Politics

Sarah Palin was in favor of the Bridge to Nowhere while Alaska had senior members in congress in the majority party who could obtain earmarks.

Paul Waldman on the great visuals being produced by the Obama campaign:

The imbalance [between the campaigns] is more than just the two campaigns' relative talent at staging photo-ops. The fact is that in every aspect of campaigning, Obama's team is showing more skill and results than that of his more seasoned Republican opponent.

To say this is a reversal of recent history would be an understatement. Over the last few decades, we've gotten used to Republicans running circles around Democrats. In a book that was released in 2006, I note that the 2004 Bush campaign outperformed its opponents in field organizing, the one area at which Democrats had always excelled. As a consequence, the Democrats faced "an extraordinary realization: there is now not a single area of campaigning — not organizing, not message development, not candidate recruitment and training, not fundraising, and certainly not ruthlessness — at which Republicans are not demonstrably better than Democrats."

Why was this the case? The most important reason may be that Republicans have almost no interest in governing. Freed from the burden of coming up with new ways to more effectively deliver services that will produce tangible benefits to the public, they put their finest minds to work on the messy business of getting elected and keeping their opponents on the defensive.

The sophisticated techniques that the GOP developed — in framing political language, in staging photo ops, in pushing back on media bias, etc. — are now being used by Democrats. But, where the GOP had to hide their real goals (dismantling government and privatizing everything), Democrats are using these same techniques to enhance a genuinely popular agenda: using our government to make everyone's lives better.

From Sara Robinson at Orcinus:

Strauss & Howe's saecular theory (which takes in the work of dozens of other historians who've proposed historical, economic, and cultural cycles in the past) postulates that the past 500 years of Anglo-American history has unfolded in a repeating cycle of roughly 80 years (it's gotten slightly longer as lifespans have increased). The events change from cycle to cycle, of course; but the essential forces of history, the priorities and personalities of recurring generational groups, and the similar consequences resulting from each phase of the cycle conspire to keep it turning back over itself through time. Certain types of events and characters emerge and converge, again and again. Things that seem impossible in one part of the cycle seem equally inevitable in others. Lessons that the passing generation once knew are forgotten, and must be learned again. (Our Roaring '20s great-grandparents could have given us an earful of caution about the '90s, for example.) For people who want to surf the waves of time and opportunity, the saecular theory has proven to be a surprisingly useful tide table. [...]

The cycle also predicts

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I was never very impressed with John Kerry's media skills, but he nails this response to an inane question from an MSNBC reporter (Huffington Post):

WITT: Okay. He said it. A 20-year relationship. Reverend Wright married him. He is the one who baptized a godparent. How personally painful is this for him?

KERRY: Can I say something to you? Obviously it is painful and he said it. You folks need to let go of this. Television needs to stop dwelling on something that is in the past. I thought Barack Obama yesterday gave America his second big presidential moment of this campaign. The first when he spoke out about the issue of race. The second yesterday, when he made it clear, every one of the statements of the minister are just unacceptable. They're not the person that he knew before. Now let's move on to how we'll put people to work. How are you going to give people health care? How are you going to create jobs in America? What Barack Obama is offering

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Salt Lake City Weekly has published its yearly "Best of Utah" issue, and you'll recognize several of this year's winners (all of these are under the Media & Politics section):

• Best BYU Event – Dick Cheney Protest, April 2007

• Best Cash Infusion – Out-of-State School-Voucher Advocates
  
• Best Air Activist – Dr. Brian Moench (he spoke at our February meetup)
  
• Best Activist – Rocky Anderson
  
• Best Elected Official – Ralph Becker (Readers' Choice)
  
• Best State Legislator – Scott McCoy (Readers' Choice)
  
• Best Capital Kook – Chris Buttars
  
• Best Reason to Unionize – Crandall Canyon Mine Disaster
  
• Best Local Scandal – Anything Chris Buttars Says

Via Raw Story:

[W]e have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the OJ trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina — or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time. [...]

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.

Salt Lake Tribune's lead editorial today:

In place of [the current] free-for-all, the reform plan would divide the states into four regions — East, South, Midwest and West. Utah would be in the West region. One regional primary would be scheduled in each of the months of March, April, May and June. A lottery would decide the order in 2012, then in subsequent presidential election years the order would rotate. For example, the region that goes first in 2012 would go last in 2016, etc.

Iowa and New Hampshire would be allowed to keep their traditional spots as the first caucus and primary. That would preserve the ability of candidates without much money or name recognition to prove themselves in these small states that rely on in-person politicking.

This system isn't flawless. It would give candidates from states in the first regional primary an early advantage, for example. But it would ensure that each region would have its say, and it would favor more efficient campaigns.

Good idea, but there's no reason to keep kowtowing to Iowa and New Hampshire. And I'd prefer about six regions rather than four.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. reviews the history of religiosity and secularism in American politics and predicts that 2008 will mark the end of the cycle that began in 1980:

The era of the religious right is over. Even absent the rise of urgent new problems, Americans had already reached a point of exhaustion with a religious style of politics that was dogmatic, partisan and ideological.

That style reflected a spirit far too certain of itself and far too insistent on the moral depravity of its political adversaries. It had the perverse effect of narrowing the range of issues on which religious traditions would speak out and thinning our moral discourse. Precisely because I believe in a strong public role for faith, I would insist that it is a great sellout of those traditions to assert that religion has much to say about abortion and same-sex marriage but little to teach us about war and peace, social justice and the environment.

With the United States turning its attention again to very large, post-9/11 issues — as our forebears did during the Depression, World War II and the Cold War — we will certainly be asking for God's blessing and help. But the questions that will most engage us will be about survival and prosperity, not religion and culture.

From BooMan of the Booman Tribune (sort of a Daily Kos spin-off):

[...] I can say with some confidence that if Barack Obama is our nominee we will stand an excellent chance of wiping out several Republican senators that most people consider to be safe. And we'll also wipe out no small amount of seemingly safe House members, too.

The nomination of Hillary Clinton will probably eliminate any chance to beat those safe senators, although big House gains are still possible because most of the vulnerable House seats are in the Northeast or Upper Midwest. But it will much harder to expand the field of vulnerable House seats with Clinton as the nominee because she has such high negatives, particularly in areas currently held by Republican representatives.

When you are considering which candidate has the better health care plan, or housing plan, or whatever, please remember that a realigning election changes everything. Imagine what FDR could have accomplished with a 1928 Congress. Almost nothing. But with a 1932 Congress he gave us the New Deal. It matters a lot more whether our nominees can bring in a tsunami of new congresspeople than whether they have a slightly better policy paper on education reform. We should dare to think big.

From the Pew Research Center:

In their political outlook, [18- to 25-year-olds] are the most tolerant of any generation on social issues such as immigration, race and homosexuality. They are also much more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than was the preceding generation of young people, which could reshape politics in the years ahead. Yet the evidence is mixed as to whether the current generation of young Americans will be any more engaged in the nation's civic life than were young people in the past, potentially blunting their political impact. [...]

• About half of Gen Nexters say the growing number of immigrants to the U.S. strengthens the country ­ more than any generation. And they also lead the way in their support for gay marriage and acceptance of interracial dating.

• Beyond these social issues, their views defy easy categorization. For example, Generation Next is less critical of government regulation of business but also less critical of business itself. And they are the most likely of any generation to support privatization of the Social Security system. [...]
  
• One-in-five members of Generation Next say they have no religious affiliation or are atheist or agnostic, nearly double the proportion of young people who said that in the late 1980s. And just 4% of Gen Nexters say people in their generation view becoming more spiritual as their most important goal in life. [...]
  
• In Pew surveys in 2006, nearly half of young people (48%) identified more with the Democratic Party, while just 35% affiliated more with the GOP. This makes Generation Next the least Republican generation.