The 2004 Presidential Election (joke)

Dr. Seuss wrote a children’s book about the 2004 Presidential Election:

One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State

Selection 2004: Making Lemonade

• Even in Mississippi, at least 14% of people thought that preventing gay marriage via constitutional amendment was a really stupid idea.
   
• Pete Coors lost.
   
• Seattle’s monorail is back on track, and we’ll clean up Hanford, and we won’t have video slots in every bar and convenience store (and Tim Eynman lost again), and we won’t have a sales tax increase to pay for an undefined education “trust fund”.

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Updated on May 31, 2011

The monorail later got repealed again and has not resurrected.  But we do now have Light Rail from downtown to the airport, and they will be extending that to the University of Washington and (we hope) up the East Side to Bellevue.  And a trolley from downtown to South Lake Union (and the old monorail from downtown to the Seattle Center).  And they are now starting on a streetcar from Pioneer Square (and past Light Rail in the International District) to Capitol Hill, due to be done in late 2012.
 

Selection 2004: Flip-Flops

A couple weeks ago, I ran into a display of these at the local Walgreens.  (Click here for the website.)

Apparently these pendants, in all sorts of designs for every holiday and theme you can imagine, are widely available, but I’ve never run into one before.  (I’m not a sorority girl, though.  Delta Nu!!!)  Can’t help but think that there’s a political intent behind a patriotic-bejeweled flip-flop during this Election Year, though.

But what intent?  Are you projecting a constant reminder of the “flip-flop” imagery used against Kerry, like with all the people holding such footwear at the Republican convention?  Or would you be embracing that imagery and saying “Flip-flops are okay, and they can even be patriotic!

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Updated on May 20, 2011
 

Selection 2004: Likely Voters

Repeatedly, we’ve heard about polls of “Registered Voters” and “Likely Voters”.  I had kind of assumed that the latter term meant that the pollsters asked “Do you plan to vote on November 2?” and got some answer other than “No” or “If I get around to it.”

That’s not the case, however.  “Likely” actually means “voted in the 2000 election.”  Suddenly the polls of these people is shown in a different light, and the value of the polls becomes somewhat questionable.  “Likely” voters leaves out two important sets of people.

• Those who could have voted in 2000 (were registered), but did not.  An oft-quoted statistic is that perhaps 4 million “Evangelical Christians” stayed home in 2000.  This is the group that Bush is trying to pull in via his stances on stem cell research, abortion, and gay marriage, and which assorted bishops and ministers are trying to fire up.
   
• And then there are those who could not vote in 2000 but can now: especially young adults ages 18-22, and newly naturalized citizens.  Young people tend to vote the Democrat/liberal side more often, as do immigrants.  There will likewise be millions of these potential voters this year.

There’s no way of knowing just what percentage of each group will actually turn out to vote, nor who they will actually vote for (although we can probably guess for the Evangelical Christians), nor which group will be larger in the end, but with the believed very small set of “undecided” voters out there, these groups loom large in their power.

I have heard is that there has been a much greater volume of new voter registrations this year than in years past — significant enough that there’s one case under investigation of a company in Nevada gathering registrations and then discarding the Democrat ones rather than turning them all in — and that a lot of these registrations are coming from high schools and colleges.

Among other things, these kids are smart enough to see the potential for a draft looming.  I know that when I was their age, avoiding such would have been one of my big issues (as it clearly was for Bush when he was younger, and presumably to a degree for Kerry), and I would have tended toward the candidate less likely to institute such.  (And here, that would be the guy who is opposed to the war.)

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Updated on May 19, 2011
 

Selection 2004: The Great Debate (#4)

Admission up front: I am biased against Bush, in favor of Kerry.  Admission out back: I’m not overly thrilled with Kerry.

I again listened to most of the debate, all but maybe three questions worth, but did not see any of it.  Nothing surprising, although phrases like “flip-flop”, “I have a plan”, “It’s just not credible”, and “You can run, but you can’t hide” were mercifully absent (or at least less prominent) in this debate.

• Is there anything which can’t be solved by Pell Grants, Mr. Bush?
   
• “No litmus test on judges” as the answer to whether you’ll try to overturn Roe v. Wade?  We’ll take that dodge as a “Yes,” since you didn’t say no.  Not that anything but “Yes” could be expected, given the Republican platform plank this year seeking a Constitutional amendment outlawing all abortions.  (And Bush has already said he does have a litmus test: strict Constitutional interpretation.  Flip-flop much, Mr. President?)
   
• Speaking of Dodge City, what kind of an answer was that on the Minimum Wage?  For a 25 year-old single mother working at Taco Bell, education (and Pell Grants) are not the answer.  A 40% pay hike from $5-something an hour to $7-something an hour, that will help.  (Not that education isn’t important, but that pays off 2, 5, 10 years down the line, and it doesn’t do shit for those who are below the poverty line now.)
   
• Kerry is being painted as not just a liberal, but a liberal from Massachusetts.  I’m inclined to interpret that as code for “He supports gay marriage,” despite Kerry’s protests to the contrary.  Same-sex civil marriage is the most prominent recent event pushing Massachusetts into the hearts and minds of Americans.
   
• In one question, Kerry made a reference to there being two education systems in this country, one for the haves and one for the have nots.  (Or something similar to that.)  While that mostly plays to Edwards’s “Two Americas” speech, it also may be code for Kerry not supporting Charter Schools, since such are usually painted as either a benefit only for better-off families, or as a method for publicly funding religious-oriented schools.

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Updated on May 18, 2011
 

Selection 2004: The Great Debate (#3)

Admission up front: I am biased against Bush, in favor of Kerry.  Admission out back: I’m not overly thrilled with Kerry.

I didn’t get to see or hear all but about 10 minutes of the second debate.  The third one, I listened to about half of it — on the computer at work and in the car — and then saw the last 20+ minutes of it.

A few items that I haven’t seen noted enough:

• Bush did better with this debate, or at least he did “less badly”.  If my estimation of him didn’ fall as far after this debate as after the first one, does then mean he did well?
   
• Yes, it begins to sound repetitive that John Kerry “has a plan.”  But you know, at least he does have one.  Does Bush?
   
• The first thing out of Bush’s mouth about what he’s done for the environment is to limit emissions on off-road diesel engines.  Oh, that’s way up there among high-priority items.
   
• On one of the last questions (on mistakes, I think) — asked by the gray-haired woman in glasses — Bush was talking directly to her (or at her?), and she had this terrific shell-shocked look on her face, like she was thinking “I wish he’d leave me alone, and God, I hope he doesn’t get re-elected.”
   
• I don’t think either candidate did well on the controversy questions — stem-cell research, tax dollars for abortion, Supreme Court appointments — but Bush certainly fumbled his way verbally through the minefield much more so than Kerry did.
   
• Bush is still on the repetition track: “It’s just not credible.”  (With little other than repetition to prove the lack of credibility, of course.)

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Updated on October 14, 2004

Updated on May 11, 2011
 

Selection 2004: The Great Debate (#1)

By now, you’ve read all the pundits about the debate, with the liberals all saying Kerry won and the conservatives mostly saying it was a tie (because they couldn’t say Bush lost, of course).

I listened to the debate on the radio.  The main effect this has is that you hear what the candidates say and how they say it; you are not distracted by what they are wearing or the gestures they make, nor in how a given network displays the debate, focusing on one candidate or the other at critical times.  (On the flip side, you don’t get to see the gestures they make, whether they look at the camera or the moderator, or how they visually project themselves.  Andrew Sullivan’s blog (archives only go back to 2006, unfortunately) had an e-mail from a viewer who saw mostly the reverse of me: he saw the debate with the sound off, and so could focus exclusively on the visuals.)

A few items that I haven’t seen noted enough:

• Bush sounded uncertain in the debate.  Kerry would hit an answer or a rebuttal hard out of the gate, but Bush tended to spend (waste) the first 10 seconds or so with false starts and the like.  Not only did this cause him to have less time for his answers, but it made him sound unprepared, annoyed, and flustered.  Not a good image to project.
   
• Bush had a couple of major flubs, most notably the bit where he conflated 9/11 with Iraq as the attacker.  It’s bad enough that he continues to project this misconception, but it gave Kerry an automatic attack point.  (Bush lobbed the ball up and didn’t defend against a spike.)  Bush’s handlers should have planned for this and directed Bush to never, ever make that sort of a comment, knowing the damning response it would get.  Either Bush’s handlers are overconfident, or Bush ignored their advice. That’s potentially fatal.
   
• As I understand it, the focus of this debate — Foreign Policy — was chosen by the Bush campaign.  It is the arena where Bush is supposedly strongest, and if that were true, choosing to do that debate first and giving Kerry a major smackdown would have been very good for Bush.  But that distinctly did not happen.  If this was Bush on his strongest topic, how will he do when discussing domestic issues?  (But Kerry needs to be sure he doesn’t get overconfident by the results of this debate.  I suspect that’s what Bush did.)

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Updated on May 10, 2011
 

Selection 2004: The Gender Card

The Washington State governor’s race is now down to two candidates: Christine Gregoire and Dino Rossi.  Up until a couple weeks before the primary, every reference I had seen or heard to Gregoire used her full first name, but her website and all the yard signs use the shorter form, “Chris”.

Perhaps the shorter, single-syllable form sets her off from two-syllable competitor “Dino”.  Perhaps it removes any religious connection which might come from having “Christ” in the name.  Perhaps the marketing wonks said that the meter of the two two-syllable names was bad.  Perhaps she saves a couple cents per yard sign by using less ink.  (In know, or perhaps “Chris” is really what she prefers and all the earlier references to “Christine” weren’t especially accurate.)

My first thought when I saw one of the signs, though, was that she was using a shorter, non-gendered name in an attempt to project a masculine image, especially to more conservative parts of the state and to those voters who will go entirely on name recognition, never seeing the face of whom they vote for.  “Yeah, I’ll vote for that ‘Chris Gregory’ guy.  Probably better that the guy named for the dinosaur on The Flintstones.”

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Updated on May 3, 2011
 

Selection 2004: Absentee Voting

This question was posed on the whiteboard at work today:

If I send in my absentee ballot on election day and the winners are announced that night, does that mean my vote doesn’t count?

Well frankly, yes.  Your vote doesn’t count in that case.

More to the point, your vote never counts.  Almost.  The only time a single, individual vote ever really counts is when the election is decided by a single vote.  And that never happens.  (But it can sure come close.  Florida, Oregon and New Mexico in the 2000 Presidential election were all won in the hundreds or low thousands of votes.  And the last Seattle monorail vote was won in the tens of votes, and absentee ballots could have changed the poll results.)

The power of democracy is that our votes add up.  Individually, we have no power, but combined with others of like mind, we become a wave, a force, and unstoppable movement.  (Or not.)

The power in voting comes from, for lack of a better term, peer pressure.  “I did my duty, did you do yours?”  On some level, I vote so that I can coerce/guilt other people to vote as well.

I also vote so that I have the right to bitch about the results.  If you don’t vote for anyone, even if you would have chosen a candidate who didn’t win, then you have no right to complain.  (Okay, you always have the right — that’s Free Speech for you — but any reason for people to take you seriously vanishes.)

A third reason to vote is to make a statement.  In the 2000 primary election in California, only registered party members would have their votes counted, but people form other (or no) parties could still vote in those races.  I was registered Green at the time, so I may have had a choice between Nader and some even less electable guy, and I didn’t really care about the outcome of that race.  So instead, I “threw my vote away” by voting for John McCain on the Republican slate.  My vote had no direct impact, but perhaps it (and others like it) were noted by the California Republican Party as an indication of the views of non-party members on the overall race, or even just by the McCain people to encourage his different heading on Republican issues.  Even if there was no formal impact of my vote because of the non-value of it, it still gives me an example to talk about — bitching rights, if you will — something that voting for Nader in that primary would not have done.

Back to absentee ballots, though.

Primarily (ahem), absentee voting is like any other voting: you get to say “I voted, did you?”  You did your civic duty.  You participated.

Washington State, in particular, has a strong tradition of absentee voting.  There have been many close races where absentee ballots affected the outcome of the election (or at least might have done so, as with the monorail vote mentioned above).

Further, remember that come November, you aren’t voting only for President.  (At least I hope you won’t be doing only that vote.)  You are voting for President (and Vice-President and the entire administration which goes with it), and for Governor, and Attorney General, and Senator, and state legislators, and Insurance Commissioner, and whether to switch from a “Montana” style primary to the “Louisiana” style, and probably some tax levies and stuff
like that.  The big races are the ones which get announced, yes, but you’ll probably have to read a newspaper to get all the details on the smaller ones, especially on which ones are close.  Any within a couple percentage points, even if the winner is “projected”, could be affected by absentee ballots, so your vote on lesser issues and races could still count.  (It’s worth noting as well that absentee ballots tend to be more liberal, reflecting people who are intent on voting as much as those responding to a particular issue or race, making your vote in either direction that much more valuable.)

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Updated on April 27, 2011

In Washington, we have moved increasingly to “vote by mail” voting — no more going to the local elementary school on election day, instead you fill out your ballot in private and send it in — which effectively makes those elections totally absentee.

Selection 2004: Thongs, Sandals, and Pool Slippers

I’m not especially concerned about Kerry’s alleged “flip-flops”.  By and large, the claims of such boil down to two things: change and context.

First is the idea that politicians are not allowed to change their position on issues over time.  Kerry spent nearly 20 years in the United States Senate.  Think about the ways the world (and American society) has changed in the past twenty years.  Think about the ways you have changed in that time.  (Myself, I’ve gone from 18, a single virgin, and on my way into college to be a Physics major, to being 38, a kinky gay leatherman with a partner and two step-children, and a home-owning software tester.)  I see my own attitudes having changed over that period, reflecting both the changing mores of society and my personal educational and economic growth.  I have no problem believing that a politician might have held some views twenty years ago — and made votes on behalf of his constituents’ needs at the time — but would vote differently today due to those views or the needs of those constituents having shifted over the decades.

Second is that complaints about such “flip-flops” are taken largely out of context.  In isolation, it may appear that Kerry voted one way at one time, but the opposite way later on.  But with many of these votes, you have to go a level deeper.  What was it that drove his vote?  Odds are that the details are not identical.  Was one vote on procedural grounds?  Was another to curtail a budget out of control?  Was there an unrelated rider amendment attached to the bill, making it more important to stop the rider than to pass the main bill?

But the ultimate reason I’m not concerned about “flip-flops” from Kerry is because Clinton — perhaps the best overall President we’ve had in my lifetime — was himself accused of “waffling”.  (You may recall that a waffle was used as Clinton’s stand-in in the Doonesbury strips of the time.)  In fact, even “flip-flop” was used on Clinton, such as from an article I read once from The Daily Texan (no archives there, and the original reprinted link I had is defunct).  If they want to put Kerry’s governing style in the same class as Clinton’s, hey, no problem.

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Updated on April 20, 2011
 

Selection 2004: Primary-ly Geared to Generate Lawsuits

Washington state has a new Primary Election system this year, as mandated by a court decision.  We used to have a “blanket primary”, where anyone could vote for any candidate — a Democrat in this race, a Republican in that one, and so forth.  In our new system — the so-called “Montana” style (or semi-open) — voters must select a single party and then vote only for people running under that party.  (Everyone gets to vote in the “Non-Partisan” races, like for Judge — we call them non-partisan because there’s no explicit political party listed, but we all know every one of the candidates has a political agenda of his or her own which may color how they perform once in office.)  The winner from each of the main parties (Democrat, Republican, and Libertarian), plus any minor party candidates, ends up on the General Election ballot come November.

Needless to say, a lot of people are angry about this, because it changes how they have been able to vote in the past.  I certainly understand that, because I, too, liked that freedom.  But people miss an important fact there, the purpose of this sort of a Primary Election:

The Primary Election is not intended to winnow the field down to just two candidates.  (At least not in most states.  Some use the “Louisiana” style, which does just that: if the top two vote getters happen to be from the same party, those two end up in the General Election.)  Instead, the Primary Election’s purpose is to choose the candidate from each party.  To that end, the parties are right in wanting only Democrats to vote for Democrat candidates, and only Republicans to vote for Republicans.  Or at least Democrats-for-the-moment: if you are willing to vote only for Democrats, they’ll (grudgingly) take you, no matter what party your official registration is with (if any).

Part of the goal here is to prevent “spoilers”.  You may not care who gets the nod from your favorite party (or it may be in the bag), but you may feel that one candidate in the opposition party has a greater chance of beating out your party, so you might want to throw your vote to his in-party opponent in order to get the less “dangerous” candidate into the General Election.  Needless to say, the political parties don’t like such “spoilers”.  One way around them is to set things up so that you can still vote as a “spoiler”, but you have to be one across the board: if you want to vote for anyone from that other party, you can only vote for that party.  (Or you can still cross party lines and have your ballot invalidated.)

And that’s what my big concern is with this election.

There are two balloting methods going on.  In most of the state, voters will declare which party they intend to vote for, are given the ballot for that party (all three ballots have the non-partisan section attached), and away they go to vote.  There are two downsides to this: first, each precinct has to have enough ballots for every registered voter (although at best half will actually vote) to vote in any party, even Libertarian (which is apt to actually get maybe 5%, tops); this triplication can be expensive.  Second, this presumably means publicly declaring your party intention to people who could be your friends (or enemies) and who might be taken aback at a party affiliation (even if only temporary) which does not match their own; I’m sure there are ways to avoid such declaration, though.

But for six counties — Snohomish, King, Pierce, Kitsap, Klickitat, and Chelan, which contain large Washington cities such as Everett, Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, Bremerton, and Wenatchee — there is none of this triple ballot stuff.  Each person gets a single ballot, marks a preferred party, and votes accordingly.  But if there is any crossing of party lines (intentional or accidental), including marking the wrong party and then voting consistently beyond that, those votes are invalidated:

[Secretary of State Sam] Reed expects a number of ballots will be tainted, with voters neglecting to mark their party preference or trying to vote for candidates of more than one party. Those votes won’t count.

Above excerpt from the Seattle Times.  According to the Official Local Voters’ Pamphlet, only votes which don’t conform to the party selection are discounted, rather than the entire ballot.

This thing is bound to be as problematic as the Butterfly Ballot was in Florida in 2000.  In the other counties, there’s no question about keeping to the selected party, but in several of the largest cities in the state — and in the strongest Democratic areas, if that’s important — ballots which can be expected to cause confusion are being used, in the name of saving money.  (Which I’m all for, mind you!)  But you have to admit, things look a little suspicious.

If there are any close races from those counties, you can expect lawsuits up the butt and new buzz phrases to drive “hanging chad” out of the vocabulary.  The state had better plan on recording all the invalid votes in order to provide statistics to refute those lawsuits, and have backup plans in place for handling recounts.

Fortunately (perhaps), Initiative 872 comes along in November, and if it passes (which is considered likely), will move us to a “Louisiana” style primary (the old “blanket primary” was deemed unconstitutional).  Of course, the political parties are campaigning against it, “saying it would deprive voters of party choice and could disenfranchise those who back minor-party candidates.”  (The first part is also known as “It would take away some of our power.”  The second part is truer, but if you can’t make Top Two in September, hon, you ain’t gonna make it in November, either.)

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Updated on April 14, 2011

Initiative 872 passed.  The political parties sued.  The Ninth Circuit Court declared it unconstitutional in 2005.  Finally, the US Supreme Court upheld the initiative in 2008.

The net effect being that now the purpose of the primary is to narrow the field of candidates to two.

Selection 2004: Undecided

Is there really anyone “undecided” left in this country when it comes to who they are going to vote for in November?  Myself, I’ve been pretty well decided since, oh, December 2000: Anybody But Bush.  Firmly so since this campaign started, anyway, once we knew for sure that only a Democrat opponent would have a chance of winning and that such could be no worse than Bush.

But what about other people?  Are any of them truly “Undecided”, or is that a myth?  As I think about, they are probably real, but not in the way the term is usually batted around.

• I suspect that anyone who voted Democrat in 2000 — and most who voted Green (Nader) — is in the “No question” camp.  Polls indicate that there are a number of people who voted for Bush last time who are at least questioning it this time.  So some “Undecideds” are actually “Undecided whether they will vote for Bush again.”
• I’m on record as being less than thrilled with Kerry as a nominee (although no worse than I was with Gore in 2000), but I know that I will swallow and vote for him anyway, as the candidate who will do my pet issues the least harm, and because not voting for him is 1/2 a vote for someone who will do those issues some harm.  I’m sure, however, that there are people who genuinely can’t stand either Kerry or Bush, who think that neither one is good for the country, and thus they are “Undecided whether they will vote for either guy.”
• As we all know, there are many who are apathetic about the entire thing.  This is especially the younger crowd, the ones who are old enough to be cynical without being wise, or who simply don’t care.  These are “Undecided whether they will bother to vote at all.”
• Everyone likes to be a winner, or at least on the winning side.  Look at sports fans, who are gleefully happy if “their team” wins (even when they don’t live where that team is based).  I’m sure there are people out there who just want to say they voted for the winner (or maybe gripe because their candidate didn’t win; sometimes they want griping rights more than a winning candidate, because they know they’ll never be happy with whomever wins).  And thus they are “Undecided which way they will throw their vote until the last minute, when they can see who is apt to be the winner.”

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Updated on April 4, 2011
 

Selection 2004/Gay Marriage: Pending Amendments

Hidden down at the bottom of a s CNN article (no longer available, try this summary), after all the stuff about the Republican Party convention platform calling for an amendment to ban same-sex civil marriage, is this little tidbit:

On abortion, the proposed platform again calls for a constitutional ban, asserting “the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.”

You got that?  The Religious Right now sees Constitutional amendments as the best way to forward their agenda.  (Yes, I’m aware that a call for an abortion amendment has been a staple of their platform for several elections, but this time it has company.)  They realize that the weight of law and court precedent is increasingly against them on the gay rights front, on abortion, on stem-cell research, on flag burning, and so on, and thus that their best (perhaps only) option is to do an end-run to where the courts can’t touch them.  (And then presumably stand there, going “Neener-neener!  We win!”)

You want a slippery slope?  This is it.  If any of these controversial amendments pass — just pass Congress, before they ever get to the states — there will be a rush to push all of them through the channel and burst the dam.

One of the primary purposes of the courts is to protect the individual and the minority against the rule of the majority.  This is the right wing’s method of imposing majority rule.

You want something that will destroy our civilization?  Don’t look at gay marriage.  Look at amendments which restrict the rights of minorities.

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Updated on August 31, 2004

Updated on March 31, 2011
 

Selection 2004: Ho Hum 2

Kerry/Edwards as the Democratic ticket.  Completely predictable.  Boring.  I continue with the same feeling of impending void: I will vote for Kerry/Edwards, not because I’m enthused by them (nor because I’m a registered Democrat and always vote the party line, since I’m not and I don’t), but because I can’t vote for Bush/Cheney and because I (we) can’t afford to not vote.

On the flip side, Edwards probably truly is the best choice.  Not because he gives a North/South balance to the ticket, or because his “humble beginnings” offset Kerry’s “privilege”, but because he minimizes exposure.  The only thing that the Republicans seem to have to throw at Edwards right now is a relative lack of experience, which is exactly what Bush himself ran on four years ago, as a candidate who had held only one elected office before running for President.  Edwards is no less experienced than Bush was, and in fact has private successes prior to office, which the current President cannot claim.

Updated on July 8, 2004
 

Selection 2004: The Real Reason to Vote

There has been all sorts of talk about whether Kerry (or possibly Edwards, and formerly Dean) is “electable”, and about the importance of getting Bush out of office.  But I think these comments forget something.

Getting Bush out of office is not the goal here.

Or rather, it’s only part of the goal.  Bush isn’t a monolith, a king, a micro-manager.  He isn’t behind all the decisions and all the politicking.  His administration is.

In other words, if we get rid of Bush, we also get rid of Karl Rove.  We get rid of Donald Rumsfeld.  We get rid of John Ashcroft.  We get rid of Dick Cheney.  (We also get rid of Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Christine Todd-Whitman, and other lesser darknesses.  It’s less clear that there’s any vast benefit there, but I’m happy to throw out those bath toys when we drain the dirty bathwater.)

So remember when it comes to voting: you aren’t just voting for the lesser of two individual evils, you are voting to oust an entire corrupt and distasteful suite of evils.
 

Selection 2004: Ho Hum

What dismays me the most about the shift from Dean to Kerry (or possibly Edwards) as the heir apparent for the Democratic nomination — and by extension, the general paring down of candidates, although that was inevitable — is that I’m not sure I can get worked up over Kerry (or possibly Edwards).

Dean, I had a feeling for.  Or at least via the media, I had the feeling I was supposed to have a feeling for him.  I inferred a personality, a stance on a variety of issues, and thus someone whom I could actually care about.

With Kerry (or possibly Edwards), I have no such feeling, nor the feeling of the need to have a feeling.  It’s no longer “Is this the best guy?  Do I agree with what he says?  Does he fire me up?”  Instead, it has become “Okay, this is the Democrat guy (or possibly Edwards).  Guess he’s the one I’ll vote for.  Sure hope he can beat Bush.”

In other words, “Yeah, whatever.

I know I’ll vote, and I know I won’t vote for Bush.  So now I just yawn until March 2, when we’ll know if it’s actually going to be Kerry (or possibly Edwards will pull enough states to prolong things).  And then I’ll stretch and scratch myself and twiddle my thumbs until July (or whenever the official Candidate Crowning Ceremony occurs).  And then I’ll nap until late October.

So far as I’m concerned, the only thing left to do is count the votes.  Although I’m sure there will be ample local and state politics to perk the interest before then.  Or at least the feeling of interest.

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Updated on December 13, 2010
 

Selection 2004: Sidekick to Super Tuesday

I don’t see any real surprises out of the seven primaries and caucuses (cauci?) on February 3.

• Correctly predicting Lieberman out after last night was no big deal.  As expected, Kucinich remains in the race despite poor showings, mostly because he has a unique message to get out which is lost if he drops out.  Probably the same thing with Sharpton.  Good for them.  (I expect both to drop in early March, though.)  [Sharpton dropped in March, Kucinish stayed in all the way to July.]
   
• Dean’s showing was far poorer than I expected.  I still attribute this mostly to the severe ill will wished upon him by the press in the week prior to Iowa.  I suspect that his hope now is that the press decides to attack Kerry (again; they did at the end of last year somewhat, too, in the name of punching up Dean).  Of course, that will serve mostly to anoint Edwards or Clark, not bring Dean back to the top; when the press kicks you off the top of the hill, you don’t slip back just a single step.  If the attack dogs focus on Kerry, though, Dean will probably see more benefit from it than the others, though.

I don’t have anything against Kerry.  I’m sure he’ll be a fine candidate, if that’s how things settle out.  On the other hand, I’m not fired up about him in the least; I don’t see anything to say he has any particular chance to beat Bush.

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Updated on February 18, 2004

Updated on December 7, 2010

And indeed, my thoughts on Kerry held true: bland, and the only reason to get behind him was to get behind someone, anyone but Bush.  At least the Democrats broke out of that deadly boring cycle with Obama.

Selection 2004: New Hampshire

Some thoughts based on the New Hampshire results:

• “Electability” is this campaign’s version of “gravitas”.  It seems to be used a minimum of once per newscast.
   
• There have been record (or near-record) turnouts for the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary.  Primaries are often plagued by low voter turnout: when one party is a shoe-in, that party’s voters don’t bother, and in states without open primaries, people not registered to vote in the “interesting” race (Democrats, this time around) don’t get to participate in the main part of the vote, so they often don’t vote at all.  This time, though, voters are turning out in “droves” (whatever those are).  This implies two things: (1) people are interested in who wins the Democratic nomination, and (2) regardless of what the approval rating polls say, people want “regime change”.  Assuming these turnouts carry forward throughout the election season, the Republicans should be worried: if Democrats turn out in record numbers for the general election in November and Republicans don’t, Bush will be in real trouble.
   
• NPR was carrying the election returns (plus commentary) live last night.  The conservative talk shows seem to be almost going out of their way to avoid any mention of the Democratic primaries.  Maybe that’s because their main whipping dog (Dean) isn’t so prominent any more and they haven’t decided if they need to replace him.  Or maybe they fear that “any publicity is good publicity,” and covering things at all would be akin to aiding the enemy.  Me, I just find it interesting what seems to constitute a “big” story and what does not.
   
• Unless he wins at least two states on Tuesday — wins, not comes in third after removing candidates from neighboring states — Lieberman will drop out.  [He did on February 3.]
   
• Unless he wins South Carolina, Sharpton will also drop out on Tuesday evening.  [He didn’t drop out until March.]

And some predictions:

• Clark will drop out around March 1.  [He dropped on February 11.]  Despite his poor showing, Kucinich will also stay in until then, just to offer an extreme left voice.  [He stayed in all the way to July 22, just before the Democratic National Convention.]
   
• Dean will win in Arizona, New Mexico, and North Dakota [he took only Vermont]; Kerry will take Missouri [he took that and almost everything else]; Edwards will get South Carolina [he also took North Carolina]; and Clark will win Oklahoma [correct].  Okay, I’m mostly just flailing around on this one.  [Full results here.]
   
• I’m trying to figure out what ticket combo “feels” best in the mouth.  I’m inclined to say that “Dean/Kerry” rolls off the tongue best.  (Well, maybe “Dean/Clark”, but then people would ask why the American Bandstand guy was running for President.  Or maybe it’s that guy who played Superman with Teri Hatcher?)

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Updated on December 3, 2010

Added a lot of links to how things played out.

Selection 2004: Jumping the Gun

Last night — Monday the 26th — at 10:00 pm, the news came on the radio that Wesley Clark was in the lead in New Hampshire!

Mind you, the New Hampshire primary doesn’t start until Tuesday the 27th.

This was 10:00 pm on the West Coast, so it was 1:00 am in New Hampshire.  Apparently some podunk little town out there hustles everyone out of bed at midnight on primary day every four years and gets them to vote, just so they can say they were first.  Must be the only way the town’s name ever gets into the news.  Sad, really.

So yes, Wesley Clark was in the lead, and not just barely but with a whopping 50% of the vote!  Wow!  Practically a mandate!  Kerry and Edwards were tied with about 19% each, and Dean and Lieberman had 6% each.

How many votes total?  16.

Can we get some real news one of these days?  Please.

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Updated on December 1, 2010

The town is Dixville Notch, population about 75 with a whopping 26 registered voters in the 2004 general election.

Selection 2004: Iowa

Quoted from the January 22 issue of The Stranger:

I run across [Howard Dean-supporter Ray] Minchew, who is wearing a jacket and tie.  “It’s the triumph of the bullshit media,” is the first thing out of his mouth.  “It’s fucking bullshit.”  Minchew is referring to negative coverage Dean encountered in the last few weeks.  As he was sailing toward the nomination, the media became increasingly critical, pumping out a series of “gotcha” stories, from Dean’s support for a wife-beating security chief to Newsweek and Time’s recent cover stories about Dean’s temperament.

I agree.  On Monday evening (when I had been on a plane most of the day), when my mother told me about the Dean upset, it’s the first thing I thought.

For the past few months, Dean has been pretty much the only candidate getting any significant coverage from the media.  (And this includes the right-wing media: they have nothing good to say about any of the Democratic candidates, but 95% of their negativity has been aimed at Dean, marking him clearly as the one they fear the most.)  How imbalanced has that coverage been?  Well, I would certainly be able to identify Kerry and Dean and Lieberman in pictures; I might be able to pick Gephardt and Kucinich out of a police line-up; I can only identify Braun, Sharpton, and Clark after seeing pictures in the last week (Clark on the cover of The Advocate); but I couldn’t begin to tell you what Edwards looks like.  (I’m pretty sure he’s a white guy with no facial hair, though.)

For the past couple weeks, it’s like “Tally ho!” and the hounds are after Dean the Fox, ready to tear him to bits.  They are aided by a couple negative things Dean had thrown to them, but the appearance is totally that of a need to chop the legs out from under the one they’ve been carrying thus far.  The media realized that he was the front-runner because of them.

In Iowa itself, and elsewhere, I doubt that the negative stories really had much effect on the people already dedicated to Dean, or to the other candidates.  What I see is probably 50,00 caucus-goers who had made up their minds a month ago, and 75,000 who paid as little attention to what was going on as possible until the week before they had to vote.  At that point, they looked around, saw massive negativity about Dean, and a little positive coverage of Kerry and Edwards, and they made their decision based on the headlines and little else.  (Much though we would like it to be otherwise, I think that’s exactly how half or more of the country votes: negligible forethought, and then vote for who their party or newspaper suggests, or even just the name they recognize the easiest.)

What happened to Gephardt, who won a previous caucus in Iowa, I don’t know.  (Sure I do: no coverage at all = no votes at all from the “pay no attention” segment.)

We’ll see what happens in New Hampshire, and then for Super Tuesday.  Will the Media Hounds keep chasing Dean?  Or will they catch the scent of Kerry as the new quarry, letting Dean catch his breath?