The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

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Can the World Series Predict the Winner?

(also after the jump: comparing margins of victory from ‘92, ‘88, & ‘96)

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Today’s Episode: Biden warns of a coming international crisis for the next president…Julia Louis-Dreyfuss goes “in the tank” for Biden…whether Biden is a “Mr. August,” “Mr. October” or a “Mr. January…

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How Reagan “Closed the Deal”

Comparisons have been made with this year’s race to 1980, & they’re apt in the sense thatlike Reagan, voters didn’t appear to feel “safer” with Obama until after the debate. Will it have the same outcome? That remains to be seen, of course.

After the jump some commercials Reagan aired that year:

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Hollywood & “Black Presidents”

Above: Sammy Davis, Jr. (yes, that Sammy Davis, Jr.) in Hollywood’s 1st look at what a black presidency would look like, from 1933.

Below: James Earl Jones, starring as an African-American thrust into the nation’s highest office, in a 1972 made-for-TV movie called “the Man:”

The era of Reagan is over.

No, it’s not.

Yes, it is.

No, it’s not.

What do you think?

Bring Back Machiavelli

Mikhail Emelianov writes a defense of the flip-flop:

“…if a politician changes his mind on the issue, then he is “for it before he was against it” and it’s a horrible thing. TV commercials are reciting a specific point of view over and over again, candidates give the same speech over and over again, proposals are made - repetition is the key.  One creates the illusion of certainty by constantly sticking to the point, even if it leads to some disastrous results. Whatever happened to the true political values of flexibility, politicking, negotiation, manipulation, and compromise? There is no need to bring up Machiavelli, but certainly politicians have always prided themselves on shrewdness, not naivete and dogmatism.  Certainly, there’s plenty of good old backstabbing and manipulative lying both in the public sphere and behind the closed political doors, but why aren’t those things popular with the people? Did American populism kill the true political activity? Is American politics basically a beauty pageant at this point?  Where is the strife?”

Amen. What do you think?

Which party would’ve made you more money?

Interesting experiment from Tommy McCall, who’s the former information graphics editor of Money Magazine.

He asks:

“…which party has been better for American pocketbooks and capitalism as a whole? Well, here’s an experiment: imagine that during these years you had to invest exclusively under either Democratic or Republican administrations. How would you have fared?”

Click here for the answer. It may surprise you.

Picture if you will…

What if Obama’s father hadn’t ever left Kenya to meet his mother?

Above: here are your two tickets.

As of October 13th, after more than six months of wearying negative campaigning on both sides, Clinton has a slight lead in the polls thanks to the financial crisis.

Polls remain very tight.

3rd party candidates are much more in play (Paul/Bloomberg?). Ceiling of 3rd party vote nationwide is about 4%.

Mike Huckabee is the race’s “Sarah Palin.”

Final electoral tally reaches a margin of victory smaller than 2004’s.

What if Obama lost the primaries?

Above: Here are your two tickets.

As of October 13th, the McCain campaign is in nearly exact same position as now in the polls, possibly worse.

Polls tend to be closer to what they are in reality.

Obama is the race’s ‘Sarah Palin.’

Final electoral tally reaches a margin of victory greater than 2004’s.

What do you think?

TRIGONOMETRY

Click here for an earlier Vote08 post that features a YouTube tribute to Trig Palin, Sarah & Todd’s newest family member. Palin has drawn widespread praise from her supporters for giving birth to a child who has special challenges (Down Syndrome).

The clip got me to wondering:

How many votes for the McCain-Palin ticket will Trig Palin be solely responsible for?

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2008 vs 1932

E.J. Dionne:

“In recent days, Obama has painted himself as calm, pragmatic, open and hopeful. He seemed to be channeling FDR when he told a crowd in Indianapolis on Wednesday: “This isn’t a time for fear or for panic. This is a time for resolve and steady leadership.”

As for McCain, his campaign is trying to sow fear and panic about Obama. That’s exactly what Herbert Hoover tried to do with Roosevelt. Days before the 1932 election, Hoover attacked Roosevelt’s “inchoate New Deal.” He predicted it would “crack the timbers of the Constitution” and warned voters to beware of the “glitter of promise.”

Hoover stopped short of declaring Roosevelt a celebrity. But Donald A. Ritchie reports in his excellent 2007 book, “Electing FDR,” that Hoover saw Roosevelt as “his weakest and most vulnerable” foe and “did not respect him as a political rival.” McCain conveys unmistakably that he feels the same way about “that one” running against him.

It’s too early to predict that the 2008 campaign will turn out like the one in 1932. But history suggests that in American elections, the candidate who underestimates his opponent often loses, and hope almost always beats fear.”

Above: John McCain on the Memorial Day weekend of 1996 talking about the (failed) candidacy of Bob Dole on the Charlie Rose show. The clip is almost 1 hour long. The McCain interview portion of the clip starts at about 2 minutes in.

Above: comparing the polls TODAY, 2008 vs the same day in 2004 & the same day in 2000.

Click here for more.

The Grandaddy of ‘em All

Above: watch how it worked for the first year this ‘town-hall’ debate format was tried, in 1992.

BETTY BOOP FOR PRESIDENT

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Any resemblence between this cartoon clip & any current candidates is purely coincidental.

Back When States Were Orange & Brown, Not Red & Blue

Click on this fun site to see the nation’s presidential electoral maps going all the way back to 1792.. & get ready to say goodbye to your afternoon..comparing 1996 & 2008.

THERE YOU GO “THERE YOU GO AGAIN” AGAIN

2008

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BIDEN: Can I respond? Look, all you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie’s Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me where I spend a lot of time and you ask anybody in there whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration has made them better off in the last eight years. And then ask them whether there’s a single major initiative that John McCain differs with the president on. On taxes, on Iraq, on Afghanistan, on the whole question of how to help education, on the dealing with health care.

Look, the people in my neighborhood, they get it. They get it. They know they’ve been getting the short end of the stick. So walk with me in my neighborhood, go back to my old neighborhood in Claymont, an old steel town or go up to Scranton with me. These people know the middle class has gotten the short end. The wealthy have done very well. Corporate America has been rewarded. It’s time we change it. Barack Obama will change it.

IFILL: Governor?

PALIN: Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he’s a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here’s a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.

Education credit in American has been in some sense in some of our states just accepted to be a little bit lax and we have got to increase the standards. No Child Left Behind was implemented. It’s not doing the job though. We need flexibility in No Child Left Behind. We need to put more of an emphasis on the profession of teaching. We need to make sure that education in either one of our agendas, I think, absolute top of the line. My kids as public school participants right now, it’s near and dear to my heart. I’m very, very concerned about where we’re going with education and we have got to ramp it up and put more attention in that arena.

1980

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Mr. CARTER: …. These are the kinds of elements of a national health insurance, important to the American people. Governor Reagan, again, typically is against such a proposal.

Howard K.SMITH: Governor?

MR. REAGAN: There you go again. When I opposed Medicare, there was another piece of legislation meeting the same problem before the Congress. I happened to favor the other piece of legislation and thought that it would be better for the senior citizens and provide better care than the one that was finally passed.

[above: FDR campaigning in 1932]

What if John McCain had run for president in 1932?

“Unlike his opponent, McCain does not want to see a large-scale government intervention to be necessary. “The wonders of the free market brought us such prosperity in the last decade, and as long as we don’t meddle with business, business will come back better than ever.” Reacting to this speech, a source close to Roosevelt has said that, “The way he talks about the economy we don’t even need to say anything! Just do your job and keep writing down what he says and keep printing it in the papers.”" - from I Used to Be Disgusted, Now I Try to Be Amused

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..for those of you who may have trouble recognizing it these days..

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Above: a Vote08 viewer sent me this clip that compares the prior experience of our nation’s Vice Presidents to that of Sarah Palin.

It’s quite informative, & I hope you view it, regardless of how you feel about Palin.

I will disclose that “Lessig,” the 47 year old law professor who narrates the piece, draws the conclusion that Palin does not have the required experience for the job, though he does point out many of Palin’s strengths & appeal throughout the clip.

My fear, though, is that you will not watch this clip based on what I said above about the conclusions the narrator reaches.

I hope that you remember my constant admonition to expand your media diet.

I hope that you are willing to consider points of view that are alternative to your own.

This blog’s mission is to get you to think more about your choice - not pull the lever as a knee-jerk reaction. [The parts of the clip above in which he derides the "binary system" of politics - either you're completely one way or completely the other way - are spot on as far as I'm concerned.]

OTHER PALIN NEWS:

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More questions answered thanks to the reporting of Dan Balz.

Which of the four debates is most important and why?

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Again, we’re repeating/relaying the wisdom of the Washington Post’s Dan Balz, who answers “8 Questions about the Debates.”

POST-JUMP ADDED VALUE: We expand on his historical take with relevant clips that show what he’s talking about.

Can debates decide an election?

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Above: Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis demonstrates the exact wrong answer to “would you support the death penalty if your wife were raped & murdered?”

Without getting into the pros & cons of the death penalty, I post this clip to show that Dukakis’ key failure here was demonstrating any kind of human reaction whatsoever to the scenario proposed.

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Above: Gerald Ford asserts that there “is no Soviet domination of eastern Europe” during a debate with Jimmy Carter. He even asserted the same after the questioner called him on it.

But it’s important to note that despite the opening of a lifetime, Carter did not call Ford out on his mistake.

D’ya think that’d happen today?

So did this gaffe have any fallout in the presidential race?

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An ad from the 1968 presidential campaign of Hubert Humphrey (D).

As you can see, Sarah Palin have more in common than the fact that they together are the veep candidates with the thinnest resumes of the last 75 years; their competence was also thrown into question by the opposition.

By the way, in case you didn’t know, Agnew resigned in 1973.

Earlier on Vote08: Comparing Sarah Palin & Dan Quayle

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TODAY’S PALIN NEWS

NEW YORK (AP) - Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is banning reporters from her first meetings with world leaders, allowing access only to photographers and a television crew.
Palin plans to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in New York on Tuesday.
The TV producer, print and wire reporters in the press pool that follows the Alaska governor were told at the start of the day they would not be admitted with the photographers and camera crew when they are taken in to photograph the meetings.
At least two news organizations, including The Associated Press, objected and were told that the decision had already been made and was not subject to discussion.
…

Hillary Clinton, interviewed on CBS’s “The Early Show,” was asked what she thought about Republican Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy. She said she thought any woman is going to face certain issues and questions but that “the bottom line is who is on top of the ticket.”

…

WASHINGTON (AP) - The hunt for the hacker who broke into Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail account is shaping up to be a remarkably simple investigation, by the standards of major cybersecurity whodunits.
U.S. investigators figure the hacker claimed responsibility in a detailed accounting that included his own personal e-mail address and that he tried to cover his trail using a U.S. Internet anonymity service that has been surprisingly cooperative with the FBI in efforts to peel away that anonymity.
In what may be a significant break in the case, the FBI searched the residence of the son of a Democratic state lawmaker in Tennessee over the weekend looking for evidence linking the young man to the break-in, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.
David Kernell has not returned repeated phone calls or e-mails from the AP since last week. His father, Mike Kernell, is a state representative from Memphis.
David Kernell is 20 and is an economics major at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

UPDATE: Kernell’s lawyer has released a statement on the case.

UPDATE#2: CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) - A federal grand jury in Chattanooga ended its Tuesday meeting without indicting a Tennessee lawmaker’s son in an investigation of someone hacking Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail.
Investigators last week searched 20-year-old David Kernell’s apartment in Knoxville, where he is a student at the University of Tennessee, but no charges have been filed. Kernell’s father is Democratic state Rep. Michael Kernell.
Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney declined comment about the grand jury but said the “government’s inquiry into this matter is ongoing.”
A Maryville attorney and three young adults who arrived early Tuesday to go behind closed doors with the grand jury in Chattanooga refused to give their names and afterward were secretly escorted out a back door at the courthouse.
Kernell and his father have not returned repeated phone calls from the AP since last week.

FURTHER READING: Read an account of Palin’s record as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

Starting a new feature today that I hope will illuminate you on how the greatest document any civilization has ever produced, the U.S. Constitution, has an impact on the presidential race.

I’m going to go through them randomly.. today we start with Amendment XII.

The 12th Amendment created the electoral college. Read the text here.

This lays out the framework for how we’ll keep score on election night.

One site that is primarily focused solely on this aspect of the race is FiveThirtyEight.com.

538 is the total number of electoral votes available.

A candidate needs to win 270 electoral votes to win the election.

Here’s FiveThirtyEight.com blogger Nate Silver’s current projection of the race, based on polling in each state:

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Thanks & credit go to NewsChannel 9’s Marcia Kling, who told me about this story.

Presidential historian Doris Kearnes Goodwin writes in Parade Magazine about the secrets to a great president. This is worth your time & careful consideration when applying these guidelines to Barack Obama, John McCain, & perhaps most importantly, President George W. Bush.

After the jump, I’ve expanded on the piece with images & relevant links for further reading.

If you plan to vote for president this year, please read this article.

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Jonathan Chait of the New Republic nails one of the nagging issues I have with Palin as a legitimate candidate:

“The main complaint against Palin has been her lack of experience. That’s fortunate for her, since “experience”–especially measured in a linear way–fails to capture exactly what Palin lacks. Yes, two years as governor is less than you’d like, as is four years as senator. The real problem, though, is that Palin has no record of thinking about national or international policy.

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Planting 2008 parallels from past campaigns is a tricky business. Applying past Democratic scenarios to the current GOP is too tempting to ignore, though.

Ross Douthat of the Atlantic has a great piece that asks of today’s GOP: are you the Democrats of 2004 or the Democrats of 1980?

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Above: a political ad from Sarah Palin’s 1st major campaign. She was running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska here.

Interesting to note: check out the full name she uses at the end of the spot.

As Marcia Kling correctly points out to me, this was likely because of the high recognition her maiden name - Heath - would get.

Harry Truman on assuming the presidency after the death of FDR, April, 1945:

“I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

Sarah Palin, in her interview with Charles GIbson last week:

GIBSON: Governor, let me start by asking you a question that I asked John McCain about you, and it is really the central question. Can you look the country in the eye and say “I have the experience and I have the ability to be not just vice president, but perhaps president of the United States of America?”

PALIN: I do, Charlie, and on January 20, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, will be ready. I’m ready.

GIBSON: And you didn’t say to yourself, “Am I experienced enough? Am I ready? Do I know enough about international affairs? Do I — will I feel comfortable enough on the national stage to do this?”

PALIN: I didn’t hesitate, no.

GIBSON: Didn’t that take some hubris?

PALIN: I — I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink.

So I didn’t blink then even when asked to run as his running mate.”

I guess.. some GOP focus group testing demonstrated it was not in Palin’s best interest to act a little.. humble at this moment. Not sure why else she wouldn’t have made an attempt to soften her image with a little self-effacement so expertly conveyed by Mr. Truman above.

What if she said this: “You know, Charlie, I gotta be honest. I was pretty floored to be asked the question. It is a huge responsibility. It’s also a great honor that I hope I can live up to if the American people decide to send me to Washington.” Would that’ve killed her? If she said that, would you think less of her?

What do you think? Post a comment! All opinions are welcome.

FURTHER READING: The world’s biggest bestseller on the importance of humility.

#1. Sarah Palin’s Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

#2. Abraham Lincoln’s:

“Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right”

#3. Bob Dylan’s: Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

What do you think?

EARLIER: The Candidates’ Views on Faith

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No, this doesn’t have to do with Hurricane Ike - I hope you follow my lead & keep checking the Storm Track 9 blog for the latest on that storm’s progress.

Fitting, though, that a storm has the name of our 34th president during an election year.

& his granddaughter Susan caused a storm of controversy last month; she announced she’s leaving her grandfather’s party. Read her reasons why after the jump.

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From Answers.com:

It was all the fault, or the bright idea, of Samuel Augustus Maverick, who lived from 1803 to 1870. Descended from an old and notable New England family, he sought his fortune in Texas and there inadvertently made a name for himself. He took up cattle ranching, which was quite a different proposition from raising livestock back East. In Texas cattle grazed on the open range, without fences to keep one herd separate from another, and thus there was much opportunity for theft and disputes over ownership. To identify their cattle, ranchers branded them, rounding up the calves each year for this purpose.

[photograph of somewhere-in-Missouri cows by my father, 1976]

But Maverick put no brand on his cattle. Stories about “old man Maverick” give various reasons for his abstinence: he was lazy; he objected to the cruelty of branding. Whatever the reason, if he had been an ordinary citizen, this practice would have put him at the mercy of other ranchers, who would have appropriated his cattle and marked them with their own brands. But Maverick was influential: mayor of San Antonio, member of the Texas legislature, and holder of 385,000 acres, he was able instead to claim that any unbranded calf was his. And so, either in earnest or in jest, the name maverick was applied to all cattle without brands. In 1867 a writer complained, “The term maverick which was formerly applied to unbranded yearlings is now applied to every calf which can be separated from the mother cow–the consequence is, the fastest brander are accumulating the largest stocks.”

It was too good a word to leave to the cattle. What better word to use for a politician who was “unbranded” by a party label, not “owned” by special interests? In 1886 a San Francisco publication called the California Maverick defined it: “He holds maverick views” means “his views were untainted by partisanship.” A Massachusetts politician declared in 1905, “I am running as a maverick; I have no man’s brand upon me.” Maverick accords with our American inclination to admire someone who goes his or her own way. A loner (1947) may be loony, but a maverick is an independent thinker.

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Are you experienced?

Is she experienced? Is he experienced?

The question is a moot one.

Why?

After the jump, a quick trip down this nation’s memory lane.

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