Odd Hours

Early indications on election night

2004-11-01T22:25:00.000-08:00

Other than exit polls, what are some indications of how the election is going? Since I have some money on the line tomorrow night, this is a question I have given a fair amount of thought. Since the networks are likely to be significantly more cautious about calling states this time around (nobody wants to issue another Florida retraction!), if the vote is close, it may be late in the night before key states like Ohio and Florida are called. But clues can be gleaned from which other states are called and the timing of the calls. Based on this timeline of election night 2000, I've drawn up a set of guidelines.

Ohio: If PA and MI are called at 5pm (all times are PST), it means Kerry is ahead by more than 5 points in these states, and he will likely win Ohio. If neither PA or MI is called by 6pm, Kerry probably loses Ohio. If WV is called before PA or MI, Kerry probably loses Ohio.

Florida: The networks will be especially cautious about calling the Sunshine State this time around. If FL is called for either candidate by 6pm, when the polls close in the panhandle, it means that candidate has a significant enough lead in FL that he will almost certainly win the election.

New Hampshire: If ME (3 of 4 EV's) is called at 5pm, Kerry probably wins NH. If either NH or ME (CD 2) is called for Kerry by 6pm, Kerry likely wins the other one too.

Iowa and Wisconsin: If MN is called before both MO and AR, Kerry probably wins IA and WI. If one of MN is called after one of MO, AR but before the other, Bush has the edge in IA and WI. If both MO and AR are both called before MN, Kerry probably loses IA and WI.

Southwest: This is the trickiest region, because there are four closely related states (NM, NV, CO, AZ). If it comes to this point, we will likely find ourselves wanting to know whether Bush has a chance in NM, or whether Kerry has a chance in NV. If either AZ or CO is called by 8pm, then Bush has a good shot in NM. If NM is called for Kerry by 8pm, or AZ is not called by 9pm, then Kerry has a good shot in NV.

My prediction

2004-11-01T21:51:00.000-08:00

Bush 284, Kerry 254. Same as 2000, except New Hampshire goes to Kerry and Wisconsin goes to Bush. The big prizes, Florida and Ohio, are within reach if we win the turnout war. But there are enough potential problems in these two states -- voter suppression and electronic voing machines chief among them -- that Bush has the edge. Many people would chose Iowa instead of Wisconsin as the likely Bush pickup in the upper-midwest. However, I think the NRA and the suppression of black voters in Milwaukee will end up putting Wisconsin in the Bush column. Finally, although recent polling puts Bush ahead in New Mexico, I think the increased number of Hispanic voters and popular Democratic governor Bill Richardson will put Kerry on top.

While the presidential election could easily go either way, I'm not very optimistic about our senate chances. There are too many open Democratic seats this cycle, and all the competetive races are in red states, where Bush will have coattails. My predictions:

Alaska: Knowles (D)
Colorado: Salazar (D)
Florida: Martinez (R)
Kentucky: Bunning (R)
Louisiana: Vitter (R) surpasses 50%, avoiding a runoff in December.
North Carolina: Burr (R)
Oklahoma: Coburn (R)
South Carolina: DeMint (R)
South Dakota: Thune (R)

New senate: 54 Republicans, 45 Democrats

The potential big news is Daschle's loss in South Dakota. While this would be a short-term negative because it costs the Democrats a seat, I think it will turn out to be a blessing in the long run. We need a senate leader who doesn't have to sell out Democratic values to get re-elected.

Florida weather

2004-10-31T14:18:00.000-08:00

An encouraging forecast for election day: PM thunderstorms in the panhandle, sunny everywhere else.

It's a 50-50 race

2004-10-28T17:37:00.000-07:00

Tradesports shares of Bush fell briefly below 50% today, tying the all-time low of 49.5% set in July. What's really remarkable is that for the first time ever that I've seen, traders now think Bush is less likely to win the electoral vote than the popular vote. Until this week, Bush has held a consistent 3-5% advantage in the electoral vote contract compared to the popular vote. Now that advantage is reversed, with Bush at 53% to win the popular vote and only 50% to win the electoral vote. This confirms my earlier speculation that Bush's national numbers are skewed by big leads in red states, and that despite the underlying structural advantage the electoral college proffers Republican candidates (a consequence of the fact that there are more red states than blue states, and that each state gets two "free" electoral votes independent of population), Kerry could conceivably win the electoral vote while losing the popular vote.

State vs. national polls

2004-10-25T14:51:00.000-07:00

A rather surprising trend has emerged in the polls over the last several days: Bush's numbers are significantly worse in the swing states than they are nationally. In the RCP averages Bush is polling worse than his national numbers in 12 swing states, and better in only four.

Below national average:

Maine: 42.0
Michigan: 44.7
New Hampshire: 44.8
Oregon: 44.9
Pennsylvania: 45.5
Minnesota: 46.7
Ohio: 47.4
Florida: 47.5
Wisconsin: 47.6
Iowa: 48.0
New Mexico: 48.0
Arkansas: 48.3

National average: 48.9

Above national average:

West Virginia: 49.0
Nevada: 49.2
Colorado: 49.2
Missouri: 50.0

Even in red-leaning states like WV, NV and CO, Bush's state average is only barely above his national average. The only possible explanation for the discrepancy between the state and national figures, other than polling error, is that Bush is doing significantly better in safe red states (e.g. Texas) than Kerry is in safe blue states (e.g. California). And the internals in the latest Gallup poll confirm this:

Red states: Bush 57, Kerry 40
Blue states: Kerry 53, Bush 44

In a way, this trend makes sense. Kerry has been going after swing voters, while Bush is trying to energize his base. Karl Rove is still obsessed with the 4 million evangelicals who stayed home in 2000. The latest round of polls suggests that Rove's strategy of playing to the base hasn't worked. On the other hand, such a strategy revolves around increasing turnout among certain voter groups, and turnout is the factor that polls are most likely to get wrong.

What a comeback

2004-10-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

Tradesports futures contract on Red Sox-Yankees game 4:

Playing the draft card

2004-10-16T01:35:00.000-07:00

In Iowa yesterday, Kerry raised the spectre of the draft if Bush is elected to a second term. Coming right now, this comment is a little worrying. It's something I expected Kerry to bring up as a desperation ploy if he was down in the polls the final few weeks of the campaign. The reason it's a desperation ploy is that it has a lot of potential for backfiring. The Bush camp can cry foul, accuse Kerry of "fear-mongering," and try to use the comment to undermine Kerry's credibility. It opens Kerry up to the kind of attack that worked so well against Al Gore: "This is a man who will say and do anything to get elected." If that line sounds familiar, that's because it's exactly what Cheney said after Wednesday's debate, referring to Kerry's remarks about his daughter. The line could be applied equally effectively to the draft comments.

So I'm puzzled as to why Kerry brought this up now, when he is nearly tied in the polls. Because undecided voters tend to break against the incumbent, if current polls are accurate and the election were held today, it would be a 2000-style cliffhanger. It could easily go either way. The fact that Kerry chose to play the draft card in this situation could be a sign that Kerry is running significantly worse in the campaign's internal polling than in public polls. On the other hand, some Kerry advisers were evidently surprised by the comment. So it could have been an off-the-cuff remark on Kerry's part rather than a strategic decision by the campaign. Either way, I think it was a mistake to play the draft card with the polls as close as they are and over two weeks still to go before election day. At least wait for the first batch of post-debate polls!

As to whether there actually will be a draft if Bush is re-elected: probably not, but it's hard to be sure. It depends how crazy you think the neocons really are. I do not think the situation in Iraq will worsen sufficiently to require a draft. But I read an article recently, can't remember where, which had quotes from various eminent neocons lamenting the fact that the mess in Iraq had destroyed the public's "appetite" for preemptive war. Clearly there are some people who think we need to keep pursuing the preemptive strategy. Presumably that means Syria or Iran. Invading either one would certainly require a draft. Now it's hard to see how a draft bill would pass congress, unless there's another major terrorist attack. After another attack, all bets are off. The fate of the draft rests on exactly how extreme are the positions of the neocons high up in the Bush administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith), and on the possibility of another 9/11-type attack.

The war Bin Laden wanted?

2004-10-16T01:33:00.000-07:00

Paul Schroeder makes the case that by invading Iraq, we played right into Al Qaeda's hands. It's an excellent piece; don't be deterred by the rather strange forum in which it appears, the Buchananite magazine "American Conservative". (Despite being an anti-Semitic wacko, Pat Buchanan seems to have pretty reasonable views on a lot of foreign policy issues.) Although it takes him a while to get to the point, Schroeder proceeds from the logic that we should spend less time demonizing our enemy and more time analyzing him. If Osama Bin Laden is rational, then why did he attack the United States, knowing the harm the American response would surely inflict on him and his organization? Bin Laden surely must have considered the possible consequences: that the United States would take down the Taliban regime, disperse his training camps, kill or capture many of his men and chase his remaining followers into hiding. Saying "he's evil," "he hates America," and so on is not really an answer. There is little doubt that Bin Laden hates America, but why attack in such a way that is not strong enough to cripple America, but is likely to provoke a crippling American response?

Here's Schroeder:

The second reply is that the 9/11 operation was intended as only one step in a long campaign against the United States, a kind of dress rehearsal for worse blows, perhaps with weapons of mass destructionnuclear, biological, or chemical. Once again, this argument makes no sense. If one intends to start a long campaign to destroy the enemy, one does not begin with an action that can be expected to galvanize rather than cripple the enemy and make him more prepared to anticipate, prevent, and counter new attacks....

The only sensible answer, once the foolish and inadequate ones are discarded, is that Osama bin Laden anticipated the American reaction and wanted it.

Schroder argues that Bin Laden is rational, but that the purpose of the 9/11 attacks was not to cripple America, but rather to provoke the United States into declaring a global "war on terror." Bin Laden's ultimate goal, Schroder says, is a united Muslim world "ruled by true Islamic law and teaching, purged of all evil, materialist, secular, infidel, and heretical influences." The fractious divisions within Islam stand in the way of this goal, and Bin Laden hoped to eliminate these divisions by providing all of Islam with a common enemy: the United States. The Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, along with its perverse insistence that Iraq is part of the war on terror, have played into Bin Laden's hands by broadening the conflict. No longer limited to disrupting the al Qaeda organization, the "war on terror" has become dangerously close to a general conflict between Islam and the West. Secular governments in the Middle East, such as Pakistan's, are increasingly unstable. And Bin Laden is one step closer to uniting the Middle East under his radical banner.

Schroeder's argument has some weaknesses. For one thing, we cannot know for sure whether Bin Laden is rational in the traditional Western sense of the word. Perhaps he believes he is doing "God's will." Perhaps he is just unhinged. It is difficult to get inside the extremist mindset. Are suicide bombers "rational"? Were the 9/11 hijackers acting in their own self-interest? A lot of people had to act "irrationally" to make 9/11 happen in the first place; perhaps Bin Laden was one of them.

Secondly, it is hard to take seriously Bin Laden's supposed goal of uniting and "purifying" the Islamic world, given the seeming impossibility of this task. Schroeder would have us believe that Bin Laden's attacks on America are merely a means to this end. But if uniting the Islamic world is not Bin Laden's long term goal, then what is? Is it not an equally impossible goal to singlehandedly take down the most powerful country in the world using only a few terrorist attacks? The goal that Schroeder proposes is plausible, if only because it is difficult to come up with any rational motivation for orchestrating the 9/11 attacks.

Thirdly, Bin Laden cannot have known that the United States would invade Iraq in purported response to the 9/11 attacks. The vast majority of Muslims were sympathetic toward the United States in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. It is only because of a series of mistakes on the part of the Bush administration -- invading Iraq in the first place, botching the occupation in general, and Abu Ghraib in particular -- that we have come this close to igniting a general conflict between America and the Middle East. Since Bin Laden could hardly have predicted those mistakes, he could not have known with any certainty that his plan to precipitate a broader war would work. All things considered, given the almost certain negative effects both to his personal safety and to the well-being of his organization, it seems an enormous risk for Bin Laden to take.

Finally, if Bin Laden really got what he wanted when we invaded Iraq, is he actually better off today? Doubtful. It's unclear how much control he can really have over Al Qaeda while he's on the run and hiding out in the mountains on the remote Afghan-Pakistani border. And the Middle East is still an enormous distance away from Bin Laden's unified, purified vision. There's a better case to be made that Al Qaeda is better off today. Despite the killing and capture of many top leaders, the rank-and-file may be gaining new recruits as foreign fighters flock to Iraq. The potency of Abu Ghraib is almost impossible to underestimate. It will be a stain on the United States' image for at least a generation, and a major impediment in any effort to convince the Muslim world of our goodwill. Bin Laden succeeded admirably in making a demon out of the United States, and Al Qaeda may be better off for it. But Bin Laden himself is almost certainly worse off.

On the balance: A thought-provoking piece, very debatable on the specifics but rock-solid on the premise that we should demonize less and analyze more. Know thine enemy.

World's wealthiest blogger?

2004-10-03T16:48:00.000-07:00

George Soros now has a blog.

Four more months!

2004-08-30T07:40:00.000-07:00

When GOP delegates started chanting "four more years," the protesters in New York shot back with "four more months!" Someone should make that into a bumper sticker.

Close to half a million people and no violence. I'm impressed. And check out the internet campaign to shut down New York City. I just hope these people don't get too carried away. Stealing media attention from the Republican convention with a peaceful protest is perfect. Too many wild antics would be bad. Let the Republicans dig their own grave.

Deceptive debating 101

2004-08-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

Great diary at Kos detailing the full slate of deceptive tactics Bush will use to draw attention away from substance, issues and facts in the debates. Each tactic comes with an example of how it was used against Gore and a note on what to expect against Kerry. Anyone who thinks Dubya will get crushed in the debates needs to read this.

Bush the flip-flopper?

2004-08-10T08:30:00.000-07:00

Kevin Drum explains point by point how Bush is every bit as calculated in his stances as Kerry. The difference is that Kerry is inept at straddling the fence, while Bush manages to sound like "a straight talking guy who says what he means and means what he says" even as he outlines a carefully calculated stance that was tested beforehand in opinion polls. This is yet another example of how Bush thrives on being underestimated. Sometimes we're so busy calling Bush a simpleton that we blind ourselves to how carefully crafted some of his "straight talking" rhetoric really is.

One thing that puts Kerry at a real disadvantage on this front is his 19-year record in the senate. It's a piece of cake to stick the flip-flopper label to four-term senator. It's probably no coincidence that four of the last five presidents were former governors. A senator's record is just too easy to attack. All those thousands of yes/no votes on long, nuanced bills are just begging for one-line attacks like "Kerry voted to cut intelligence spending," or "Kerry voted for the Iraq war and then against reconstruction money." It's pretty ironic, but Kerry's long and distinguished political career is actually a liability.

International observers to monitor November election

2004-08-08T20:44:00.000-07:00

Thanks to pressure from 13 Democrats in congress, the State Department has invited the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor the U.S. presidential election. The OSCE has monitored 150 elections in 30 countries. This is the first time international observers will be present at a U.S. presidential election.

But nobody expects the observers to solve everything, least of all the Kerry and Bush campaigns themselves. Both campaigns are assembling armies of lawyers to watch for voting regularities in Florida and other key states.

Ah, the irony

2004-08-08T20:25:00.000-07:00

Bush opposes 'legacy' college admissions.

Could an Israeli preemptive strike stop Iran's nuclear program?

2004-08-08T05:03:00.000-07:00

One of the most significant preemptive attacks in recent history took place in June, 1981, when Israeli fighters bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, near Baghdad. American-made F-15's and F-16's made the 600-mile trip, surprised the Iraqi air defenses, and leveled the site in eighty seconds. Every plane returned to Israel intact. In response to the international condemnation that followed, Israel pointed out that Saddam Hussein was attempting to use the reactor to develop nuclear weapons. Although Iraq was at least two years, and perhaps as many as ten years away from a nuclear weapon, Israel argued that it needed to strike the reactor before it went online, to prevent radiological contamination of the surrounding area.

The United States joined the chorus of nations publicly condemning Israel's act. It was pointed out that Iraq was a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a document that Israel refused to sign. And Israel itself was suspected of possessing a significant nuclear arsenal. Members of congress pointed to a violation of the Arms Export Control Act, which prohibited the use of U.S. military equipment except in self-defense. Behind the scenes, however, the United States worked to defeat U.N. sanctions on Israel, and Israel got off with "a slap on the wrist."

The internal Israeli politics surrounding the raid on Osirak are no less fascinating. Ariel Sharon has said of the raid:

This was perhaps the most difficult decision which faced any (Israeli) government during all the years of the state's existence.

The Labor Party, then the party out of power, favored a diplomatic solution. Labor argued that France, which was providing Saddam Hussein with much of his nuclear technology, could be persuaded to stop exporting this technology. Likud Prime Minister Begin, however, felt that too much was at stake to leave things up to diplomacy. An intermediate approach was tried: sending terrorists to blow up components of the reactor being assembled near Marseilles before they were shipped to Iraq. While these tactics delayed the reactor's construction, they could not stop it completely. In the end, Begin, afraid his party would lose power and that Labor would not deal with the problem forcefully enough, decided to go ahead with the air raid.

Could Israel do it again, this time to Iran? There are numerous difficulties, both tactical and diplomatic. Iran is a lot farther from Israel than Iraq, and Iran has taken the lessons of Osirak to heart. Iranian nuclear facilities have been deliberately spread around the country, rather than concentrated at a single site. Moreover, many of the facilities were deliberately situated in urban areas that are hard to strike from the air. In 1981, Iraq was unable to effectively retaliate against Israel after the raid; but Iran has at least threatened to retaliate if Israel attacks its nuclear facilities. Whether these threats are credible I don't know.

Tactical difficulties aside, Israeli fighter planes on their way to Iranian nuclear sites would in all likelihood have to pass over Iraq. And for all intents and purposes, Iraqi airspace is American-controlled. An Israeli raid into Iran would almost certainly have to be coordinated in advance with the American air command in Iraq. Because of the long distances involved, Israeli aircraft might even need to base their strikes from airbases in Iraq, or use those bases for refueling. While the Americans could try to deny any advance knowledge of the strike, it would look awfully suspicious when American-made Israeli fighter jets pass over hundreds of miles American-controlled airspace on their way to Iran. The U.S. could hardly condemn the action with a straight face the way it did in 1981.

Finally, the internal political situation in Israel is not what it was in 1981. I don't know enough about Israeli politics to say what other options the government would consider, or which decisions are likely to prevail in the current political climate. But it's possible that the 1981 raid was born primarily of the very specific admixture of Begin's personal beliefs and the political conditions prevailing at the time. In the absence of those factors, Israel may find a less violent way to deal with the Iranian nuclear problem. The specter of a nuclear-armed Iran, while deeply unsettling, may not be as alarming to Israel as that once posed by a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein. After all, Iran and Israel have a certain amount in common. The rest of the predominantly-Sunni Arab Middle East is a common enemy to both. It is at least plausible that a nuclear Iran could be tolerable to Israel's strategic interests.

All things considered, I'd say an Israeli raid on Iranian nuclear sites is unlikely. At the very least, it would be difficult to plan and execute such a raid. There are an awful lot of confounding factors. But it isn't completely out of the question.

Rep. Alexander switches parties

2004-08-08T03:09:00.000-07:00

Just five months after announcing he would remain a Democrat, conservative Louisiana Rep. Rodney Alexander has switched to the GOP -- on the final day candidates could register for the November ballot in Louisiana. The timing of the move prevents the Democrats from fielding a strong challenger.

In changing parties, Alexander is following in the footsteps of Texas Rep. Ralph Hall, who went over to the GOP back in January. In some ways, these defections may be good for the Democratic party in the long run. A big tent is all well and good, but Rep. Alexander is pro-life, pro-gun, voted for the Bush tax cuts, Bush prescription drug plan, and the Iraq war. He announced in February that he preferred Bush to any of the Democratic primary candidates. Does someone with these political views really belong in the Democratic party? Switching parties is understandable, but the manner in which Alexander chose to do it was pretty low. This is what he said back in March:

I have determined that I can do the best job for the 5th District by remaining where I am. I'm not going to change the way I vote, so there is no need to change my party.

Alexander lied to his own party in order to avoid having to face a challenger in November. That's pretty low.

UPDATE: Alexander's entire staff has resigned in protest, and the DCCC wants its money back from his campaign. Plus, the Louisiana Democratic Party is looking into legal challenges to Alexander's candidacy, including getting him disqualified from the ballot or recalling him if he wins.

Ayatollah Sistani has left Iraq

2004-08-08T02:02:00.000-07:00

Lebanese paper The Daily Star reports that Grand Ayatollah Sistani has flown to London for treatment of a heart condition. Juan Cole speculates that Sistani may have feared being "taken hostage" by Muqtada al-Sadr. The heart condition may be mere pretext. Prof. Cole also speculates on Sistani's probable "successor" as the leading moderate voice of Iraqi Shiism. I take this to mean that Cole thinks Sistani will be gone for quite some time.

No bounce? No problem.

2004-08-05T01:31:00.000-07:00

Slate's William Saletan deconstructs the notion that Kerry even needs a convention bounce. Bush's approval is way below 50 percent, Kerry's support is within a hair of 50 percent and solidifying fast. Only 5 percent of those supporting Kerry say they're likely to change their minds, down from 12 percent in June. That doesn't leave George W. much room to maneuver.

Davenport banks robbed

2004-08-04T23:58:00.000-07:00

Wow. Between 10:45 and 11:45am this morning, while Kerry and Bush were speaking just a few blocks away from each other in Davenport, Iowa, three Davenport banks were robbed. That's pretty good timing.

Location-specific terror alerts

2004-08-03T02:32:00.000-07:00

Here's something that makes the location-specific alerts seem a little less sinister (see previous post). From the Homeland Security Presidential Directive, the bill that created the color-coded alert system:

There are five Threat Conditions, each identified by a description and corresponding color.... Threat Conditions may be assigned for the entire Nation, or they may be set for a particular geographic area or industrial sector.

So what they're doing now is within the bounds of the directive. Fine. All that means is that the text of the directive itself should have set off some alarm bells. Plus, you have to wonder why they haven't used these "geographic area" alerts until now, less than three months before the election. Of course, they say it's because this time they have specific intelligence on the intended targets. That could be the reason. Or, maybe this is a test run for November 2nd.

Okay, enough paranoia for today.

Playing politics with the terror alert system

2004-08-03T02:19:00.000-07:00

I know I keep coming back to this topic quite a bit, but the thing that set me thinking this time was the new designation of Orange Alert, not everywhere, for the whole country, but only in specific locations -- in this case Manhattan, Newark and Washington. If I'm right, this is the first time that a terror alert level has been set for a particular location. This kind of location-specific alert should be setting off alarm bells, because it would be extremely easy to abuse this tactic for political purposes on election day. If the polls show a reasonably close election, all it would take is a few well-placed Orange or Red alerts in heavily Democratic regions of key swing states.

Imagine the effect of a November 1st Orange or Red Alert, accompanied by all kinds of dire warnings, applying only to the cities of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Detroit, Michigan; Palm Beach, Florida; Cleveland, Ohio; St. Louis, Missouri; and Portland, Oregon. They wouldn't even have to close the polls. All they'd have to do is scare enough people to cause a significant dent in voter turnout. Bush could lose the popular vote by 5% and still win the election.

I'm not accusing the Bush campaign of intending to use this tactic. Probably, even they wouldn't sink so low. Probably, we can rely on their basic decency and sense of fair play. But we can't let an election as important as this one ride on something as uncertain as the fair play of the Bush campaign. We should be ready for the worst. Fortunately, the best defense against this kind of scare tactic is spreading the word. Let people know it could happen, and tell them no matter what kind of warnings they hear, red alert or not, go to the polls. Vote.

If people are prepared for the possibility of an alert in their neighborhood on election day, and they know it's probably just a scare tactic, then the tactic won't work. In fact, people are probably more likely to vote if they suspect that someone is trying to scare them into staying home!

Of course, many people don't listen to "conspiracy theories," and might reject out of hand any notion that the Bush campaign would play politics with the alert system in such an underhanded way. For this reason, it's important to get another message across: It is your patriotic duty to vote no matter what the circumstances. If there's a terror alert in your neighborhood, that means al Qaeda is trying to disrupt our democratic process, and by not voting you'd just be giving in to the terrorists. This again plays into the "reverse psychology" that goads people into voting if they think someone (be it Bush or the terrorists) is trying to stop them.

Is Bush losing minorities?

2004-07-27T18:58:00.000-07:00

In my search for something, anything non-convention-related on the blogs, I finally found this post by Andrew Sullivan, entitled "Bush Loses Minorities." His data comes from this Annenberg study. I don't think Sullivan is deliberately misrepresenting the data, but I disagree with his conclusions. If you look at the numbers he cites, African-Americans are split almost exactly as they were in 2000, while both parties have made gains among Hispanic voters: registered Democrats increased from 39% to 45%, and registered Republicans increased from 21% to 24%. It's true that Democrats increased twice as much as Republicans (6% vs. 3%), but that's really a wash when you consider that there were nearly twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans to begin with!

The changes in minority voter registration do not work to the advantage of either party. But the study goes on to show that since 2000, Republicans have made considerable gains in registration among white evangelicals and born-again Christians, a group larger than blacks and Hispanics combined. Sullivan concludes:

It's important to understand that this was a deliberate choice by Rove: to increase the base before you reach out to others. He has been successful. And Bush may lose because of it.

On the contrary, I'd say it was a pretty good move on Rove's part. He has increased his base considerably without losing any ground among minorities. Bush may lose, but it won't because of this.

Top 5 convention quotes

2004-07-26T23:16:00.000-07:00

5. "Since most Americans aren't that far to the right, our friends have to portray us Democrats as simply unacceptable, lacking in strength and values. In other words, they need a divided America. But we don't." -Bill Clinton

4. "Let's make sure not only that the Supreme Court does not pick the next president, but also that this president is not the one who picks the next Supreme Court." - Al Gore

3. "We had confidence that our leaders, military and civilian, would not put our soldiers and sailors in harm's way by initiating 'wars of choice'" -Jimmy Carter

2. "Now, everybody talks about John Edwards' energy and intellect and charisma. You know, I kind of resent him. " -Bill Clinton

1. "Their opponents will tell you we should be afraid of John Kerry and John Edwards, because they won't stand up to the terrorists. Don't you believe it. Strength and wisdom are not opposing values. They go hand in hand, and John Kerry has both." - Bill Clinton

Is Bill Clinton a good speaker or what?

New election odds

2004-07-25T16:43:00.000-07:00

I just updated the Tradesports odds, and Bush's reelection chances are down to a flat 50%, which is almost an all-time low (it briefly went as low as 49.5%). I'm not sure what caused the change. The polls don't seem to have changed dramatically. It could just be the selection of Edwards and pre-convention excitement. In that case, I'd say this is a pretty good moment to go long on Bush. But maybe I missed some political news while I was away. I did catch Tom Ridge's announcement a few weeks ago about there being a "significant chance of a terrorist attack before the election." Okay, so clearly this was an attempt to steal media attention from the Edwards nomination announcement. But I found it strange that Ridge would refer so explicitly to the election. It almost sounded like a Freudian slip: we're warning you about an attack, but what we really have on our minds is the election. Why not convey the same idea by saying "before the end of the year" or "before Labor Day"?

The fact that Ridge specifically said "before the election" means one of two things. Either he has specific intelligence indicating that Al Qaeda might be trying to disrupt the November elections with a terrorist attack, or the Bush campaign has decided to use the possibility of an attack as a scare tactic. Without more information it's very hard to decide which is the case. It pretty much boils down to just how evil you think the Bush people are.

Earlier I wrote about how the chance of an orange alert (again, according to Tradesports) on October 31st, two days before the election, was 41%, more than double the chance for the last day of any other month. That figure, now 40%, has hardly changed. Since the Ridge announcement, the figures for September and November have increased slightly. The biggest change has been the chance of a red alert in October, which grew from 4.5% to 7.0%. Still, the changes are not as significant as you might expect from such a major announcement like the one Ridge made. Here's the new chart:

Month	Chance of red alert	Chance of orange alert
July	3.5%	12%
August	3.0%	18%
September	3.0%	25%
October	7.0%	40%
November	5.0%	20%
December	4.0%	20%

The fact that the odds didn't change much after Ridge's announcement causes me to lean toward the second explanation: that the Bush campaign is merely playing politics with the terror alert system. If traders on Tradesports thought Ridge was speaking on the basis of real intelligence, the odds should have moved more dramatically.

Back in Berkeley

2004-07-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a stint of traveling (France, Italy and Alaska were the highlights), and I'm still playing catch-up with the news, but I want to recommend two Atlantic Monthly articles I read on the plane ride back from Anchorage. In the first article, James Fallows warns not to underestimate Bush's debating ability. The man thrives on being (mis?)underestimated. In his 1994 campaign for Texas Governor, Bush agreed to only one debate with incumbent Ann Richards. His campaign worked very hard to lower expectations, pointing out that Richards had gone to college on a debate scholarship and generally implying that Bush was no match for her.

In fact, George W. performed astonishingly well in that debate, deftly turning every question into a reiteration of his core message. Fallows, who watched a tape of the debate, says he was surprised by Bush's eloquence. I was skeptical. Eloquence? That doesn't sound like our president. But before you can cry biased reporting, Fallows admits he is baffled by the contrast between the eloquent Bush of 1994 and the confused muddler of today. Could it be lack of preparation, he wonders? Bush is evidently capable of inspiring speech when he is well-prepared. It's the unexpected questions that catch him off guard. Or perhaps the Bush campaign is deliberately trying to create an image of the president that will induce people to underestimate him. Part of the secret to Bush's "victories" in his debates vs. Richards in 1994 and Gore in 2000 was a skillful lowering of expectations. When everyone expected Bush to fall apart facing champion debaters like Richards and Gore, even a mediocre performance could be spun as a victory.

Sometimes it can be hard to resist making fun of Bush's seeming lack of intelligence or abilities. But in doing so, we may be playing right into the hands of his reelection campaign by helping convince ourselves and others to underestimate the president. Let's not make the same mistake that the Richards and Gore campaigns made. Kerry should walk into the debates ready for a tough fight. He should treat George W. as if he were the same caliber opponent as William Weld in 1996. If Bush turns out to be an easier opponent, so much the better.

In the other excellent piece in this month's Atlantic, Benjamin Wittes presents a very balanced view of the issue of American citizens designated "enemy combatants"and prosecuted under the Patriot Act. For the first time, I understand where the people on the other side of this issue are coming from. That's not to say that I agree with them. If the president is to be given the right to designate American citizens as enemy combatants, allowing them to be detained indefinitely without being charged, at the very least the "enemy combatant" status should be subject to judicial review, and the person detained should have access to a lawyer.

What really surprised me was that John Ashcroft comes across as taking the middle ground on this issue. Although Justice Department lawyers are obligated to take a hard line, arguing that "enemy combatants" are not entitled to legal counsel and that enemy combatant status cannot be reviewed by a court without compromising sensitive information, Wittes claims that Ashcroft is uncomfortable with this extreme stance, and reluctantly takes this position only because of pressure from the Pentagon. Even if Wittes is right, it doesn't relieve Ashcroft of responsibility for a litany of other attacks on our civil liberties, including his sponsorship of the Patriot Act, permitting investigators to spy on library records and lawyer-client conversations, not to mention his role in drafting the far worse Patriot Act II. Still, if Wittes is right, it's comforting to know that even John Ashcroft is not a complete authoritarian, and that his seemingly boundless contempt for constitutional law has its limits.

The bad news is that neither of these Atlantic pieces is available online, and the print issue is a steep $5.95. I paid up because I was desperate for some reading material on the plane. In retrospect, it was probably worth the price. We're spoiled by the amount of free information on the internet, but for the best information, sometimes you have to pay.

UPDATE: (hat tip to sid on Kos) The Fallows piece is still available online: it's not on the Atlantic site, but here's Google's cache.

NY Times vs. Washington Times

2004-06-23T01:11:00.000-07:00

When will the media learn that being "balanced" is not the same as being objective? Here's CNN on the media reaction to the corporate tax giveaway recently passed in the House:

The $34 billion corporate tax bill passed last week by the House of Representatives has been called "a masterpiece of bad legislation" by the editors of the allegedly liberal New York Times and "an arbitrary auction of taxpayer money" by the editors of the allegedly conservative Washington Times.

So the country's leading paper is "allegedly liberal," while the moonie-controlled Washington Times is merely "allegedly conservative." CNN can take "allegedly unbiased."

Another tax cut?

2004-06-17T21:29:00.000-07:00

Today the house passed a corporate tax giveaway worth $150 billion. No less than 48 Democrats voted for the bill because of various pork projects included to win their support. The "analyst" on CNN kept bringing up the fact that this is an election year: you can't pull these tricks all the time, but right now those representatives really need to "show they can bring home the bacon." Two things. In the House, every other year is an election year! So he's saying that such tricks work about half the time, which is far too often as far as I'm concerned. Second thing, we keep hearing about how 9 out of 10 house races aren't even competitive. If they have no chance of losing the seat, then it doesn't matter whether or not it's an election year.

The Democrats could take a few lessons from the Republicans when it comes to party unity.

The real transition

2004-06-16T02:25:00.000-07:00

Juan Cole predicts the real significance of the coming transfer of power in Iraq:

On June 30, the real transition will be from Defense Department dominance of Iraq to State Department responsibility for Iraq.

The State and Defense Departments have a long history of conflict dating back to the early stages of the Cold War. In the course of the intermittent power struggle between the two agencies, the power of the State Department has gradually declined, while the Pentagon has taken on new responsibilities and gained additional influence. Over the past decade, the Defense Department has expanded enormously in scope, obtaining supervision of many programs not of a strictly military nature, such as nation building, intelligence gathering, and homeland security. As a result, it is predominantly the Pentagon, rather than the State Department, that controls the occupation of Iraq.

Prof. Cole is of the opinion that the State Department, had it had more control over U.S. policy in Iraq, may have managed to avoid many of the costly blunders committed by the Defense Department. State Department officials, for example, have long advocated negotiating with Muqtada al-Sadr, whereas military officials precipitated a long and bitter struggle, perhaps an unnecessary one, by stubbornly insisting that capturing or killing al-Sadr were the only options. Let's hope that Cole is right both that State will assume more power in Iraq after the June 30th transition, and that it will use its power more wisely than Defense.

October surprise

2004-06-15T23:01:00.000-07:00

Everyone's heard the conspiracy theory that Bush & Co. could try and pull an orange/red alert to delay or cancel the presidential election if they believe they are likely to lose. Tradesports recently added contracts for betting on alert levels in each month from now until December. Not much trading has occurred on these, so the figures should be viewed as extremely speculative. Nevertheless, the results are fascinating. Below are the most recent closing prices for red and orange alerts in each month.

Month	Chance of red alert	Chance of orange alert
June	2.0%	14%
July	3.0%	17%
August	2.0%	18%
September	2.0%	19%
October	4.5%	41%
November	4.0%	17%
December	3.0%	18%

For all months other than October and November, this data is remarkably consistent. Red alert is at 2-3% and orange in the range 14-19% every month. Although it is viewed as extremely unlikely, the chance of a red alert in October or November is noticeably higher than in the other months. But the really amazing thing is the chance of an orange alert in October, which at 41% is more than double the chance in any other month!

When you consider the fact that election day is early this year -- November 2nd -- it makes sense that a terror alert is anticipated in October rather than November. According to the trading rules, the day of reckoning is the last day of the month: if you buy a share of orange for the month of October, you are betting that we'll be on Orange alert on October 31st, two days before the election. Likewise for November, it's November 30th, which is four weeks after the election.

There is another, less cynical, but no less alarming interpretation of these figures. Perhaps people are betting that the ugly pattern of 3/11 in Spain will be repeated in this country; Al Qaeda for whatever reason may have an interest in influencing or disrupting U.S. elections, and could be planning a major terror attack for shortly before election day.

I'll be keeping my eye on these trading prices, and will post again if there is any significant change.

Reagan's funeral

2004-06-11T05:56:00.000-07:00

Why is it that 95% of the time I can flip between CNN and Fox News (adjacent channels) and they have the exact same camera shot from the exact same angle? They cut to a close-up at exactly the same time. They're obviously buying the camera feed from some third party. Who, I wonder? I've always wondered why competitors in the same line of business seem to become such exact mirror images of each other. Look at the airlines - they all have exactly the same planes, the same beverage service, same meals (now lack of them), same frequent flyer programs, same safety videos, everything. The two competing supermarkets in my area of Berkeley even have the same items on sale week after week. It's almost as if they're afraid of giving people any reason, no matter how small, to switch companies. So when one does something new, they all have to copy it. Doesn't this go against the spirit of capitalism? If competing businesses are all offering me exactly the same service, choosing between them is meaningless.

Good News

2004-06-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

General Paul Kern, commander of the Army Material Command, says that all our soldiers in Iraq now have body armor. About time.

Reagan dead at 93

2004-06-05T22:40:00.000-07:00

Ronald Reagan died today. For a very different perspective on his presidency, check out "Reagan's Liberal Legacy" (yep you read that right!), thanks to Kevin Drum for the pointer. I especially like the part about how all the obituaries, tributes and whatnot were written months in advance.

Senate races in red states

2004-06-04T19:21:00.000-07:00

This year's competitive senate races are nearly all in red states: Alaska, Colorado, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Louisiana and the Carolinas. So naturally, we're going to see a lot of Democrats positioning themselves uncomfortably far to the right. Witness Tony Knowles, Alaska's Democratic Senate candidate, defending himself from "attacks" alleging that he is not sufficiently supportive of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; or Tom Daschle's support for a bill which would have granted gun manufacturers blanket immunity from civil lawsuits.

Maybe this sort of thing happens every election cycle. After all, there are more red states than blue states. Al Gore carried 20 states and DC in 2000 to Bush's 30 states. Since the blue states are more populous, the two groups are roughly equal in electoral votes. But in the senate, where every state is represented equally, the Democrats need to pick up at least a half dozen seats in red states just to get to 50-50.

Refuting David Brooks

2004-06-01T10:19:00.000-07:00

David Brooks' column in this morning's Times is directed to those of us who disparage the Bush tax cuts. He tries to defend the cuts, but if you take a minute to think about it, you'll find his arguments don't hold up. Brooks articulates the four main objections to the tax cuts and then addresses them. Let's take the objections one at a time. In Brooks' words:

The first [objection] is that you don't cut taxes in a time of war. This is the least persuasive. Some outside economists say the cuts created or preserved 1.5 million jobs. It's hard to see how the war effort would have been enhanced with those people out of work. If we had wanted to create a sense of shared sacrifice, which we should have, it would have been far better to institute an ambitious national service program.

Brooks assumes here that the people who argue against tax cuts in time of war do so ONLY because they wish to create a sense of shared sacrifice. This is nonsense. The main reasons that people argue against wartime cuts is that wars are expensive. When a government spends more money than it takes in from tax revenues it runs budget deficits, which, if uncorrected, are bad for the economy. Although Brooks neglects to mention that point here, he does get to deficits in his analysis of the fourth objection.

The second objection is that the cuts were poorly designed. They were drawn up in the midst of prosperity and then wheeled out in response to recession. Even Decision Economics' Allen Sinai, a big supporter of the cuts, says the stimulus could have been stronger if more of the cuts had been distributed down the income scale. The White House lacks a compelling response to this.

Although he doesn't let it distract him from his conclusion, it is cool that Brooks admits that the cuts were poorly designed. He is right to question the impact on the economy of a tax cut skewed overwhelmingly to the wealthy. This is because the level of economic stimulus created by tax cuts depends on the distribution of those tax cuts over the income scale. If someone in the middle class gets a tax cut, he will probably spend the excess cash on a product or service he needs or wants, but would have been unable to buy otherwise. Spending his tax cut money strengthens the economy because the money goes to the firm that provided the product. If tax cuts create sufficient consumer spending, firms will be able to hire more workers, reducing unemployment.

Rich people, on the other hand, are generally able to buy most things they want before they receive their tax cut. While they may spend some of the money on big-ticket items, most of it will be invested, rather than consumed. Buying stocks or bonds with tax cut money increases the rich person's future net worth, but has no immediate effect on the economy. This is especially true if the investor puts his money in foreign assets, which offered better returns than domestic assets in 2001 and 2002.

The third argument is that the cuts should have been temporary. White House folks argue persuasively that given the rolling series of blows the bubble, the corporate scandals, the war jitters a short-term stimulus would not have worked. "You were not going to get a sustained recovery from something temporary," Friedman says.

I completely agree with Brooks that temporary tax cuts are not stimulative. Consumers who get one-time tax cuts are just as likely to save as spend them, and saving them does not directly stimulate the economy. If the consumer believes that the cuts are permanent, however, he will be more likely to spend today, because he knows he can save a greater portion of his future income by paying less taxes tomorrow. All very true. Tax cuts stimulate the economy only if they are spent, and will be more likely to be spent if the recipients believe the cuts are permanent.

But wait! In discussing objection two Brooks admitted that most of the tax cuts went to the rich, who will be less likely to spend. If giving the cuts to the rich makes those cuts less effective, whether or not middle-class taxpayers believe the cuts to be temporary is beside the point. Brooks' point would have made perfect sense here if it wasn't inconsistent with the paragraph he had just written.

The final and most serious argument is that whatever the short-term benefits, the tax cuts have left us with a long-term fiscal mess. When you ask administration folks about the deficit problem, they argue that it isn't caused primarily by the cuts, but by rising health care costs and the aging baby boomers. That's true, but it evades the fact that the tax cuts made the situation worse.

Very reasonable of Brooks to point out that the long-term ramifications of the deficit are a real mess. I posted on that on May 7. However, his idea that the deficit is "caused primarily...by rising health care costs and aging baby boomers" is just nonsensical. Deficits are not caused by one thing or another, they occur whenever government spending exceeds taxation. Bush was given a surplus and chose to turn it into a deficit by blowing the money on missile defense, tax cuts, and war. Deficits do not just happen. They are the result of policy and choices. Gore may have sounded like a loser when he talked about the social security "locked-box" (the SNL skit of that debate WAS pretty funny), but there is nothing unreasonable about putting surpluses away for the future, rather than giving them to the rich.

Brooks' argument is kind of a mess. He creates a straw man, admits the tax cuts were poorly planned, ignores that poor planning in his very next paragraph, and distracts us from what he admits is "the most serious argument" by playing word games. His writing style makes him seem really reasonable, but today's column just doesn't hang together.

Politics by Pronouncement: Ground Rules

2004-05-31T13:52:00.000-07:00

A comment thread on Atrios references a really good Guardian article on the growing disconnect between British and American statements about Iraq and the situation on the ground:

Tony Blair for once disagreed. "If there is a political decision as to whether you go into a place like Fallujah in a particular way, that has to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government and the final political control remains with the Iraqi government," he said. But by the next day he was back in his box. "We are both absolutely agreed that there should be full sovereignty transferred to the Iraqi people, and the multinational force should remain under American command," he told the Commons.

In so doing he revealed two of the golden rules in this new era of politics by pronouncement. First, so long as you say things boldly and confidently, they do not have to make any sense. Second, whatever announcement you make last negates all announcements you've made before.

Daschle and Herseth

2004-05-28T02:04:00.000-07:00

The Daschle v. Thune blog has some interesting comments on the relationship between Daschle and Stephanie Herseth, the Democratic candidate in the June 1st special election for South Dakota's house seat.

Republicans and energy independence

2004-05-28T00:17:00.000-07:00

Kerry's speech in Seattle might have been less than inspiring, but the Republican response was pretty funny:

Republicans also complained that if Kerry wants to end America's dependence on Mideast oil, he should support opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, which he opposes.

"His solution is to make families drive around in small, unsafe cars," Virginia Sen. George Allen said on a Republican conference call to respond to Kerry's speech in Seattle.

This one really made me laugh. The amount of economically recoverable oil in the ANWR (i.e. oil that can be profitably extracted and sold) is estimated at 5 billion barrels. By comparison, total U.S. oil consumption is 19.7 million barrels per day. When you work this out, there is enough oil in the ANWR to power the country for approximately eight months. Sure, drilling in the ANWR could bring us energy independence -- eight months of it.

I am not necessarily opposed to drilling in the ANWR if it could be shown to have minimal environmental impact; but to claim that drilling in the ANWR would solve the problem of energy independence is like saying that giving a meal to one starving child solves world hunger. The problem completely dwarfs the proposed solution. When you consider that those in favor of drilling point out that "the Coastal Plain of ANWR is America's best possibility for the discovery of another giant `Prudhoe Bay-sized' oil and gas discovery in North America," and even this "best possibility" would only power the country for an estimated eight months, conservation starts to look like a pretty good idea. That's where those "small, unsafe cars" come in.

Kerry's latest policy speech

2004-05-27T23:22:00.000-07:00

The headline Kerry outlines global mission for U.S. is misleading to say the least. The Bush campaign wasn't far off the mark in saying that Kerry's latest policy speech offered "nothing new in terms of substance." Just more of the same calls for renewed alliances and multilateralism: "Alliances matter... we can't simply go it alone... working with other countries is not a sign of weakness; it's a sign of strength." Okay, already. We've heard this a hundred times. Alliances won't magically fix our problems in Iraq. How is Kerry going to get us out of this mess?

There are good reasons for Kerry not to go into specifics on Iraq policy. Proposing a specific policy that he is powerless to implement, and which will likely become irrelevant as conditions on the ground change, is just inviting political criticism. Specific proposals would just give the attack dogs more grit to sink their teeth into. But knowing this doesn't make it any easier to listen to the same tired old line about alliances for the ninety-ninth time. Not only does it make Kerry sound boring, it makes him sound far too negative. If Kerry won't propose a constructive vision of his own, there's not much ground to cover other than Bush's failures. Sure, that's a vast territory, but it's important to have a positive vision in addition to criticism.

Kerry's unwillingness to go into details about Iraq policy seems to be part of a larger strategy of staying quiet while Bush digs his own grave. So far, that strategy is succeeding admirably. But I'd be amazed if Kerry can coast on Bush's failures all the way to November without ever having to outline a specific foreign policy vision of his own. And frankly, I'd feel a lot better if I knew that Kerry had a plan for how to get us out of this mess in Iraq. Kerry is a good enough politician to know that it can be dangerous to come out and take a stand. But great politicians know that sometimes you have to take a stand.

Wag the Dog

2004-05-27T07:17:00.000-07:00

John Ashcroft announced yesterday that the Bush administration has credible information that Al Qaeda is "almost ready to attack the United States" over the summer and has a "specific intention to hit the United States hard."

There was no information as to where or when the attack might take place, although there was a suggestion that the attackers might make use of biological or radiological WMD.

A day before Ashcroft's speech, analysts at the Department of Homeland Security said that they had no new intelligence about a summer attack. Ashcroft said that, "the public, like all of us, needs a reminder" when asked why he was making a speech when no new information had come to light.

This really looks like a "Wag the Dog" scenario to me. Support for the Iraq war is failing, and Bush's approval ratings on economic management are at an all time low. Bush's main advantage over Kerry is that he polls better on handling the war on terrorism. Making speeches about vague terrorist threats that include no specific information is just an attempt to distract voters from the Abu Ghraib scandal and the fact that the administration has no coherent plan for dealing with Iraq.

Liberal and conservative accounts of Ashcroft's speech are available at these links.

Presidential Mendacity Index

2004-05-20T03:54:00.000-07:00

Washington Monthly records the biggest lies told by our last four presidents. Compared to the high-stakes lies that Bush is so fond of, some of these seem light-hearted and good for a laugh. I've often found Reagan's lies good natured and amusing. One of my favorite Reagan quotes:

"A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."

India gets another new Prime Minister

2004-05-19T09:11:00.000-07:00

Manmohan Singh, the economist who masterminded India's ten-year journey from socialism toward the free market, will be India's next prime minister. Sonia Ghandi, whose election on Tuesday roiled India's financial markets, has declined to accept the post. She seems to support Singh's election.

Two things about this story are worth noting. The first is the trend of Asian countries towards electing economically trained leaders. While China's Hu Jintao studied chemistry, many members of his cabinet were trained in economics and finance outside of China. Singh's election provides more evidence of a regional move away from socialism and, in China's case, dictatorship, and towards capitalism and democracy. Personally, I am happy to see technocrats in positions of power. I wish that American administrations thought more about the effects of policy and less about spin.

Second, to quote the New York times:

In a milestone that says much about this vast nation's diversity and capacity for co-existence, Mrs. Gandhi, an Italian-born woman raised a Roman Catholic, is making way for a Sikh prime minister who will be sworn in by a Muslim president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

nice point for the "clash of civilizations" camp to consider.

Opportunity and Responsibility: A Liberal Story

2004-05-17T13:34:00.000-07:00

Matthew Yglesias posts some commentary on an article by Joshua Shenk in "Mother Jones." The thrust of Shenk's article is that Republicans know how to tell a good story about their candidates and cause while Democrats do not, and that this story-telling ability translates into more Republican votes. Shenk writes:

According to Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, & Co., the president of the United States of America is a great gentle warrior, the scion of a noble line: He's a Texas cowboy descended from George Washington descended from the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. He's a man of God and family. Truly, the story goes, he's a simple man--wanting only to care for his own, tend to his plot of land, and go to church on Sunday.

But this man is besieged--on all sides--by the rabid armies of the Godless and the cowardly. By terrorists and evil-doers. By bureaucrats who want to run his life. By liberals who want to tax him. By drug dealers, welfare mothers, and atheists.

What is he to do? He would dearly love not to fight. But his enemies are climbing the walls of his castle. The killer has got a knife to his little girl's throat. Not fight? Fight he must.

This story works, in Shenk's words, because "It presents a classic hero and a journey that reaches down through the brain into the gut. And Republicans can translate into simple, clear lines of action: Wage war and don't stop. Cut taxes. Put bad guys in jail, or to death."

There is a lot of truth, in my opinion, to what Shenk is saying. Many people make their voting decisions on an emotional level, rather than a rational, calculating level. How many people do you know who would've voted for Gore on policy issues, but didn't because they just did not like him? Stories not only appeal to our emotions, but also give us an opportunity to make sense of a confusing, morally ambiguous reality.

Matthew Yglesias agrees with Shenk's analysis, but worries that the Democrats are unable to tell compelling stories because they are reluctant to "make stuff up." The Republicans are only able to tell stories, Yglesias argues, because they lie.

While I agree with Yglesias that Republicans often lie about substantive issues, I think the idea that Democrats are unable to tell compelling stories is both untrue and unproductive. During the '96 campaign, Bill Clinton articulated a Democratic story that appealed to most Americans, and will continue to do so. It was a story of Opportunity and Responsibility.

Clinton realized that Americans don't mind helping the less fortunate, so long as those less fortunate people are perceived as working hard, rather than getting a free ride. This is why so many voters who abhor welfare are happy to see their tax dollars channeled into tax relief for families that have children in college, or turned into financial aid for students who are the first in their family to attend. The idea of unemployment insurance for laid-off workers who decide to re-train is another popular idea from the Clinton administration. The GI Bill, which gave a free college education to soldiers who served in World War II, is perhaps the ultimate example of this Democratic principle in action.

This story argues not only that the granting of opportunity be conditioned on personal responsibility, but that those who grow rich and powerful by exploiting their opportunities have a responsibility to pay society back. This means that politicians should implement policies that are beneficial to our country and economy as a whole, rather than to wealthy, connected insiders. Similarly, the Opportunity and Responsibility story frames the graduated income tax as a fair trade for those people who have benefited from our free markets, rather than an onerous and unfair obligation.

The story of Opportunity and Responsibility is what America and the Democratic party are all about. Losing Democratic candidates, such as McGovern, Carter, Dukakkis, and Gore, use slogans like "The People vs. The Powerful" which make "the people" feel like victims and losers who are getting pushed around. Winning Democrats, like Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Clinton, articulate a positive, can-do message that puts the American Dream within the reach of every voter.

Head of Iraqi Governing Council Assassinated

2004-05-17T05:17:00.000-07:00

Abdel-Zahraa Othman, the head of the Iraqi Governing Council, was killed by a suicide bomber in Baghdad this morning. He is the second council member to be killed. American and British officials, as well the Iraqi foreign minister, have said that the killing will not derail the transfer of power expected to take place on June 30. The AP and NY Times have the full details.

U.S. Citizens Indicted on Terror Charges

2004-05-15T02:50:00.000-07:00

Warrants have been issued for the arrest of 19 members of a New York City street gang called the St. James Gang. These gang members are accused of murder, conspiracy, and gang assault. Because they acted with "the intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population", Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson is arguing that these crimes are acts of terrorism. Article 490, a New York state statute passed six days after 9-11, makes it possible for two otherwise identical crimes to carry different sentences if one can be shown to be an act of terrorism. For example, murderers in New York state face a sentence of 25 years to life with the possibility of parole, while murder shown to be an act of terrorism carries a mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole. The details of the case against the St. James gangsters can be found here.

In the course of trying to kill a rival gang member a St. James gangster named Edgar Morales inadvertently shot a 10-year-old girl. The other gang members who have been charged were present at the scene. Killing children is despicable, and Morales deserves to go to prison for at least 25 years and perhaps for his entire life. However, it is important to remember that despite being killers and criminals these men are also American citizens, and are legally entitled to the same rights and protections as other Americans.

This case is troubling. The Bronx DA is arguing that these men should be held to a different standard of justice because of their subjective intentions or states of mind. The proposition "A bullet fired from a gun held by Edgar Morales struck and killed a ten year old girl" seeks to establish an objective fact that can be proved or disproved by evidence and testimony. On the other hand, the proposition "Edgar Morales intended to intimidate a civilian population" can be neither proved nor disproved. Evidence and testimony do not bear on this proposition, because it is impossible to testify as to what is going on in someone else's mind.

Our justice system will be starting down a slippery slope if these men are found guilty of acts of terrorism. A guilty verdict will establish the precedent that the state can identify American citizens as terrorists, and hand out harsher sentences, if prosecuting attorneys can convince juries that the citizens were thinking the wrong thing when they committed their crimes. Because a person's thoughts are unknowable, sentences will be determined not by the facts of the case, but by conjecture and rhetoric. Courts must make their decisions based on facts, rather than unprovable assertions.

The California Patriot

2004-05-13T16:22:00.000-07:00

It's gotten to the point where the word "patriot" immediately makes me suspicious. So when someone tries to hand me a magazine called The California Patriot as I'm walking down Sproul Plaza, it's with a bit of wariness that I reach out my hand to take a copy. It turns out that The California Patriot is "Berkeley's conservative student voice." As you can imagine, Berkeley Republicans are an exceedingly rare and exotic breed of political animal. Most of the articles were good for a few laughs. I learned how diversity programs are actually racist, and how country music is "a genre not afraid to embrace American values." The entire issue can be found online here. But I'm sorry to say that one article wasn't funny. In fact, it was disturbing.

In a piece titled "Rules of Engagement," subtitled "Left capitalizes on brutal attacks," one Errol Tremolada tries to make the case that "the anti-war crowd" was happy that four American contractors were mutilated, killed, and dragged through the streets of Fallujah on March 31st. I'm not even going to touch that part of his argument. What bothers me is Mr. Tremolada's attempt to contrast this crime with the behavior of American troops:

This kind of action is not war, nor was it done for any reason other than the opportunity to rejoice in death. It is nothing the American soldier would ever do or of which he would approve. The American soldiers and civilians in Iraq are not there to torture and mar their opponents or demonstrate total disregard for human life...

Our prisoners of war are fed, clothed, sheltered, and never threatened with barbaric death or gratuitous violence.

If only that were the case. Evidently this article was written before the stories of the Taguba report hit the press. But the article appears in the May 2004 edition of the magazine, and was handed to me yesterday afternoon. It might have seemed reasonable at the time it was written, but in the present context this article is just offensive. The insensitivity shown by The California Patriot's editors in allowing this piece to go to press helps explain why "Berkeley's conservative student voice" remains such a pariah on campus.

New Ohio poll

2004-05-13T15:06:00.000-07:00

From American Research Group:

Bush 43% Kerry 50%

Bush 42% Kerry 49% Nader 2%

Strangely enough, Kerry is polling significantly better in Ohio than Pennsylvania. Unlike Pennsylvania, Ohio has whole cities that are culturally conservative (Cincinnati). My simplistic comparison of Ohio and Pennsylvania demographics: Cleveland=Pittsburgh (rust-belt union city trying to modernize, votes Democratic but not overwhelmingly so); rural Ohio = "the T" (middle section of Pennsylvania which Carville famously likened to "Alabama"). What's left? Philadelphia and Cincinnati. Which one is more liberal? So my conclusion is, a Democratic presidential candidate should have an easier time winning Pennsylvania than Ohio. But that's not what the polls are showing. Maybe someone more familiar with these two states can offer an explanation.

Rumsfeld: No cover-up here

2004-05-13T03:23:00.000-07:00

The pentagon has decided not to release any more photos from Abu Ghraib. Senators who have seen the new photos say that they are even more disturbing than the original round.

Rumsfeld has assured the press that if he had it his way, he would release all the photos to the public, so we could "get it behind us." Unfortunately, those snarky pentagon lawyers are advising Rumsfeld that releasing the photos would be illegal, because they would humiliate prisoners of war, which is a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Rumsfeld would like to do the honest thing here, but those lawyers just won't let him. He probably has to do what they say, much as he might regret it. It's not like he runs the pentagon or anything.

Even though this excuse is implausible, it does not mean that covering-up the new photos is the wrong move. If the first link above is any indication, these new photos are really, really bad. The pentagon is not faced with the question of whether it is right or wrong to release these photos. What they are trying to figure out instead is whether anyone else has copies of these photos, and whether the photo holders will be more inclined to give/sell their copies to the pentagon or the press.

Apparently, Rumsfeld is gambling that he has all the photos, or that he can get his hands on any additional photos before the press does. Additionally, if photo holders sell to Arab media outlets, such as Al-Jazeera, Rumsfeld can claim that the photos are fakes. The problem with that strategy is that Rumsfeld's international credibility is probably on par with Al-Jazeera's at this point, and his credibility certainly lags theirs in the Arab world. Even if new photos exposed by Al-Jazeera ARE fakes, Rumsfeld can only prove that by releasing the photos he currently has. Rumsfeld's inflated estimation of American credibility is leading him to make a poor gamble.

Marginally competitive states

2004-05-12T12:12:00.000-07:00

Today's NY Times has a good article on how the campaigns are focusing on marginally competitive states: Kerry recently spent $2 million on ad buys in Colorado and Louisiana; Bush is advertising in Delaware and might try for New Jersey. The list will probably get smaller after the conventions, but no one wants to repeat Gore's mistake of abandoning viable states like Ohio and West Virginia. The Gore campaign gave these up as unwinnable, but they turned out to be close enough that campaigning and advertising could have made up the difference.

Reform Party endorses Nader

2004-05-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

Ross Perot's Reform Party endorsed Ralph Nader today, which assures Nader ballot access in seven states, including Michigan and Florida. This article claims he will also get ballot access in Wisconsin.

Prison abuse in the U.S.

2004-05-09T10:11:00.000-07:00

(via Josh Marshall) NY times columnist Fox Butterfield compares what happened at Abu Ghraib in Iraq to the routine mistreatment of prisoners here in the U.S. In fact, some of the same people may be responsible:

The man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time.

The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq.

"Private prison company"? I had no idea these existed. Another wonderful libertarian idea.

What Geneva Convention?

2004-05-08T16:51:00.000-07:00

One of the soldiers charged in the prison abuse investigation says she never even saw a copy of the Geneva Convention until after she was charged:

One of the seven soldiers facing possible court martial for abusing detainees revealed that she did not read, or even see, a copy of the Geneva Convention until two months after she was charged. Specialist Sabrina Harman, 26, said she now understood that it was regularly breached at Abu Ghraib....

The claims made by Harman, who is confined to quarters in Baghdad awaiting trial, contradict US army assurances that all soldiers are familiar with the Geneva Convention.

Back to blogging

2004-05-08T16:29:00.000-07:00

I've finished my two big projects for the semester, which means more time for blogging. It's amazing how quickly things change in politics. Turned on NPR yesterday after a week of not following the news, and the first thing I heard was "President Bush apologized today..." That sure got my attention. Then I'm biking down Shattuck and glance over at the news stands to catch the headline "Democrats demand Rumsfeld's resignation." Time for some catching up.

Economics is not a matter of opinion

2004-05-07T07:59:00.000-07:00

In a speech yesterday, Alan Greenspan warned of the economic dangers of running large budget deficits. He said that running uncorrected deficits raises long-term interest rates, which constrain long-term economic growth. The Bush administration responded that the link between deficits and interest rates isn't strong.

The administration is trying to get people to buy into the line that whether or not running repeated deficits is good for the economy is really a matter of opinion, much as voters might have an opinion on the costs and benefits of an education bill or a new gun registration law. Their argument is that they believe one thing, Greenspan believes another, and no one really knows who's right.

The problem is that any serious economist, including Gregory Mankiw, the Head of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, will tell you that running deficits unambiguously drives up long-term rates. This happens because governments must issue debt in order to finance budget deficits, and larger deficits require more debt than smaller deficits. The problem is that there are a finite number of buyers willing to hold debt that pays a given rate of interest. In order to raise large amounts of debt, the government must offer higher rates to attract more buyers.

High rates slow the economy down because they reduce the range of profitable projects that investors and firms can pursue. If the interest rate for a given year is 4%, capitalists will take projects that return more than 4%. However, if the interest rate is 8%, fewer projects will be pursued in the economy as a whole. If fewer projects are pursued, GPD grows at a slower rate or not at all, and crucially, fewer people have jobs.

Republicans deny this line of reasoning, arguing that deficits don't matter because Reagan ran large deficits without impacting the economy. The reason that Reagan's deficits didn't matter is that Bush I and Clinton raised taxes, and used those tax revenues to pay off Reagan's debts. Bush's actions were especially courageous. His decision to raise taxes set the groundwork for the 1990's boom, but cost him the 1992 election. While many of Reagan's policies contributed to the strong economic environment of the 1980's, running huge, undisciplined deficits was not one them.

For the record: America's 2003 deficit was a record $374 billion. For 2004, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office is projecting a deficit of $477 billion.

How Nader can run without being a spoiler

2004-05-05T09:28:00.000-07:00

Bruce Ackerman has a brilliant opinion piece in today's NY Times explaining how Ralph Nader can run and raise awareness for his issues without handing the election to Bush.

Ackerman points out that when we vote for a presidential candidate we are actually voting for the group of electors that the candidate has nominated in each state. Technically, it is these electors who cast the votes that actually determine the next president. Ackerman's idea is that Nader should nominate the same slate of electors that Kerry does. These electors will then go on to vote for Kerry. The net result of this is that Nader will receive his share of the popular vote, while still ensuring that Kerry will win any state where the total votes cast for Kerry and Nader are greater than the total votes cast for Bush, even if Bush manages to get more votes than Kerry alone.

This proposal gives progressives a guilt-free way to vote for Nader. The decision to accept or reject this proposal will give us all real insight into Nader's character. Does he really care about what's best for America, or is he selfishly running for the ego boost that comes from influencing world affairs?

Argument and Policy in the Bush Administration

2004-05-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

Over at World on Fire Rick Freedman has an excellent post on the role that argument and policy play in the Bush Administration. His thesis is that Bush makes his decisions based on conservative ideology, and on what can be spun to the American public, rather than on a substantive look at the costs and benefits of those decisions. Great post!

California bans Diebold voting machines

2004-05-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

California's secretary of state has banned the use of 14,000 Diebold electronic voting machines in the November election. 28,000 other Diebold machines have been "conditionally banned" and may be reinstated if Diebold complies with independent security guidelines and equips the machines to produce paper receipts. The full story can be found here.

This is great news. Voting machines that do not produce paper receipts are a threat to democracy, and the fact that Diebold's executives are major Bush contributors is extremely suspicious. More states should follow California's example.

Bush's approval rating at all-time low

2004-04-29T00:02:00.000-07:00

A CBS/NY Times poll released today shows Bush's approval rating at 46%, the lowest of his presidency. One year ago, immediately after the fall of Baghdad, Bush's approval rating was 67%. His ratings on handling Iraq (41%) and foreign policy (40%) are also all-time lows. While his 39% rating on handling the economy is dismal, it is not an all-time low.

Interestingly, the poll finds that 60% of Americans approve of Bush's handling of the threat of terrorism. Perhaps the political advertising featuring 9/11 corpses and middle eastern men in airports are working.

Finally, the poll reports that Kerry would beat Bush 46-44% in a race without Nader, although the 3% margin of error makes this result a statistical tie. With Nader in the race, Bush has the advantage over Kerry, winning 43-41% with Nader getting 5% of the vote. Although the 43-41% is still a tie, the result shows that Nader, despite his arguments, steals more supporters from Kerry than from Bush.

Specter beats Toomey in PA Republican Primary

2004-04-28T03:36:00.000-07:00

Arlen Specter, four-term Pennsylvania senator, edged out challenger Patrick Toomey in Pennsylvania's Republican primary. Specter carried 50.8% of the primary vote to Toomey's 49.2%. The primary result represents a victory for Specter's relative centrism over Toomey's far-right conservatism.

What effect will Specter's nomination have on the outcome of the Presidential election in PA? Although Toomey has called for his supporters to rally behind Specter and Bush this fall, that fact remains that hardcore social and fiscal conservatives are disappointed with Bush's performance.

Specter's stumping for Bush will certainly appeal to Pennsylvania's swing voters, but Toomey's defeat will upset the state's hard-core conservatives. What is the size of Pennsylvania's far-right voter population relative to its swing voter population? Are those far-right voters sufficiently disappointed with Bush that they will stay home in November?

Daschle's chances

2004-04-22T02:21:00.000-07:00

Good news for Tom Daschle's reelection campaign. Indian activist Tim Giago, an independent candidate in the race, has withdrawn and endorsed Daschle. It seems that Daschle and Giago met over the weekend and ironed out their differences. Native Americans, who make up almost 10% of South Dakota's population, traditionally vote strongly Democratic, but Giago's candidacy threatened to undercut Daschle's support on the reservations. While it's not clear exactly what conditions Daschle agreed to, he may have softened his position on the Black Hills land dispute. The federal government illegally took possession of Sioux land in 1877, initiating a century-long conflict over the ownership of the Black Hills. In 1980, the Supreme Court awarded $105 million to the Sioux in compensation, but the tribes refused the settlement, arguing that the land was never for sale. In the past, Daschle has consistently ignored the tribes' claim to the land, angering one of his core constituencies.

Giago's withdrawal and endorsement are definitely a plus, but Daschle is still looking extremely vulnerable. His opponent, former Rep. John Thune, lost to incumbent Senator Tim Johnson in 2002 by a razor-thin margin of 524 votes. While Daschle's position as Senate Minority Leader makes him a stronger candidate than Johnson, there is one big difference between 2004 and 2002: Bush will be running at the top of the ticket. Four years ago, Bush won South Dakota by a margin of 22%. In order for Daschle to win reelection, some 22% of South Dakota voters have to break party lines, voting for Bush at the top of the ticket and Daschle on the next line. That's a huge number of split tickets. The Bush campaign will surely try to frame a vote for Daschle as inconsistent with a vote for the President. South Dakota residents will be hearing a lot of rhetoric about Daschle's "obstructionism" in the coming months. Given Daschle's anemic polling numbers, below 50% and only a few points ahead of Thune, his position is very tenuous. I wouldn't put his chances at much higher than 50%.

If Daschle loses, it would be a huge symbolic defeat for the Democratic party. On the other hand, it's time we had a leader in the Senate who doesn't have to sell out Democratic values to get reelected. Having a safe seat ought to be a requirement for a Congressional leadership position.

For the true die-hard political junkies, here's a whole blog devoted to the Daschle/Thune race.

Draft bills in congress

2004-04-20T23:09:00.000-07:00

Since early last year, the Universal National Service Act of 2003 has been in subcommittees in the House and Senate. Summary of the act:

To provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.

It seems that the bills do not have very much support among members of Congress, which would help explain why they've been stuck in subcommittees for more than a year. My worry is that in the wake of some future catastrophic event -- say, a meltdown in Pakistan or another major terrorist attack on US soil -- these bills could be rushed through Congress in much the same way as the Patriot Act was hurried through in the panicked weeks after 9/11.

The draft is not the answer to our current woes in Iraq. For one thing, it's not at all clear that more soldiers would help in Iraq. More soldiers would provide more targets for terrorist and guerrilla attacks, and would further complicate an already daunting supply problem. Secondly, it would take perhaps a year to restart the selective service system and perhaps another year to fully train drafted troops. Even if more troops would help in Iraq, we can't wait two years for those troops.

As to Chuck Hagel's argument that the draft would spread the burden of war equitably among all social classes, that's just not true. The rich and powerful have always found ways to avoid being drafted. During Vietnam, classism was essentially built into the draft system in the form of student exemptions. Community college or vocational students did not qualify for these exemptions as they were not considered "full-time" students. Family connections could evidently get you past the waiting list for a coveted spot in the National Guard. And it is the rich and powerful who have the means to escape the draft by leaving the country. The class gap in our military may be a problem, but the draft is not the solution.

"Conservative case for voting Democratic"

2004-04-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute argues that the government does a better job keeping spending under control when Congress and the White House are controlled by different parties. Of all the postwar administrations, the biggest spenders were Kennedy, Johnson and Bush II, all of whom enjoyed party majorities in Congress. The lowest spenders were Eisenhower and Clinton, who had to deal with an opposition Congress. Since Congress isn't likely to go Democratic this year, the normally conservative Bandow concludes that the best way to rein in government spending is to vote for Kerry.

The Draft

2004-04-20T12:14:00.000-07:00

Chuck Hagel suggests that bringing back the draft will solve the troop shortage in Iraq, and also ensure that Americans from all social classes will have a stake in the war.

The Israeli view on Iraq

2004-04-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

Matthew Yglasias explains why democracy in Iraq is not necessarily in Israel's interest:

Sharon doesn't "want us to win in Iraq" if "winning in Iraq" is defined as establishing a stable Iraqi democracy. Under the circumstances, a democratic Iraq would be strongly anti-Israel (as was the old, undemocratic Iraq), but it will have the sort of global credibility and legitimacy as a state sponsor of the Palestinian cause that the old Iraq utterly lacked. Sharon's best hope is that Iraq either degenerates into a failed state (no threat there) or else that the United States imposes a broadly pro-American dictatorship there as we see in Egypt.

Interesting point, although I disagree that a failed state in Iraq would constitute "no threat" to Israel. A failed state is likely to lead to some kind of civil war, destabilizing the region. I'm reminded of a post on Aspasia a while back:

The defeat of Saddam Hussein removes the last conventional threat from Israel's Eastern border, making the concept of strategic depth obsolete and making clear that the West Bank is a security liability, not a security asset to Israel.

This is true, provided nothing really ugly happens in Iraq. A civil war or radical Islamic regime could renew the threat to Israel's eastern border. It does seem that a "pro-American dictatorship," as Matt suggests, would be the best result in Iraq from Israel's point of view.

How will Sistani react to an invasion of Najaf?

2004-04-18T03:32:00.000-07:00

It seems that negotiations have broken down and US troops are preparing to invade Najaf in an effort to capture the renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. A decision to invade Najaf could have drastic consequences. Najaf is the holiest city of Shiite Islam, site of the Imam Ali Mosque, the burial place of Muhammad's son-in-law Ali. Invading Najaf could transform the current insurrection by Sadr's fringe group into a general Shiite rebellion.

Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the well-respected voice of moderation in the Iraqi Shiite community, has repeatedly warned the United States to stay out of Najaf. The big variable is how Sistani would react to an invasion. His threats thus far have been vague; if the United States ignores his warnings, he says he will "take a different, stronger position" on the occupation. That could mean anything from a mild rebuke of US actions to an all-out declaration of war. It seems to me that the US is taking a real gamble here. If Sistani decides he's had enough of collaborating with the occupation, Southern Iraq could easily descend into full-fledged guerrilla war.

CNN, NBC, ... NRA?

2004-04-17T18:35:00.000-07:00

(via The Fulcrum) The NRA is setting up an internet radio operation, and has plans to acquire radio and television stations. Why? It seems this may be their way of getting around McCain-Feingold:

The NRA's media outlets will be financed by unlimited donations, known as "soft money".

Campaign finance laws ban the use of "soft money" for political advertising in the run-up to elections

"If you own a news operation," said [NRA executive vice-president Wayne] LaPierre, "you can say whatever you want. If you don't, you're gagged."

Experts say that the NRA might be able to sidestep campaign finance laws if it can convincingly show that it is running a media organisation.

Factions within the Kerry campaign

2004-04-16T16:25:00.000-07:00

Slate's Michael Crowley has a nice article outlining the many factions within the Kerry campaign, their political ambitions, friends and enemies. There's Ted Kennedy's crew facing off against the Clinton's former advisors and cabinet members. Kerry's decades-old network of Boston pols and advisors is clashing with the newer, Washington set. Then there's Kerry's family and his network of Vietnam veterans. Crowley does a good job deconstructing these various factions, identifying the major players and ambitions of each.

Bush campaign has already spent $40 million

2004-04-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

(via Pandagon) MSNBC says the Bush campaign has already spent half of its pre-convention advertising budget. The campaign has spent at least $40 million on advertising in the last month and a half, roughly the same amount it has budgeted for the next four and a half months. Nor has Bush gained that much in the polls as a result of this advertising blitz. It looks like the early effort to "define Kerry before Kerry defines Kerry" hasn't worked.

Somebody stop these people

2004-04-16T07:44:00.000-07:00

I almost never click on banner ads, but here's one I just saw:

When you click on it, it takes you straight to www.GOP.com, where you find out, in tiny print they hope nobody will read, what Kerry actually said:

"Mr. McMANUS: If that amendment does not pass, will you then vote against the $87 billion?

Sen. KERRY: I don't think any United States senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq to--to whatever follows as a result of simply cutting and running. That's irresponsible.

I'm no fan of Kerry's vote against the $87 billion, and I'm no fan of his hedging answer to this question, which not only refuses to give a straight yes or no answer, but also reads an accusation into the question that just isn't there. Kerry should have said, "If the amendment does not pass, then, absolutely, I will vote against the $87 billion," and explained why. But in no sense does Kerry's answer confirm the implication the ad is trying to make, namely that Kerry publicly renounced his vote after the fact, accusing himself of "abandoning our troops" and characterizing his own decision as "reckless" and "irresponsible."

The folks at GOP.com must have sensed the inadequacy of this quote, hence their inclusion of -- hold your breath -- some context. In the rest of the quote, Kerry goes on to explain why voting against the $87 billion does not constitute abandoning our troops. The rest of of the quote, if you actually read it, controverts the argument the ad is trying to make. But the folks at GOP.com are very clever: in that tiny font, it's awfully tough to get past the first sentence.

I wonder whether this ad qualifies as libel. A legal definition:

LIBEL - Published material meeting three conditions: The material is defamatory either on its face or indirectly; The defamatory statement is about someone who is identifiable to one or more persons; and, The material must be distributed to someone other than the offended party; i.e. published; distinguished from slander.

The second and third conditions are easily met. The first one rests on the definition of "defamatory." If saying something false about someone with the intent of harming his reputation is "defamatory," then this is libel.

New sidebar addition: state polling map

2004-04-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

DC's Political Report compiles state polling results for the presidential race into the handy little map you see on the right. Dark blue/red means the candidates are separated by at least twice the margin of error (typically at least a 9-10% difference); light blue/red means the separation is between one and two margins of error (typically 4-9% difference); green means the separation is less than one margin of error, making the state a tossup.

I do have a quibble with the coloring, in that it's only based on the most recent poll. This means outlier polls make the map fluctuate a lot. A few weeks ago Minnesota was green and Wisconsin was dark blue. New York was even green at one point. It'd be better to average the three most recent polls. In any case, I find the map useful as a way to see at a glance roughly how the presidential race is going, but you can't take individual results too seriously.

The Marsh Arabs of Iraq

2004-04-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

The Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq are the modern-day descendants of ancient Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations. This is how they lived in as recently as 1990:

In what has been called "the environmental crime of the century," Saddam Hussein systematically destroyed the marsh habitat. After the Shiite rebellion of 1991, Saddam must have feared that the marshes and their 200,000 Shiite inhabitants could become a center of resistance to his regime. He dumped toxic chemicals into the water and blanketed the area with napalm bombs. The final blow was Saddam's "Third River Project," which diverted the flow of the Euphrates river so that water no longer reached the marshes. As a result, the marshes were slowly drained. By 2001, as much as 90 percent of original marshland had been replaced by desert. Today's remaining Marsh Arabs live in refugee camps in Iran, or in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City. The estimated cost of restoring the marshes is $1 billion, although some of the damage, such as species extinction, is irreversible.

Supply lines

2004-04-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

Here's the most detailed report I can find on the supply line situation:

The military has been trying to regain control of supply routes after several convoys were ambushed and at least 10 truck drivers kidnapped. Nine were released, but an American -- Thomas Hamill of Macon, Miss. -- remained a captive.

On Monday, a convoy of flatbed trucks carrying M113 armored personnel carriers was attacked and burned on a road in Latifiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad. Witnesses said three people were killed...

Securing roads has now become a top priority for the military, U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Monday.

Okay, so it looks like I was right. The southern supply lines are posing a problem for US troops. Moreover, this has the marks of a deliberate attack on supply lines. You don't kidnap ten truck drivers by accident.

I noticed something interesting after staring at this map for a while. Every major road from the Gulf to the capital runs through either Nasiriyah or Kut, two cities the US has lost control of in recent days!

Fortunately, there are reports that the US has regained control of those two cities. That should help restore the southern supply routes.

I wasn't totally right, though. I underestimated the problem. There are also supply problems in central Iraq. It doesn't look good for the marines at Fallujah:

While the Marines have not suffered significant losses in Fallujah, the 30-mile-long road behind them has fallen into the hands of Iraqi fighters.

They have made repeated attacks on convoys and even set fire to an American tank with a rocket propelled grenade. Two US soldiers have gone missing in the area.

The US has only very limited control over al-Anbar province, a vast area with a population of 1.25 million, most of them living in towns and cities on the Euphrates river.

I still think the southern supply lines could pose a bigger problem. The US didn't count on troubles with the Shiites, and probably assumed those lines were safe. There are only a few routes to the sea, and losing control of just two cities cuts them off. Once those lines are cut, the troops in Baghdad are isolated without supplies. I'm guessing some supplies could be airlifted in that case, but it would be an ugly situation.

UPDATE: One possibility that just occurred to me, in the scenario that the southern supply lines are cut, is that the US could supply troops in central Iraq from the north, via Turkey. I'm not sure how feasible this would be. It's certainly more inconvenient, given the geography. Supplies would have to be shipped through the Mediterranean, driven through Anatolia and then down into Iraq. I also don't think the military is prepared to supply troops that way. Would Turkey be okay with tanks and the like crossing its territory? It would take a certain amount of time to restructure the operation, at the very least. One has to wonder whether the Pentagon planned for this eventuality. Shiite southern Iraq might have seemed like safe territory, but a backup plan is always wise.

Finally, this administration will negotiate

2004-04-12T08:41:00.000-07:00

The US has signaled its willingness to negotiate settlements to its outstanding conflicts in Iraq. Ceasefires have been called at Fallujah, Najaf and Karbala. It's about time.

Juan Cole has some tips for US negotiators. He explains from a cultural standpoint how the Iraqis are likely to approach mediation.

To be sure, the administration is only now willing to negotiate because it is in a position of profound weakness. Broken supply lines mean that even if US forces may eventually have the ability to retake the lost cities by force, they are not in a position to do so right now. It's hard to find much information right now about the supply problem, but it's not too difficult to guess what's happening. Troops in central Iraq rely on supply routes from the Persian Gulf through Southern Iraq to Baghdad. As long as the Shiite-populated south remained calm, marines fighting in Fallujah could rely on a steady stream of supplies arriving from the south: gasoline, ammunition, and so on. But the Sadrist rebellion has put these supply routes in jeopardy.

Supply problems aside, even if the US military has the ability to put down these twin rebellions by force in the end, trying to do so would surely squander what little political capital the US has left in Iraq. Juan Cole again: "A hated occupier is powerless even with all the firepower in the world." Crushing the current uprising by force is just not worth the price of becoming a "hated occupier."

Let's hope the administration recognizes its weak position and doesn't bring too much high-handed arrogance to the negotiation table. I'm cautiously optimistic about the prospects of the negotiations, especially on the Shiite side. Muqtada al-Sadr has a lot to gain by accepting a compromise. By bringing the Americans to the negotiating table he has already achieved many of his political goals. Not only has he forced Bremer and the CPA to deal with him as an equal, he has also greatly enhanced his stature in the Shiite community (though perhaps not to the level of the Ayatollah Sistani). Since Shiites are a majority in the country, Shiite leaders naturally have the most to gain from the establishment of democratic government in Iraq. Sadr is surely shrewd enough to understand that his swiftest route to power is through elections, rather than a prolonged guerrilla war.

Iraq and the presidential race

2004-04-11T19:58:00.000-07:00

Bad news in Iraq should be bad news for Bush's reelection campaign, right? Maybe not. For one thing, any news about Iraq diverts attention from Kerry's strong suits -- social issues and the economy -- to Bush's strong suit, national security. As LA Times writer Maria LaGanga points out:

The Democratic nominee for president set out every day this week to talk about a peacetime economy and ended up discussing war. He was nudged in the new direction by a week's barrage of bad news.

It's something of a catch-22. If things are going well in Iraq, Bush gets to say "see, I made the right decision, I got rid of a brutal dictator and liberated a country"; if things are going badly, he gets to act the part of the "popular wartime president" and remind us not to switch horses in midstream (thus the campaign motto, "steady leadership in times of change").

Iraq, Vietnam, escalation and quagmire: does Kerry have a plan?

2004-04-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

Newsweek's new cover story compares Iraq and Vietnam. I'm not going to analyze the comparison in detail, but two things struck me. First, while the Vietnam war was on a scale far larger than what is going on in Iraq -- it involved a higher level of American troop commitment and a much higher casualty rate -- Vietnam, too, started out as a small-scale conflict. We just couldn't stop it from escalating. That brings me to my second point. The recent difficulties we've had in Iraq are sure to provoke calls for more troops. Many Americans seem to accept the need for more troops, at least in the short term. The idea of sending more troops to Iraq is not unreasonable, and it should be considered. At the same time, we should be wary of allowing Iraq to escalate into the same sort of quagmire as Vietnam. Daniel Schorr reminds us of the Vietnam-era meaning of quagmire:

Maybe it's time to dust off that unhappy word from Vietnam days - quagmire. For those too young to remember, quagmire means that, whether or not you should have been there in the first place, you're stuck there now because you can't get out without making things infinitely worse.

I was surprised to read such a specific definition. Being one of those "too young to remember," I had thought of a "quagmire" as nothing more specific than "a big mess."

The amazing thing about Schorr's very specific definition of quagmire is how well it applies to Iraq. Pulling out of Iraq really would be a disaster. The Sunni/Shiite united front against the occupation wouldn't last for two days after the United States left. It could turn into another another Bosnia, religion taking on the role of ethnicity, Kurds undertaking "ethnic cleansing" of the Turkmen, who knows. Turkey, Syria and Iran would be drawn into the power vacuum. The end result could be an Iranian-style Islamic state, another dictatorship, or a partitioned Iraq. We really can't leave. And that's what makes the Vietnam parallels so accurate. Sure, it's not a "domino effect" this time. Nobody thinks pulling out of Iraq would turn the whole world communist. But pulling out could have some pretty horrible consequences. We can't pull out, and we may not be able to control the country with current troop levels. We may need to send more troops. More troops might not solve the problem either, and we'll still be stuck there. Escalation and quagmire.

I want to see a detailed plan from Kerry. What's he going to do about Iraq? Out of the current generation of national politicians, Kerry is potentially among the best-qualified to handle the Iraq crisis. He fought in Vietnam and understood its follies. He has decades of foreign-policy experience. If anyone can stop Iraq from turning into another Vietnam, Kerry can. Yet I've been disappointed by his response so far. Calls for more international involvement are all well and good, but we've heard that point a hundred times already. International involvement is not going to magically fix the current crisis. So what's Kerry's plan? Why do I suddenly find myself afraid that he doesn't have one?

"We did not sign up to fight Iraqis"

2004-04-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

(via Billmon) The Iraqi Armed Forces' 2nd battalion refused to participate in US operations at Fallujah last week:

[Army Maj. Gen. Paul] Eaton said members of the battalion insisted during the ensuing discussions: "We did not sign up to fight Iraqis."

He declined to characterize the incident as a mutiny, but rather called it "a command failure."

The refusal of the battalion to perform as U.S. officials had hoped poses a significant problem for the occupation. The cornerstone of the U.S. strategy in Iraq is to draw down its military presence and turn over security functions to Iraqis.

Over the past two weeks, that approach has suffered a severe setback as Iraqi security forces have crumbled in some parts of the country. In recent days perhaps 20 percent to 25 percent of the Iraqi army, civil defense, police and other security forces have quit, changed sides, or otherwise failed to perform their duties, a senior Army officer said Saturday.

I like the part about calling it a "command failure" instead of a mutiny. Still sounds pretty bad, any way you put it. So US-trained and -equipped Iraqi security forces are falling apart or changing sides. More evidence that the Coalition Provisional Authority is losing control of the country.

Pledged

2004-04-11T16:36:00.000-07:00

Reviewing the book Pledged, Margaret Sullivan recounts some of the amazing hardships in the lives of sorority sisters.

Alternate history

2004-04-11T03:57:00.000-07:00

What if Bush had ordered preemptive action in the summer of 2001 in response to warnings of an impending terrorist attack? TNR's Easterblogg has a fanciful alternate history of the Bush administration. While this scenario is more funny than it is realistic, it underscores the point that the administration probably couldn't have done much with the vague and disparate pieces of information it had. So far -- though everything could change if new evidence surfaces -- it just doesn't look like the administration could have plausibly prevented 9/11.

Trading tips

2004-04-11T03:19:00.000-07:00

The Big Picture has some interesting tips for investors.

What the memo says

2004-04-11T01:52:00.000-07:00

After all the hype the August 6th, 2001 presidential intelligence briefing was getting in the liberal blogosphere, its actual text, released last night, is a bit of a disappointment. The most interesting bit is near the end, on the bottom of the first page and top of the second page:

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [blacked out] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

(emphasis mine) I wonder what "federal buildings" were being surveyed? The World Trade Center doesn't qualify as a federal building, right? Still, that's pretty specific information: hijackings and surveillance of buildings in New York mentioned in the same sentence.

Did Bush even read the memo? It's quite possible he did not. Remember this exchange with Fox news anchor Brit Hume?

HUME: How do you get your news?

BUSH: I get briefed by Andy Card and Condi in the morning. They come in and tell me...

I glance at the headlines just to kind of a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves.

If Bush rarely bothers to read the news, why would he make an effort to read any of the gazillion memos he receives every day? Given that the memo says "for the president only," it's unlikely that any of his staff read the memo and appraised him of its contents. So it's quite possible that Bush never read the memo and was never made aware of what it said. Even if he did read it, the contents are sufficiently vague that it's not clear what he could have done about it (though I'll admit his August 7th departure for a month-long vacation at the Texas ranch was pretty bad timing).

New sidebar addition: latest political odds

2004-04-10T13:02:00.000-07:00

Tradesports is a great site, but let's face it, it's a pain to navigate if all you want to do is find out the latest odds. So I've added an odds summary to the Odd Hours sidebar. The numbers I'm including are

Bush's reelection chances;

his chances of winning individual swing states;

chances of various pols receiving the Democratic VP nomination;

and a few other miscellaneous odds (e.g. the chance Bin Laden will be captured by the end of the year).

I'll be updating these numbers at least once a week.

If you're not familiar with the way Tradesports works, they run a futures market where people can buy and sell contracts on future events. If I buy one share of Bush winning the election, in November that share will be worth either 10 dollars (if Bush wins) or it will be worthless (if Kerry wins). The basic principle of the market is that if I think Bush has a 50% chance of winning, I should be willing to pay 5 dollars (50% of 10 dollars) for that share. The most recent sale price for a share of Bush was $5.83, meaning someone (the buyer) thought Bush had a greater than 58.3% chance of winning and someone else (the seller) thought Bush had a less than 58.3% chance.

In theory, the most recent sale price at a futures market takes all available information into account to arrive at an accurate estimate of the probability an event will happen. Amazingly, this really seems to work in practice. Futures markets have a better track record than polls when it comes to predicting election outcomes.

Remember Gray Davis?

2004-04-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

He's going into acting. I'm not kidding, read the article! Maybe he figures once he's got a successful acting career he can beat Arnold in a recall.

The Iraqi Governing Council may be falling apart

2004-04-10T05:10:00.000-07:00

Juan Cole draws attention to the Iraqi Governing Council's recent condemnation of the actions of US troops in Fallujah. At least one member of the council has resigned in protest over the way US troops have handled the situation in Fallujah, and more members are threatening to resign. Many members are even rumored to have left the country, fearing they could be assassinated because of their connection with the Americans. Cole concludes, "This looks to me like an incipient collapse of the US government of Iraq." Indeed. The US can't very well hand over power to the council on June 30 if all its members have resigned or fled the country!

How to deal with the Sadrists: Force or compromise?

2004-04-10T00:49:00.000-07:00

NY Times columnist Yitzhak Nakash argues that the US should ask the Ayatollah Sistani to broker a compromise between the Coalition Provisional Authority and the leader of the Shiite insurgency, Muqtada al-Sadr. But this WaPo editorial points out that Sadr's rebellion is about more than just opposition to the US occupation; it's also a power struggle within the Iraqi Shiite community:

Mr. Sadr, who has a base in the slums of Baghdad, is a young cleric with a considerably smaller following and reputation than other Shiite leaders, like Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf. Precisely for that reason, Mr. Sadr has sought to gain support by adopting a hard line against the occupation and the United States.

If by attacking occupying troops Sadr is making a bid to try and supplant Sistani as the leading figure of Iraqi Shiites, it seems unlikely that Sistani will be able to broker a compromise. The WaPo concludes that US troops need to eliminate the Sadrist rebellion by force. OxBlog discusses the relative merits of the two approaches.

Have US forces lost control of Baghdad?

2004-04-09T20:17:00.000-07:00

Buried near the bottom of a NY Times article, this quote is a real shocker:

"We absolutely must regain control of Baghdad and open the lines of communication to the south, to Kuwait and down to the sea, or the position will become untenable," said Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general and the commander of the 24th Mechanized Division in the 1991 Persian Gulf war. "We have got to get back the road through Najaf and through Al Kut, and Rick Sanchez has the combat power to do it."

Juan Cole's interpretation:

He gave away a great deal. One may conclude that a) the US has lost control of Baghdad and b) the US communications and supply lines in the South have been cut. That is, a year after the fall of Saddam, the US faces the task of reconquering the country.

One has to wonder, if US troops have lost control of Baghdad, why isn't the media reporting it? According to Cole, General McCaffrey made those remarks in a CNN interview. In that case, why isn't this CNN's headline? "Retired general says US troops have lost control of Baghdad." CNN's front-page article makes it seem like the Iraqi capital is experiencing nothing worse than a tense atmosphere and a few isolated skirmishes:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Two U.S. soldiers and an unknown number of civilian contractors are unaccounted for after a fuel convoy was attacked Friday near Baghdad International Airport, a senior Pentagon official said.

Another 13th Corps Support Command soldier and an Iraqi driver were killed in the incident, and 12 people were wounded.

The contractors' nationality was not immediately known.

The official said "unaccounted for" means that U.S. troops are looking for the soldiers and contractors. The senior Pentagon official said a search is under way.

The four-truck convoy was hit with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades and exploded into flames, the official said.

[snip -- unrelated stuff about Fallujah]

Baghdad and al-Sadr

In Baghdad's Firdos Square, the scene was a stark contrast last year, when jubilant celebrations accompanied the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein. Friday, the square was empty, and Iraqis were told that anyone with a weapon would be shot on sight.

On the platform where Saddam's statue once stood, posters of al-Sadr -- whose supporters have been blamed for inflaming the insurgency -- were visible. U.S. soldiers pulled them down.

At a Baghdad mosque, hundreds of Shiites and Sunnis prayed together and denounced the coalition.

Either General McCaffrey is off his rocker, or the media is being extremely dishonest about what's going on in Iraq.

UPDATE: US troops have pulled out of Sadr City, a Shiite district of Baghdad (not a small district, either: population 2 million). After several days of fighting with insurgents, US forces have evacuated Sadr City police stations and the town hall. No word on what's happening in the rest of the capital.

Kerry should distance himself from Bush on spending

2004-04-09T04:37:00.000-07:00

Kerry seems to be playing the same game as Bush when it comes to his promises on spending and the deficit. Sure, he would repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and use that money on health care and education. But other than that? He promises to "cut the deficit by half within four years" (versus Bush's five years) and restrict increases in "discretionary spending" to the rate of inflation (Bush wants to cap discretionary spending increases at 4% per year). In other words, except for the issue of the tax cuts, they're both making essentially the same promises. And since health care and education spending will eat up the revenue gained from repealing the tax cuts, neither candidate really has an argument as to why he would be better able to deliver on these promises.

What I'd really like Kerry to say is that he'll reverse some of Bush's unreasonable increases in defense spending. This administration has increased defense spending by a shocking 26 percent over the past three years, and there's another 7-percent increase in the FY 2005 budget. These figures don't even include spending in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Much of what goes on at the Department of Defense is outdated. The Cold War has been over for fifteen years. We're not going to be fighting a major conventional war anytime soon. The period of conventional war in Afghanistan and Iraq lasted weeks at most, while guerrilla war and low-intensity conflict have stretched on for more than two years in Afghanistan and over one year in Iraq. To his credit, Rumsfeld is trying to modernize and reform the military. But that shouldn't just mean endless budget increases. Outdated programs need to be cut. I wish Kerry would stand up and say that defense spending is out of control -- it's something he used to believe in, at least -- but maybe that's just too much to ask of a candidate afraid of being painted as "weak on defense."

Sunni/Shiite unity in Iraq

2004-04-09T03:57:00.000-07:00

I find it pretty remarkable that both Sunnis and Shiites helped carry supplies to Sunni insurgents in Fallujah yesterday:

The rare display of unity came after Shiite radicals launched an uprising in cities across central and southern Iraq, shattering a year of relative tolerance of the US-led occupation from the country's majority community.

"No Sunnis, no Shiites, yes for Islamic unity," the marchers chanted. "We are Sunni and Shiite brothers and will never sell our country."

My impression was that US forces were fighting two essentially separate insurgencies, one against Baathists and foreign fighters in the Sunni triangle, and another, more recent insurgency in the South led by the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. But many of those who carried supplies past US roadblocks to the Sunni resistance in Fallujah actually held signs in support of Sadr. Over at Counterspin Central, commenter SXL makes an interesting point:

Sunni and Shi'ite tribes united in 1920, to throw the British out of Iraq and there have been many references to this unity from the loudspeakers of the mosques during this insurrection.

The cooperation between Sunni and Shiite insurgent groups is a bad sign for the future of the occupation. It seems we may have succeeded in uniting Iraq... against us!

Why the US military should be more like Saddam's

2004-04-09T02:12:00.000-07:00

This week's insurgency -- the deadliest spate of fighting in Iraq since the first weeks of the war -- was bound to unleash a flurry of prescriptions for what US forces are doing wrong in Iraq and what they should do differently. In one of the most perverse such prescriptions, James J. Na writes in the Seattle Times that the US military should try to be more like Saddam's. After all, Saddam was able to control the country; why can't we? According to Mr. Na, American troops are not respected in Iraq the way Saddam's troops were. He believes that "a healthy dose of fear" should fix the problem. I'm not kidding! Here's what Mr. Na has to say:

To be successful in Iraq, we do not need more troops. Instead, we need to instill a healthy dose of fear -- that is, respect -- for our power. This certainly does not mean murder and torture, but it does mean overwhelming military responses to insurgents even in the face of serious collateral damages, as well as collective communal punishments such as reduced electricity and water rations for harboring insurgents....

In order to achieve the clearly noble purpose of establishing a stable, democratic Iraq in a region full of totalitarian regimes, it will be more effective, and certainly more humane in the end, to exercise seemingly harsh methods in the short-term than to risk a long drawn-out guerrilla war.

I find it interesting that Mr. Na seems to think that his "harsh methods," including accepting "serious collateral damages," are the best way to prevent a guerrilla war. Let's look at the Department of Defense's definition of "guerrilla warfare:"

guerrilla warfare. Military and paramilitary operations conducted in enemy-held or hostile territory by irregular, predominantly indigenous forces. (Joint Pub 1-02).

(Italics mine) Moreover, it's generally accepted that a guerrilla war cannot succeed without substantial popular support. Indigenous forces and popular support are the two major factors lacking in Iraq right now. Although some of the insurgents are Iraqis, many are foreign fighters. It is also unclear to what extent the attacks are the work of extremists only, and to what extent average Iraqis support the insurgency. The quickest way to turn the situation in Iraq into a full-fledged guerrilla war, however, would be Mr. Na's proposed "harsh methods." Nothing would give the insurgency more Iraqi recruits and more popular support than "serious collateral damages" and "communal punishments."

It's not easy to fight a prolonged low-intensity conflict without alienating the population, but that's what we need to try to do. To fall for Mr. Na's "harsh methods" argument would be inviting disaster.

Kristof again

2004-04-04T03:48:00.000-07:00

Nicholas Kristof has another interesting column on Africa. This one is about attempts to ban or regulate child labor. While laws against child labor mean well, they don't always have the intended effect:

In 1993, when Congress proposed the U.S. Child Labor Deterrence Act, which would have blocked imports made by children (if it had passed), garment factories in Bangladesh fired 50,000 children. Many ended up in worse jobs, like prostitution.

Then there was the hue and cry beginning in 1996 against soccer balls stitched by children in their homes (mostly after school) in Sialkot, Pakistan. As a result, the balls are now stitched by adults, often in factories under international monitoring.... Bad publicity about Pakistan led China to grab market share with machine-stitched balls: over the next two years, Pakistan's share of the U.S. soccer ball market dropped to 45 percent from 65 percent.

So poor Pakistani families who depended on earnings from... children who stitched soccer balls are now further impoverished.

Instead of just condemning child labor, Kristof argues, we should fund programs that provide free meals in schools. This would provide an economic incentive for parents to send their kids to school. These programs have been tried before, with very encouraging results.

Matthew Yglasias tries to debunk Kristof's argument, and there's a lot of good discussion in the comments. Commenter Wrye makes an interesting point:

A lot of the child-labour advocates out there don't consider the possibility that having child labor out in the workforce undermines the value of adult labour in the workforce--part of why children in some developing countries may need to work to support their family is that their parents cannot make enough money to do so because the presence of child labour depresses the value of adult workers.

In other words, banning child labor would decrease the supply of available workers, resulting in increased pay for adult workers, and thus eliminating some of the financial hardship that forces children into the labor force in the first place.

Does Google's new "Gmail" violate users' privacy?

2004-04-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

I've always thought the whole "free browser-based email" thing could be done better. The existing providers aren't user-friendly, have annoying ads and offer too little storage space. Now Google is beta-testing a new email service, Gmail, which would offer users 1GB of free storage space, among other benefits. But here's the thing that really caught my eye:

Gmail will be supported by text ads that appear in the margins of individual e-mails. Google software will automatically scan the messages for meaning, then try to offer relevant ads.

In other words, every message you write or receive will be scanned for content so that Google can display ads you might be interested in. Isn't this a little disturbing on privacy grounds? I think Google may be taking a good idea too far. The text ads that appear on the right side of the Google search page are wonderful. Because they're targeted to the search words you entered, the ads can afford to be minimal and unobtrusive. There's no annoying animation, no sweepstakes or porn (unless you search for sweepstakes or porn!) Best of all, the ads are occasionally helpful.

The ads on Google's search page clearly do not violate privacy. When you search for something on the internet, you're basically telling Google, "I'm looking for information about X," so Google displays lots of information, including ads, about X. No problem. But when you write someone an email that's supposed to be private communication, that's a little different. Though I would trust Google to keep my messages from being read by other people, there's something disturbing about having them read at all, even by software. If your emails are already getting scanned for keywords for advertising purposes, it's only one small step to scan them for keywords the government may be interested in. Try to avoid words like "revolution" or "bomb" if you want to stay out of trouble. I'm not saying Google would do this, but even the possibility that they could is frightening. I'll stick with Yahoo mail for the time being. 1GB of space sure would be nice, though.

Genocide in Africa... again?

2004-03-30T02:52:00.000-08:00

Aspasia draws attention to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's recent apology for failing to do more to stop the genocide in Rwanda. In remarks at a UN conference commemorating the ten-year anniversary of the 1994 genocide, Annan said, "I realized after the genocide that there was more that I could and should have done to sound the alarm and rally support." But here's NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof:

Yet right now, the government of Sudan is engaging in genocide against three large African tribes in its Darfur region here. Some 1,000 people are being killed a week, tribeswomen are being systematically raped, 700,000 people have been driven from their homes, and Sudan's Army is even bombing the survivors.

It seems Mr. Annan has another chance. The situation in Sudan would certainly benefit from "sounding the alarm" and "rallying support." Personally, I had no idea what was going on in Sudan until about half an hour ago.

Mass. legislature votes to ban gay marriage

2004-03-30T02:15:00.000-08:00

The Massachusetts legislature voted 105-92 yesterday to approve an amendment to the state's constitution that would ban gay marriage, allowing for civil unions instead. The session was filled with legislative wrangling:

The 75 or so legislative supporters of a right to gay marriage, knowing they did not have enough votes for a majority, made use of a strategic gambit throughout the constitutional convention: many of them repeatedly voted for the amendment as it advanced through a series of preliminary votes, their goal being to keep more conservative amendments off the floor.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the whole marriage/civil unions distinction seems more like a matter of definition than an issue of substance. And there's a reasonable argument to be made that gay and lesbian unions should go by a name other than "marriage" -- a term which after all carries substantial religious as well as legal connotations. On the other hand, the Massachusetts Supreme Court has a good point when it says "the history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal." And Alan Hirsch points out that there's more to equality than simply having equal rights.

However things end up in Massachusetts, leaving the issue to the states just doesn't seem like a good solution. Gay couples are just as entitled to the federal benefits of marriage as they are to state benefits, and they shouldn't lose married status if they move to another state. The gay marriage issue ought to be settled in federal courts, just like civil rights.

Conditions on the ground in Iraq

2004-03-29T20:03:00.000-08:00

It's hard to know what things are really like in Iraq. Ambidextrous has a very different description from what you'll find at most of the major news outlets:

The violence is relentless. Explosions from bombs, rocket propelled grenades and artillery as well as guns firing can be heard all day and night.... There are systematic assassinations of policemen, translators, local officials, and anybody associated with the occupiers....

Mosques are attacked every night and clerics killed, leading to retaliations against the opposite sect. Mosques now have armies of young volunteers wielding Kalashnikovs guarding them....

Meanwhile over ten thousand Iraqi men are being held prisoner, and most of them are innocent.... Unlike the murderous accuracy of the Israeli security forces, who at least speak Arabic, the American security forces are a blunt instrument. They arrest hundreds at once, hoping somebody will know something.

The part about conflicts between mosques of different sects is especially frightening. It almost sounds like the start of a civil war.

Why doesn't Condi want to testify?

2004-03-29T19:46:00.000-08:00

Why won't National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice testify publicly before the 9/11 commission? Here are a few things she's said that she might be wary of repeating under oath.

Ugh

2004-03-29T05:14:00.000-08:00

I can't stand google's new look.

European elections

2004-03-28T23:12:00.000-08:00

The Left Coaster has a roundup of recent European elections.

It ain't the DNC headquarters, but...

2004-03-28T18:04:00.000-08:00

These scandals are looking more like Watergate every day. Historian Gerald Nicosia of Marin County, CA had his home broken into Thursday. The burglars left a camera and other expensive items untouched. What they took was three boxes of records the FBI kept on John Kerry from his antiwar protest days in the 70's. Yes, the FBI kept files on antiwar protesters back in the 70's (some things never change), and yes, they had a file on John Kerry. Nicosia had obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act request, and was using them in his research.

MemoryBlog wonders how the burglars--whoever they were--found out about the files, and comes up with an interesting answer.

Predicting presidential elections

2004-03-28T02:17:00.000-08:00

I had my eye on Yale economist Ray Fair's new book Predicting Presidential Elections and Other Things for my next Amazon splurge, until I stumbled on this post by Daniel Munz. Munz, a student enrolled in Fair's class at Yale, describes Fair's lecture on his apparently famous "Presidential Vote Equation." I had to see for myself what this equation was. Here we go. Are you ready?

The equation to predict the 2004 election is
VOTE = 55.57 + .691*GROWTH - .775*INFLATION + .837*GOODNEWS.

So you can see for yourself how simplistic this equation is, let me explain the terms involved:

VOTE is the proportion of the two-party popular vote going to Bush;

GROWTH is the growth rate in real per capita GDP for the first three quarters of 2004;

INFLATION is the average annual inflation rate during Bush's term;

GOODNEWS is the number of quarters during Bush's term where the real per capita growth in GDP exceeded 3.2%.

Okay. We start with a base term of 55.57% of the vote for Bush. The GOODNEWS term is always positive, adding even more votes for Bush. Go try it yourself. The site lets you plug in whatever numbers you want for growth, inflation, etc. The only way Bush can ever fall below 50% in this model is if inflation reaches double-digit levels or there's a huge (10%) drop in GDP.

Advance knowledge of 9/11?

2004-03-27T23:18:00.000-08:00

Sibel Edmonds, a former translator for the FBI, says detailed information was available in the summer of 2001 regarding a planned Al Qaeda attack in the US involving airplanes. "We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001," Edmonds said. "There was that much information available." According to Tom Flocco, who attended Wednesday's 9/11 commission hearings where Edmonds testified:

Edmonds said "The Senate Judiciary Committee and the 911 Commission have heard me testify for lengthy periods of time (3 hours) about very specific plots, dates, airplanes used as weapons, and specific individuals and activities."

It's hard to know what to make of this, since Edmonds won't go into specifics. Why not? This is the most interesting part:

Edmonds cannot talk in detail about the tapes publicly because she's been under a Justice Department gag order since 2002.

Why the gag order? In 2002, Edmonds went public with accusations of inefficiency and corruption in the FBI's translation department. She claimed her superiors ordered her to translate at a slower pace so the department would receive more funding in the following year's budget, and she accused a colleague of intentionally mistranslating key documents. Even worse, according to Flocco:

FBI translator Sibel Edmonds was offered a substantial raise and a full time job to encourage her not to go public that she had been asked by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to retranslate and adjust the translations of [terrorist] subject intercepts that had been received before September 11, 2001 by the FBI and CIA.

In March of 2002, Edmonds was fired from the FBI. When she contested her firing in a lawsuit, Ashcroft had the suit dismissed:

In October 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss the Edmonds case, taking the extraordinary step of invoking the rarely used state secrets privilege in order "to protect the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States."

Edmonds' motives are potentially suspect, given her prior history of conflict with the FBI. On the other hand, the gag order issued as a result of this conflict makes it hard to judge her allegations on their merits.

I'm generally skeptical of the theory that the administration had advance knowledge of 9/11. I don't even think the administration is necessarily to blame for intelligence failures leading up to 9/11. Intelligence is a tough business. Intelligence agencies are overwhelmed with leads and clues, most of which are total garbage. It's hard to separate the accurate information from the junk. With an operation as big as 9/11 there were bound to be clues, but sorting them out and getting them communicated to the right people was too hard of a task. It's worth keeping in mind that we don't hear about intelligence successes, only failures. Who knows how many attacks were prevented before this one got through.

With all that said, Edmonds' testimony is just one more piece of evidence that the administration has something to hide. Why slap a gag order on Sibel Edmonds if all she was doing was exposing inefficiency in the FBI's translation unit? Why all the fuss about the 9/11 commission's request to extend its deadline? And for that matter, why are administration officials so wary of testifying before the commission? Condoleezza Rice has refused to testify, and Bush and Cheney have each limited their testimony to one hour. Even that one hour of testimony is only in front of the chairman and vice chairman, rather than the whole commission. And why refuse to grant the commission access to the President's daily intelligence briefs?

If the administration simply missed a few clues about 9/11, that's nothing to be ashamed of, and they should come out and say that's what happened. Their secrecy leaves the impression of something much worse than a simple intelligence failure.

UPDATE: MemoryBlog has more.

Secrecy only when it suits them

2004-03-27T22:11:00.000-08:00

Demagogue has a good post on how the administration's selective use of secrecy--opening Richard Clarke's classified testimony to a groundless fishing expedition, while refusing to release information as trivial as the names of participants in Cheney's energy task force--could backfire.

Stock market performance in presidential election years

2004-03-27T19:02:00.000-08:00

The Big Picture has a graph comparing stock market performance in years when the incumbent president's party won the election to years when it lost:

There are two major effects. First, the market did better in years when the incumbent's party won the election. Second, in years when the incumbent's party lost, although the market did worse overall, it spiked in November and December. These findings confirm the conventional wisdom that incumbents tend to be reelected if the economy is strong. If an incumbent is ousted due to a weak economy, the market rebounds at the prospect of a new administration.