Kausfiles: A mostly political weblog.

Scozzafava and the Feiler Faster Thesis

FFT-NY-23: Was the NY-23 race--in which conservative third-party candidate Doug Hoffman's surge suddenly unsurged after the GOP candidate dropped out--an example of the Feiler Faster Thesis (which holds that voters now comfortably process new information and events with a speed that matches the speeding up of the news cycle)? Here's Mark Blumenthal:

Experience tells us that when a candidate enters a contest's final weekend with both a lead and as much apparent momentum as Hoffman, they almost always win. By the end of a long campaign, voters have spent weeks or months acquiring information and pondering their choice, and most have made up their minds by the final weekend.

In this case, however, the voters experienced "man bites dog" news twice: First, the Republican nominee [Dede Scozzafava] dropped out, then she endorsed the Democrat. I am guessing that the unprecedented news made a significant number of these habitual voters sit up and take special notice, especially those who had until that moment experienced the campaign mostly through television advertising.

So here is my hunch: When confronted by a pollster's call over the weekend, many were simply not ready to make a final decision. If pollsters pushed hard for a choice, some voters may have fallen back on an initial preference that they were now in the process of reconsidering. For those who shifted to Owens that weekend, however, the campaign had started anew. Their final decisions were probably not made until they cast a ballot on Tuesday. [E.A.]

NY-23 voters certainly seem to have processed a lot of dramatic new information very quickly, the essence of the Feiler Faster Thesis. Upshot: Not only is momentum not what it used to be--a venerable implication of the FFT--but dropping out or switching candidates a few days before an election doesn't seem to annoy or confuse voters. Rather, it can have its intended effect (for Scozzafava, the intended effect of defeating Hoffman). Prediction: We will see a lot more of these dramatic last-minute drop-outs and support switches. I wouldn't even be surprised to see it happen in a presidential race.**

**--In October, 1988 I thought the flailing Michael Dukakis should drop out and let his then-popular VP pick, Lloyd Bentsen, become the Democratic candidate. I snuck the idea into a Newsweek piece, and then felt vaguely embarrassed. When I argued to my friends that it was the best chance to beat Bush, people looked at me like I was an unsophisticated high schooler, Presidential candidates didn't pull stunts like that. It was simply too late for Dukakis to avoid inevitable defeat. If he bailed, voters would only be confused and demoralized. Democrats might stay home--and then down-ballot Dems would suffer along with Dukakis.

That may have been true in 1988. Not sure it would be true today. ... 12:19 P.M.

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Guaranteed 50% Fox-Related Ingredients

Attention, "Fait Accompli" Brigade: This chart seems to be going in the wrong direction for health care reform, even if you discount the lopsided FOX poll (for Nate Silverish reasons--they only get the big support/oppose question after asking a series of spoiling questions). ... P.S.: Does this suggest that the much-derided insurance industry study (suggesting premiums would rise after reform) had an impact? ... It could also reflect increased dissent on the left, from public-option supporters, as hinted by the new WaPo survey. (See, for example, question 13.) ... 9:55 P.M.

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On Sunday, William Kristol argued it was "reckless" for Obama to delay surging in Afghanistan while he waits to see how legitimate our "Afghan partner" will be:

If the president issued the order now, he could always delay or revoke it later, if the political situation seemed truly insupportable....

Why do I get the feeling that if Obama ordered a surge of troops today and revoked it in two weeks, Bill Kristol would be among the first to savage him for being indecisive and prone to sudden reversal? There's a virtue in making the decision once, and then being able to stick with it, as Kristol surely knows. ... P.S.: I would suspect Kristol of adding his bad faith argument so he'd have three bullet points, but he already had his three. So no excuse! ... P.P.S.: Won't Kristol's post--which sneers that the White House had "failed" to improve the election process--look awfully silly if Obama's delay turns out to force Karzai to accept a cleaner runoff? ... 10:21 P.M.

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Gawker got hold of the first few words of ex-President Clinton's private twitters, including this entry:

Twitter / Bill Clinton:  John Edwards ... why did you ...

You'd think Clinton, of all people, would know that answer to that one. ...

Update: In a slyly invisible, joke-ruining revision, Gawker's Anthony De Rosa now says the twitters were probably captured from the account of a Bill Clinton imposter. ... P.S.: Is De Rosa the new night guy or the new ex-night guy? ... 10:50 P.M.

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Odd sloppiness in Monday's big N.Y. Times story with possible dirt on GOP N.J. gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie:

1) The Times writes that

interviews with federal law enforcement officials suggest that Ms. Brown [to whom Christie had loaned $46,000] used her position in two significant and possibly improper ways to try to aid Mr. Christie in his run for governor. [E.A.]

Motive is very hard to prove. The Times doesn't come close to showing that Brown was trying to aid Mr. Christie's run for governor if (as alleged) she a) supervised a FOIA request by the Corzine campaign of her and Christie's travel records and b) argued for making a big corruption arrest before Christie left office. In (a), she might have been trying to cover her own a--, since the FOIA request included her own records, no? In (b), maybe she just thought her friend and boss (rather than his successor) deserved to get full props for his hard work. I suppose the facts do "suggest" that Brown was trying to aid Christie's political run, but it's still a weird, easily abused way to write a lede. The first arrests at the Watergate suggested that the White House was a lawless operation headed by a crook who was trying to spy on his Democratic rivals, but I don't think that's how Woodward & Bernstein's nut graf read. The allegation about Brown's motive was hardly necessary to make a good story--all the Times had to say was that in both cases Brown seems to have taken actions that actually helped Christie's campaign.

2) In its tour of anti-Christie accusations, the Times refers to

reports that [Christie] discussed a run for governor with Karl Rove in 2006 led Democrats to assert he had violated the Hatch Act, which forbids candidates from “testing the waters” for a run for office. [E.A.]

The Hatch Act forbids candidates from "testing the waters"? There's your story! A whole lot of politicians are going to jail if that's the case. But maybe the Times "computer assisted reporting team" should hit the keyboards to find out what the Hatch Act says first. (And is talking to Karl Rove "testing the waters"?)

3) "$20,000 in mileage reimbursements during his seven-year tenure" is less than $3,000 per year--not that much. Even if it does include $79 to see a Mets game.

It would be wrong of me at this point to mention the famous Howell Raines Spike (of reports damaging to Democratic New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli when he was running for reelection) as evidence that the NYT is trying to elect Dems in New Jersey. It certainly "suggests" that! But we're in the age of partisan media and if the NYT wants to try to elect Dems the way Fox wants to elect GOPs, that's their right. ...

P.S.: If you believe the Feiler Faster Thesis, this story was dropped way too soon. Plenty of time before November 3 for Christie to change the narrative. But maybe in New Jersey Feiler is slower. ... 10:52 P.M.

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Faster Scandal

Josh Marshall's TPM has been presciently keeping the undernews fires burning on the Sanford scandal, even when the mainstream media (MSM) was buying the story that the governor had been hiking the Appalachian trail. But reading over TPM's post "Sanford Press Conference Leaves Unanswered Questions," I was struck by one thing: How uninteresting all the remaining questions are.** "[W]ould [Sanford] have stuck to the Appalachian story" if he could have gotten away with it? Duh! "[D]id he voluntarily tell the State's reporter that he had been in Argentina" or did she look at his luggage tags? Did he see his paramour on earlier taxpayer-funded junkets to Latin America? Other analysts wonder if he used taxpayer-funded gas to drive to the airport. Not sure anybody cares.

We have Faster News and Faster Politics and Faster Scandal. It seems likely that in the course of about 48 intriguing hours those who follow the news have basically learned everything important they need to know about the Sanford mess. He was in Buenos Aires. He cheated on his wife. He really seems to have been in love with this Argentinian. He's out of the 2012 presidential race. Things that ten years ago would have dribbled and drabbed out over the course of days or weeks now hit the Web within minutes. What's left?

Even the story about how scandals happen faster these days has already been done--by TPM, about 29 minutes ago.

There are some obvious implications to Faster Scandals. For one thing, they lead to Faster Comebacks. (Though that won't happen if, like John Edwards, you successfully prolong the suspense, leaving key details--like paternity--hanging for months and even years.) But there are also unanswered questions! Most importantly, what does Faster Scandal mean to Jerry Skurnik's "second electorate"--the one that doesn't follow the news and won't find out about the Sanford scandal until either a) they see it briefly on the nightly news or the front page of their MSM paper tomorrow, or b) Sanford runs for national office years from now, if he runs, in which case a significant segment of voters may suddenly discover that he's an adulterer (the way they discovered that Giuliani was an adulterer at an absurdly late date, namely the GOP primaries of 2008).

In general, you'd think Faster Scandal would mean diminished scandal. The rule of thumb for disaster spin has always been to get the whole story out fast--and now it typically gets out fast, whether the pol at the center of the scandal wants it to or not. A weeks-long story is now a one-day shotgun blast. (Edwards may be an exception in part because reporters have been reluctant to cause more pain to his wife and haven't bothered to smoke out all the key facts.) Back when the editor of the LA Times had a motto of "Do It Once, Do It Long, and Do It Right," it was a scandal-killer, in part because it avoided the extended period of uncertainty in which the media's tom toms of doom are beating and wavering sources can be panicked into coming forward. Now the technology of news has conspired to make the LAT's misguided motto the normal course of events.

But it's also possible that by blunting the initial impact of scandal's like Sanford's--and restricting it largely to Skurnik's first, informed electorate--the increasing speed of scandal means that when the second uninformed electorate finally does learn about it--say, during Sanford's 2016 presidential run--the damage will be all the greater. The news will seem fresher to more of them, because it didn't have sufficient impact back in 2009 to have been processed by everyone. ...

**--Yes, there is still the issue of Maria, who she is, etc. Photos tk. But even that is less interesting now, with so much of the story already out.

P.S.--Was it really about the sex, governor? Do you know anyone who's been to Buenos Aires recently and not wanted to stay there? I know four or five people who returned to California's alleged paradise only reluctantly. ...  5:07 P.M.

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Join A Union, Get a Health Care Tax Break!

Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center reports that Sen. Baucus

is floating the following trial balloon: Congress would fund fund part of health reform with a cap on the tax exclusion of employer-sponsored health insurance but only at a level "significantly above" the cost of the standard plan offered to federal employees. The measure would also exclude policies bargained under current union contracts. ... [E.A.]

Why exclude policies negotiated by unions but not policies negotiated by individuals? Politics, I assume. Unions wouldn't stand for anything else. Fine. But here's the thing--the provision appears to be more than a simple "grandfather" clause that protects current union contracts.  A kf source says that the new tax will not take effect until 2013. Does this mean that labor contracts agreed on between now and that date would also be protected? If so, Baucus has just given a big tax incentive for workers--perhaps encouraged by labor signature collectors under a "card check" bill--to form unions and bargain for lavish health benefits that will then be exempted from his tax on lavish benefits. Join a union, get a tax break! (A break the rest of us would have to pay for). ... If Dems start lavishing IRS advantages on union members, maybe organized labor won't even need the "card check" bill to reverse its declining membership numbers. ... 9:53 P.M.

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Mitosis in the Faster Electorate: Conor Friedersdorf notices that the fast twitter-driven news out of Iran has divided his fellow citizens and friends into two groups: 1) Those who keep up to the second with what is happening and how the U.S. should react; and 2) Those who take the weekend off and only know the vaguest details (i.e. " that Ahmadinejad won"). I'd say that Friedersdorf has stumbled upon Jerry Skurnik's "Theory of the Two Electorates"--except it's a peculiarly accelerated version of the Skurnik theory, because Friedersdorf's two groups are both made up of people who would normally be part of the better informed of Skurnik's two electorates:

And those out of the know? They aren't any longer just grandmothers, the apolitical, and the middle manager in Scranton who gets all his news at 11 o'clock after the game. Now people who watch The Daily Show, subscribe to The New Yorker, and read the CNN subtitles as they run on the 24 Hour Fitness treadmill possess radically less information than a self-selecting group of their fellow citizens, granting that they mostly catch up on any given piece of information in a matter of days.

Will this make a difference, Friedersdorf asks?

Are we approaching a point where political information is processed so fast that an event happens, information elites weigh in to shape the discourse surrounding it, the conventional wisdom is communicated to Congress, and elected leaders formulate reactions based on public opinion... all before most of even the formerly plugged in members of the public ever learn what on earth is going on, or have a chance to form an opinion?

I could see Congress, spooked by twitter, overreacting in this fashion--if, say, a draft of Senator Baucus' health care plan comes out that displeases the left, which reacts by shutting down various switchboards before the David Broders of the world can even get to their typewriters keyboards. ... It's hard to believe it will have an effect on official U.S. Iran policy.** (Friedersdorf agrees.)

Of course, to the extent it does empower Friedersdorf's first group, including the fastest bloggers, it would empower Andrew Sullivan-- which (as Obama has learned) is always a dangerous thing. ...

**--That doesn't mean it hasn't had a big effect on the events in Iran itself--the events that the U.S. government must react to--or on the unofficial reaction of American activists to those events. ... 8:53 P.M.

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Alert reader J: "Interesting that the WaPo could write an entire article on the decline of public housing in NYC without ever mentioning the words "ACLU," "liberalism," and "Lindsay." [Link added] ... True! The piece--on Sotomayor's childhood--makes it seem as if the projects were just suddenly swamped by waves of drugs ("Then heroin surged through the projects ... Then came crack ...") as opposed to, say, an increasingly concentrated culture of fatherless dependence in which drug users and dealers and gang members couldn't be evicted because of misguided due process concerns about deprivation of "new property"! ... (I remember an excellent piece by WaPo's Blaine Harden on the difficulty of evicting bad actors from housing projects, but haven't been able to find it.). ... 

P.S.: The Post's Robin Shulman does mention that in 1981 Congress "changed eligibility rules to give preference in public housing to the poorest households," which had the perverse effect of intensifying the culture of poverty by excluding middle class and working class tenants. But Shulman doesn't make that point--instead quoting an expert who simply says the change made public housing the "housing of last resort." And that was a problem because ...? ... 8:21 P.M.

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Matt Cooper calls "the idea that that the Clintons were unwilling to take half-a-loaf" on health care "total revisionism." Hmm. It sure seemed that way at the time! ... P.S.: Unless Cooper's talking about a specific early-on period when the Clinton plan was first being produced--he uses the vague qualifier "back then" .... 7:32 P.M.

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Obama vs. Slate: Obama cites "medical errors that lead to 100,000 lives lost unnecessarily in our hospitals every year." [E.A.] Walter Olson smells BS, and cites a Slate article to back him up. ... 7:25 P.M.

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Blog of Rivals!

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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Thank You, Ohio!

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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Khalidi: Pushke Comes to Shove!

Will Greg Packer Outlast the MSM? Five years after being exposed (by Ann Coulter) as "the entire media's designated 'man on the street' for all articles ever written" and banned by the AP, Greg Packer's triumph over the MSM is complete: Patterico documents his Friday humiliation of the New York Times. ... He will dance on their graves, and maybe give a celebratory quote to Mayhill Fowler. ... 2:07 P.M.

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Saturday, November 1, 2008

Went to a Halloween party dressed as The Bradley Effect. The elemental conceptual simplicity of my costume somehow failed to terrify, even in a Dem heavy Hollywood crowd. ... This may be the first election where average Web-surfing, procrastinating liberal comedy writers know more about the last Insider Advantage poll in Pennsylvania than Howard Fineman does....  Unfortunately, they thought the photo of George Deukmejian on my costume** was Robert Rubin.

**--Pinned to the red half of the costume under a blue flap that--easier to show than tell--flopped over to obscure a photo of long-serving L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley, whom they mistook for an Asian man. They had been drinking. ...[Had you worn the White Liberal Guilt Effect costume, I would have been impressed.--emailer DM It was at the cleaners.]
 2:46 P.M.

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Friday, October 31, 2008

The five important people in American politics whom Mark Halperin most wants to suck up to right now -- who aren't running for president ... :2:15 P.M.

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Psst, Dittoheads: Obama has come out against reimposing the Fairness Doctrine. [Through an aide, in an email--ed. Sure. But is is better to discount and downplay the anti-Fairness pledge on those grounds, or to play it up and lock Obama in? Depends whether you want to help McCain or free speech.] 11:54 A.M.

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A year is an eternity in politics ... but it will seem like three months: NBC's First Read:

[T]oday just happens to be the one-year anniversary of the MSNBC debate in Philadelphia that tripped up Hillary Clinton on the question of drivers’ licenses for illegal immigrants. It seems longer than a year, right?

Actually, it doesn't. It seems like it happened last month. I can't explain it--you'd think one implication of the Feiler Faster Thesis, much discussed in this space, is that any given period of time would seem longer because it's now typically more jampacked with twists and turns (as the campaign has, in fact, been). But all the FFT says is that we comfortably process information more quickly, which allows for the twists and turns.** It doesn't necessarily say anything about how those twists and turns will be remembered. ...

** High school poetry bonus: See A. Marvell: "Thus, though we cannot make our sun/Stand still, yet we will make him run." Would that make time seem longer, looking back? I don't think so, though the issue isn't directly addressed. ... 1:34 A.M.

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Thursday, October 30, 2008  

The See-Saw Cuts Both Ways: Republicans have been gaining in the "generic" Congressional ballot, according to The Hill.

Republicans have cut the Democratic advantage in the generic ballot question in half over the past week, according to a new GW-Battleground poll. Democrats now lead by four points, their slimmest lead in more than three years. A week ago, according to the George Washington University pool, their advantage was eight points. [E.A.]

Is this the fabled See-Saw Effect, where the more Obama goes up the more Dem Congressional candidates go down? ... As someone rooting for an Obama victory coupled with a small Dem majority in Congress, I've worried that in all the last minute confusion the See wouldn't know which way to Saw, given the countervailing possibility that ticket-splitting voters would side with McCain and compensate by voting for Dems in downballot Senate and House races. ... But if the MSM Final Push to Victory. among other factors, really does help produce a big Obama closing surge, that could (perversely!) tip the ticket-splitters' lever against Franken, Martin, etc., no? ... Update: TalkLeft points out that the very same Battleground poll does not show Obama surging, but rather has him only three points ahead of McCain. I knew that! But the ticket splitting impulse could be rising, even if Obama's lead remains constant, as the possibility of his winning looms larger in voters' minds. (The poll in question didn't show McCain surging either--he was three points behind last week as well as this week.) ... P.S.: I'm not predicting! Just speculating on possible last-minute dynamics. Obama and the downballot Dems won't necessarily rise or fall in tandem. ... 7:17 P.M.

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Pushke Comes to Shove: Regarding Rashid Khalidi, here is what a friend of mine--a Jewish Democrat involved in "mainstream Jewish ... peace work"--wrote me:

its always about rashid..who has been a  
buddy of mine for 20 years... and is from an old palestinian
family and is pro palestinian....but who has also worked with israelis  
and jews (he has a blue and white pushke in his office!)