The View From Australia

I always like to read the foreign press about American campaigns. This article has no great shocking news, except for one small note near the end. Obama tells his supporters to text to a certain number. Then on election day they get flooded with reminders to get out and vote. Nobody has ever dreamed of that wrinkle before, nor would it work for most candidates. Can you imagine McCain trying to explain it to one of his small audiences of confused older voters? Which I would modestly suggest is a very different demographic from us exceptionally savvy older voters.

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(Note on McCain: "I made a very unfortunate and insensitive remark. It was the wrong thing to do, and I have no excuse for it.'' -- Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, June 11, 1998.
McCain was apologizing for telling a Republican fund-raiser that Chelsea Clinton was "so ugly'' because "she's the child of Janet Reno and Hillary Clinton.'' According to "My Bad," he later sent a note to the Clintons.)

Arthur

Counting On The Young

Every parent will agree that counting on the young to do something can be a mistake. But this year may surprise us. I hope so, since that is the hope that our country will continue to survive. I am rather fond of it, so I hope that it will. We should know by Wednesday how many younger voters came out in the TX, OH, RI and VT primaries. That should tell us something important about how motivated younger voters really are this year. The weather in Texas is supposed to be okay, Ohio is supposed to have really nasty weather. Rhode Island an Vermont are normally crappy at this time of year. I would expect a strong younger voter turnout in those three states. If we see a similarly high turnout in all four states, then it is a believable trend.

Referring to an earlier story, I mistakenly believed that the students who marched seven miles along a highway to vote were from Texas A&M. They were from a smaller traditionally black A&M college in Texas which has had decades of problems in being able to register, vote, or to have their votes count. It seems that all sorts of accidents keep happening in that rural Republican district, the latest being the only polling place being located 7.3 miles from the campus. With all the publicity I think it will be hard to suppress that vote, but it is important to remember that with all the progress that has been made, pockets of racism remain very much alive in this country. I am amused by reports that some Republicans in Texas claim to be voting for Obama as a "spoiler vote" intended to knock out Clinton and set up an unelectable candidate for the General Election. It certainly would be ironic if their support helped him clinch the nomination and win the election, wouldn't it? I can't think of a nicer group of folks to have that delightful surprise. My, how they will laugh and laugh and laugh if that happens! Tears may even be rolling down their cheeks, they will be laughing so heartily...

(More on the Texas youth vote here.)

Arthur

Agreeing With Rich

I find myself agreeing with Frank Rich's meta-analysis of the political race this year. I'm going out on a limb and calling Texas for Obama by between 3 and 10 points and Iowa a toss up, either candidate winning by 3 points, VT for Obama by 10 to 15 and RI for Clinton by 5 points. Statistically that would not support Clinton staying in the campaign, and she knows it, as it would raise the bar from all the additional races to something like her needing to do 70% in all of them. If she wins only one state of the four on Tuesday I think it will be easier for her to step down. In fairness, a lot of people have put millions of dollars into her campaign and want her to hang in there. It is a tough position for her to be in. Rich is looking ahead to November, making some intelligent observations about McCain. I do love his comments about Rush Limbaugh. Ya gotta love a candidate who attacks a potential supporter with such venom. What a unifying figure he would be for our country, given his habit of running off at the mouth like that!

P.S. Click here for another Limbaugh story.

Arthur

Weekend Update - March 1st

• Okay, the new American Embassy in Baghdad only cost us taxpayers $736 MILLION. Maybe John McCain's right. We ARE going to be there for 100 years.


• Due for a colonoscopy? Have Aetna Insurance? Ouch.


• What?! Gasoline is up to almost $4 a gallon? Someone tell the President! Please!


• Tim Russert's performance as a moderator of last week's debate has drawn widespread criticism. We think he's just a squinty-eyed MSMputz. Or to quote Uncle Bob: "Here is overwhelming evidence that Tim Russert is a right wing media clown who would not recognize the truth if Molly Ivins arose from her grave and bashed his fat face with it."


• And speaking of Molly Ivins....Molly Ivins, Elvis, and Obama.


• Dan Rather slamming corporate control of MSM newsrooms? Repent! The End Is Near!


• Uncle Bob writes: Of all the reminiscences I have seen about the late William F. Buckley, I like this one by New York Daily News columnist Lars-Erik Nelson:
  'Buckley exists to wrap up people's base, greedy, bigoted, low-life, mean, and nasty views into high-faluting language so that they don't have to go around thinking that they are just mean, stupid, and nasty, but instead have a philosophy like Buckley's.'"

A Poll That Explains the Facts In Texas

Okay, there are polls of all Texas voters, polls of this, polls of that. Here is a poll done by Texans, for Texans, that picks apart demographic trends and preferences and then goes one important step further. They pick apart the data by region, then they list the delegate count for each region. Others have warned that the Texas system is likely to favor Obama, but this is the first poll to seek to quantify the effect.

Guess what? They show Obama leading in the Districts which have 88 delegates at stake, while Clinton leads in Districts where 39 delegates are in play. If this were a Republican primary with winner-take-all assignments of delegates this would be a landslide in terms of delegate "get" for Obama. In the Democratic primary what one can say is that it looks like a proportional win for Obama, which since Clinton needed to win delegates by something like a 65% - 35% margin, means the primary season would appear to end here. Even more so, as national polls come out citing Obama as ahead on national polling, or in head to head matchups with McCain. That electability factor (not polled for in this poll) may sway undecideds to vote for Obama. Public discussion abut how well Obama's fundraising is going and questions as to whether Clinton should step aside can't help either, for those paying close enough attention to hear about it.

If this poll is accurate, or even close to accurate, there is no statistical chance for Clinton to get a high enough delegate count in Texas to keep alive her hopes of winning the nomination. That being the case, it would appear to be time for Democrats to wake up to the fact that they have a new nominee, for better or worse. No candidate is free of flaws and negatives. Obama has fewer negatives than Clinton, fewer than the Republican Party, but now the slime machine is going to start up. Given the unpopularity of President Bush that may only serve to further damage the GOP, in a similar pattern of self-inflicted wounds that we saw when Clinton turned into an attack machine. When Obama turns negative he seems able to do it in a softer manner. The result has more impact, while generating less anger.

Arthur

Campaign Notes

If Obama gets elected it will be because he seems to have struck a chord with a certain age group across the country. One might scoff at the idea of finding good reporting in the Wall Street Journal, but while their editorials are written by wizened trolls with bad breath, their reporters often produce some of the best reporting around. But the reporters don't get to write the headlines, so at first glance the story looks as though it is going to be a predictable hit piece from the corporate right.

This is a good example: downbeat headline and leader, but a quite insightful and balanced article, telling a story that other news media are probably not going to get around to even thinking about until a year from now. If ever.
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And highlighting meta-trends for 2008, this article has some interesting facts:

1. 22 million Democrats have turned out for their primaries, only 14 million Republicans bothered. That is better than a 3:2 advantage. That's 61% to 39%.

2. The article quotes a GOP pundit as saying the Republican Party "Is going through a transition". Yes, so it would appear.

3. As a strategy to halt the slide in enthusiasm the GOP in Ohio has lists of gun owners to send mailings to. That's daring.

Arthur

Howard Kurtz Says It's Over

Whatever else one can say about this article, one can lay a safe bet that Kurtz will probably not be invited to the Clintons' Fourth of July party this year. Whether Kurtz is essentially right or is getting ahead of the story, what this points out is the dangers for a politician in lashing out at the press, though it is certain that all politicians and government figures would happily see them gathered together and kept locked in an isolate rural prison camp. For their own protection, of course...

I happened to catch the MSNBC bio on John McCain last night, or at least a part of it. A fascinating story, at least the parts that I saw. McCain comes across as a curious personality, prone to plane crashes, literally and figuratively. I can't get out of my mind the joking line from Pat Buchanan that if McCain was elected that he'd make Dick Cheney look like Gandhi. What an image. It also struck me that when McCain was lashing out at Obama yesterday he was speaking (if one can judge from the sound of the crowd) to a group of a few hundred or so, while Obama's response was delivered to one of his halls with five thousand or so.

Arthur