony! 11:53 A.M.
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Thursday, November 20, 2008
Mitt Romney writes that in a "managed bankruptcy" of the auto industry
[M]anagement as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries — from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations.
Why "must" Alan Mulally of Ford go? He practically just got there (in late 2006). He's not a Detroit lifer like GM's Rick Wagoner. He can't be held responsible for Ford's sorry condition--he was brought in to fix Ford's sorry condition. A new face recruited from a successful outside company (Boeing) he seems like just the sort of person Romney says should be hired. Is Romney really sure recruiting another new CEO--who'll have to relearn whatever Mulally has learned--will be so much better? Maybe Romney knows something about Mullaly that I don't. Or maybe he's failing to discriminate among three different companies in a way that can't be the mark of a good "turnaround" artist. ... P.S.: For one thing, Mulally hasn't killed off Ford's new products the way GM and Chrysler seem to be doing--perhaps because Ford has more hope of actually selling its new products. ... 1:43 A.M.
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Crocodiles: Good to see my father's most famous quote back in the news. It's about how hard it was for him as a judge to be uninfluenced by the possibility that voters might boot him from office if they don't like his decision. The quote is freshly relevant because everybody's wondering whether the current California Supreme Court has the balls to invalidate Proposition 8, which reversed that same Court's ruling on gay marriage.
Now the moderately conservative state Supreme Court is being asked to take an even riskier step -- to overturn the November voter initiative that reinstated the gay-marriage ban and possibly provoke a voter revolt that could eject one or more of the justices from the bench. ... [snip]
Kaus later said that as hard as he tried to decide cases impartially, he was never sure whether the threat of a recall election was influencing his votes.
"It was like finding a crocodile in your bathtub when you go to shave in the morning," Kaus said. "You know it's there, and you try not to think about it, but it's hard to think about much else while you're shaving."
I suspect the crocodile effect won't even come into play in the state court's review of Prop. 8. True, the court could throw it out if they decide it amounts to a wholesale "revision" of the state constitution, rather than a mere "amendment." But the arguments that it's a "revision" are implausible. (See Prof. Volokh's analysis.) Precedent and reptile are in accord. I'll be shocked if Prop. 8 isn't upheld.
Does that mean gay-marriage advocates should stop bringing lawsuits? Prof. Althouse asks:
Why should a minority group that perceives itself as oppressed accept the will of the majority? Why should the intransigency of the political majority convince them that they should refrain from using the courts?
The answer is it shouldn't. Gay rights groups remain perfectly free to argue that Prop. 8 is invalid under the federal Equal Protection clause. But they don't want to argue that case, apparently, because they are worried they'll lose.
Gay rights lawyers, fearful that a high court defeat on same-sex marriage would set the movement back decades, have urged supporters to stay out of federal court.
With state constitutions amended, they may have no other judicial remedy. But it still seems simpler, and preferable just to wait a couple of years and overturn Prop. 8 at the ballot box. A democratic resolution will tend to stick. A judicial resolution will produce an ongoing, painful social battle (what abortion has been ever since Roe). ... 1:14 A.M.
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Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Still not black enough! Sasha Frere-Jones disses Will.i.am. .. 10:23 P.M.
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Rahm: Yes on universal health care, noncommittal on card check. ... The hesitancy about card check would be more significant if Emanuel hadn't been talking to a business group. Still. ... 10:09 P.M.
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Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures: Automobile is offering subscriptions for $6 annually. That includes a free tire gauge. I'm waiting until they offer free tires. ... P.S.: The way things are going could also throw in the New York Times. (Not just a subscription to the New York Times. The New York Times.) ... 8:39 P.M.
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Excitability + Aflatoxin = Iraq War Hillary! Atlantic backscratchers Andrew Sullivan and Jeffrey Goldberg are swooning over Secretary of State Clinton. Sullivan says it's "an inspired idea." Goldberg cites a passage that he says demonstrates Clinton has a "simultaneous mastery of the smallest details and of the biggest themes" that is "beyond impressive." Read it for yourself. Does it reflect Hillary's "uncommon knowledge"? Or is it, rather, an unremarkable politicians' statement that either tells Goldberg what he wants to hear ("You do not get people into a process ... unless the other side knows that your commitment to Israel is unshakable.") or makes Hillary someone Goldberg might like to promote for either political or beat-sweetening reasons? You make the call! ... P.S.: It does seem like he's always selling somethin'! ... P.P.S.: And Holbrooke doesn't know about the Middle East? ... Update: Dick Morris is making sense. Always a troubling sign. ...
Goldberg responds: "I plead guilty to the charge of political promotion." ... :6:28 P.M.
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A young Facebook/PayPal mogul is catching flak from his Silicon Valley peers for his alleged support of ... not Prop. 8**, but Numbers U.S.A., the highly effective "restrictionist" lobbying group. In particular, the mogul is said to have fallen under the sway of a "Christian right wing thinker" named "Rob" Morrow:
Earlier this year, Morrow wrote a paper called "The Bull Market in Politics." His thesis was that "government influence — over trade policy, social programs, decisions of war and peace — becomes much more important" to investors. One key policy area: immigration, where Morrow thinks there is a rising consensus for restrictions.
A politically driven drop in immigration has broad economic implications, especially on the housing market; with less population growth, housing prices will continue to suffer for much longer than most anticipate.
The Northern California beef against Morrow is that he's "not merely forecasting the market. He has cajoled his influential boss to spend money to make his forecast a reality." OK, but what about the forecast? The timing more or less fits, no? Real estate prices started to plummet just as expectations of imminent semi-amnesty were turning into the reality of harsher enforcement. Schools in immigrant heavy areas of L.A. for example, reported declining enrollments in 2006. The nationwide character of the Gran Salida became apparent, even to the press by early 2008. . It seems highly plausible to me that there is some non-trivial causality running between the decrease in the net inflow of illegal immigrants and the real estate bust--all the immigrants who have disappeared would have had to live somewhere. Even if they were renters, not buyers, they would ordinarily have bolstered the value of housing stock. (And some were buyers--search for "this borrower has gone back to Mexico and has no intention of returning.")
But you don't hear many MSM analysts making this obvious connection. It's odd, because you'd think the reporters who favor legalizing illegals and increasing immigration would want to be able to say, "We need more hard-working immigrants to buy our damn houses!" But they aren't saying it. Why? Is it because a) admitting that immigrant populations are declining contradicts the reigning bipartisan right-thinking line that illegal immigrants are here to stay, they're never going back, so therefore we have no choice but to legalize them? Also, b) once you admit that immigration flows affect the real estate market, you might also have to admit that they can affect other markets, like the labor market--where more immigrants would have the likely effect of driving down wages, especially for the unskilled workers who've been doing relatively badly recently. ...
**--The Prop. 8 list is here, though, for those who want to engage in distasteful and counterproductive boycotts. ... 12:58 A.M.
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Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Lieberman keeps chair after anonymous private vote of Senate Dem caucus. Netroots unhappy. Uh, oh. Now they'll really hate the secret ballot. ... 11:53 A.M.
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"How Hard Can It Be?" Ex-National Reviewer David Frum tries to put his finger on what annoys him about what Sarah Palin symbolizes in the GOP (and why she's like Harriet Miers) ... 1:22 A.M.
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Monday, November 17, 2008
James Carville explains why Hillary's nomination as Secretary of State might be complicated by her husband's business dealings:
"She's not married to Todd Palin," Carville said, referring to the oil field worker and snowmobile champion who is married to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee.
Maybe that just accidentally came out sounding like snobby Clintonite arrogance. ... Hadn't had a dose of that for a few months--I didn't miss it. Did you? ... P.S.: Will the Clintonites--those who haven't defected to Obama--now be more obnoxious because they lost? ...11:50 A.M.
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Forget the "Fairness Doctrine," says the American Thinker. The Dems will try to knock out Rush Limbaugh with "localism." Even discounting for right-wing paranoia, you have to think that making broadcasters consult with "leaders in the civic, religious, and non-profit sectors that regularly serve the needs of the community" is a recipe for a lot of makework meetings with self-promoting complainers and shakedown artists.**
There are three more interesting wrinkles, however:
1) The conservative strategy is to delay regulations until Obama is in power! Why this seemingly perverse approach?
The delay is critical, since once it is the Obama Administration leading the fight for rules which would shut down conservative talk radio, Republican Congressmen and Senators will find it easier to fight back. [E.A.]
Hmm. The same non-intuitive logic might apply to another issue I could think of. ...
2) Some broadcasters think McCain would have been worse, from their point of view, than Obama:
One broadcast lobbyist thinks broadcasters will be better off with Obama "only because you know where McCain's from on the issues. At least you're starting off with somewhat of a fresh slate with the Obama folks. There's not that instinctive 'let's go after the broadcasters.' "
3) There's a potential fratricidal conflict between "localism" requirements and minority broadcasters--or at least the Heritage Foundation thinks so:
"An Obama administration would definitely push stricter broadcaster controls on ownership and take more aggressive efforts on diversity, says James Gattuso, senior fellow for regulatory policy at the Heritage Foundation.
"The question is what would an Obama administration do on localism: Would an Obama FCC pursue the moveon.org agenda of strong regulation to enforce local news and content?" he asks."Or would it side more with minority or smaller broadcasters who point out that the cost of regulation would fall disproportionately on minority- and women-owned stations."
**--It's not that diversity and consolidation don't seem valid issues. I wouldn't have a problem with a strict ownership limit that would require Clear Channel, say, to sell half its stations. Just unload them. Whether or not they were serving the "community," No complaints, no hearings, no self-appointed "representatives," no fuss, no muss. The problem is the tendency of liberals to promote not so much de-consolidation as the empowerment and consequent enrichment of their non profit allies.... 10:56 P.M.
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Autoshow Shocker: Ford debuts the new Mustang and it's ... not ugly. 10:10 P.M.
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Vodkapundit makes the basic point about Obama's Blackberry. ... You want the President to rely solely on information passed up the official chain through the White House gatekeepers? That way lies the Bay of Pigs! The chain of command is a lousy way to find out bad news. Emailing around seems like a pretty good way. Is it that much harder to secure than a phone call? Aren't Presidents trusted with the telephone? ... Paranoid P.S.: You have to wonder whether on some level this isn't an an attempt by the White House bureaucracy to control Obama. ... [via Insta] 8:28 P.M.
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Academics are always the last to know! Today, kf. Tomorrow ...
Kausfiles, Nov. 3--"Democrats should pause to be grateful that John Kerry didn't get 70,000 more votes in Ohio in 2004."
David Rohde, Ernestine Friedl Professor of Political Science at Duke University and Director of the Political Institutions and Public Choice Program, Nov. 17--"Let's call John Kerry's loss in 2004 what it is: the luckiest thing to happen to Democrats in 40 years."
10:23 A.M.
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The NYT gloats that Chris Buckley and David Frum's exit suggests National Review has become an un-erudite "megaphone for Republican party orthodoxy" and "'intellectual defender of the Bush administration.'" I can name one issue where that was definitely not true, in part because there was no party orthodoxy and in part because most of the magazine's editors openly disagreed with the Bush administration. Begins with an "i." (And it's not Iraq. Or Iran.) . ... P.S.: Buckley seems to be basking in his Strange New Respect. If Frum wants to keep his street cred on The Corner, which I suspect he does, I counsel him not to follow suit. ... [via Gawker, which has suddenly become much more substantive. What happened to Julia Allison?.] 2:12 A.M.
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I dunno, I'm having trouble figuring out what Obama supporter Marty Peretz really thinks of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State:
[T]he young Hillary was a fashionable leftie. No, she wasn't Bill Ayers. But her Wellesley commencement address was especially trite when trite was the rule. She worked for a communist law firm. She was faddish when independent thinking was what the country needed.
Hillary then went to Little Rock, armed with a Yale Law School diploma, and worked for another law firm, this one positively sleazy.
It goes on from there ...
Now, if Barack Obama has actually offered Hillary the post of secretary of state, he has reversed what most Americans thought was one of the much sought-after consequences of his nomination and his electoral victory. That is, sought after by the voters. And this was to end the Clinton dominion in American politics. That's certainly what the primaries were about. Once Obama freed himself and the party from the vice presidential blackmail almost everyone assumed that, with Joe Biden as their candidate's running-mate, the Democratic nominee did not need the experience of someone who'd visited 81 capitals for a day or two or who'd been to Bosnia "under fire" or who kissed Suha Arafat right only moments after the pampered lady had accused Israel of spreading cancer in the West Bank. ...
I believe Barack is playing with fire.
He's for Holbrooke. ... P.S: Don't recent events tend to support Marty's view? We're already worrying whether Hillary is scheming to maniuplate Barack (by making public the possibility of her becoming Secretary of State and implicitly threatening a rupture if she's not picked) before she even has the job. Maybe LBJ was wrong. Sometimes you want them outside the tent p------g in. ...The very reasons she might want the job (i.e., she doesn't have that much seniority or power in the Senate) are the reasons she couldn't do that much damage from the outside. ... 12:44 A.M.
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Sunday, November 16, 2008
Future Unrecanters of America? On reflection, does Peter Beinart's well written Time cover essay on "The New Liberal Order" say anything other than, in essence, 'If Obama and the Democrats succeed in restoring the economy and stabilizing the government's finances without cutting popular programs or producing social disorder, they'll keep being reelected for decades'? Well, yeah. ... Beinart abstracts from the question of whether Obama and Democratic policies can actually achieve this winning result. It's one thing to say that if Obama tries to "shore up the American welfare state" it "won't divide his political coaliton." (They like the welfare state.) It's another thing to recognize that Medicare is heading for deep deficits and to figure out how to pay for it without imposing intolerable rationing. ... And of course Beinart just assumes that if Democrats give labor more power it won't significantly gum up the economy. Or that some Democrats won't reestablish no-work cash welfare under another name, giving the Republicans back one of their more potent issues. ...
P.S.: Beinart says
Obama doesn't have to turn the economy around overnight. After all, Roosevelt hadn't ended the Depression by 1936. Obama just needs modest economic improvement by the time he starts running for re-election ....
Are we sure of that? In a time of Faster Politics voters may want Faster Results. They're certainly not going to give Obama the time they gave FDR. ...
P.P.S.: I thought Dems would only succeed if they put a war against "Islamist totalitarianism" at "the center of their hopes for a better world"! Oh, well. Another day, another weltanschauung. ...
P.P.P.S.: Aren't now-recanted Iraq War supporters like Beinart about to unrecant their support, now that the war is going better? ... A prize for the reader who correctly guesses the first recantation-recanter. ... 11:42 P.M.
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Poor "Pulitzer" Chuck Philips! Patterico is on Philips' case, he doesn't seem about to give up, and he has a hot doc. ... P.S.: This isn't the embarrassing Philips screw-up that led to a spectacular LAT retraction in April. This is another, potentially more-than-embarrassing, incident--but also related to the Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls murder stories. ... 9:46 P.M.
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Sorry to miss the Fannie Mae Help the Homeless Walkathon! ....9:34 P.M.
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Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Mark Krikorian looks at Obama's likely actions on immigration and sees ... hope! He expects Obama will prioritize. ...
To the chagrin of hard-left activists, [incoming chief of staff Rahm] Emanuel has said of immigration that "For the American people, and therefore all of us, it's emerged as the third rail of American politics. And anyone who doesn't realize that isn't with the American people.” Last year Emanuel told a Hispanic activist that “there is no way this legislation [“comprehensive immigration reform”] is happening in the Democratic House, in the Democratic Senate, in the Democratic presidency, in the first term.”
There's a twist ending, though. ... P.S.: In March, we're due for a fight over reauthorizing the government's E-Verify system, which now screens one of 8 new hires for legal status. Obama has said he supports E-verify. Senator Menendez of New Jersey opposes it. ... The real objection to E-Verify is that it works, no? ...
Backfill: See also this mixed WSJ assessment, which concurs with Emanuel--"Mr. Obama will be focused on the economy and tax policy and isn't likely to expend political capital on such a divisive issue"--but which overdramatizes the anti-"comprehensivist" electoral losses, at least as described by Krikorian:
Roy Beck of Numbers USA [a leading anti-"comprehensive" lobbier] has done a preliminary analysis of House results and finds that there are six incoming pro-amnesty Democrats replacing somewhat anti-amnesty Republicans, though none of the Democrats made immigration a major issue. On the other hand, three other newly elected Democrats ran on very strong pro-enforcement platforms and four others appear to be much more hawkish than the Republicans they’ll replace. In Beck’s words, “The results of this evening have not been a reason for celebrating. But neither have they been a reason for us to put on sackcloth.”
4:52 P.M.
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Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Get Me a Ron Burkle Type: It looks to me as if bankruptcy might be a better solution for GM than a federal bailout--union contracts could be redone, duplicative dealers axed--except for one factor: GM sells cars, and nobody wants to buy a car if they think the manufacturer isn't going to be around to honor the warranty or provide spare parts. Formal bankruptcy would itself help sink the GM ship. A bailout could be a way to essentially do what a bankruptcy would do, but without the sales-killing stigma. Taxpayer money would be a lure to force the necessary dealer and UAW concessions. a) But do you trust Pelosi's Congress to ever make either of these groups give up some of its pay or perks? No. That's where the White House (either Bush's or Obama's) should come in. A job for Ron Burkle! (Talking unions into giving up contract gains was once his specialty.) b) Wouldn't it be good PR if the UAW stepped up to the plate and unilaterally, voluntarily, offered a substantial package of givebacks in exchange for all that federal money (and maybe a cap on executive pay)? I don't expect this to happen--for internal purposes, union leaders probably have to be seen as going down fighting for every dollar. But it would help get the money, no? [Also improve the unions' image and help them pass "card check"-ed Sorry I suggested it.] 10:53 P.M.
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Will 'more time to blog' replace 'more time to spend with my family'? Al Martinez blazes the trail. ... 8:22 P.M.
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I dont understand Andrew Gelman and Matt Yglesias' point. You don't win the House of Representative when you rack up a large percentage of the national "two party "Congressional vote, or when you win a large "average swing" vote on a "state-by-state" basis. You win when you win lots of actual House seats. That's what can pass or defeat legislation. And measured by actual House seats the Democratic gains (of about 22) were a little less than expected. There is a reason for this. Maybe my favorite theory--the SeeSaw Theory--isn't the reason. That's fine. It's just a theory. But that's different from saying there's nothing to explain because by some other, meaningless measure, Dems did great.. ... See Yglesias' first commenter. ... Update: Gelman gropes for common ground [see P.P.S.]. ... 7:57 P.M.
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Hispanic Hype Alert--That Crucial Latino Vote: Not there, says Krikorian:
[T]he benchmark in garnering Hispanic votes for Republicans is Bush's 40 percent showing in 2004. So So what would have happened if McCain had matched Bush's performance, instead of the 31 percent he actually got? Based on CNN's exit polls, McCain still would have lost Nevada, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, not to mention, say, California and New Jersey. Conversely, even if Obama had won 90 percent of the Hispanic vote in Texas, instead of 63 percent, he still would have lost the state. With the possible exception of North Carolina, where the results were close but the number of Hispanic voters is too small to register in the exit poll, there doesn't seem to be a single state where the Hispanic vote was critical to the outcome. [E.A.]
Even if the Latino vote was decisive, Krikorian notes, it wouldn't necessarily follow that the best strategy for GOPs is to pursue it--which might be a tough sell--as opposed fo figuring out a way to win a bigger share from far more numerous whites and blacks. ... 7:35 P.M.
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Faster 538: Dems are slobs.** They mess up more ballots that can then be salvaged in recounts. Meet Senator Franken....
**-- Sorry, I meant "vulnerable voters." ... 7:12 P.M.
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Dick Morris: "The Election Is Not Over." He's right. We've been set up for a plot twist after the credits, if the Dems sweep the three undecided Senate seats, which is entirely possible. And there is a big difference between 57 Democratic senators and 60. ... P.S.: I don't endorse Morris' pro-GOP fundraising efforts. But I'm pretty sure I'd rather have 57 than 60. Already the prospect of a GOP-led filibuster is encouraging some labor unions to modulate their demands to end secret ballots, for example. ... P.P.S.: Democratic presidential campaign aides have reportedly been dispatched to the Georgia runoff. But you have to wonder: Does Obama really want to get to 60? Getting a large,"filibuster-proof" majority would dramatically increase the expectations from his party's left, and from its entrenched Congressional interests, making them that much harder to control. Without 60, Obama can cite the filibuster threat and easily steer a moderate, popular center-left course. With 60, he'll have to use heretofore untested muscle to control Dem demands regarding the Detroit bailout, union "card check" elections, immigration, health care, tax cuts, the Fairness Doctrine (sorry "Forced Balance") etc. ...
Update: [Don't you want Obama to think big out of the box on some issues, like health care?--ed Yes. But even there it's not clear 60 would help more than it woud hurt. a) Even within the Obamaesque consensus that Jonathan Cohn says is emerging, emblodened libs could easily push for too much--unaffordable subsidies, loose coverage limits (think "mental health parity"), protection for lavish union plans, draconian drug price controls that ignore the dilemma of non-rising marginal costs, and resistance to cuts elsewhere in the budget to pay for all of it; b) Cohn says Dems don't need 60 to pass health care anyway! And businesses are on board! (Presumably they'll have a few GOPs in tow).
In any case, I'll risk less health care to avoid the disaster of card check, immigration semi-amnesty, and a Leyland-like auto bailout. ...
More: If Obama really wanted 60, wouldn't he go to Georgia to campaign for the Democrat in the runoff? [Might not want to risk losing his first postelection fight. See Crowley--ed. But if he really wanted 60 ...] 3:18 P.M.
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"Peace and Security": Maguire notes WaPo confirming that Obama's omission of "democracy" from his acceptance speech was not an accident:
[C]onversations with several Obama advisers and a number of senior military strategists both before and since last Tuesday's election reveal a shared sense that the Afghan effort under the Bush administration has been hampered by ideological and diplomatic constraints and an unrealistic commitment to the goal of building a modern democracy -- rather than a stable nation that rejects al-Qaeda and Islamist extremism and does not threaten U.S. interests.
I'd give up on the drug war (and the attempt to eradicate Afghanistan's opium crop) before I'd give up democracy.... P.S.: So we really are in for a mirror image of the 20th century, when it was liberals who criticized the U.S. government for siding with strongmen in order to fight the global enemy (Communism)? ... There are even hints that "some senior military strategists" see elected Afghan President Karzai as a dispensable, Diem-like figure. ... 2:53 P.M.
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Monday, November 10, 2008
Gawker: What was Antonio Villaraigosa doing onstage at the Obama economic summit? He is not one of America's 17 most confidence-inspiring economic minds. ... Update: Hellisotherpeople makes a good point--better to start to pay back Latino voters with this "appointment" than with other, more substantive concessions I can think of. ... 4:13 P.M.
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Obama will act quickly to "chart a new course for immigration enforcement, some Obama advisers say." Hmm. After all, why not give the fractured GOP rump a unifying issue right out of the box? ... Rahm, you there? ... Rahm? .... 3:59 P.M.
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A New Morning in America: Nic Harcourt, who for a decade has deadened L.A. musical culture (much like the L.A. Times deadened L.A. political culture) with his soul-killing taste for breathy pop and humorless delivery is leaving his influential position as music director for local NPR affiliate KCRW. ... If only the Times could go away as quietly and costlessly. ... P.S.: Harcourt "rarely pays attention to lyrics," reported the NYT in a clueless puffer a few years ago. I mean, who cares about lyrics? Bob Dylan never worried about 'em, right? ... P.P.S.: Change we can believe in! ... P.P.P.S.: Bad news for Pete Yorn. ... 3:21 P.M.
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The Big Three's Little Secret: I hate to make invidious solidarity-eroding comparisons between competing UAW shops, but Detroit's cars aren't uniformly inferior to their Japanese competitors. Ford's products have been consistently less unreliable, in recent years, than vehicles made by the other two members of the Big Three. From the most recent issue of Consumer Reports:
Ford's three brands--Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury--continue to pull away from the rest of the Detroit automakers. Almost all Ford models are now average or better, with the exception of some that are truck-based. Excluding those, Ford's reliablity is now on a par with good Japanese automakers.
GM is a "mixed bag." Chrysler seems hopeless. "Almost two thirds of its products rate below average for reliability."
I know reliability isn't everything. Most Chrysler products are ugly too! ... P.S.: If the automakers react the way GM reacted when its Saturn subsidiary actually started making good cars, their legislative strategy is clear: Figure out a way to punish Ford! ... 1:34 P.M.
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Fragging Palin: If McCain's such an instinctive man of honor, where is his "vigorous defense of his running mate"? 1:04 P.M.
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Sunday, November 9, 2008
NYT buries story on labor's "card check" campaign on the bottom of page 25. I smell liberal bias! As noted earlier, it's in labor's interest that the "card check" story gets as little publicity as possible. The NYT is complying. ... When I tell my underinformed, idealistic SoCal liberal friends that labor wants to end the secret ballot, the typical response is "Why would they want to do that?" Or else they assume that I have it backwards and it must be management that wants to eliminate the secret ballot. ... Union legislative strategists may think that demanding "card check" is a great, scary bargaining chip, to be traded away for a pro-labor compromises on other rules (like holding quick elections, or empowering arbitrators to set contract terms). But I wonder if it's not so disreputable sounding that it doesn't actually discredit all of labor's other, perhaps more reasonable demands--putting the unions in a worse position than if they'd never asked for it in the first place. It's not a bargaining chip. It's a poisoning chip. Getting voters to cheer for the "Employee Free Choice Act" is a little like getting them to cheer against Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. ... 11:48 P.M.
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Say You Won't Steal Fitzmas! A plea from Obama's hometown paper, the Chicago Tribune, for the President-elect to reaffirm his apparent promise not to fire local U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, even as Fitzgerald closes in on Obama's Democratic colleagues. ... Fallback plan: Indict fast. ... Clever Way Out for Obama: Justice Fitzgerald? Or at least a Federal Appellate slot. ... How does Fitz feel about Roe? ...[via Newsalert] 11:30 P.M.
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In the past week, I bought a CD online at Amazon, then I bought the same CD at Barnes & Noble. Amazon price: $9.99. B&N price: $16.99. My impression is that this sort of price differential has opened up pretty much across the board. B&N is doomed, no? ...
Alert Reader N asks, pointedly: "Why didn’t you buy the second CD from Amazon?" Because I needed it that day for a birthday present. This is what B&N and Borders are (sometimes) good for. But it's hard to believe that the I-need-it-in-my-hands-right-now sliver of the marketplace is enough to sustain a large, expensively-located building and sales staff if you lose the basic I-need-it-in-a-couple-of-days market. ... 11:11 P.M.
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I admire Rahm Emanuel. Without him welfare reform might not have happened in 1996, and the Dems might not have won back a House majority a decade later. (Two milestones that, I think, are not unconnected--welfare reform made liberal government acceptable again.) Emanuel is smart, relentless, disciplined, gets things done, a winner, all that stuff. But here's my problem with having him as chief of staff: Suppose you work for President Obama. You send a memo up the line to the Oval Office. If a week later Rahm Emanuel tells you he's showed it to the President, would you believe him?
By way of an answer, I should add that among Clinton-era welfare reporters, the rule of thumb was that you called Rahm to get the administration's line and then you called Bruce Reed to find out if it was the truth. ...
P.S.: But Rahm was not the unnamed Clinton official who foolishly boasted to Michael Kramer, early in the administration, that the Clintonites would "roll" Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Ask Lawrence O'Donnell if you don't believe me. ... 8:57 P.M.
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And now for another view of Mayor Bloomberg, we have Mr. Fred Siegel ...
A knockoff of Berlusconi, he's a man with a media empire who has dedicated his efforts to saving not his city or country but himself from the boredom of buying influence by merely giving away pieces of his fortune. ...
[O]perating on the basis of ambiguities in the city charter, Bloomberg strong-armed the city council into overturning term-limits: threatening to cut off funds to their districts and stop his "anonymous" donations to the nonprofits they count on to get out the vote if they opposed his plan.
Siegel's attack is ... incompletely convincing,** but enjoyably vitriolic. [Not unlike his review of your book--ed. It's lucky I don't remember things like that] ...
**--Is it really true, for example, that "the additional $9 billion [Bloomberg's] spent on education hasn't shown up in any improvements" in test scores? ... 2:23 P.M.
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Newsweek s poll: Put it out of its misery. ... 1:59 P.M.
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Friday, November 7, 2008
Vertical Ticket Splitters Rule! National Journal's Charlie Cook seems to very tentatively embrace a version of the See Saw theory (which I first heard from Reader M):
[G]iven the strength of the top of the ticket nationally, one might have thought that the victory would have been more vertically integrated. ...
There is no shortage of theories. It could be that a lot of first-time and younger voters cast their ballots for Obama but didn't bother to venture down the ballot. Once the final vote tallies are tabulated, we will have a better idea of whether that happened. Or maybe there was a determined effort to apply checks and balances. By deciding to elect Obama president, more than a few voters may have opted to keep the Republican incumbent in place, just to prevent Democrats from getting carried away. ... [E.A.]
Sorry again, Kinsley. ...2:32 P.M.
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Thursday, November 6, 2008
Opponents of the "Fairness Doctrine" are looking for a more evil-sounding name. "Forced Balance"? ... 10:53 P.M.
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Mark Krikorian admits he was wrong about Julie Myers. ... Jonah Goldberg discovers that Rahm Emanuel is Jewish! ... I mean, who knew? ... 9:47 P.M.
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How About At Least Making Them Choose? So the UAW wants a $25 billion bailout and an end to the secret ballot ... Because Wagner Act unionism clearly worked out so well for Detroit. ... 9:31 P.M.
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The Sound of One Hand Sat On: One big argument before the election was whether a) McCain's heterodox positions (on immigration, campaign finance, torture, Bush's initial tax cuts, etc.) had alienated conservatives, who would fail to turn out and vote for the Republican nominee, or whether b) conservatives would turn out anyway, leaving McCain free, in theory, to run to the center (the Mike Murphy position). It should be possible to get at least part of an answer to that question now, no? Here's a start, from Curtis Gans' Center for the Study of the American Electorate--and at first glance it doesn't look good for Murphy. [Note: But see semi-vitiating conclusion, at end of this item] As summarized by CNN:
“A downturn in the number and percentage of Republican voters going to the polls seemed to be the primary explanation for the lower than predicted turnout,” the report said. Compared to 2004, Republican turnout declined by 1.3 percentage points to 28.7 percent, while Democratic turnout increased by 2.6 points from 28.7 percent in 2004 to 31.3 percent in 2008. [E.A.]
From Gans' explanation, as summarized by the study's press release:
John McCain's efforts to unite the differing factions in the Republican party by the nomination of Governor Sarah Palin as vice-presidential nominee was a singular failure. By election time many culturally conservative Republicans still did not see him as one of their own and stayed home ... [E.A.]
This would be at least part of an argument as to why, contra Jamie Kirchick's glib comments, Republicans can't afford to move further in the McCainish pro-legalization direction on immigration (for example!) unless they want to find themselves a new base. ...
P.S.: Of course, it's possible the McCain campaign ineptly managed to alienate both the base and the center. It's also possible that given the country's predicament there was no way for even a non-inept campaign to please enough of both to win. But the mere fact that yes, conservatives sometimes do sit on their hands would knock out a pillar of Murphy-style political strategy, no? ...
Note: Reader G. suggests that maybe there were just fewer Republicans this year. No. Unless I'm reading Gans' stats wrong, they measure the percentage of Republicans who went to the polls, not how many Republicans there were. (The percentage went down from 30 to 28.7.) ... Update: On rereading the release, I'm now thinking Reader G is right and I misread the tables. I have emailed Gans. ("Efforting," as they used to say at Newsweek.) ...
Semi-vitiating conclusion: I've heard back from Gans. Reader G is right--the stats measure the "percentage of citizens voting Republican," not the percentage of Republicans voting. "But that, also, in the real world, translates into a GOP voting decline," Gans adds. Statistical proof of that is still tk, however. ... 7:56 P.M.
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How far would the stock market plummet if investors thought "Transition Economic Advisory Board" member Robert Reich actually had influence on President-Elect Obama's economic policies? ... P.S.: Reich will be hard-pressed to top the epic suck up his American Prospect co-founder Robert Kuttner delivered at President Clinton's transitional economic "summit" in December, 1992:
"Mr. President, I -- words fail me in describing what an extraordinary event this is. This has to be the defining moment of your presidency. It is the president as teacher, as leader, as explainer, as synthesizer. This is a magical moment, and I thank you for including me and for offering this to the country."
7:26 P.M.
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Who Said 60 Isn't A Magic Number? Fail to win a couple of Senate seats and legislation starts to change shape almost immediately. From a WSJ story on the labor push for quick passage of "card check":
With Democrats failing to win a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate, some say a compromise on the controversial card-signing provision is more likely now.
Hal Coxson, a management-side labor lawyer in Washington, said he expects the AFL-CIO to propose shortening the notice before elections to five days, which would give companies less time to campaign against a union, but allow Democrats to say they preserved secret-ballot elections. "If they overreach, they lose," Mr. Coxson said of the AFL-CIO.
Maybe they could call it the Al Franken Lost So All We Got Was This Pro Labor Act. (The truth is that even the watered down law terrifies business, largely because of its binding-arbitration provision.) ...
P.S.: Of course, Franken could still win. And if the Dems pull out the two other unresolved Senate races, they would get to 60 after all. ...12:36 A.M.
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Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Another message on my phone machine from my Republican friend:
It was a horrible night. I could not not not get __ to bed and I was famished and all I wanted to do was sit in front of the TV and watch returns come in and eat pizza and he just he would not go down. He kept getting out of bed. And he never does that so I don't know what the issue was. I was lying with him and trying to get him to go to sleep and everytime I thought he was asleep this little voice would pipe up: "Mommy, do you know that a farmer is like a babysitter for animals" ..."Mommy what is Barack Obama." I swear to God that was the last one. ... It was a nightmare....
Anyway, I can't believe someone hasn't blogged or written about this already because it seems incredibly obvious, but
No Bradley Effect in the presidential race
but Total Bradley Effect for Proposition 8
Everyone I knew thought it ... wasn't going to pass and I think it was down in the polls. I could double check.
But I think most people assumed Prop. 8 would not pass and then I think it turns out that people were just sheepish about sharing their real feelings with pollsters who could be ... I don't know I don't know exactly how the Bradley Effect works but anyway
No Bradley Effect, Presidental. Total Bradley Effect, Prop. 8. But I'm sure this has been written about already.
It has, though I hadn't seen it (but then I read the L.A. Times!) ... The Field Poll taken a few days before the election said Prop. 8 was losing 49 to 44. In the event it won by 5 points--a 10 point discrepancy. ... Even the seemingly infallible Nate Silver was kinda sorta almost fooled. ... It makes sense that the Bradley Effect would show up in this context. Telling a stranger you are going to vote for John McCain--well, there were plenty of respectable reasons to vote for John McCain. But tell a stranger you're voting against gay marriage? That's a way to either mark yourself as a bigot in polite company, or at least start a long, tedious possibly emotional fight. Who needs it? Voters learn to lie. ... [If they just replaced the secret ballot with a "card check" system--ed. Don't give anyone ideas] ...
Backfill: This morning E.J. Graff claimed the Bradleyesque "homo effect" has shrunk from four to two percent. ...11:43 P.M.
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Jerry Skurnik's list of "stories that the pundits and pols thought were really, really important" but weren't. ... I'd also be interested in "stories the pundits had to pretend were really, really important in order to push their candidate." 1) State licensing of plumbers. ... 6:33 P.M.
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Office Pool: On what date will John McCain self-servingly apologize for self-servingly lying during the 2008 campaign? He's done it before! ... P.S.: To be true to form, McCain would have to self-servingly lie in the course of self-servingly apologizing for self-servingly lying--perhaps by artificially limiting the number of lies he needs to self-servingly apologize for. As in, "Only once, I believe, did I act in an unprincipled way." That worked in 2000! ... He might have to say "only twice" this time. ...
Bonus tie-breaker: How many hours after McCain's self-serving apology will Joe Klein forgive him and proclaim that "McCain has reclaimed his greatest asset, his integrity"? Entries denominated in minutes and seconds also accepted. ...
Update: Reader C.C. suggests a "perfecta option"' in which you guess the date McCain "will self-servingly apologize, and be immediately forgiven, in the course of an exclusive interview with Joe Klein." My money is on next Wednesday. ... 5:48 P.M.
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Winner--The Newsom Rule: The Newsom Rule holds that it's almost always a bad idea for politicians to gloat that their side has won "whether you like it or not." That's what S.F. Mayor Gavin Newsom did after a temporary gay marriage victory. Now California voters--influence by ads featuring Newsom's giddy, egomaniacal video boast-- have by a narrow margin stuck a gay marriage ban into the state constitution. ... [Is the Newsom Rule like Godwin's Law--ed Saying that anything is like Godwin's Law is itself a violation of Godwin's Law, I think] 4:19 P.M.
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Book Him on Three Counts of Failure to Transcend: Everyone wants to praise McCain's "gracious" concession speech. But it was shockingly tin-eared--especially the good-for-you-black-people beginning:
This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.
He went on and on--as if Obama's victory was all about race and not about a rejection of McCain or Republican governance. As if even if it had to do with race its rejection of bigotry was mainly of interest to African Americans as opposed to all Americans. As if the most important characteristic of the man most Americans chose over McCain was his skin color, etc. ... I know I'm overreacting, but McCain's tone seemed almost tribal. ... Maybe the problem was his distancing, clanging choice of pronoun--"theirs." Not "yours," let alone "ours." .. 3:26 P.M.
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Winner: Pork! Champion bacon-conduit Ted Stevens defeats challenger, despite a fresh multiple-count felony conviction, while death-to-earmark Skywalker McCain crashes and burns ... 1:35 P.M.
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Winner: Mike Murphy. The McCain loss unfolded pretty much exactly as he predicted back in August. ...
Loser: Mike Murphy. Nobody's resented more than a dissenter who turns out to have been right. ... 1:34 P.M.
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I See. I Saw. I Didn't Get 60: Hmm. As Obama surged to victory, further down on the ballot things were drifting in the opposite direction. Politico:
But as NRCC staffers returned to work Wednesday morning, many of them were breathing sighs of relief. A 20- or 22-seat loss is hardly a victory, but it’s not the sea-changing — and majority-robbing — 30-seat loss the Republicans suffered two years ago. Just a week ago, the NRCC staffers were braced for worse. But they say they saw the Democrats’ wave crest just a little too early — and that it was starting to recede as voters went to the polls. [E.A.}
See-Saw Effect, anyone? ... P.S.: Specifically, this would be the Downballot Hedge version of the See Saw, in which swing voters compensated for the bold, hopeful risk they took on Obama (including for overcoming any race prejudice) by gravitating back toward Republicans in their local Senate and House races. ... P.P.S.: Sorry, Mike! ... For background, search this post for "vertical ticket splitter," and search here for the original mirror-image version of the See Saw proposed by Reader M. ... 1:32 P.M.
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Grant Park: I was struck by two lists of virtues used by Obama in his acceptance speech--or rather by two omissions on those lists. [Emphasis added]
1.
To those who would tear this world down – we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security – we support you.
"Peace and security." Not "democracy" or "freedom." This is someone who doesn't want to seem in any way a neocon idealist.
2.
And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.
No mention of "equality"--not even social equality. Nor "equality before the law." This is someone who doesn't want to seem in any way a leftish "redistributor." ... 1:51 A.M.
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Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Kinsley:
People who want divided government are afraid of politics.
I dunno. Maybe we're just afraid of card check. ... 6:09 P.M.
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kf Moment of Hope: The News. ... 6:04 P.M.
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Props: If California's Proposition 11--redistricting reform--passes, that will be at least a partial redemption of Gov. Schwarzenegger's reformist promise, squandered in his disastrous 2005 "year of reform." Prop. 11 doesn't apply to Congressional redistricting--Nancy wouldn't allow it. It only applies to state officeholders. But it's a start. ... Drug policy expert Mark Kleiman is torn about Prop. 5, in theory designed to end incarceration of non-violent drug offenders. (He calls it a "crock," but might vote for it anyway). ... Race preference opponent Ward Connerly comes out strongly against the anti-gay-marriage initiative (Prop. 8)--and without kausfiles' tortured legalism:
In an interview today with The Times, Connerly said he made the decision without telling the No-on-8 campaign consultants, and against the wishes of some of his political advisors.
“There are times when you have consider who you are,” Connerly said.
Connerly, whose wife is white, noted that when he got married in 1962, “the government in many parts of our country did not legally allow us to do that. I have never forgotten that.”
Kevin Drum has generally sensible recommendations on the other California ballot questions. (The only one I'm torn on is Prop. 4, for Patterico's reasons.) ... 2:49 P.M.
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My Obama Hangup: My main hangup in voting for Obama today is his support of "card check" legislation that would eliminate the secret ballot in union recognition elections. That would be both a violation of democratic priinciples and a practical drag on the economy, threatening to spread Detroit/UAW-like inefficiencies while reviving the wage-price spiral of the '70s.
If Obama wins, and Democrats gain the expected majorities in Congress, "card check" will be hard to stop. I'll even concede that it will be harder to stop "card check" under Obama than it would be to stop the equally significant, equally misguided "comprehensive immigration reform" under McCain. But there's still a chance--even a good chance. It's not easy to defend "card check" in public. Will Democrats want the public to know that carrying Big Labor's water was their first priority upon gaining unified control of the government? Press coverage won't help their cause. Some moderate Democratic Senators--Mark Warner?--might balk at cloture-time.
But suppose "card check" passes, and unions mount their expected organizing campaigns. If the new law has the expected semi-disastrous consequences, its impact will be partially self-limiting (unionized firms will lose business). And Democrats won't be able to avoid accountability for any economic deterioriation. It will certainly be a lot easier to reverse "card check" than reverse the impact of a failed immigration semi-amnesty. Misguided labor laws can be repealed (think Taft-Hartley). If a failed immigration law legalizes 12 million new Americans and attracts another 12 million illegals hoping to become legal, that will create irrevocable 'facts on the ground"--including millions of new voters and political support for further amnesty.
Isn't a focus on these discrete legislative issues inappropriate, given the grand election themes of war, peace, justice, liberty, hope and change? Not really. If you look at what Clinton actually accomplished in his 8 years, you could be excused for giving a prominence to the welfare reform of 1996--a prominence vastly exceeding the issue's coverage in the press. The same would be true of "card check," though I suspect with a different historical verdict. Both laws alter fundamental economic institutions, with consequences that tend to outlive presidencies.
Still, Obama's virtues outweigh the threat of this one bill. He promises to calm down the world in a way John Kerry, say, could not--and I supported Kerry in 2004 largely because of his global hatred-lowering potential. His choice of advisers, so far, is confidence-inspring. It's hard to predict what he'll do once elected--maybe he'll replace Jason Furman with Amiri Baraka. But all indications suggest he's a steady, inclusive, perhaps overly cautious and conventional leader. (Examples: Jim Johnson as veep-vetter, Joe Biden as VP--and: John Kerry,rumored to be Obama's Secretary of State. A Trifecta of Usual Suspects.) And don't forget health care.
Time to go vote for him. With hope, even. 10:45 A.M.
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Sister Sagjah: There was some sniping when Mary Battiata suggested an Obama victory might render unfashionable
heavy gold, medallions, below-the-butt denim, the whole hip-hop gangsta fashion habit.
Here's Obama in Nevada last Saturday (in an interview broadcast Monday):
"I think people passing a law against people wearing sagging pants is a waste of time. ... [snip] Having said that, brothers should pull up their pants. You are walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing. What's wrong with that? Come on. There are some issues that we face, that you don't have to pass a law, but that doesn't mean folks can't have some sense and some respect for other people and, you know, some people might not want to see your underwear -- I'm one of them." [E.A.]
It's not clear anyone will pay attention to Obama on this. But it's not clear they won't. ...12:44 A.M.
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Monday, November 3, 20008
Thank you, Ohio! Tomorrow, if all goes as expected, Democrats should pause to be grateful that John Kerry didn't get 70,000 more votes in Ohio in 2004. What would have happened if Kerry had won? 1) He would have presided over a slow motion loss, or continuing stalemate, in Iraq. No way Kerry would ever have approved the "surge." 2) He would also have presided over the current housing and financial collapse that has both broken economic growth and, apparently, destroyed any chances of the incumbent party retaining the White House. Democrats don't bear the main blame for this crisis, but is there any reason to think they would have prevented it? I can't think of one. We'd be looking at a Republican wave instead of a Democratic sweep. ... 7:46 P.M.
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The Tamar Jacoby Prize: The Republican candidate for president seems poised to lose the Latino vote despite his longtime championing of illegal immigrant legalization. Some would argue this demonstrates the poverty of attempting to win the Latino vote by championing illegal immigrant legalization. (Maybe Latino voters, like other Americans, worry mainly about the economy, the war, and schools.) But sophisticated policy journalists know this is plodding, linear thinking. The coveted kausfiles Tamar Jacoby Prize goes to the first writer to argue, as if it were self-evident, that McCain's abject failure pursuing a Rovian Hispandering strategy dramatically vindicates the Rovian Hispandering strategy. ... I mean, that strategy must be right, because unless politicans are convinced of it, you know, there's not much hope of actually passing illegal immigrant legalization, which is bipartisan and therefore good. ... [Offer void where applicable. Tamar Jacoby and members of her immediate family are eligible!] 3:34 P.M.
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MSNBC's "First Read" on how the early voting results seem to mirror its overall poll results:
One more thing: 30% say they’ve already voted, and those voters break [for Obama] by an identical 51%-43% margin.
Hmm. Is this breakdown in early voting really such good news for Obama? You'd think, given the enthusiasm gap between the two candidates' supporters, that Obama voters would tend to be early voters. That means the voters left to vote on election day will be the more undecided, more pro-McCain voters, no? The final results should be less pro-Obama than the early results. Which means if the early voting is 51-43, then the overall MSNBC poll showing a 51-43 Obama edge is off--and Obama is actually less than 8 points ahead, no? Just asking! ... 2:24 P.M.
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Greg Sargent is shocked by John McCain's "lying."** Those of us who opposed McCain's campaigns for illegal immigrant legalization--sorry, "comprehensive reform"--are maybe less shocked. McCain routinely lied during the immigration debate when it suited him--saying the illegals he legalized would "not be in any way rewarded for illegal behavior" (BS), that they'd have to go to the "back of the line behind everybody else" (not the most important line), and that he does "not support nor would I ever support any services provided to someone who came to this country illegally" (BS he does and BS he did). ... He got away with this serial dissembling because most reporters thought he was on the right and compassionate side of the issue. And, of course, that he got away with it may help explain why he dissembled in the first place--he knew he wouldn't be punished by the press if he deceived to get what he wanted. ... Now he knows he'll be punished, but he feels he has no choice (if he's going to get what he wants). ... That's a distinction, I guess. But not necessarily a moral one. ...
**--If the "lie" Sargent complains about isn't good enough for you, here's a better one. ...12:26 P.M.
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Sunday, November 2, 2008
Dept. of Heterodoxy: Anti-liberal, anti-Obama, anti-LAT blogger Patterico comes out against California's Prop. 8, which would amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage (after the state Supreme Court ruled the constitution required gay marriage):
I am angry about the California Supreme Court’s attempt to take this matter out of voters’ hands, and part of me wants to support the measure just to flip the bird to the justices. Ultimately, however, I support the right of homosexuals to marry one another, and so I will be voting no.
I'm pretty sure I will too, for similar reasons. The problem is that if the state Supreme Court is sustained in creating this right, it will be inevitably tempted to create other, more problematic constitutional rights. ("Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don't contract them," says a man who may soon be in a position to insure this "expansion" picks up steam.) We'll wind up in a Rose Bird world in which almost all significant disputes involve contending "rights" and are therefore to be decided by judges, not voters. ... I'd vote for a ballot proposition that merely reversed the Court and kicked the gay marriage issue back to the legislature and the voters. But that's not what we're being asked to vote on. We're being asked to keep the matter out of the legislature's hands--just in the other direction. ... P.S.: Patterico got 267 comments. Those are HuffPo numbers, no? ... P.P.S.: Patterico also supports California's animal rights Proposition 2. Come home, Matthew Scully! ...
Update: Alert reader G.D. notes that the gay marriage issue was already out of the legislature's hands even before the Court ruling, thanks to Proposition 22, which amended the Family Code in 2000 to define marriage as man-woman only. Because it passed as an initiative statute, Prop. 22 could not have been simply overturned by the legislature. Prop. 22 was what the state Supreme Court overturned, declaring that it violated the state constitution. Prop. 8--being voted on Tuesday--would write the gay marriage ban into the state constitution, thus overturning theCcourt. But--a big caveat--it would only take a majority vote on another constitutional initiative, in the future, to overturn Prop. 8. The California Constitution is easy! ... Which leads to G.D.'s implicit question: What's the big difference between the solution of merely reversing the Court decision--which would leave an initiative statute (Prop 22) in place that could only be overturned by a majority of the voters--and Prop. 8's solution, which would leave a constitutional ban in place that could also be overturned by a majority of voters? Either way, there's a ban, the state Court couldn't reverse it, but 50% + 1 of the voters could. My answer: I'm willing to vote to overturn the Court's decision, rendering the state constitution mute on the subject of gay marriage. I'm not willing to write a gay marriage ban into the constitution. I'm for gay marriage. I wouldn't vote for the statutory ban of Prop 22 either. Why ask me to do it--especially if you could achieve the same practical effect by just reversing the Court's decision? ... And of course you could write an inititiative constitutional amendment that voided both the Court's decision and Prop. 22, leaving the issue for the legislature to decide. ... 10:38 P.M.
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Isn't it pretty clear that the reason Obama is contesting McCain's home state of Arizona isn't to humiliate McCain or because Arizona might actually be decisive (those scenarios are fairly complicated) but as a media strategy to generate Election Week MSM stories about how McCain is on the defensive, etc.--stories that will demoralize Republicans and help Obama win the real battleground states? ... P.S.: It's working. On MTP, Tom Brokaw had "Arizona" at the top of his list of contested states, as part of a how-things-have-changed-for-McCain analysis. It's almost as if the MSM is playing along! .. .8:46 P.M.
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Not over! At this point in New Hampshire, had Hillary even cried yet? No. ... [Don't give McCain any ideas--ed. He's tried A! He's tried B. ...] ... P.S.: Remember that the Two Electorates Theory (those not following the election are less well informed than in the past) plus the Feiler Faster Thesis (they can inform themselves very quickly at the last minute) = Volatility and Unpredictability. ... 7:35 P.M.
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