Adventures in Syberspace

Illinois Politics: The Laughs Keep Coming!

For those of you outside the Illinois area (or for those of you not paying attention), what Rod Blagojevich got started was just the beginning. The man who won the Democratic primary for Lieutenant Governor is a man named Scott Cohen (read more about him here). It was revealed the day after he won the primary that his arrest in 2005 was due to an incident wherein he allegedly put a knife to the throat of his then-girlfriend, a woman who pleaded guilty to prostitution later that month. His charges were later dropped. Also, in December his ex-wife accused him of being $5400 behind in child support payments, despite the fact that Cohen spent $2 million of his own money to finance his campaign. Sounds like a swell guy.

This wouldn't be so big of a deal except for this: Illinois is one of seven states that chooses the lieutenant governor and governor separately in primary elections, but then requires the two to run together as one ticket in the general election. So incumbent Pat Quinn (who ironically was himself elected Lieutenant Governor and is now an incumbent only because of Blagojevich's shenanigans) is now saddled with this fella whether he likes it or not. Many Democratic leaders have called for Cohen to step down, but thus far he has refused to do so.

The reason this way of electing the governor was put in place was because in 1968, a Republican was elected governor and a Democrat elected lieutenant governor, so in 1970 they forced the two to run as a ticket. But the state has had the ability under the current constitution to ensure that a party's nominee could choose his running mate; they just never made it happen. Note to the other six states that run their elections this way: you may want to look into making some changes before this happens to you.

For the sheer comedy of it all, I'm grateful. Stay tuned!

It's the Candidate, Stupid

If you spend any time around Republicans, you’ll hear them using the words “liberal” and “media” together like “bread” and “butter.” Sometimes the term “elite” is also added in for good measure. If you believe the conspiracy theories, this liberal media is singularly responsible for the creation of the celebrity of Barack Obama. “Poor John McCain,” the theory goes. “If only he had the liberal media machine behind him, maybe he’d be leading in all the polls.”

Granted, there is no doubt that many of our country’s most prominent newspapers and magazines unabashedly support the more liberal candidate. Ted Turner doesn’t try to hide his political colors, so his magazine and TV station will reflect that. A popular YouTube clip shows CNN’s Jack Cafferty calling a Katie Couric-Sarah Palin interview “one of the most pathetic pieces of tape I have ever seen." So if you’re looking only at this election, it would be easy to conclude that the media is responsible for Obama’s popularity.

But here’s my question: if the liberal media is so darn powerful, how has our country elected a Republican president the past two elections? And in five of our last seven? Surely if they were as powerful as they are touted, the Republican candidates would have been the Washington Generals to the Democrats’ Harlem Globetrotters.

People forget the road that Obama took even to get to this place. It took a scandal to turn away the Daley Machine’s first choice of Blair Hull for the Democratic nomination for US Senate in 2004. Obama was a face in the crowd before the controversies surrounding Hull’s divorce caused his star to fall. Even then, it took a very effective TV ad featuring Sen. Paul Simon’s daughter for Obama to gather the attention that eventually led him to victory in the primary. The moment that thrust him onto the national stage, his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, never would have happened had he not earned the nomination. None of that had anything to do with the media.

It’s clearly more complicated than this, but the reality is that our country’s presidents are chosen from a combination of a couple key factors: fortuitous political timing and being the “better” candidate; that is, the candidate that connects better with the average voter. In 2000, Gore might have been the better candidate and indeed, he got more popular votes, but the lingering anti-Clinton resentment gave Bush the narrow majority of electoral votes. In 2004, Bush won re-election because of the public’s unwillingness to change leaders mid-stream in the war and Kerry’s failure to stand for much. Clinton won his elections because of his ability to “feel your pain.” In ’92, Perot helped take votes away from Papa Bush and in ’96, Dole had no platform.

With all due respect to Barack Obama’s vision of a truly United States of America, the one that isn’t blue or red, we are as polarized as we have been in a long time. It is unlikely that we will soon see a candidate unify our nation in the way that Ronald Reagan did in ’84, capturing 49 of the 50 states (the liberal media must have really been off its game …or was there a vast right-wing media at work back then?) The Tribune’s historic endorsement of Barack Obama flies in the face of the liberal media effect as well. Perhaps if Obama wins tonight, there will be a simple reason: he’s the better candidate.

The roots of Socialism

Read this excerpt from a personal letter and guess who wrote it.

"I don’t mean your giving should make life easy for others and hard for yourselves. I only mean that there should be some equality. Right now you have plenty and can help those who are in need. Later, they will have plenty and can share with you when you need it. In this way, things will be equal."

So who do you think wrote it? Karl Marx? Mao Tse Tung? Barack Obama? Nope. It's the Apostle Paul from his second letter to the church in Corinth. What? The Apostle Paul believed in the redistribution of wealth? So does that mean Paul was a Socialist? I thought Paul was a Christian or something.

Updated electoral map

7 weeks ago, I put an interactive electoral map on my blog. It's time to look at it again, with the election just 11 days away. Check out the new version by clicking here. By most pollsters' predictions, it will take a small miracle for McCain to overcome Obama's lead. The original map from September 4th is below.

But first...I wrote this on August 29th, the day Palin was announced as McCain's VP choice:
"I’m a little shocked that anyone thinks this is anything but a desperate, kneejerk response to trying to court Hillary supporters. Seriously: mayor of a small town, former beauty pageant runner-up, and governor of one of the smallest states (population-wise) in the country? This will energize the conservatives but I think will push the moderates to the left. She seems like a spunky, cool person with strong convictions which is great, but…prepared to be a heartbeat away from leading the most powerful nation in the world?

This isn’t Dan Quayle– remember that Quayle won one election. Folks, this is Adm. James Stockdale, Perot’s VP choice in 1992: in my opinion, a deal-breaker."

Almost two months later, I kind of feel like maybe I was right.

A cool, interactive, electoral map

I've got a lot of things to blog about related to the political campaign, but I thought I'd start it off with this really cool electoral map put out by the LA times that allows you to imagine all of the ways one candidate or another could get to the needed 270 electoral votes. Have fun!

Who gets elected?

In honor of today's Super Tuesday elections (and a Happy 8th Birthday to my daughter Ellie), I thought I'd throw in my analysis of who is the most likely person to get elected this year. I received an e-mail recently from a friend detailing how, in recent history, US senators have fared very poorly against those who held other offices, particularly Governors. For instance, in the last 50 years, presidential losers include Senators John Kerry, Al Gore, Bob Dole, Walter Mondale, George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey, and Barry Goldwater. Winners include Governors Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush (W). This year, it looks as though the Senator shut-out will be broken, as Senators Clinton, Obama, or McCain will likely be our next president, baffling Governors Huckabee and Romney.

You could read a lot into this, as some have, specifically that governors are better suited to be presidents because they're the top of the food chain, while senators are merely one of many leaders. There could be something to that. But what I offer to you is this: the person most likely to get elected is the one who comes across as generally competent and then is the most likable. Likability, at the end of the day, is what got Clinton elected twice, and then got Bush elected twice. We all thought Clinton could "feel our pain" so he coupled likability with empathy. And as nice a guy as Bob Dole was, nobody could stand how strange a guy he was. Ditto for Al Gore and John Kerry. Who would you rather go have a burger with: W, Gore, or Kerry? Politics aside, most people would have said W.

So on the likability scale, I think Hillary is doomed, and it will be a fight to the finish between McCain and Obama. Obama is one of the most charismatic figures in the history of American politics, but McCain is the self-proclaimed Straight Talker who was a Vietnam POW. If I had to guess, his views on abortion and the war will keep him out of the White House.

Of course, it's also all about the swing states. I'll blog about that another time.

A quick comeback: Obama vs. Clinton

I'm not a hater. I'm not trying to endorse a candidate or vilify another one. But watch this little clip, and you can see why, in my opinion (and provided he doesn't stumble significantly), Hillary is likely to lose and Barack is likely to win the democratic nomination. Clinton awkwardly laughs at a question directed to Obama in an attempt to punctuate the question. Obama smiles graciously, but then provides an unbelievable comeback. Watch what I'm talking about.

He's a sharp one. And she just comes across as trying WAY too hard.