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November 18, 2004
X = not a whole lot
The people have spoken, but what did they say? John Allen Paulos finds it difficult to draw statistical conclusions from Bush 's victory in the US election
by John Allen Paulos
George Bush's election has generated far too many ill-founded conclusions about the US electorate. Despite Bush's assertions to the contrary, the voters certainly did not give him a mandate to further "traditional moral values" (or, indeed, to do anything else).
No deep theorem in arithmetic is needed to see that the 51% of the electorate who voted for him constitute a bare majority. The outcome looks even more questionable in the electoral college. Bush received approximately 130,000 more votes than John Kerry in Ohio, so if 65,000 Bush voters in the state had switched, we'd now be talking about president-elect Kerry.
Looking back over recent elections strengthens the view that no seismic realignment of the electorate has occurred. Of the last four presidential elections, the Democratic candidate has received a greater popular vote in three and a greater electoral vote in two.
Excuse my mathematician's obsession with coin flips, but consider this. There is a large bloc of people who will vote for the Republican candidate no matter what, and a similarly reliable Democratic bloc of roughly the same size. There is also a smaller group of voters who either do not have fixed opinions or are otherwise open to changing their vote.
To an extent, these latter people's votes (and thus elections themselves) are determined by chance (external events, campaign gaffes, etc).
So what conclusion would we draw about a coin that landed heads two or three times out of four flips (or about a sequence of two or three Democratic victories in the last four elections)? The answer, of course, is that we would draw no conclusions at all.
One reason we tend to draw far-reaching conclusions about elections is the charming superstition that significant events must be the consequence of significant events.
This psychological foible is illustrated by an experiment in which a group of subjects is told that a man parked his car on a hill. It then rolled into a fire hydrant. A second group is told that the car rolled into a pedestrian.
The members of the first group generally view the event as an accident; the members of the second generally hold the driver responsible. People are more likely to attribute an event to an agent than to chance if it has momentous or emotional implications. Likewise with elections.
Another argument against the claim that the electorate has undergone a drastic change derives from so-called statistical regression models. One of the most cited models of this type was constructed by Yale economist Ray Fair and is based on six factors.
The first is incumbency, which has been a distinct advantage historically. The second is party (Republicans have a slight historical edge), and the third is "party fatigue" (two or more terms out of power offers some benefit).
The remaining three factors concern the economy: GDP's per capita growth rate (higher is better for the incumbent), the number of quarters during the preceding four years in which the growth rate exceeded 3.2% (the more, the better), and the inflation rate (lower is better).
On the basis of these six factors, Fair's model has generated quite accurate vote percentages in presidential elections dating back to 1916. (It should be noted, however, that a degree of after-the-fact torturing of the data to reveal meaningless correlations can make a model appear more impressive than it is. Predicting the past isn't too difficult).
In 2004, Fair's regression model (and several others) predicted that the election wouldn't even be close, that the incumbent Bush would win somewhere around 58 per cent of the vote.
If we give more credence to Fair's model than it perhaps deserves, the fact that Bush won only 51% of the vote can be interpreted optimistically, at least by Kerry supporters.
Fully 7% of the electorate - 8 million voters - resisted the compulsions of incumbency and the economy to vote for Kerry. Moderately impressive, if true.
In any case, my meta-conclusion is that there are no very compelling conclusions to be drawn about the electorate. Bush received more votes than Kerry. Period. I don't think this simple fact means the country supports the Bush agenda.
· John Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics at Temple University, Philadelphia, and bestselling author of Innumeracy and A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market. http://www.math.temple.edu/paulos
Posted by Jim at 02:28 PM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2004
Orwell
as quoted over at the Crooked Timber
"...Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events. For example, it is impossible to calculate within millions, perhaps even tens of millions, the number of deaths caused by the present war. The calamities that are constantly being reported — battles, massacres, famines, revolutions — tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources. What were the rights and wrongs of the Warsaw rising of August 1944? Is it true about the German gas ovens in Poland? Who was really to blame for the Bengal famine? Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied. Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him. All nationalist controversy is at the debating-society level. It is always entirely inconclusive, since each contestant invariably believes himself to have won the victory. Some nationalists are not far from schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connection with the physical world."
Posted by Jim at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)
DemocracyFest '05 will be held in...
...Austin, TX on June 17th-19th. Mark your calendars now!
Thank you to the people in CA, TX, and VA for their excellent proposals, and congratulations to TX on becoming the 2005 DemocracyFest host. Over 4,000 people voted, thank you to everyone who voted.
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Posted by Jim at 12:02 AM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2004
Something to think about
Types of Advocacy Groups
501(c) Groups – Nonprofit, tax-exempt groups organized under section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code that can engage in varying amounts of political activity, depending on the type of group. For example, 501(c)(3) groups operate for religious, charitable, scientific or educational purposes. These groups are not supposed to engage in any political activities, though some voter registration activities are permitted. 501(c)(4) groups are commonly called “social welfare” organizations that may engage in political activities, as long as these activities do not become their primary purpose. Similar restrictions apply to Section 501(c)(5) labor and agricultural groups, and to Section 501(c)(6) business leagues, chambers of commerce, real estate boards and boards of trade.
527 Group – A tax-exempt group organized under section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code to raise money for political activities including voter mobilization efforts, issue advocacy and the like. Currently, the FEC only requires a 527 group to file regular disclosure reports if it is a political party or political action committee (PAC) that engages in either activities expressly advocating the election or defeat of a federal candidate, or in electioneering communications. Otherwise, it must file either with the government of the state in which it is located or the Internal Revenue Service. Many 527s run by special interest groups raise unlimited "soft money," which they use for voter mobilization and certain types of issue advocacy, but not for efforts that expressly advocate the election or defeat of a federal candidate or amount to electioneering communications.
Non-Federal Group – A group set up to raise unlimited contributions called “soft money,” which it spends on voter mobilization efforts and so-called issue ads that often criticize or tout a candidate’s record just before an election in a not-so-subtle effort to influence the election’s outcome. 501(c) groups and 527 groups may raise non-federal funds.
Political Action Committee (PAC) – A political committee that raises and spends limited "hard" money contributions for the express purpose of electing or defeating candidates. Organizations that raise soft money for issue advocacy may also set up a PAC. Most PACs represent business, such as the Microsoft PAC; labor, such as the Teamsters PAC; or ideological interests, such as the EMILY’s List PAC or the National Rifle Association PAC. An organization’s PAC will collect money from the group’s employees or members and make contributions in the name of the PAC to candidates and political parties. Individuals contributing to a PAC may also contribute directly to candidates and political parties, even those also supported by the PAC. A PAC can give $5,000 to a candidate per election (primary, general or special) and up to $15,000 annually to a national political party. PACs may receive up to $5,000 each from individuals, other PACs and party committees per year. A PAC must register with the Federal Election Commission within 10 days of its formation, providing the name and address of the PAC, its treasurer and any affiliated organizations.
More info on PAC's can be found here
Posted by Jim at 10:48 PM | Comments (0)
November 09, 2004
The Spite Vote
"IT CAME ON suddenly and without warning. Fuck the Democrats. Fuck the liberals. I hope Bush wins. I hope Bush steals another election and urinates into everyone's wounds…"
This interior rant lasted for a good five minutes before I snapped out of it. The realization that some pro-Republican sentiment lurks inside of me was enough to make me want to stick my head in the oven. Or throw myself out the window like the possessed priest at the end of The Exorcist.
What inspired this crazed outburst wasn't any love for Bush. It was an instinctual reaction to a tonal shift I've detected among the American left. They're losing that brave, cornered, hysterical tone that I've identified with, a tone that came from years of increasing marginalization combined with a sense that the whole country had gone completely insane.
For the first time in almost 30 years, the left has a chance to occupy the reality vacuum that opened up after the big barbecue in Fallujah. The left can sense that their time may have finally arrived, and they're prematurely settling into their new role as saviors of the national soul, with their former hysteria already reverting to a smug, nurturing tone. The once-vicious humor, born of desperation and hatred, is again becoming nauseatingly didactic and responsible. This is a disaster. The left seems to be buying into the high school civics teacher's idiotic lie that "you can't just be de-structive, you have to be con-structive as well." Yeah, and did you know that girls prefer shy, sensitive boys?
What's worse is that the new smug tone is being accompanied by high-profile outbursts of fake rage. Yesterday's genuine fury has been hijacked and reified by painted-up frauds like Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi, who look about as comfortable feigning rage as Rumsfeld looked when he tried to squirt a few tears before Congress over Abu Ghraib.
Some people say that the Democrats are actually getting bolder and more vicious. I don't buy it. What Gore and Pelosi and the others on their bandwagon are really trying to do is snuff out the real rage before it spreads and threatens their fake opposition. It's a classic strategy in big politics: Co-opt the opposition, suck the life out of it and dump its dried-out shell on the side of the freeway, where it can never bother you again.
This is America, not Denmark. In this country, tens of millions of people choose to watch FoxNews not simply because Americans are credulous idiots or at the behest of some right-wing corporate cabal, but because average Americans respect viciousness. They are attracted to viciousness for a lot of reasons. In part, it reminds them of their bosses, whom they secretly adore. Americans hate themselves for the way they behave in public, always smiling and nodding their heads with accompanying really?s and uh-huhs to show that they're listening to the other person, never having the guts to say what they really feel. So they vicariously scream and bully others into submission through right-wing surrogate-brutes. Spending time watching Sean Hannity is enough for your average American white male to feel less cowardly than he really is.
The left won't accept this awful truth about the American soul, a beast that they believe they can fix "if only the people knew the Truth."
But what if the Truth is that Americans don't want to know the Truth? What if Americans consciously choose lies over truth when given the chance—and not even very interesting lies, but rather the blandest, dumbest and meanest lies? What if Americans are not a likeable people? The left's wires short-circuit when confronted with this terrible possibility; the right, on the other hand, warmly embraces Middle America's rank soul and exploits it to their full advantage. The Republicans know Americans better than the left. They know that it's not so much Goering's famous "bigger lie" that works here, but the dumber the lie, the more they want to hear it repeated.
What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank And this leads to another truth that the left still has trouble understanding: Millions of Americans, particularly white males, don't vote for what's in their so-called best interests. Thomas Frank recently attacked this riddle in his new book What's the Matter with Kansas? but he fails to answer his own question. He can't, in fact, because his is a flawed premise. Frank, who is at his best when he's just vicious, still clings to the comforting theory that Middle Americans are being duped by an evil corporate-political machine that subtly but masterfully manipulates the psychological levers of cultural backlash, implying that if average Americans were left to their own devices, they would somehow make entirely rational, enlightened choices and elect sensible New Deal Democrats every time. This puts Frank in a bind he never quite gets out of. Like all lefties, he is incapable of taking his ruthless analysis beyond a certain point.
The reason is simple. The underlying major premise of humanist-leftist ideology states that people are intrinsically sympathetic. If people are defiantly mean and craven, the humanist-left structure falters. "Why the fuck should I bother fighting for Middle Americans," they ask, "if they're just as loathsome, in their own petty way, as their exploiters, with whom they actively collaborate?"
Rather than grapple with that dilemma, the left pretends it doesn't exist. This is why they will forever struggle to understand the one overriding mystery of why so many working- and middle-class white males vote against their own best interests.
I CAN TELL YOU WHY. They do so out of spite. Put your ear to the ground in this country, and you'll hear the toxic spite churning. It's partly the result of commercial propaganda and sexual desperation—a desperation far more common than is admitted. If you didn't know anything about how America's propaganda worked, you'd think that every citizen here experienced four-dimensional multiple orgasms with beautiful, creative, equally satisfied partners, morning, noon and night.
The wretched truth is that America is an erogenous no man's land. Most white males here (at least the straight ones) have either dismal sex lives or no sex lives at all. As bad as this hurts, the pain is compounded every time you expose yourself to the cultural lies that await you at every turn—that is, every waking hour and during deep REM sleep, when the subliminal messages kick in. This wretchedness leads to a desire for vengeance, to externalize the inner famine—it leads directly to the Republican camp.
Spite-voters also lack the sense that they have any stake in the future of the country. There is something proprietary implied in all of the didacticism and concern found in the left's tone. The left struggles to understand why so many non-millionaire Americans vote Republican, and yet they rarely ask themselves why so many millionaires, particularly the most beautiful and privileged millionaires in Manhattan and Los Angeles, vote for the Democrats.
I can answer both. Rich, beautiful, coastal types are liberal precisely because their lives are so wonderful. They want to preserve their lives exactly as they are. If I were a rich movie star, I'd vote for peace and poverty relief. War and domestic insurrection are the greatest threats to their already-perfect lives—why mess with it? This rational fear of the peasantry is frequently misinterpreted as rich guilt, but that's not the case. They just want to pay off all the have-nots to keep them from storming their manors and impaling them on stakes.
Republican elites don't set off the spite glands in the same way, and it's not only because of a sinister right-wing propaganda machine. Take a look at a photo of the late billionaire Sam Walton, a dried-out Calvinist in a baseball cap and business suit, and you'll see why. If Republican billionaires enjoy their wealth, they sure as hell hide it well. As far as one can tell, Republican billionaires genuinely like working 18-hour days in offices. Their idea of having fun is a day on the golf green (a game as slow and frustrating as a day in the office) or attending conferences with other sleazy, cheerless Calvinist billionaires. If that's what all their wealth got them, let 'em have it—so says the spite bloc. This explains why the Republican elite—the only true and all-powerful elite in America today—is not considered an "elitist" class in the spleens of the white male have-nots. Elitism as defined today is a synonym for "happy," not "rich" or "powerful." Happiness is the scarcest resource of all, not money. And the happy supply has been cornered by the beautiful, famous and wealthy coastal elite, the ones who never age, and who are just so damned concerned for the have-nots' well-being. In that sense, you can see how the Republicans were able to successfully manipulate the meaning of "elitism" to suit their needs. They weren't just selling dogshit to the credulous masses; they were selling pancreatic balm to the needy.
At the other end of the economic spectrum, non-millionaires who vote Republican, the so-called "Reagan Democrats," know that the country is not theirs. They are mere wage-slave fodder, so their only hope is to vote for someone who makes the very happiest people's lives a little less happy. If I'm an obese 40-something white male living in Ohio or Nevada, locked into a permanent struggle with foreclosure, child support payments and outsourcing threats, then I'm going to vote for the guy who delivers a big greasy portion of misery to the Sarandon-Robbins dining room table, then brags about it on FoxNews. Even if it means hurting myself in the process.
This explains the mystery of why Bush still has a chance of winning in November, even though most Americans acknowledge that his presidency is little more than a series of slapstick fuck-ups with apocalyptic consequences. Inspector Clouseau meets the Book of Revelations. Close to half of this country will support Bush simply to spite that part of America that it sees as most threatened by the Iraq debacle. If the empire ends up collapsing into that filthy, sizzling hellhole in the desert, if more terrorists are created to help set off dirty bombs in Manhattan or Los Angeles, our spiteful voter has a real chance of finally achieving some empowerment.
It's simple mathematics: Bring down the coastal elite and the single 40-something Ohio salesman might actually matter. And if they're not brought down, but instead remain in a constant state of indigestion over policies that could ruin them at any time? Well, that's still better than nothing.
This is why all the talk about "personal interests" is a sham. Spite voters don't care solely about their own interests, nor are they bothered by how "the left talks as if they know what everyone's best interests are," an argument you often hear from the whiney right. What bothers spiters is that the left really does know what's in their interests. If you're miserable, you don't want to be told what's best for you by someone who's correct—it's sort of like being occupied by a foreign army with good intentions. You'd rather fuck things up on your own, something you're quite good at, and bring others down with you.
Spite voting is mostly a white male phenomenon, which is why a majority of white males vote Republican. It comes from a toxic mix of thwarted expectations, cowardice and anomie that is unique to the white American male experience.
SPITE VOTING IS not just an American problem; it's a flaw in democracies everywhere. When I lived in Kosovo in the late summer of 2000, I asked my Serb friends there if they thought Milosevic was going to win the upcoming Serbian presidential elections. Most were pessimistic. They told me of friends, young people even, who voted for Milosevic "just out of spite." The Serbian spite voters believed that if the opposition got their way and Serbia became as tame and civilized as Luxembourg, all those college-educated Otpor protestors and pro-Western intellectuals would simply take the privileges for themselves. They didn't want caste-based happiness and its accompanying propaganda, so they voted for Milosevic precisely because he was wrong, because he was a vote against hope. Under Milosevic, nearly every Serb was fucked equally, and that suited some people, particularly some Serbian males, just fine.
George W. Bush and Milosevic have a lot in common. Before Milosevic, the Serbs were loved by everyone in the West. But as their third-way socialist economy crumbled and they perceived a threat from local Muslim populations, Milosevic pandered to the people's darkest fears. He dragged them into what we call "wars of choice" and turned the international community against them, to the point where Serbia was the most reviled nation in Europe. He attacked the U.N. and the West as anti-Serb, and kept the country in a permanent state of war and fear and isolation. Like Bush, Milosevic destroyed his little empire almost as quickly as he assumed control of it. It took a decade and massive covert and overt Western efforts to finally get Milosevic out of power and into the dock. For many a spiteful Serb male, those years of decline, hatred and isolation were glorious years indeed.
Unfortunately, the chances of the international community putting their blue helmets where their mouths are to overthrow Bush, liberating us against our own bad judgment, are nil to negative-nil. But all's not lost. There is still a chance to get the spite vote to defect. Kerry might be the right candidate to blunt some of Bush's natural spite-support.
One look at Bush and you'll know why: Bush is the privileged frat-boy/jock asshole that every spiteful male recognizes from his school days. Spiteful males may have supported him in the past, but only because Bush's cartoonish stupidity gave a daily dose of stomach cramps to the responsible, concerned Americans who voted for Gore. And really, what white male in his spiteful mind could possibly have voted for Al Gore, with that pained "Am I pleasing you?" smile he beamed at you? Spiteful white males don't want to be pleased—they want other people to be displeased.
Kerry, on the other hand, has that long graveyard face, and a dull, 1940s delivery, making it hard for the spiteful voter to hate him instinctively. In fact, with Kerry, the spleen just goes to sleep.
If there were one perfect spite president, it was Richard Nixon. He looked mean, spoke mean and stomped on the hippies who were having too many orgasms, the last real orgasms this country ever witnessed. Kerry shares roughly the same repulsive physical qualities as Nixon, repulsive in the sense that he doesn't look like a tv anchor—which is a good thing. And while Kerry may not stomp on hippies, it's hard to imagine that he ever enjoyed a single minute of his life. There is nothing about Kerry to make a man envious, even if he is rich and famous. You get the sense that Kerry's greatest joy in life is sitting alone in his office at the end of a long day, thumbing through his fresh collection of business cards and coveting the connections that each one brings. When it comes to the spite intangibles, Kerry is the closest thing to Nixon that the Democrats have ever fielded.
Kerry won't draw the spite vote, but his creepy face, along with Bush's jock glow, just might neutralize it—out of spite. All the left has to do is not stir up the wrong bile. That means keeping the focus on Bush's corporate-jock clique, and keeping it mean. Just don't let us know how responsible and concerned you are. Don't let us know that you care about us, and the election is all yours
Posted by Jim at 12:07 AM | Comments (0)
November 08, 2004
Howard Dean considering bid to chair Democratic Party
by Christopher Graff, Associated Press Writer
Former presidential candidate Howard Dean is considering a bid to become chairman of the national Democratic Party.
"He told me he was thinking about it," Steve Grossman, himself a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Monday. Grossman was a Dean backer during the former Vermont governor's failed presidential bid.
Dean, who was in Albany, N.Y., Monday night to give a speech, said he hasn't decided about the top party job, noting he'd received thousands of e-mails urging him to try for it. He said he's still uncertain about his future.
"It's a lot easier to run for president when you don't know what you're getting into," he said. "I will stay involved, believe me."
During his Albany speech, Dean said President Bush's re-election was not a mandate to ignore the views of those who voted against him.
"We're not retreating. We're not giving up," Dean told an audience of nearly 1,000. "We're not going to stop fighting because we're going to stand up for ordinary Americans even though the President doesn't."
Earlier Monday, his spokeswoman, Laura Gross, said "it was far too early to be speculating" on Dean's becoming party chairman. "The election was less than a week ago."
The roughly 240 members of the DNC will elect a new chair early next year. Several names are already being mentioned, including former Clinton aide Harold Ickes; Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore's presidential campaign, and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack.
Grossman said it is not too soon for Democrats to focus on their future leadership.
"I strongly urged (Dean) to seek the position," he said. "Howard is a voice of political empowerment and that to me is important, for the Democrats to get their sea legs back as quickly as possible, to get beyond the disappointment of the last week and to believe there is a bright future ahead for the Democratic Party."
Dean has been outspoken since the beginning of his presidential bid in saying that the Democratic Party must establish a separate and unique identity from Republicans.
Grossman said that if Dean were to run for DNC chair, he would need to pledge that he would serve the full four-year term, thus ruling out a presidential bid in 2008.
The next chairman will replace Terry McAuliffe, whose term is ending.
Posted by Jim at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)
Over at Pandagon
Excerpt: "Dean benefits from the widespread belief that the party lacked principles and its greatest need is a clear message. He's the king of crystal clear Democratic values, and his 2004 loss left him with a devoted base, name recognition, and time to build a stronger persona for 2008. I'm quite sure that his missteps in 2004 are recoverable (yes, including the scream) and his attributes would quickly overtake them. Plus, he'll come out of the gate with an easy ability to fundraise, thus giving him the time and means to remake his image. My feeling is Dean looks in the mirror and sees Reagan, circa '76..."
Posted by Jim at 05:34 PM | Comments (0)
Howard Dean: Democrats Cannot Give Up
By Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.
This is one in a series of weekly syndicated columns written by Governor Howard Dean.
The Democrats took a beating last week, at least at the Federal level. But while the re-election of the President may be a setback on many levels, especially from the point of view of fiscal conservatives like me; the Democratic Party is not in the middle of a catastrophe.
First, at the local grassroots level, Democrats fared better than the Republicans. We picked up two state legislatures, and a number of other offices, we had some near misses in a states where candidates who had never run before did very well, thus helping to build a strong bench for 2006.
While President Bush's campaign did a flawless job getting out their vote, and preparing ahead of time by putting anti-gay marriage amendments on the ballot in key states, the Democrats also did very well, building a record turnout. The surge in young voters, who overwhelmingly voted for John Kerry, is a good sign for the future.
Having said all this, the Democratic Party needs an overhaul. We will never win by trying to be "Republican-lite".
The Republican Party consistently undermines the American middle class, makes it tougher to get health insurance, makes college education less affordable, and runs up large deficits, while giving enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars to the biggest corporations in the world.
Two weeks before the election, the Bush administration passed a bill that was supported by too many Democrats, giving $139 billion away. The argument was that we couldn't win if we didn't support this legislation, which had lots of goodies for everyone. Well, the bill passed, and we lost anyway.
If you want to win, you have to fight, and you have to stand for something. I disagree with President Bush on almost every direction he takes us in, but he is a disciplined campaigner with an easy to understand message.
I think Democrats have a better message. First, we are fiscally responsible, and deficits hurt America. There is nothing moral about passing on our debts to our children. You cannot trust Republicans with your money. This week another increase in the debt ceiling is to be voted on, the Democrats need to stand fast for fiscal responsibility.
The President successfully turned a discussion about moral values into a discussion about gay marriage and abortion. I think moral values are also about how you treat poor people, how you treat those who are different, how you respect the opinion of others, and what you leave to your children. On those moral values, I think the Republicans lose. We need to talk about these values too.
Finally, we should also continue to do what I think the Kerry/Edwards team did well. Every American needs a job, every American needs affordable health care, every American needs a decent public education system, and every American wants a foreign policy consistent with the vision of American moral leadership, so we can be the moral leader, not just the military leader of the world.
Posted by Jim at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2004
The Scream
Posted by Jim at 07:08 AM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2004
Dear MoveOn member,
As the Wall Street Journal points out, Bush's victory was "the narrowest win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916." Narrow defeat still hurts. But today, the staff here at MoveOn can't help but be hopeful, even elated, by the clear impact we've all had together.
In the shadow of our loss, it's easy to forget what a difference our work made. Together, we changed the lives of thousands of people, one conversation at a time. We brought people to the polls who had never voted. We challenged our neighbors to rethink the information they had been given by Fox News and the right wing echo chamber. We turned co-workers into activists. And in the end, we turned out enough voters to provide the margin of victory in several states.
You don't have to take our word for it. Just look at the numbers. Our goal in this program was to turn out 440,000 extra voters for Kerry. We figured only about one third to one half of them would actually check in with us after they voted. This morning, we figured out that the number of people who had checked in alone was over 472,000 -- an outstanding success. And the actual total number of our targeted voters who showed up is much higher.
In New Hampshire, where Kerry won by 9,171 votes, 9,820 people on our target lists got to the polls. In Wisconsin, where Kerry won by only 11,813, we turned out over 37,000. The 119,000 people we got out in Pennsylvania almost exceeded the margin of victory there, too. The effort that all of you put in clearly had a decisive impact in winning these states.
And that impact wasn't just at the Presidential level. In Colorado, the voters that we brought out helped elect a new Democratic Senator, win back control of the legislature for the first time since 1960, and pass progressive ballot measures. In Minnesota, as one TV channel pointed out, "Kerry supporters turned out, and they sparked a [Democratic] rout in Minnesota House races, nearly toppling the Republican majority." In fact, Kerry won Minnesota by a larger percentage of the vote than Gore did in 2000.
All of the media hullabaloo about the "missing youth vote" is false, too, by the way. More people between 18 and 30 turned out this year than ever before, even though the total percentage of young people in the population is smaller than it was in previous races. And the youth age bracket voted emphatically for Kerry -- a good sign that future generations are more progressive, that history continues to move in our direction.
But the numbers only tell part of the story. You helped build a new progressive movement, a movement that is just beginning. And because of the work you've done, because of the relationships you've formed and the people you've brought in, we are stronger now than we were when we started this campaign. Because of groundswell that you have created, we are better able to stop Bush in Term 2 than we were in Term 1.
Victor, one of the precinct leaders, wrote:
This program helped me overcome a sense of passive hopelessness about our country leading me to become empowered to work for a positive change. One of the best outcomes of this experience was meeting and becoming friends with a host of like-minded neighbors. This election was just a first start for us. Realizing how much power we have to effect the political process when we work together as part of a well organized team, has changed us and prepared us for future battles.
I am going to be keeping a list of my team members (and encourage other precinct leaders to do likewise), and will distribute this list to all team members. When it is time for our next political action, we will hit the ground running.
And there's a historical precedent for believing this is a beginning, not an end. In 1972, Richard Nixon ran against George McGovern, a progressive populist with a great message about stopping the Vietnam War. McGovern lost in a landslide, winning literally only one state even though the Watergate scandal was swirling around Nixon. But a year and a half later, Nixon resigned; two years later, reformist Democrats won back control of both legislative chambers.
History is on our side. We look forward to working for you and with you in the months and years to come. You're real heroes to all of us on the MoveOn staff. Thank you so, so much, for everything you've done.
--Eli, Adam, and the whole MoveOn PAC Team
November 4th, 2004
P.S. We'll definitely want to learn as much as we can from you about how to make this process better the next time through. We'll be sending you a survey next week; we really want your input.
Posted by Jim at 07:53 PM | Comments (0)
Thomas Paine: The American Crisis
December 23, 1776
"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated..."
Posted by Jim at 11:30 AM
Lest we forget
55,554,114 voted for our side.
Posted by Jim at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)
Lessons of the 2004 Election
by Ruy Teixeira
Well, a second term for George W. Bush it is. Not a smashing victory for him: he took the popular vote by a 51-48 margin and gained two new states (IA and NM) by 50-49 margins, while losing one old state (NH) by a 50-49 margin.
What are the lessons Democrats can draw from Bush's victory? How was Bush able to hang onto power despite the poor economy, Iraq, the health care crisis and so on?
1. The limits of mobilization. Democrats put great stock in mobilization and the ground game. And Kerry did do better in many areas where there was intensive mobilization. For example, in Ohio, Kerry carried Franklin county (Columbus) by 41,000 votes, compared to Gore's margin of just 4,000 last election, and carried Cuyahoga county (Cleveland) by 218,000 voters, compared to Gore's margin of 166,000 in '00. But these gains were mostly cancelled out by Republican mobilization in conservative rural and exurban areas, so Ohio, in the end, was only slightly closer (2.5 percentage points) than it was in 2000 (3.5 points).
As another example, the exit polls indicate that 23 percent of voters this year were minorites, up from 19 percent in 2000. So Democrats were reasonably successful in getting minorities to the polls But these data indicate that hispanics only supported Kerry 53-44, a dramatic compression from Gore's 62-35 margin among the same group in 2000. And--much more consequential for the election--the exit polls say that Bush widened his margin among white voters to 17 points (58-41), up from a 12 point margin (54-42) in 2000. Weakened support among hispanics and, especially, a bigger deficit among whites (still 77 percent of voters) was more than enough to cancel out the effect of more minority voters going to the polls.
2. The limits of anti-Bushism. Kerry had much to say that was very critical of Bush and certainly there was much to criticize in the areas of the economy, tax cuts, Iraq, health care, energy policy and so on. These criticisms were directed at genuine weak points in Bush's record and there is good evidence that most voters shared at least some of these criticisms. Bush was not, and is not, a particularly popular incumbent, so attacking his record was an inevitable and important part of Kerry’s campaign.
The problem, however, was that Kerry never managed to convince many of the same voters who shared his criticisms of the Bush administration that he could and would do a better job in the areas he criticized. To cite just one example from the exit poll, voters were asked if they trusted Bush to handle the economy: 51 percent said no and 49 percent said yes. Not so good for an incumbent. But voters rated Kerry even worse: 53 percent said they didn’t trust the economy, compared to 45 percent who said they didn’t.
And all through the campaign, up to the very end, there was abundant evidence that voters did not think he had a clear plan for Iraq or, for that matter, for the country in general. His campaign was notable for lacking signature themes and proposals that typical voters could easily grasp and identify with. Does anyone seriously believe that many voters knew or understood Kerry’s plan for Iraq? For health care? For the economy? How many voters knew the one or two thematic phrases (if they existed) that summarized what John Kerry stood for?
Let’s face it: not many. I worried about this all through the campaign, but hoped, toward the end, that voters were interested enough in getting rid of Bush that they would cut him slack on these specifics. That did not turn out to be the case.
3. The need for white working class support. The last three elections (2000, 2002, 2004) have all had strong ‘culture war’ components that have severely depressed white working class support for Democrats. Recall that Bill Clinton actually carried the white working class (whites without a four year college degree) by a point in both his election bids. But in 2000, Al Gore lost these voters by 17 points; in 2002, Democratic congressional candidates lost this group by 18 points and this year, the situation appears to have worsened further. That is implied (though not proved) by the finding, cited above, that Democrats lost whites as a whole by 5 points more than 2000 and another exit poll finding that Democrats’ slippage by education group was concentrated entirely among the non-college educated. (Kerry split the college-educated evenly with Bush, just as Gore did in 2000, but, where Gore lost the non-college educated by just 2 (49-47), Kerry lost them by 6 (53-47).)
The fact of the matter is that Democrats cannot win when they do so badly among this very large constituency. John Judis and I always believed that the trends we described in The Emerging Democratic Majority could underpin a majority coalition given reasonable (not majoritarian, but competitive) performance among white working class voters. Alas, this does not qualify as reasonable performance.
Democrats’ difficulties with this group surely have a great deal to do with these voters’ sense of cultural alienation from the national Democratic party and its relatively cosmopolitan values around religion, family, guns and other social institutions/practices. Even the war on terror has increasingly become more a cultural issue linked to patriotism than a true foreign policy issue for many of these voters.
Given this sense of cultural alienation, it must be questioned whether candidates like Gore or Kerry can ever really be viable with these voters. Democrats may have to choose candidates in the future who do not so easily evoke this sense of cultural alienation and who can connect in a genuine fashion with these voters. I come to this conclusion reluctantly because I had hoped that an effective campaign could overcome this obstacle by, in effect, using wedge Democratic issues like health care or jobs to build support among this group. But the messenger appears to matter a great deal, just as having a message does (see point number two, above). The Democrats in the future will have to pay attention to both, I think.
Posted by Jim at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)
Stand and Fight
by Katrina vanden Heuvel
One thing we can say for certain at this point, after the grieving, the anger, is that the country is still bitterly divided.
We saw two turnouts and Two Nations last night. Both sides of the chasm saw a major turnout of its voting base. Karl Rove talked about creating a permanent Republican majority. But the truth is, he has a divide-and-rule strategy. And the electoral college amplifies the rural, socially conservative vote. (Twenty percent of voters considered "moral values"--eleven states had anti-gay marriage ballots--more important than the economy or Iraq in this election.)
Perhaps more astonishing than the polling on the murky issue of morality (why aren't poverty and unjust war considered immoral?) are the figures reported in the New York Times: "Voters who cited honesty as the most important quality in a candidate broke 2 to 1 in Mr. Bush's favor..." The most mendacious Administration in American history won the honesty vote?
Progressives, who were on the defensive two years ago, added millions of new voters as well, and tapped a new energy and activism that will last far beyond November 2nd. The extremism and incompetence of this rightwing cabal has sharpened our focus to a razor's edge.
But for me, one of the fundamental questions about this campaign has been whether you could defeat a terrible but clear incumbent without a substantive policy alternative, and this time at least we couldn't. Kerry offered intelligence, a return to fiscal discipline, a bulwark against a rightwing court, and a health plan that few understood. He failed to use the moral message of "Two Americas" to erode Bush's edge. He mounted a late challenge to Bush's disastrous war in Iraq-- but he also talked about "staying the course." That wasn't enough of a coherent positive, populist or moral message to complement the impressive mechanics. We've got to build a politics of conviction, of passion and substance. It's there but it needs to be built and fought for. And the lesser lessons, if that's the big one, are:
1) People really are confused and manipulated (we have a mainstream media that continues to focus on irrelevant stories--Swift Boat, Rathergate and all the rest--abrogating its responsibility to focus on what's important and significant; and too much of it keeps giving head instead of keeping its head.) This makes an expansion of the progressive media echo chamber all the more important; And,
2) Neoliberalism is broken beyond repair and people need to be offered a real alternative not just despair at this point. This is truly a non-violent Civil War between those who think government is basically screwed up and that they're on their own, and those who believe....what exactly? We've got to be much clearer on the latter.
But this morning, we woke to a country at war with itself--as well as Al Qaeda. As America fights Islamic fundamentalism abroad, progressives are re-fighting the Enlightenment here at home. (The two new Senators from Oklahoma and South Carolina are leaders of our homegrown Taliban.)
This is war at a very deep level about how this country will proceed and this war isn't over, it's just renewed.
In that spirit, on Election Day, a friend sent some words by John Dos Passos, from his great trilogy USA. He said these lines, from the part where Dos Passos narrates the death of Sacco and Vanzetti, stuck in his head in these last weeks as we faced the possibility of Bush winning this election:
"America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and foul
their hired men sit on the judge's bench they sit back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the dollars the guns the armed forces the power plants
they have built the electric chair and hired the executioner to throw the switch
all right we are two nations."
The American Right understands we are two nations, and cares less about healing than about holding power. A Bush wins forces us to understand, in a very deep way, what that means for us and for the values and institutions we care about. Not that they are wrong, or rejected or weighed down by "identity politics" or some other rationale for surrender. But that they are in desperate danger and we need to start thinking along the lines of how to resist, delay, deflect, oppose and ultimately defeat the assault on our freedoms. As progressives, we will need to marshal at least as much dedication, purpose, strategic focus and tactical ruthlessness, and The Nation is one of the few places that will have earned the trust of over 40 percent of the American people who were against Bush and all his works from the beginning.
And we should be thinking about the indispensable work of resistance. We need to identify legislative and administrative choke points where Bush's initiatives can be blocked, and make clear to both legislators and their constituents that the days of go-along in the interest of non-partisan comity have to stop.
We need to give a clear sense of priorities and red-lines so that people aren't fatigued by constantly being asked to protest--and we need to identify and work for some early victories, at both the local and national (and international) levels...BECAUSE we all need to remember, and remind ourselves, and everyone else that there are two Nations--not Bush's America and some dissenters-- especially since I'd be willing to bet that numerically there are more of us.
In the end, this election is about what kind of people we are, what kind of country we'll be. Half of the electorate dissents from Bushism. The election still represents an expression of the strength of opposition to the radical and reckless course Bush has followed, despite the ugly campaign.
Unlike 1972, when Democrats were wiped out everywhere--in 2004 there is an emerging progressive infrastructure capable of standing and fighting. Progressives should build on those structures put in place in this last cycle and redouble their commitment to economic justice, peace and environmental movements that can make real change.
In the streets of New York on August 29th on the eve of the Republican National Convention and in precincts across America these past few months, millions of people stood up for democracy. This is the heart and soul of this country and it will be the heart and soul of the defense of our rights and liberties in the months to come.
Posted by Jim at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)