A strong circumstantial case can be made that there is a link between vaccines and Autism.
Exhibit A:
From 1960 to 2007 there was a 100x rise in the incidences of Autism. This timeframe was coincident with a dramatic increase in the amount of infant vaccinations. Compare this 1983 CDC vaccination schedule (8 vaccinations) with the 2008 equivalent (29 vaccinations).
http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/cdc1983.pdf
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/schedules/downloads/child/2008/08_0-6yrs_schedule_pr.pdf
*note – some of the increase in incidences is attributable to the way Autism diagnosis has evolved.
Exhibit B:
Prior to 1970, Autism was primarily a white middle class disease (again, the population that was getting vaccinations). Today Autism affects all races and classes equally. Again this is coincident with CDC efforts to vaccinate %100 of the population.
Exhibit C:
Non-scientific studies between non vaccinated and vaccinated populations show marked differences
http://www.generationrescue.org/olmstead.html
http://www.nomercury.org/science/documents/Articles/UPI-The_Age_of_Autism-Amish_ways_6-6-05.pdf
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Health/2005/06/28/the_age_of_autism_homeschooled/9829/
To date, no scientific study has been done by the CDC.
It should be understood that there is no scientific evidence to support a direct vaccine-Autism link. What has been recently proven is that vaccines can potentially exacerbate a genetic weakness in the mitochondria in the brain which can then result in Autism (the CDC argues that this is “Autism-like symptoms”). The Govt. just settled a highly publicized lawsuit of exactly this scenario.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/the-vaccineautism-court-_b_88558.html
It is not well understood exactly how many Autism cases are caused by this condition. Initial studies show that it’s anywhere from near zero to 40%.
Vaccine proponents argue the benefits to public health, and that they outweigh the risks. However, one in every 15 children is affected by Autism Spectral Disorders and Autism. This is a potentially huge risk that vaccine proponents typically discount. In fact when compared to the worst case risk of the diseases the vaccines are designed to prevent, Autism is typically on par and Autism + ASD is an order of magnitude greater risk.
So what should we do about this if we have infants? Obviously there is a risk tradeoff here. I highly recommend that an alternative to the CDC’s vaccination schedule be at least considered. I came across this link and it seems like a reasonable approach to mitigating the risks of being vaccinated and not being vaccinated:
http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/user_friendly.pdf
Admittedly, I don’t know much about the risks of live viruses so I can’t vouch for that part. But the rest of the advice seems to be pretty prudent.
Other things about Autism to consider:
Very few health care plans currently cover Autism, although a number of States are considering bills requiring coverage.
http://www.autismspeaks.org/government_affairs/index.php
80-90 percent of parents with an Autistic child eventually divorce.
http://www.nationalautismassociation.org/htmlpages/divorce.htm
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
The Subprime Mortgage Crisis and Bear Stearns: What happened and what to do about it
The subprime mortgage crisis and the failure of Bear Stearns are two painful examples of vulnerabilities in our financial system. I’ll explain both of these events using kitchen table examples. I’ll then discuss what went wrong and what can be done about it.
The Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Fundamentally, the subprime mortgage crisis is a liquidity crisis. Financial institutions are reluctant to write loans and they have less ability to buy and sell the loans they already own.
Loans are tremendously important in our financial system. Most people could not afford to own a house or a car without them. Most businesses could not be created and could not function without them. So when loans are more difficult to obtain, many other areas of our economy will take a hit.
So what causes a bank to become reluctant to write loans? Imagine that you buy a $200,000 home. You put a down payment of $40,000 and take out a loan for the remaining $160,000. Now imagine that the value of your home goes up to $220,000. You now have $18,000 in equity against which you can borrow (most home equity loans require that you hold at least 20% equity in your home). You might decide to enhance the value of your home by reinvesting that $18,000. Maybe you would remodel your kitchen or build a deck.
But what happens if the value of your home goes down? Say it’s only worth $180,000 now. You still owe your bank $160,000 so your equity is only $20,000. Since you have less than 20% equity, you probably won’t try to borrow more money against the value of your house. Now you have to wait until you make enough payments so that you have more than $36,000 in equity OR the value of your house goes back up before you can think about a home equity loan again.
For the last 20 years, the housing market has been going up, and therefore most of the financial institutions that wrote mortgages were making money and happily borrowing more money to reinvest (like you remodeled your kitchen in the first secenario).
But right now, most financial institutions are in a position that’s analogous to the latter case. Their equivalent of “percent of equity” is below where they want it to be. They feel overextended and therefore they will try to build up their equity and/or reduce their debt. So the only loans they want to write in this situation are those where the down payments are relatively high. In fact, the only real difference between financial institutions and you is that they set their target of debt to equity arbitrarily. The 20% figure that they apply to you is typically more like 12% for them. In the case of Bear Stearns, it was more like 2% … but I’ll get to that later.
So why are they all in this situation? There is a two-part answer to this question. First, financial institutions wrote a lot of low down payment loans. The housing market was generating good returns and a lot of folks we’re speculating (aka “flipping”). Furthermore, the mortgage market was such that most mortgages were written and then immediately sold so that the actual mortgage writer often didn’t do due diligence. Second, the housing market turned downward, and then homes purchased using low down payment loans were underwater. For example, someone might have paid $10,000 down and financed $190,000 on a $200,000 house. But then the value of the house went down to $180,000. So, now the homeowner has a $180K house and a $190K loan. In this situation, default on the loan becomes much more likely. Of course in a default, the financial institutions then get to foreclose and recoup some of the losses, but they often lose a substantial amount of the value of the loan in the process.
The bottom line on all this is that the assets (and therefore the equity) held by all the institutions participating in this market took a huge hit. The total loss has been estimated at around $400 Billion. The other problem is that the mortgage market is huge and just about every bank in the country was participating to some extent. So now most banks are feeling that they are over-extended and therefore that they don’t want to write any low down payment or otherwise risky loans. And now this problem is starting to be felt in other areas of the economy.
A detailed analysis of all of this can be found here:
http://www.brandeis.edu/global/rosenberg_institute/usmpf_2008.pdf
Bear Stearns
Bear Stearns was of course a big participant in the mortgage market. What made their situation catastrophic was that they were heavily leveraged. In other words, they were doing the very same thing that the low down payment house flippers were doing. They borrowed billions of dollars with a “down payment” (aka corporate equity) of only 2% as I alluded to earlier. So when they lost 10-15% of the value of their mortgages, they were tens of billions of dollars underwater.
Much like the homeowner that owes much more than his house is worth, Bear wanted to declare bankruptcy. But unlike the homeowner, Bear Stearns manages retirement accounts for tens of thousands of citizens. These accounts could not be frozen for 10 years while all the Bear stakeholders fought over Bear’s Assets in bankruptcy court. Also, Bear Stearns has Billions of dollars of obligations to other banks and so if Bear were allowed to fail, a chain reaction could occur.
So the FOMC re-wrote their rules to allow themselves to step in and engineer a buyout of Bear Stearns. In the process, the Fed had to guarantee tens of Billions of dollars in risky loans. The terms of the buyout were that the stock would be sold for $2/share which in theory was going to punish Bear shareholders (aka be the “moral hazard” for Bear’s bad investments).
However, the Bear bond holders went unpunished for making those “2% down” loans to Bear. This is analogous to the Government stepping into the subprime mortgage crisis and allowing borrowers to be foreclosed on, but then reimbursing banks for any money that they lost.
Conclusions
Loans are an important tool in our financial system and therefore we need to be very careful with respect to any kind of regulation.
However, clearly we need to understand how loans go wrong and minimize the associated risks. Bear Stearns and the subprime mortgage crisis are both examples of the kind of failure that can occur when a borrower has no stake in the repayment of a loan. This situation is MUCH more likely to occur when the borrower’s initial stake in a loan is low. But it can also occur if the lender overvalues the collateral of the loan.
I don’t think that we want to limit what lenders can do across the board. Lenders need to be able to take risks and fail. But in markets where many banks are exposed to large losses should a downturn happen, risks need to be mitigated. The 30 year fixed mortgage model seems to have stood the test of time. A borrower should have to put 20% down or buy payment insurance. Perhaps there needs to be some legal recourse against loan originators if collateral has been overvalued and the loan has been re-sold.
Bear Stearns points out the need to legally insulate retirement accounts from the failure of the financial institution that manages them. Furthermore, a means for punishing lenders to a failed institution without doing major damage to the financial system has to be put in place.
The insulation of retirement accounts should be straightforward. The punishment of lenders needs to be stretched out over time to soften the blow to the system. Perhaps in the event of another Bear Stearns, the Fed could immediately create a pool of cash that could be used for no-interest loans to bond holders to be repaid over a 5 year period. Thus, bond holders would still lose their money but it would happen much more slowly.
The Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Fundamentally, the subprime mortgage crisis is a liquidity crisis. Financial institutions are reluctant to write loans and they have less ability to buy and sell the loans they already own.
Loans are tremendously important in our financial system. Most people could not afford to own a house or a car without them. Most businesses could not be created and could not function without them. So when loans are more difficult to obtain, many other areas of our economy will take a hit.
So what causes a bank to become reluctant to write loans? Imagine that you buy a $200,000 home. You put a down payment of $40,000 and take out a loan for the remaining $160,000. Now imagine that the value of your home goes up to $220,000. You now have $18,000 in equity against which you can borrow (most home equity loans require that you hold at least 20% equity in your home). You might decide to enhance the value of your home by reinvesting that $18,000. Maybe you would remodel your kitchen or build a deck.
But what happens if the value of your home goes down? Say it’s only worth $180,000 now. You still owe your bank $160,000 so your equity is only $20,000. Since you have less than 20% equity, you probably won’t try to borrow more money against the value of your house. Now you have to wait until you make enough payments so that you have more than $36,000 in equity OR the value of your house goes back up before you can think about a home equity loan again.
For the last 20 years, the housing market has been going up, and therefore most of the financial institutions that wrote mortgages were making money and happily borrowing more money to reinvest (like you remodeled your kitchen in the first secenario).
But right now, most financial institutions are in a position that’s analogous to the latter case. Their equivalent of “percent of equity” is below where they want it to be. They feel overextended and therefore they will try to build up their equity and/or reduce their debt. So the only loans they want to write in this situation are those where the down payments are relatively high. In fact, the only real difference between financial institutions and you is that they set their target of debt to equity arbitrarily. The 20% figure that they apply to you is typically more like 12% for them. In the case of Bear Stearns, it was more like 2% … but I’ll get to that later.
So why are they all in this situation? There is a two-part answer to this question. First, financial institutions wrote a lot of low down payment loans. The housing market was generating good returns and a lot of folks we’re speculating (aka “flipping”). Furthermore, the mortgage market was such that most mortgages were written and then immediately sold so that the actual mortgage writer often didn’t do due diligence. Second, the housing market turned downward, and then homes purchased using low down payment loans were underwater. For example, someone might have paid $10,000 down and financed $190,000 on a $200,000 house. But then the value of the house went down to $180,000. So, now the homeowner has a $180K house and a $190K loan. In this situation, default on the loan becomes much more likely. Of course in a default, the financial institutions then get to foreclose and recoup some of the losses, but they often lose a substantial amount of the value of the loan in the process.
The bottom line on all this is that the assets (and therefore the equity) held by all the institutions participating in this market took a huge hit. The total loss has been estimated at around $400 Billion. The other problem is that the mortgage market is huge and just about every bank in the country was participating to some extent. So now most banks are feeling that they are over-extended and therefore that they don’t want to write any low down payment or otherwise risky loans. And now this problem is starting to be felt in other areas of the economy.
A detailed analysis of all of this can be found here:
http://www.brandeis.edu/global/rosenberg_institute/usmpf_2008.pdf
Bear Stearns
Bear Stearns was of course a big participant in the mortgage market. What made their situation catastrophic was that they were heavily leveraged. In other words, they were doing the very same thing that the low down payment house flippers were doing. They borrowed billions of dollars with a “down payment” (aka corporate equity) of only 2% as I alluded to earlier. So when they lost 10-15% of the value of their mortgages, they were tens of billions of dollars underwater.
Much like the homeowner that owes much more than his house is worth, Bear wanted to declare bankruptcy. But unlike the homeowner, Bear Stearns manages retirement accounts for tens of thousands of citizens. These accounts could not be frozen for 10 years while all the Bear stakeholders fought over Bear’s Assets in bankruptcy court. Also, Bear Stearns has Billions of dollars of obligations to other banks and so if Bear were allowed to fail, a chain reaction could occur.
So the FOMC re-wrote their rules to allow themselves to step in and engineer a buyout of Bear Stearns. In the process, the Fed had to guarantee tens of Billions of dollars in risky loans. The terms of the buyout were that the stock would be sold for $2/share which in theory was going to punish Bear shareholders (aka be the “moral hazard” for Bear’s bad investments).
However, the Bear bond holders went unpunished for making those “2% down” loans to Bear. This is analogous to the Government stepping into the subprime mortgage crisis and allowing borrowers to be foreclosed on, but then reimbursing banks for any money that they lost.
Conclusions
Loans are an important tool in our financial system and therefore we need to be very careful with respect to any kind of regulation.
However, clearly we need to understand how loans go wrong and minimize the associated risks. Bear Stearns and the subprime mortgage crisis are both examples of the kind of failure that can occur when a borrower has no stake in the repayment of a loan. This situation is MUCH more likely to occur when the borrower’s initial stake in a loan is low. But it can also occur if the lender overvalues the collateral of the loan.
I don’t think that we want to limit what lenders can do across the board. Lenders need to be able to take risks and fail. But in markets where many banks are exposed to large losses should a downturn happen, risks need to be mitigated. The 30 year fixed mortgage model seems to have stood the test of time. A borrower should have to put 20% down or buy payment insurance. Perhaps there needs to be some legal recourse against loan originators if collateral has been overvalued and the loan has been re-sold.
Bear Stearns points out the need to legally insulate retirement accounts from the failure of the financial institution that manages them. Furthermore, a means for punishing lenders to a failed institution without doing major damage to the financial system has to be put in place.
The insulation of retirement accounts should be straightforward. The punishment of lenders needs to be stretched out over time to soften the blow to the system. Perhaps in the event of another Bear Stearns, the Fed could immediately create a pool of cash that could be used for no-interest loans to bond holders to be repaid over a 5 year period. Thus, bond holders would still lose their money but it would happen much more slowly.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Color on the Pastor Wright Issue (Pardon the Pun)
I read a ton of articles on Pastor Wright and Black Liberation Theology in the process of doing homework for my "Thought Experiment" blog. Much of what I read, particularly on Black Liberation Theology, didn't make me very happy.
I convinced myself that BLT wasn't anti-American so much as anti-oppressor and pro-oppressed. Give credit where credit is due. BLT is pro-Gay (tolerance is goodness). Also Trinity United Church of Christ was one of the first organizations in the US to openly condemn Apartied (while the US govt. still suppoted it) and support Nelson Mandela. Today they support the Palestinians and are anti-Israel. Again, the rationale is because one is the oppressed and the other is the oppressor. Obviously this is not in line with American policy, and by supporting the democratically elected Palestinian leadership (Hamas) TUCC is supporting what the US considers to be a terrorist organization. But at one time the US considered Nelson Mandela to be a terrorist.
However James Cone, the father of BLT, lays a foundation that is fundamentally anti-white. Some of Cone's statements will be quite shocking to white folks ... a great deal of whom apparently aren't watching FOX news these days. There's a %100 chance we will all become intimate with Mr. Cone's ideas in the fall through 527 ads. But before anyone get's too upset, I recommend the linked article below. In the context of a statement by Frederick Douglass, Pastor Wright and his church might make a little more sense.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/07/080407fa_fact_sanneh?currentPage=1
I convinced myself that BLT wasn't anti-American so much as anti-oppressor and pro-oppressed. Give credit where credit is due. BLT is pro-Gay (tolerance is goodness). Also Trinity United Church of Christ was one of the first organizations in the US to openly condemn Apartied (while the US govt. still suppoted it) and support Nelson Mandela. Today they support the Palestinians and are anti-Israel. Again, the rationale is because one is the oppressed and the other is the oppressor. Obviously this is not in line with American policy, and by supporting the democratically elected Palestinian leadership (Hamas) TUCC is supporting what the US considers to be a terrorist organization. But at one time the US considered Nelson Mandela to be a terrorist.
However James Cone, the father of BLT, lays a foundation that is fundamentally anti-white. Some of Cone's statements will be quite shocking to white folks ... a great deal of whom apparently aren't watching FOX news these days. There's a %100 chance we will all become intimate with Mr. Cone's ideas in the fall through 527 ads. But before anyone get's too upset, I recommend the linked article below. In the context of a statement by Frederick Douglass, Pastor Wright and his church might make a little more sense.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/07/080407fa_fact_sanneh?currentPage=1
Friday, March 28, 2008
Dewey Defeats Truman!
OK, apparently reports of Obama's demise were premature. All of a sudden NC looks like it will be a rout.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_032508.pdf (Obama by 21 pts)
http://www.southernpoliticalreport.com/downloads/uploaded/31_InsiderAdvantage_%20Majority_Opinon_NC_Dem_Poll_(3-27-2008).pdf (Obama by 15 pts)
Splits along racial/gender/age/income lines look pretty much like they did coming out of Texas and Ohio. Basically ... polls are indicating a full recovery from the Pastor Wright flap.
Also there is today's daily Gallup:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/105814/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Back-Into-Lead-Democratic-Race.aspx?loc=interstitialskip (Obama by 8 pts nationally)
I should caveat this by saying that we still can't rule out the "Bradley Effect"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect
But I would expect that we'll see a boatload of superdelegate commitments to Obama based on these polls alone. Perhaps that will be followed by Clinton bowing out. This thing may be over folks.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_032508.pdf (Obama by 21 pts)
http://www.southernpoliticalreport.com/downloads/uploaded/31_InsiderAdvantage_%20Majority_Opinon_NC_Dem_Poll_(3-27-2008).pdf (Obama by 15 pts)
Splits along racial/gender/age/income lines look pretty much like they did coming out of Texas and Ohio. Basically ... polls are indicating a full recovery from the Pastor Wright flap.
Also there is today's daily Gallup:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/105814/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Back-Into-Lead-Democratic-Race.aspx?loc=interstitialskip (Obama by 8 pts nationally)
I should caveat this by saying that we still can't rule out the "Bradley Effect"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect
But I would expect that we'll see a boatload of superdelegate commitments to Obama based on these polls alone. Perhaps that will be followed by Clinton bowing out. This thing may be over folks.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Thought Experiment: A speech Obama might give on Pastor Wright
My fellow Americans, I stand before you today to describe how spirituality informs my life, and may someday inform my presidency. Let me start by saying that I’m a proud Christian, I’m proud to be a member of TUCC, and I’m proud to have had Jeremiah Wright as my pastor. My faith and my church are integral to my hopeful outlook, my belief in my fellow man, and my desire to serve my country as a proud American.
Ironically, my church and my relationship with its Pastor, Jermiah Wright, have caused many to question these characteristics which I consider the hallmarks of my candidacy. Therefore, I feel it is important to talk about what is in my heart so that the missing parts of this story can be better understood. I believe that when the full measure of my spirituality is taken, Americans will be confident in the core values and ideas that I take away from my church – even if they aren’t completely comfortable with the way those values and ideas are delivered.
Many of you had never heard of TUCC prior to my candidacy. Your first exposure to my Pastor was a series of outrageous sound bites played over and over on network and cable news. Most of you now struggle to understand why I would be a member of this congregation for 20 years. You struggle to understand why I would want my children raised in this church.
Let me say that first and foremost, I am a member of TUCC to enter into a covenant with the Lord through his son Jesus Christ, to celebrate and reaffirm that relationship through communal worship and conversation, and to use Christian values to guide my choices. These are the core motivations held by Christians all around the world.
But TUCC offered me an approach to Christianity that was uniquely empowering. TUCC presented scripture and spirituality in a way that a person with African heritage such as me could more closely identify. TUCC’s Africentric approach allowed me to fully realize a relationship with God that heretofore did not exist.
But TUCC’s Africentic approach … the very thing that attracted me … is a nuance that can be misunderstood. Critics charge that Africentrism is tantamount to black separatism. But this charge is not true. Black separatism violates the fundamental Christian value that we are all equal in God’s eyes. Africentrism is akin to Europeans painting Jesus to look like them in spite of the fact that most scholars believe that he was a Semite.
But Pastor Wright was also a major factor in my decision to join TUCC. I respected his service to his country in the Marines, his scholarly work, his service to God and to his community, and his ability to grow TUCC from an 87 member congregation to over 8000 today. His sermons had a deep emotional impact which translates into a powerful spiritual fervor. And though he occasionally went over the top, the positive far outweighed the negative.
Furthermore when Pastor Wright is put in context, it becomes easy to interpret his sermons differently. Pastor Wright was a product of the 1960’s civil rights movement. He watched the leaders of the day overcome injustice by directly challenging the people of America. And so, when he sees what he believes to be injustice today he is not hesitant to do the same. He sees this as his patriotic duty. When he unfortunately analyzes public events in the context of race, I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality. The power of his ideas is not lost in the translation.
This is not to say that Pastor Wright never offends me or that I am apologizing for his transgressions. The idea that we somehow deserved 9/11 was an egregious error, as was the honoring of Louis Farrakhan. Furthermore, I view his race-centric views as wrong-headed. However, I understand that some of this is a product of his experiences.
I understand that even after I have explained all this, that some will still think badly of Pastor Wright. Hopefully most will understand that I think highly of him even though I know he has to be taken with a grain of salt. And hopefully most will understand that Pastor Wright and TUCC are my pathway to a deeply rewarding relationship with god. This is why I stand by them.
Ironically, my church and my relationship with its Pastor, Jermiah Wright, have caused many to question these characteristics which I consider the hallmarks of my candidacy. Therefore, I feel it is important to talk about what is in my heart so that the missing parts of this story can be better understood. I believe that when the full measure of my spirituality is taken, Americans will be confident in the core values and ideas that I take away from my church – even if they aren’t completely comfortable with the way those values and ideas are delivered.
Many of you had never heard of TUCC prior to my candidacy. Your first exposure to my Pastor was a series of outrageous sound bites played over and over on network and cable news. Most of you now struggle to understand why I would be a member of this congregation for 20 years. You struggle to understand why I would want my children raised in this church.
Let me say that first and foremost, I am a member of TUCC to enter into a covenant with the Lord through his son Jesus Christ, to celebrate and reaffirm that relationship through communal worship and conversation, and to use Christian values to guide my choices. These are the core motivations held by Christians all around the world.
But TUCC offered me an approach to Christianity that was uniquely empowering. TUCC presented scripture and spirituality in a way that a person with African heritage such as me could more closely identify. TUCC’s Africentric approach allowed me to fully realize a relationship with God that heretofore did not exist.
But TUCC’s Africentic approach … the very thing that attracted me … is a nuance that can be misunderstood. Critics charge that Africentrism is tantamount to black separatism. But this charge is not true. Black separatism violates the fundamental Christian value that we are all equal in God’s eyes. Africentrism is akin to Europeans painting Jesus to look like them in spite of the fact that most scholars believe that he was a Semite.
But Pastor Wright was also a major factor in my decision to join TUCC. I respected his service to his country in the Marines, his scholarly work, his service to God and to his community, and his ability to grow TUCC from an 87 member congregation to over 8000 today. His sermons had a deep emotional impact which translates into a powerful spiritual fervor. And though he occasionally went over the top, the positive far outweighed the negative.
Furthermore when Pastor Wright is put in context, it becomes easy to interpret his sermons differently. Pastor Wright was a product of the 1960’s civil rights movement. He watched the leaders of the day overcome injustice by directly challenging the people of America. And so, when he sees what he believes to be injustice today he is not hesitant to do the same. He sees this as his patriotic duty. When he unfortunately analyzes public events in the context of race, I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality. The power of his ideas is not lost in the translation.
This is not to say that Pastor Wright never offends me or that I am apologizing for his transgressions. The idea that we somehow deserved 9/11 was an egregious error, as was the honoring of Louis Farrakhan. Furthermore, I view his race-centric views as wrong-headed. However, I understand that some of this is a product of his experiences.
I understand that even after I have explained all this, that some will still think badly of Pastor Wright. Hopefully most will understand that I think highly of him even though I know he has to be taken with a grain of salt. And hopefully most will understand that Pastor Wright and TUCC are my pathway to a deeply rewarding relationship with god. This is why I stand by them.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Obama Damage Control Watch
Finally a poll that shows good news for Obama.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/105559/Gallup-Daily-Clinton-Now-47-Obamas-45.aspx
"Clinton moved 7 percentage points ahead of Obama in Gallup's March 19 report and sustained a significant 5-point lead on March 20. Her gains were coincident with the controversy over Obama's former pastor and "spiritual mentor," Rev. Jeremiah Wright. However, the surge in Democrats' preference for Clinton that Gallup detected earlier in the week has started to move out of the three-day rolling average, and the race is back to a near tie. It is possible that Obama's aggressive efforts to diffuse the Wright story, including a major speech about race on March 18, have been effective.
Still, Obama has yet to recover fully from the apparent damage done by the Wright controversy. It was only one week ago that Obama led the race by a significant six-point margin over Clinton, 50% to 44%. (To view the complete trend since Jan. 2, 2008, click here.)"
As we all know, you can't really trust polls. The acid test will be NC. If Hillary beats Obama there, then the Obama coalition has been damaged.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/105559/Gallup-Daily-Clinton-Now-47-Obamas-45.aspx
"Clinton moved 7 percentage points ahead of Obama in Gallup's March 19 report and sustained a significant 5-point lead on March 20. Her gains were coincident with the controversy over Obama's former pastor and "spiritual mentor," Rev. Jeremiah Wright. However, the surge in Democrats' preference for Clinton that Gallup detected earlier in the week has started to move out of the three-day rolling average, and the race is back to a near tie. It is possible that Obama's aggressive efforts to diffuse the Wright story, including a major speech about race on March 18, have been effective.
Still, Obama has yet to recover fully from the apparent damage done by the Wright controversy. It was only one week ago that Obama led the race by a significant six-point margin over Clinton, 50% to 44%. (To view the complete trend since Jan. 2, 2008, click here.)"
As we all know, you can't really trust polls. The acid test will be NC. If Hillary beats Obama there, then the Obama coalition has been damaged.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Obama Disqualification and the Return of the Dream Ticket
Early returns on Obama’s damage control of the Pastor Wright/TUCC issue are not good:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/105205/Gallup-Daily-Clinton-Moves-Into-Lead-Over-Obama.aspx
Plus these polls taken prior to Obama’s “More Perfect Union” Speech indicate that the damage done was extensive.
http://edisk.fandm.edu/FLI/keystone/pdf/keymar08_1.pdf
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=45313abe-4220-409a-bc6c-5159d0751f46
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_031908.pdf
Obama is apparently losing the middle and lower class swing voters that he’s worked so hard to cultivate. If Obama can’t recover in this demographic, he will not only lose the general election … he will lose by a landslide.
Superdelegates and Obama supporters are holding their breath waiting for more post-“Perfect Union” polling data. Without a significant recovery, Obama will lose a string of primaries going into the general election. In North Carolina, where Obama was up 5-10%, there is now a virtual tie and trending for Hillary Clinton. The Clinton lead in PA has nearly doubled.
The nightmare scenario for the Democrats is that a mortally wounded Obama limps into the convention with a big lead in elected delegates. Superdelegates will be faced with a decision: Do we stick with Obama and risk a huge loss that not only loses the presidency, but potentially hurts lower level candidates as well? Or do we shift to Hillary Clinton and risk losing big because the Obama supporters stay home?
If the nightmare scenario comes to pass, there will be only one course of action that can save the Democrats … Obama has to drop out of the race and throw his support to Clinton. Most likely, Obama will have to be the VP candidate. I’ve previously written that Obama wouldn’t take this position, but this situation would pretty much require that Obama be a team player so that the Democrats could have a chance in November.
Why is the Pastor Wright Issue Such a Big Deal?
I’ve talked to many Obama supporters that seem bewildered that this is such a big deal. After all, how is this different than any of a number of other issues that were all over the news and then flamed out after a few days?
The difference is that the issue of spirituality is always incredibly sensitive in presidential politics. In 1960, candidate John F. Kennedy had to give a speech to assure the country that he wouldn’t be taking orders from the Pope because he was Catholic. In the 2008 primaries, Mitt Romney had to give a speech to reassure Republicans that his church of Latter Day Saints was not a cult religion and in fact that they worshipped Jesus Christ.
It is my belief that if Obama was just buddies with Pastor Wright and not a member of his congregation, he would easily survive this controversy. The thing that’s killing Obama is that swing voters are looking at his church and they are saying … “Sorry, that won’t work for us”.
So What Does All this Mean? What’s Going to Happen?
It’s hard to say what will happen as we are in uncharted waters. I can tell you that if Obama was a white candidate, he would be disqualified with no chance to come back. Obama is banking on white America giving him a pass on what they consider to be a “bad” church (at least in presidential terms) based on the sordid history of racial injustice in this country. The bottom line is that I’d rather be in Clinton’s position than Obama’s right now.
If the polls continue to go in a bad direction and if he loses this last series of primaries, Obama will be forced to drop out of the race. He can recover from this so long as he cuts ties with TUCC. He is too young to risk doing serious damage to his party and effectively ending his political career. Make no mistake about it, Obama understands how this might play out. And he still would have a very real chance of becoming president one day if he plays ball.
Of course another possibility is that the “Perfect Union” speech convinced voters that Obama is still the guy they like in spite of the fact that they don’t like his church. In that case, Obama is in great position to be the next president. Without a FL and MI re-vote, Obama has Clinton check-mated. With John McCain’s string of gaffes this week, he’s not looking like the guy that can pull off a miracle GOP win in the fall.
Conclusion
My take-away from all this is that in 2008 America is ready for an African-American President AND it’s ready for a Woman President. However, America may not be ready for a non-mainstream Christian candidate.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/105205/Gallup-Daily-Clinton-Moves-Into-Lead-Over-Obama.aspx
Plus these polls taken prior to Obama’s “More Perfect Union” Speech indicate that the damage done was extensive.
http://edisk.fandm.edu/FLI/keystone/pdf/keymar08_1.pdf
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=45313abe-4220-409a-bc6c-5159d0751f46
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_031908.pdf
Obama is apparently losing the middle and lower class swing voters that he’s worked so hard to cultivate. If Obama can’t recover in this demographic, he will not only lose the general election … he will lose by a landslide.
Superdelegates and Obama supporters are holding their breath waiting for more post-“Perfect Union” polling data. Without a significant recovery, Obama will lose a string of primaries going into the general election. In North Carolina, where Obama was up 5-10%, there is now a virtual tie and trending for Hillary Clinton. The Clinton lead in PA has nearly doubled.
The nightmare scenario for the Democrats is that a mortally wounded Obama limps into the convention with a big lead in elected delegates. Superdelegates will be faced with a decision: Do we stick with Obama and risk a huge loss that not only loses the presidency, but potentially hurts lower level candidates as well? Or do we shift to Hillary Clinton and risk losing big because the Obama supporters stay home?
If the nightmare scenario comes to pass, there will be only one course of action that can save the Democrats … Obama has to drop out of the race and throw his support to Clinton. Most likely, Obama will have to be the VP candidate. I’ve previously written that Obama wouldn’t take this position, but this situation would pretty much require that Obama be a team player so that the Democrats could have a chance in November.
Why is the Pastor Wright Issue Such a Big Deal?
I’ve talked to many Obama supporters that seem bewildered that this is such a big deal. After all, how is this different than any of a number of other issues that were all over the news and then flamed out after a few days?
The difference is that the issue of spirituality is always incredibly sensitive in presidential politics. In 1960, candidate John F. Kennedy had to give a speech to assure the country that he wouldn’t be taking orders from the Pope because he was Catholic. In the 2008 primaries, Mitt Romney had to give a speech to reassure Republicans that his church of Latter Day Saints was not a cult religion and in fact that they worshipped Jesus Christ.
It is my belief that if Obama was just buddies with Pastor Wright and not a member of his congregation, he would easily survive this controversy. The thing that’s killing Obama is that swing voters are looking at his church and they are saying … “Sorry, that won’t work for us”.
So What Does All this Mean? What’s Going to Happen?
It’s hard to say what will happen as we are in uncharted waters. I can tell you that if Obama was a white candidate, he would be disqualified with no chance to come back. Obama is banking on white America giving him a pass on what they consider to be a “bad” church (at least in presidential terms) based on the sordid history of racial injustice in this country. The bottom line is that I’d rather be in Clinton’s position than Obama’s right now.
If the polls continue to go in a bad direction and if he loses this last series of primaries, Obama will be forced to drop out of the race. He can recover from this so long as he cuts ties with TUCC. He is too young to risk doing serious damage to his party and effectively ending his political career. Make no mistake about it, Obama understands how this might play out. And he still would have a very real chance of becoming president one day if he plays ball.
Of course another possibility is that the “Perfect Union” speech convinced voters that Obama is still the guy they like in spite of the fact that they don’t like his church. In that case, Obama is in great position to be the next president. Without a FL and MI re-vote, Obama has Clinton check-mated. With John McCain’s string of gaffes this week, he’s not looking like the guy that can pull off a miracle GOP win in the fall.
Conclusion
My take-away from all this is that in 2008 America is ready for an African-American President AND it’s ready for a Woman President. However, America may not be ready for a non-mainstream Christian candidate.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Critique of Obama’s “More Perfect Union”
Barack Obama delivered a speech in Philadelphia yesterday. The speech was intended to address a significant negative reaction to statements made by Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright.
(http://rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/people2/just_8_have_favorable_opinion_of_pastor_jeremiah_wright)
In my estimation, this speech was lacking thematic clarity. I would liken it to a horoscope … a jumble of ideas loosely tied together from which the listener can latch onto whatever resonates with his or her own experience. As such, it may be effective for some of its audience (the ones who are inclined to believe in horoscopes give Obama the benefit of the doubt). However, for those that needed to understand Obama’s rationale for closely associating himself and his family with Pastor Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ, the speech came up short.
Let me say for the record that Obama and his team have proven themselves to be communicators of the first order. Thus there is a different standard for his speeches. Usually after an Obama speech, I can immediately jot down the main theme, the target audience, the intended take-away, etc. However this time, the only thing that was clear was the target audience – clearly this was the swing voting blue collar white males.
I will do my best to critique this speech. But I will qualify my commentary by saying that 10 different people could easily have10 different interpretations.
Theme of the Speech
In speechwriting 101, you are taught to immediately establish the theme … support … support … support … then conclude with a re-statement of theme. Obama doesn’t follow the template and thus, the theme is not clear.
In “A More Perfect Union”, Obama starts with 4 paragraphs of background on the Constitution, the founding fathers handling of the slavery issue, and the subsequent struggle to achieve the ideal of equality.
Finally, Obama makes the following statement which I believe is the theme of the speech:
“…unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren. “
Or restated: Through better understanding and alignment of goals between races we can take another incremental step on the way to our Constitutional ideal of equality.
Now restated as I believe this is meant to be interpreted by the target audience: Listen working class whites, YOU are not being treated equally AND African-Americans are not being treated equally as the Constitution says we should be. If these two groups can align their goals, they can form a powerful successful coalition.
So from this, I think we're going to get something similar to Obama's Pennsylvania stump speech.
Supporting Point 1: When racial issues are not in the way, this coalition has been successful
“Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans. “
(Nevermind that the white Americans have been more upscale than working class)
Supporting Point 2: African Americans need improved infrastructure to enable the American Dream (or alternatively the establishment has always done us wrong)
“ … Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us. “
Supporting Point 3: Working class whites need the same infrastructure to maintain the opportunity of achieving the American Dream (or alternatively, now the establishment is doing you wrong)
“…Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time. “
Supporting Point 4: This coalition which would otherwise be natural is kept apart by the political exploitation of racial resentment
“… Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding. “
Supporting Point 5: A great example of racial resentment exploited for political purposes … Jeremiah Wright
“…On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way “
So in other words, Obama doesn’t deny that resentment and anger exist in his church. Furthermore his friend and former pastor presents a “profoundly distorted” view of this country … which Obama condemns.
The big problem here is not that Obama and Wright are buddies, but that Wright is being taken out of context for the purposes of political exploitation
The $64K question: Why is the Obama-Wright relationship not a problem?
“…The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. “
Restated: Jeremiah Wright has done enough good in Obama’s life that he can overlook (and condemn) the “profoundly distorted” view of this country. Obama knows that there are underlying reasons why Wright is what he is. Furthermore Wright reflects (albeit in an extreme) the feelings of his community. Obama doesn’t want to disown his church and his community over his disagreements on the country and on racial resentment. He just wants to divorce himself from those ideas and still have those relationships. Obama then goes on to compare his relationship with Wright with his relationship to his grandmother who also made him “cringe” from time to time.
Now, if I put myself in the shoes of a working class white, I see Obama’s dilemma. I too have grandparents, uncles, etc that make me cringe. Yet I still love them. So the idea of the Obama-Wright friendship might not bother me anymore.
However, when I start imagining myself in a community and a church that is overtly bigoted and anti-American … this is a little tougher to swallow. However if my race was at one time enslaved and then suffered a century of injustice after that, OK … I might take Obama’s word for it.
But the final jump that I am asked to make is that Obama can completely divorce himself from these ideas held by his church and his community. Furthermore, that even though he disagrees with these ideas, he’s willing to steep his children in this church and community … no doubt perpetuating these bad ideas. The bottom line is that I think most people would find a church and community where those ideas that they consider bad are less intense for the benefit of their children.
I don’t think most people make that last jump. And I think some people won’t give Obama the benefit of the doubt on the anti-American and bigotry in their church leap. They’ll imagine themselves in a church where African Americans or America was being derided and they’ll stop thinking about the circumstances that might underlie that behavior. So at best Obama’s white working class audience will be uncomfortable with his explanation. At worst, they will reject his explanation out of hand.
Conclusion
I found this speech to be unusually poorly organized. There was a weak statement of theme, ideas didn’t flow correctly, and the ending restatement of theme was non-existent. Comparisons to “I have a dream” are completely beyond the pale as anyone who listened to Dr. King's speech could tell you the theme and the bullet points.
In my mind, the poor organization of the speech is suspect. Obama and his team are too good to put out a product like this at this moment. Did Obama mean to confuse us? Was he looking for a horoscope type reaction? Or worse … was he looking for an emperor has no clothes reaction? I can easily envision that Obama saw that his argument to his target audience was weak (at least with respect to Pastor Wright) and thus he had to give a speech that was a lot harder to figure out. He mixed his normal stump argument with a lot of distracting intellectually honest stuff about race and then threw in the Jermiah Wright argument. In the end we are all scratching our heads, wondering which way is up, and we’ve forgotten what this was all about in the first place.
The net effect of all this is that we're not talking about Jeremiah Wright anymore which is good for Obama. However, I have a feeling this isn't the last time we'll be examining this topic.
(http://rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/people2/just_8_have_favorable_opinion_of_pastor_jeremiah_wright)
In my estimation, this speech was lacking thematic clarity. I would liken it to a horoscope … a jumble of ideas loosely tied together from which the listener can latch onto whatever resonates with his or her own experience. As such, it may be effective for some of its audience (the ones who are inclined to believe in horoscopes give Obama the benefit of the doubt). However, for those that needed to understand Obama’s rationale for closely associating himself and his family with Pastor Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ, the speech came up short.
Let me say for the record that Obama and his team have proven themselves to be communicators of the first order. Thus there is a different standard for his speeches. Usually after an Obama speech, I can immediately jot down the main theme, the target audience, the intended take-away, etc. However this time, the only thing that was clear was the target audience – clearly this was the swing voting blue collar white males.
I will do my best to critique this speech. But I will qualify my commentary by saying that 10 different people could easily have10 different interpretations.
Theme of the Speech
In speechwriting 101, you are taught to immediately establish the theme … support … support … support … then conclude with a re-statement of theme. Obama doesn’t follow the template and thus, the theme is not clear.
In “A More Perfect Union”, Obama starts with 4 paragraphs of background on the Constitution, the founding fathers handling of the slavery issue, and the subsequent struggle to achieve the ideal of equality.
Finally, Obama makes the following statement which I believe is the theme of the speech:
“…unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren. “
Or restated: Through better understanding and alignment of goals between races we can take another incremental step on the way to our Constitutional ideal of equality.
Now restated as I believe this is meant to be interpreted by the target audience: Listen working class whites, YOU are not being treated equally AND African-Americans are not being treated equally as the Constitution says we should be. If these two groups can align their goals, they can form a powerful successful coalition.
So from this, I think we're going to get something similar to Obama's Pennsylvania stump speech.
Supporting Point 1: When racial issues are not in the way, this coalition has been successful
“Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans. “
(Nevermind that the white Americans have been more upscale than working class)
Supporting Point 2: African Americans need improved infrastructure to enable the American Dream (or alternatively the establishment has always done us wrong)
“ … Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us. “
Supporting Point 3: Working class whites need the same infrastructure to maintain the opportunity of achieving the American Dream (or alternatively, now the establishment is doing you wrong)
“…Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time. “
Supporting Point 4: This coalition which would otherwise be natural is kept apart by the political exploitation of racial resentment
“… Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding. “
Supporting Point 5: A great example of racial resentment exploited for political purposes … Jeremiah Wright
“…On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way “
So in other words, Obama doesn’t deny that resentment and anger exist in his church. Furthermore his friend and former pastor presents a “profoundly distorted” view of this country … which Obama condemns.
The big problem here is not that Obama and Wright are buddies, but that Wright is being taken out of context for the purposes of political exploitation
The $64K question: Why is the Obama-Wright relationship not a problem?
“…The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. “
Restated: Jeremiah Wright has done enough good in Obama’s life that he can overlook (and condemn) the “profoundly distorted” view of this country. Obama knows that there are underlying reasons why Wright is what he is. Furthermore Wright reflects (albeit in an extreme) the feelings of his community. Obama doesn’t want to disown his church and his community over his disagreements on the country and on racial resentment. He just wants to divorce himself from those ideas and still have those relationships. Obama then goes on to compare his relationship with Wright with his relationship to his grandmother who also made him “cringe” from time to time.
Now, if I put myself in the shoes of a working class white, I see Obama’s dilemma. I too have grandparents, uncles, etc that make me cringe. Yet I still love them. So the idea of the Obama-Wright friendship might not bother me anymore.
However, when I start imagining myself in a community and a church that is overtly bigoted and anti-American … this is a little tougher to swallow. However if my race was at one time enslaved and then suffered a century of injustice after that, OK … I might take Obama’s word for it.
But the final jump that I am asked to make is that Obama can completely divorce himself from these ideas held by his church and his community. Furthermore, that even though he disagrees with these ideas, he’s willing to steep his children in this church and community … no doubt perpetuating these bad ideas. The bottom line is that I think most people would find a church and community where those ideas that they consider bad are less intense for the benefit of their children.
I don’t think most people make that last jump. And I think some people won’t give Obama the benefit of the doubt on the anti-American and bigotry in their church leap. They’ll imagine themselves in a church where African Americans or America was being derided and they’ll stop thinking about the circumstances that might underlie that behavior. So at best Obama’s white working class audience will be uncomfortable with his explanation. At worst, they will reject his explanation out of hand.
Conclusion
I found this speech to be unusually poorly organized. There was a weak statement of theme, ideas didn’t flow correctly, and the ending restatement of theme was non-existent. Comparisons to “I have a dream” are completely beyond the pale as anyone who listened to Dr. King's speech could tell you the theme and the bullet points.
In my mind, the poor organization of the speech is suspect. Obama and his team are too good to put out a product like this at this moment. Did Obama mean to confuse us? Was he looking for a horoscope type reaction? Or worse … was he looking for an emperor has no clothes reaction? I can easily envision that Obama saw that his argument to his target audience was weak (at least with respect to Pastor Wright) and thus he had to give a speech that was a lot harder to figure out. He mixed his normal stump argument with a lot of distracting intellectually honest stuff about race and then threw in the Jermiah Wright argument. In the end we are all scratching our heads, wondering which way is up, and we’ve forgotten what this was all about in the first place.
The net effect of all this is that we're not talking about Jeremiah Wright anymore which is good for Obama. However, I have a feeling this isn't the last time we'll be examining this topic.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Great Minds Think Like Mine
Mark Schmidtt at Tapped concurs with my endgame strategy.
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=03&year=2008&base_name=what_should_obama_do_about_mic
Here's some further thoughts from The New Republic's Josh Patashnik
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/03/12/should-obama-agree-to-seat-florida.aspx
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=03&year=2008&base_name=what_should_obama_do_about_mic
Here's some further thoughts from The New Republic's Josh Patashnik
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/03/12/should-obama-agree-to-seat-florida.aspx
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Democratic Endgame
Barack Obama will be the Democratic Nominee. However he’s got a big problem. The TV networks, the Republican Party, and his opponent are all working as hard as they can to extend the Democratic primaries as long as possible. The TV networks are raking in dollars from all the campaign advertising and the high ratings. The Republican Party wants to see the Democrats spend all their money fighting each other. And Hillary Clinton is indicating that she’ll keep fighting in spite of the fact that her only winning scenario is extremely ugly and likely Pyrrhic.
The Obama campaign was well-positioned to go into end-game mode today … even with the Hillary Clinton victories. Going back to the spreadsheet leaked by the Obama campaign:
http://ia341038.us.archive.org/1/items/Obamaexcel/obamacampaignexcel.xls
They had expected to be ahead by 58 delegates today and they are 75 delegates ahead of that pace due to the overwhelming victories in the MD, VA, and WI primaries. Looking at the spreadsheet, if Clinton were to run the table with 15 point victories in every contest she would pick up roughly 100 delegates between now and the end of the race. So Obama’s 133 pledged delegate lead is looking pretty unbeatable right now.
Based on that outlook, the superdelegates are about to put their thumb on the scale. Obama is rumored to have about 50 new superdelegate commitments that he is going to roll out. This would erase the Clinton superdelegate lead and then some. Essentially, the race would be out of reach and more superdelegates would pile onto the Obama campaign, the outcome would be inevitable and Clinton would be forced to bow out.
This superdelegate thumb on the scale scenario or something close to it may still happen, but Gov Crist in FL threw a fly into the ointment. Gov Crist announced that he would support a re-do of the FL primary. This in spite of the fact that he that forced the early primary in the first place and thus was the reason that the FL delegates were disqualified. Until now, he had stood in the way of the re-do due to the $10M price tag (and assumably he wanted to damage the Democratic party’s chances to win FL in the general election). However since he’s now willing to accept the cost of the re-do (due to the damage an extended battle would cause to the Democratic candidate) FL’s 185 delegates and assumably MI’s 128 delegates are back in play. In the Hillary-run’s-the-table-by 15% scenario, she now passes Obama. Granted, this is still very hard but not impossible.
FL and MI create the same problem for Obama that TX and OH did … everyone knows how they will probably come out, but until they complete you can’t say that the Obama win is inevitable. So what’s Obama to do? An extended race with FL and MI in June would force him to spend money and time that he would otherwise use to fight John McCain.
If I were Barack Obama I’d strike the following deal: First, accept the original FL results. (he lost by 17% which resulted in 38 delegates net loss) on condition that a MI re-do would be a caucus held prior to PA.
Here’s the rationale:
1. He’s got enough delegates to to cover the loss in FL and still have the insurmountable lead.
2. He’s likely to lose a FL primary by 10-15% no matter what. FL is old and old is Hillary’s demo.
3. He owns caucuses so he’s likely to recover some of his losses in MI.
4. Hillary is likely to accept the deal because it’s good for her and she’d get a lot of pressure from her party to do so.
5. In the perception game, the FL loss will have an asterisk. Plus he’s taking a bullet for team D and thus is a hero. If the primary were to be re-run and he lost, then he’d risk losing momentum.
The bottom line is that if Obama cut such a deal, after the MI caucus he’d be basically where he expected to be today. The FL and MI problem would be neatly taken care of, and the superdelegates can avalanche to his side prior to PA more or less ending things.
UPDATE:
Crist is backing off of his statement that he'd support a re-do.
http://www.local10.com/news/15504360/detail.html
So Obama eating these delegates may not be necessary. One way or another the Dems have to figure out a way to end this after PA. In the end, Hillary supporters and FL and MI Dems have to feel like they got a fair deal.
The Obama campaign was well-positioned to go into end-game mode today … even with the Hillary Clinton victories. Going back to the spreadsheet leaked by the Obama campaign:
http://ia341038.us.archive.org/1/items/Obamaexcel/obamacampaignexcel.xls
They had expected to be ahead by 58 delegates today and they are 75 delegates ahead of that pace due to the overwhelming victories in the MD, VA, and WI primaries. Looking at the spreadsheet, if Clinton were to run the table with 15 point victories in every contest she would pick up roughly 100 delegates between now and the end of the race. So Obama’s 133 pledged delegate lead is looking pretty unbeatable right now.
Based on that outlook, the superdelegates are about to put their thumb on the scale. Obama is rumored to have about 50 new superdelegate commitments that he is going to roll out. This would erase the Clinton superdelegate lead and then some. Essentially, the race would be out of reach and more superdelegates would pile onto the Obama campaign, the outcome would be inevitable and Clinton would be forced to bow out.
This superdelegate thumb on the scale scenario or something close to it may still happen, but Gov Crist in FL threw a fly into the ointment. Gov Crist announced that he would support a re-do of the FL primary. This in spite of the fact that he that forced the early primary in the first place and thus was the reason that the FL delegates were disqualified. Until now, he had stood in the way of the re-do due to the $10M price tag (and assumably he wanted to damage the Democratic party’s chances to win FL in the general election). However since he’s now willing to accept the cost of the re-do (due to the damage an extended battle would cause to the Democratic candidate) FL’s 185 delegates and assumably MI’s 128 delegates are back in play. In the Hillary-run’s-the-table-by 15% scenario, she now passes Obama. Granted, this is still very hard but not impossible.
FL and MI create the same problem for Obama that TX and OH did … everyone knows how they will probably come out, but until they complete you can’t say that the Obama win is inevitable. So what’s Obama to do? An extended race with FL and MI in June would force him to spend money and time that he would otherwise use to fight John McCain.
If I were Barack Obama I’d strike the following deal: First, accept the original FL results. (he lost by 17% which resulted in 38 delegates net loss) on condition that a MI re-do would be a caucus held prior to PA.
Here’s the rationale:
1. He’s got enough delegates to to cover the loss in FL and still have the insurmountable lead.
2. He’s likely to lose a FL primary by 10-15% no matter what. FL is old and old is Hillary’s demo.
3. He owns caucuses so he’s likely to recover some of his losses in MI.
4. Hillary is likely to accept the deal because it’s good for her and she’d get a lot of pressure from her party to do so.
5. In the perception game, the FL loss will have an asterisk. Plus he’s taking a bullet for team D and thus is a hero. If the primary were to be re-run and he lost, then he’d risk losing momentum.
The bottom line is that if Obama cut such a deal, after the MI caucus he’d be basically where he expected to be today. The FL and MI problem would be neatly taken care of, and the superdelegates can avalanche to his side prior to PA more or less ending things.
UPDATE:
Crist is backing off of his statement that he'd support a re-do.
http://www.local10.com/news/15504360/detail.html
So Obama eating these delegates may not be necessary. One way or another the Dems have to figure out a way to end this after PA. In the end, Hillary supporters and FL and MI Dems have to feel like they got a fair deal.
Friday, February 29, 2008
McCain Healthcare Criticism
The following article is a slanted but informative criticism of the McCain healthcare program.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=7e9b013b-2fb7-45c7-91cb-e05218063a33
The summation is that McCain would incentivize the country to move to individual insurance (and away from employer-based insurance) via tax credits.
The disconnect in the McCain proposal is that without Govt intervention, there is no reason to think that the free-market will come up with a solution for individuals that have pre-existing conditions. Think about an analogy to auto insurance ... the cost of a policy for someone with a history of accidents can be an order of magnitude higher than for someone with a spotless record. Extrapolating that to health care, a high-risk family might be paying $4000/month if a healthy family pays $400/month. Obviously that cost would be prohibitively expensive for most high-risk families.
Continuing my auto insurance analogy, would it make sense for an insurer to offer auto insurance that didn't take driving record into account? Obviously the answer is no, there is nothing like that on the market. Why? Because good drivers would always opt for the lower cost insurance that they get because they are low risk. A risk-independent insurance market is equivalent to a high-risk insurance market.
For the health insurers to make money AND maintain costs to an affordable level for individuals, the healthy have to pay for the sick. In our current system, healty individuals effectively split the costs of sick individuals with employers.
So the bottom line on the McCain plan is that it's unsustainable as proposed. Practically speaking, such a plan could never produce legislation without significant modification. Ultimately it could only result in no action and thus status quo, or perhaps it is trying to remove the employer contributions and thus put the entire cost burden on individuals.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=7e9b013b-2fb7-45c7-91cb-e05218063a33
The summation is that McCain would incentivize the country to move to individual insurance (and away from employer-based insurance) via tax credits.
The disconnect in the McCain proposal is that without Govt intervention, there is no reason to think that the free-market will come up with a solution for individuals that have pre-existing conditions. Think about an analogy to auto insurance ... the cost of a policy for someone with a history of accidents can be an order of magnitude higher than for someone with a spotless record. Extrapolating that to health care, a high-risk family might be paying $4000/month if a healthy family pays $400/month. Obviously that cost would be prohibitively expensive for most high-risk families.
Continuing my auto insurance analogy, would it make sense for an insurer to offer auto insurance that didn't take driving record into account? Obviously the answer is no, there is nothing like that on the market. Why? Because good drivers would always opt for the lower cost insurance that they get because they are low risk. A risk-independent insurance market is equivalent to a high-risk insurance market.
For the health insurers to make money AND maintain costs to an affordable level for individuals, the healthy have to pay for the sick. In our current system, healty individuals effectively split the costs of sick individuals with employers.
So the bottom line on the McCain plan is that it's unsustainable as proposed. Practically speaking, such a plan could never produce legislation without significant modification. Ultimately it could only result in no action and thus status quo, or perhaps it is trying to remove the employer contributions and thus put the entire cost burden on individuals.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Obama: Re-Branding Liberalism
Barack Obama is making an interesting proposition to the American people. He’s trying to sell Liberalism to Independents and Conservatives that have rejected that philosophy for decades. And so far … it’s working.
To understand why it’s working, we have to understand Liberalism itself. In America, we equate Liberalism with a set of policy preferences …diplomacy over military action, stem-cell research, the legalization of same-sex marriage, secular government, stricter gun control, environmental protection laws, the preservation of abortion rights, etc … But in terms of core values, Liberalism is defined by the desire to provide everyone with an equal opportunity and to promote a creative and productive society.
Opposing philosophies (i.e. Conservatives) have been successful in branding Liberalism as “un-American”. Conservatives have no problem with the equal opportunity component of the Liberal philosophy. However, Conservatives believe that our society should be shaped only by the free market, the Constitution, and God – the ideas of the founding fathers of this country. When Liberals advocate an idea that they think makes the country better but has no basis in the free Market, the Constitution, or God (for example Social Security), Conservatives will often argue that the idea is un-American. Strictly speaking, they are right.
The Obama proposition is that our country as presently constructed denies opportunity to many middle and lower class families. Furthermore, the denial of opportunity is fundamentally un-American. Thus we have to build infrastructure in a way that’s not guided by the ideals of the founding fathers in order to maintain the ideal of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We are being un-American either way, but one way is better than the other. Why? Because of this thing that Americans all hold near and dear … the American Dream. Making government a little bigger than it would otherwise be to preserve the American dream fits within the core values of Americans.
Thus, Obama is operating within Liberal philosophy AND he’s operating within Conservative philosophy. He’s advocating opportunity for all and he’s shaping America beyond its strict definition for some greater good. At the same time, he’s pushing the envelope only as far as it needs to be pushed to preserve the American Dream. If he’s successful, he’ll offer a brand of Liberalism than can’t be called “un-American”.
Let’s illustrate this with a couple examples.
Obama’s Health Plan
Obama argues that health care costs have risen to the point where ordinary American’s can’t afford coverage and also build a life for themselves and their families. Thus the government has to step in and insure that there is an affordable option that is available to everyone including those with pre-existing conditions.
The distinction between the Obama plan and the other Democratic candidates plans is subtle, and his campaign has taken a lot of heat from his opponents over his lack of “universal coverage”. However, in Obama’s brand of Liberalism, mandating that everyone has health coverage goes too far. Universal Health care is an idea that’s long been deemed to be un-American. However Americans accept that the rising cost of health care is swamping some families. And furthermore, American’s accept that pre-existing conditions and health care portability are further limiting opportunities. So if something can be done which solves those two problems, it won’t be un-American. It may require bigger government and Conservatives generally oppose things that make government bigger. But sometimes there are big problems that only the federal government can solve … the interstate highway system for example.
Another feature of Obama’s Liberal brand is that his programs in general will be smaller in scope than many Liberal ideas … after all they aren’t intended to make America “better”, they are only intended to make sure that opportunities are available. In fact Hillary Clinton believes that her Health care plan will cost $100B dollars while Obama estimates his as costing about half as much.
So in the Fall, McCain and Obama will argue over the relative merits of their respective health plans, but McCain can’t attack the brand … or if he does, many won’t buy into his attack. After all, the brand is keeping the American dream alive.
Obama’s Subprime Mortgage Crisis Recovery Plan
Another example of the Obama’s brand is his program to recover from the subprime mortgage crisis. In Obama’s view, the problem with the subprime lending market isn’t that middle class families are going to lose their homes. They were speculating and / or were taking too much risk and they lost their money. The problem is that people who rely on risky loans just to have a home shouldn’t get wiped out along with the speculators.
Contrast this to the Clinton plan that freezes interest rates on ARMs for 5 years across the board. Philosophically speaking, her plan isn’t grounded in the core American values and by the way … is much more expensive.
Conclusion
So the bottom line is that Obama’s program is at least palatable to the entire spectrum of political philosophies. His program is in fact, Liberal. However, it can’t be dismissed out of hand by anyone. Obama still has to convince Americans that his ideas are better than McCain’s ideas. However the argument won’t end when Americans read the brand name.
To understand why it’s working, we have to understand Liberalism itself. In America, we equate Liberalism with a set of policy preferences …diplomacy over military action, stem-cell research, the legalization of same-sex marriage, secular government, stricter gun control, environmental protection laws, the preservation of abortion rights, etc … But in terms of core values, Liberalism is defined by the desire to provide everyone with an equal opportunity and to promote a creative and productive society.
Opposing philosophies (i.e. Conservatives) have been successful in branding Liberalism as “un-American”. Conservatives have no problem with the equal opportunity component of the Liberal philosophy. However, Conservatives believe that our society should be shaped only by the free market, the Constitution, and God – the ideas of the founding fathers of this country. When Liberals advocate an idea that they think makes the country better but has no basis in the free Market, the Constitution, or God (for example Social Security), Conservatives will often argue that the idea is un-American. Strictly speaking, they are right.
The Obama proposition is that our country as presently constructed denies opportunity to many middle and lower class families. Furthermore, the denial of opportunity is fundamentally un-American. Thus we have to build infrastructure in a way that’s not guided by the ideals of the founding fathers in order to maintain the ideal of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We are being un-American either way, but one way is better than the other. Why? Because of this thing that Americans all hold near and dear … the American Dream. Making government a little bigger than it would otherwise be to preserve the American dream fits within the core values of Americans.
Thus, Obama is operating within Liberal philosophy AND he’s operating within Conservative philosophy. He’s advocating opportunity for all and he’s shaping America beyond its strict definition for some greater good. At the same time, he’s pushing the envelope only as far as it needs to be pushed to preserve the American Dream. If he’s successful, he’ll offer a brand of Liberalism than can’t be called “un-American”.
Let’s illustrate this with a couple examples.
Obama’s Health Plan
Obama argues that health care costs have risen to the point where ordinary American’s can’t afford coverage and also build a life for themselves and their families. Thus the government has to step in and insure that there is an affordable option that is available to everyone including those with pre-existing conditions.
The distinction between the Obama plan and the other Democratic candidates plans is subtle, and his campaign has taken a lot of heat from his opponents over his lack of “universal coverage”. However, in Obama’s brand of Liberalism, mandating that everyone has health coverage goes too far. Universal Health care is an idea that’s long been deemed to be un-American. However Americans accept that the rising cost of health care is swamping some families. And furthermore, American’s accept that pre-existing conditions and health care portability are further limiting opportunities. So if something can be done which solves those two problems, it won’t be un-American. It may require bigger government and Conservatives generally oppose things that make government bigger. But sometimes there are big problems that only the federal government can solve … the interstate highway system for example.
Another feature of Obama’s Liberal brand is that his programs in general will be smaller in scope than many Liberal ideas … after all they aren’t intended to make America “better”, they are only intended to make sure that opportunities are available. In fact Hillary Clinton believes that her Health care plan will cost $100B dollars while Obama estimates his as costing about half as much.
So in the Fall, McCain and Obama will argue over the relative merits of their respective health plans, but McCain can’t attack the brand … or if he does, many won’t buy into his attack. After all, the brand is keeping the American dream alive.
Obama’s Subprime Mortgage Crisis Recovery Plan
Another example of the Obama’s brand is his program to recover from the subprime mortgage crisis. In Obama’s view, the problem with the subprime lending market isn’t that middle class families are going to lose their homes. They were speculating and / or were taking too much risk and they lost their money. The problem is that people who rely on risky loans just to have a home shouldn’t get wiped out along with the speculators.
Contrast this to the Clinton plan that freezes interest rates on ARMs for 5 years across the board. Philosophically speaking, her plan isn’t grounded in the core American values and by the way … is much more expensive.
Conclusion
So the bottom line is that Obama’s program is at least palatable to the entire spectrum of political philosophies. His program is in fact, Liberal. However, it can’t be dismissed out of hand by anyone. Obama still has to convince Americans that his ideas are better than McCain’s ideas. However the argument won’t end when Americans read the brand name.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Obama Takes Control of the Democratic Race; Obama and McCain Outline General Election Themes
Barack Obama has taken control of the Democratic race due to the stunning results in the VA, DC, and MD primaries. Obama was supposed to win these primaries by a pretty big margin. By the last set of polls, he was up about 17%. But when the results came in at 27% … the game changed. Obama is going to net something like 25 extra delegates above and beyond the expected 20-25. Those extra delegates will more than offset a 10 point Clinton victory in Texas. Effectively, Clinton lost Texas along with VA, MD, and DC yesterday.
Here are the ramifications of the extra delegates won last night:
1. Even if Clinton is able to get her expected victories in TX, OH, and PA, she will NEVER get the lead in pledged delegates. In fact, I now expect her to lose in pledged delegates by 90 or so. And that’s assuming that the demographic trends that happened in VA don’t extend to other states.
2. This effectively takes the scenario where Obama wins in pledged delegates but loses due to superdelegates out of play. Furthermore it’s hard to believe that Clinton’s 90 superdelegate lead will hold up if everyone knows that there is virtually no chance that she will regain the pledged delegate lead.
Bottom line: This is now Obama’s race to lose.
So where does Obama go from here? I believe he foreshadowed his approach in last night’s speech in Madison, WI.
Obama’s Themes for the Stretch Run to Denver:
Obama was able to break into Clinton’s coalition in the Potomac Primaries. The $40K/year and under white males were the group that will be key going into states like WI, TX, OH, and PA. As CNBC’s Andrea Mitchell quipped, “White Men Can Jump … to the Obama coalition!”. But in order to continue that trend, Obama will have to stress his economic program and how it helps the blue collar Democrats. This theme was stressed in Obama’s speech last night:
“… Because at a time when so many people are struggling to keep up with soaring costs in a sluggish economy, we know that the status quo in Washington just won't do. Not this time. Not this year. We can't keep playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expect a different result – because it's a game that ordinary Americans are losing.
It's a game where lobbyists write check after check and Exxon turns record profits, while you pay the price at the pump, and our planet is put at risk. That's what happens when lobbyists set the agenda, and that's why they won't drown out your voices anymore when I am President of the United States of America.
It's a game where trade deals like NAFTA ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart. That's what happens when the American worker doesn't have a voice at the negotiating table, when leaders change their positions on trade with the politics of the moment, and that's why we need a President who will listen to Main Street – not just Wall Street; a President who will stand with workers not just when it's easy, but when it's hard. …”
Obama’s Themes for the General Election
And to set some themes for the fall campaign, Obama struck a chord that will resonate with Republicans and Democrats alike. He didn’t argue against the war, but instead against spending for the war. Even the most hawkish conservatives will freely admit that they can’t abide the costs of the war in Iraq.
Obama then went on to point to McCain’s vote against the Bush tax cuts (a little salt for the wounds of fiscal conservatives). He underlined McCain’s rationale for not supporting the tax cuts at the time. This accomplished two things: first, it lends credibility to Obama’s argument that the tax cuts need to be rolled back. Second, it challenges McCain to either re-affirm his position as a maverick that does what he believes is right (the McCain that most of his fans like) or to position himself as a conservative establishment candidate (which the Republican base would love, but would probably spell disaster for the McCain presidential campaign).
“If we had chosen a different path, the right path, we could have finished the job in Afghanistan, and put more resources into the fight against bin Laden; and instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Baghdad, we could have put that money into our schools and hospitals, our road and bridges – and that's what the American people need us to do right now.
And I admired Senator McCain when he stood up and said that it offended his "conscience" to support the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy in a time of war; that he couldn't support a tax cut where "so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate." But somewhere along the road to the Republican nomination, the Straight Talk Express lost its wheels, because now he's all for them.
Well I'm not. We can't keep spending money that we don't have in a war that we shouldn't have fought. We can't keep mortgaging our children's future on a mountain of debt. We can't keep driving a wider and wider gap between the few who are rich and the rest who struggle to keep pace. It's time to turn the page”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/us/politics/12text-obama.html?_r=1&fta=y&oref=slogin
The Failed Clinton Strategy … is it About the Money?
Clinton’s strategy of abandoning / conceding states cost her once more. The “Big State” strategy has been used successfully many times. However, that strategy doesn’t work when you get your clock cleaned in the small states. If Clinton was even competitive in the caucus states and the Potomac primaries, this race would be over by now. There’s no way that this can be intentional. Campaign funds must be an issue on the Clinton side.
One last comment on the Clinton Campaign, I don’t believe that the statement made by Clinton endorser Ed Rendell to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette yesterday was a coincidence or an accident:
“"You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate,"”
I believe this was intentionally put out by the Clinton Campaign on the eve of Obama’s big win in the Potomac primaries in an attempt to mitigate the perceived damage of the losses. Clearly they anticipated that the white voters would support Clinton as they had in previous primaries. This was basically the same divisive racial strategy used when it became apparent that Clinton wouldn’t win in SC. This is interesting because the strategy backfired in SC, yet Clinton re-tooled it and used it again. Again the result will be a net negative for the Clinton campaign. They guessed wrong, and they look bad for trying it.
McCain Doesn’t Believe in Miracles
I’ll have to hand it to Huckabee. He nearly pulled off a miracle in VA. He was greatly helped by a massive crossover of Republicans and Independents to vote in the Democratic primary. The crossover left an electorate composed mainly of evangelical conservatives … who voted for Huck. VA was a winner-take-all state so the win would have been a major coup for Huckabee. But alas, it was not to be. McCain narrowly pulled out the victory.
I predicted in an earlier post that Huckabee would be out of the race before yesterday. At the time, I couldn’t understand why staying in would be a good idea. I still don’t. However, Huckabee can clearly make his presence felt in Wisconsin and Texas. I’m not sure why that’s a good thing. It will be interesting to find out what Huckabee was thinking post-mortem.
But let’s get back to John McCain. McCain, in his victory speech also started to lay out themes for the fall. First, he made the classic Republican argument:
“… But now comes the hard part, and for America, the much bigger decision. We do not yet know for certain who will have the honor of being the Democratic Party's nominee for President. But we know where either of their candidates will lead this country, and we dare not let them. They will promise a new approach to governing, but offer only the policies of a political orthodoxy that insists the solution to government's failures is to simply make it bigger. They will appeal to our dreams of a better future for ourselves, our families and our country, but they would take from us more of the wealth we have earned to build those dreams and assure us that government is better able than we are to make decisions about our future for us. They will promise to break with the failed politics of the past, but will campaign in ways that seek to minimize their exposure to questions from the press and challenges from voters who ask more from their candidates than an empty promise of "trust me, I know better." They will paint a picture of the world in which America's mistakes are a greater threat to our security than the malevolent intentions of an enemy that despises us and our ideals; a world that can be made safer and more peaceful by placating our implacable foes and breaking faith with allies and the millions of people in this world for whom America, and the global progress of our ideals, has long been "the last, best hope of earth."
We will offer different ideas, based in a better understanding of the challenges we face, and the resolve to confront them with confidence in the strength and ideals of free people. We believe that Americans, not our detractors and certainly not our enemies, are on the right side of history. We trust in the strength, industry and goodness of the American people. We don't believe that government has all the answers. We believe that government must respect the rights, property and opportunities of the people to whom we are accountable. We don't believe in growing the size of government to make it easier to serve our own ambitions. We believe that what government is expected to do, what we cannot do for ourselves individually, it must do with competence, resolve and wisdom.
The American people don't send us to Washington to serve our self-interest, but to serve theirs. They don't send us to fight each other for our own political ambitions; but to fight together our real enemies. They don't send us to Washington to stroke our egos; but to help them keep this beautiful, bountiful, blessed country safe, prosperous, proud and free. They don't send us to Washington to take more of their money, and waste it on things that add not an ounce to America's strength and prosperity; that don't help a single family realize the dreams we all dream for our children; that don't help a single displaced worker find a new job, and the security and dignity it assures them; that won't keep the promise we make to young workers that the retirement they have begun to invest in, will be there for them when they need it. They don't send us to Washington to do their job, but to do ours; to do it better and with less of t heir money… ”
McCain then went on to argue against Obama whom he now knows for the first time is his likely opponent in the fall. Of course his argument was similar to the Clinton argument that has worked to some degree … that Obama is style but not substance. But McCain went further. He insinuated that Obama was seeking self-glorification and considered himself “anointed by history”. I found this argument to be interestingly personal.
“… Hope, my friends, is a powerful thing. I can attest to that better than many, for I have seen men's hopes tested in hard and cruel ways that few will ever experience. And I stood astonished at the resilience of their hope in the darkest of hours because it did not reside in an exaggerated belief in their individual strength, but in the support of their comrades, and their faith in their country. My hope for our country resides in my faith in the American character, the character which proudly defends the right to think and do for ourselves, but perceives self-interest in accord with a kinship of ideals, which, when called upon, Americans will defend with their very lives.
To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude.
When I was a young man, I thought glory was the highest ambition, and that all glory was self-glory. My parents tried to teach me otherwise, as did the Naval Academy. But I didn't understand the lesson until later in life, when I confronted challenges I never expected to face.
In that confrontation I discovered that I was dependent on others to a greater extent than I had ever realized, but that neither they nor the cause we served made any claims on my identity. On the contrary, I discovered that nothing is more liberating in life than to fight for a cause that encompasses you, but is not defined by your existence alone. And that has made all the difference, my friends, all the difference in the world.
I do not seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need. I seek the presidency with the humility of a man who cannot forget that my country saved me. I am running to serve America, and to champion the ideas I believe will help us do what every American generation has managed to do: to make in our time, and from our challenges, a stronger country and a better world. …”
McCain then concluded by mocking an Obama standard closing line:
“I am fired up and ready to go”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/us/politics/12text-mccain.html?pagewanted=2&sq&st=nyt&scp=4
I’m guessing that McCain is looking for something that the conservative base can hate about Obama. It’s been said many times in this campaign that Hillary would be “the one thing that would energize and unite Republicans in the Fall”. For whatever reason, Hillary is disliked by the conservative base and reviled on conservative talk radio. However, Obama is only disliked for his policy differences. So McCain threw a couple of things against the wall in his speech and we’ll see if anything sticks.
One thing’s for sure, the threat of poor Republican turnout in the fall is very real. So at this point … anything that excites the Republican base would be a good thing.
Here are the ramifications of the extra delegates won last night:
1. Even if Clinton is able to get her expected victories in TX, OH, and PA, she will NEVER get the lead in pledged delegates. In fact, I now expect her to lose in pledged delegates by 90 or so. And that’s assuming that the demographic trends that happened in VA don’t extend to other states.
2. This effectively takes the scenario where Obama wins in pledged delegates but loses due to superdelegates out of play. Furthermore it’s hard to believe that Clinton’s 90 superdelegate lead will hold up if everyone knows that there is virtually no chance that she will regain the pledged delegate lead.
Bottom line: This is now Obama’s race to lose.
So where does Obama go from here? I believe he foreshadowed his approach in last night’s speech in Madison, WI.
Obama’s Themes for the Stretch Run to Denver:
Obama was able to break into Clinton’s coalition in the Potomac Primaries. The $40K/year and under white males were the group that will be key going into states like WI, TX, OH, and PA. As CNBC’s Andrea Mitchell quipped, “White Men Can Jump … to the Obama coalition!”. But in order to continue that trend, Obama will have to stress his economic program and how it helps the blue collar Democrats. This theme was stressed in Obama’s speech last night:
“… Because at a time when so many people are struggling to keep up with soaring costs in a sluggish economy, we know that the status quo in Washington just won't do. Not this time. Not this year. We can't keep playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expect a different result – because it's a game that ordinary Americans are losing.
It's a game where lobbyists write check after check and Exxon turns record profits, while you pay the price at the pump, and our planet is put at risk. That's what happens when lobbyists set the agenda, and that's why they won't drown out your voices anymore when I am President of the United States of America.
It's a game where trade deals like NAFTA ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart. That's what happens when the American worker doesn't have a voice at the negotiating table, when leaders change their positions on trade with the politics of the moment, and that's why we need a President who will listen to Main Street – not just Wall Street; a President who will stand with workers not just when it's easy, but when it's hard. …”
Obama’s Themes for the General Election
And to set some themes for the fall campaign, Obama struck a chord that will resonate with Republicans and Democrats alike. He didn’t argue against the war, but instead against spending for the war. Even the most hawkish conservatives will freely admit that they can’t abide the costs of the war in Iraq.
Obama then went on to point to McCain’s vote against the Bush tax cuts (a little salt for the wounds of fiscal conservatives). He underlined McCain’s rationale for not supporting the tax cuts at the time. This accomplished two things: first, it lends credibility to Obama’s argument that the tax cuts need to be rolled back. Second, it challenges McCain to either re-affirm his position as a maverick that does what he believes is right (the McCain that most of his fans like) or to position himself as a conservative establishment candidate (which the Republican base would love, but would probably spell disaster for the McCain presidential campaign).
“If we had chosen a different path, the right path, we could have finished the job in Afghanistan, and put more resources into the fight against bin Laden; and instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Baghdad, we could have put that money into our schools and hospitals, our road and bridges – and that's what the American people need us to do right now.
And I admired Senator McCain when he stood up and said that it offended his "conscience" to support the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy in a time of war; that he couldn't support a tax cut where "so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate." But somewhere along the road to the Republican nomination, the Straight Talk Express lost its wheels, because now he's all for them.
Well I'm not. We can't keep spending money that we don't have in a war that we shouldn't have fought. We can't keep mortgaging our children's future on a mountain of debt. We can't keep driving a wider and wider gap between the few who are rich and the rest who struggle to keep pace. It's time to turn the page”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/us/politics/12text-obama.html?_r=1&fta=y&oref=slogin
The Failed Clinton Strategy … is it About the Money?
Clinton’s strategy of abandoning / conceding states cost her once more. The “Big State” strategy has been used successfully many times. However, that strategy doesn’t work when you get your clock cleaned in the small states. If Clinton was even competitive in the caucus states and the Potomac primaries, this race would be over by now. There’s no way that this can be intentional. Campaign funds must be an issue on the Clinton side.
One last comment on the Clinton Campaign, I don’t believe that the statement made by Clinton endorser Ed Rendell to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette yesterday was a coincidence or an accident:
“"You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate,"”
I believe this was intentionally put out by the Clinton Campaign on the eve of Obama’s big win in the Potomac primaries in an attempt to mitigate the perceived damage of the losses. Clearly they anticipated that the white voters would support Clinton as they had in previous primaries. This was basically the same divisive racial strategy used when it became apparent that Clinton wouldn’t win in SC. This is interesting because the strategy backfired in SC, yet Clinton re-tooled it and used it again. Again the result will be a net negative for the Clinton campaign. They guessed wrong, and they look bad for trying it.
McCain Doesn’t Believe in Miracles
I’ll have to hand it to Huckabee. He nearly pulled off a miracle in VA. He was greatly helped by a massive crossover of Republicans and Independents to vote in the Democratic primary. The crossover left an electorate composed mainly of evangelical conservatives … who voted for Huck. VA was a winner-take-all state so the win would have been a major coup for Huckabee. But alas, it was not to be. McCain narrowly pulled out the victory.
I predicted in an earlier post that Huckabee would be out of the race before yesterday. At the time, I couldn’t understand why staying in would be a good idea. I still don’t. However, Huckabee can clearly make his presence felt in Wisconsin and Texas. I’m not sure why that’s a good thing. It will be interesting to find out what Huckabee was thinking post-mortem.
But let’s get back to John McCain. McCain, in his victory speech also started to lay out themes for the fall. First, he made the classic Republican argument:
“… But now comes the hard part, and for America, the much bigger decision. We do not yet know for certain who will have the honor of being the Democratic Party's nominee for President. But we know where either of their candidates will lead this country, and we dare not let them. They will promise a new approach to governing, but offer only the policies of a political orthodoxy that insists the solution to government's failures is to simply make it bigger. They will appeal to our dreams of a better future for ourselves, our families and our country, but they would take from us more of the wealth we have earned to build those dreams and assure us that government is better able than we are to make decisions about our future for us. They will promise to break with the failed politics of the past, but will campaign in ways that seek to minimize their exposure to questions from the press and challenges from voters who ask more from their candidates than an empty promise of "trust me, I know better." They will paint a picture of the world in which America's mistakes are a greater threat to our security than the malevolent intentions of an enemy that despises us and our ideals; a world that can be made safer and more peaceful by placating our implacable foes and breaking faith with allies and the millions of people in this world for whom America, and the global progress of our ideals, has long been "the last, best hope of earth."
We will offer different ideas, based in a better understanding of the challenges we face, and the resolve to confront them with confidence in the strength and ideals of free people. We believe that Americans, not our detractors and certainly not our enemies, are on the right side of history. We trust in the strength, industry and goodness of the American people. We don't believe that government has all the answers. We believe that government must respect the rights, property and opportunities of the people to whom we are accountable. We don't believe in growing the size of government to make it easier to serve our own ambitions. We believe that what government is expected to do, what we cannot do for ourselves individually, it must do with competence, resolve and wisdom.
The American people don't send us to Washington to serve our self-interest, but to serve theirs. They don't send us to fight each other for our own political ambitions; but to fight together our real enemies. They don't send us to Washington to stroke our egos; but to help them keep this beautiful, bountiful, blessed country safe, prosperous, proud and free. They don't send us to Washington to take more of their money, and waste it on things that add not an ounce to America's strength and prosperity; that don't help a single family realize the dreams we all dream for our children; that don't help a single displaced worker find a new job, and the security and dignity it assures them; that won't keep the promise we make to young workers that the retirement they have begun to invest in, will be there for them when they need it. They don't send us to Washington to do their job, but to do ours; to do it better and with less of t heir money… ”
McCain then went on to argue against Obama whom he now knows for the first time is his likely opponent in the fall. Of course his argument was similar to the Clinton argument that has worked to some degree … that Obama is style but not substance. But McCain went further. He insinuated that Obama was seeking self-glorification and considered himself “anointed by history”. I found this argument to be interestingly personal.
“… Hope, my friends, is a powerful thing. I can attest to that better than many, for I have seen men's hopes tested in hard and cruel ways that few will ever experience. And I stood astonished at the resilience of their hope in the darkest of hours because it did not reside in an exaggerated belief in their individual strength, but in the support of their comrades, and their faith in their country. My hope for our country resides in my faith in the American character, the character which proudly defends the right to think and do for ourselves, but perceives self-interest in accord with a kinship of ideals, which, when called upon, Americans will defend with their very lives.
To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude.
When I was a young man, I thought glory was the highest ambition, and that all glory was self-glory. My parents tried to teach me otherwise, as did the Naval Academy. But I didn't understand the lesson until later in life, when I confronted challenges I never expected to face.
In that confrontation I discovered that I was dependent on others to a greater extent than I had ever realized, but that neither they nor the cause we served made any claims on my identity. On the contrary, I discovered that nothing is more liberating in life than to fight for a cause that encompasses you, but is not defined by your existence alone. And that has made all the difference, my friends, all the difference in the world.
I do not seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need. I seek the presidency with the humility of a man who cannot forget that my country saved me. I am running to serve America, and to champion the ideas I believe will help us do what every American generation has managed to do: to make in our time, and from our challenges, a stronger country and a better world. …”
McCain then concluded by mocking an Obama standard closing line:
“I am fired up and ready to go”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/us/politics/12text-mccain.html?pagewanted=2&sq&st=nyt&scp=4
I’m guessing that McCain is looking for something that the conservative base can hate about Obama. It’s been said many times in this campaign that Hillary would be “the one thing that would energize and unite Republicans in the Fall”. For whatever reason, Hillary is disliked by the conservative base and reviled on conservative talk radio. However, Obama is only disliked for his policy differences. So McCain threw a couple of things against the wall in his speech and we’ll see if anything sticks.
One thing’s for sure, the threat of poor Republican turnout in the fall is very real. So at this point … anything that excites the Republican base would be a good thing.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Superdelegate Math
(click chart to enlarge)
Like the Obama and Clinton campaigns, I've done my own spreadsheet predicting the outcome of the Democratic race. I've made the assumption that current voting coalitions hold up and I take into account latest polling where possible.
I'm showing the picture 2 different ways. First, I show the pledged delegates at various points in time. Then I include the superdelegates assuming they continue to accumulate proportionally (i.e. no major break for one side or the other). In both cases, the race is always close ... the margin is never more than 100. The maximum margin happens after PA and includes the superdelegates. At that point, Hillary is leading and the margin is almost entirely provided by the superdelegates.
If status quo continues, Hillary ends up within a hair of winning the nomination. However, Obama will have won the pledged delegates. This is not a happy scenario for the Dems. I'm guessing that at some point, the superdelegates will have to put their finger on the scale even moreso than it already is (currently favoring Hillary by about 90). The question is ... when? and for whom?
Of course there is another possibility. Clinton or Obama may at some point peel off enough voters from the other's coalition that they open up a wide gap in pledged delegates. Ultimately, this would be the best case scenario for the party. But there is no reason to think that's going to happen. The coalitions on both sides are rock solid. Both candidates will probably have plenty of money. And there will probably be no major mistakes.
So now we see the stakeholders posturing on whether the superdelegates should should commit to a candidate or whether they should stay on the sidelines. Clnton advocate Donna Brazil has gone so far as to threaten to quit the Democratic party if the superdelegates "decide the race". Of course her position ignores the fact that the current difference of 90 superdelegates in favor of Clinton might very well decide the race. In my prediction, that 90 delegate margin is 2x the pledged delegate margin. The Obama side is openly urging the superdelegates to commit. The fact is that he NEEDS them to commit or he will most probably lose.
In a previous post, I tried to interpret a statement by Howard Dean that seemed to be trying to pressure superdelegates into commitment. Since then, various other "nuetral" figures in the Democratic party have suggested that the superdelegates wait "for a few more weeks" ... presumably they are hoping that someone will control of this race ... or possibly they don't want the superdelegates to pick sides at an Obama high point.
How will all this unfold? My crystal ball is very cloudy at the moment ... I'm guessing that after the March 4th primaries in Ohio and Texas the end-game should be pretty apparent to everyone. Either the superdelegates break for Obama and he wins, or status quo and Hillary wins. I can't tell which way this will go at the moment, but I can predict that the superdelegate gap on April 22 (the day of the PA primary) will predict the eventual winner. I say if the margin is closer to 90 than 0, Clinton will win. Otherwise, Obama will be the nominee.
Like the Obama and Clinton campaigns, I've done my own spreadsheet predicting the outcome of the Democratic race. I've made the assumption that current voting coalitions hold up and I take into account latest polling where possible.
I'm showing the picture 2 different ways. First, I show the pledged delegates at various points in time. Then I include the superdelegates assuming they continue to accumulate proportionally (i.e. no major break for one side or the other). In both cases, the race is always close ... the margin is never more than 100. The maximum margin happens after PA and includes the superdelegates. At that point, Hillary is leading and the margin is almost entirely provided by the superdelegates.
If status quo continues, Hillary ends up within a hair of winning the nomination. However, Obama will have won the pledged delegates. This is not a happy scenario for the Dems. I'm guessing that at some point, the superdelegates will have to put their finger on the scale even moreso than it already is (currently favoring Hillary by about 90). The question is ... when? and for whom?
Of course there is another possibility. Clinton or Obama may at some point peel off enough voters from the other's coalition that they open up a wide gap in pledged delegates. Ultimately, this would be the best case scenario for the party. But there is no reason to think that's going to happen. The coalitions on both sides are rock solid. Both candidates will probably have plenty of money. And there will probably be no major mistakes.
So now we see the stakeholders posturing on whether the superdelegates should should commit to a candidate or whether they should stay on the sidelines. Clnton advocate Donna Brazil has gone so far as to threaten to quit the Democratic party if the superdelegates "decide the race". Of course her position ignores the fact that the current difference of 90 superdelegates in favor of Clinton might very well decide the race. In my prediction, that 90 delegate margin is 2x the pledged delegate margin. The Obama side is openly urging the superdelegates to commit. The fact is that he NEEDS them to commit or he will most probably lose.
In a previous post, I tried to interpret a statement by Howard Dean that seemed to be trying to pressure superdelegates into commitment. Since then, various other "nuetral" figures in the Democratic party have suggested that the superdelegates wait "for a few more weeks" ... presumably they are hoping that someone will control of this race ... or possibly they don't want the superdelegates to pick sides at an Obama high point.
How will all this unfold? My crystal ball is very cloudy at the moment ... I'm guessing that after the March 4th primaries in Ohio and Texas the end-game should be pretty apparent to everyone. Either the superdelegates break for Obama and he wins, or status quo and Hillary wins. I can't tell which way this will go at the moment, but I can predict that the superdelegate gap on April 22 (the day of the PA primary) will predict the eventual winner. I say if the margin is closer to 90 than 0, Clinton will win. Otherwise, Obama will be the nominee.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Mitt Romney Out, John Kerry's Endorsement More Important than Ted Kennedy's
Romney goes fishin'
Time to start up the boat again Kenny ... VRRRM VRRRM
As I predicted, Mitt Romney exits the race. The fiscal conservative wing of the house of Reagan mourns. There was no heir apparent to Reagan in this race, but Mitt beared the closest resemblence to one.
This basically clears the way for McCain. A shift from Romney to Huckabee seems extremely unlikely.
Prediction: Huck will also drop out by Sunday. Then let the healing begin.
Kerry's endorsement more important than Kennedy's
Why you ask? Check out this article from the Washington Post:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/02/07/obama_fundraising_strength_com.html
When you get John Kerry's endorsement, you also get his database of 2004 Democratic Presidential campaign donors. Turns out this comes in handy since he's the only one that's got one.
I’m Super, Thanks for Asking!
Before the conclusion of the voting on Super Tuesday, Howard Dean said the following in an interview on NY1 television:
"The idea that we can afford to have a big fight at the convention and then win the race in the next eight weeks, I think, is not a good scenario,"
"I think we will have a nominee sometime in the middle of March or April. But if we don't, then we're going to have to get the candidates together and make some kind of an arrangement, because I don't think we can afford to have a brokered convention -- that would not be good news for either party."
Of course, he’s right. Brokered conventions are bad. They tend to weaken the nominee, as they weren’t directly elected by the people. Brokered conventions need to be avoided.
However, Dean now faces the very real possibility that neither candidate earns the necessary 2025 delegates to win the Democratic nomination outright. So, what’s Dean thinking when he says that he may have to get the candidates together to make some kind of an arrangement? The possibilities are as follows:
1. One of the candidates steps aside. (not a very likely possibility)
2. Seat the delegates from Florida and Michigan or possibly re-run those races (which the Obama campaign would not agree to as it would stack the deck for Clinton).
So knowing that both of these options are essentially non-starters, I’m guessing that Dean’s intent was to rally the superdelegates to pick a candidate.
I believe that both the Obama and Clinton campaigns made the same interpretation and reacted.
Clinton’s campaign (through it’s surrogates … I said cynically) started to argue for a re-do or delegate seating of Florida and Michigan. The argument was made by pointing to the standing positions of the DNC and the respective state democratic committee– DNC has requested that Florida and Michigan re-do, the state committees have said “seat our delegates”.
But is a fight over seating these delegates really what Clinton wants? First of all, deadlock between the DNC and state Democratic Commitees would have to be broken and could get ugly. Along with that, Obama’s supporters would cry foul and there would probably be a legal challenge. It’s hard to believe that all that could happen without substantial damage to Hillary's general election campaign.
So what's the thinking of the Clinton camp? My guess is that the argument they'll be making to the undecided superdelegates will be: If Florida and Michigan had had a voice, I would have been elected. Therefore, I'm really the people's choice.
Meanwhile, the Obama campaign “accidentally” let a spreadsheet slip that supported the Howard Dean nighmare scenario where no candidate has the delegates for nomination. Basically, I interpret this as ... "yeah, Howard Dean is right! You superdelegates can't let this happen!"
See the following article for the details:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a9T3ToQrPGqc&refer=home
“Coincidentally”, Obama is openly lobbying for more superdelegate support:
"If this contest comes down to superdelegates, I think we're going to be able to say that we have more pledged (earned) delegates, meaning that the Democratic voters have spoken," Obama said.
"And I think those superdelegates who are elected officials, party insiders, would have to think long and hard about how they approach the nomination, when the people they claim to represent have said, `Obama's our guy.'"
Thus the Obama campaign likes the idea of virtual brokerage. Furthermore, they are making the case for a rally to their side. But obviously a Clinton argument which included Florida and Michigan would weaken and possibly trump the delegate count argument.
So, Obama may be counting on another rationale to sway the superdelegates: Obama's electability in the general election. The case is made today by columnist George Will (again I said cynically … not coincidentally):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/06/AR2008020603943.html
So what’s going to happen here? The most likely scenario is that the election will be decided by primary voters.
If neither candidate can get enough delegates, I expect that the superdelegates will decide matters. Or at least with that premise, I can manufacture plausable rationale that might explain why all the players did what they did.
"The idea that we can afford to have a big fight at the convention and then win the race in the next eight weeks, I think, is not a good scenario,"
"I think we will have a nominee sometime in the middle of March or April. But if we don't, then we're going to have to get the candidates together and make some kind of an arrangement, because I don't think we can afford to have a brokered convention -- that would not be good news for either party."
Of course, he’s right. Brokered conventions are bad. They tend to weaken the nominee, as they weren’t directly elected by the people. Brokered conventions need to be avoided.
However, Dean now faces the very real possibility that neither candidate earns the necessary 2025 delegates to win the Democratic nomination outright. So, what’s Dean thinking when he says that he may have to get the candidates together to make some kind of an arrangement? The possibilities are as follows:
1. One of the candidates steps aside. (not a very likely possibility)
2. Seat the delegates from Florida and Michigan or possibly re-run those races (which the Obama campaign would not agree to as it would stack the deck for Clinton).
So knowing that both of these options are essentially non-starters, I’m guessing that Dean’s intent was to rally the superdelegates to pick a candidate.
I believe that both the Obama and Clinton campaigns made the same interpretation and reacted.
Clinton’s campaign (through it’s surrogates … I said cynically) started to argue for a re-do or delegate seating of Florida and Michigan. The argument was made by pointing to the standing positions of the DNC and the respective state democratic committee– DNC has requested that Florida and Michigan re-do, the state committees have said “seat our delegates”.
But is a fight over seating these delegates really what Clinton wants? First of all, deadlock between the DNC and state Democratic Commitees would have to be broken and could get ugly. Along with that, Obama’s supporters would cry foul and there would probably be a legal challenge. It’s hard to believe that all that could happen without substantial damage to Hillary's general election campaign.
So what's the thinking of the Clinton camp? My guess is that the argument they'll be making to the undecided superdelegates will be: If Florida and Michigan had had a voice, I would have been elected. Therefore, I'm really the people's choice.
Meanwhile, the Obama campaign “accidentally” let a spreadsheet slip that supported the Howard Dean nighmare scenario where no candidate has the delegates for nomination. Basically, I interpret this as ... "yeah, Howard Dean is right! You superdelegates can't let this happen!"
See the following article for the details:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a9T3ToQrPGqc&refer=home
“Coincidentally”, Obama is openly lobbying for more superdelegate support:
"If this contest comes down to superdelegates, I think we're going to be able to say that we have more pledged (earned) delegates, meaning that the Democratic voters have spoken," Obama said.
"And I think those superdelegates who are elected officials, party insiders, would have to think long and hard about how they approach the nomination, when the people they claim to represent have said, `Obama's our guy.'"
Thus the Obama campaign likes the idea of virtual brokerage. Furthermore, they are making the case for a rally to their side. But obviously a Clinton argument which included Florida and Michigan would weaken and possibly trump the delegate count argument.
So, Obama may be counting on another rationale to sway the superdelegates: Obama's electability in the general election. The case is made today by columnist George Will (again I said cynically … not coincidentally):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/06/AR2008020603943.html
So what’s going to happen here? The most likely scenario is that the election will be decided by primary voters.
If neither candidate can get enough delegates, I expect that the superdelegates will decide matters. Or at least with that premise, I can manufacture plausable rationale that might explain why all the players did what they did.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Super Tuesday Postgame Analysis
Democratic Headline: Obama levels the playing field
Let’s start by saying that when the delegate counting today is complete, Obama will have won more delegates on Super Tuesday than Clinton. The difference will be small, but make no mistake - Obama has cleared a major barrier to his candidacy.
Don’t tell this to Rudy Guiliani, but front-loading the primary schedule was a huge advantage for the frontrunner. Hillary Clinton has held a 20-30% lead in most of the Super Tuesday states for the last few months. Obama has had to pare down these huge margins in a very short amount of time. The odds were long against Obama still having a viable candidacy exiting Super Tuesday. Last week I predicted he’d lose by 70 delegates, and I thought he’d be lucky to get that. But thanks to some brilliant tactics and campaigning we now have a horserace. Furthermore, the back half of this race favors neither. The best campaign will win.
So, what were the strategies going into Super Tuesday?
Clinton:
1. Clean up in NY and CA
2. Win her “backyard” states: MA, CT, NJ
3. Win Western states with large Hispanic populations: AZ, NM
4. Win in her other “home” state and backyard AK, MO, OK, TN
5. Concede the caucus states?
Obama:
1. Clean up in IL and heavily black AL, and GA
2. Minimize the damage in NY and CA
3. Try to pick off a couple of Hillary’s backyard states where it was close: CT, NJ (Concede MA), MO
4. Clean up in caucus states
Evaluating the execution, I’d say both sides did well. Hillary cleaned up in NY, the jury is still out, but she should get something like a 10% delegate margin in CA … a solid victory, but not the bonanza she was hoping for. Obama was able to win narrow victories in a couple of Hillary’s backyard states: MO and CT. But that was somewhat offset by extra delegates in MA and a convincing win in NJ (which had been running neck-and-neck in all the polling). AZ and NM were split, but NM was a caucus state and was won by a very narrow margin.
On the Obama side, he did extremely well in his cleanup states winning many extra delegates. Results in the head to head competitions were mixed as I described above. But most impressive was that he was able to run the table in the caucus states. I’m thinking that the Clinton team has to be pretty surprised at the magnitude of the victories there:
State Clinton Obama
Idaho 17% 80%
Kansas 26% 74%
Alaska 25% 74%
Colorado 32% 67%
Minnesota 32% 67%
North Dakota 37% 61%
These are some lily white states we’re talking about. Prior to Super Tuesday, Obama hadn’t proved he could get more than 40% of the white vote. I think team Clinton was counting on the race gap to keep Obama from blowing her out here. One problem with that strategy though … these are typically low turnout affairs. So a good “get out the vote” ground game produced some eyebrow raising results.
The bottom line on all of this is that even though both sides will be claiming victory today, the Obama camp has to be pretty happy to be where they are. And the Clinton camp has to feel like they missed the opportunity to take control of this race.
But exiting Super Tuesday both sides probably feel pretty good about their chances going forward.
GOP Headline: McCain takes Command, but Reagan coalition fractures
On the Republican side McCain swept the big winner-take-all NE states: NY, NJ, CT. He also won convincingly in IL and OK and eked out MO. On this basis, he takes something like a 250 delegate lead and is the prohibitive favorite.
The story of the night was Huckabee’s over-achievement. He was expected to be competitive in states with a heavy evangelical population. But he was able to win 6 states outright: AL, AK (where he was governor), WV, GA, IA and TN. In GA, AL, an WV the margins were slim. My guess is that the conservative campaigns that were intended to drive votes from McCain to Romney unintentionally diverted votes to Huckabee. Thus McCain’s margin of victory was not as strong as it might have been, but the race is still 3 horses which ultimately hurts Romney. Had Huckabee only won 2 states, he might have been convinced to step aside.
So while Romney otherwise did well, he now faces very long odds. His campaign is relying heavily on his personal fortune and the return on investment doesn’t look good. This is purely speculation, but I’m guessing Romney will withdraw in the very near term.
As of today, McCain is in the driver’s seat. He’s got a coalition of moderates and hawks that will make him competitive going forward and his competition is running out of steam. It’s hard to think of a scenario by which McCain might lose, but if there is one, it starts with Huckabee or Romney dropping out of the race quickly.
The bad news in all of this is that with Huckabee’s success, the Republican coalition is now split 3 ways: moderates and hawks going with McCain, fiscal/traditional conservatives going with Romney, and evangelicals going with Huckabee. McCain has to bring the coalition together again. The quicker he can put this race away, the sooner he can start doing that.
PS: Here's some good links to watch today as the delegate counts unfold. I wouldn't pay too much attention to the superdelegate counts until we get closer to the convention.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/#val=D
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/#val=R
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
The Vice Presidential Short List
While we’re waiting for the Super Tuesday returns, let’s speculate on potential Vice Presidential candidates.
First of all, what makes a good Vice Presidential candidate? The first and most important criterion is that the ticket is strengthened in the swing states. The second criterion is that the choice excites the party’s base (usually by providing balance). The third criterion is that the candidate can hold his (or her) own on the stump and in debates.
Looking at the swing states, the “big 4” (i.e. the ones with the most electoral votes) are Florida (27), Ohio (20), Michigan (17), and Pennsylvania (21). In 2000 and 2004, Florida and Ohio went to the Republicans while Pennsylvania and Michigan went to the Democrats. The margins in these states were all less than 5%. Looking at the 2006 elections, Florida went mostly Republican while the other 3 went Democrat. Here are the Governors:
FLA Gov. Charles Crist (R)
OH Gov. Ted Strickland (D)
PN Gov. Edward Rendell (D)
MI Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) (foreign born so she can’t be president)
Next, I’ve listed the remainder of the battleground states with a significant number of electoral votes.
Other Battleground States (Electoral votes >5)
VA (2004 margin: 8.2% R, EV: 13) Gov. Tim Kaine (D)
MO (2004 margin 7.2% R, EV 11) Gov Matt Blunt (R)
MN (2004 margin 3.5% D, EV 10) Gov Tim Pawlenty (R)
WI (2004 margin .4% D, EV 10) Gov James Doyle, Jr. (D)
CO (2004 margin: 4.7% R, EV: 9) Gov. Bill Ritter (D)
IA (2004 margin .7% R, EV 7) Gov. Chet Culver (D)
OR (2004 margin 4.2% D, EV 7) Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D)
On the Democratic side, the guy that jumps out at me here is Tim Kaine from VA. He’s a Harvard Law guy, a Jesuit, and he gave the Democratic Response to the State of the Union in 2006. He’s been tabbed as a rising star in the party and his approval rating is 55%. Strickland and Rendell should also be considered (61% and 54% approval rating. respectively). Recently Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia have all been going Democratic. But there’s a pretty good chance that Ohio and Pennsylvania go Democratic in 2008 without the Veep bump, while Virginia will be more difficult to win. I’d definitely lean towards Kaine. One problem though, Kaine has endorsed Obama so that may tip the scales toward one of the other two if Hillary Clinton is the nominee.
On the Republican side, Crist and Pawlenty are both 60%-ish approval rating in their state. The Republicans are more likely to take FL without a lot of help though, so I might lean towards Pawlenty.
Lastly, I don't think we'll see any "dream tickets" this time around. On the Dem side, I don't think Hillary would help Obama's ticket should he win. Older women are pretty reliable voters. If she wins, he could help her but I doubt he would. A better career choice would be to go be Governor of Illinois.
On the GOP side, none of the other candidates has the fiscal conservative credentials to help McCain.
First of all, what makes a good Vice Presidential candidate? The first and most important criterion is that the ticket is strengthened in the swing states. The second criterion is that the choice excites the party’s base (usually by providing balance). The third criterion is that the candidate can hold his (or her) own on the stump and in debates.
Looking at the swing states, the “big 4” (i.e. the ones with the most electoral votes) are Florida (27), Ohio (20), Michigan (17), and Pennsylvania (21). In 2000 and 2004, Florida and Ohio went to the Republicans while Pennsylvania and Michigan went to the Democrats. The margins in these states were all less than 5%. Looking at the 2006 elections, Florida went mostly Republican while the other 3 went Democrat. Here are the Governors:
FLA Gov. Charles Crist (R)
OH Gov. Ted Strickland (D)
PN Gov. Edward Rendell (D)
MI Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) (foreign born so she can’t be president)
Next, I’ve listed the remainder of the battleground states with a significant number of electoral votes.
Other Battleground States (Electoral votes >5)
VA (2004 margin: 8.2% R, EV: 13) Gov. Tim Kaine (D)
MO (2004 margin 7.2% R, EV 11) Gov Matt Blunt (R)
MN (2004 margin 3.5% D, EV 10) Gov Tim Pawlenty (R)
WI (2004 margin .4% D, EV 10) Gov James Doyle, Jr. (D)
CO (2004 margin: 4.7% R, EV: 9) Gov. Bill Ritter (D)
IA (2004 margin .7% R, EV 7) Gov. Chet Culver (D)
OR (2004 margin 4.2% D, EV 7) Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D)
On the Democratic side, the guy that jumps out at me here is Tim Kaine from VA. He’s a Harvard Law guy, a Jesuit, and he gave the Democratic Response to the State of the Union in 2006. He’s been tabbed as a rising star in the party and his approval rating is 55%. Strickland and Rendell should also be considered (61% and 54% approval rating. respectively). Recently Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia have all been going Democratic. But there’s a pretty good chance that Ohio and Pennsylvania go Democratic in 2008 without the Veep bump, while Virginia will be more difficult to win. I’d definitely lean towards Kaine. One problem though, Kaine has endorsed Obama so that may tip the scales toward one of the other two if Hillary Clinton is the nominee.
On the Republican side, Crist and Pawlenty are both 60%-ish approval rating in their state. The Republicans are more likely to take FL without a lot of help though, so I might lean towards Pawlenty.
Lastly, I don't think we'll see any "dream tickets" this time around. On the Dem side, I don't think Hillary would help Obama's ticket should he win. Older women are pretty reliable voters. If she wins, he could help her but I doubt he would. A better career choice would be to go be Governor of Illinois.
On the GOP side, none of the other candidates has the fiscal conservative credentials to help McCain.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Jan-31 Gallup: Clinton-Obama gap to 4%, McCain running away from the field
http://www.gallup.com/poll/104071/Gallup-Daily-Tracking-Election-2008.aspx
Great performance by both candidates in last night's debate by the way. By far the most substantive debate in the campaign.
Great performance by both candidates in last night's debate by the way. By far the most substantive debate in the campaign.
POLICY: HEALTH CARE
Health care in America has several major shortcomings.
First and foremost, there is a major deficit issue that needs to be addressed. See the figure from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. "Outlays" are Outlays due to Social Security + Medicare. The numbers on the left are percentage of GDP.
First and foremost, there is a major deficit issue that needs to be addressed. See the figure from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. "Outlays" are Outlays due to Social Security + Medicare. The numbers on the left are percentage of GDP.
So in other words, Social Security and Medicare taxes and premiums would have to almost double in the coming decades to pay for the rising costs. Part of that problem is Social Security, but I will only address the Medicare component in this post.
Second, there are millions of uninsured or underinsured in our system. This is not just a social problem, but also a cost problem. Since the only way that a lot of these folks get treated is in emergency rooms, the cost is unduly high. Of course, those costs are passed along to the consumer through higher hospital costs, doctors fees, etc....
Third, the cost of insurance to most families is onerous.
HEALTH CARE REFORM PROPOSED BY THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES
To broadly characterize the health care proposals put forth by the presidential candidates, the Republican plans attempt to address the cost of insurance to families and leaves open the possibility of working the deficit problem (they can’t address it outright due to the political difficulties) but does little for the problem of the uninsured. The Democratic plans attempt to address the uninsured and the cost to families problems, but do nothing for the deficit problem (the assumption being that this will have to be solved by reprioritization of budgets or tax increases / reductions in service).
A PROPOSAL BY A DUMB BLOGGER
In my view, there is a better answer. I propose a health care system modeled on the system we use to finance retirement. In other words, I propose a system that looks very much like a 401k / IRA with a safety net of Social Security. To accomplish this, I’ll have to borrow some of the ideas from both the Republican and Democratic plans. The outline of the plan is as follows:
1. Responsibility of paying for health care in retirement is shifted from Medicare to the individual with a safety net. The safety net would be analogous to Social Security.
Individuals would have to save money in the equivalent of IRAs or 401ks (Health Savings Accounts or a similar vehicle) while they are employed to pay for medical expenses in their retirement. Contributions to these accounts would be tax free.
Additionally, taxes would be deducted from paychecks with employer contributions (assumably less than the current FICA) to pay for the safety net. The safety net would work in similar fashion to Social Security: upon retirement, a monthly stipend would be paid into the individual’s HSA based on contributions.
2. Mandatory High Deductible Insurance with Tax Credit for the poor. A big difference between saving for retirement and saving for health care in retirement is that at any time, an individual may get sick and have to pay medical bills which would deplete their HSA. Insurance would have to be in-place to mitigate this risk. Tax credits would be given to offset costs for poor families.
Medicaid would still be required to help poor families that can’t meet their deductibles. Although In theory the costs of such a program should be substantially lower.
3. Larger employers would be required to match (up to a fixed amount) employees contributions to HSAs. In the current employer-based system, employers incur large and ever increasing health insurance expenses. Their burden could be greatly reduced while greatly increasing value.
4. Private sector insurance would receive tax credits for offering High Deductible Insurance policies if they met the following requirements:
a. Cover all individuals regardless of pre-existing conditions
b. Reimburse preventative healthcare costs (i.e. yearly checkups, mammograms, etc ..)
The tax credits would be designed to offset higher costs to the insurer due to meeting the requirements.
5. Heath care decisions would be entirely the responsibility of the individuals. Thus the burden/costs of health care administration are shifted to the individuals and away from the Govt. and away from Employers.
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM?
The first advantage is that the Healthcare system becomes consumer driven. In the current system, inefficiencies are not driven out by market forces.
For example, even though drugs cost 2-5 times as much in the United States as they do elsewhere else in the world, HMOs typically don’t re-import them. The HMOs just pass that cost along to their customers (individuals and employers). Individuals don't see the outrageous cost of the drugs. They simply pay the co-pay. But ultimately, individuals and employers are paying for that inefficiency.
When an individual is looking at the choice between re-importing a drug and paying an exorbitant price, they’ll choose re-import. Other inefficiencies, such as unnecessary medical tests and procedures, and perhaps overhead due to excess litigation will be driven out as well.
Ultimately, good consumers will drive all the inefficiencies out of the system. The result will be that overall health care costs will go down. In the prescription drug example, Drug companies would have to lower prices in the US to compete with re-imports (where the prices would have to be raised). Even though the unfair US pricing has been a well-known problem and re-importation was legalized in 2003, reform has never fixed it. However where legislation fails, market forces would succeed.
The second advantage of the proposed system would be that cost savings from driving out inefficiencies and from removing the administrative costs would enable deficit reduction, universal coverage, manageable costs to families, and even reduced cost for employers.
The third advantage of the proposed system would be increased demand for more cost-effective healthcare solutions. Right now, individuals don’t necessarily feel the pain due to cost-ineffective management of diseases. However if individuals with diseases that cost a lot to manage (e.g. Diabetes) had to pay thousands of dollars out of their own pockets every year, you can be sure the urgency would be much higher to find a better solution. Diseases would get cured instead of managed, and ultimately the costs of healthcare would go down.
WHAT ARE THE DISADVANTAGES OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM?
A disadvantage of the proposed system would be that people would make bad decisions. People that might not have gotten sick in the current system will get sick in the proposed system. Unfortunately there will always be a certain percentage of people that won’t make good risk / reward trades when it comes to healthcare. However, one would expect that the free market will come up with a solution for that problem as well.
A second disadvantage may be cost. The various tax credits I proposed wouldn't be free. I have to believe the cost would be significantly less than the $110 Billion needed to fund Hillary Clinton's plan. Furthermore, I believe that removing the healthcare burden from employers would increase profits and encourage growth. Ultimately as the inefficiencies in the system worked themselves out, the cost would mostly be offset. Combine that with the long term solvency of the healthcare system and I think that the total picture would be acceptable to even fiscal conservatives.
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