Excitement

Wow, this is an exciting day. The closest experience I have for the feeling I have now is the 1992 election. After 2 terms of Nixon and 3 terms of Reagan (with a blip of the disaster-on-a-stick Carter), we faced down a serious, nearly overwhelming Democratic victory. It was exhilirating and sweet.

This year the stakes are higher, so there's a consequentialness to the impact of the victory. And it will be over 50% (unlike both of Clintons) and probably as much a blowout for the Dems that is possible in our current climate. So that will be sweet too.

I can't perceive a total domination like 1964 or 1984 for a Democrat in the political climate now. Rove v. Wade has rendered Democrats verboten for many states, and since there are no more "Southern Democrats," a 1976 southern sweep is a distant memory.

But it will awesome tonight (or truly horrifying if the Gooper voter suppression and intimidation wins, but since 2006 was victorious, I think we'll be in good shape tonight).

To remember the sweetness of 2006, here's a rerun of Steve Sack:

Am I Worried About November?

Well, in a large abstract way, I am worried about the election in the same way I'm worried about death or Nazis. Two national elections have been awarded to a profoundly unqualified man (Bush) and a party that decided to commit themselves to strange and evil policies.

2000 was terrible but until 9/11 most of us thought that the damage would be temporary, given that we were living through peace and prosperity. 2004 was heart-rending because it was clear how bad Bush was and things were getting worse and worse. The past 4 years have been horrifying and I know my kids will ask me about them with the same hushed awe I asked my parents about 1963-1968 (assassinations, Vietnam, Nixon). And if things were teetering on the bad in 2004, the re-election of Bush in 2008 would be a full-gonzo catastrophe.

It bears repeating: all of us who warned about the horrors of a second Bush term, and were ridiculed by Goopers who claimed we were being paranoid hysterics, were proven to be correct. And I was not correct by accident - i.e. many people are correct only by chance. For example, the smartasses who said that John Edwards was *of course* cheating on his wife... basing their assertions on the sole facts that (a) Edwards was good-looking, and (b) they disagreed with Edwards' policies/profession/accent.

Not liking somebody, and thus attributing to the disliked person all sorts of crimes, does not make your criticisms prophetic. You just got lucky.

However, if you said that Edwards was a wife-cheater because of certain provable factors (e.g. you knew of some shady behaviors, you read in his book that 'cheating on your cancer-stricken wife ain't the worst thing a person can do', or if you personally slept with him), then - fine - you can be considered a perceptive prognosticator.

For the record, I didn't believe the rumors that Edwards was cheating on his wife because I didn't think that someone as successful as him (self-made multi-millionaire, young Democratic senator in a red-state) would do something so destructive and stupid. I mean, it was Spitzer-esque! And even then, I had some glimmering that Spitzer was a sexual-schkutz because he intermarried. Ya see, that's a provable indicator. Sex crime here leads to sex crime there. But Edwards? Why would someone running for president - someone who constantly references his wife's terminal cancer - have an affair on the campaign trail.

Anyway, I went on this tangent to talk about the stakes of the election: just as the loss in 2004 was bad, and I knew it would be bad beforehand, I can say with confidence that McCain winning in November would mean total freakin' disaster for the U.S. of A. McCain is unfit to lead and will most likely die soon in office (based on simple actuarial prediction) leaving the country in the hands of a serial-fabricator hillbilly Evangelical.

And, as some dude pointed out, Bush managed to destroy our country from the starting point of Clinton's peace and prosperity. McCain - an uck-fup of Bushian magnitude - would be elected in the midst of two draining wars and an economy teetering on the brink.

Stop, You're Scaring Me!

I hear you cry. Yes, if McCain wins in November, we are totally screwed. But I don't expect it to happen. In fact, and you can quote me, the only way for the GOP to win in November is through fraud. I say this based on three proofs: (1) the frauds of 2000 & 2004, (2) the 2006 midterms, and (3) American history.

1. The only way the GOP won in 2000 and 2004 was through fraud.

Yeah, the Goopers amongst you will deny that 2000 was fraud, even though, based on facts, it's clear that Gore *would* have won in Florida if the votes that the voters cast were actually tabulated. If you prefer winning at all costs, and see a 'win' as proving retroactively everything done as right and correct, then the fact that the Supreme Court allowed Bush to win Florida, and thus the whole election, to be enough to say that Bush actually won.

But in the world of facts, it's important to remember than no matter what the weird rules stated, Gore won in 2000. A sports analogy, if I may. If quarterback Jack Drake throws a 95 yard touchdown pass while being tackled by a blitz of linebackers, yet the play is invalidated because the second-string slotback was barely offsides, do you credit the QB with a touchdown.

In the official game scoring, Jack Drake does not get credit for a touchdown. In the world of real life and of commerce, Jack Drake will be known as an amazing athlete who can perform under pressure and whose expertise was proven in real events. The rules of sports, while important to those who follow sports, are arbitrary and do not determine actual events.

Gore *should* have won in 2000; and for this argument it means that the country was willing to have a third Clinton term, and to elect Gore-Lieberman, even though arbitrary (and ultimately skewed rules) undermined the true events.

2004 was not as close as 2000 and for months after the election I was devastated not only because Bush was still in office, but with enough of a margin to suggest that people approved of his idiocies.

However, as the numerous scandals that were uncovered from 2006 on have shown, the Bush administration was involved in systematic voter fraud in every election since they took over the Justice department. I don't have time or space to get into great details - yet, they are easily found all over the internet - but event after event has shown that Bush administration politicized every aspect of the executive branch, skewing policy and actions to help Republicans get elected. The very core of the attorney scandal was that Bush/Gonzales were forcing the U.S. Attorneys to (a) suppress the vote of probable democratic voters (e.g. minorities), and (b) indict Democratic politicians or their staff-members close to the election date. The 8 attorneys who were fired all refused to engage in malfeasance.

Read the data, get scared, and conclude - as you should - that 2004 was won via fraud.

Now, this does not deny that the Democratic candidates of 2000 and 2004 were poor candidates. They were pusillanimous, uncharismatic, and not great leaders. But also recognize that conditions were such in 2000 and 2004 that would have made the country vote for an accept a mediocre Democrat.

Barack Obama is not a mediocre politician. He has many detriments, tis' true - he's young, black, and smart. But he also is a galvanizing speaker and a sober thinker who has raised the most money in history and did so with small donations. Which means he excites millions of people. These facts militate against the not-unfounded anxieties that Americans won't vote for a black man with a funny name. I'd have said that - and in fact did - back in 2007. Today, it's an unfounded fear.

2. The 2006 Midterms showed that the country wants change.

Even with the Justice Dept. vote-fraud, even with the Senate lineup stacked against the Democrats, we still managed to win Congress in 2006. Things were so terrible, in just 2 years, that the country threw their bums out. And, it needs to be said, it's hard to throw out congressional incumbents, and a switch-over in the Senate is not a great way to gauge public mood since only 32-33 people are up for election and not always in states that express the public mood. Even with all that, the Democrats won in 2006.

In 2008, the country is in even WORSE shape. The economy is teetering on the brink of collapse, the Iraq war is still hated (and our soldiers are still dying), etc. Add onto that the fact that congressional oversight of the Executive has led to mass firings in the Justice Dept. and elsewhere, making it very hard to repeat the fraud of 2002, 2004 and 2006.

Without the fraud, it's very hard for the GOP to win... even in a good year. And this year is one of the worst.

3. The past 100 years have shown that it's very hard for the incumbent party to win a third term in the presidency.

Since 1900, there have been a few third terms:

1. 1896-1912: McKinley was re-elected, but his assassination makes things difficult to gauge, so we start with Teddy Roosevelt. He had two terms, and he was succeeded by Taft who only had 1. Note, Taft would have been re-elected if Roosevelt hadn't run against him in '12, so following my Gore-2000 rules above, I think the GOP should get real-world credit for winning in 1912.
   
2. 1920-1932: Harding's death led to Coolidge's ascension and his two terms was followed by Hoover's 1.
   
3. 1932-1952: FDR had four terms - the only true 'third term' proof we have - and he was succeeded by Truman who won 1 term on his own right. He would have lost in '52 if he had run.
   
4. 1952-1960: Eisenhower almost won a third term; Nixon barely lost in 1960 (and, following Gore-2000 rules, it could be that this is a third term).
   
5. 1960-1968: LBJ, despite being elected via a grief-fueled nostalgia landslide in 1964, was quite unpopular in 1968. His successor didn't get a third term (even though I could hear an argument that he would have won if Wallace wasn't a third-party spoiler, but it was a complicated year).
   
6. 1968-1976: Nixon led to Ford who lost to Jimmy Freakin' Carter.
   
7. 1980-1992: Reagan was able to secure a third term for his bland VP.
   
8. 1992-2000: Clinton won a third term, but just just barely.

What does the chart prove? That a party can win a third party only when things are going very well, and the incumbent is popular. Coolidge, FDR and Reagan are the successes that prove this rule. Even when the incumbent is pretty popular, and the country is in good shape, the party still has a hard time staying in power: Nixon in '60 and Gore in '00 show this. Even if you want to say that Nixon and Gore actually were cheated out of their deserved victory, it's also demonstrable that the elections were very very close.

The bottom line is that a party gets a third term when (1) people like the outgoing president and (2) the country is in good shape.

In 2008, Americans hate George W Bush and 80% think the country is on the wrong track. The Iraq War is killing our soldiers, breaking our military and draining our coffers. The economy is going through shocks unseen since Herbert Hoover. Just on history alone, it's nearly inconceivable that the voters will reward the incumbent party with a third term.

This is why, ultimately, I'm not so worried about 2008. Barring fraud, which will be hard to do this year, the GOP will lose.

P.S. If my enormously long-winded description above doesn't comfort you, doesn't quiet the 2004-embedded fears that the GOP is so scummy and/or the American people so stupid, that they will defy the rules of logic and history and elect Growly McSame and Jesus S. Palin, I will just say that there are three presidential debates coming up. If the polls are still depressing after the debates, then it will be time to panic.

The Jacket Can Come Off

Obama has (putatively) won the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in what may be the biggest upset in (modern) American political history. Now the jacket comes off. Two jackets, really. The first jacket is doffed when gentlemen prepare for fisticuffs. Or a duel. Of all Republicans, McCain is a gentleman, and we know over and over that Obama is, so this battle of two men of honor will be as bloody as a hillside duel, but it portends to be on a higher level than other contests in the past.

The other jacket is a straight-jacket that Obama has had to wear since Hillary announced her intention to run for president. Bill Clinton was enormously popular in America and even moreso in the Democratic party, where he was the Democrat to leave office as popular and powerful (contrast to Carter, LBJ, Truman; this point was first made by Marshall). And the Clinton's fought dirty.

Obama was straight-jacketed, hamstrung, shackled by having his opponents be the most popular Democrats in a generation. And Hillary compounded the trouble by invoking female-disempowerment at every slight. Her "unconcession" speech last night - a disgusting display of narcissism, hubris, and neurosis - contained an especially galling line in this vein. I was fortunate to hear the line uttered live (we get only one TV news channel, it was showing her speech, and I could only listen to her for a minute or two at a time), transcribed passage from here:

You know, I understand that a lot of people are asking, what does Hillary want? ... I want the nearly 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected, to be heard and no longer to be invisible.

What's galling about the 'invisible' line is that it is red-meat to angry feminists who have cried 'sexism' at every criticism of Holy St. Hillary.

I won't refute the 'invisible' remark because it is beneath contempt; I bring it up to show the lines of the straight-jacket that has now been removed. Other bindings that have been loosed: now every single Democrat can, with full voice, support Obama. Many have been silenced because (a) they don't want to unleash the Clinton fury or worse (b) the fury of Clinton voters. So Reid, Pelosi, Webb, Emmanuel, Salazar, Gore - all big names with set constituencies who have had to remain 'neutral' can now plaster the walls of America with pro-Democratic, pro-Obama words and ideas.

As a number of smart commentators have noted, until last night McCain was at the highest point he could be and Obama the lowest. McCain enjoyed a unified GOP and comparitively little press scrutiny while Obama had a deeply divided party and attacks coming from three sides (GOP, Clinton Democrats, the Press) with only 1/4 of a defense (his part of the party). No longer.

McCain and Obama may be in a dead-heat today, but now that Obama is unrestrained? It's going to be a slaughter.

As an anonymous blogger from the Economist online (UK) wrote last night, comparing the speeches of all three candidates:

At the risk of bolstering the reporters-mooning-at-Obama stereotype, if this evening's speeches were a video game, a wrinkled wizard would be hollering "Finish Him!" to Barack Obama while a dizzied John McCain wobbled. And Hillary Clinton would be frenetically mashing the buttons on an unplugged controller.

The biggest proof that Obama will destroy McCain comes from simple structure. The same structure that elected Harding in 1920 and Carter in 1976: that when the populace has had enough of the status-quo, they will elect the other party.

The only person, truly, who could have screwed that up this year was Hillary. Because she's so divisive, so hated, and quite frankly such a bad campaigner, that it would have been possible for the Democrats to have lost. It would have been a repeat of '04, when an unpopular incumbent was ALMOST unseated by a deeply flawed, lackluster candidate. And while I'm no fan of Kerry, he didn't prompt the deep visceral hatred that Hillary can and does. We just dodged the bullet.

Ah, but I hear you cry, what about Obama's weaknesses? The ones that are skin-deep, if you catch my drift. Well, 16 months ago, I thought the strongest ticket for the fall was Edwards-Obama, and I claimed that I didn't think America would vote for an inexperienced Black man with Hussein for a middle name. But, uh, he won. He won over whites, blacks, hispanics, in all the states.

Yeah, but he lost Ohio and Pennsylvania! Yes, and no. As I said earlier, he lost *closed primaries* in those states. A closed primary has no bearing on the fall general election. All a closed-primary proves is that he's not as popular to Democrats. And while, intuitively, that may bother people (how can a guy win when his party doesn't like him as much as another), it also repudiates the biggest weakness of the primary process which is that it rewards the extremists of each party, which give a rather poor general election contender.

More open primaries may have spared us from Dukakis and Kerry. And if PA/OH were open, I would wager that Obama would have won them handily, like he did in Virginia, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Minnesota (all open).

Obama is a very strong candidate, which is how he beat the Clintons. Let that settle into your skin for a moment: he beat Bill and Hillary Clinton. Nobody beat the Clintons since 1980! And Obama is inspiring, a historic orator, a gifted thinker, a talented writer, and damn near perfect campaigner. He has also just campaigned in all 50 states - something not done in any previous primary - which means he has already run a general election campaign once. From now til November, it's just picking up the lost sheaves.

And the structural reason why Obama/Democrats will win? The Iraq War is enough. And McCain, god love him, has decided to embrace the Iraq War as his running mate. It's the one thing which may be more unpopular than Bush, and McCain's embracing it?! And he embraces Bush, too. Why else would McCain reject the improved GI Bill? In an election year, the Republican nominee rejects a veteran-friendly piece of pork, a rejection not shared by his party but only by the incumbant president who enjoys the lowest approval rating since Andrew Johnson.

And you think McCain can win? Running on a platform of "I like the Iraq War and Bush's treatment of the country!" The only way Obama can lose now is if there's a crippling scandal. Could happen, sure. But I don't play lotto, and I don't bet on long-shots when the stakes are this high.

The twin jackets are now off. It's a great day for America.

Electability

The problem is not that 'electability' is hard to determine. It's that the primary voters suck at it.

John Kerry was not electable, but people I know (including family members, I'm sorry to say) were convinced that while Kerry was horrible, he'd be 'electable' because he was acceptable to Independents. The fact is that Kerry - as I've said before - was a boring, effete, waffling, liberal from Massachusetts with actually little going for him besides heroism expressed 40 years earlier. If actual independents would have been asked in early 2004 if they would elect someone boring, callow and shallow, they would have said "NO"

Yet, instead of Bill Clinton in 92 & 96, the Democrats nominate gawky, irritating nerds. Here's the key to electablity, something I wrote a while ago (from my old blog, Sept 15 2004):

A conclusion I make from this [a collection of polls], as a die-hard Democrat, is that my fellow party-voters are a collection of fumbling chuckleheads. Back in the primaries they voted not for the candidate they wanted, but for somebody they thought “Swing Voters” would vote for. In general, as an anthropologist, I am reluctant to call a group of people, a culture, idiotic. Generally, a mass of people do something that is in their best interest. Not in this case.

I said it back then, too, Kerry is a poor candidate. He has the charisma of untanned leather. He makes Gore look like P Diddy. He also has gaping gaps in his trained moral reasoning. How could he support the Iraq war? I’m not talking about flippy-flops, and despite my [initial] support for the war (see my post on 9/11/03 for nuances) – if Kerry were any fashion of real deal he would have voted against the war. The comparisons to Vietnam are clear for a sidelines observer, for someone who ostensibly based his youth on ‘Nam-opposition, he should have been the first to vote against. He didn’t. He’s a weenie.

The Democrats primaried Kerry because of what they thought someone else would want. This is stupid because of a countervailing psychological rule: when in doubt choose real over potential. Put simply, the Democrats liked Edwards, but thought a Swinger will like Kerry better. Except that Edwards had inherent and established value while Kerry had potential value. Is it any surprise that people still like Edwards and nobody – even Democrats – like Kerry?

If I had a chance to talk to the Democratic leadership (alert me next time a pig flies) I’d tell ‘em straight out – the only way a Democrat wins is with charisma. That is it. Yet the party keeps nominating these policy robots (Stevenson, Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry) as if the power of ideas will outweigh the natural human desire to look up to a leader.

Successful Democrats? All charismatic bastards. JFK, Clinton, LBJ, even Truman. A Republican doesn’t need charisma in America, despite the majority of the country’s population being democrats, the state-electoral college thang makes the states significant, and there are more Republican states. The GOP can run moral reprobates (Nixon, Bush II) and spineless crackers (Bush I) and win as long as the opposition is a standard Democrat weenie.

Both parties know these heuristics:
Evil GOP vs. Robot Dem, GOP wins
Weenie GOP vs. Robot Dem, GOP wins
Charisma, no matter whom, always wins.

1960: JFK v. Nixon – Charisma/evil
1964: LBJ v. Goldwater – Charisma
1968: Humphrey v. Nixon – evil/robot
1972: McGovern v. Nixon – evil/robot
1976: Carter v. Ford – the only exception which is manifest evil is hard to win
1980: Carter v. Reagan – doofus/Charisma
1984: Mondale v. Reagan – Charisma
1988: Dukakis v. Bush – possibly the worst election in my lifetime; gads what a waste
1992: Clinton v. Bush v. Alf – Charisma
1996: Clinton v. Dole v. Alf – Charisma
2000: Gore v. Bush v. Nader – don’t get me started on the election results

If the Democrats had only nominated any one of the candidates with charisma – this would have been no contest. E.g. if the ticket were flipped and you had Edwards as the candidate with Clark, Dean, or even Kerry as VP, then we'd be having red-terror alerts every day of the summer just for Bush to barely catch sight of the donkey's rear.

Back in 2004, I said that Kerry was annoying - just as annoying as Mondale, Dukakis, and Gore. And now we got the howler monkey in a pantsuit: Hillary.

Backpost finished 4/15/08, 1:57 PM. Why didn't I publish this at the time? The whole thing was written and just sitting there.

Why I Still Like Edwards

I'll get into a longer discussion of the Democratic field soon, but you readers know that I really don't like Hillary and I've been supporting Edwards as the next president since 2003. I'm not rabid behind him - I actually like Obama as a full package because he's the smartest and most thoughtful out there - but Edwards is the model of a modern major general, uh, president.

As 1964, 1976, 1992 showed, Democrats are equally able to be elected president as long as they come from the South and are White (with good hair).

But the reason why I'm still supporting Edwards in the coming primaries is because he has been first, and best, in a lot of issues I care about. He is the best about Labor, the class/economic inequality, about Israel, and about Health Care. And he got the right answer on these issues earlier than the others. The GOP hates him because they fear him - as I showed in an earlier post. The GOP would love for Hillary to be the nominee because she is defeatable.

The most recent Edwards "first" is that he is making the best, most effective attacks against Hillary.

It's always dangerous to be negative in the primaries because if you're unsuccessful in toppling the front-runner, then you've crippled your party's chance to win. If you're a small-timer and you launch against the big-guy (e.g. Jerry Brown vs. Clinton or Bradley vs. Gore) then it's folly to go negative.

However, despite the early numbers, we're not stuck with Hillary yet. If Edwards weakens her enough then either he or Obama could be our next president. So Edwards' attacks against Hillary are important. Let's see if it works.

Here's what Edwards put out today:

State of the 2008 Race - Analysis

As many of my avid reader(s) know, I am pretty bad at predicting mass human behavior. Give me an individual and I can predict their behavior pretty well... but masses of unknown dolts? I am worse than Lotto. Can't help it, it's just an ability I lack. And I also can't help myself from MAKING predictions. All I can do is warn you that my predictions stink.

You may ask "Why, then, do you feel compelled to make these (ironically) predictably bad predictions?" Good question, voice in my head. Because while my conclusions are almost always wrong, my analysis is often right. So I want broadcast points for my deductive skills even when my inductive skills blow.

Overview

All logic should state that the next president will be a Democrat. A Democrat won in 1992, 1996, and in 2000 - and came very close in 2004 and that was a very poor candidate against a wartime, post-homeland strike, opponent. In the three subsequent years the GOP have shown themselves to be corrupt incompetent hypocrites. Their support seems to come entirely from flat-earth fundamentalist xenophobes. So logic says it will be nearly impossible for the GOP to win in 2008.

The nearest example of this election would be 1976, when a very poor Democratic candidate defeated the scandal-ridden GOP. There are lessons for both parties since it was a remarkably close election. Quoth the wiki:

Carter defeated Ford by two percentage points in the popular vote. The electoral vote was the closest since 1916; Carter took 23 states with 297 electoral votes, while Ford won 27 states and 240 electoral votes...

Despite the stink of Watergate, the GOP installed an honest-ish dolt as President and he was able to run on a clean slate. And he almost won! What undid Ford? The fact that in 1976 the American electorate actually cared that their president not be a moron:

During the second presidential debate on October 6, Ford stumbled when he asserted that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration." He added that he did not "believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union", and made the same claim with regards to Yugoslavia and Romania. Ford compounded his error by refusing to retract his statement for almost a week after the debate...

Side note: burn this fact into your cerebrum - in 1976 a visibly stupid Ford wasn't (re)elected despite an impressive record of leadership and valor (WWII veteran, in the House for 24 and Minority Leader for eight, and sitting as president for 2 years); yet in 2000 an even more obviously stupid candidate, George W Bush, with a pathetic resume (drunk, drugged and unemployed until he was 40, then - after his father had served as VP and President, being elected governor in a state known for having one of the weakest executives in the Union and serving one term) came dangerously close to being elected president against an accomplished & talented, albeit irritating as hell, incumbent VP of a very popular president.

Ford lost in 1976 because he was (moron + scandal) while Bush was almost elected because he was a (moron - +scandal) i.e. minus the scandal that hung around the neck of his rival.

The GOP could win in 2008 if they extrapolate the 1976 lesson - get a competent candidate who can push the scandal of the past 8 years onto a rival and run against a weak Democrat. The Democrats need learn from Carter's shaky '76 run:

When Carter left the Democratic National Convention, he held a huge 33-point lead over Ford in the polls. However, as the campaign continued the race tightened, and by election day the polls showed the race as too close to call. Carter's decline in the polls, and Ford's surge, is usually credited to three events. First, Carter promised a "blanket pardon" to Vietnam War draft dodgers ... Second... Carter admitted to having "lusted in his heart" for women other than his wife [in Playboy Magazine]... [Third], Ford performed well in what was the first televised presidential debate since 1960.

The lessons again? (1) Don't be a crazy liberal, (b) don't be arrogant and stupid in your sanctimony, (c) Any stumble can cost dozens of points no matter how stupid your opponent is.

Primaries vs. Generals

An added problem is the decades-broken primary process. True, the primary system was developed to fix what was perceived as an even worse process (the Fat Balding Party Boss System), but in general it appears that the primaries have been worse for Democrats (see: 1972-2004) than Republicans (see: uh, 1996?). Sadly the only people who vote in the Primaries are wild-eyed freaks on the fringes of both parties, and the candidates know that. Which means Republicans bank rightward and Democrats bank left.

The candidates will need to fringe themselves up only as far as the fringe requires. In 1992, Clinton didn't have to go too far left because after having a Republican president for 20 of the past 24 years, the Left wasn't as strong and the Center was ripe. So too, now: the Democrats don't need to be so far left because the Centrists of the party are as fed-up with the past few years as the Liberals are.

The GOP is in trouble, though, thanks to Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay and Karl Christian Rove. The Rove Strategy was to take a country that is pretty centrist - as reflected in 1992, 1996 & 2000 - and pump up "wedge issues" so as to create a massive, but illusory, Red-Blue split. This grotesque polarization started with Newt's Crew who were shocked by a JFK/LBJ style Centrist Democrat in office. Their attacks on Clinton were designed not only to weaken a strong Democrat but were done so in a hyper-partisan way. And just as the Israelis, while being victims of terrorism, are blamed as aggressors for retaliation, so too Clinton was blamed for being "partisan" after he was dragged through the mud for every idiot possible thing that he maybe kinda shoulda woulda coulda did. And so in 2000 the country, which was unified in a desire for a centrist (like Clinton), was persuaded to believe that the victim of the partisan assaults (Gore) was the cause... while a mop-topped 'outside the beltway' Gucci-cowboy dunce would be a 'unfyiter not a divdinger.'

The politics of radical division was then AGGRESSIVELY pursued by Karl Christian because he knew (I think) that the "Centrist" mantle could easily be adopted by the Democrats as well as the Republicans. It was 50-50. So Karl needed an edge - the 1% or 2% that is all that will matter in a tight, close race. Karl then pumped up his rabid fringe to show up and vote (while also preventing likely Democrats from getting to the polls and forcing the Justice department to investigate talented Democratic rivals; cf. the Attorney Scandal).

Karl Christian was a success in 2004, but the price is being paid in 2008: the fringe now dominates the Republicans. Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are the spokesmen and any deviation from their venomous blather will cost a GOP hopeful in the primaries. You need to be a jingoistic soldier for Christ or you're not a proper Republican.

Note, the fringe-voter imbalance that skews the Primaries are also reflected in any of the polls taken before the primaries - because most people don't pay attention to the race until it becomes "necessary" - which for some is right before the primary, or possibly post-Labor Day 2008.

I will continue this analysis for each party in the next few posts.

Update: Woops, I forgot the most important lesson from 1976 and that is 1980. That no matter how scandal ridden the GOP was post-Watergate, the almost complete idiocy of Carter made it possible for an even more right wing Republican to win just FOUR YEARS after the population "threw the bums out." And Reagan was so popular that he even got his nebbish Vice President to win in '88. What I would suggest, then, for Republicans is to pull a 1964 - choose an upright and outstanding candidate who can never ever win the general election but will make the GOP look good after 8 years of idiocy, and then run the A-list in 2012 so to pull of a 1980. The Democrats can help the GOP by having an idiot win in '08...

{2009 Update: moving gif from here.}

1976 Election Map

Speaking of Carter, I looked at the Electoral Map of the 1976 Election and its a collection of states I never expected to be bunched together in a modern election. Check it out (note: Carter is Red, Ford is Blue).

Holy Frijole. Jimmy won the South! And New York, but not California. Texas, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania - but not Virginia or Illinois. Massachusetts, but not Connecticut or New Jeresey.

That's one weird election.

By the way, I've downloaded all the election maps from the beginning till now. If I learn the technology to convert it to a small movie, I think it would be illuminating.

For now, let's just see how Jimmy did in 1980:
Here Carter is Blue, Reagan in Red. Awww, Jimmy, you got smooshed!

Cheney in 1994

Many people are linking to this clip of an April 15 1994 American Enterprise Institute interview with then ex-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney about what a war in Iraq would wreak.


Editor and Publisher, gives this transcript (but you should also see the clip if you have not done so):

Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it -- eastern Iraq -- the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families -- it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?

Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.

Analysis
People have wondered - what could have happened to Cheney. If he was 100% correct back then, why was he a moron now? Some have suggested that he changed; either 9/11 profoundly shook up his mental state, making bold irrational moves seem acceptable, or its a physical change - parts of his brain have been destroyed through micro-strokes.

Both answers are possible but I think overstate the case. I don't think he has changed at all. His speech pattern is the same in 1994 as it was in the 2000/2004 VP debates and this great interview from Nov 4 1976 when he was Chief of Staff to Pres. Ford and was beaten by (gag) Jim E. Carter.



I claim that Cheney, the unhinged greed-hound hasn't changed at all. What changed from 1994 and 2000-2007 are two things:

1. In 1994 he was defending a decision he already had made. He was trying to explain the war policies of his employer, Bush Sr. That administration didn't go into Iraq, so he'll do his Cheney Act - using his calm, reasonable, authoritative voice and his steadfast gaze - to defend his behavior as the only smart rational thing to do. I believe that had Bush Sr. decided to attack Iraq then Cheney would say the same things he's saying today.

2. However, one still needs to ask why Bush Sr. didn't go into Iraq and why Cheney in 1994 was saying things that we now know are correct. My theory is that the fact that Bush Sr. was a major loser (proof: Quayle), his war staff was obviously talented. The decision to not go into Iraq was probably made by smart people (like Powell) and Bush Sr. listened to them (possibly, also, since he himself had been in a war he didn't think it was all playtime cowboys and Indians unlike his draft-dodger son). Cheney was the same but the rationale was being provided by someone else.

As we know, nobody has made Bush Sr. look quite as good as his reprobate loser son George Jr. This is the opposite of effective parenting; my job is to make sure my kids have a better life than I have had. The Bushes take the other parenting view, I guess.

Cheney could very well have not been in charge of decisions back in 1991. Either that or his crackpot idiocy was being routinely shot down by smarter people. Or even that Bush Sr. was not quite as much a milquetoast pushover as his son. Or even that almost every human in history has more of an interest in what is done in his name than George W. Bush. He seems to allow the most horrible things to be done in his name whether it's torturing American citizens or shotgunning puppies.

In any case, Cheney hasn't changed. He's always defending his behavior: in 1976 it was to make Ford look good, in 1994 Bush Sr, and 2000-2007 Bush Jr.