Kausfiles: A mostly political weblog.

New York is the New Friday

Why watch Saturday Night Live in L.A. when the twitters from back East say it's weak? Does that mean TV shows now have a New York problem like movies have a Friday problem? Movies: If twitterers don't like on Friday, it will die on Saturday. TV: If the East doesn't like it, it will die in West? Just asking! Not my industry. ... 1:45 A.M.

___________________________

I agree with Charlie Cook that redistricting reform--an end to gerrymandering--is at least as important as campaign finance reform. Safe seats mean more voter alienation (voting doesn't produce changes) and less moderation (competitive districts will tend to produce candidates who fight for the center). But I didn't understand this Cook complaint:

There is more straight-ticket voting now than in the past. Few voters seem to value electing a candidate with the willingness and temperament to reach across the aisle. When President George W. Bush's policies and politics became unpopular, moderate-to-liberal Republicans were the ones who paid the highest price at the ballot box in 2006 and 2008.

Likewise, if President Obama or congressional Democrats are out of favor in November 2010, conservative-to-moderate Democrats will lose in far greater numbers than their liberal colleagues. And the cycle of hyperpartisanship will continue.

If gerrymandering were eliminated, that would mean more swing districts won by moderate Dems or moderate GOPs--but that would mean more moderate Dems losing in a Republican year, not fewer, no? That's what having a competitive district means. It would also mean more moderate Republicans losing in a Democratic year. It's the swing districts that swing!  Moderates of either party have a shorter life expectancy. Redistricting reform doesn't change that. And reform would mean more swing districts. ...

P.S.: I understand that Cook is lamenting the rise of straight ticket voting, but why? We want competitive districts, I always thought, in part so voters can have an impact by throwing more of the bums out, not so voters can elect bipartisan moderates who hold their seats for life whether the President is a Democrat or a Republican. In itself, party line voting seems like something to be encouraged, because it makes it more likely that an incoming President will have a Congress that is, at least initially, supportive. That would make the ideas of the national parties, as elaborated in national campaigns mean more.  ... Another way to put it (I think): The problem Cook's discussing isn't really an excess of partisanship, it's an artificial shortage of centrists within each party, which is not necessarily the same thing. ... [Jesus, you're sounding like Ezra Klein-ed Tentative yet condescending! Took years to perfect.]

P.P.S.; Good Cook point about how the gerrymandered House makes even the un-gerrymandered Senate more partisan less moderate. ....2:26 A.M.

___________________________

kf Out-Paranoids the Paranoids

Wednesday, April 15, 2009 

Defending Robert Samuelson's attack on Dem health care plan and Obama's "post-material" economy, blogger D.A. argues that it's only "an aspirational preference" for "everyone to be insured." In other words, it's not a preference people would make spending "their own money in the absence of compulsion by the government." ... I think I like aspirational preferences. "All men are created equal" seems like an aspirational preference. Can't buy it at the mall. It seems like it would be hard to achieve any desirable form of equality--equality before the law, equality of opportunity, or social equality--simply by aggregating the choices of individuals spending their own money.  ... 1:08 A.M.

___________________________

Did John McTiernan Make the Wrong Self-Serving Paranoid Conspiracy Film? Die Hard director John McTiernan, who pled guilty, withdrew his plea, and is now awaiting potential indictment in the Anthony Pellicano scandal, has apparently made a film blaming Karl Rove for pursuing Pellicano. The theory? According to the NYT, McTiernan sees

the Pellicano prosecution as having stemmed from a pre-emptive strike against a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential candidacy.

Mrs. Clinton, the film says, was widely reported to have had help from Mr. Pellicano when her husband was accused in 1992 of having had an affair with Gennifer Flowers.

According to an elaborate turn of events asserted in the documentary, the Pellicano prosecution was intended to churn up dirt that was then folded into an anti-Clinton campaign video that was planned for use if she were nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate.

I'd say McTiernan's thinking too small! If I were making a paranoid conspiracy documentary about Rove and Pellicano, I wouldn't focus on Hillary. I'd focus generally on the "thousands of hours of encoded tapes from wiretaps" the FBI supposedly found when they raided Pellicano's office. Who knows who is on those tapes? Lots of Hollywood bigshots, presumably. Whoever has those tapes might, in this conspiracy theory, be able to blackmail half the big showbiz donors to the Democratic party--donors to Hillary and Obama. Of course, the tapes were in the possession of government law enforcement officals--not Bush operatives. But, hey, would that have stopped Richard Nixon or John Mitchell? We're making a crazy film here!  ... I know when I heard about the stash of tapes, I began to drool (figuratively). And I'm not Karl Rove. ... 12:20 A.M

___________________________

Headline in WSJ: "Emanuel Now a Backer of Immigration Action" The evidence?

For his part, Mr. [Rahm] Emanuel said his views haven't changed, though people may be viewing him in a new light now. In any case, he said, his job now was to represent the president's views.

"It doesn't matter what Rahm thinks," he said in an interview. "It matters what President Obama thinks." [E.A.]

Yes, sounds like he's had a total change of heart! ... 12:18 A.M.

___________________________

The Failure Faster Thesis

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Now Obama's gone and pissed off Slashdot. ... 2:15 A.M.

___________________________

Liberal Media Bias: Occasional Slate contributor Tom Geoghegan is running for Rahm Emanuel's congressional seat. He's a friend of mine, a terrific writer and a man of honor. I'm for him even though I'm sure he's for card check. ... P.S.: You can't call Geoghegan unthinkingly left.  In 1972, he wrote a justly famous analysis of the McGovern rebellion in the Democratic Party and its relationship with the student left--still one of the best pieces on the nervous breakdown of post-WWII liberalsim I've ever read. It's online. ... 1:28 A.M.

___________________________

After giving in to a lazy inconclusive lede on whether Richardson's withdrawal might or might not hurt Obama's Southwest strategy (Answer: It might or might not!) NYT's Adam Nagourney finally gets around to asking the obvious key question:

[W]hether the Obama administration’s eagerness to get Mr. Richardson into the Obama cabinet might have contributed to what appeared to be an uncharacteristic laxness ...

And, Nagourney might have added, if there was eagerness why the eagerness. Specifically, was there a pre-endorsement deal?. ... Nagourney doesn't seem to even make an attempt to find out the answer to his question. WaPo at least has some reporting on the vetting process-- and it doesn't reflect well on the expert Obama "team" that "scoured" Richardson's background. If there wasn't eagerness/laxness, it certainly looks like there was incompetence. After all, even if Richardson didn't fully disclose the scope of the investigation that scuppered his nomination, what kind of savvy Washingtonian would take Bill Richardson at his word? A scout for the Kansas City Athletics, maybe? ...  P.S.: WaPo certainly didn't get to the bottom of the issue. We demand "tick-tock"--accounts of who said what to whom. And what they were eating. ... Backfill: Byron York notes that, if WaPo's report is right, the FBI seems to have started its background check one (1) day before the appointment was formally announced. ... 1:17 A.M.

___________________________ 

We'll all be working for Andrew Breitbart one day (if we aren't working for Arianna). In the meantime, he's launched Big Hollywood. ... I'm not sure he can succeed in his mission of getting conservative entertainment industry types to come out of the ideological closet--they're too worried about losing paying work. But that's kind of his point, no? ... 12:25 A.M.

___________________________

Enjoyable anti-DiFi sniping by William Bradley. ... He notes that CIA nominee Leon Panetta is more than just a Clinton loyalist (for one thing, he hasn't been all that loyal).  ... But Bradley describes the Iraq Study Group, on which Panetta served, as

"widely excoriated on the right two years ago but whose blueprint is basically being followed today."

Really? I must have missed the part of the blueprint where the Iraq Study Group called for the Petraeus "surge" strategy. ... Update: Fred Kaplan joins the "Keep Kappes" choire, and has a suggestion for breaching the CIA's own internal wall to coordinate intelligence in specific problem areas. ... P.S.: We need a czar! ... Oh, wait. We already have a czar. ... 12:09 A.M.

___________________________

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Michael Hirschorn has seen the future, and it is ... Arianna.

In this scenario, nytimes.com would begin to resemble a bigger, better, and less partisan version of the Huffington Post, which, until someone smarter or more deep-pocketed comes along, is the prototype for the future of journalism: a healthy dose of aggregation, a wide range of contributors, and a growing offering of original reporting. This combination has allowed the HuffPo to digest the news that matters most to its readers at minimal cost, while it focuses resources in the highest-impact areas. [E.A.]

Hmm. OK! .... But I don't quite understand Hirschorn's argument that the proliferation of "lifestyle fluff" in the Times has "undermined the perceived value of serious newspaper journalism." That seems a bit like the argument that gay marriage undermines the perceived value of traditional marriage. How? I don't know anyone who doesn't read the news because of the presence of the fluff. And I know quite a few people who read the news and also love the fluff. ... My problem with the fluff is that the need to generate so much copy, coupled with the subliminal need not to piss off advertisers, leads to what my old collegaue H.R. called "hearty hack" writing. But it's not as if most of the serious Times national reporters are great writers who are tragically infected by the hearty-hack virus. They would be hearty hacks without "Thursday Styles." ... Anyway, HuffPo has started its own lifestyle-y sections--e.g., "Living," and "Style"--for obvious commercial reasons not dissimilar from the Times' reasons. ... 11:30 P.M.

___________________________

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.

___________________________ 

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.

____________________________

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.

___________________________.

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.

___________________________

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.

___________________________

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.

___________________________ 

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!)