Author: colinski

Graduate of University of Colorado-Boulder

The Coming Swiftboating?

POLITICAL DIARY #5 — a prediction?

This is a story that we’ll have to wait on. It’s being reported that some of the Clinton big money contributers have set up ‘independent’ committees to attack Senator Barack Obama.

If this is true — and it’s only an unverified report at this point — these committees could violate election law.

http://pundits.thehill.com/2008/02/13/will-clinton-money-bosses-break-campaign-finance-laws/

http://pundits.thehill.com/2008/02/13/whered-they-get-the-money/

Big state & Red state fallacies

POLITICAL DIARY II

Two of the fallacies (non sequiturs) I’ve been hearing are the ‘big state’ and ‘red state’ fallacies, which are based some poor reasoning. In this case, both the Clinton and Obama campaigns are at fault.

Firstly, the logic that wins in big state Democratic primaries/caucuses equates to a win in the general election is invalid. There is no big state demographic,  only a categorical grouping. This curious bit of dis-logic seems to be based on the electoral winner-take-all system (except for NE & ME) which mathematically favors the campaign that wins these states in the fall election. Large blue states, of which there are many, would almost certainly to go to either Democratic candidate in the fall. A Big red state such as Texas is not likely to go to either Democrat.

Secondly, red state appeal is not much better, logically speaking. A win in a closed primary indicates only that the candidate has greater appeal to a minority of the voters in a red state. A win in a open primary/caucus may indicate some potential for crossover appeal, but this is not enough to presume success in the general election without other supporting evidence.

A LESSON (not) LEARNED

POLITICAL DIARY #1

I decided to start my own 2008 political diary in order to write on certain topics that catch my attention, many of which would not fit into the regular topics on this site.

GOOD AND BAD NARRATIVES

At their best, stories tell us something essential about a candidacy and condense a myriad details into an easily understood form. They need not be true in a literal sense, since the best examples, such as Lincoln’s “railsplitter,” aren’t attempts to convey factual details. But rather, they convey some essential truth, usually in archetypal form, and the candidate’s message is attached to this.

Candidates don’t invent new stories out of a whole cloth, they use pre-existing ones and attach their message to them. For instance, although Andrew Jackson’s “Old Hickory” clearly expressed something about his character, it was less a statement about him than a statement about the American character. Moreover, Old Hickory not only expressed a factual truth about a resolute, individualistic American ethos, but more importantly, it told a story about how Americans would like to see themselves, and thus provided them with a template for their future.

At their worst, stories can be attempts at deceit, mere illegitimate attempts to graft upon an archetypal story-form. As such, they rely heavily upon the truth of that story-form, often to excess. Thus, a bible salesman, who appeared after a death, didn’t need to tell lies, he merely to needed to convince the victim of his con of the truth. The deceased was a good person, the deceased had been a religious man, and so on — all of which was either factually true or something the grieving widow was strongly predisposed to believe in any case. The con artist didn’t have to lie to execute the con — quite the contrary — his objective was to find an existing truth and graft a small lie to it. Thus the bible salesman who appeared after a death, with a tale of bible ordered at an exorbitant price, found a ready supply of marks throughout the bible belt.

THE LESSON BILL LEARNED

It never takes long to find new examples of illegitimate story-forms coming out of the Clinton campaign, since they produce them with stunning regularity. Today’s example plays upon an earlier controversy over smear tactics by the Clinton campaign.
The uproar created by those tactics led to a backlash that helped Obama trounce Clinton in the South Carolina primary, and Ted Kennedy was so outraged that he came off the fence to endorse Obama in reaction. Recognizing that they had made a mistake, the Clinton campaign moved quickly to reposition Bill’s role in order to avoid repeating their blunder.

FALSE CONTRITION

I’ve already written about the “false contrition” game, so I’ll merely provide a link to that posting below.

http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2008/2/1/143636/3578/25#25

What’s pertinent here is how the Clinton campaign responded to the uproar over their tactics. As is usually the case, Hillary is loath to admit to a mistake, but the circumstances demanded it, therefore it was necessary to show contrition even while at the same time denying the nature of their offense.

THE MIXED MESSAGE GAME — the barking dog wags his tail

Acknowledging that he had made a mistake would be too much for Bill, and was hardly expected, but acknowledging that a mistake had been made was demanded by the rules of decorum. In the aftermath of the South Carolina primary, Bill assumed a lower profile within the Clinton campaign. There was also explicit acknowledgments from the campaign, although these were combined with efforts to recast the nature of their mistake. Rather than admit the true nature of their mistake, the campaign attempted spin their offense in order to graft it onto a different story-form.  

THE REAL LESSON BILL LEARNED?

Instead of admitting that their dirty tactics had backfired, Bill’s act of contrition was to acknowledge his mistake as “defending his wife.” Much like Hillary’s earlier admission that her biggest flaw was her impatience for change. In other words, her biggest flaw was in trying too hard to bring about positive change. Mother Theresa pales in comparison. And Bill’s only offense was to defend his wife, and act that hardly requires contrition, despite his apologetic form of his admission.

Needless to say, I find Bill’s spin less than satisfactory.  

SEE LINK BELOW FOR ARTICLE

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080208/ap_on_el_pr/bill_clinton

The flight of the white male

 Un-enlightened Self-Interest

One of the myths of democracy is that voters know their interests and vote accordingly. At worst, voters may see those interests narrowly and choose to reward politicians whose policies are likewise short-sighted. And at best, voters could see beyond parochialism and chooser wiser policies. According to this model, a successful government was one that accurately reflected the desires of the electorate, and elections were a plebiscite on whether politicians had done this.

Whether framed narrowly or broadly, the underlying assumption is that voters are rational, and the problem with this assumption is that it is frequently wrong.

Voters do vote against their own self-interests, and as tempting as it is to think of them as confused it’s also somewhat misleading.

In What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank gives us part of the answer, and I strongly recommend reading it.

Another resource, which I hope will provide the basis for a discussion on this topic, is in the following article.

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=68225069-3048-5C12-00FA02842EFBC1AA  

Was the fix in? Exit polls show a replay of 2004.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2006 election results, there was sigh of relief as the returns alleviated fears of another stolen election. In any normal year, the tsunami that developed, as voters expressed their disgust with the Republican party, would have swept a large number of Republican candidates — and, indeed, it had.

But lost in the celebration was an ugly fact, one that had emerged in aftermath of 2004 — the exit polls had told a different story than the ‘official’ results. It was a tsunami, indeed, but one of even greater proportions than we had been led to believe.

Analysis of the exit data shows a wave that should have swamped even more Republican candidates, and would have if official returns had reflected the will of the people. And, again, much like in 2004, canards are being proferred as part of a disinformation technique to distract the public from the pertinent methodological questions — such as; exit polls are unreliable, the Rove turnout machine neutralized voter fallout, and so on.

Although “safe districts” insulated Republican candidates in some cases, even those safe districts came into play, as even the most heavily Republican districts, ones that no one would have dreamed could flip, were swamped by a combination of forces; Democrats had turned out in greater numbers, a large contingent of independents had voted two to one for Democratic candidates, the youth (heavily Democratic) had turned out in record numbers, and so on. The damage had been limited, somewhat, by twenty five years of gerrymandering, but the tidal wave of discontent had been too high. Much like Katrina, even well-constructed electoral levees stood no chance in the onslaught.

In spite of this perfect storm, some of the Republican candidates remained standing, as if protected by a some kind of miracle. In places such as in Florida’s 13th Congressional District, where touchscreens rule and paper trails are nonexistent, 20% of the early voters, who voted on touchscreens, didn’t register a vote for the Congressional race. Meanwhile, the absentee voters, who differ from the early voters in that they voted on a paper ballot, failed to register a vote at a more typical rate of 2%. Furthermore, the electoral miracle confined itself to a single county; Sarasota, as the neighboring counties in the five county district experienced non-vote rates close to the historical average.

Perhaps these events explain why Karl Rove was so confident in the run-up to the election — is there something he knew that we didn’t?

Again, lost in the celebrations was the ugly fact that  the tsunami had been much bigger than indicated by official results — which, of course, are officially registered on electronic machines that were failing at astronomical rates in polling done before the election. In this age of ‘faith-based’ elections, we have only faith to reassure us, since the evidence — which is far closer to my religion — shows something quite odd was happening.

The following article examines a problem that first reared its ugly head in 2004, that is; a huge difference between the exit polls and the official results.

http://electiondefensealliance.org/landslide_denied_exit_polls_vs_vote_count_2006