Uncommitted in Michigan

Posted on 2008-01-10 by David

In case this election cycle was not convoluted enough already we now get to approach the Michigan primary. The combination of having an open primary and having the DNC strip the delegates from Michigan for moving their primary into January meant that we faced the prospect of Democrats in Michigan voting in the Republican primary which does nothing to make the Republican contest any clearer. All the major Democratic candidates promised not to campaign in Michigan and Obama and Edwards went so far as to leave their names off the ballot in Michigan so the only major choice on the Democratic ballot there is Clinton. Now comes the news that Obama and Edwards are encouraging their supporters in Michigan to vote “Uncommitted” rather than allow Clinton to sweep that state.

From the sound of things, having all their delegates stripped by the DNC does not actually indicate that they have no delegates. I’d love for someone to explain how that works for me, but NPR reported that if “Uncommitted” receives 15% or more in a district then those delegates could later support Obama or Edwards.

If Michigan Democrats take this course there would be more confidence in the Republican results there. If they don’t then it really makes you wonder how satisfying this “victory” would be for Clinton. It reminds me of the Iraqi elections under Saddam Hussein – Mr. President-for-Life just loved getting 99.9 – 100% support as the only candidate on the ballot with citizens being required to “participate.”

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Bloggers – Turn Out Utah

Posted on 2008-01-08 by David

Earlier today, before significant numbers of ballots had been counted, the news coming out of New Hampshire was that turnout was way up and some precincts were requesting more ballots. In response to that, JM Bell and Misty Fowler each suggested that we’d love to have that problem in Utah. The more I think about that the more I am convinced that not only would we love to have that “problem” but have four weeks to actively work to achieve that in our state.

I’ve suggested before that any election with high turnout is a good election. Let’s make this into such an election. Starting now, let’s light up the Utah Political Blogosphere with ideas and thoughts to inspire people to turn out and vote in the primary election. Misty has set a good example by posting reminders about registration deadlines and information about how to register. What else can we do to encourage people to participate?

People all around the country have wondered why Iowa and New Hampshire should have so much influence on our elections – let’s show that Utahns can be as politically involved as Iowans.

If you are interested in pushing for this let me know – share your ideas of how we can encourage people online and offline to get to the polls. If you don’t think that higher turnout is valuable, convince me that low turnout has any benefit to our state or our nation.

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The Pull of Youth

Posted on 2008-01-07 by David

I can’t really explain why the following passage stuck in my mind from Frank Richs’ column in the New York Times yesterday. Something about it just caught my attention and has been hanging on in the background ever since. Speaking of the winners of the Iowa caucuses:

The two men are the youngest candidates in the entire field, the least angry and the least inclined to seek votes by saturation-bombing us with the post-9/11 arsenal of fear. They both radiate the kind of wit and joy (and, yes, hope) that can come only with self-confidence and a comfort in their own skins. They don’t run from Americans who are not in their club. Mr. Obama had no problem winning over a conclave of white Christian conservatives at Rick Warren’s megachurch in Orange County, Calif., even though he insisted on the necessity of condoms in fighting AIDS. Unlike the top-tier candidates in the G.O.P. presidential race, or the “compassionate conservative” president who refused for years to meet with the N.A.A.C.P., Mr. Huckabee showed up last fall for the PBS debate at the historically black Morgan State University and aced it.

The “they” who did not see the cultural power of these men, of course, includes not just the insular establishments of both their parties but the equally cloistered echo chamber of our political journalism’s status quo. It would take a whole column to list all the much-repeated Beltway story lines that collapsed on Thursday night.

One thing that struck me was the admission that the established leaders of the parties and the professionals of political journalism can’t grasp what is happening in this year’s primaries. The second thing was the comment that these are the two youngest candidates. I had known that Obama was the youngest candidate, but I had never really considered the age of Huckabee. Back before Huckabee was a top candidate I noticed in my study of the candidates that Mitt Romney was the youngest of the major Republican candidates and he was a couple of months older than Hillary who was the oldest of the major Democratic candidates. That was an interesting split between the two parties in my mind.

Looking into the ages now I find that Huckabee is two years younger than the next youngest candidate (John Edwards) and only 6 years older than Obama. I wonder if part of this is more than just the rhetoric of change, but the evidence that the electorate is ready to pass the reins of leadership over to a younger generation. If Huckabee goes on to get the Republican nomination there is only one viable Democrat left who could represent the Baby Boom generation in the general election – that would be Hillary Clinton (unless by some miracle Rill Richardson can leap from 4th place to 1st among the Democrats).

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Pre-Fix Winners and Losers

Posted on 2008-01-05 by David

Over at the Washington Post political blog – The Fix – Chris Cillizza always does a Winners and Losers post after every debate. While he’s tied up with the Democratic debate I thought I’d beat him to the punch on the Republican side for tonight’s debate.

WINNERS

Mitt Romney: The fact that every other candidate was attacking Romney indicates the consensus that if he wins in New Hampshire on Tuesday he is the clear front runner for the Republican nomination. Every candidate but Mitt can benefit by having this race stay undecided for a few more weeks.

LOSERS

Mitt Romney: With everyone attacking him, Romney was unable to score any clear victory in the debate which can’t help his chances on Tuesday.

How did I do Chris?

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Vote Totals in Iowa

Posted on 2008-01-05 by David

I had written before that the Iowa Democrats should publish their vote totals rather than just “delegate equivalents.” Today I discovered that USA Today is reporting the votes in the Iowa caucus results. Thanks to this more detailed information I finally see how Hillary Clinton managed to get one more delegate than John Edwards even though she got a lower vote total. (In one district she got enough higher to get one more delegate than Edwards and everywhere else she was close enough that her lower totals did not lead to fewer delegates.)

It appears that they will report the same amount of information on all the states as the primaries progress (they had Wyoming Republicans from today).

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Candidate Questions vs President Questions

Posted on 2008-01-04 by David

Thanks to Scott’s post on Presidential Qualifications I really got thinking about the difference between what we should look for in a president and what we often do look for in a candidate. Scott quoted three questions that Dr. Lawrence Lindsey suggested we should be asking to choose a good president:

    • “Has the candidate faced a crisis or overcome a major setback in his or her life?”
    • “Has has the candidate had a variety of life experiences?”
    • “Can the candidate tell the difference between a foreign enemy and a political opponent?”

To those questions, Scott then listed the three questions that we seem to ask about the candidates that we choose to support:

    • Is this candidate most likely to win?
    • How closely do I agree with this candidate?
    • Do I like this candidate’s personality?

Now Scott leaves me asking myself, are these two sets of questions complimentary to each other, contradictory to each other, or independent of each other?

I tend to think that the two sets of questions are complimentary. The first set (for selecting a president) should be asked first because there is nothing to gain by choosing a candidate who can win if they can’t pass the test of whether they are likely to be a good president. I think that set of questions is what I was crudely trying to answer through my candidate endorsement series earlier last year. If we could ask those questions generally we might be better at retaining the good candidates who sometimes drop out early when they can’t capture our attention with the second set of questions. On the other hand, there is a lot of value to be had by applying the second set of questions to the available candidates after they have been passed through the sieve of the first question set.

Once the primaries are over, if your favored candidates are no longer in the race it can be useful to return to the first set of questions and see which of the remaining candidates (if any) qualify. (The only time the second set of questions should apply is when there are multiple candidates available that pass that first critical standard.)

Now I ask myself if my positions on the candidates would have been any different if I had followed this process more exactly for the 2008 field.

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Iowa Caucuses

Posted on 2008-01-03 by David

No, I’m not liveblogging nor am I going to analyze the results. I do wonder why I find it so fascinating to watch the results come in. That’s the same question I asked myself in November 2006 as I watched the results between Orrin Hatch and Pete Ashdown. The difference is in 2006 I was happy early on when Ashdown was slightly ahead (the more democratic areas seemed to report first) and I sat and watched as all the lemming votes floated in for Hatch to win.

Thankfully this time there was no such turn of fortune. Obama won among the Democrats by a very respectable margin and I am left to wonder how Hillary will spin her third place finish, especially as the later votes show her falling further behind Edwards rather than keeping right up with him. Huckabee won quickly among the Republicans so that I could turn my attention to wondering which candidates would drop out. My only disappointment is that Ron Paul could not stay closer to McCain and Thompson.

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Magna Carta

Posted on 2008-01-02 by David

I don’t intend to review these historical documents each day, but I do want  to get started and I decided to go basically in historical order. Ever since I wrote yesterday I have been intrigued by the first of these documents – the Magna Carta or Great Charter. Prior to today I had never given more than a cursory look at the actual text of the Magna Carta, mostly for me it has just been an ancient document that helped establish the foundation of freedom upon which the Constitution was built. It appears that there were two versions, one given in 1215 and then a revised version – omitting some sections – in 1225.

The Magna Carta establishes the independence of the church from the control of the king although I would have to study my history to see what that meant in practical terms. It also addresses the laws pertaining to inheritance and the payment of debts protecting heirs (especially heirs under the legal age) and debtors from having their property taken unduly. It also established the rights of widows to own common property upon the deaths of their husbands.

Based on the 13th section (the original document had no such breaks) it appears that the people of the city of London had gained some freedoms that were unusual for the time. The Magna Carta dictated that all cities should enjoy the same privileges as London had obtained.

I find what appear to be precursors to a judicial system that allowed for standardized punishment, juries (four local knights were the prescribed jury here) and possibly a system for appeals. Free men were given the right of a trial by a jury of their peers before they could be imprisoned or stripped of their rights. Also included was a provision that fines should be “only in proportion to the degree of his offence[sic], and for a serious offence correspondingly, but not so heavily as to deprive him of his livelihood.”

Government officers are prevented from taking goods for the government without the consent of the owner and appropriate compensation. They were also required to produce witnesses besides themselves in order to put a person on trial.

Standards of measurement and value were to be established throughout the kingdom.

Except in time of war, merchants were to be allowed free passage into and out of the country – so long as they did not swear allegiance to another country.

A congress of 25 barons was to be established (perhaps a precursor to the House of Lords) which had the authority to seek redress if the king should break any of the provisions of the Magna Carta. They also had the authority to seize anything save the members of the royal family if redress was not given within 40 days after they notified the king of any offense against this charter. I particularly like this portion:

Any man who so desires may take an oath to obey the commands of the twenty-five barons for the achievement of these ends, and to join with them in assailing us to the utmost of his power. We give public and free permission to take this oath to any man who so desires, and at no time will we prohibit any man from taking it. Indeed, we will compel any of our subjects who are unwilling to take it to swear it at our command. (emphasis mine)

More historical information – such as the fact that it was renounced soon afterwards by the king and that many parts of it were repealed in the 18th and 19th centuries (no wonder the American colonies broke away in the late 18th century) – can be found in Wikipedia under Magna Carta and 1215. Another interesting fact was that it was (closely) based on the Charter of Liberties given by Henry I.

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A New Birth of Freedom

Posted on 2008-01-01 by David

How do we rekindle the flame of liberty in the heart of all American citizens?

I have been thinking about that question. It continues to disturb me that high turnout in an election approaches 50% participation. That is evidence of the disengagement that indicates a passive (or absent) desire for freedom unlike the active desires of Americans at the founding of our nation. I have said before that I would be happy with the outcome of any election where turnout topped 70%.

As this has been churning through my mind trying to come to some approach to the question, I started doing some searching through the things I have written before. Most powerfully I found my Independence Day post from last year quoting American by Choice that “true American citizens are made and not born” and that “Americans, both natural and naturalized, must be trained–they must be made.”

I went on to talk about how to transmit this “made” American culture through the way we celebrate our national holidays. Naturally my focus then was on the 4th of July. The more I think about it though, we should be celebrating our American culture by participation in the rituals that made America what it is – that would be exercising our rights to vote and participate in the various levels of government.

A week later I revisited the topic after I had found a list of what could be considered the founding documents of our nation. To that list I would add the Federalist Papers which I found among my searching today. That gives me 103 documents to study and react to as I continue my search for how we make Americans so that we may experience an end to our Uncivil War and find – as Lincoln sought during our Civil War:

“. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” (Gettysburg Address)

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Ready to Vote

Posted on 2007-12-31 by David

Votes will start to be counted this week. The Iowa caucuses take place on Thursday as a wide open presidential election promises to dominate the news coverage for another 10 months. I have already done individual endorsements of the candidates and an advance ranking of what candidates I liked best. Now, with actual votes on the line, here is my final position on the candidates I could vote for. In alphabetical order I could vote for:

    • Joe Biden
    • Mike Huckabee
    • Barack Obama
    • Ron Paul
    • Mitt Romney

The Republicans include a Small-Government Constitutionalist that the media does not understand, and hence does not cover (Ron Paul), a man who knows how to get things done (Mitt Romney), and a more articulate champion for “compassionate conservatism” than our current President (Mike Huckabee). The Democrats include a fresh face of optimism (Barack Obama) and a man who is everything that Hillary pretends to be – experienced and essentially moderate (Joe Biden).

Many people say this is a change election (I’ve heard that before but we’re still doing the same thing in Washington) and if your view is to change Washington then the order of candidates (from most change to least) would have to be:

    • Ron Paul
    • Barack Obama
    • Mitt Romney
    • Joe Biden
    • Mike Huckabee

Based on my positions (where change is not the only factor) I would support the candidates in this order (My support from 1-10):

    1. Ron Paul (10)
    2. Mitt Romney (7)
    3. Joe Biden (6 – I like his positions better than Obama)
    4. Barack Obama (6 – I like his tone and his chances in the primaries better than Biden)
    5. Mike Huckabee (4 – if you think our current domestic priorities are acceptable then Huckabee would be better able to sell them than Bush has been)

While everyone who doesn’t support Ron Paul will argue that he hasn’t got a chance, I argue that his real support is much broader than any other candidate (with the possible exception of Obama). The problem is that his supporters as a group may not be reliable about getting to the polls (it’s hard to say because they are such an unorthodox group politically). I think that if Ron Paul can place at least 3rd in Iowa behind Romney and Huckabee (I say third because the caucuses are more complex than a simple primary) and second (or possibly even 3rd) in New Hampshire behind Romney or McCain then the media will have to pay more attention to his showings in those states which will have surprised the media and the general public. This increased coverage will make those who might not have supported him before less apprehensive about voting for him and he will have a very real chance (unless Romney wins both of those states outright).

Obviously I want Ron Paul to win the Republican nomination but I would be extremely happy to see an Obama/Biden ticket in November. Then I could have a decent choice even if the Republicans choose an unacceptable candidate like Giuliani for the general election.

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