PoliBlog ™: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts » 2024

Via CBS News: Fox-Backed Democrat Debate Called Off, Sept. 23 Debate Will Not Be Held; Major Candidates Had Been Planning To Skip

Fox News and a black political group say they will not hold a Sept. 23 Democratic presidential debate in Detroit, which the leading candidates already were planning to skip.

[…]

The campaigns of U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards had said they would not participate in the debate. Opponents have criticized Fox as biased against Democrats.

The debate, co-sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education and Leadership Institute, was to have been held at the Fox Theatre.

On the one hand, there have already been a remarkable number of ~~joint press conferences~~ debates, so one less isn’t a big deal.

On the other hand, this kind of move feeds into the polarization of the media and also strikes me as strategically stupid. Yes, shunning the All Evil Fox News will make the netroots and some of the hardcore base of the Democratic Party happy, but in an election cycle wherein there GOP is already suffering in the eyes of the public and where the party’s voters aren’t exactly in love with their choices, it would seem to me that it would behoove the Democrats to cast their net as widely as possible.

Plus, there is just something impetuous about the foot-stomping “we won’t go on that network” routine. Same thing for the GOPers who wanted to bow out of the YouTube debate.

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Via the BBC: Cuban leader Castro ‘very well’

Secrecy surrounding his condition has fuelled rumours about the extent of his health problems and his eventual political future.

However, Cuban officials have repeatedly said he will eventually resume office.

Which, I can’t help but feel, is very Soviet of them.

It does strike me as odd that at this stage of the game, where the quasi-transition from Fidel to Raul has gone quite smoothly, that they continue to insist that Fidel is going to fully recover. Why maintain that public stance? He is clearly too ill to make even a controlled public appearance and the simple fact that he is 81 years of ago suggests that “full recovery” isn’t in the cards, as 81 year-olds often die sans a major illness and surgery, let alone with them.

The part about all of this that strikes me as odd is that they seems to have the opportunity before them to fully ease away from the idea of the Cuban state equaling Fidel, yet they prefer to insist on the notion that he will return.

Perhaps it is simply the habits of a closed political system, or maybe it is Fidel’s own denial manifesting as public statements. In any event, I continue to believe that this lingering illness is perhaps the best thing that could have happened to the regime, as had Fidel suddenly died, there would have been an immediate crisis that would have been far more difficult to manage. As it stands, the illness has given the party leadership the chance to figure out how to proceed and has allowed the Cuban public time to adjust to government without Fidel without having to go through the shock of his death.

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The story so far via the BBC: Turkey votes again on president

while the ruling party’s candidate, Abdullah Gul, is again expected to win easily, it is thought he will only win outright in a third round next week.

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In the first round of voting on Monday, he secured 341 votes - falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to win outright.

Friday’s vote is expected to follow a similar pattern, with the other two candidates - Sabahattin Cakmakoglu from the right-wing Nationalist Action Party, and Tayfun Icli from the centre-left Democratic Left Party - unlikely to challenge Mr Gul.

However, in a third round, a candidate needs only a simple majority to win - leading analysts to predict confidently that Mr Gul will be declared president next Tuesday, 28 August.

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The following (from yesterday’s LAT) goes along with the other proposed CA initiative I noted yesterday: California Democrats push popular vote measure

Democrats on Tuesday proposed putting on a 2024 ballot an initiative aimed at having California join the movement to elect presidents by popular vote.

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If backers gather sufficient signatures to place one of the Democratic measures on the ballot, and voters were to approve it, California would become one of roughly a dozen states to have embraced the concept of electing presidents by popular vote.

The national drive toward a popular vote would not scrap the electoral college system, but would require states to award their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the most actual votes nationally. It would take effect only if states representing a majority of the electoral votes agree to the change.

I am still deciding whether I like this idea or not. I would prefer to simply have the whole thing scrapped via a constitutional amendment. Of course, that is rather unlikely to happen. As such this plan, which could be accomplished via the Interstate Compact Clause of Article IV (along with the constitutional fact that states get to decided how the electoral votes from their states are assigned), may be the only way to go if the EC is going to be changed.

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Via the BBC: Exiled Pakistani PM can go home

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ruled that exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif can return to the country.

Sharif was ousted in a coup in 1999 by Pakistan’s current president, Pervez Musharraf. He was sentenced to life in prison by the new government, but went into exile in Saudi Arabia. His return will add another piece to an increasingly volatile situation in Pakistan.

One has to wonder if the newly re-instated Chief Justice of the Pakistani Supreme Court is behind this move. At a minimum, it will be interesting to see how Musharraf reacts.

Indeed, it has been interesting to see the Pakistani court to be as much of a burr in Musharaff’s side as they have been. Here’s another example from earlier in the month (also via the BBC): Court keeps pressure on Musharraf.

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Via the AP: Arizona moves primary up to Feb. 5

Gov. Janet Napolitano has decided to move up Arizona’s presidential primary by three weeks to Feb. 5, joining at least 19 other states with primaries or caucuses on that date.

Napolitano will invoke her authority under state law and move the primary from Feb. 26, aides told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

And the Great Primary Migration of ‘07 continues…

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Via the AP: Michigan steps toward earlier primary

The Michigan Senate voted Wednesday to move the state’s presidential nomination contests to Jan. 15, further roiling an already turbulent nomination schedule that has raised the possibility of voting before New Year’s.

Maybe the Secretary of State of New Hampshire will just declare the NH Primary for next month, so we can just get this all over with…

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Via the SF Chronicle: Field Poll shows Californians lean toward dividing electoral votes

California voters are inclined to support a proposed ballot initiative that would change how the Golden State allocates its electoral votes in presidential campaigns, but they’re not yet sold on the idea, a Field Poll released today showed.

Currently, California employs a winner-take-all system that awards the state’s entire 55 electoral votes to the winner of the state’s popular vote.

Under the proposed measure, which could be on the June 2024 ballot, the presidential election would become, in essence, a congressional district-by-congressional district contest. The winner of the statewide popular vote would receive two electoral votes, but the remaining votes would go to the winner in each of the 53 congressional districts.

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The Field Poll found that 47 percent of registered voters back a change to California’s system for electoral votes, with 35 percent opposed. Republicans generally support the change more than Democrats.

I am all for doing away with the Electoral College. However, there is a very serious flaw in awarding electoral votes based on Congressional districts (as is already done in Maine and Nebraska). That flaw is the fact that the congressional districts in most states have been gerrymandered and usually in a way that radically over-represents one of the two parties–this is certainly the case in California, where a large number of the districts are “safe” for either the Democrats or the Republicans. So while smaller units with semi-predetermined outcomes beat large units with semi-predetermined outcomes, it still isn’t exactly democracy at its best.

Of course, this move in CA is one that Republicans would like very much, as it takes a huge number of electoral votes that are currently practically guaranteed to be in the Democratic column and splits off a good number of them for the Republican column.

Really, we need to sit down and hammer out a new primary system and a new electoral process for choosing the president, as there is no good reason to retain the Electoral College, as it distorts the democratic significance of both large and small states and essentially eliminates the important of some votes (e.g., Democratic votes in Texas essentially count for nothing under the current system).

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Via the BBC: Venezuela lawmakers back reforms

Venezuelas parliament has given initial approval to reforms proposed by President Hugo Chavez, including an end to presidential term limits.

The proposals still require a final endorsement by parliament, which is dominated by Mr Chavez’s supporters, and must then be put to a referendum.

The constitutional reforms would also increase presidential control over the central bank.

Doubtless the reforms will easyily clear all hurdles and be instituted.

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Here’s more on the aforementioned book survey, this time looking at partisanship and reading: Book Chief: Conservatives Want Slogans

The AP-Ipsos poll found 22 percent of liberals and moderates said they had not read a book within the past year, compared with 34 percent of conservatives.

Among those who had read at least one book, liberals typically read nine books in the year, with half reading more than that and half less. Conservatives typically read eight, moderates five.

By slightly wider margins, Democrats tended to read more books than Republicans and independents. There were no differences by political party in the percentage of those who said they had not read at least one book.

A couple of things strike me. First is that by conflating “moderates” with “liberals” creates a false category to use in comparing to “conservatives”–so what that first paragraph above tells us is hard to say, unless one is simply trying to make a political point. The analysis is especially sloppy, because in the next paragraph we switch from liberal, moderate, conservative to Democrat, Republican and Independent—are these categories to be construed as the same or as different?

Ultimately, I am not surprised by the notion that liberals would, in the aggregate, read more books than conservatives, as liberals tend to be more educated, in the aggregate, than conservatives. Indeed, I would tend to think that the operative issue here is not partisan/ideological self-identification, but rather one of educational attainment. I suspect that if one compared libs and cons of similar educational level, that the reading issue would end up being similar regardless of ideology.

The funny thing about the story as written is that there is an inherent assumption that we are somehow talking about political books here, and the first couple of paragraphs are focused on the notion that conservatives read less because they have simpler ideas about politics:

Liberals read more books than conservatives. The head of the book publishing industry’s trade group says she knows why—and there’s little flattering about conservative readers in her explanation.

“The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: ‘No, don’t raise my taxes, no new taxes,’” Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers, said in a recent interview. “It’s pretty hard to write a book saying, ‘No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes’ on every page.”

Schroeder, who as a Colorado Democrat was once one of Congress’ most liberal House members, was responding to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that found people who consider themselves liberals are more prodigious book readers than conservatives.

She said liberals tend to be policy wonks who “can’t say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion.”

Egads, it’s Karl Rove’s fault! And really, Schroeder isn’t exactly an unbiased observer and to lead the story with her “assessment” isn’t exactly a study in good reporting.

Another major problem overall is that the poll is about reading in general, not reading of political books. Indeed, surely we are talking predominantly about fiction., not political manifestos.

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