DRAFT MAHER 08!!

The Harvard Dems nearly had its first candidate to run while still a member in Mr. Andrew Gerard Maher '11. Mr. Maher, a devoted Democratic activist and upstanding member of the Bow, New Hampshire community, was asked by the state party to run for state representative in New Hampshire.

The filing deadline may have come and gone but the dream has not! New Hampshire needs change and there is only one 19 year old vertically challenged identical twin who can deliver it!

Many would say, how can a rising college sophomore be qualified to be a state representative? As his roommate the past year I can attest to his unique preparedness. Firstly, as I learned every friday morning when my Ec 10 PSet remained saddeningly hole riddles his facility with economics exceeds that of John McCain. Second, his New Hampshire accent, which he claims is nonexistent, is actually quite strong (for example he might say "I gawt some wicked snacks at Stawp and Shawp to eat while we watch the Sawx.") Thirdly, he does not smell bad and the Republican slate in Bow this year is particularly smelly.

Andrew, on behalf of the people of New Hampshire, I implore you to run! We need your leadership! If you ignore our calls you will end up like fellow draft dodger Al Gore, stroking your new found beard and belly.

Harvard Dems, lets Draft Maher! We raise the moneys and he raises the honeys!!

Should he need campaign ads, I offer this suggestion.

The Word of Wisdom is Dandy!!

Run, Andrew, Run!

H-Bomb in New Hampshire

Well, it's certainly been awhile since I last posted anything here. Only time will tell if this is fluke, or if I'm back for good. Why break my silence today? Because H-Bomb and in particular my friend Jenna Mellor got some great video up in New Hampshire, which I haven't seen posted or sent around yet. Keep watching until about a minute in when a major party candidate makes an appearance:

...amazing. You can find the rest here.

Now the fun begins...

It's incredible just how wrong so many polls were. Hillary's pulled through, defying talk of a double-digit loss, and won New Hampshire. The Clinton campaign worked overtime playing down expectations post-Iowa, and it pulled off big time. A few weeks ago, a three point NH win would have been seen as a major defeat for Hillary, and now she's the new Comeback Kid. Tim Russert just called it "one of the greatest political upsets in American political history."

Earlier today there was talk of her skipping a state or two, of her wealthy donors resorting to forming an independent group to try and swiftboat Obama, of the "end of the Clinton era." Despite fairly consistent leads all night, the networks refused to call it for hours, with the expectation that Obama would validate the polls and turn it around. And now, seeing how well they've shifted the message to that of a stunning comeback, I can't help but think it was all orchestrated to some extent.

Regardless, congratulations the Clinton campaign and Clinton supporters. As an Obama supporter, it's a tough loss. But I'm looking forward to the road ahead, and especially that more voters in more states (although still probably not my one-week-too-late February 12th vote in Maryland) will get a say. It's going to be a fun race.

Some immediate questions:

• When will the recently-departed candidates (Biden and Dodd) endorse, and who will they support? (And will it matter?)
  
• With the prospect of an early win by either Clinton or Obama fairly slim, how long will Gore be able to hold out on an endorsement of his own?
• Earlier today the extremely important Culinary Union in Nevada was poised to endorse Obama, almost handing him a victory there. Will they rethink that endorsement in light of Hillary's win?
• Will either of the remaining major candidates (Edwards and Richardson) take the opportunity to make more of an impact than they ever could by remaining in the race by dropping out and endorsing Obama or Clinton?

Update: Looks like Obama's still got the Culinary Union but Hillary got the endorsement of Nevada's Democratic Congresswoman. It's going to get interesting.

And the first votes are cast

While many of us are eagerly awaiting the results of today's (yes, it's finally the day) primary and plan on attentively watching the votes come in, for those who can't bear the wait the first votes have already been cast. CNN reports that Barack Obama and John McCain have carried the towns of Dixsville Notch and Hart's Location (pop. 72 and 42 respectively).

It's interesting to note that Barack has as a whopping 16 of the 23 votes cast by democratic voters in the two towns. While the voting turnout for the primary may be a couple of powers of ten greater, It looks a good start for the senator, even if it may not mean much.

And of course, as a side note, I must say that any village that has an episode of West Wing devoted to it must be pretty awesome.

Clinton office hostage situation

If you haven't heard yet, there was a hostage situation at Hillary Clinton's campaign offices in Rochester, NH (not New York, which someone told me today) today. Two hostages were released earlier; police aren't saying whether there are additional hostages in the building. Keep them in your thoughts.

Sununu, we hardly knew you

Conservative editor of the Manchester Union Leader Andrew Cline, who apparently has been reading Dem Apples, writes in the OpinionJournal about New Hampshire's shift towards Democratic politics. He makes the following augur about John Sununu's prospects:

His task now is to convince voters that he is an old-school New Hampshire Republican, not someone who lost his way in Washington. Should he succeed at doing that, the race may turn on whether voters will be tired of punishing all Republicans for the sins of Mr. Bush. If so, Mr. Sununu could hold onto his job for another six years. If not, he'll be a goner.

Given the polling in the race, it seems like "he'll be a goner" is the safer assumption.

In which Mike Gravel's effective campaign expenditures quadruple

Via DailyKos:

Some guy posted a Craigslist ad offering to pay people $25 each to put up Mike Gravel signs on their lawns.

I support Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. I will pay $25 to install a yard sign on your property. Urban areas and places with maximum traffic preferred. If you have a property with roadside view in New Hampshire email me your address and I will have a sign installed on your property and put $25 in an envelope in your mailbox so you can go have a beer or two with a friend and talk about Mike Gravel's candidacy. All I ask is that you keep the sign visible and spread the word.

Blue Hampshire points out that this is probably Greg Chase, a millionaire hedge fund manager, who has attempted to pull other stunts in Gravel's support (buying full-page paper ads, paying NBC to let Gravel into the next Democratic candidates' debate). Blue Hampshire complains about the violation of campaign finance laws. I agree it's a pretty nasty precedent, but - come on! It's Mike Gravel!

Of course, I am rather puzzled that there hasn't already been a groundswell of support for Gravel in New Hampshire, given the wide availability of his brilliant postmodern media offerings:

Jeanne Shaheen: Possibly Superhuman

DAMN. An A.R.G. poll pits the IOP's own Jeanne Shaheen against NH's incumbent senator John Sununu, and, well... DAMN.

Shaheen -- 57%

Undecided -- 14%

I realize New Hampshire has been trending Democratic lately, but holy fucking shit. When was the last time you saw numbers like this for an incumbent this early? My God, you could nominate Jesus against an incumbent in most states and he'd struggle to break 40. This is insane! She even pulls in 30% of Republicans, for crying out loud. Pardon my hysteria but this is unprecedented.

...Yes, considering the political climate up there, any Dem could give Sununu a serious challenge; but Shaheen would wipe the floor with him. It would be an absolute joy to watch. And I don't know much about the candidate currently in the race, Katrina Swett, but I hear she's -- dare I say it -- sweating over her ties to Joe Lieberman. There's also a guy named Marchand, who seems nice, and a few other potentials; but you have to agree that by comparison to Shaheen everybody else is negligible.

Kos thinks she's going to run, but Kos has been wrong before, and the Governor has said time and again that she wants to stay at Harvard. We all know how the IOP can lull people into complacency. But, these numbers... all I know is, if come September Governor Shaheen wants to stay in that cushy office, a little bit of IOP arson might just be in order.

...Actually that sounds like a good idea anyway.

(h/t Political Wire)

Roundup -- So Close And Yet So Far

About this time in April at Harvard everything comes to a head. It dawns on you, and your TFs, that we have what -- five, six weeks left of classes? Holy shit. Crunch time. You expect the next 20 days or so to just rocket by in a barrage of papers and problem sets and Student Group Activities and housing lotteries and PANIC! But of course, time never goes slower than when you have lots of unpleasant crap to do, and you'll still spend what feels like most of the day watching asinine YouTube videos and weeping softly into your keyboard. The end result being, from now until reading period will feel like longer than the rest of the year combined. Hooray for college! Now look at this:

My favorite graph of all time. (Professor Pollkatz puts it together.) I love to show it to haters who claim that public opinion surveys are arbitrary or inaccurate -- TRY and tell me there's no science to that trend.

But the real insight here: look closely. The only periods post-9/11 where Bush approval has increased or levelled (other than the spikes for the invasion of Iraq and the capture of Saddam) were July-December 2002, June-December 2004, and June-October 2006, all of which contained intense electoral campaigning which put the GOP in a better light. (Clearly, by the end of the 06 cycle, Dem messaging had got through and negated that effect.) At all other times, Bush's approval has been constantly declining at a remarkably consistent rate, and it continues to today. Logically, then, one should not necessarily assume it's going to bottom out. We could potentially see a decline even further, below Nixon territory and into uncharted waters, within the next few months. Hypothetically: impeachment could be on the table, and more importantly it could be widely popular.

Anyway. Why dwell on the "public" and its silly "opinions"? We have more pressing roundup matters to attend to! Like:

--STUPID BULLSHIT! Yes, the White House claims that it has magically "lost" a jillion emails that might pertain to the fired attorneys, presumably while the I.T. guys were waxing out the Intertubes. Every commenter on Daily Kos immediately pointed out how patently ridiculous this is; even Patrick Leahy had the sense to describe it as a "dog ate my homework" excuse. (DKos's Kagro X went on to suggest that we start calling this scandal "DogAte." You know, like Watergate and Travelgate, except cleverer. Truly we live in the end times.) Up next: Alberto Gonzales gets "stuck in traffic" on the way to his Senate committee deposition and is never heard from again.

--On a happier note: warm welcome to Endria Richardson, making her blogdebut at Cambridge Common with some cool poetry. Looking forward to more!

--Read David Sirota on the so-called "labor shortage," which he argues is a fiction produced by business interests trying to justify outsourcing and keep costs under control -- meanwhile wages here continue to stagnate (and let's not even get into the ugly truth about disposable income and purchasing power). Our economy is in deep shit. (But hey, did you hear? That American Idol guy survived another round! BIG NEWS!)

--An unwitting RedState writer sums up the mentality of the entire conservative intellectual movement. Special treat for Garrett:

I was listening to the re-run of an obvious spinster-to-be named Jenny Ballantine on Rush Limbaugh's radio show as she was kvetching and whining in New Hampshire in front of the Edwards "Couple" and I thought of that flag with the snake that said "Don't Tread on Me." It's still on the license plate, if I'm not mistaken.

Whatever happened to the rock-ribbed New Englanders that Norman Rockwell immortalized back in the day when Life Magazine and Saturday Evening Post covers portrayed a different reality, one of a nation that worked out its difficulties through grit and gumption?

Yup. That'll solve our problems: grit and gumption. And we'll all wear an onion on our belt, 'cause it's the style at the time. Prohibition forever!

--Speaking of the olden days, Phyllis Schlafly is still alive and still writing op-eds about those darn feminists. Who'd have guessed?

--Have you been following the Michael Godelia story? Me neither. But kudos to Kameron Collins for handling it with such class. He's done the Harvard community a service.

--Mystery Pollster has a great look at some recent FOX polls that are insanely, ridiculously biased. We call them a "news" organization why?

--Best look yet at the New Populism, and how John Edwards fits into it. If I say it enough times maybe you guys will listen: this is how we win. "Edwards is a one-man 50-state strategy."

--If you'd like to be really disturbed, watch this British documentary on the Westboro Baptist Church (those people who protest soldiers' funerals). It's like a car accident, you can't tear your eyes away.

--MyDD's Matt Stoller, who has been strange and off-kilter lately, suddenly shouts out a wonderful and impassioned articulation of everything the New "Netroots" Left (or whatever we're called) stands for. Read it.

--Random Wikipedia Curiosity: "Erdős–Bacon number." Mathematicians apparently have lots of time on their hands.

--Band Madness's 4th round ends at 4:00, and Neil Young needs our help. He's down 400-some votes to Guns 'n' Roses. This cannot stand (I mean, "Sweet Child of Mine" is classic, but come on.) We can do it, liberals!

..AND that's all I got, save a closer; of all the tributes I've seen for the late Kurt Vonnegut -- who was one of my heroes, literary and otherwise -- James Wolcott's somehow seems to be the most appropriate.

But I can't say the atmosphere was any cheerier when I left. I was escorted down a corridor, a door opened, and standing there, waiting to enter, was Kurt Vonnegut, looking rumpled, baffled, and tired after his long inward journey through life. It was such a startling apparition--I had no idea Vonnegut had been booked and was taping immediately after me--that I couldn't even rustle up a hello, not that he seemed to notice. He was there to do his television duty, no more, no less. The look on his face so matched the mood in the studio that additional comment seemed superfluous. I wonder what he and Cavett chatted about during the commercial breaks, or if in lieu of small talk they sank into separate compartments of silence as the crew made busy little adjustments to the lights, sound levels, camera angles. It was all so long ago, sometime during the Age of Chivalry. Anyway, that's my non story about not meeting Kurt Vonnegut.

So it goes. This is an open thread.

I Saw Barack Obama In New Hampshire Today

I went up to New Hampshire today for the town hall with Barack Obama. This was my second time seeing him in person and both times I came away really engaged by him. I first saw him about 3 months ago and since then I have drifted away, considering other candidates such as Edwards for his focus on poverty and Clinton for her campaign's expertise. However, today reaffirmed my enthusiasm for Obama. Others who were there with me expressed similar feelings, saying unanimously that they were "impressed" by him.

Read more »

Popped-Collar Conservatism

Garrett may well be right that Granite State Republicans seem to be going the way of the dodo. What's more, the Republicans they do have up there are of a curious variety. Consider the following words from former Dartmouth professor and National Review editor Jeffrey Hart:

"My conservatism is aristocratic in spirit, anti-populist and rooted in the Northeast. It is Burke brought up to date. A ‘social conservative’ in my view is not a moral authoritarian Evangelical who wants to push people around, but an American gentleman, conservative in a social sense. He has gone to a good school, maybe shops at J. Press, maybe plays tennis or golf, and drinks either Bombay or Beefeater martinis, or maybe Dewar's on the rocks, or both."

Of course I knew that there were still some country-club northeastern Republicans who hadn't crossed over to our side of the aisle yet, but it's still a little strange to see someone be so candid about it. This quotation is so easy to make fun of that I'm not even going to try. What's even more interesting, though, is the rest of the article from which that quotation is taken. Hart says some things that could very well have come from the pen of Atrios or our very own Markus Kolic:

"Never to be out-extremed, Ponnuru declared editorially in NR that a single embryo (e.g., fertilized egg) 'must not be destroyed no matter how noble the cause.' No matter how noble the cause. In other words, the single cell is to be absolutized over every other consideration. WHHHHeeeeeeee! Even curing bubonic plague. Even end of the world! It is a very peculiar kind of conservatism that values life only in utero."

"I certainly was not aboard that Ship of Fools, so-called 'conservatives' as well as 'neo-conservatives' – more correctly neo-trotskyites – who sailed with Bush right over Niagra Falls and smashed to pieces on the rocks of reality below."

"[Bush] is a right-wing ideologue whose abstract imperatives across the board are characteristically disconnected from actuality. That is precisely the reason why he is a failed president."

So what you have here is a dyed-in-the-wool fusionist conservative who absolutely despises Bush. Must be something in the water up there, Garrett.

Indeed, as a final aside, I suspect that Hart's political views are in most respects not all that different from mine. I probably favor a little bit more in the way of social spending than he does, but as far as I can tell we're both essentially pragmatists with a libertarian bent. And yet it's only a slight exaggeration to say that I despise everything he stands for. That, in the end, is why I'm a Democrat. I may have won the Dem Apples "Republican Lite" award (of which I'm immensely proud, by the way, and no, Alex Burns, you can't have it, even if you have taken over my magazine), but I still happily associate myself with these timeless words from Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, quoted in a piece by the Weekly Standard's Matt Labash:

"After hours of listening to Mudcat talk about how he hates foreign interventions but supports a robust military, about how he detests high taxes and profligate spending, about how he can't stand demonizing all rich people as greedheads, and how he's fervently pro-Second Amendment, I tell him he sounds an awful lot like an old-school Republican. Why not save some time and just become one? 'Because since the beginning of time, the big sonofabitch has kicked the little sonofabitch's ass,' he says. 'Republicans are the big sonsofbitches. And I happen to like the little sonsofbitches. They're my people.'"

Looks Like We'll Live Free Rather Than Die

As Democrats in Massachusetts, our jubilation about this Tuesday centers mostly around the sweeping victories in Washington and in the hope-hope hope mchope that's bubbling up on Beacon Hill¹.

But if you want to truly feel OMG LOL LIKE SO HAPPY, then I kindly and selfishly turn your attention to the north, into the great white wilderness of my home state.

Let's set the stage, first, for you foreign nationals from places like, let's say, Pennsylvania. New Hampshire has long been considered the conservative bastion of the northeast, famous for its rural makeup, the weakness of its Democratic organization, and the fact that raising taxes in the ol' Granite State has historically been less popular than clubbing babies. Our Congressional delegation to both the House and Senate has been Republican for a long time now, and we're the only northeastern state to have voted Red in 2000.

Fast-forward to today. In two of the most surprising House elections in the nation, both of our representatives were kicked out of office, replaced by Democrats who weren't even considered serious challengers. Our Democratic governor John Lynch won re-election after his first two-year term with 74% of the vote—swamping such 'landslides' as Schwarzenegger in California and Spitzer in New York. And, most significantly, Democrats swept both the NH House and Senate, as well as the Executive Council, putting New Hampshire under one-party Democratic rule for the first time since 1874.

That's pretty amazing. And what's more amazing is that this is in a state which is not by any means a liberal bastion and in which the Republican delegation has been traditionally quite moderate. My parents and many people I know who are quite liberal still hesitated whether to vote against our sitting representatives, as they are largely well-regarded. There's a conventional wisdom that New Hampshire's liberalization has been a result of spillover from Massachusetts (as the New York Times stupidly dittoes in its banal analysis), but a quick look at the electoral map shows that the bluest districts are those farthest from Boston—and the most heavily populated by the oft-denigrated rural New Hampshire yokel.

So what happened? My guess: New Hampshire, along with other bellwethers like Montana, signals the beginning of a changing relationship between Democrats and rural voters. For our part, we've started putting aside our prejudiced, stupid views of rural America as flyover country (though we still have far to go). And on the other side, rural voters are damn smart, I think, and they've finally reckoned with the fact that Republican rule just plain sucks.



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