Author: JLG

So, there it is in this morning’s paper.  Right underneath Ike, the story is about a suit being brought by the Wisconsin Attorney General, who is also co-chair of the McCain campaign in Wisconsin, to require registered voters to cast provisional ballots if there is a discrepancy between their driver’s license and their voting registrations.  It is not clear from the article whether he is bringing this suit in his capacity as AG or as campaign official, but as we have seen in recent elections, these hats tend to coalesce.
This may or may not affect my vote.  I have no driver’s license.  It could mean that my voting registration is unverifiable and therefore my vote won’t count.  Or it might mean there is no possible of a discrepancy so I am guaranteed the opportunity to cast an actual ballot.  I guess it’s something the court will have to determine.

This must be going on all over the country.  Wherever there is an opportunity to force voters to cast provisional ballots, the Republicans will seize that opportunity.  Provisional ballots are their best friend.

Wisconsin was extremely close in 2004.  The polls so far indicate it will be less close in 2008, but things could change.  The election could well hinge on whether provisional ballots are counted in any of a dozen states.  Every one of the many thousands of provisional ballots that will be cast are subject to judicial review.

Which is why I think we should seriously consider resetting all those Last Day Countdown calendars and extend Bush’s term.  For most of American history, the President was inaugurated on March 4.  FDR changed that to reduce the post-election lame duck period.  But I think it’s time to go back.  Elections are no longer over in a day.  Forevermore, the winner of a close election will be decided by the post-election litigation.  And a January inauguration just doesn’t provide enough time.  When there is a December 15 deadline for the Electoral College ballots to be cast, the Republicans can run out the clock — keep the legal motions rolling until there is no longer time to count the provisional ballots.

Besides, if there ever is enough hard evidence of rigged or hacked voting machines in states without paper backups to convince a court, there will be no remedy other than a revote.  Which can hardly happen in the current time frame.

So that is why this on November 4, I’ll be mentally chanting, “Four More Months.”

Looking at the historical record, 2008 isn’t a realignment sort of year.  In the 20th century, there were three realignments that took place in Presidential election years — 1912, 1932, and 1980.  What these elections had in common was that the President was highly unpopular, and he was running for reelection.

Having an unpopular President who is not running again just doesn’t produce the same sort of results.  Maybe it doesn’t produce any result, if the last French election is any guide, where Chirac was unpopular but his party won anyway.
What about 1952, you might ask.  Wasn’t that a realignment election?  I suppose it may have seemed so at the time, with Eisenhower winning in a landslide and the Republicans taking both houses of Congress.  However, the Republicans were closing in on majority status prior to 1952, had only modest gains in that year, and lost their majorities in 1954.  Without a national hero on the top of the ticket, the Republicans didn’t make a lasting change to the electoral map.

Going back a ways, there was 1896.  There weren’t any polls, of course, which saves Grover Cleveland some historical embarassment.  There had been a period of exceptionally close Presidential races, which gave way to four straight Republican landslides.  So, in terms of Presidential politics, it was a realignment moment.  But there was a catch.  The Republicans lost 48 seats in the House that year, making it a funny sort of realignment.

To see that there is no historical inevitability to a Democratic sweep in 2008, just consider for a moment what would be going on now if the Constitution didn’t require a President to be born in the US.  It seems likely to me that Schwartzenegger would be the presumptive GOP nominee, and the favorite to win in November.  It seems like a funny sort of realignment year that depends on the other side’s best candidate being ineligible to run.

There was a recent survey where people identified themselves as conservative, moderate, or liberal on social and economic issues.  The double conservative bracket had 24% while the double liberals were only 9%.  As long as Republicans go into every election with a nationwide ideological advantage of 15%, it’s not going be realignment, even if a sinking economy does bring the Democrats substantial gains.

If you start handicapping states for November, you might get something like this:

Start with assigning all of Kerry’s states to Obama, the rest to McCain.  Now shift New Hampshire to McCain, who is popular there, having spent about a year of his life campaigning there.  Then take Iowa away from McCain, who won the caucuses there and leads in the early polls.  Colorado seems likely to go to Obama as well, and also New Mexico.

Which leaves the electoral vote at :  Obama 269, McCain 269.  Now, if Obama leads in one Congressional District in Nebraska….
With an election that chose shaping up, it seems to me that both sides have to be looking at a VP choice who can bring in a state to tilt the scales.

So, what is a winning strategy here?  The GOP can exploit an advantage here, that their convention is second, so they can see what happens with the Democrats and then, if need be, choose a candidate who can deliver a state with more electoral votes.

For the Democrats, a lot of names come up:  Jean Sibelius, who is already on most lists, Evan Bayh, Brian Schweitzer.  The names Tim Kaine and Blanche Lincoln also surface from time to time.  I like Schweitzer as the most likely to bring in the electoral votes.  However, it’s just 3 votes, and the Repulicans can perhaps get more.

McCain’s best options here are Olympia Snowe, Tim Pawlenty, and Tommy Thompson.  Pawlenty could be part of an all-out strategy to win over Minnesota, which will get a boost from the fact that they are having the convention there.  But Pawlenty’s approval ratings have been mediocre of late.  Thompson is an uninspiring campaigner, but his presence on the ticket would almost certainly give Wisconsin, a state that is always close, to McCain.

If the final score is 269-269, we could see a new wrinkle to election SNAFUs.  To win the House vote, a candidate needs the votes of 26 states.  But that might not be possible, given that some delgations may be evenly split.  If the House is deadlocked, the Senate selects one of the two Vice-Presidential candidates, who, in the absence of a President, immediately ascends to that office.  A note of caution if Obama thinks of putting Hagel on his ticket.

This week’s election in Wisconsin showed that the Right is alive and thriving in this politically schizophrenic state.

In Milwaukee County, there have been painful cutbacks in government services, particularly in funding for public transportation and the parks.  More cutbacks are certain to come in the near future.  A progressive Democratic candidate ran a spirited campaign to fight for better goverment, and she was handily defeated by the Republican incumbent, who promised to hold the line on taxes.  There is widespread speculation that the Republican county executive, Scott Walker, will be Wisconsin’s next governor in 2010.

Lowering (or at least not raising) taxes is still a powerful argument for Republicans.  

There is a general belief in Milwaukee that property taxes here are extraordinarily high, and that this discourages people from moving here.  The story that is told usually follows these lines:
I know of a family, they say, that was seriously considering relocating to Milwaukee.  They found a three-bedroom house in a neighborhood they liked for $400,000 (the numbers here are just thrown out for an example — they may not be accurate, and it doesn’t matter) but when they found out that they would be paying $12,000 a year in taxes, they decided not to move to Milwaukee.

Seems like a plausible story.  But it doesn’t actually hold any water.

Whoever ultimately decides to buy the $400K home is taking into account the $12K taxes in figuring out what they can afford to pay for housing.  Let’s imagine the situation if taxes were cut by 50% in order to lure families to Milwaukee.  Also, suppose that the mortgage rate is 6% (to make the math easy).  With a reduced tax bill of $6K, the family can afford to carry an additional $100K of mortgage.

From the point of view of the buyer, there is no difference between paying $400K plus $12K/year in taxes and paying $500K plus $6K/year in taxes.  So what would you expect to happen in the real estate market?  The price of the  $400K home would shoot up to half a million, and the buyer would end up with exactly the same house at exactly the same cost (to the buyer) as at the higher tax rate.  The only difference is that more of the money would be going to the lender and less of it to the County.

If people aren’t relocating to Milwaukee, it’s probably because they don’t like endless winters.  Or maybe it’s because the public school system stinks.  But it’s not because of the property taxes.

Something is very wrong here.

You have escort services operating pretty much in the open in most (maybe all) large cities in the U.S.  The reason, I suppose, is economic.  Any business that draws in tourists or gets tourists to spend more while they are in the city is welcome.  I suspect eliminating prostitution would be a bigger disaster to a city’s economy than losing a pro sports franchise.

But a particular escort service gets busted.  And not by a state or local DA trying to get a cheap headline.  But by the Federal government.  Oh, and in the process of busting this escort service, the name of one particular customer happens to leak out.
It’s obvious, isn’t it, that the GOP is using the DOJ to destroy a prominent Democratic leader.  Isn’t there something wrong with that?  Isn’t this what the U.S. Attorney firing scandal was all about?  People being fired because they refused to allow their office to be used for partisan bullshit?  Well, here is a case where a Democratic official is being destroyed by a partisan prosecution, and nobody is coming to his defense and nobody is outraged at the government for pulling this.

Of course, it’s not just that Spitzer is a Democrat.  He was busted for a reason.  We have the comforting illusion that there is a corporate Party and a party of the people.  Of course, the party of the people lives on corporate money, and there are lines drawn as to how far any party can go in serving the interests of the people once they accept that money.  Spitzer crossed that line, and so he had to be destroyed.

I was wondering about what Hillary Clinton must be making of all this.  Hillary Clinton knows something about being targeted in a politically motivated prosecution.  It was an experience that shaped her, and it may not be an exaggeration to consider it the central motivating force in her political career.  Gov. Spitzer was a political ally of hers.  I know that in politics a friend ceases to be a friend when he does something embarrassing, but I can’t help feeling that at some level that she isn’t allowed to express, Clinton is feeling some outrage here.

I wish that some Democrat would stand up and cry “Foul!” but I guess that is too much to expect.  

It has become a cliche to call the Bush administration a failed Presidency.  The evidence for that — a war (or maybe two wars) that didn’t go so well, out-of-control budget deficits, an abysmal approval rating — seems pretty strong.  But I would argue that looked at another way — starting from the position of what the administration was actually trying to accomplish — Bush can be viewed as one of the most successful presidents in American history.  Perhaps only FDR and James Polk were as successful in advancing their agenda as Bush has been.
Domestically, Bush can be credited with the following fairly sweeping accomplishments:

1.  Extensive expansion of the power of the executive branch of government.
2.  Strong shift to the right in the Federal judiciary.
3.  Vast increases in the state security apparatus.
4.  Increased military expenditures.
5.  Skewing of the distribution of wealth toward the highest strata.
6.  Pre-emptive attack on any future social initiatives through the bankrupting of the Treasury by staggering deficits.

Internationally, granted, there is less of a sweeping record of success, but there are still some signficant developments:

1.  Weakening of the rule of international law
2.  Doctrine of pre-emptive war
3.  Establishing the prerogative of American military to act without approval of any international organization.

A new president may try to undo some of these achievements, but, especially in the domestic sphere, this will not really be possible.  I don’t see how any major policy initiatives of a progressive bent can be attempted with the current budget deficit.  The new president will be inheriting an economy either in or near a state of recession; tax increases, under the circumstances, will not be an option.  The hands of the future administration will be tied from the start.  And no current social programs or regulations are safe from being overturned by a strongly motivated right-wing judiciary.

It is almost needless to say, but none of these successes could have been possible without Democratic support or acquiescence.

It seems incredible that with one of the most unpopular presidents in history, an unending and unwinnable war, and an economy where all news is bad news, that the party in power would not only retain the White House, but do so with panache.  But that seems to me precisely what is going to happen this year.

There are good reasons for favoring Clinton over Obama for the Democratic nomination.  There is the argument that the country is in such awful shape that it is imperative that we elect someone ready to take charge from the first day.  The Clinton team has been there, they know the ropes, they can handle it.  There is the argument of Clinton’s intelligence, her incisiveness, her grasp of the issues.  There is even the argument that with Clinton, “it’s personal,” that decades of attacks from the right have hardened her and given her the fire in her belly to get payback.  But ever since the Team Clinton’s panic after Iowa, all those reasons have been swept aside, and been replaced with a reason that is poison for her candidacy.  That is the argument that Clinton should be nominated because a black candidate cannot be elected.
If Clinton ultimately wins the nomination (and I think she will), this will be argument that will stick in the minds of many millions of black voters.  They will believe that at the highest levels of power in the Democratic party, blacks are simply not welcome.  And they will stay home on election day, or worse, vote Republican.

This November, of the 33 or 34 Senate candidates the Democrats will be running, how many are African-Americans?  There may be somebody I’ve missed, but as far as I have heard, there is Vivian Figures in Alabama, an attractive, progressive legislator who will, I am confident, be abandoned by the national party as they focus on supposedly more winnable races.

The Democrats can’t win elections anywhere if they lose their largest constituency.  The blue state/red state divide will be breached, and a dozen or so blue states will fall.  The Democrats will see the Senate slip from their hands, as seats in Louisiana, Arkansas, New Jersey, Michigan and Illinois are put in jeopardy.

Maybe it doesn’t make a difference anymore.  Maybe the do-nothing Congress that we elected in 2006 is all that we could expect from a party when all progressive instincts collide with the necessity of corporate backing to produce paralysis.  But, somehow, it seems to me that even a pessimist had a right to expect something better from November.