The Next Hurrah

Ode to the Undecided Voter

by emptypockets

Who are you undecided jerks
who know not where you stand
who in political shadows lurk
and never show your hands?
Are you so indecisive?
Or just uninformed?
I mean all due respect, but
really, it's no way to live.
Your opinions come pre-warmed
by pundits - stop, and listen to your gut!

What is your demographic?
What issues are you for?
Cut taxes, reduce traffic,
reach out and save the poor?
Are you 24 to 33?
Is your income median?
Who got your vote in '04?
Do you have your GED,
and are you in a union?
So tell me, which one are you for?

Do you like Clinton or Obama?
They each spent a hundred mil
in a mega-campaign-o-rama
so that you could get your fill
of health plans and of timetables
and of hope, pan-anodyne.
Yet here you sit, and say the two
are interchangeable
and either would be fine?
Oh crap... I'm one of you!

The Only Issue is (Still) Iraq

by emptypockets

A month ago there was a spate of "sky is green" articles claiming that Iraq is no longer an important issue for voters:

Iraq War Fades as an Election Issue (NPR, Dec 6) "...concerns about Iraq remain, but the war is not the only top-tier issue among voters. Many have turned their focus to domestic issues such as health care, energy, the mortgage crisis and immigration."

Pocketbook issues push past Iraq in poll (USA Today, Dec 28) "More than half the voters in an ongoing survey for The Associated Press and Yahoo News say the economy and health care are extremely important to them personally. They fear they will face unexpected medical expenses, their homes will lose value or mortgage and credit card payments will overwhelm them."

Domestic issues now outweigh Iraq (NY Times, Jan 3) "...the war is becoming a less defining issue among Democrats nationally, and it has moved to the back of the stage in the rush of campaign rallies, town hall meetings and speeches that are bringing the caucus competition to an end. Instead, candidates are being asked about, and are increasingly talking about, the mortgage crisis, rising gas costs, health care, immigration, the environment and taxes."

The funny thing is, when this voter sees "health care," "mortgage crisis," "rising gas costs," "the environment," and "taxes" I read them all as a single four-letter word: Iraq.

Dynasty

by emptypockets

Hillary Clinton made an interesting statement in the debate last night. She was asked how, as a member of one of the two families who have led the country the last 20 years, she could call herself an "agent of change".

[Side note for word watchers: "agent of change" brings up 25,000 google hits with "Clinton" and "Obama" together; 17,000 with "Clinton" alone; and only 9,000 with "Obama" alone. On the other hand, it brings up 22,000 with "Bush" and without the other two, a warning not to read google's tea leaves too quickly.]

I've been thinking a bit about the dynastic objections that are often raised around Clinton's candidacy. They come wrapped in some interesting packaging.

One wrapper, as noted above, is the idea that Clinton is a Washington insider and cannot embody the change that Americans deeply desire. This objection makes very little sense, because the change we're seeking is change from eight years of tax-cut-and-spend deficits, treating the military as a doormat, and a failure to use public money for the public good. The fact that she's part of a family who has a record of fixing exactly those problems is not really a drawback.

Another wrapper, most vocally espoused by Chris Matthews, is that she didn't make it here on her own. This attack is sometimes bundled with a critique of her experience, such as Blitzer made last night when he asked why she considers herself more experienced than Obama considering she has been a senator for about the same period and was not in an elected position as First Lady. This critique is also garbage, because obviously nobody makes it on their own -- we have all enjoyed the help of family, mentors, and colleagues to get where we are. Even Bush, as much as it pains me to say it, did not get to be president by being born into it. If that were the case, then surely first in line to the throne would not have been the children of a one-term wonder like Bush Sr (and even among his spawn Junior is not the sharpest tack). If nepotism were that powerful, the Clinton currently in office would as likely be Roger as Hillary. Surely, all these people have had advantages (though 90% of opportunity is recognizing it when it arrives) -- but even the most-privileged 1% of the country are still 3 million strong. And there are only two people left in the race.

But this attack comes closest to the real reason I think people are rubbed the wrong way by American political dynasty. It hews close to what it means to be an American -- the rejection of royalty or aristocracy or any privilege by birthright, of being born into one's class. That is the root of the great national fairy tale called the American Dream, that anyone can grow up to be president. And its fairy-tale nature is struck at quite directly by the cold reality that someone who's a Bush or a Clinton has got better odds at the big time than someone who's just a Schmoe, or a Suarez, or a Saad.

Obama obviously embodies the American Dream in a fairly straightforward way (as does Edwards, who reminded audiences he was the son of a millworker so often as to diminish its power). He plays on it often and successfully when he refers to the younger version of himself as just "a skinny kid with a funny name." Clinton embodies it no less. Her father was a conservative Republican curtain-maker. Born a Rodham, and having become a Clinton before Clintons were cool, her story is no less an affirmation of the national fairy tale than her husband's was, or Obama's is. (In fact, with so many fairy princes and princesses on the stage, one has to wonder if I'm right to disparage it as a fairy tale!) Yet she is cast effectively as an heir to power, not as someone who pulled herself up by the bootstraps.

Is this a sexism thing? Is it just a Hillary thing? Certainly we hear much more about her husband, about his parents, and about Obama's parents, (and about Edwards's parents) than we have heard about Hillary's. Could she have pre-empted some of the dynastic criticisms by talking more often about her childhood? Or would this have been seen as simply exploitative, a hollow cry of "I'm just one of you" from someone who has been elevated well above most of us for the last two decades, and who we've grown accustomed to seeing as American royalty and not as the daughter of a Chicago curtain-maker?

Unity Pledge

by emptypockets

Watching the Democratic debate, what strikes me most is how hard Clinton and Obama need to work to find a difference between them. And when they finally do differ, their views are more often complementary than dissonant -- they agree on the problems, and just have different ideas about how best to implement a solution. What's more, I feel like there's a genuine rapport between them that's developed over the campaign.

Compare that with the fire and the fury of the Republican debates, where from the first question candidates couldn't agree on as basic a question as whether Americans are better off now than they were 8 years ago, and often came to verbal blows personally. They're a mess.

The power of the Democratic ticket is clear not only in the debates, but in the fund-raising and turnout data for the campaigns and primaries so far. Americans are excited about getting rid of Bush/Cheney and getting one of these two into office. The point I'm building up to is that I'm wondering what the effect on the campaign would be if Obama and Clinton pledged to pick the runner-up as their vice-president.

Now, as I write this post, Blitzer just asked the same question, which is enough to make me think it's a terrible idea. And the candidates of course said they wouldn't rule it out (what else could they say?). But I still want to open it for discussion. Its effect on who would continue to vote in the primaries and who the eventual nominee is are one side of it. I'm more interested in how it will effect the tone of the remaining debates and the media messages in the months leading up to the convention.

If the two jointly announced a "Unity Pledge" before Super Tuesday -- a guarantee they will both be on the ticket in some order -- would they be more effective at distancing themselves as a pair from the other side? If they don't, will they necessarily devolve into more pettiness as the convention draws nearer (assuming their delegate counts stay neck-and-neck), or can the collegial tone they've (mostly) set so far survive on its own?

Could President Bush Become a U.S. Citizen?

by emptypockets

As Republican politicians continue to focus on immigration, with DHS Secretary Chertoff imposing new requirements for border crossing (although about 5 million of the country's 12 million illegal immigrants crossed the border legally and then simply overstayed their visas), and Governor Mike Huckabee reversing positions to appeal to extremist nativist groups, I began to wonder: if he weren't born here, could President Bush have become a U.S. citizen?

Just imagine his visa form:

Question 1: Have you ever been arrested or convicted for any offense or crime, even though subject of a pardon, amnesty or other similar legal action? Have you ever unlawfully distributed or sold a controlled substance (drug), or been a prostitute or procurer for prostitutes?

Let's see. Arrested twice in college, for stealing a Christmas wreath and for conduct at a football game.

Arrested for drunk driving.

Possibly arrested for cocaine.

We don't know if he was directly involved in hiring male prostitute Jeff Gannon/James Guckert to pose as a reporter and issuing him a White House press credential -- so let's skip that one.

Question 3: Do you seek to enter the United States to engage in export control violations, subversive or terrorist activities, or any other unlawful purpose? Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization as currently designated by the U.S. Secretary of State? Have you ever participated in persecutions directed by the Nazi government of Germany; or have you ever participated in genocide?

Hm. Another tough one. Does unlawful purpose include ordering illegal wiretaps?

Does it count as a subversive activity if you intend to bypass anti-torture laws? Is it subversive to overthrow the Constitution and ignore Congress -- and to say so in dozens of signing statements like this one (chosen at random)?

Well, let's not get bogged down in details. Just one more question though: are 80,000 Iraqi civilian deaths a genocide?

Question 6: Have you ever been afflicted with a communicable disease of public health significance or a dangerous physical or mental disorder, or ever been a drug abuser or addict?

I'll take the last part first. Cocaine again.

As to "a dangerous... mental disorder" -- do you really have to ask?

While a YES answer does not automatically signify ineligibility for a visa, if you answered YES you may be required to personally appear before a consular officer.

If only Congress held him to the same standards!

My Hypocrisy about Early Primaries

by emptypockets

Iowa is overblown. And people like me are to blame.

Consider three things: One, we don't know who got more votes in the Iowa Democratic caucus; we only know delegate percentages that don't directly reflect the popular vote. Two, Clinton came in third in delegate count by less than a third of a percent. Finally, recall that Clinton currently has ten percent more delegates than all other candidates put together. Yet, because of Iowa, she is considered to have lost her clear front-runner status and she was able to talk with a straight face in New Hampshire about her "comeback." This idea is ridiculous.

Yet it's not. Because politics is perception, and if it's perceived that she's stumbling then she will have stumbled. The expectation fulfills itself as people like me go to the polls and vote based on the way we think the results will turn out. If I think the race is down to Clinton and Obama -- and judging by every media report, it is -- then I surely will vote for one of those two. And, because Edwards failed to capture any of the earlier states, I will perceive him to be out of the running, and my perception will make it true.

And that's exactly the spot I find myself in. And it's exactly the spot that, apparently about 2,000 other progressive Edwards-leaning blog readers have found themselves in. Many of them, like me, have whined stridently about the disproportionate power of Iowa and New Hampshire -- yet, hypocritically, I would certainly consider changing my Feb. 5 vote based on the narrative that those two states created.

Short version: A vote that changes after Jan. 3 is a vote against the power of one's own state primary.

Newfound Transparency in Iowa [...someday]

by emptypockets

I'm a little slow out of the starting gate with this one, but it seems that one of the major criticisms of the Iowa Democratic caucuses -- that the actual vote totals are kept secret -- has quietly disappeared into the cornfields. The purpose of this post is to bring attention to that change, and raise the questions of how and why it came about. [Update 1/14/08, 8 am: In fact, it seems that this problem has not yet been addressed. See update at the end. Can one be slow out of the starting gate and jump the gun??]

Let me first define three terms I'll need to talk about this topic clearly:

RAW VOTE The number of caucusgoers who cast a vote for each candidate at the beginning of the caucus (in the first round of voting).

REALIGNED VOTE The number of caucusgoers who cast a vote for each candidate at the end of the caucus (after eliminating non-viable candidates, and when all is said and done).

DELEGATE COUNT The number of delegates to the state convention each candidate has earned at the end of caucus night.

Previously, the Iowa Democratic Party released only the last of these three numbers to the media. So, if you look at the CNN caucus results page for 2004, you'll see that Kerry won 1,128 State Delegates, or 38%, compared to Edwards's 957, or 32%. There's a note attached to those figures, reading

"Instead of releasing caucus vote totals, the Iowa Democratic Party releases a total indicating the number of delegates to the state convention each candidate will receive."

Why would that matter? Well, since the number of delegates per precinct is not determined by population (but by a formula involving turnout in the last two elections), it means that a candidate could, in principle, come in first in the delegate count without getting the most realigned votes. You could basically win the caucuses but lose the popular vote... and no one would ever know.

The Iowa Democratic Party has been criticized harshly for this lack of transparency. For instance, Saletan and Schiller wrote in Slate, under the header "Why you'll never know who won Iowa":

On caucus night, the Iowa Democratic Party will release the delegate count. Here's when the party will release the raw vote count and the realigned vote count: Never. The party won't compile or even record them, except as a temporary step in most precincts so that the caucus chair can determine how many delegates each candidate gets. The party doesn't want raw votes compiled and released, because it wants the caucuses to be a collaborative activity [...] but if you want to know how many voters stood up for John Edwards, you're out of luck.

That was four years ago. Just four weeks ago, the same complaint was filed by Cranberg, Strentz and Roberts in the NY Times op-ed "Iowa's Undemocratic Caucuses":

The percentage broadcast on the networks and reported in the newspapers is the candidate’s share of the 2,500 delegates the party apportions across Iowa’s 99 counties, based on Democratic voter turnout in each of the 1,784 precincts in the two most recent general elections. So, the turnout for a candidate in a precinct caucus could be huge, yet the candidate’s share of the delegate pie could be quite small — if that precinct had low voter turnout in 2004 and 2006.

The authors seem, to me, to confound the raw vote and the realigned vote in their piece, but as I read it they are saying that neither the raw nor the realigned vote is released -- only the delegate count (you might want to click the link to see if you read it the same way).

So I was all set to get royally cheesed about this lack of transparency, and Iowa's gall in insisting it maintain its first-in-the-nation status while the state Democratic party wouldn't even open its books to ensure the kind of fair vote accounting that Democrats have been campaigning for nationwide. And just as I fired up my snarkblaster to smother those poor Iowans in a deluge of withering blog-posting, I discovered a curious thing:

The 2008 vote totals are online.

That link is to an Excel file published by the Gazette on one of their caucus coverage web pages (it's the first link on that page). Admittedly, it contains only the realigned vote, not the raw vote (which would have been nice to see), but the numbers add to 250,005, so it seems they would have to be an actual head-count, not just delegate numbers. The percentages are the same as the ones reported that night, so it would seem the media quietly (and perhaps without even being aware of it) switched from reporting the Iowa delegate count in previous years to reporting the realigned vote count this year.

[Update 1/14/08, 8 am, continued: Caucus turnout was about 240,000. There are 2,500 state delegates. It appears that the Gazette may have followed the Associated Press in simpy multiplying state delegates by 100 (to eliminate fractions, I guess) which coincidentally came out pretty close to real turnout. Bottom line is, we still only know the delegate counts, not the popular vote. And you can bottle up the next paragraph and save it -- I hope -- for 2012.]

If that's the case, I want to commend Iowa Democrats on a well-deserved move toward open election reporting. I also want to suggest that they should have gotten more recognition for this move -- particularly by those who have criticized them in the past -- than they did.

But most importantly, I'd like to know how and why this change occurred, especially since it happened so quietly (to me, anyway). When did it happen? Who pushed for it? Why this year?

I've written to two of the NYT op-ed authors asking if they know what happened, and they have not yet replied (in fairness, I wrote under this pseudonym and from a yahoo address, so I could have easily been spam-filtered or otherwise screened out as a crank). This weekend, I wrote to the Gazette and the Iowa Democratic Party asking the same questions. I'll let you know if I hear anything... and, if anyone out there knows more, please post it in the comments.

The Iowa Crockuses

by emptypockets

As you're no doubt aware, the Iowa crockuses are tonight. They are a folksy homespun tradition -- you can tell it's folksy and homespun by the living rooms and pie -- that was invented by Dr. Alfred Crockus, who believed that participatory democracy would be made most inclusive and the results most accurate if everyone went to strangers' homes at night, got drunk, and performed arithmetic.

This year's crockuses seem, to me, to have less media gravity -- to have sucked fewer words and ink into their orbit -- than the ones in 2004, which took place on Jan. 19 of that year. The Christmas and New Year's holidays provided a nice winter snowstorm of light, fluffy news which is great for packing into cable news, as long as you don't have to shovel it. By comparison, at this time four years ago we had another couple of weeks of Iowa campaign events and media coverage to inflate the significance of that state's results. To my mind, this year's crockuses feel more like a starter's gun than a finishing line.

My favorite site for tracking news about the race is http://www.electoral-vote.com, which has switched fully into primary mode as of the New Year. As you can see there, the polls are essentially "25% +/- 5%" for all three of the Democratic contenders, and they've been that way for nearly a full year. It's difficult enough to interpret poll numbers on a two-way race, where the preference numbers are typically an order of magnitude greater than the error. In a three-way (or more) race, where everyone's close and the fraction favoring any given candidate is small relative to error, the polls are almost as short on substance as the crockuses themselves.

And that's not to mention the funny way the crockuses themselves work, prone to mistakes, manipulation, and mess-ups. There may be disputes about the tally at the caucus site, where the loudest voice usually wins, and misinformation about the numbers and the candidates spread on-site to screw with people's votes. And, after all that vote-wangling and miscounting, we may never know how many individual voters were, in the end, recorded as having voted for a given candidate -- because those person-by-person counts are mailed to party headquarters and kept there, not disclosed to the press or the public. Ever.

I was only beginning to read blogs, and had not been commenting or writing, during the 2004 crockuses, but I recall well watching the broadcast of a couple of individual crockuses on C-SPAN that night, and following along on the DFA blog. I've been looking back at the archive of the site from that night, and find that my reactions were well mirrored by a series of comments from someone commenting as "Perry Young," who was liveblogging (perhaps?) before liveblogging was a word:

69. I am watching the Caucus on CSPAN 2, it is a disorganized mess. The people can't get phone calls out due to Bush callers blocking the line - they are having trouble with the math - and it looks like bedlam!!!! For a person from Texas this looks like madness. People trying to do math and they can't get figures to balance. They are getting cut off. Maybe it is just that I am not used to it, but this looks like a nightmare!!!!!

86. How can anyone assure accuracy in an environment such as what I am seeing on CSPAN-2 right now? It looks really really confused. I think I see why Dean spoke out against the Caucus system. It is a prescription for mass error. Wow, never seen anything like this.

115. Watching CSPAN-2 - this looks crazy. Can these people run a calculator? What is the control for error? I am amazed, I have never seen one of these before. Very very very weird. I am used to primaries.

That's just about how I felt. In fact, this post is something of a political birthday for me -- as best I can remember, the first time I commented on a blog or used the name 'emptypockets' was around Jan. 25 2004, in a sort of talking blues about the Iowa system and the race so far. (And, listening to it again now, it's not half bad!) So, happy birthday to me, and -- to you -- happy crockusing!

Imagine there's no telecoms

by emptypockets

This afternoon, on the outskirts of Lima, in a mountain village a mile and a half above sea level, all 46 children and each of their teachers are wired. Their laptops came courtesy of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, and a quarter million other Peruvian children will soon be wired as well, as are children in other pilot programs in Abuja, Nigeria; Villa Cardal, Uruguay; Samkha village, Thailand; Porto Alegre, Brazil; and Khairat, India.

(You can be, too, for $200 and a matching tax-deductible donation to give one to a child somewhere. The give-one-get-one program runs until Dec. 31.)

There are several things to say about this remarkable project, but first let me establish the basics. The OLPC laptops are small, power-efficient laptops built to withstand rugged conditions. Each has a microphone, a camera, a screen that can be viewed in bright daylight or in dark, a small amount of flash memory (no hard drive), and innovative wireless networking capabilities that I'll come back to in a minute.

They are open-source, run linux, and are produced, sold, and distributed by a non-profit academic group as a charitable enterprise -- not by a computer company. From what I can tell, the villages that receive them are poor, but children have clothing, access to clean water, limited electricity (the laptops can be charged from a wide range of voltages, solar panels, or a hand pull), and some educational infrastructure. Rather than sprinkle the laptops throughout the population of developing countries, OLPC is targeting individual villages and saturating them, so that every child in the village has his or her own personal computer to use at school and at home.

A number of criticisms have been leveled against the program, including that the money would be better spent on providing more teachers, and that the program seeks to destroy some natural harmony that exists between poor people and the land (for example, here). With regard to the latter, the ads for the give-one-get-one program, showing a black girl with a laptop perched on her head like a bucket of water, leaves itself particularly open to critique, implying as it does -- to me, anyway -- that the program is targeted to Africa (it's not) and that the recipients are supposed to swap basic resources for new technology and smile.

I'll come back to these two topics -- what you can learn from a computer that you don't learn from a teacher, and whether "living in harmony with nature" is a myth -- in a couple of posts down the road. Right now, though, I'd like to overlook the question of all the good that I think will come out of the project in the future... and look instead at some of the good that, perhaps, already has.

Qaddafi gets his reward

by emptypockets

We've extensively covered the story of the six healthcare workers scapegoated by Libya, telling you how they were blamed for an outbreak of HIV in a Libyan hospital, raped, beaten, and tortured in prison, and sentenced to death (here, here, here, and here); how American corporations nevertheless continued to expand trade with Libya, and how political leaders like Hillary Clinton discouraged diplomatic efforts to free the workers (here and here); and, finally, how the EU as a whole, and France in particular, ultimately secured their last-minute release (here).

So it's only fitting that we bring you the final chapter: this week, Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi is in France, receiving his reward: the royal treatment, meetings with national leaders, and a deal for Libya to receive several nuclear reactors from France. Happy International Human Rights Week.

I don't know how to feel about this outcome. Was the visit this week a part of the original package, which included $400 million for the families of HIV-infected children, that Libya extorted from the EU before the medics were released? Or is the visit just what it feels like: a lollipop for the child who stops his tantrum, a $20 tip for the mugger who didn't take your whole wallet?

The most positive light I can see it in is a reference to the old chestnut of game theory known as "The Prisoner's Dilemma," in which a pair of players have the option of cooperating with or exploiting each other -- the rewards are higher if you both cooperate, but attempting to do so runs the risk of exploitation by your partner. The most successful strategy for years (up until a funny trick was discovered in 2004) has been "tit-for-tat" -- start off cooperatively, then do whatever your partner did the last time. If he's good to you, return the favor; if he screws you, screw him back next time.

This translates directly into political games, and is sometimes considered to be one of the guiding principles of cold war strategy. Perhaps France's Sarkozy, unlike the "never cooperate" strategy adopted by Clinton or the "always cooperate" strategy used by American business, is simply practicing "tit-for-tat": regardless of Qaddafi's past, his most recent action was beneficial, so he gets benefits. If Qaddafi acts well in the future, he'll presumably get more rewards; if not, he'll presumably be cut off until the next "turn." One thing to note about this strategy is that it doesn't mean you'll always "win" -- there will be events where your partner screws you -- but, in the end, you come out farther ahead than you would with any other strategy.

Considering that in the mid-1980s Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein appeared to be a well-matched pair of terroristic dictators, and today one has been pulled from a hole and hanged while the other has pitched his tent in the fertile fields of France (and I don't mean that in a dirty way), it would seem that "Prisoner's Dilemma" is a game Qaddafi plays well.