bad and worse September 30, 2008

The Palin bounce (down the stairs) effect is now confirmed.  After seeing acts like this, Dems no long need to point out Palin’s total lack of qualification to be veep, because the R’s are doing it for them.  Palin is now an anchor on John McCain’s boat, no longer the helium helping him rise.  The McCain/Palin numbers will only drop from here, and the downtrend will be due both to McCain’s economy-managing fiasco as much as from Palin’s stunning unsuitability for the job.  The McCain campaign is clearly shielding her from further public interviews and contact with the press as they can’t afford more Couric-type interviews.

As far as the markets, the left/right divide on the $700B Paulson power grab has been fascinating to watch.  In Colorado the voting outcome was mixed.  Those on the left and right in safe seats voted Y (Degette, Perlmutter and Tancredo) and neither of these players are necessarily considered moderates.  The Nay votes were both from contested races (Udall and Musgrave) and from a D (Salazar) and R (Lamborn) in safe seats.   In other words, there’s no real pattern here.  The media has made much of the fact that rank-and-file R’s voted against the plan across the country (and they did by 2-1) just as 40% of rank-and-file D’s did, showing (supposedly) that conservatives and liberals both are in agreement on hating the compromise Paulson Power Grab, just for different reasons.

Are the reasons really that different?  R’s, D’s and moderates all around see the same things here: just two weeks ago Paulson, Bernanke, Bush, McCain, etc. were all spouting that the fundamentals of the economy were strong and that everything was roses.  Now they are asking for $700 billion in taxpayer money in a panic rush, telling us that if they don’t get it the economy is gonzo.  Voters are very rationally asking the WTF question while their reps are squirming around, ready to push the nuclear button after about two days of debate.  Again, it’s times like this I am thankful we have a slow Congress designed to make sure we don’t make panic decisions.

Finally, speaking of the Paulson Power Grab, if you thought the weekend compromise bill ameliorated the No Longer Invisible Hand provisions, think again: 

What attracted far less notice in the bill was a set of provisions that would have given Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson virtually unfettered authority to set up and run the new organization designed to stabilize the financial system — bypassing federal acquisition rules and competitive hiring procedures in the process.

The 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act would have allowed Paulson and his eventual successor to waive provisions of the Federal Acquisition Regulation “upon a determination that urgent and compelling circumstances make compliance with such provisions contrary to the public interest.”

“It’s unprecedented in American history and American government,” said Donald F. Kettl, a political analyst and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “The blank check is blanker still given that we don’t know who will be signing dollar bills on Jan. 21.”

The department would have had to notify the House Financial Services and Oversight and Government Reform committees, as well as the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs committees of any waiver within seven days. But the bill would not have granted the panels explicit power to block any such contract.

And it goes on and on….

power corrupts? really? September 24, 2008

I’m having a hard time not falling on the floor laughing every time Paulson opens his mouth, Bernanke gives a “stern warning,” and Dick Cheney is spotted coming out of a meeting with Congressional Republicans in which he begged them to support imposing socialism on America’s capital markets.

Fortunately in times like this we do have a Congress.  Congress was designed precisely for this purpose: to make sure that lawmaking is a very slow, deliberate process that is insulated as much as possible from acting out of panic.  Paulson and Bernanke can’t help it because they live in panic spheres, they have never lived outside of the high-risk, no-reality world of Wall Street and the Fed, and they seemingly have no perspective on the moral hazard they are trying to create here.  But by its very nature Congress does have this perspective, and even though it does at times ignore the moral hazard risks in making its decisions, it is still an institution designed to make sure that at the very least, more than just one or two people agree that the moral hazard risks are worth being ignored.

Sportsmen for Obama September 22, 2008

Anybody who has spent more than 2 minutes in politics in America knows that real political power lies in knowing, understanding and managing the myriad distinct constituencies we have in this land.  For instance, Sarah Palin as a proud “Hockey mom?”  As easy as it appears to be to draw well-defined distinctions, clearly there is no single constituency that can be labeled “Hockey Moms.”  Instead you have 40-something hockey moms who lean left and have right-voting husbands, 30-something hockey moms who just bought the new Metallica album but usually vote Republican, 42-yr old Hispanic hockey moms who have 3 dogs, etc.   

And so it is with people who own and use guns.  To those who do not, especially those of the metro East Coast political analysis cadre, there probably isn’t much perceived nuance: if you own a gun, especially if you own one for hunting, you’re voting with the NRA and therefore with the Republicans. This, of course, is absurd, but strange as it may seem, the NRA loves this perceived distinction.  It gives them a strong wedge issue with which to stoke their funding base, so the NRA does nothing to disabuse the public of the perception.  

Fortunately for America, while the NRA does dominate gun politics here, it does not represent all (or probably even a majority) of gun owners.  Yes, the NRA has an impressively huge membership and ostensibly represents all American gun owners.  But like hockey moms and soccer moms and NASCAR dads and west coast elites and coal miner’s daughters and single black men in their 30’s and elementary school librarians, the “gun owner constituency” is not a single-minded, single-issue, black-and-white politics constituency.  Far from it.   And while the NRA is proudly and staunchly protecting the interests of gun owners for whom the biggest priority is to be able to own any and every gun ever manufactured, it is not doing nearly as well for the silent majority of gun owners.  Amongst others, those are gun owners for whom the biggest priority is to be able to hunt in pristine lands.  

I am in the latter category.  I am an avid big game hunter, a bird hunter and a fly fisherman.  I own — well, let’s say more than a couple — guns, mostly for hunting.  But more importantly, I am a gun owner who doesn’t feel threatened by gun control laws.  I am a gun owner who doesn’t want any friggin crazy to have the right to own an assault rifle or a semi-automatic pistol.  I am an avid gun owner who feels sick when yet another massacre comes down from a kid or kids who should never have had access to a gun.  I am a gun owner who becomes incensed when gun rights groups don’t even wait until the smoke clears to declare that the massacre occurred because of gun control laws, not in spite of them.  I’m a gun owner that thinks nobody in America needs to own an MP-5 or an HK416.  And because of all this and more, I am a firearm owner who feels totally alienated by the National Rifle Association.  

Colorado’s swing status September 19, 2008

Was covered marginally well by Stuart Rothenberg in RCP today.  Rothenberg calls Colorado the single swing state if there is a single swing state.  And he might even be right.  He boils down his list of the top-5 most important states (Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia) to Colorado, thinking that as Colorado goes so goes the race.  It’s a point I made a long time ago on another blog I took down, so I’m not going to call him wrong, but his understanding of Colorado’s electorate is a bit suspect:

Still, the state looks to be made for a tight contest. With upscale white voters who would seem likely to prefer Obama, Hispanics, Boulder liberals and plenty of swing suburbanites, Colorado looks like a one-time Republican state where Obama should have appeal.

As those states will likely go VA, MI and NV to Obama and OH to McCain, Colorado will be pivotal.  Expect to see all four candidates here a lot over the next few weeks.

Meanwhile the cracks continue to open up for Ms. Palin.  The latest was (Republican) Senator Hagel ripping her for knowing nothing about the world outside of Alaska.  The rest of this election season will witness the slow and inexorable decline of Ms. Palin as a force for increased Republican votes, especially as Troopergate and her earmark hypocrisy continue to grab lines and lines of ink.

peaking? September 17, 2008

The economy being the headline is not good news for the McCain campaign.  You can see McCain reaching, groping for something, anything.  And you can see Palin flailing with no answer.  McCain’s “fundamentals are strong” comment was probably one of his biggest stumbles of late and unfortunately for him, his long Senate record on addressing these issues does not support his recently tougher talk. 

My guess is that the carnage is not over on Wall Street, and that there will be a direct correlation between McCain’s polling numbers and the financial sheet news.  ARG has a slew of new numbers out today.  Unfortunately they are delayed, so while the post date is Sept 17th the sample date is generally in the Sept 10-13 window.  This means that McCain’s 2-point lead in Colorado, for instance, is suspect because it samples before the recent visits by Obama and Palin.

Interestingly, the ARG numbers have a tighter race in Montana than I would have expected.  McCain has only a 2-point lead in MT and the survey questions ignore the fact that both Ron Paul and Bob Barr will be on the ballot there, and that there are a slew of good statewide D candidates running, including the popular D governor Brian Schweitzer.  MT is not a pivotal state in terms of Electoral College votes by itself, but it could add with another smaller state to become so for Obama (because McCain is expected to win there).  That state could be West Virginia, where McCain’s lead is also surprisingly small in the ARG survey.

As far as Colorado, if McCain’s 2-point edge was accurate as of Sept 10-13, that’s where he will peak.  I think McCain will not open a bigger lead on Obama here and I expect that if Obama can come to CO a few more times, especially to the western slope, he will win this state.  Of course, Obama must talk about western issues.  He must come out strongly pro-hunting and recreation without looking like John Kerry pandering.  He must press on clean energy issues without alienating those that make their money on oil and gas development here.  And he must realize that westerners want to be given a reason to vote for him.

home stretch of potus08 September 16, 2008

Swimming amid the on-again/off-again currents, for the rest of this political season I’ll try to ramp back up to the steady stream of analysis I had going during the Dem and Rep primary season.  I’ll be totally upfront about my biases: I have every desire to see Barack Obama win this election and no desire whatsoever to see Sarah Palin be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office chair.  Despite that, my point in creating this blog was to go for analysis not partisanship.  You can find the partisanship in a million other blogs.  You can only find real analysis in a few of them (see the blogroll to the right for those).

So let’s start here: the second I heard about the Palin pick I was impressed.  I guess I had the same intuitive reaction that John McCain had: Palin was going to be good energy to add to the ticket and was going to give him very good buzz.  And has it not?  Palin gave McCain immediate buzz, a new look from the religious right (without whom John McCain can absolutely not win this election), and a great rise in the polls.  

But let’s face it: for all the buzz, Palin is completely lacking in substance and it is bound to catch up to the McCain campaign.  I’m already seeing signs of that inevitable truth coming to bear, and over the next two weeks you will see the Palin effect erode further until it fades nearly into the background noise.  

The fact is, the R’s are facing a real problem now: Barack Obama has already been through the buzz wringer and came out looking better than ever.  Why?  Because behind the flash is substance.  Obama’s appeal is based on the fact that people believe in him in a way that they never will believe in Sarah Palin.  People actually believe: a- that Obama wants to do what he says he wants to do; b- has the resolve and intelligence to actually do it; c- will do it if elected.  Aside from judging Palin as a person, nobody can believe any of that about a Republican right now, and while that’s not Palin’s fault, it is reality.  Palin’s party’s actions over the past few years, including the two major politicans from her own state, have ensured that nobody can trust an R to do what they say they want to do.  Inevitiably it is a condition that will come back to inflict the Dems, probably sooner than later, but for now it is squarely an R problem.  

Obama has passed the smell test by getting through the very difficult D primary season.  Palin has no such luxury (if it could be called that).  Palin has a few more weeks of the D’s making her look like a lying, incompetent (and ultimately irrelevant) a-hole and the R’s trying like hell to dislodge those attacks.  And the more time the D’s have to strip away the initial sheen, the more Palin’s buzz will wear into the background noise.  Obama faced the same challenges and came looking as good as ever.  Palin will not.