Okay, with but two days to go I think we can stop being completely paranoid about the outcome of this election. Not complacent, but not frantic, either. The choice of Sarah Palin served to reduce the McCain campaign to a parody of its former self. That took some doing, but Palin was so creepy and in the end so corrupt that she pulled off what seemed to be impossible.
That has left the McCain campaign flailing to find a message, a theme, an issue that they could use to blunt the momentum of the Obama campaign. Ten hour lines to vote early? That is astounding to me. I find it hard to believe that voters would be willing to stand in such lines. The determination to make their voice heard in this election is greater than I can recall in my lifetime. My guess is that the Democratic Party is going to make fairly stunning gains. What my hope is that with those gains they can make their first priority to mandate election reform. A lot has been done, some a success, some not, but far, far more is needed. A ten hour line? Absurd. We look like a fixed election in Haiti during the tenure of Duvalier. Enough machines and staff should be assigned that the wait is no more than a few minutes. And a verifiable paper copy should be produced for every vote cast.
Having everyone vote is pretty close to our national core value, to the extent that there is such a thing. The idea that a voter would be asked to stand in line for hours in order to vote seems to me to violate the spirit of everything this country attempts to stand for. I'd like to comment briefly on the idea of voting as a core value in this country. Originally there were restrictions based on land ownership in some areas. It was a given that women could not vote and in most areas it was blithely assumed that African-Americans could not vote. And American Indians? Oh please! Latinos? Not likely! If one looked at the numbers who voted in historic elections, as contrasted to the population of the nation in those years, my guess is that the percentages of voters to the adult populations has steadily risen over the years from a low of perhaps ten percent of the adult population to where it is today. And with this nonsense of not enough voting booths and selective use of poor voting machines in low-income districts, we still have a good distance to go.
The bright spot on the electoral map is college campuses. Our two boys have each registered at their colleges. Further, each college has a polling station. Each college also has good-looking women manning Obama information tables. By Federal law, even if a student is legally a resident of another state, by law they may register to vote on campus if they choose to do so. Where their vote is more valuable there those nice looking ladies (and young men) at the information and registration tables are counseling students to register on campus, then tell them where and when to vote. On election day, with the support of the colleges, there is going to be a massive "harass the voter" effort on each campus, to make sure the students DO vote. Stickers and hugs will be handed out. My guess is that "turnout" will be in the high 90s. Needless to say, the trend on college campuses is running more than 2:1 Obama. Obama's youth and vigor strike a chord with the young while McCain keeps making references that baffle them. When he talks about Herbert Hoover their eyes glaze over. They don't even want to know who that is, they just want to head for the exit. Sarah Palin does not seem to be doing much better among the college demographic. She seems to be coming across as a nasty-spirited Dolly Parton wanna-be, better know to the young through Tina Fey's parody of her on Saturday Night Live than by her own repetitive campaign appearances.
Meanwhile Barack Obama seems to just be focused on the job in front of him, without letting much distract him. No drama, just a steady consistent effort. I had no idea what Obama's half hour info-politics-mercial on Wednesday night would be like. I assumed that it would be a lengthy fireside chat, which might or might not work. Instead it was a skillfully edited series of four different stories of people dealing with the challenges of keeping their heads above water, as our economy goes through the many adjustments of this period of time. Each story was different and I thought they were cleverly chosen to appeal to different demographics. I could not help but notice that one was in Ohio, one in New Mexico, one in North Carolina and the other in some other battleground state. Not missing a trick there, were they? I thought the stories were representative and did a good job of illustrating some systemic problems our nation has. The cost of healthcare seemed to jump out at the viewer. As it should. Anyone who has had any kind of health issue can testify that the costs of medical care just seem to spiral into the ozone layer. The cost of medical care per person in the United States is the highest in the world but our actual delivery of services is wildly uneven and far from the best in the world, or the most fair. We are fools to be complacent about this issue. Preventive care can slash the cost of keeping our population healthy, whereas relying on sending very ill people to emergency rooms is probably the most costly and inefficient system one could possibly design. If our population is healthy, logically it is a more productive population. When people are sick that can impact entire families. A lot of health conditions are avoidable, unless one is too stupid to do so.
That has left the McCain campaign flailing to find a message, a theme, an issue that they could use to blunt the momentum of the Obama campaign. Ten hour lines to vote early? That is astounding to me. I find it hard to believe that voters would be willing to stand in such lines. The determination to make their voice heard in this election is greater than I can recall in my lifetime. My guess is that the Democratic Party is going to make fairly stunning gains. What my hope is that with those gains they can make their first priority to mandate election reform. A lot has been done, some a success, some not, but far, far more is needed. A ten hour line? Absurd. We look like a fixed election in Haiti during the tenure of Duvalier. Enough machines and staff should be assigned that the wait is no more than a few minutes. And a verifiable paper copy should be produced for every vote cast.
Having everyone vote is pretty close to our national core value, to the extent that there is such a thing. The idea that a voter would be asked to stand in line for hours in order to vote seems to me to violate the spirit of everything this country attempts to stand for. I'd like to comment briefly on the idea of voting as a core value in this country. Originally there were restrictions based on land ownership in some areas. It was a given that women could not vote and in most areas it was blithely assumed that African-Americans could not vote. And American Indians? Oh please! Latinos? Not likely! If one looked at the numbers who voted in historic elections, as contrasted to the population of the nation in those years, my guess is that the percentages of voters to the adult populations has steadily risen over the years from a low of perhaps ten percent of the adult population to where it is today. And with this nonsense of not enough voting booths and selective use of poor voting machines in low-income districts, we still have a good distance to go.
The bright spot on the electoral map is college campuses. Our two boys have each registered at their colleges. Further, each college has a polling station. Each college also has good-looking women manning Obama information tables. By Federal law, even if a student is legally a resident of another state, by law they may register to vote on campus if they choose to do so. Where their vote is more valuable there those nice looking ladies (and young men) at the information and registration tables are counseling students to register on campus, then tell them where and when to vote. On election day, with the support of the colleges, there is going to be a massive "harass the voter" effort on each campus, to make sure the students DO vote. Stickers and hugs will be handed out. My guess is that "turnout" will be in the high 90s. Needless to say, the trend on college campuses is running more than 2:1 Obama. Obama's youth and vigor strike a chord with the young while McCain keeps making references that baffle them. When he talks about Herbert Hoover their eyes glaze over. They don't even want to know who that is, they just want to head for the exit. Sarah Palin does not seem to be doing much better among the college demographic. She seems to be coming across as a nasty-spirited Dolly Parton wanna-be, better know to the young through Tina Fey's parody of her on Saturday Night Live than by her own repetitive campaign appearances.
Meanwhile Barack Obama seems to just be focused on the job in front of him, without letting much distract him. No drama, just a steady consistent effort. I had no idea what Obama's half hour info-politics-mercial on Wednesday night would be like. I assumed that it would be a lengthy fireside chat, which might or might not work. Instead it was a skillfully edited series of four different stories of people dealing with the challenges of keeping their heads above water, as our economy goes through the many adjustments of this period of time. Each story was different and I thought they were cleverly chosen to appeal to different demographics. I could not help but notice that one was in Ohio, one in New Mexico, one in North Carolina and the other in some other battleground state. Not missing a trick there, were they? I thought the stories were representative and did a good job of illustrating some systemic problems our nation has. The cost of healthcare seemed to jump out at the viewer. As it should. Anyone who has had any kind of health issue can testify that the costs of medical care just seem to spiral into the ozone layer. The cost of medical care per person in the United States is the highest in the world but our actual delivery of services is wildly uneven and far from the best in the world, or the most fair. We are fools to be complacent about this issue. Preventive care can slash the cost of keeping our population healthy, whereas relying on sending very ill people to emergency rooms is probably the most costly and inefficient system one could possibly design. If our population is healthy, logically it is a more productive population. When people are sick that can impact entire families. A lot of health conditions are avoidable, unless one is too stupid to do so.
Does anyone recall when Sarah Palin went on a rant during her debate with Joe Biden about "waving the white flag of surrender", which was a long quote from Ronald Reagan? She quoted Reagan as saying "we’re going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free". Did you ever hear what Reagan thought would destroy our freedom? Medicare. I kid you not, it was not capitulation to Communist forces or pacifism or any of those evils, it was the loss of our freedoms caused by the adoption of that terrible Socialistic... medicare. Oh horrors!
So that's really what this is all about. The forces of stupidity versus the forces of common sense. The forces of the future, as exemplified by college volunteers who are not willing to take no for an answer, or the forces of those who imagine the world is about to end and the Rapture could happen during the next four years. Seriously, Sarah Palin really suspects we may ALL be about to get evicted, and our global house may be demolished as having become the moral equivalent of a Crack House. No problem for her, as she believes she will be among the elect. The rest of us? Hmmm, not such good prospects, no, not so good at all. And the whole issue of public health? That just will not be an issue, as we are being consumed by a sea of fire.
I'm not sure how many of you saw Alex Baldwin talk later about his meeting with Sarah Palin, speaking of her as "Bible Spice" (a dated Spice Girls reference). A kind of hot young Tammy Fay Bakker, as it were, minus the tears and dripping mascara. Meanwhile John McCain has settled on all slander, all the time. When you are sitting in the mud and are out of good ideas, I guess that mud is about all you have to work with. My impression then is that the Republican ticket has become:
Commander Slander and Bible Spice
A fine variety act, but not something one would care to have a steady diet of.
I will close by making a potentially faulty prediction. If Obama and Biden are elected, as seems statistically likely, my hunch is that the world stock markets will jump by 5% to 10% on November 5th. Will they then fall back? Can't say, but I think there will be at least a temporary burst of relief and enthusiasm. Polling done in other countries suggests about a 4:1 preference for Obama over McCain, pretty much worldwide. I guess one could say they are looking for a change.
Arthur
P.S. Check out Sarah Palin getting punked on the radio. Hilarious.
2 comments:
"By Federal law, even if a student is legally a resident of another state, by law they may register to vote on campus if they choose to do so."
A clarification is in order here. It's not quite that simple.
Since 1998 a provision of the Higher Education Act required colleges to actively encourage voting and provide registration materials to all students or lose federal funding. A 1979 Supreme Court ruling allowed students to register to vote at their college, but since there is no Federal Voting Statute per se, each state is responsible for who is allowed to vote and their requirements vary substantially to include residency requirements. Generally if you register at college you relinquish your voting privileges in your home state, county or even city. In other words, if you want to vote for president at your California college and mayor, senator and ballot measure in Oregon, it can't be done legally.
Now Virginia, Indiana and Florida are another story with numerous roadblocks for residency and ID claims. In Arizona, you need to be extra careful because it's a felony to register in dual locations. Speaking of felonies you lose voting rights for life in Kentucky and Virginia and 14 other states have variations of disenfranchisement surrounding felony convictions. Now commit a felony or be incarserated in Maine or Vermont? Not a problem. You get your voting booth in the slammer with personal instructions from the Secretary of State's office with one exception. The only crime that would prevent you from hanging a chad in Vermont is voter fraud.
" If Obama and Biden are elected, as seems statistically likely, my hunch is that the world stock markets will jump by 5% to 10% on November 5th."
FREEFALL NOVEMBER 5TH
Austrailia -4.3% (Percent drop)
Hong Kong -6.8
Japan -6.55
Germany -3.5
France -2.0
UK -2.5
Indonesia -4.0
Korea -7.5
Taiwam -5.7
USA -5.0
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