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August 28, 2008
Upgraded...
...In a couple of ways. First, after about a week of trying, I've upgraded my blogging software to MovableType 4.21. You won't notice many changes on the surface, but it should help fix the comment system (which has been broken for a while). I screwed up the first couple of tries and ended up locking myself out, which is why it's been a while since I posted.
The other upgrade: I've been asked to join The Moderate Voice (a blog I've read and held in high regard for a long time) as a coblogger. I've already started with a couple of posts about the Obama campaign's approach to polling the election and fighting 527 smear attacks. I'm going to try to post at TMV regularly during election season, but I'll link to or cross-post everything from here as well.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 9:58 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 21, 2008
VP predictions
I'm getting a little tired of all the veepstakes speculation in the media. Not because I'm disinterested, but I'm tired of reading columns about front runners that might as well have been written by a dog chasing a flashlight beam. Obama's visiting Virginia? It's going to be Kaine. Biden went to Georgia? He's now the hands-down favorite. Tomorrow if Obama accidentally sneezes after someone mentions Evan Bayh's name, we'll see dozens of articles declaring him the next vice president.
Pundits/journalists/bloggers are attempting to make educated guesses with about a week's worth of information, at best. Election media cycles are so short that the people immersed in them forget what happened a month or so ago, and they're approaching this decision with a short-term mindset. Obama, and hopefully any candidate, has put a lot of thought into the decision over several months, and although a single event the weekend before the announcement might bump someone over the top if they were already at the top of the list, it's not going to completely change the outcome. That would be a horrible decision-making process.
That said, I have no idea who either of them are going to pick either, but I can't resist going on record with a guess, just in case I'm right. It's awfully hard to resist chasing that flashlight beam, after all.
For Obama:
Wesley Clark. His military background trumps McCain's, but unlike Joe Biden, he still reinforces the change/outsider brand that Obama has established. Obama's brand is almost too strong. He risks seriously damaging it if he picks someone seen as an insider, so trying to find a VP with experience to balance the ticket is tricky. I think Clark does that well enough. A lot of people wrote him off after he said McCain's experiences as a POW wasn't enough to qualify him for commander in chief, but that was just a small bump in the road and shows he's not afraid to go after McCain.
Backup pick: Kathleen Sebalius.
For McCain:
Mitt Romney. I think McCain's going to play it safe, and that means going with Romney, who party loyalists preferred during the primaries. He doesn't bring any key demographics or add to the ticket a lot, but he'll say and believe anything the party wants him to, and that's why they like him. He'll be a vicious attack dog, not that McCain has needed it so far. He is a little more credible on the economy than McCain, and since that has been the top issue so far in the campaign, I think it'll be enough to convince him.
Backup pick: Christine Todd Whitman (but only if Obama doesn't pick a female VP)
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 4:47 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 15, 2008
If this doesn't make your head explode, Part II....
Speaking in Aspen, CO, John McCain criticized Congress for going on recess "while people are paying $3.75 a gallon for gas." The few news reports I've seen are focusing on the "out of touch" aspect of the line—the audience of 800 began laughing and yelled that in Aspen they're actually paying nearly $5 a gallon for gas. But here's the mind-boggling part that I haven't seen reported along side the comment: McCain hasn't showed up to vote in the Senate since April 8.
Yesterday he claimed nations don't invade other nations in the 21st century, despite supporting the invasion of Iraq (and a possible follow-up in Iran), and now he criticizes Congress for taking a break when he's been absent for five months. He apparently thinks the American public is easily duped and has the attention span of a gnat. I guess we'll see if he's right in November.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 1:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 13, 2008
If this quote doesn't make your head explode...
"In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations."
- John McCain, speaking to reporters today about the conflict between Russia and Georgia.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 8:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 7, 2008
The myth of the horse race
Mark Nickolas at the Huffington Post does some of the math that I'd been meaning to do if I could find the time to dig through data and make fancy charts. He takes a look at popular vote and electoral vote margins from the last 20 elections to answer the media talking heads' question about why, if the public is so upset with the current Republican administration, the race is so close.
The answer: It's not. Everyone seems fixated on national tracking polls (that have consistently shown Obama leading, even if only by a few points) when they should be paying attention to state polls and, more importantly, the electoral vote predictions. Virtually every EV projection has Obama winning comfortably. That could obviously change in the next few months, but as the race currently stands, here's what we're looking at (270 votes are needed to win):
FiveThirtyEight: Obama 296, McCain 242
RealClearPolitics (w/ tossups): Obama 238, McCain 163, Tossups 137
RealClearPolitics (no tossups): Obama 322, McCain 216
Pollster: Obama 284, McCain 157, Tossups 97
Even the seemingly small margins in the national polls are more significant than they appear. Clinton won the popular vote by 5.6 percentage points in 1992, and had an electoral college margin of 202.
But the media has a vested interest in a close race—no one wants to watch nonstop punditry about a lopsided election. It's difficult to distinguish deliberate misrepresentation from incompetence/laziness with today's journalists. Are they deliberately portraying it as close to keep the public interested? Or do the daily tracking polls just offer them an easy way out of a real analysis of the race?
Because at this point, it's not a horse race. The dynamics could change and the election could tighten or even swing considerably in McCain's favor—it's happened before. But until the numbers drastically change, the general election looks like won't be nearly as competitive as the Democratic primary.
I like to use the analogy of last year's Major League Baseball playoffs, where the championship was effectively decided in the ALCS. The Colorado Rockies got hot at the end of the season and had a relatively easy path to the World Series, winning 21 of 22 games, but they were ultimately a weaker team than whatever the American League threw at them. The American League playoffs looked a little more like this year's Democratic primary, with the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians battling it in an exciting, back-and-forth seven game series. The actual World Series was a fairly boring sweep.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 8:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 6, 2008
Speculating...
I usually think the Obama team is pretty savvy when it comes to winning policy debates and framing their arguments, but they seem to be missing an obvious opportunity when it comes to the "to drill or not to drill" question. McCain is making his short term case for offshore drilling based on largely on oil speculation. And he's right that today's high oil prices have little to do with current supply and demand and are being driven upward by commodities traders investing in oil futures based on predicted supply and demand. If we make plans to increase future supply, McCain argues, speculation will decrease.
And I think there's an opening here for Obama to win the argument on McCain's terms. Speculation is based on both supply and demand, yet Republicans are only focusing on the supply side (naturally). But we've seen very recently that a drop in demand can deter speculation and send prices downward. So why hasn't Obama made the case that decreasing demand (by investing in alternative energies and, yes, inflating tire pressure) is just as effective as increasing supply when opposing offshore drilling? It seems that he could essentially argue that his plan will provide the same short term benefits without the longterm costs.
My understanding of economics is pretty limited, so I may be completely off the mark here. Is there any reason the supply-side argument makes more sense?
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 12:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 1, 2008
Is Obama too skinny to be president?
I know, it's a dumb question. In fact, it would be a struggle to think of a more irrelevant and mind-numbing question to ask related to the presidential election.
But it's currently plastered on the front page of the WSJ online.
We're engaged in two wars, the economy may be on the verge of a recession, oil prices are breaking records, the Department of Justice is breaking laws, the healthcare system is broken, there's a global food crisis, and more Americans think the country is on the wrong track than at any other point in history. And with all of these incredibly relevant issues to choose from, the Wall Street Journal decides to dedicate 1,400 words to analyzing whether or not "in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese," Obama's skinniness could be a liability.
Amy Chozick was actually paid to find quotes like, "I won't vote for any beanpole guy," which she pulled from a Yahoo politics message board. This is what passes for journalism today?
To be fair to the Wall Street Journal, few other publications have actually covered the issues in the last few weeks. Somehow we've managed to make Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Ludacris the focus of one of the most important elections in years.
Though the blame lies in part with the politicians at the center of this maddening popularity contest, that is expected to a certain degree. It's the media's eagerness to sensationalize and dumb-down that is the most disappointing.
Perhaps it is because I just watched Good Night, and Good Luck last night that I'm feeling particularly cynical and eager for November to arrive, but there's a line that Edward R. Murrow spoke in 1958 that seems particularly prescient today:
Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.
As he would say, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
UPDATE: Wow. Apparently the author's investigative journalism technique included going to Yahoo Message Boards and starting a thread asking:
Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his “no excess body fat”? Please let me know. Thanks!
The response that she followed up with and eventually whittled down to the "I won't vote for any beanpole guy," was:
Yes I think He is to skinny to be President.Hillary has a potbelly and chuckybutt I'd of Voted for Her.I won't vote for any beanpole guy.
The messages have apparently been deleted but you can still find a Google cache copy.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 8:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack