Uppity

This shit is just racist.

And so, let me tell you, is all the talk about "small-town values" and "Barack Obama thinks he's special" and everything else they said at that odious, repulsive, sickening Republican convention. It's all just coded Southern Strategy garbage. I come from a small town, and I promise you, our "values" are exactly the same as the values of city people, except maybe we care a little more about corn subsidies and -- well -- there don't happen to be any black people out here. That's what "small town values" means. The whole thing amounts to "Barack Obama, stay out of our house."

Not that you'd know it from the networks. I've been at home this week, relying on CNN and MSNBC for most of my news because our internet is not quite state-of-the-art, and all they ever talk about is goddamn Sarah Palin. Here is a woman who signifies nothing new about anything and serves only to waste airtime we could be spending on unemployment. But: Hockey mom! Pregnant daughter! Moose stew! Who gives a shit? She's there to wink at their racist, fundamentalist base, and nothing else. Yet her religious fanaticisim gets the cutesy treatment normally reserved for puff pieces about bible-thumpers who run foster homes (awww! babies!), and the only person I've seen on TV to even broach the race issue was Katrina Vanden Heuvel from the Nation -- at which point Larry King nervously cut her off.

Luckily the Obama campaign has its head on its shoulders and continues to, you know, campaign in swing states while McCain's people are focused on these political Special Olympics. Fact is this isn't a predominantly rural country anymore -- you don't win Colorado by turning out mountain men, you win it in the Denver-Boulder-Colorado Springs metropolitan area, and Democrats know it. I'd be THRILLED to watch the McCain campaign dig its own grave by playing to the racist base, because that's a 50%+1 strategy to begin with, one that Bush barely scraped by on; with that kind of thinking, just a little demographic shift or an opponent who scrambles the turnout model is enough to send the other guys to a big party in Atlanta -- and you wake up one morning to learn you're stuck in Hazzard County. Which is where the entire Republican Party belongs.

BUT it won't stop the Republicans, and their useful idiots on the network news, from lecturing us about "patriotism" and the "heartland" until everyone sane has finally gone crazy and everyone crazy sounds sane. My God.

Well... that felt good to get off my chest. See you all next week.

Poll: Statistical Tie in... Nevada?

Geez but the Obama campaign is a game-changer. Mason-Dixon has McCain 44%-42% Obama (16% undecided, MoE 4%) in Nevada, ordinarily a solid red state.

The swing region, if you're curious, is traditionally Republican Washoe County, which includes Reno and a sizable swath of desert towns. It's for McCain by just 3%; the Las Vegas metro area is for Obama (lots of unionized workers there) and the rural counties are strongly McCain. Another interesting figure: Hispanics are for Obama by a potentially decisive margin of 53%-28%. Not sure what any of that signifies.

(Note: I actually take the position, and I'll explain this in a long post sometime, that this election comes down 100% to Ohio and everything else is bullshit. Nevertheless it's interesting and comforting to see how Obama's widening the playing field.)

Coming back to Harvard after a couple weeks with your family, you notice--

--how utterly repulsive Harvard Square actually is. Jeebus. I guess we get inured to it, but JFK Street seen through clear eyes is a hellscape of fashion boutiques, redundant banks, overpriced restaurants with names like "Z-Square", and all the other hideous blight that comes from living with pretentious wealthy people. You can't walk down those sidewalks without bumping into either a douchebag or a hipster, usually both, and you can't buy a cheap hamburger to save your life. This is supposed to be a college town! What the hell?

I think I would have liked Harvard Square better when it looked like this:

or at least this:

(Dig the tiny snowplow in front of the bus there. That was really the best they could do?) (Both these pictures are from the Cambridge Historical Commission, by the way, and their history of Harvard Square is worth reading if you're bored.)

That's all I have to say. How was your vacation?

Worth remembering for NH campaigners

The latest Globe/UNH poll -- results (PDF) here, boring Globe analysis here -- has an instructive lesson in understanding the condition of the New Hampshire primary. Even though voters there have been subjected for months to unbelievably intense lobbying by all possible candidates, what portion of them are still undecided?

48%.

Nearly half of NH voters are still "trying to decide" which candidate they support (and that figure's of likely voters, not just registered voters, who we can safely assume would show even less commitment). Another 28% are "leaning", leaving less than a quarter that's solidly committed to its candidate. For all the hooting and hollering about Hillary's "inevitability," the fact is there's still tremendous fluidity in the New Hampshire electorate. Here's an example that may jog your memory:

And that's an eighteen-day shift. With roughly two months to go at this point and this many people still undecided, there's plenty of room for any candidate to overtake Senator Clinton, or for her to build a totally unstoppable lead. NH is still anybody's game.

OTHER INTERESTING FINDINGS FROM THIS POLL (and I love UNH for releasing a wonderfully complete set of crosstabs and a full questionnaire -- more like this, please, pollsters):

...Obama leads among independents, 29% to Clinton's 22%. (Richardson does disproportionately well among independents, Edwards struggles)...

...Clinton and Edwards seem to be fighting for the same demographic, while Obama and Richardson are competing for a different set of voters; the former disproportionately win voters who are more partisan, have lower incomes, and are less educated, while the latter take more educated/wealthy and less partisan voters. (The most extreme figure: voters with a high school diploma or less favor Clinton overwhelmingly, 54% to Edwards and Richardson's 13% each, and Obama at just 9%. Meanwhile college grads and post-grads are split almost evenly between Obama and Clinton.) This is consistent with the conventional wisdom, which paints Obama as a sort of Gary Hart figure who appeals to more cerebral, creative-class Democrats but not so much the rank-and-file -- and it explains why Edwards (badly in need of momentum) has been consistently attacking Clinton but not Obama, since attacks on Obama would gain him nothing, whereas taking down Clinton removes the only barrier between his populism and its natural constituency...

...The notable exception to this pattern is secular voters (those who attend religious services less than 1-2 times a month, or never), who you'd think would trend to Obama with their stereotypical liberal-elite counterparts; not so. In fact Clinton is disproportionately strong among the non-religious. (This tracks with what Chris Bowers has been saying about the collapse of the Obama coalition, though I wouldn't be quite as dramatic or unequivocal as he is considering the fluidity of the race)...

...My knowledge of NH geography is limited (Garrett?), but there seem to be some interesting local trends -- for instance, Clinton pwns everybody in Manchester (50% to Obama's 18%, and Edwards at a pathetic 4%), but she's comparatively weak in the Connecticut Valley where Obama's sneaking up on her at 24% to her 28%, and John Edwards has a big base in the "Central/Lakes" region where he pulls 23% (ahead of Obama's 18%, in fact, and a comparatively small 12% behind Clinton). These are small samples with presumably large MoEs, so take them with a grain of salt, but it's interesting to see an urban-rural divide taking shape...

Anyway. Of course you cannot extrapolate from these numbers to anything nationwide, for the simple reason that there's no minorities involved (the fact that the two early states are both lily-white is a scandal of serious proportions) -- the race factor is absolutely enormous in presidential politics, especially when we have both a black candidate and one who has longstanding ties to the black community. But these numbers are nevertheless more valuable than the national polls being shit out in the press every other day (those results are almost meaningless, since only political junkies and early-state voters are seriously paying attention right now); and they portray a New Hampshire electorate that's divided and unsure of itself, fertile ground for a big-time political shift.

The Value of Front-Loaded Primaries

The Crimson has an editorial today that, typically, decries the Death of Democracy and Decline of Civilization, oh woe is us, etc.; this week's villain is the front-loaded 2008 primary schedule. Seems that the preponderance of large-population big-money states leaping into the early primary season (CA, FL, etc.) is "disenfranchis[ing] the smaller states" and ruining "the time-honored practice of retail politics" by forcing candidates to play financial and political hardball right away.

To be fair to Plympton St., this is not just a boring argument, it's also an unoriginal one. Stephen Dewey made this point seven months ago on RedIvy after Dems brought NV and SC into the inner circle, and I argued with him at length about it then. (As usual, we all wound up slinging personal insults. Good times.) And this discussion has turned up constantly on blogs and editorial pages across the nation.

So rather than rehash the argument at length, let me make it concisely: the death of retail politics, while sad, is inevitable and we'd be stupid to resist it. Why put a candidate through the Iowa/New Hampshire slog, glad-handing in cafés, when the real skills they'll need to win elections are -- honestly -- fundraising and mass-media prowess, and when the battlefields we need to win are not "small-town" but very much suburban and urban? I think it's fairly obvious. This is of course a pragmatic perspective, though (it amounts to "do what you have to to win"); since the Crimson seems more interested in a dreamy-eyed normative approach, let's take a moment to address their perspective.

The Crimson makes two points. First they wistfully reflect that voters in these small states can make a more informed decision after intimately experiencing the presidential candidates on a personal level; to which I reply, it's not necessarily desirable to have a candidate that just appeals to that sector of voter or that style of politics, particularly when the majority of Americans are tuned in to the nation entirely through TV and the Internet, and when the majority of Americans neither expect nor need personal contact from their political leaders. (Not to mention, in today's technological and media climate, the idea that you can do anything "intimate" to begin with is laughable on its face. Case in point: Macaca.)

Second, the Crimson suggests that this primary system makes money the determining factor and forces out financial-underdog candidates; while they describe a real problem here, the solution to this is comprehensive campaign finance reform, not a regression to old-style politics. Their approach would only delay the onset of the big-money game, not end it.

Logically their points are without merit. So what this attitude essentially flows from, ultimately, is irrational: a romanticization of the small primary states. Political observers have always had this cute idea that New England town meetings and Iowa union halls contain some kind of magical democratic spark, that alights upon Good People to Lead Our Nation and then brings them to the front of the primary process. Bullshit. These are elections like any other, fought on the ground by gritty organizers, and often decided by luck or dirty tricks; Bill Clinton did not become the Comeback Kid just by being pleasant and likeable, folks, he came back by playing the game well. He could just as easily have applied his political genius to New York and California if that had been necessary.

Thus, why should we focus political energy on these small, irrelevant, primarily rural states -- which are ludicrously non-representative of the nation in any demographic sense -- when we could focus on states which do reflect the country and the politics it employs? Such as, say, FLORIDA, which in the past has kind of been important in determining presidential elections? It is obvious from every perspective that a primary system more focused on large states serves us better.

Yes, the financial hurdles are a problem. But on that issue, and on the question of front-loading as a whole, the Crimson's attitude is completely wrong-headed. We should not be swayed by calls for a traditionalist primary system; the Party and the country are moving in the right direction.

What's Happening to St. Louis Schools?

Somewhat randomly I stumbled on this story, which grabbed my eye, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

State moves to take over St. Louis schools

JEFFERSON CITY -- The State Board of Education voted this morning to take the first step to intervene in the St. Louis Public Schools, despite parents and teachers who disrupted their meeting...

...an appointed board could be running the St. Louis schools by this summer, relegating the elected School Board to the sidelines...

[Some board members] also expressed concern that the board has no St. Louis representative at the moment, after a state senator refused to support Gov. Matt Blunt's nominee, a woman who has been active in efforts to help students switch to private schools.

"Where is the voice of St. Louis? It's not here," St. Louis Superintendent Diana Bourisaw said after the vote."

This is a story with many facets, most of which (not being familiar with the backstory) I don't understand. But the gist of it is, Missouri's Republican governor has decided to strong-arm the city into running its schools his way, whether they like it or not. And that apparently involves putting privatization advocates on the board.

And the subtext here is even more troubling -- see, the City of St. Louis is in an odd position, because its official city limits are tiny. The vast majority of metropolitan St. Louis' population lives outside it; the city proper is mostly just office buildings and slums. (Thus it is one of the few major cities in America whose population technically shrank in the 20th century, rivalled only by Hartford, Connecticut.)

St. Louis is 51% African-American and has a median household income of $29,000. By contrast, the state of Missouri on the whole is 87% white and has median household income of $38,000.

So what we have is an impoverished, heavily African-American city, whose sovereignty over its education is being forcibly usurped by a heavily Caucasian (and Republican-governed) state -- which, as noted above, intends to operate these schools through a board which has no members from St. Louis at all.

Draw your own conclusions.