The California primary elections are rapidly coming up on Tuesday, 6/7. Many Angelenos might have voted already by mail or in person, but the following resources may prove useful for the general election in November as well, even if they're more useful for the primary.
First up, one of Los Angeles' local NPR stations, KCRW, teamed up with the Los Angeles Times to a debate on homelessness/houselessness solutions for mayoral candidates.
The moderators, KCRW’s Anna Scott and Times columnist Gustavo Arellano, know their stuff. The participating candidates are U.S. Representative Karen Bass (D), L.A. City Council member Keven de León (D), and Gina Viola, a community organizer and business owner, officially nonpartisan but on the liberal/progressive side of things. Candidates Mike Feuer (D) and Joe Buscaino (D) accepted the invitation to the debate, but dropped out of the race beforehand. The most notable omission is Rick Caruso, a billionaire Republican officially running as a Democrat in this election. He's bought TV ads around the clock and has sent out a ton of campaign mail, sometimes two pieces a day. Caruso has spent a record-breaking, insane $34 million and counting, more than twice what the entire field of candidates has spent in the last competitive mayoral primary. Count me among the many who think Caruso's trying to buy the election. Caruso has claimed he'll fix the homelessness situation in Los Angeles, but he ducked this debate on that very issue and has dodged and other candidate fora. As you'll hear if you listen to the debate, glib campaign slogans only take a candidate so far, and bullshitters are likely to squirm.
If the debate doesn't play for you, use the first link above or find it on the Press Play podcast.
I was somewhat familiar with Bass and de León before the debate, and they have some decent things to say, but I was quite interested to hear Gina Viola's perspective, especially her advocacy for hearing from homeless/unhoused people themselves.
Meanwhile, as usual, local NPR station KPCC has put together useful voter resources, including guides to the candidates and ballot measures. This time, there's even a neat meet your mayor quiz, which lets you see which candidates most closely match your own positions.
As usual, I also find the Los Angeles County Bar Association's evaluations of judicial candidates quite valuable. LACBA does not endorse any candidates, but rates whether they are qualified on a four-point scale: not qualified, qualified, well qualified, and exceptionally well qualified. (The last rating is bestowed sparingly.)
President Barack Obama fist-bumps custodian Lawrence Lipscomb in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building following the opening session of the White House Forum on Jobs and Economic Growth. December 3, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza).
The big political news today is, of course, Mitt Romney naming Paul Ryan as his running mate. It's hard to keep up with all the coverage on Vice Presidential candidate Ryan, but Balloon Juice has been blogging up a storm today, providing some excellent links. Ezra Klein and Nate Silver provide good background on what it means, Charles Pierce weighs in, and Paul Krugman briefly left his vacation to post.
Paul Ryan was the key figure in the Stealthy Extremist section of my recent looong post, "The Four Types of Conservatives." Ryan's radicalism has been dissected very well many times, and in that post, I linked the archives of several writers and outlets that have done so. Their budget analysis is damning, and it speaks volumes about Ryan's (lack of) integrity.
I wanted to link Jonathan Chait's piece "The Legendary Paul Ryan" again, because it's one of the best introductions to Ryan, especially for people who aren't political junkies. I wanted to feature a different section, though:
How has Ryan managed to occupy these two roles in our national life—Fiscy award-winning spokesman for those Americans demanding a bipartisan agreement to reduce the deficit, and slayer of bipartisan deficit agreements—simultaneously? Here is where, in the place of any credible programmatic commitment, he substitutes his remarkable talent for radiating good intentions. New York Times business columnist James Stewart, for instance, recently opined that Ryan’s plan would usher in an overhaul of the tax code that would raise taxes on the rich, by eliminating special treatment for capital-gains income.
It is certainly true, as Stewart argues, that one could reduce tax rates to the levels advocated by Ryan without shifting the burden onto the poor and middle class if you eliminated the lower rate enjoyed by capital-gains income. But Ryan has been crystal clear throughout his career in his opposition to raising capital-gains taxes. An earlier, more explicit version of his tax plan eliminated any tax at all on capital gains. The current version, while refraining from specifics, insists, “Raising taxes on capital is another idea that purports to affect the wealthy but actually hurts all participants in the economy.” I asked Stewart why he believed so strongly that Ryan actually supported such a reform, despite the explicit opposition of his budget. “Maybe he’s being boxed in” by right-wing colleagues, Stewart suggested.
After Obama assailed Ryan’s budget, Stewart wrote a second column insisting that Ryan’s plans were just the sort of goals liberals shared. He quoted Ryan as writing, in his manifesto, “The social safety net is failing society’s most vulnerable citizens.” Stewart is flabbergasted that Democrats could be so partisan as to attack a figure who believes something so uncontroversial. “Does anyone,” Stewart wrote in his follow-up, “Democrat or Republican, seriously disagree?”
The disagreement, I suggested to Stewart, is that Ryan believes the social safety net is failing society’s most vulnerable citizens by spending too much money on them. As Ryan has said, “We don’t want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency”—which is to say, plying the poor with such inducements as food stamps and health insurance for their children has sapped their desire to achieve, a problem Ryan proposes to solve by targeting them for the lion’s share of deficit reduction. Stewart waves away the distinction. “I was pointing out that, at least rhetorically, you can find some common ground,” he says. Stewart, explaining his evaluation of Ryan to me, repeatedly cited the missing details in his plan as a hopeful sign of Ryan’s accommodating aims. “He seems very straightforward,” he tells me. “He doesn’t seem cunning. He seems very genuine.”
Seeming genuine is something Ryan does extraordinarily well. And here is where something deeper is at play, more than Ryan’s charm and winning personality, something that gets at the intellectual bankruptcy of contemporary Washington. The Ryan brand is rooted in his ostentatious wonkery. Because, unlike the Bushes and the Palins, he grounds his position in facts and figures, he seems like an encouraging candidate to strike a bargain. But the thing to keep in mind about Ryan is that he was trained in the world of Washington Republican think tanks. These were created out of a belief that mainstream economists were hopelessly biased to the left, and crafted an alternative intellectual ecosystem in which conservative beliefs—the planet is not getting warmer, the economy is not growing more unequal—can flourish, undisturbed by skepticism. Ryan is intimately versed in the blend of fact, pseudo-fact, and pure imagination inhabiting this realm.
This dynamic is absolutely maddening – the constant impulse of mainstream media figures to ignore the evidence and anoint even extremists as sensible and responsible. In the terminology of the "four types" post, Paul Ryan is a stealthy extremist, but Stewart is insisting that Ryan is a sober adult. Okay, most of us have been taken in by a politician from time to time. (Although most of us haven't been paid to cover politics, either.) What's most frustrating is that Chait even points out to Stewart that his perception of Ryan is inaccurate – and Stewart replies, “I was pointing out that, at least rhetorically, you can find some common ground,” and that Ryan "seems very genuine.”
This is what sends my blood pressure soaring. Who gives a shit about common ground in rhetoric?!? Politicians lie all the time. They all love America and babies and whatever plays well in the region they're campaigning in that day. It's really not a big challenge to find "common ground" in rhetoric. The question is how much basis Ryan's proposals have in reality. As Greg Sargent likes to say, politics is supposed to be a clash of visions (and his example involves Paul Ryan). If there's no common ground to be found in the actual policies being discussed, and the values underneath them, well then, another speech won't help much – especially if it's bullshit from a charlatan.
One of the benefits of doing at least basic policy analysis – and one of the reasons it's so necessary – is that it helps one evaluate where a political figure is lying, and how badly, and to what consequence. Policy analysis is both a practical matter and a character assessment. Come election-time, voters can pick the candidate that lies less frequently and about less important things, and has higher credibility on delivering the good things and preventing the bad things, and so on. Making such decisions is essential to the whole democracy thing.
In Chait's account, Stewart doesn't care about the reality of Ryan's proposals. He's only valuing appearance. He is only judging by cosmetics. Maybe he's a fine reporter otherwise, and a nice guy in person, but it's appalling... if all too common among mainstream political reporters (the subject of another recent post). Perhaps, like many Americans, Stewart is so desperate to find common ground and get along and see responsible governance that he’ll seize upon any huckster than comes along who says a few nice things. But this is journalistic malpractice, not to mention bad citizenship. Policies should succeed or fail on their merits, and political figures should pay a cost for lying.
For the addled Sensible Centrists that dominate political reporting, "compromise" always seems to entail that liberals should capitulate to the center-left contingent of the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party should always capitulate to the (mostly) far-right Republican Party. (But somehow, the Republican Party is supposed to heed their rabid base, and never move to the left in the name of compromise. Hmm.) Actually, the true solution is exposing bad ideas and calling bullshit. And in that vein, may the accurate examinations of the Romney-Ryan plans continue!
If you're a California voter, you can get the official voter information guide here. Some candidate statements and analysis is included (Orly Taitz' is both disturbing and hilarious). The Smart Voter site also has useful information on all the various elections, particularly the overlooked ones such as judicial positions. Because of California's new open primary rule, the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, will face each other in November. In some cases, that means the race will essentially be between the same candidates twice. That's the likely scenario in my congressional district, the newly-redrawn California 30th, with two incumbent Democrats squaring off, Howard Berman and Brad Sherman. Which Way L.A.? had them on as guests back in April (along with two Republican candidates). It also ran an election show tonight.
Meanwhile, Wisconsin is holding recall elections, most notably of Republican Governor Scott Walker, but the other elections are important, too. As David Dayen points out, turnout will be key: "one must acknowledge that no public poll has shown [Tom] Barrett in front [of Scott Walker]. That argues strongly that Walker will be able to hold on. He goes into Election Day a small favorite." Walker's Koch backing and anti-labor stances make this a significant election, but Walker's rich backers have given him a three to one spending advantage. Kay at Balloon Juice has more about the expectations game.
In any case, if your state is up tomorrow, make sure you vote!
Election coverage has a number of silly rituals and tropes. NYU journalism professor and media critic Jay Rosen at PressThink has a great piece up called "A Viewer’s Guide to Iowa Caucus Coverage" (1/3/12). Some of it pertains exclusively to the Iowa Caucus completed two weeks ago, but much of it applies to election coverage in general. His key point is:
The Iowa Caucuses are presented as a news event, a mini-election with an informational outcome, a winner. But what they really are is a ritual, the gathering of a tribe, which affirms itself and its place in our political system by staging this thing every four years.
This is spot-on. The specific reason for this is that “the Iowa caucuses will award no delegates to any candidate.” More generally, while the Iowa Caucus does hold some real consequences (candidates with very low numbers dropping out), there's no doubt that its importance is massively and artificially inflated. It should not hold the prominence it does. The same goes (to a lesser degree) for the New Hampshire Primary. Their predictive value regarding the eventual nominee is quite poor, and neither state is populous or demographically representative of the nation as a whole. (I explored much of this in "That Fragrant Horse Coverage" in 2008, a year that saw some high marks – or low marks – in idiocy in election coverage.)
Rosen features some sharp observations from Joan Didion and the late James W. Carey. Here's Didion:
When we talk about the process, then, we are talking, increasingly, not about “the democratic process,” or the general mechanism affording the citizens of a state a voice in its affairs, but the reverse: a mechanism seen as so specialized that access to it is correctly limited to its own professionals, to those who manage policy and those who report on it, to those who run the polls and those who quote them, to those who ask and those who answer the questions on the Sunday shows, to the media consultants, to the columnists, to the issues advisers, to those who give the off-the-record breakfasts and to those who attend them; to that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life. “I didn’t realize you were a political junkie,” Marty Kaplan, the former Washington Post reporter and Mondale speechwriter who is now married to Susan Estrich, the manager of the Dukakis campaign, said when I mentioned that I planned to write about the campaign; the assumption here, that the narrative should be not just written only by its own specialists but also legible only to its own specialists, is why, finally, an American presidential campaign raises questions that go so vertiginously to the heart of the structure.
Rosen adds:
Then she goes in for the kill. “What strikes one most vividly about such a campaign is precisely its remoteness from the actual life of the country.” Yes! That is something else I want you to watch for tonight. That remoteness.
Sadly, remoteness seems to be a defining feature of mainstream election coverage. Here's Carney:
What is arrayed before the reader is not pure information but a portrayal of contending forces in the world. Moreover, as readers make their way through the paper, they engage in a continual shift of roles or of dramatic focus. A story on the monetary crisis salutes them as American patriots fighting those ancient enemies Germany and Japan; a story on the meeting of the women’s political caucus casts them into the liberation movement as supporter or opponent; a tale of violence on the campus evokes their class antagonisms and resentments. The model here is not that of information acquisition, though such acquisition occurs, but of dramatic action in which the reader joins a world of contending forces as an observer at a play.
Rosen comments:
Carey‘s point in “A Cultural Approach to Communication” is not that the transmission view is “wrong,” but that it cannot illuminate much of what is happening when we encounter the news. A feature on the candidate’s media adviser invites us behind the scenes, where appearances are contrived for an unwitting audience from whom we are now separated by our superior knowledge of the mechanics of manipulation. A television report puts us inside the cockpit of a fighter jet, zeroing in on an enemy target with high-tech precision. We might call this the “positioning effect.” It occurs regardless of whether the journalist-as-author takes a position or produces a neutral, “objective” account. Something else I want you to watch for tonight. How are we–the users, the viewers–being positioned by the reporting and commentary we are given?
I've long felt that, unfortunately, imbibing a great deal of mainstream political coverage can easily leave someone less informed than before, but with a false sense of confidence that the opposite is the case. As studies have shown, this is certainly true for Fox News viewers, but if we're discussing political understanding and context, I would contend the problem is much more widespread. In terms of knowing that specific events have taken place, avid news consumers will more informed and conversant than average Americans, but in terms of political insight, they can wind up worse than before. The conventional Beltway wisdom on any given subject reflects the social norms and consensus of the chattering class, but it is rarely actually wise. The political analysis in mainstream outlets is often appalling shallow and vapid if not factually incorrect. Smart and skeptical news consumers can sift through the dross in coverage, of course, but less grounded viewers can be misled – especially when poor political conversation is the norm. For instance, consider that the dreadful Mark Halperin, who is almost unfailingly wrong and chronically shallow, but is presented to viewers as a political sage. Halperin "won" #1 on Salon's Hack 30 in 2011, a well-deserved dishonor (he was #2 in 2010), but the other 29 are similarly presented as Very Serious People… and there are many more who didn't make the list. (These dynamics are explored in more depth in "Partisanship, Policy and Bullshit.")
As Bob Somerby has often opined, many prominent political reporters write novels rather than journalism, selling narratives that are almost always misleading and superficial, and often outright false. As Geoffrey Nunberg has observed, the selection of political pundits on talk shows resembles sitcom casting, with "types" of political observers being selected. (I have more on this in reference to Ann Coulter in this 2006 post, and Nunberg's insight deserves more discussion in a future post on political theater. "Silent Questions" also covers some of this material, more tangentially.)
This year, Mitt Romney was announced the winner of the Iowa Caucus (by a mere eight votes over Rick Santorum, although the results have been questioned, and now it appears Santorum won). Romney also won in New Hampshire, and is predicted by most analysts and odds-makers to be the eventual Republican nominee. The primary season is less suspenseful because of this, although there have been some interesting elements. Romney is absolutely despised by most voters in the conservative base (they didn't like McCain, either, but they hate Romney more vociferously). Watching those dynamics play out, and the rise and fall of a series of Not-Romney candidates, has been amusing. Meanwhile, the Super PAC money has made things more tumultuous. Such groups can widen the lead for the frontrunner (a Romney Super PAC slammed Newt Gingrich relentlessly and successfully), but a single rich donor can give a flailing candidate new life (A Nevada billionaire gave a Gingrich group five million dollars). With Romney pulling ahead, most of the other candidates have eagerly broken Reagan's "11th commandment" (thou shalt not talk ill of a Republican) in going after Romney as too liberal, too moderate, and even too conservative and heartless. This, too, has been pretty amusing, especially given the rank hypocrisy and bad faith of most of these attacks. Most importantly, with only a few exceptions, the actual policies the Republican candidates have been presenting have been absolutely horrible (Lower taxes on the poor rich!). The candidates, just like many of the reporters covering them, would prefer to keep everything on the level of personalities and gossip versus serious policy analysis and discussion of the likely consequences of their proposals (further devastating the middle class and the poor to give more to the most rich and privileged, mostly). None of this requires arcane knowledge to divine, either. Rosen presents some election rituals and other things he "want[s] you to watch for tonight" in election coverage, and news junkies and conscientious citizens should always keep an eye out for the bullshit: the old, recycled and revered, the re-vamped and re-branded, and the new.
There's another Republican debate looming, and the past ones do not bode well for the Republic. The conservative faithful keeps looking for a savior, finding and then rejecting one candidate after another... and rejecting reality, history and compassion as well.
It’s not unusual for a political candidate or two to rise dramatically and then melt beneath the lights of the public stage—this happens in almost every election cycle. But it is unusual for so many candidates to rise and collapse in such rapid succession, while still at an early point in the elections. It may tell us something about the quality of the candidate pool. Or it may be revealing of the fickleness and immaturity of the voter group the populists are competing to capture. Or both.
In any event, however, it is characteristic of our current political process. We have created an environment in which scrutiny of political candidates is superficial, and in which candidates can get away with knowing only enough about critical issues to fill a three-by-five-inch filing card. Illiteracy about key economic issues is widespread, and vacuous, simplistic formulations are put forth without being challenged or parsed. Bogus claims about history are made without shame or correction. That would be a fair summary of the televised debates, which offer little actual debating and are often packaged to resemble a television game show. Is America going about picking presidential candidates the way viewers choose their favorite contestants on “American Idol”? America today faces the very real prospect of a double-dip recession, and is deeply enmeshed in two land wars in the Middle East (one of which marks its first decade this week) that are unpopular but that our political elites don’t want to discuss. It faces the prospect of a “lost generation” of un- and underemployed youth. But our political culture continues to avoid vital issues. Instead, we are treated to political tragicomedy. The rapid rise and fall of candidates in the Republican contest is a telling sign of our Age of Distraction.
Charles Pierce has joined the already excellent Esquire political team, and his ire is provoked by a silly Hill piece claiming that Herman Cain's success proves that observations about racism in the conservative movement are overblown. As Pierce writes in "The GOP Is Not Giving Up 50 Years of Bigotry for This Guy":
Jesus God, man, read some history, will you? Or, otherwise, some conservative might come up to you one day and you'll trade him your car for a bag of magic beans. If you don't want to read, at least Google "Harry Dent" or "Southern strategy." Republicans made a conscious choice to abandon the traditions that began with Lincoln and produced Edward Brooke in order to profit politically from the backlash against the accomplishments of the civil-rights movement and the remnants of white-supremacy, especially in the South. This wasn't an accident. It was a shrewd — if amoral — calculation. That is how black voters came to be attached to the Democratic party; hell, it's why Martin Luther King, Sr. stopped being a Republican. If you think that party is willing to surrender 50 years of profitable bigotry for the political phenomenon that is Herman Cain, well, you should take it up with the future of the GOP, Congressman J.C. Watts, or former chairman Michael Steele, who also represented the new multiracial party for a while. I also wish you luck with your beanstalk.
Roy Edroso writes sympathetically about "the end of the affair" between Sarah Palin (who declared she is not running for president) and the conservative faithful, who didn't recognize the scam and truly believed:
...the salt-of-the-earth types who are now left standing at Palin Central, waiting on a train to Galt's Gulch and glory that will never arrive.
I note this with some sadness, and not only on my own account. Most of Palin's retinue will peel off without many tears to the Perry and Bachmann bandwagons, where their thirst for blood and bullshit may be slaked. But I spare a thought for those who actually believed in Palin -- who thought this venal con woman was the real deal, their mama grizzly, their wingnut messiah -- someone who, though swimming in unearned wealth and privilege, understood their underwater double-wide lives and, though incredibly averse to responsibility, would bravely take up the Old Standard and be the backwoods Boudicca of their redneck resurgence.
She was as close to a new Reagan as the Tea Party people had -- simultaneously sunny and impenetrable, a great grinning billboard behind which they could safely wreak their bitter vengeance on the hippies, ethnics, and paupers on whom they blamed the modern world. How long will it take for them to move on, and where to? And -- here's a strange thought, coming from someone who expected to see her crowned -- whether they did or not, are there enough of them that anyone will notice? Or was the whole idea that battalions of backwards-looking, flintlock-shouldering patriots marched with her just a scam as well? That would seem the cruelest thing for them to find: that they were doomed all along, and had only seemed close enough to victory to yearn for it because hucksters found profit in telling the world that they were.
Finally, Driftglass is holding a fundraiser and has been blogging up a storm (and podcasting). Make sure to stay for the prose, but I'm particularly fond of this picture, which until recently was on his masthead (click for a larger view):
As I wrote over at his place, it occurs to me that this creature is the conservative version of the Krell monster. The difference is that it didn't emerge from noble if misguided attempts to increase knowledge and intelligence; the Republicans chose to plunge directly into the lizard brain instead, and what they unleashed was a violently incurious, brutally rapacious and recklessly nihilistic Id that has destroyed civilizations in the past and is hungry to do the same again.
Lastly, here's a longer MoveOn ad with a sci-fi dystopian theme, and featuring Olivia Wilde. Apparently it's personalized for users who follow a Facebook-MoveOn log-in process:
More info about this ad is here and here. It's a bit creepy, and fairly clever and entertaining, including the little throwaway geek-out at the end about time travel theories.
I was working on a longer piece about the disappointing Democrats and third parties and all that, subjects of perennial discussion on some liberal blogs. But personally, when faced with an unabashedly reckless, nihilistic, plutocratic party, the party that's partially plutocratic-and-corrupt, and often gutless, but also has a few genuine liberals and hasn't completely abandoned the social contract, looks pretty good in comparison. And hey, the weekend after the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Keep Fear Alive," the "Not Insane" ticket may not always be inspiring, but it is nonetheless compelling.
Outside of that it's the straight Democratic ticket for me. Obama is a trimmer and a pudding, but the Republicans are Satan's emissaries on Earth, and if I have little hope of making a difference I can at least, at the Final Trump, answer my Maker that I spurted my spitball against the hull of the Dark Lord's deathship when duty called. Go thou and do likewise!
If you don't live in California, you're lucky you miss the election year onslaught of political ads. Normally, it's ballot measure ads around the clock, but this time, the candidate ads have been non-stop all year. I thought I'd try to look at some of the ads in a few posts before the election is over, in, um, two days. First though, I thought it'd be useful to look at the money.
The spending has been insane, and in the race for governor, it's been extremely lopsided. On 10/22/10, the Fresno Bee reported:
Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman spent nearly $23 mil- lion the first 16 days of October, bringing her record-breaking spending total to $163 million for the campaign, according to finance reports filed Thursday.
Democrat Jerry Brown, meanwhile, had spent $14.6 million between Oct. 1 and 16, more than half of the total $25.3 million his campaign has spent this year.
Brown had $11.6 million in the bank for the final push as of Oct. 16, while Whitman reported $12.4 million on hand with about $1.9 million in debts.
Whitman, a billionaire former CEO of eBay, has put $141.6 million of her own money in the campaign. In all, she has raised $173 million.
Brown has raised nearly $38 million for the campaign.
The Senate race between Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina is a little harder to tally. From a 10/22/10 article:
Republican challenger Carly Fiorina added $1 million from her personal fortune to her campaign to unseat Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, pouring in money for the final days of a tightening race...
The loan, made Thursday, brings Fiorina's total contributions this year to $6.5 million...
Boxer campaign manager Rose Kapolczynski said Fiorina is using the golden parachute she received when she was ousted from HP "to try to buy a seat in the Senate." Overall, Boxer has raised $26.4 million compared to $17.9 million for Fiorina...
National Republicans have not been so reticent in talking about their plans for the Senate race. They've promised to spend nearly $4.8 million in California in coordination with the Fiorina campaign. Fiorina's efforts are also being helped by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has spent more than $4.5 million on television ads critical of Boxer...
According to quarterly campaign reports filed Oct. 15, Boxer had about $6.5 million cash on hand compared to $1.8 million for Fiorina, who is receiving significant help from independent groups.
Since then, there has been a flurry of spending. Campaign finance reports based on the first two weeks of October show Boxer spent $5.3 million, leaving her with $2.3 million cash on hand.
Fiorina spent $2 million during the same period, leaving her with $1.3 million. Adding Fiorina's latest loan, she should now have roughly the same amount as Boxer.
The prospect of unseating three-term Sen. Barbara Boxer has led business groups and social conservatives to invest heavily in California's U.S. Senate race over the past six weeks.
About $4 million has been spent on ads and election activities that help Republican challenger Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co.
By comparison, outside groups have spent about $121,000 helping Boxer, who started the race with a huge cash advantage in her campaign account.
The new CNN poll of California provides further corroboration that Democrats Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer are on track in their respective gubernatorial and Senate races.
The gubernatorial numbers: Brown 51%, Republican Meg Whitman 44%. In the previous poll from a month ago, Brown led by 52%-43%. The TPM Poll Average has Brown ahead by 49.0%-41.3%.
The Senate numbers: Boxer 50%, Republican Carly Fiorina 45%. In the previous poll from a month ago, Boxer led by 52%-43%. The TPM Poll Average has Boxer ahead by 47.4%-43.4%.
The survey of likely voters has a ±3.5% margin of error.
538 currently has Brown up by 8 points and Boxer up by 6 points. But we'll see come Tuesday. The outside money factor is troubling, and that's a national issue. Transparency on who's funding all those ads would be a big help. Meanwhile, the Mercury News has more on Whitman, her eBay past and her diminishing prospects despite the staggering amount of money she's spent. When the dust has settled, I'll be interested to see if Meg Whitman winds up with an even worse dollar-to-vote ratio than Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 presidential primaries.
If you follow politics a bit, you're bound to get exposed to the Beltway Conventional Wisdom. If you follow politics closely, at some point you'll notice that the Beltway Conventional Wisdom is often badly wrong - and impervious to facts or reason. Rachel Maddow is doing some superb work in fact-checking and investigative reporting, and this segment, about the Beltway CW on the upcoming midterms, is exceptional. I'll add one point many liberal bloggers have noted - voters don't care that much about the deficit, except as a proxy for jobs and economic growth, which they consistently pick as far more important.
Feel free to make you election predictions in the comments. What will be the electoral vote count? What will the popular vote percentages be? How many Senate or House pickups will there be? Any ballot proposition predictions?
CNN allows you to make your own map (some other sites freeze up).
Slate has spreadsheets you can use to track your picks as well for a weighted contest (extra points for picking battleground states correctly, etc.).
Five Thirty Eight's projections show the most common results are 311, 338, 378, 353, and 291 for Obama.
FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver has a very good piece in Newsweek on what to watch for in the election returns.
The yellow states on CNN's map plus Pennsylvania and Nevada are those that have or will likely see the most voter suppression or dirty tricks. Democracy Now and Brad Blog have more details.
The number of true battleground states varies from source to source, but we'll go with these 15 (the CNN map lists abbreviations if you need them):
Some people would add AR, ME and WV to that list. Add anything you like. In any case, feel free to make any predictions in the thread. Mine are in the comments below.
(I'll probably spend more time over at the Blue Herald version of this post, but feel free to leave comments here, if you prefer.)
So McCain campaign... How and why are any of us supposed to respect any of you at all at this point?
I don't think there's been a single significant claim made by McCain, Palin or anyone associated with the campaign in the past three weeks that hasn't been highly deceptive if not an outright lie.
And seriously, it's hard to keep up with all those lies. Even the full-time bloggers can’t. (Your habit of repeating the same debunked and ineffective smears over and over does make it a bit easier, though.)
Let's take one example. Anyone who accuses Obama of being a "socialist" is either an ignoramus or a liar. Or a combination of both.
Look, I know this socialist smear crap, fear-mongering and demonizing has gone on for a very long time. But this stuff is really pathetic. It has all the integrity of Ann Coulter and Jonah Goldberg, if that. And this is a presidential campaign.
Driving home Thursday night, I heard key McCain advisor Nicole Wallace on NPR first try to dodge a question several times, then offer a horrible analogy. Then I learned via John Cole that this same horrible analogy has been circulating in a GOP forwarded e-mail and in recycled "letters" to the editor. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if some GOP operation started the chain e-mail, which is sad enough, but otherwise, much as they abruptly made "Joe the Plumber" a centerpiece of their campaign, the McCain gang is now taking their talking points from anonymous e-mails. Did I mention it's pathetic?
Still, all that pales besides this TV appearance by Michael Goldfarb. Keep in mind he's the deputy communications director for the McCain campaign, paid to blog for him, and normally works for neocon rag The Weekly Standard:
That may be the weakest performance I've ever seen. Palin's interviews come close. But Goldfarb definitely makes the Hall of Infamy.
John Cole calls it "douchebaggery." Publius calls it the "Platonic ideal of d***ness." Several people rightly call Goldfarb's smears McCarthyism.
CNN already debunked the smears against Rashid Khalidi, and Scott Horton points out that McCain actually has stronger ties to Khalidi than Obama does, but since Khalidi is an admirable figure, that's hardly an issue. As Horton points out, the crux is that:
Khalidi is also a Palestinian American. There is no doubt in my mind that it is solely that last fact that informs [Andrew] McCarthy’s ignorant and malicious rants.
Seriously. Because Khalidi is a Palestinian American, Goldfarb, Palin and others are implying - or in some cases, outright accusing - Khalidi of being anti-Semitic. It's amazingly sleazy, but completely believable from this crew.
Rick Sanchez should have challenged Goldfarb to support his outrageous accusation against Khalidi, but give him some credit for pressing Goldfarb, and some leeway for being thrown by Goldfarb's ludicrous responses.
But I also don't see any point in being polite with Goldfarb at the end other than the bare minimum (some commenters think Sanchez was being sarcastic). I understand you can't call him a lying asshole on television, but that's precisely what he is. There simply has to be a way to call him out more forcefully. Maybe there were time restraints here, and Sanchez certainly wasn't expecting this. But Goldfarb is offering absolutely nothing of value. It's preposterous to pretend he's speaking in good faith. He is a smug asshole who can't even lie effectively. He's trying to scare Jews away from voting for Obama. That's it. That's all. And it does the public a grave disservice to give Goldfarb a platform unless on that platform he is hammered in a conscientious, prosecutorial fashion and he leaves (metaphorically) crying and bleeding. What Goldfarb did was unconscionable and immoral. The faults of the MSM are well known in the liberal blogosphere (more on this in "The Bullshit Matrix" and "False Equivalencies"). Their main motive is profit. But there's certainly commercial value in ripping a scoundrel to shreds on TV (the problem is the person probably won't come back). The MSM has to have a way – or has to be pushed to have a way for the public's sake – of holding scumbags like Goldfarb accountable. Sheppard Smith was actually quite good at challenging ignoramus "Joe the Plumber" when he tried something similar. There has to be a steep cost for lies and smears like this. At the very least, Goldfarb should be made a laughing stock. He's certainly helped that goal with a performance that would be perfect for a series called "Hackdom Don'ts." Now this video has to spread, and the chattering class needs to start chattering and do what they do best – clucking disapproval. The despicable tactics of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove will always be tried until the shit they're flinging is made to bounce back on them and everyone can tell who's stinking.
And that's one of many reasons this election is exciting. It won't kill sleazy politics, but an Obama victory would repudiate those tactics. It'll push them back at least a little. I know liberals and conservatives that used to think John McCain was a pretty good guy. They're not news junkies, and haven't followed every development. But they've seen enough to lose a great deal of respect for him. Meanwhile, I have to say, some of the moves I've observed from McCain are among the sleaziest, if not the sleaziest, I've ever seen. The sex ed ad was especially deplorable. The constant lying and distortions, even after being corrected, are despicable. Some of these comments are better suited for a post-mortem, but it's not as if we don't know the general story now. McCain was always running mainly on his persona, not policies. His policies almost all stink, and many would be disastrous if enacted. McCain has revealed himself to be more clueless on policies, government and the world than many people would have believed (myself included). Palin is literally a national joke, except among her rabid fan base. Meanwhile, McCain showed how erratic he was with his campaign "suspension" and squandered his fake "honor" in public with all his nasty attacks, despite his own rabid fan base. His carefully constructed persona was all he really had going for him, and it's been progressively crumbling.
Former conservative John Cole says "the GOP just needs to be destroyed," and he's right. The sane rule-of-law and pragmatic Eisenhower conservatives need to take their party back. The current authoritarian movement crew have little to nothing of value to offer the country or public debate. All they have is shrieking accusations of anti-Americanism and an ideology which amounts to nothing more than, "give more riches and power to the rich and powerful." They have every right to their opinions, and liberals fight to protect the civil rights of all people, even the scumbags (in contrast to the eliminationist attitudes of the far right). but of all the mistakes of the MSM that liberal activists shouldn't repeat, the biggest is probably an unwillingness to make qualitative judgments, and to call bullshit. Doing those things is one of the best ways to honor "values" and "morality" in service of "the real America."
I leave you with one last insightful passage from the Poor Man Institute:
This is the problem. It’s not just the McCain campaign’s problem - although their inability to pick a narrative and stick to it is a special kind of inexcusable - it’s a problem for the entire wingnut noise machine. Obama is a Marxist Muslim Arab Jesus Black White Terrorist Technocrat Racist Do-Gooder Liberal FDR Stalin Hilter Commie Fascist Gay Womanizing Naive Cynical Insider Noob Boring Radical Unaccomplished Elite Slick Gaffe-Prone Pedophile Pedophile-Seducing Liberation Theology Atheist Etc. & Anti-Etc. with a bunch of scary friends from - wait for it! - the Nineteen Hundred And Sixties. It makes no sense. It’s a jumble sale of fears and scary associations from 50 years of wingnut witch hunts and smear campaigns, a flea market of pre-owned and antique resentments, and if one does detect a semi-consistent 1960’s motif running through it all, that’s because that’s when most of these ideas were coined. While it is great fun for wingnut yahoos to relive the glory days when National Review was still taken more seriously than liberal blogofascists by the people who matter, most of this stuff is obsolescent (or at least unfashionable), and people suffering from the material problems caused by 50 years of right-wing ascendancy aren’t going to drop everything to listen to fuguing conservatives spin disjointed yarns about how much better everything was back in their day. Nobody gives a fuck.
All the more so because they're incompetent, lying assholes.
Hey kids, it's rich lobbyist and 'jes folks' character actor Fred Thompson! (He's readin' sumthin', which proves he's smart 'n' stuff, not matter what Nixon said about him). I wonder what he has to say!
Uh, okay. "Responsible" change is the essence of conservatism?!? Obama's really, really liberal? Basically:
If you're nostalgic for Reagan's fake folksy bullshit, and you're fond of Fred's fake folksy bullshit, then you might be just the type who's attracted by Sarah Palin's fake folksy bullshit and McCain's phony populist crap, especially all the fake folksy bullshit he's shilling about his new BFF, Joe the Plumber, who, besides not being a licensed plumber, would - like the vast majority of the country (95% plus) - benefit more under Obama than McCain. But hey, vote the wrong way and those scary furriners might getcha. So vote for McCain.
That is, if you can forget eight years of fake folksy bullshit from George W. Bush.
If you've been following the liberal blogosphere the past few days, you're bound to have seen video of angry, and in some cases bigoted, McCain-Palin supporters (BH and C&L have posted pretty much all of them, I think). You may have missed this gem though, from Friday 10/10/08. Here's Mark Murray at MSNBC's First Read:
Earlier today, Obama remarked on recent outbursts of "Traitor!" "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" at McCain campaign events. "It's easy to rile up a crowd," Obama said. "Nothing's easier than riling up a crowd by stoking anger and division. But that's not what we need right now in the United States."
In response, McCain senior adviser Nicolle Wallace released this statement, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports. "Barack Obama's assault on our supporters is insulting and unsurprising. These are the same people obama called 'bitter' and attacked for 'clinging to guns' and faith. He fails to understand that people are angry at corrupt practices in Washington and Wall Street and he fails to understand that America's working families are not 'clinging' to anything other than the sincere hope that Washington will be reformed from top to bottom."
"Attacking our supporters is a new low for the campaign that's run more millions of dollars of negative ads than any other in history."
*** UPDATE *** McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers adds in another statement: “Barack Obama’s attacks on Americans who support John McCain reveal far more about him than they do about John McCain. It is clear that Barack Obama just doesn’t understand regular people and the issues they care about. He dismisses hardworking middle class Americans as clinging to guns and religion, while at the same time attacking average Americans at McCain rallies who are angry at Washington, Wall Street and the status quo."
Ben Smith at Politico supplied the next paragraph to that Rogers statement on Obama:
Even worse, he attacks anyone who dares to question his readiness to serve as their commander in chief in chief. Raising legitimate questions about record, character and judgment are a vital part of the Democratic process, and Barack Obama’s effort to silence and shame those who seek answers should make everyone wonder exactly what he is hiding.
'It is clear that Barack Obama just doesn’t understand regular people and the issues they care about' – like, I dunno, lynching the Evil Other consistently demonized by their parties' leaders and flacks. These campaign statements appear to have been issued before McCain defended Obama as a "decent man" to some of his more rabid supporters, but they're still pretty despicable (and apparently "Arabs" cannot be "decent men"). Yet while McCain deserves some credit for defending Obama, let's be honest – he really had to in these instances. Video of McCain affirming the most virulent and inexcusable of smears against Obama would be deadly to him with journalists and independents. The success of this sort of smear campaign depends on innuendo, code words and deniability when it enters the mainstream.
McCain's continued his long tradition of policy reversals, of course. This past Friday, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis contradicted earlier McCain rhetoric by claiming that McCain 'blew up' the initial economic package (when McCain "suspended" his campaign). That's newsworthy on its own, but it deals with policy and McCain's shifting bullshit. Far more stark and more TV-friendly is the obvious contradictions in the rhetoric of McCain-Palin when it comes to smearing Obama. It's honestly hard to keep up with all the articles and posts on the subject, because they just keep coming. But here's a few samples.
Via the post "Rage" at Balloon Juice, we learn that CNN reported on Saturday:
McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said that he didn’t know who those people were and if they were there as supporters or to disrupt the rallies.
I suppose those would be the same Obama agitators that Obama was "insulting" on Friday. Meanwhile, by Sunday, Rick Davis was using the P.O.W. defense. He was also demanding an apology from Barack Obama for remarks by Congressman John Lewis, who stated:
As one who was a victim of violence and hate during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.
During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.
As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better.
So, to recap, Rick Davis demanded an apology from Barack Obama for a statement by John Lewis condemning language that McCain himself implicitly condemned... but Sarah Palin has continued. At this point, I guess the crowd aren't agitators anymore, they're back to being good, honest 'Muricans, and so is McCain. Man, that's one schizophrenic campaign. The "honor" line really doesn't wash. Time magazine reports:
If John McCain is as serious as he says about running a "respectful" campaign against an opponent he considers "a decent person," word hasn't yet trickled down to his newly opened storefront field office in Gainesville, Virginia...
With so much at stake, and time running short, [state GOP Chairman Jeffrey M.] Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary." It is also not exactly true — though that distorted reference to Obama's controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. "And he won't salute the flag," one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, "We don't even know where Senator Obama was really born." Actually, we do; it's Hawaii.
And that's exactly right – it's not as if this violent, bigoted, eliminationist rhetoric is anything new to anyone following the right-wing blogosphere for a few years. I recently re-read some older posts - "A Recap of the Sliming of Graeme Frost", Howard Kurtz' whitewashing of that shameful campaign, a "Torture Watch" post, and "That Damned Liberal Racism," which chronicled some of the early articles selling this Obama-is-a-Muslim crap. Other blogs have documented right-wing smears far more relentlessly. But the only thing new, really, is that more mainstream outlets are actually taking note this time.
I've seen many writers say the McCain campaign is "playing with fire," or refer to Pandora's Box, or wonder how to get "the hate genie" back in the bottle. It's hard to keep up with all of those pieces, just as it's hard to keep up with the shifting bullshit of the McCain campaign and all the examples that expose them as hypocrites, liars and dishonorable people. I suppose we should be grateful some of the press is noting that and reporting it (although if they could stop the ridiculous false equivalencies, we'd be better off). David Brooks has copped to his party's obvious anti-intellectualism and hatred of merit and competency (see the ObWi posts above), but his move reeks of an attempt to salvage his credibility by stating what's long been obvious to those in the reality-based community. I have to admit I'm pretty irked as well, and side with those who have intoned that should (god forbid) harm fall on Obama, it will be on the heads on McCain, Palin and the many hate merchants of the Republican Party. To them, I'd say, this shtick has gone far beyond annoying and mendacious – it's become genuinely dangerous. To the MSM, I'd say, the liberal blogosphere has pointed out this violent rhetoric time and time again, and you've largely ignored it or minimized it. The more you report it accurately now, the better.
As Digby points out, if Obama wins, he'll face tough challenges from the right-wingers and the press corps. Those challenges might be a bit easier with each victory now. But the challenges also cut in another direction – the McCain campaign, the Michelle Malkin wingnut crowd, and the angry mobs at the rallies all risk further alienating swing voters from the Republican Party. And you'll have to excuse me if I laugh at the McCain campaign complaining that the Obama campaign is intolerant of McCain's smears and appeals to bigotry and fear.
Visiting performers and celebrities can be a real pain to handle, storming off and refusing to go on, requiring plenty of stroking and praise... With this in mind, I offer you:
