RealPolitix.com – The Non-Partisan Blog about Politics and Technology Archive for December 2008

My guess is that the first public Christmas celebration in Baghdad is more retaliation for the shoe-throwing incident.

I think this event takes the cake for “Most Disgusting Photo Op Of The Year”

Despite what your beliefs may be on the (I will choose my words carefully) “merits” of  ”bringing” Democracy to Iraq, how can we not draw the line there?  Why should Iraqis celebrate Christmas?  They are M-U-S-L-I-M-S.  This really is adding insult to injury.

  How to excuse this?  Well, I guess Christmas really is a secular holiday.

Elections come and go. The public, abetted by the press, pays attention to certain issues of a trivial nature in the big picture and then returns to their normal lives. There is however two items of note that have escaped almost all notice and that deserve a few comments from last month; Puerto Rico elected a Republican governor and America has its first Catholic Vice President. The significance of each has eluded even most astute political observers.

It can perhaps be expected that the American media has not paid much attention to the politics of Puerto Rico. Still, it is telling during a time in which the consensus is that Republicans are hurting with Latinos that Puerto Rico, an American territory of close to four million citizens, has bucked that trend with the election of Luis Fortuno. In fact, Gov.-elect Fortuno is young, energetic, and full of ideas. Now he is the first Republican governor of Puerto Rico in close to forty years after having spent the last four as Puerto Rico’s only Republican ever elected to serve in D.C. His election is a change in Puerto Rico and merits our attention over the next four years.

The bigger omission has been the election of our first Catholic Vice President. The fact that almost no one realizes that Joe Biden will be the first Catholic veep come January 20th when he is sworn in as our 47th Vice President is surprising, but in a good way. In 1960 John Kennedy’s race for president was hurt in many strongly Protestant states that had long voted Democratic due to fears that he would be beholden to the Pope and the Vatican. The divide between Catholics and Protestants was stark. Catholics viewed JFK’s election in terms of change that was the equal of anything that blacks felt about Barack Obama this year. In 1928 Gov. Al Smith of New York was the first Catholic to run for president on a major ticket and Herbert Hoover summarily routed him even in staunch Democratic states of the day like Florida, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. His Catholicism was too much for many Yellow Dog Democrats to vote for in that time and they either stayed home, or in more cases, voted for the Quaker Hoover.

In 2008 no one raised any questions about Biden’s faith. There was some talk about how his pro-choice stance on abortion is clearly at odds with his church despite what Nancy Pelosi says. More was said however about his plastic surgery and hair plugs than about his religious beliefs. This may show that America is becoming a more secular nation perhaps, but more likely it demonstrates that Christians have begun to look past issues that separate them. It would be nice to think that in forty years if a black candidate is elected vice-president no one will remark upon the racial factor. As the years pass our demographics will make us increasingly a nation of mixed ancestry and divisions will grow increasingly weaker. When once it was common for people to be viewed as Scottish, Irish, Italian, English, German, Scandinavian, Greek, Polish, Czech and so forth, they are now all just viewed as “white.” One day African-Americans will join the same polyglot label of being just “Americans” and race and religion will cease to be barriers or crutches for one group against another. Intermarriage and the course of time will cause these divisions to fall. Oklahoma is a leading example of this change where perhaps 80% or more of the residents of that state claim some Native American Indian ancestry. Those that attempt to find “full-blooded” pure members of one tribe or another are often on a fool’s errand.

Perhaps we should not celebrate that Barack Obama is the first president with an African for a father, but rather that Joe Biden is our first Catholic vice-president and no one even noticed. America’s better days, with less racial and religious bigotry, remain before us and all thanks to time and demography.

Republican Congressman-Elect Anh “Joseph” Cao..

The month of December has been unkind to the Democrats. While basking in the glow of Barack Obama’s victory by ordering outlandish Obama “Victory Plates” on TV for $19.95 (“His warm smile and kind eyes…”), the few Democrats that are paying attention have witnessed ominous signs of renewed strength from the Republicans. In fact, if 2009 and 2010 are anything like December 2008 the Democrat’s plates may break on their bumpy ride.

The first “Victory Plate” had not even finished drying when Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss crushed Democrat Jim Martin in the Georgia senate runoff on December 2nd. His 57% to 43% landslide proved to be a thorough drubbing and ended any talk of a 60-seat “filibuster proof” Democratic senate. More importantly, the runoff was a clash of the titans with each party pouring in money and endorsements. In the end rallies with Sarah Palin moved more voters than did events with Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and thug rapper Ludacris. Obama had cut ads for Martin and dispatched over 100 campaign staffers to the state. It wasn’t even close. Blacks had made up 35% of the Georgia electorate when racial identity politics came into play in November, but with two whites running in December the percentage plummeted to 20%. Chambliss improved from 49% to 57% while Martin fell from 46% to 43%. The harbingers for 2009 and 2010 continued to accumulate when Obama’s selection of Gov. Napolitano for Secretary of Homeland Security resulted in the next governor of Arizona being Republican Jan Brewer. Later in the same week the continuing recount in Minnesota added votes to Republican Norm Coleman’s lead. It became increasingly likely that Democrat Al Franken will not prevail. A few days after that a final counting of the ballots in California produced a victory for conservative stalwart Tom McClintock. All signs indicate he will be one of the Republican leaders of the new freshman class in congress come January. Next, new polls out of New Jersey show that a majority of voters do not want Democratic governor Jon Corzine reelected in 2009. Other trends of this sort are now surfacing. In many ways it feels like the early days of 1993 or early 1994.

The Obama inaugural programs were just being printed when Republicans scored two huge victories in Louisiana last Saturday. Each race had been delayed because of Hurricane Gustav and each resulted in stunning loses for the Democrats. In a race much like the Georgia runoff, Obama and the Democrats cut ads for congressional candidate Paul Carmouche in northwest Louisiana. They cited his years as a DA in Shreveport and ruthlessly attacked his opponent John Fleming, a self-made millionaire physician that got his start as a doctor in the US Navy. Just as in Georgia, the Democratic money, ads, and machinery failed. Fleming emerged triumphant by less than 400 votes after rising star Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal endorsed him. Carmouche had held a lead of 10 points in the last round of polls, but clearly they didn’t measure an emerging trend.

The most shocking political upset of the year, and perhaps of the last fifty years, came out of New Orleans late Saturday night. No one, absolutely no one, thought that scandal-plagued nine-term Congressman Bill Jefferson could lose. Louisiana’s 2nd congressional district is the heart of inner city New Orleans and routinely votes 80% for Democrats. Jefferson was easily reelected in 2006 even though he was under investigation by the FBI for corruption. Earlier that year he had been caught with $90,000 of cash bribes hidden in his freezer from a Nigerian business. In 2007 he was indicted, but the Democratic majority refused to do more than take away his committee assignments.

The man that slew the King of New Orleans Corruption is named Anh “Joseph” Cao. A 41 year-old attorney who had once entered training for the Catholic priesthood, Cao is a modern day version of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Only 8 years old when he fled Vietnam with his mother and sisters, Cao’s father was an officer that was later captured by the Communists and imprisoned for eight years in a POW/Reeducation camp. To Cao, running this election was the right thing to do. Shockingly, he emerged victorious with 50% of the vote to Jefferson’s 47% and thus becomes the first Vietnamese-American in Congress. Fittingly, at his victory night celebration he told the excited crowd that his win proves that the American dream is still alive. Even better, his father, since freed and now in a wheelchair, was on the stage to see his son make his remarks. As for “Dollar Bill” Jefferson, it now seems increasingly likely that his next office will be behind bars. He also becomes the first congressional black Democrat to ever lose a general election.

The wave of bad news continued to grow into this week. Just today the FBI has arrested Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich for corruption. Amazingly, several of his staffers had been wearing hidden microphones around him and the conversations are now being reported in stunning detail. Most egregious of all, Blagojevich apparently hung a “for sale” sign on Obama’s vacant senate seat. Audio transcripts show the governor asking for upwards of $500,000 to a million dollars for the seat and saying that the vacancy, “is a f___ing valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.” Ironically, Blagojevich was elected in 2002 to replace a governor that was heading to jail for corruption. Blagojevich stated in 2002 he would “change the old way of doing business” and on election night that, “Illinois has voted for change.” Nice. Where have we heard that before? This emerging trend is forming into a pattern. Is it too late to buy an Obama Victory Plate?

This is a huge historic upset coming out of Louisiana tonight. Republican Joseph Cao has defeated nine-term Congressman William Jefferson in a district that normally votes 75% to 80% Democratic in every race. No one thought Cao could win even though Jefferson was caught by the FBI with illegal cash bribes hidden in his freezer. Cao was born in Vietnam and fled when the Communist took over and began killing those that opposed them. He will now become the first Vietnamese-American to serve in the U.S. Congress and is easily one of the biggest upset winners of all time. He dispatched Jefferson tonight by 50% to 47%. The election was pushed back because of Hurrican Gustav with the primaries taking place on Nov. 4th and the general election occuring today. Amazing! Here the wikipedia bio on Joseph Cao. Also, the GOP won a congressional race in northwest Louisiana even though Barack and Michelle Obama cut ads for the strong Democratic candidate in the race, Shreveport DA Paul Carmouche. Instead, John Fleming becomes another conservative Republican in the House.

Its a brand new bright Obama Day! A star-studded cast turns out for Marc Shaiman’s “Prop 8 – The Musical.” From FunnyOrDie.com.

       Election 2008, as I previously noted, was remarkable for being the first truly 21^st century campaign. Today, I’ll give you my take to how the media was involved in that. Such a discussion should begin with CNN.

             No channel contributed more in terms of raw, state of the art technology than they did. Nearly anyone with a passing interest in politics now recognizes the ridiculously awesome touch screen electoral map that served as the political equivalent of a play-by-play. On election night, they showed off a hologram machine that transmits the person’s actual image in real time to the newsroom, using multiple cameras to beam in correspondents and Will.i.am. And I though R2-D2 had the holographic market covered (help me Wolf Blitzer, you’re my only hope!). Their website was also the most comprhensive for raw data. Where users could get real time updates in nearly any race nationwide up to the country and municipal level. One wishes the actual correspondents were substantive, but no one really expects that anymore.

              CNN, and other networks globally, provided a level of coverage previously unheard of. It should not surprise anyone that results were real time broadcasted worldwide. People from Baltimore to Bangkok to Baghdad were avid and dedicated viewers to the historic election. And such attention had a genuine effect on voters. With increased coverage came significantly increased viewership and readership. Blogs like ours at RealPolitix, and news sites such as the Drudge Report, Huffington Post, Washington Post, NYTimes, and of course CNN, recieved enourmous numbers of visitors. Estimated voter turnout was somewhere in the ballpark of 63%. Black and youth turnout each had increases in the millions of voters in states battleground and not.

            One can also not discount parody news for increasing interest and action. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report (among my favorite things on planet Earth), as well as The Onion brought youth interest way up. That some of those youth (which I am still a part of), might actually followed up such amusement with voting is something even I didn’t believe could really happen. I have little doubt that this was what gave Obama the Democratic nod, and nudged him into the Oval Office.

  People, including (and especially me), tend to deride the modern 24-hour newscycle. Yet, at least based on initial data collected since the election a few weeks ago, it may really have increased turnout for both parties. We can only hope the trend continues. President-elect Obama should remember to thank the media one of these days (even O’Reilly and the other family friendly faces at Fox News), they might have just done him a huge favor.

 

PS: Watch the Onion.com’s video of Bush Pardons Scooter Libby in Giant Turkey Costume, you’ll thank me.

 

For anyone that is currently following the Minnesota senate recount debacle, there can be no doubt that technology could have prevented this situation. In particular, electronic voting machines could have stopped the inane fights over pen marks on ballots. In fact, there has never been any proof, or even any credible allegations for that matter, of electronic voting machines resulting in voter fraud. The paper ballots in Minnesota though have resulted in a comedy of errors that reminds us that Florida isn’t the only state that has issues with elections.

At present incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman holds a lead over Democratic challenger Al Franken officially by 303 votes. At issue now are the over 6,000 ballots that are being contested because one campaign or another believes the marks on the ballot are unclear. The state will not begin to settle the dispute over the challenged ballots until Dec. 16th. Thus far we have seen everything from voters not fully filling in the bubble next to the candidate’s name to others that have written in votes for candidates not in the race, or in one instance for the “Lizard People,” while still filling in a bubble for either Coleman or Franken. None of this could happen with an electronic voting machine. With the machine you either hit the button to vote for a candidate or you didn’t. There are no long drawn out legal disputes over hanging, pregnant, or dimpled chads. No fights about what a voter meant when they bubbled in one name and x’d in another. No head scratching when it appears that a trained baboon marked up the ballot.

The most ironic thing about this recount is that Minnesota has a reputation for having some of the cleanest and most fair elections of any state. The idea of “Minnesota nice” has been seen in shows like Little House on the Prairie and heard on Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon radio programs. This last election was anything but nice though. Former comedian Al Franken ran a scorched earth race that slung mud and crud at Sen. Norm Coleman at a rapid-fire rate. Coleman, a former Democratic mayor of St. Paul, has a reputation as a moderate and his classy style and affability allowed him to remain competitive in the race even though Obama was carrying Minnesota easily. In fact, Minnesota has not voted for a Republican for president since Nixon in 1972, the longest such streak of any state. It seems likely that a generic Democrat could have beaten Coleman if they had stayed above the fray. Instead the Democratic Farm-Labor Party in Minnesota was saddled with Franken due to his fame and money allowing him to coast to the nomination. Many of his past “jokes” and “exploits” were beyond the pale for average voters that wanted a senator that would not be a vitriolic mouthpiece and embarrassment. Voters told pollsters that Jesse Ventura as governor had made Minnesota the butt of jokes and they had little desire to relive those days with a “Sen. Mean Clown.”

On election night Sen. Coleman held a lead of well over 700 votes. Then, some counties began to discover “errors.” Whether these were egregious or not may never be known, but the result was that Franken cut into Coleman’s lead by some 500 votes. It was now essentially a tie and the state went to work on a recount. Literally every single ballot in the state is being reviewed by hand in an extremely tedious process. At present over 90% of them have been recounted.

The day before Thanksgiving Franken was dealt a severe blow when the bi-partisan election board ruled unanimously that it would not count thousands of absentee ballots that were illegally cast. Franken’s lawyers argued unsuccessfully that things such as a voter’s signature or registration were not necessary. As the counting continued Coleman began to gain votes. This appears to have been a shock to the Franken campaign. Soon they began to profess that they had their own internal count that showed them within 50 votes of Coleman and not the 300 or so away that the state and the media were reporting. Then, just two days ago a strongly Democratic county “found” 171 ballots that were not counted on Election Day nor during the recount. It is claimed that these found ballots produced a net gain of 37 votes for Franken. It has not been fully explained how this occurred.

When all is finished it seems likely that Coleman will prevail. The Franken forces have tacitly acknowledge this fact and have begun making noise about having the US Senate review the election results. In theory the Senate can decide to seat whomever they wish. In practice however it would be stunning to see Franken seated as a senator despite the state of Minnesota saying he lost. History shows this could happen however. In 1974 Republican Louis Wyman was declared the victor over John Durkin for a New Hampshire senate seat by two votes. The Democratic senate decided it would not seat Wyman and a Republican filibuster for several months kept Durkin from taking the office either. Ultimately the two candidates agreed to a new election in 1975 and Durkin prevailed, though the anger at his election was great and he was easily defeated in the Reagan landslide of 1980. The U.S. House did much the same thing in 1984 when Republican Richard McIntyre was declared the winner of an Indiana congressional district by four votes. The Democratic house did not have to worry about a filibuster and seated the Democrat instead. Now that Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ landslide victory in Georgia ensures the Democrats cannot attain 60 seats this session, perhaps the Democrats will send Franken packing, avoid a public outcry, and let the state of Minnesota certify their own winner. Perhaps Minnesota will also switch to technology and send the paper ballots packing, too.