HorsesAss.Org

This dispatch is from a friend who is in Iowa. Like me, this person supports Sen. John Edwards, but the behind-the-scenes view benefits anyone who’s interested in the race for ’08. (Emphasis mine throughout.)

I am here in Iowa and the new Des Moines Register poll came out:

Obama 28
Hilllary 25
Edwards 23

But –VERY fluid — over half said they are still willing to change their mind

The fav/unfav shows trouble for Clinton — but good news for Edwards:

Clinton — 68 fav, 30 unfav

Obama — 84 fav, 14 unfav

Edwards – 86 fav, 13 unfav

The papers have been covering another angle here — Obama’s strongest support comes from younger, college age supporters. Because of the earlier date of the caucus, the colleges are still closed for the holiday and the dorms are closed. Obama sent a flier to 50k college age kids — urging them to register here (even if from somewhere else) and find somewhere to stay. So a big question — will the Obama supporters show up, or will they be absent like the Dean supporters ? In 2004 only 17% were under 29.

In fact, last night at the forum, some were saying this Des Moines Register poll could not reflect an up tick for Obama — but an over sample of youth. Their last poll (October) had only 9% in under 35 age group, while this one has 14%

But Obama is cutting in to the Clinton women vote — and Oprah comes to town this week.

So in Iowa — it is still anyone’s race, but Obama has some momentum, Hillary is falling and Edwards is holding steady.

This tracks with what I’ve heard elsewhere. Edwards, discounted by many to second tier status with the likes of Gov. Bill Richardson, is often polled in 3rd place. But it’s a strong 3rd place!

Edwards highlights: he is holding steady though being outspent HUGELY on the airwaves. Clinton and Obama are up and up big. It is odd seeing so many political commercials in December. Edwards also has a lead in previous caucus goers — so turn out is key. January 3rd, kids home and not on the campus, Orange bowl, — all a recipe for party faithful — and that is Edward’s strong suit. Also, almost half of caucus goers traditionally have been in rural areas, and there Obama is running solid third

Saw Edwards a 3 events yesterday: Every child matters forum, Heartland forum , and Black/Brown forum — then later a t dinner. He is connecting to folks. WE will see if it is enough. If I had to predict — I would say Hillary finishes third unless she stops the bleeding.

But — Bill has been in town and was at the forum — so it is anybody’s game.

Edwards has an ace in the hole- or several aces- that give him a change to win Iowa, or at least beat expectations. His supporters are reliable caucus-goers. He’s also loved by party faithful. (At my last 36th District Democrats meeting, Edwards got lots of love from the Ballard liberals and former Deaniacs.)

Also, Edwards has the same advantage he did in 2004 in Iowa. The caucus system rewards candidates who are a good “second choice.” If Obama isn’t viable in a precinct, I don’t think they’ll flock to Clinton, who’s bashing the shit out of Obama right now all over the local media. Clinton supporters will be in a similar situation. I wonder where Richardson’s supporters will go if their candidate isn’t viable. In ’04, Kucinich pissed off loads of Dean supporters when he threw his supporters behind Edwards. Could such a thing happen again, but to a different candidate this time? John Edwards could pick up a lot of votes as the result of being the “second choice.”

“Fluidity” is the word of the day in Iowa. Last time, in ’04, four candidates were within a few points, but on caucus day the participants chose Kerry and Edwards and ditched Dean and Gephardt. Caucus-goers can flips the CW on it’s ear at anytime.

Maybe there’s a reason Thomas’ colleagues voted her to the front row:

What with eight men now coming out claiming they’ve had sex with Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, despite his public protestations that he is not gay, I thought it a prudent time to come clean with my audience and clarify my own role in the Craig affair: I am not gay, and I have never had sex with Sen. Craig. Never.

But since so many men apparently have had sex with the senator, I figure the only reasonable way to get to the truth is by process of elimination, so I urge all my male readers to follow my lead and definitively state in the comment thread whether you have or have not had sex with Larry Craig. As for those of you who choose not to participate in this thread, well… you’re silence will speak volumes.

UPDATE:
I cross-posted to Daily Kos, and included a short poll at the end. Apparently, 24-percent of Kos readers have indeed had sex with Larry Craig. Who knew?

Good morning, HAers! We hope you had a great weekend fighting the crowds in the malls. Funny thing…people tell me it snowed here. I ran some errands Saturday, came home feeling a little flu coming on and took a nap. Next thing I know it’s Sunday morning and wet and rainy outside. Snow you say? Yeah, right…

I am aware, however, that it is the last month of 2007, entering the thick of the holiday season, which means a lot of snow news days, make that slow news days, are on the way. Not that no news is actually happening. It’s just that the real news, the bare hungry sniffin’ truth, is not likely to be covered during this or any holiday season. There are two reasons for this: First, the real truth is kinda depressing and might serve up a real downer during a season to be jolly. Second, reporting real news would usurp space reserved for contest entries. The Seattle Times is particularly aggressive with prize-based, multi-part series this time of year. After all, the many prizes the industry awards to itself (no one else volunteering for the privilege) translate into respect, leadership and the current booming circulation rates that newspapers enjoy.

So yesterday’s and today’s Times are dominated by a series on old people being victimized by mortgage lenders (the headline says “Seniors prime targets…” shouldn’t that be subprime?), focusing on the trials of 96-year-old Frances Taylor, who lost $2 million in a sort of Ponzi scheme of refinancing during the housing boom. Anyone who owns a house, of course, is aware of the lending vultures eager to separate the gullible or defenseless from their life investments, and one wouldn’t wish Taylor’s experience on even the greediest of homeowners. But cynics like me (who was told repeatedly from 1999 on to refinance my home because equity is “dead money”) scoured the news media rabidly during the boom years for even a hint, a shred, a scintilla of skepticism arguing against leveraging equity. Perhaps The Times and other news media would have better served Frances Taylor and the rest of their reading public with a series on the dangers of the lending market in time to save people their homes. Granted, such unpleasantness might have discomfited the real-estate advertising community and probably not won any awards. But it would have saved a lot of readers a lot of grief.

So hark, the herald angels sing: It’s not too late to report today’s news today! Here’s an idea: How about a three-part series, or let’s not be greedy, just one good, hard-hitting story on the overbuilding crisis (all those condos and townhouses still being built while the ones already in place aren’t selling). Or here’s one: Somewhere there must be someone who is dying or already dead because they could not afford medical insurance. Or their insurance company did not cover what they should have. Or because their insurance company did not pay, they lost their house to predatory lenders. And how about Seattle’s war on the homeless, led by our curiously unreproachable mayor — a story rife with political and societal overtones. Oh drat, it’s the holidays. Let’s do a roundup instead of where the homeless can get turkey dinners. Or how about the huge giveaways to Paul Allen’s Vulcan, millions for a useless streetcar serving the rich while affordable housing goes wanting. Oh wait, the Beacon Hill News and The Stranger have that covered. So instead we have the P-I airing the kvetches of the privileged and wealthy, who are squabbling over downtown condos blocking each other’s views. “What Do You Think?” the P-I Web site asks. Um, er, can’t those guys afford lawyers?

Perhaps in this season of glad tidings we should adapt the cheerful admonition of suspected war criminal Donald Rumsfeld: You read the morning headlines you have, not the ones you might want or wish for. So for now anyway we’re stuck with 8 guys saying they had sexual associations with Larry Craig. That’s 7 more than got Clinton impeached, and Craig is still walking tall, with a spring in his wide stance. If only Monica Lewinsky had been male. We wait breathlessly for Matt Lauer’s call-back to Craig (with special guests!).

Or here’s something: Obama leading Clinton in Iowa? If I could do it, I would make that little Chris Berman “Wha….????” squeak. And what about Kucinich teaming up with Ron Paul? Hey, they could have their own debate, networks be damned. Ah but that would be the news we wish for, not the news we have.

The Bushies have called Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez a dictator and a tyrant… but since when do dictators lose elections?

CARACAS, Venezuela, Monday, Dec. 3 — Voters in this country narrowly defeated a proposed overhaul to the constitution in a contentious referendum over granting President Hugo Chávez sweeping new powers, the Election Commission announced early Monday.

[…] The outcome is a stunning development in a country where Mr. Chávez and his supporters control nearly all of the levers of power. Almost immediately after the results were broadcast on state television, Mr. Chávez conceded defeat, describing the results as a “photo finish.”

“I congratulate my adversaries for this victory,” he said. “For now, we could not do it.”

Our close ally in the “war on terror,” Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, he’s a dictator. Our good friend King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, now he’s a tyrant. But Chávez congratulating his adversaries for winning an election? That’s not a dictatorship… that’s a functioning democracy.

Now if only Bush had accepted the will of the people as graciously as Chávez….

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: Radio Kos with McJoan
Joan “McJoan” McCarter joins us for our weekly chat with the folks at Daily Kos. Topics of discussion will include the GOP YouTube debate, a status report on the presidential race, and a look ahead to the issues that will drive the 2008 election.

8PM: Do all kids deserve a shot at a college education?
Polly Trout and Anttimo Bennett join us from Seattle Education Access to talk about their innovative programs to give all kids a shot at college education.

9PM: Is it time for government to get out of the marriage business?
That’s what Evergreen State College history professor Stefanie Coontz argues in a guest column in the Seattle PI. She is the author of Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

It snowed yesterday in Seattle, apparently for the first time ever! A dusting of frozen water fell from the sky in the form of fluffy, white flakes, making the roads slippery! Who the hell can drive in that?!

And in breaking news, today it is going to rain! A lot. Expect flooding. Again, something apparently that has never, ever happened here before.

Will wonders never cease?

“Or you can drive your car!”

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: Special Session or Special Olympics?
Our Democratic leadership sure is “special” aren’t they, if they think a revenue cap below the rate of inflation is either good politics or good policy? The Stranger’s Josh Feit was down in Olympia for Thursday’s debacle and he joins us in studio for his first hand take and a discussion of the inevitable fallout.

8PM: Does WalMart have an obligation to treat its workers fairly?
A class action suit was filed this week, alleging as many as 75,000 were illegally denied overtime pay and work breaks. Tough shit for the workers? Or does WalMart have an obligation to treat them fairly?

9PM: Are we squandering America?
Robert Kuttner is the co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, and the author of a new book, “The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity,” and he joins us in studio for the hour. With wages stagnating and the gap between the very rich and everybody else growing ever wider, Kuttner argues for a return to the “managed capitalism” that guided the great economic expansion from 1948 to 1973, an era during which the U.S. economy, wages, and incomes flourished, and a rising tide really did lift all boats. Kuttner appears tomorrow night, 7:30 PM at Seattle’s Town Hall, for a book reading and signing.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

It is just another Republican attempt to gain power through tricks and exploitation, rather than through leadership. We all remember previous Republican coup attempts: the Clinton impeachment, Katherine Harris’ illegal disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of legitimate Florida voters, the Republican shutdown of recounts in Florida, the illegal mid-term Texas redistricting, the California gubernatorial recall, and even the Republican’s attempt to steal the Washington governors office by suing over made-up charges of election fraud.

This time, the Republicans are gaming the electoral votes in California. Johann Hari’s guest column in the Seattle P-I explains:

…the Republicans are trying to exploit the discontent with the Electoral College among Americans in a way that would rig the system in their favor. At the moment, every state apart from Maine and Nebraska hands out its Electoral College votes according to a winner-takes-all system. This means that if 51 percent of people in California vote Democrat, the Democrats get 100 percent of California’s electoral votes; if 51 percent of people in Texas vote Republican, the Republicans get 100 percent of Texas’ electoral votes.

The Republicans want to change this — but in only one Democrat-leaning state. California has gone Democratic in presidential elections since 1988, and winning the sunny state is essential if the Democrats are going to retake the White House. So the Republicans have now begun a plan to break up California’s Electoral College votes and award a huge chunk of them to their side.

They have launched a campaign called California Counts, and they are trying to secure a statewide referendum in June to implement their plan. They want California’s electoral votes to be divvied up not on a big statewide basis, but according to the much smaller congressional districts. The practical result? Instead of all the state’s 54 Electoral College votes going to the Democratic candidate, around 20 would go to the Republicans.

The effect would be to hand the Republicans an extra state the size of Ohio or Pennsylvania–but without so much as a single extra popular vote going to the Republican candidate. They would simply be gaming the system for a short-term advantage to win acquire the White House in 2008.

At Hominid Views, I’ve been conducting a series of simulation studies for the 2008 election. I’ve used state-wide head-to-head polls pitting, say, Clinton against Giuliani (as well as other match-ups) to repeatedly simulate 2008 elections. The results provide a distribution of electoral college votes that can be used to estimate the probability that each candidate would win if the election were held today.

For example, after 10,000 simulated elections using, whenever possible, polls from the last month, the distribution of Electoral College votes looks like this:

Clinton won the electoral vote 9,530 times, and Giuliani won only 417. (There were 53 ties that would almost certainly be a win for Clinton). In other words Clinton wins about 95.8% of the simulated elections and Giuliani wins 4.2%.

Here is the same simulation, but this time using the “California Counts” rules to divvy up the California electoral votes:

Now after 10,000 simulated elections, Clinton wins only 7,233 (plus 181 ties) and Giuliani wins 2,586. With no change whatsoever in the popular vote, Clinton’s chance of victory decreases to 74.1% and Giuliani is up to a probability of 25.9%.

Giuliani’s increased chance of winning is not attributable to some refinement of democracy, and it doesn’t better reflect the will of the people. Rather, it reflects a trick. Apparently, the Republicans are still not confident in their ability to win through genuine leadership, superior public policy, or popular appeal. That leaves them with little choice but political trickery.

I laughed out loud at this comment by one of the flying monkeys over at uSP:

Oh the Nutroots base will definitely screw it up for Gregoire. Those folks are mostly unorganized anarchy.

Yeah, as opposed to that organized anarchy I keep hearing about, right?

Today I stumbled across this recent Field Poll that shows Californians growing more and more…um…excited about mail-in voting.

Notable finding: “Permanent mail ballot registrants include more registered Republicans than are found in the overall electorate.”

About two months ago, I was at the Northgate Park & Ride helping a UW transfer student from Sydney figure out which bus to take back to the University. She’d just arrived in the U.S. that morning and was buying basic supplies at Target. I recognized her accent and knew she was an Aussie right away. She seemed surprised that people she’d talked to earlier in the day thought she was English. I just replied “Americans are stupid.” She says, “You’re the second person to say that so far.” If what’s happening in Olympia isn’t enough proof, here’s more:

UPDATE: My god, people! Get a grip on yourselves. When I said “Americans are stupid” to her, it was said in a joking fashion to someone who was overwhelmed by being in this great country for the first time. The notable thing was that I wasn’t the first person to say that to her.

The bottom line is that Americans ARE pretty stupid (arguably the better world is ignorant) when it comes to knowing about the rest of the world. Survey are survey confirms this. The numbers are terrifying:

Take Iraq, for example. Despite nearly constant news coverage since the war there began in 2003, 63 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 failed to correctly locate the country on a map of the Middle East. Seventy percent could not find Iran or Israel.

Nine in ten couldn’t find Afghanistan on a map of Asia.

And 54 percent were unaware that Sudan is a country in Africa.

I’m reasonably certain that commenter Puddybud could find Afghanistan on a map of Asia. That means that he’s arguably more knowledgeable about the world than 90% of young adults. If that doesn’t send chills down your spine about what’s going on, nothing will.

I’ll save the venting for tomorrow night’s show when The Stranger’s Josh Feit will join me in studio to give his first-hand account of the proceedings at yesterday’s special session, and the inevitable fallout from the Dems’ boneheaded political blunder. But I just want to take time to thank those Democratic legislators who stood up to the political pressure, and voted against rashly reinstating I-747’s unsustainable and irresponsible one-percent cap on regular levy revenue growth.

Yesterday I wrote, “I’d be surprised if a majority of the Seattle delegation didn’t vote to approve the governor’s plan,” and, well… I was wrong. There are six legislative districts that represent Seattle, for a total of twelve representatives and six senators. Of those, only one senator and four representatives voted for the bill, with two representatives excused and not voting. A total of eleven Seattle legislators cast votes against the bill: Senators Ken Jacobsen, Adam Kline, Jeanne Kohl-Welles, Joe McDermott and Ed Murray, along with Representatives Mary Lou Dickerson, Sharon Nelson, Jamie Pedersen, Eric Pettigrew, Sharon Tomiko Santos, and Helen Sommers. I was particularly proud that my entire 37th Legislative District Delegation — Kline, Pettigrew and Santos — voted against the bill.

Only a handful of non-Seattle legislators bucked the governor’s pressure to quickly pass dumb policy. In the House, special kudos go to Rep. Geoff Simpson of Covington, who voted his conscience despite the fact that his district overwhelmingly supported I-747, and despite the fact that he feared this vote could potentially end his political career.

“I’m not here to make decisions based on whether or not I’ll get re-elected,” he said. “I’m here to make decisions that are good public policy … 747 is not good public policy.”

Simpson said local government can’t be expected to provide high quality services when revenues are not keeping pace with the rate of inflation.

While he was aware of the risks, Simpson said he hoped voters in his district would consider the sum of his voting record, not just this one vote.

That’s what representative democracy is all about. In the Senate, Craig Pridemore of Vancouver made a similar principled stand, again, knowing the political risks coming from a district that overwhelmingly supported I-747:

“I’m a former county commissioner. I know the impacts this will have on local government, law enforcement abilities, and all of the other critical local services. I can’t vote yes for that,” he says.

No doubt Pridemore and Simpson’s opponents will attack them as arrogant and out of touch, but this is exactly the sort of principled leadership voters so often decry as missing in our elected officials. If we want our legislators to mimic the polls rather than make informed decisions, we might as well just eliminate the Legislature entirely.