MegaAwesome

Over at MHCBUYP Bruce Carlson’s latest podcast is a history of the Iowa caucuses. He explains why the caucus is so important and lays out some very good arguments against a National Primary system. I’m not big on podcasts, but his are always excellent so check him out if you haven’t before.

And remember that here in Washington it’s the caucuses that determine delegates to the conventions, at least for Democrats. The state Republicans split up their delegates between their caucuses and the primary results, or something. For D’s however, you must show up to your caucus in order to make a difference.

In fact, if you’re a Democrat you should go ahead and fill this out for updates on your local caucus. And go and make sure you’ve got February 9th free so that you can participate. It is sort of important.

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Freedom 101 by rx (starring JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Malcolm X):

Back in 2004 when I was seriously burnt out on the campaign I clicked a little ad link from a political blog that said something along the lines of “Join the Party Party!” and I was renewed. There was a collection mp3s of President Bush Jr remixed into hilarious new songs, my favorite being “Dick is a Killer” which has very explicit lyrics and is amazingly funny.

And then I pretty much forgot about The Party Party, until now. The video of the President singing “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” was passed around over the last week and I’ve fallen in love all over again.

You can see all of his videos here.

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Blogger, webcomic author, and personality-test maker SaintGasoline put up his endorsement of Mike Gravel a few days ago:

For anyone participating in the Democratic primaries, I strongly urge you to vote for Mike Gravel (or possibly Dennis Kucinich as an alternative). Gravel is a man who genuinely cares about this country, and I have no doubt that he would be a great, effective, and innovative leader. After researching his stance on the issues, I see that his policies almost perfectly reflect my own political stances. But then again, so do Kucinich’s. The clinching factor for Gravel, though, was the fact that he is a man who knows how to get things done. Unlike the Democratic congress we elected, from whom we expected some sort of pressure put on the President to resolve the mess in Iraq and from whom we actually received complacency and inactivity, Mike Gravel would quickly and decisively put an end to this unjust war

It’s well written and passionate, and I haven’t seen too much from Gravel supporters lately so it’s certainly worth a quick read. I have my policy disagreements with Gravel, and if you haven’t noticed the sidebar I’m cheering for someone else, but I don’t dislike him. I wish that he had stuck with his record instead of doing things like this:

…because seven minutes is a very long time to wait for nothing.

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I went in to last night’s county council without having made up my mind on the idea, and came out of it less convinced than before. Passions are running high, but I’m really not all that certain that it’s warranted at this stage of the game.

As you’ve no doubt heard, the Council decided 6-Sam Crawford to send the issue back to voters next year. There were two primary reasons given for doing so:

• The ballot statement last time was confusing
• There was no real debate prior to the vote

Of the two, I find the first one particularly compelling. As a fan of martial arts movies a poorly written or misleading title is in the top five of things that make me especially crazy. Have you ever seen Bionic Ninja? There were lots of ninjas but if any of them were bionic then they didn’t bother to mention it. Don’t get me started on Thunder Ninja Kids 3: The Hunt for the Devil Boxer.

The second proposition, though it has more emotional appeal, is also interesting. I’m one of those people who like big drawn out debates on policy things like this (see every third post on this blog) and I’m eager to see what comes out of this.

There’s an interesting debate to be had here. At the meeting it was brought up that many representatives on the national and statewide levels won’t give you the time of day if you’re not in that district. Whenever I get an automated response from a member of the US House Leadership that says, essentially, “Thanks, but as a courtesy to our colleagues we don’t respond to people outside our Congressional District” I want to call up their office and say bad words to the poor intern who answers the phone. I understand their reasoning, but I don’t agree with it.

There were other arguments in favor of county-wide voting, such as the idea that since the Council represents the whole county then they should be accountable to the whole county. I don’t disagree with that, but I’m not yet sold.

On the other side, I like the idea of having my representative who represents my area who I can call and say bad words to whenever they do something that I think is dumb. I know that’s not a very persuasive, but it’s the sort of thing I worry about.

It has been suggested that the switch will help Democrats and I think that’s true just not as dramatically as people seem to think. Looking at the map, Democrats should do just fine on the Council under district-only voting. Their chances aren’t too great in District 2, but the results of Ken Mann’s campaign seem to indicate that it’s not forever out of reach. For that matter I’m not sure that the Council should even be 100% Democrat, but I’ll leave it at that for now before I get myself in too much trouble.

I haven’t made up my mind on this yet, but the discussion so far has been interesting and hopefully the passions will stay hot long enough to get people organised on both sides. The Council, most of it anyway, has thrown down the gauntlet and since it’s going to go to the ballot anyway now lets make sure that no one can ever say that there wasn’t robust, and at least mostly civil, public debate from both sides.

Clearly many people feel strongly about this, but are they bad enough dudes to put a campaign together and see it through to the end?

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The New Hampshire hostage crisis in Hillary’s campaign offices is old news now, but it’s something that has really stuck with me. I’m something of a serial volunteer, I love campaigns, and I’m very lucky in that the craziest situation I’ve ever had to deal with is calling the police to remove a belligerent drunk.

Its important to remember that behind any big campaign is a core of true believers, people with just about zero influence or status who do just about everything. They work long hours for little if any pay, and sacrifice most of their lives to keep the campaign going. A lot of them are ambitious, hoping that this will be the big one that gets them noticed and makes them a player who is courted for other campaigns in the future, but not as many as you’d think.

I’ve been proud to count myself among them in the past and will probably continue to do so with any campaign I believe in that will have me for the rest of my life. I have a deep respect for anyone who’s given up portions of their life for goals they believe in, no matter the campaign or cause. This is what makes our democracy work, such as it does.

My heart goes out to those staffers and volunteers in New Hampshire, and to their families. I am very glad that the situation was resolved without violence, and I hope that it won’t deter anyone from the vital service of campaign work in the future.

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Techpresident points to Harry Shearer’s silent debate series:

I know that they’re not really for everybody, but I think it’s hilarious. Number 3 (Edwards v Huckabee with Russert moderating) is my favorite.

I agree that candidates don’t say much during the debates, and I blame the format. Hopefully by 2012 or 2016 we’ll have some amazing technical breakthrough and the ‘raise your hand if…’ style debating will be a thing of the past. As interesting as the YouTube debates were for novelty, they kind of made me wonder why the candidates even showed up at all. They could have just posted video responses on YouTube themselves and stayed at home that night watching cartoons in their underwear (I assume that’s how they spend their free time). That way they could have addressed more of them and in more depth.

My favorite televised event so far is still the Logo forums, where each candidate came out one at a time and fielded questions from a panel. The format was fantastic, though the theme wasn’t really aimed at my demographic.

Why can’t we do something like this for broader topics like foreign policy and the environment? One candidate at a time, no fixed time limit for answers, and a panel that can ask all the follow-up questions it wants. Sort of like Charlie Rose or Inside the Actors Studio. The issues that a president is expected to face are too broad for a 90 second answer, and so instead we get a bunch of people who don’t even really try to answer the questions and moderators who choose instead to play stupid ‘gotcha’ games and try to trip up the candidates on ridiculous non-issues. There is certainly a place for analyzing the words a candidate chooses when they lay out a talking point or strategic decisions they make about where to focus their time and money, and maybe even to throw comments their spouse made in the past at them, but these ‘debates’ so far have been pathetic.

We need to expect better from our presidential candidates than a good ten to fifteen word answer on the most complex issues in the world. We should be asking not only what they think, but why and how they got there. There are a lot of things on the table in this election, like health care and the environment, that hint to broader themes that we should be hearing more about.

Such as: What is our place in the world? What is the role of the American government in the national economy? Foreign Affairs has had a tremendous series allowing candidates to submit essays on their plans for American foreign policy, and it would be nice to see more of that.

But at the same time it should be recognised that candidates, and presidents for that matter, aren’t going to have all the answers. There are going to be times when they simply don’t know or haven’t really thought about a given topic, and that has to be ok. The gotcha questions from debate moderators and 10-second clip mentality of the network news has a heavy deterrent effect on the candidates’ willingness to say that they don’t know something, or that they might have changed their mind on a position. Instead we get sound bites and non-answers, and that’s not good for anyone.

It’s important to remember that whoever wins the game gets the keys to an unimaginably powerful military and a single poorly thought out decision could mean disaster for millions in this country alone. This is a hell of a job, and I wish more time was spent emphasising that.

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Don’t forget to come down to the the Ranch Room tonight for Drinking Liberally. The Ranch Room is located in the Horseshoe Cafe at 113 Holly St, and we’ll be gathering at about 7 and hanging out for hours and hours afterwards so show up whenever you’re able.

There will be a special emergency session of Bellingham Drinking Liberally sometime in late December, and if you want details on that go to drinkingliberally.org and sign up for the Bellingham announcement list. That way you’ll know just as soon as I figure it out.

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This Wednesday we finally get the Republican CNN/YouTube debate!

I love the trailer (via TechPresident):

It looks like the intro for an 80’s television series where a bunch of older men travel the county in a big bus solving crimes, which would be awesome. Most of them will find themselves with a lot of free time in a few months, and I think they should consider filming a pilot. Just imagine Matlock meets the A-Team, and it practically writes itself.

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Huckabee is clearly challenging RP for the World of Warcraft demographic:

As I’ve said before: I have no idea why Huckabee has had such a difficult time getting support together to win the Republican nomination. According to ARG he’s managed to increase his standing by 600% since July Nationwide, but that just brings him up to 6%. He seems likable, funny, and is strictly in line with the platform on everything except for immigration, where his policy seems to bother Fred Thompson. He seems like the perfect candidate for the R’s, not only to win their own social conservative base but to draw off Democrats who might not be able to bring themselves to vote for Hillary.

I’m not trying to sell him, I just don’t get why he isn’t more popular. Instead they’re lining behind a couple of liberals from New York and Massachusetts and a man who announced in September that really aught to remind his supporters that he’s running to win. WTF?

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There were a lot of races this year, and a lot of dumb things happened. For my purposes in this, however, I’m going to focus on the Mayor’s race because that was the one that was of greatest importance to me, personally.

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