2008 election

  • I've spent most of my free time in the past 24 hours reading the Newsweek seven-part series called "Secrets of the 2008 Campaign." (The highlights I linked to on Wednesday were culled from this series.) It's an in-depth look at the recent presidential election from beginning to end, and it's revealing, thorough, and cathartic. (0) #
    11/7/2008

President-Elect Obama

I was up at 5am yesterday and worked until 8pm in the nonpartisan Election Protection command center at the ACLU of Nevada's office, so by the time I realized that Obama had it in the bag, I was feeling rather delirious. It was a great day for American politics, only tempered by a lost wallet, now found, and lost rights in California, the recovery of which will be longer in the coming. Other post-election nuggets:

  • All my hard work in Washoe County paid off, as Obama destroyed McCain in both the county and in Nevada as a whole. Alas, the local elections were more of a mixed bag given my preferences. (E.g., my state supreme court choice lost, and a really awful eminent domain initiative passed.)
  • Bill Ayers gave his first interview since he became an election issue to the New Yorker, and he seems like a decent but flawed guy who was heavily caricatured.
  • 2009 will be the first year in 45 years without a Dole or a Bush in elected office.
  • The Marijuana Policy Project, my former employer, had a successful day winning both medical marijuana in Michigan and decriminalization in Massachusetts.
  • Newsweek has an article reporting some campaign items that they couldn't reveal until now: a "foreign entity" hacked into the systems of both campaigns, Palin may've spent more money than was even originally reported on herself and her family, and violent threats to Obama increased sharply in September and October at the same time when the Palin rallies were getting scary.

I wish I lived within driving distance to D.C. for January's shindig.

Wed, 11/05/2008 - 11:04am
  • Today is the last day you can donate to the No On 8 campaign to defeat California's Proposition 8, which would eliminate marriage rights for same-sex couples in that state. Help end legal discrimination by sending them a Halloween treat. (5) #
    10/31/2008
  • The Las Vegas ACORN office was raided, but there have been no charges against them yet. Meanwhile, there are reports that Hispanic voters in Nevada are receiving calls that tell them they can vote over the phone, and the state GOP is trying to block voters with incomplete voter registrations who are still within the timeframe to complete their registration.

    Update: The Secretary of State's office has ruled against the GOP incomplete registrations complaint. (0) #
    10/22/2008
  • There's been a recent attempt by right-leaning folks to paint ACORN, a voter registration organization that focuses on low-income communities, as responsible for enacting large-scale voter fraud. While this is perhaps an attempt by the right to delegitimize a potential loss on Nov. 4th, it actually raises some interesting statistical questions about large-scale voter registration and registration fraud. Matt Yglesias begins the conversation here.
    [I]f you go out and register over a million voters you’ll wind up with a lot of bad forms being submitted. But just as 30,000 is a lot of people and also only a very small fraction of one million people, when you’re talking about registering over a million new voters you’d need orders of magnitude more bad forms to constitute real evidence of a systematic fraud campaign.
    The fundamental problem here is that some on the right see it as a good thing that not all eligible Americans are registered to vote. (via advodude) (30) #
    10/14/2008
  • The New York Times has a somewhat horrifying article about what may be unintentional voter suppression on a wide scale, affecting six swing states including Nevada.
    Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times... apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law...
    These errors plus overzealous voter fraud laws may lead to a frustrating election day for many. (5) #
    10/9/2008
  • The Daily Show last night had a segment where they put a group of elderly Jewish people in a room to watch last Friday's debate and had them scream their thoughts at the TV. Now this is the kind of focus group I enjoy watching! (6) #
    9/30/2008
  • I've resisted posting something like this, I really have, but this is just too mind-boggling. Compare and contrast: South Carolina vs. Alaska. (24) #
    9/25/2008
  • Washoe County, in which I live, is under the political microscope at the moment. Sean at FiveThirtyEight.com reports that Democratic registrations may overtake Republican ones by Election Day, and the New York Times has a profile of Washoe as a swing county:
    Nevada is divided in large part between rural and urban voters, newcomers versus old-timers, the contours of the political discussion formed by growth, energy and immigration. While the voters in the rural area of the state are almost certain to go for Mr. McCain, and Mr. Obama is seen as having an advantage in southern Clark County — home to Las Vegas — Washoe County is widely considered the place that could tip the state one way or the other.
    (1) #
    9/23/2008
  • I started reading fivethirtyeight.com several months ago, and somewhere along assumed I had already blogged it, but I haven't. It has without a doubt the best statistical analysis of presidential election polling out there, with scores of easy-to-understand graphs. For example, today's analysis shows that McCain's recent bounce has been much stronger in states he already has secured than in swing states, increasing the chance that Obama could win the electoral vote without the popular vote. (And, of course, increasing the chance that McCain could win with both.) (3) #
    9/11/2008
  • Obama's vice presidential selection is looming, so I'm going to throw this one out there: could Richard Clarke be his dark horse pick?


    Update: It turns out it's the more famous older white guy with foreign policy experience. Biden will be fun to watch in the VP debate. (5) #
    8/21/2008

Edwards: A Brief Editorial

I am not upset or mad at Edwards for having the affair -- it is his business, and between him and his family. However, I am extremely pissed off at him for running for President after having the affair, particularly because infidelity issues have in the past hurt the Democratic party to the point of arguably getting Bush elected. What an egomaniacal dick, to run for president when the stakes are so high.

Fri, 08/08/2008 - 5:57pm
  • I'm an Obama supporter and all, but while I think his modified US Seal is kind of cute, it also sort of smacks of dictatorship -- as in, "I'm remaking America in my image." He should drop it.

    Update: He dropped it. (10) #
    6/20/2008
  • Here's an excellent and simple graph comparing the differences between Obama's and McCain's tax proposals. Kevin Drum comments:
    Bottom line: If you're really rich and think that George Bush's tax cuts for the rich didn't go nearly far enough, John McCain is your man.
    (43) #
    6/12/2008
  • These are all anonymous quotes from insiders of the Clinton campaign:
    -Hillary assembled a team thin on presidential campaign experience that confused discipline with insularity...
    -There was financial mismanagement bordering on fraud.
    -Her people spent all of 2008 making lists blaming each other (but never themselves) rather than lists of solutions.
    There are a lot more like that in the article. It makes me feel extremely glad that this team is unlikely to be running the White House in one year's time. (3) #
    5/16/2008
  • Josh Marshall has a fascinating post about why Obama has done so poorly in West Virginia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and the surrounding areas:
    There's been a lot of talk in this campaign about Barack Obama's problem with working class white voters or rural voters. But these claims are both inaccurate because they are incomplete. You can look at states like Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states and see the different numbers and they are all explained by one basic fact. Obama's problem isn't with white working class voters or rural voters. It's Appalachia.
    The post also has a convincing map of all the counties where Clinton has won over 65% of the vote. (1) #
    5/13/2008
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