Completely Unnecessary

Did that work? My puns are more and more belabored these days. You can blame The Wire (and Violeta, the addict who got me hooked), which has eaten the better part of my vaycay thus far.

Anyway, in the above metaphor (if we’re generous enough to call it that) oil companies and Republicans are doing the scratching and the Democrats, as always, are exposing their bellies, wagging faintly.

House Dems capitulated on the off-shore drilling ban yesterday - ending a 25-year moratorium on drilling in US coastal waters.

Faced with a promised veto from Bush on their 50-mile plan, Democrats said, “Oh well then, I guess we give up.”

How many seats in Congress must we win before we start using the power we have? Would a 430-5 majority do it? Or would the Dems still find themselves quivering in terror before the Republican “we’ll-say-something-mean/untrue-about-you” machine?

I get it - Republicans are better at spin, and would leave the Dems holding the bag for $4 gasoline in an election year.

But what is the point of power if you’re not going to use it?

I’m not talking about corruption; I’m talking about the people electing you to office for a reason. In 2006, American voters looked around and thought, ‘Well, that is some bullshit.” And then we turn around and give them the same old bullshit. Now with false promises of lowered gas prices!

Seriously, I’ve been watching way too much of The Wire. I’ve got harmonica riffs stuck in my head, and I’m feeling just overly sassy about damn near everything.

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Yay. Supposedly Obama’s set to name his running mate tomorrow, ending months of media speculation and prognostication. The list currently stands with Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Senator Joe Biden of Delaware in the lead.

Apparently, the current favorite is Biden, which is such a surprise to me. Though a happy surprise. I like Biden a lot, and he’s got the foreign policy chops.

The problem, however, is how much he contributes to the 50-state plan that Dean and Obama are running. Also, two senator ticket - gives McCain the advantage should he nominate a governor.

Seriously though, I can’t wait for this announcement since it will finally inject some wind into the pre-convention doldrums in which we’re currently languishing. I mean, McCain’s Cone of Silence?

Though one of my students did say yesterday that she thought Clinton got more favorable coverage simply because she was a woman and different from the other candidates. So then the entire class took a trip to a online gallery of unflattering Clinton photos, and were treated to a diatribe about the choices the media made in selecting pictures of candidate Clinton. And the pictures they’ve selected since.

Bring on the veeps - I’m sick of picking the candidates to pieces. The more obscure the better; let’s really get to know these (most likely) guys.

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Well, one of the most tangible differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama appears to be flying out the Rotunda window:

Congressional Democrats are backing away from healthcare reform promises made by their two presidential candidates, saying that even if their party controls the White House and Congress, sweeping change will be difficult.

It is still seven months before Election Day, but already senior Democrats are maneuvering to lower public expectations on the key policy issue.

Well, I guess it’s back to deciding whether you’d like the white lady or the black man again. Good luck with that.

I think Wonkette put it best yesterday when they said:

A formerly “energized and optimistic” Democratic Party finds itself bored and frustrated with two candidates who can’t seem to win and can’t seem to lose.

Link:
Dems hedge on healthcare [The Hill via Wonkette]

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The NYT and all the cable channel websites are refusing to wildly speculate on the outcome of the Pennsylvania primary using exit polls.

They’re saying it’s ‘too close to call’, which just sounds like a cop out to me.

When they start ‘reporting’ you can check these links for results:

NYT
CNN
MSNBC
FOX [not a direct link - I can't find one to results yet]

Update: NYT and CNN have started reporting numbers. 65% of 2100 Pennsylvanians want Clinton for president! Let’s just call it for her and go to bed (or back to paper writing in the middle of the day, depending on where you live…).

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This brings us to the article on politicians as TV comedians, which I think is actually the more depressing one:

None of the presidential candidates want to be seen as snooty or overeducated, which must be why on Monday all three provided taped greetings to wrestling fans watching “WWE Raw” on the USA network.

I’m going to leave the shamefulness of this statement. I’ll note only how pathetic it is that that around the world, education is seen as the thing that can lift people up, change their lives - and in the US its seen as effete and something to be hidden. As if there is somehow a thing as ‘too educated’ - call me elitist (though you might be racist if you do), but that is the single saddest comment anyone can make about the United States.

The article goes on to detail the alarmingly large number of TV appearances by the candidates. There is something disturbing about the embedded (and by this I actually mean ‘in bed’)-ness of the candidates, their wives and surrogates with the news media.

For instance, Laura Bush is serving as co-host on the ‘Today’ show. Hard news it’s not, but there’s still something alarming about the media serving as an uncritical platform (literally) for politicians. How will NBC Nightly News critique the husband of the woman who hosted their morning show? Oh wait, he’s already on Deal or No Deal.

Sure there is concern about politicians using the airwaves as cheap publicity stunts. The cheapening of our politics (and politicians), however, is only one aspect of this problem.

As this trend becomes more entrenched, the networks will be compelled to deliver these kind of political celebrity moments more and more. The problem becomes not if Bush wants to show off on Deal or No Deal, but if NBC needs to have Bush on the show. What kinds of efforts will the networks have to make to attract these guests?

Media theory around sources suggests (unsurprisingly) that one of the problems inherent in relying on government for media sourcing is that eventually the media becomes dependent on the government. They become unlikely to bite the hand that feeds them because they need access for their stories.

Control of access is incredibly powerful, which we saw this weekend in the NYT’s story about military analysts. These men admitted that they sometimes told military falsehoods to keep their Pentagon contacts happy.

If the media become dependent on government and politicians for both their news and entertainment sources, it further removes the media’s ability to be an independent watchdog.

Which brings me to a question: how do we feel about satire? The Daily Show and Colbert Report seem to be able to critique politicians in ways available to few other media outlets. The two shows have also been using politicians as guests for a number of years. A) Do you think their success is driving the trend in other media outlets? and B) Could the critical distance of these shows make them immune from the effects?

Please discuss in groups for about ten minutes, and then we’ll report back.

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Cleveland.com (via TPM Election Central) has reported large numbers of Republicans crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary, for reasons - as they put it - ‘both pure and sinister.’

I thought I’d await the numbers from the TX caucus by doing a completely unscientific comparison of 2004 and 2008.

Guess what I found out? Math is hard! I would so not listen to what I’m about to say because I’m sure it’s really, really wrong. (But I think it’s right.)

Okay. The OH counties that went strongest for Bush in 2004 were Auglaize, Putnam, Van Wert, Mercer and Holmes.

Holmes County (fun fact: has the world’s largest concentration of Amish settlements!), for example, gave 76% of their 11165-odd votes to Bush in 2004. Today, 2553 votes went to Dems (65%-41% to Clinton) and 3536 to Republicans (51%-38% to McCain)

Holmes has 18,206 registered voters, which means - if I’ve crunched the numbers right - they got about 61% turnout for the general in 2004 and about 33% turnout today for the primaries. Given that I don’t know exactly what’s gone on with those numbers of registereds since 2004, I’m going to just call that half. It might be skewing it a bit, but I’m not a pollster, so whatevs.

If Holmes County’s percentages remained the same, you’d expect 4234 Republican votes and 1855 Democratic votes in the primaries today. In reality, only 3536 people voted Republican and 2553 voted for Democrats.

To put that in perspective, though only about half of the Holmes county residents that voted in 2004 voted in the primary today, the Democrats got only about 100 less votes than John Kerry garnered in the 2004 general. Dems got 42% of the vote today, Republicans got 58%. That’s an 18% switch from 2004.

Strange.

Let’s do another county now that I’ve got the hang of this - I started out dividing by the total number of residents (I was like, ‘15%, wtf?’).

I’m choosing Auglaize because it has a larger population and it’s a weird word (fun fact: it’s either a bastardization of the French for ‘clay water’ (yum!) or a Native American word for ‘fallen timbers’).

Alright, about 70% of Auglaize’s voters turned out in 2004, giving George Bush a 74% margin over John Kerry. Today, about 30.4% of their population voted. So, about 43.5% of those who voted in 2004, voted today in 2008, less than half.

[It's time for another beer...]

Again, if we’re going with the percentages from 2004, the Republicans should have had 7385 voters today, the Dems with 2562. In reality, the Democrats got a total of 4954 voters today (49.7%), while the Republicans received 5018 votes (51.3%). Another substantial switch to the Dems - they got 22.7% more primary voters than general election voters in 2004.

I’m going to make a chart:

[Wow. Glad I got that second beer. My favorite part was when it WP decided to delete the two rows of data and I got to recode the whole thing.]

Both counties have percentage splits similar to the statewide results (57% Clinton to 42% Obama). Auglaize’s Obama percentage is a little low (39%), but CNN hasn’t released their full county by county results yet, so I’m not sure why. [Since that's what I chose for 2004, I feel I should be consistent.]

So, something is clearly going on. Cleveland.com has testimonials about some voters just liking Obama or Clinton better than McCain and changing parties for their preferred candidate. There could also be Republicans voting for the candidate they see as weaker against McCain.

As I said, this is pretty unscientific. I should really be comparing it to the 2004 primaries, but a) I can’t find the data for that (if you can, email me) and b) even if I could, Kerry had pretty much wrapped everything up at that point. It’s a different kind of race when there are motivating factors to get people out to the polls. So, with John McCain as the huge front runner, perhaps all these numbers simply represent a larger number of Dems turning out for their own primary and Republicans staying home.

22.7% is a big swing though, I’d be my hat that some of those D votes came from Republicans. Let’s just hope they’re in it for the long haul.

To sum up, if my numbers are right (and again… jesus), it appears there was some crossover today, at least in counties that went strongly Republican in 2004. What that means in terms of a strengthening of the Democratic base or attempted sabotage on the part of Republicans, I’ll leave to the people who are actually getting paid for this sort of thing.

Aww, this is how I spend my free time.

Links:
2004 Ohio Election Results by County [CNN]
2008 Primary Results [CNN]

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I thought I was done, but this is amazing.

Rick Santorum (down by double digits-PA) has a new, rather elfin defense of the Iraq War:

“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.“It’s being drawn to Iraq and it’s not being drawn to the U.S.,” Santorum continued. “You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don’t want the Eye to come back here to the United States.”

Now, I’m tempted just to leave this one on funny mode, but it seems like Senator Santorum is saying that we invaded Iraq to use the Iraqi people as human shields.

Hilarity ensues.

Via ThinkProgress, Salon, and PillyBurbs.com

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