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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Ars Technica ran an great article a few days ago, referencing an interesting study:
In all, 63% of the campaign stories focused on political and tactical aspects of the campaign. That is nearly four times the number of stories about the personal backgrounds of the candidates (17%) or the candidates’ ideas and policy proposals (15%). And just 1% of stories examined the candidates’ records or past public performance, the study found.
The press’ focus on fundraising, tactics and polling is even more evident if one looks at how stories were framed rather than the topic of the story. Just 12% of stories examined were presented in a way that explained how citizens might be affected by the election, while nearly nine-out-of-ten stories (86%) focused on matters that largely impacted only the parties and the candidates. Those numbers, incidentally, match almost exactly the campaign-centric orientation of coverage found on the eve of the primaries eight years ago.
None of this comes as a surprise to someone who’s been following this election, but this is a topic that is important to me. The focus on personal issues and who is using what strategy, to the expense of issues and record, is tragic. The focus on strategy and tactics changes the question in many peoples’ mind from “Who should be elected and why?” to “Who will be elected, and isn’t that a shame?” Not to mention that it screws up the priorities of the candidates and magnifies silly campaign blunders (like Dean’s exuberant battle cry) and minimizes real policy blunders (like the commitment of the major Republican candidates to change absolutely nothing).
When a candidate puts forward a policy proposal what I want to know is:
Is it realistic?
How will it change existing policy?
How does it compare with proposals from other candidates?
How much will it cost?
How does this stack up with other proposals the same candidate has made in the past?
What I don’t need is “X is trying to shore up support with men between the ages of 25 and 40 who spend most of their time working on a script for a Logan’s Run/Dr Who crossover.” Either I knew that already, or I don’t care.
The Caucus has a great press-release from the Edwards campaign:
“Stephen Colbert claims to represent a new kind of politics, but today we see he’s participating in the slash and burn politics that has no place in American discourse. The truthiness is, as the candidate of Doritos, Colbert’s hands are stained by corporate corruption and nacho cheese. John Edwards has never taken a dime from salty food lobbyists and America deserves a President who isn’t in the pocket of the snack food special interests.”
…for the Romney campaign contest and while he got the most votes, was cut out of the running for the top prize (the campaign would pay for the ad to be put on the air). I highly recommend reading Reed’s telling of the story, especially for those curious about the use of the internet in political campaigns.
There’s still a ways to go, clearly, before someone really figures out just what role the internet will play in the future of campaigns and I hope that people are paying attention to this. Under all these missteps and silliness there’s a sort of weird science developing that will probably result in a pretty high-priced campaign staff position for many years to come.
This is in response to the excellent endorsements of Edwards around the net lately. In addition to the MyDD list I linked to earlier there’s more roundups here and here.
Let me start this off by talking about my second favorite candidate: Dennis Kucinich. I kept up with Talking Points Memo, the Washington Monthly and a few other blogs, but I didn’t know anything about Kucinich for the majority of the 2004 campaign. It wasn’t that the information wasn’t out there, I just didn’t care. After the 2000 mess I was so turned off to politics that I didn’t even really start paying attention until after the primaries.
I still didn’t know anything about Kucinich until early 2005 when I went to an event at the Seattle Labor Temple about the Social Security fight. I was there to see Jim McDermott, another incredible person, but Kucinich spoke also and I was an instant fan. I don’t think there’s a single issue that I disagree with him on.
But some things are more important than issues.
I firmly believe that John Edwards has what it takes to be a great president. More than just pulling the other ‘top-tier’ Democrats to the left with bold and ambitious positions, he’s outlining a vision of a new and greater America. The issues are all fairly straightforward:
Health care and college for everyone
The United States should lead the world and work to solve global issues like poverty and disease
American workers shouldn’t pay the price for higher executive profits
…and so on. What’s more important than the issues, though, is the reasoning. We need to do these things not because they’re a good idea (which they are), but because it’s who we are. This is America dammit, all of this should be a given.
I support the Democratic candidates because they make me feel proud to be a Democrat. I support Dennis Kucinich because he makes me proud to be a liberal.
