What is the world coming to when I have to learn about the latest crazy Modern Love column from Fark?
You're alive! Alive, I tell you!
My! Goodness! You're! Right!
I'm a bit sunburned, though.
DC's act is more together than the America of Obama's dreams.
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I asked my brother if he finally registered to vote and he said yes. I just learned from my mother that he conveniently left off the part where he forgot to register in time to be eligible to vote in the primary.
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9: Some days one expects that the reason the youth vote isn't considered reliable is that they're all kinda dumb.
I am, of course, coming. See y'all there.
11: sweet! See you at Deep Ellum!
Buck and I are in for O'Reilly's.
Sir Kraab and I will be at the Dog and Duck. Get your asses there, Austin-area people!
Jammies and I will be there. And we're THIRTY!
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Remember Info?
w00t Buck!
If someone gets there before me, just tell the bar we called a few days ago about going upstairs and putting on CNN to watch the returns.
I'm going to the drinking liberally thing in Chicago, which I think is at Sheffield's on Belmont? Also at Obama hq tomorrow from 10-4.
21: aw, sheffield's on belmont...love that place. man i miss chicago sometimes.
I'll be there at around 7:30.
9.---I know just how you feel. Yesterday, as we were walking to the restaurant where we had a delicious meal, I asked my honey where he's registered. He's all, oh, at my old address. I'm all, so, when are you going over there tomorrow? He's all, oh, I don't think I'm registered with a party, so I can't vote in the primary. Then suddenly he's disavowing the Democratic party---which, mind you, I totally understand---and then talking about U.S. policy in general as "you Americans." And to think he had asked me to buy him Kucinich paraphinalia! After all my work to get him over to Obama, too.
also for DC folks, apparently on wednesday there's an obama happy hour at the red derby in columbia heights from 6-10pm. fundraising, volunteer recruitment, etc - plus good beer at a good bar.
Providence peoples, I think there's something going on at Local 121 tomorrow night.
25 to 23. Also, is oudemia coming?
Oh, it's called Kush, on Fulton St. They call their cuisine "French Pan-African." I had a roasted pepper salad (with tangy salty capers and goat-cheese croutons), and my honey had broiled jerk chicken. To drink, I had THE MOST HEAVENLY house-made tamarind juice.
Drinking Liberally isn't at the Red Lion anymore? Thank God (for unspecified reasons)!
is oudemia coming?
I am such an immature juvenile. All I could think of was "I certainly hope so!"
Oh! Oudemia hopes to! But I have to get up at 5am tomorrow, so a non-recoverable midafternoon collapse is entirely possible. The plan, however, is to nap and get up again.
31: Ahem. I just sent off an abstract (thank you, RTFS!) and now I'm watching Saturday's Torchwood on my Tivo. I am pretty sure that is the opposite.
I will try to have goodies for you, oudemia, if I can get them done in time before I teach!
34, 33 is the better answer, because 33 is the truth, and however great friends we are of our fellow commenters, we must be greater friends of the truth.
37: I'd rather be Plato than Aristotle, much as I'd rather be Pindar than Bacchylides.
I'd rather be Plato than Aristotle
Incomprehensible.
She's comparing two historical philosophers, Ben, and saying which one she'd rather be. Does that help?
DC! Executive decision:
The Union Pub at 7 PM (www.unionpubdc.com). Metro accessible by the red line at Union Station. Hordes of drunken Hill staffers for true nation's capital atmosphere!
It looks like just me and Minivet so far, contact if you're coming too.
28: I've walked past that place -- now I will know to try it out. I don't wander up that way often enough to know any good places at all.
21: Thanks, I'll drop by Sheffield's for a bit after I vote tomorrow. Gotta be up in the area anyway for an 8 pm show at the Metro.
I'll be drowning myself in homebrew on my front porch by 6pm. Look for me; I'll be wearing a hat.
42: Executive decision confirmed! Let it be known that DC now has its act together.
Incomprehensible.
Don't hang out with a lot of Johnnies, do you?
Huh.
The depth of my commitment to Aristotle can only properly be expressed by noting that the sole philosophical work in the "favorite books" section of my facebook profile is the Nic Eth.
Motherfuckers. I promised I'd be at the next Boston meetup, and then I step away for a couple weeks and you plot behind my back. And strategically place your so-called "meetup" on the other side of the river. Well, I'll have you know that if I don't show, it won't be because of your scheming, but because I have class.
I will be on a business trip off in deep Redstatia. Fleur is strongly disinclined to drive to Allston on her own, but maybe a spontaneous outpouring of encouragement from the Mineshaft could sway her.
I went to the town house yesterday and voted early. Go, B. Hussein Obama!
Thread hi-jack:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2008/feb/05/germany?picture=332374942
Click through the whole sequence of pictures.
One deserves another. German speakers might enjoy this little bit from my wife's home state.
51: easily accessible from Cambridge, wuss. Plus, we'll be there for hours.
I'm not free until ten. Do you think anyone will still be there? If so I'll stop by.
In Europe, third floor means the fourth floor.
And get your act together, D.C.!
Also, NoCal? No act to get together, evidently. You guys should get a blogger resident out here.
The Onion's video clips are awesome.
Plato is clearly superior to Aristotle, unless you are boring and scientistic.
Plato is clearly superior to Aristotle, unless you are boring and scientistic.
What is the matter with you people?
Ok, academics, help me out.
Wasnt there a difference between Plato and Aristotle about one wanting to keep bad stuff from people and the other wanting to show people why the stuff was bad?
What's wrong with being 'scientistic', eh?
Or is that some sort of Duns Scotus reference for those in the know? I'd rather be Duns Scotus than Aquinas.
65: St. John's College of Annapolis MD and somewhere NM. Teo's dad taught there, and my sister, oudemia, and Helpy-Chalk were students there. It's a great books program, heavy on the ancient Greek, and students are known as Johnnies.
My love for Plato is like my love for chocolate and booze: deep and true, but not without an accompanying suspicion that it isn't all that good for me.
I love the craziness of Plato. There are always all these balls in the air, and you never can be quite sure who speaks for Plato. Likewise, you can't be completely sure of the relationship between any given dialogue and any other, though there may be consensus about the sequencing by now, which in turn makes possible rather speculative theories of the development of Plato's thought.
I just looked at a book (by Kahn) claiming that Plato's work is consistent from beginning to end and that he was just gradually unfolding it and going ever deeper toward his most basic ideas. I can't believe that. I also got a fair familiarity with the Straussian occult reading of Plato during the period when the neocons-to-be were recruiting me, and it seems pretty tendentious too. (And not a remotely possible ground at all for participation in a democratic polity.)
To us Plato is an authoritarian obsessed with order, but while he was alive both Athenian politics and the Greek international system were bloody and chaotic. Contemporary anarchism, by contrast, is nested within an excessively efficient order which breaks down only occasionally.
Just remember, the Aristotelians would beat the Platonists in a fair fight.
. . . is that some sort of Duns Scotus reference for those in the know?
Followers of Duns Scotus are called 'dunces'
You people are wack. Aristotle is terrible. It took the west nearly 2000 years to recover from him, a process we'll apparently be needing to complete in an epic showdown.
Aristotelians seem well suited to being giant tree sloths, platonists to being a good-looking group of young Italians draped in just-so animal skins, following Sergio Leone's direction and armed with chert and obsidian. May the fittest survive.
Aristotle removed the entertainment value from philosophy forever. Anyone who tried to reintroduce them (Montaigne, William James, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer) is shunned or marginalized (e.g., continentalized). Dante erred in not putting Aristotle in the lowest circle of Hell.
Aristotelians seem well suited to being giant tree sloths, platonists to being a good-looking group of young Italians draped in just-so animal skins...
Plato is the self-satisfied farmer in the country pub, sitting in his own seat at the bar, drinking from his own mug, and favouring the whole damn bar with his opinions in a loud voice.
Aristotle is the guy at the corner table who's decided it's time to look for another watering hole.
Woo, I voted, and I got a sticker!
Are we conducting an Unfogged exit poll?
What is your prediction, Cala? Did you package your vote by collecting all calasises?
I remember thinking when I read Aristotle "I'd hate to get into an argument with this guy". He has this methodical steam-roller way of laying out his position and meeting objections as he goes along. But that feeling wasn't accompanied by any feeling that he was actually right. I just felt that if he was wrong, it would be almost impossible to prove it, or even to state the opposed position in his presence.
Whereas Plato is a smorgasbord of possibilities, and it's always possible to wind back to the place where he stated and rejected a given position, and start over from there.
Plato argued for the Discourse of Truth, whereas Aristotle assumed it.
54: Gott als Saarländer! Mit iPhone!
74: I was just trying to decide whether to put my sticker on my sweater or on my coat. Coat's a little wet from the rain, so I think I'll go with the sweater, so it doesn't fall off.
74: Hrmphf. My polling place didn't give out stickers. The 8:25 downtown A-Train has a conductor who really gets into the announcements (Deep DJ sounding voice: "This is your downtown A Experience..."), and he was nagging people to remember to vote, which I thought was excellent.
I'm caucusing for Al Franken and Obama tonight. I've never caucused before and have no idea what that entails.
Schmlato vs. Schmaristotle
I enjoy watching y'all argue about things about which I have absolutely no opinion.
I think David Brooks summed this topic up succinctly when he remarked "Aristotle points to the ground this way; whereas Plato points to the sky that way."
Off topic: This is a beautiful sentence:
"... as a spectator, I'm much more fascinated by the Republicans. Watching those shifty, devious, unscrupulous creatures clawing at each other in spasms of demagoguery and pander is like beholding the whole vile, fear-driven history of humanity."
My local ClearChannel urban contemporary radio station had Bill Clinton talking to Russ Parr this morning. Bill reminded everyone to go vote.
Populuxe, when citing one of Brooks's rare unobjectionable sentences, the protocol is to write "I can't remember who it was who said...."
This is your final warning.
78: No stickers?! No wonder nobody votes anymore.
79: I caucused for Jackson (not without pause) in Ohio in 1988. All I really remember is the drab Holiday Inn or whatever it was where the caucus was held.
I'm torn between being jealous of those of you who get to vote/caucus today and being relieved that I don't have to make up my mind yet.
DO NOT TRY TO COMMUTE TO WORK THROUGH THE MIDDLE OF A TICKER-TAPE PARADE.
That is all.
The calasises are all registered in Pennsylvania.
My prediction is that the massive rainstorm is going to make things a mess at the polling place. We have ballots that can't! get! wet! and nowhere for people to put their coats. "If you drip on your ballot, you come back here and get another."
Oh, god, Becks. I'm sorry but that made me laugh.
"Aristotle points to the ground this way; whereas Plato points to the sky that way."
But when I travel, I want a map that's beeen drawn by surveyors, not copied off the flyleaf of Lord of the Rings.
In reality I'm far more sympathetic to Epicurus (Or at least Lucretius) than either of them.
There are people who prefer Aristotle? Are these the same people who thinks that Plato has Socrates mouth what Plato himself really believes? </semi-troll>
On my way to work this morning, I ran into a client of mine on the bus. After chatting about his case, he asked me if I was voting. I said I'd just come from my polling place and asked him who he was supporting. He looked at me like I'd completely lost my mind.
I guess I should have realized that for an old black man in recovery who's been screwed over six ways from Sunday, the prospect of having Obama in the White House must be pretty exciting.
85: Doesn't the parade start at 11?
People show up early. At 9:30, Grand Central was noticably more crowded than usual with Giants-jerseyed Westchesterites who'd come south on Metro-North.
Ah, Westchester. Home to a McDonalds with valet parking.
Hey, I was one of those Westchesterites for one of the Yankees' parades during high school. Today, I suppose I wouldn't have noticed between voting and getting on the uptown F if there was some massive flow of people heading downtown.
93: That's not so implausible that I'm sure if you're joking, but if you're not, which town?
What's wrong with being 'scientistic', eh?
Instrumental reason run amok! There's a reason we keep scientists segregated in laboratories, and only let them write in obscure journals. (The white coats allow easy identification if they escape permitted areas).
I'm not joking, but I can't remember the name of the town. (JustOverConnecticutBorder, NY?) The McDonalds is in a shopping complex of some kind.
Instrumental reason
Unpleasant caricature. What displaced the church? Hadn't the lawyers been working independently for centuries? Also, hasn't science helped a bit with the spread of reasoning of any sort?
Just over the border makes it Rye, most likely.
Jesus, people. Aristotle is a minor figure, an epicycle on the Platonist project; he was rightly ignored by philosophers of the Hellenistic age, and his later influence is due entirely to the fact that his works happened, though a freakish accident, to survive to influence people who should have known better. Today, he'd be an SUV-driving Republican prick.
Now you made me spill my soda. Fuck.
How do you figure Aristotle, the one who explicitly warns us not to expect scientific exactitude in all areas of inquiry, is scientistic?
Emerson gets it right in 72: Plato is a good read, Aristotle is rarely readable, and if philosophy doesn't deliver entertainment value, what the hell is it good for?
I haven't gotten a sticker for voting since I moved to New York. This takes away about half my motivation for voting.
I truly wish I'd saved the stickers from each time I've voted and stuck them on a piece of paper or something at the end of the day. It would be cool to see them all in one place. I could start now, but then I'd have missed 20 years of elections. You youngsters, take note!
The Aristotle Adventure is a very detailed study of the transmission of Aristotle between his death and about 1400 or so. There was more than one time when Aristotle's texts might have been lost entirely. I found it completely fascinating. (He deals with the mostly Eastern Christian translators from Greek into Arabic, for example).
TBH, I agree on Plato being a better read than Aristotle. I could even be persuaded that he's by far the more important philosopher. I just tend to find myself in agreement with the latter more than the former.
[Not that I lay any great claim to being any kind of expert on either.]
I like the loose ends in Plato. He gives you more to work with. Aristotle tries to settle everything, and you really have to dig for loose ends which mostly lead you to endless arguments about Being or a few other stereotyped topics.
Would you look at that? I go to bed and go teach and youse people talk about Plato and Aristotle. I'll settle it: Plato wins. But as Emerson notes, I'm also a gal who loves her some Montaigne and Nietzsche.
Also? CA aka mr. oudemia aka le platoniste continental could never tolerate me if I thought otherwise.
104. But I believe that back in the day (c.4 BCE) Aristotle was regarded as the better writer. Very little of his properly revised and edited stuff has survived - we mainly have the "Collected Lecture Notes", which isn't likely to show to advantage.
Aristotle tries to settle everything
True, and heaven forfend that Dixit Magister should be an acceptable way to go on. But of course he went over the top a bit with the methodological approach - he was making it up, usually for the first time. Plato was just scoring debating points.
Also, NoCal? No act to get together, evidently.
Hey, Magpie brought it up and I suggested Triple Rock in Berkeley... and then it just sat there.
We're still game for a meetup if any of the slackers in the area wanna show.
Maybe because you suggested a place in Berkeley.
I suggested a place in Berkeley because the only other people who expressed any interest were Ari and Megan, and both of them wanted it to be in the East Bay. Did anyone else say "Hey, I'd be interested, but I can't make it if it's in Berkeley?" No they did not.
Well, you East Bay people can just go East Bay it up, for all I care.
I voted! But I didn't get a sticker. Last time, when I voted for city council, I filled out a card suggesting that they get stickers, but clearly they didn't decide to take me up on it.
I did however get a hot dog from the people doing a fundraiser for the local community center.
Aristotle: gives good gravitas.
Plato: looks presidential.
So is there a meetup hazing ritual for Unfogged lurkers?
Lurkeds always welcome, as they say. Hazing TBD.
I am really fucking miserable right now with plaguey allergies and having taught on one hour of sleep. I will do my damnedest to feed my body drugs and pass out for a few hours so I can show up and be all yours, but if I'm very late, you'll know it was for your own good.
longtime lurker, might come (NYC), neutral on P vs. A
I should be at the Austin meetup, maybe even close to on time!
AWB, you can try my patented whiskey cure for what ails you.
After a long strange professional trip, it looks like I'll be able to make it tonight. Only now I wish I'd put up more of a fight to keep it out of midtown.
Okay so this lurker should be there (NYC).
I did however get a hot dog from the people doing a fundraiser for the local community center.
IYKWIM.
How do you figure Aristotle, the one who explicitly warns us not to expect scientific exactitude in all areas of inquiry, is scientistic?
It's true Aristotle was wise enough not to tangle practical reason up with trolley problems and the like, but he was writing in a much wiser (if less knowledgeable) time. So I'm sure that was just conventional wisdom. He remains a comparatively writer. No poetry of reason in Aristotle.
But the virtuous enjoy him.
Teo's dad taught there
No, dammit, my dad went there, as did my mom, aunt, and uncle. My sister goes there now. And the NM campus is in Santa Fe.
Okay, friends, I'll be there, a bit late, and I'm not drinking, except maybe one of whatever Mike D's got in mind. See y'all soon!
Sorry, I'm an idiot. He went there and taught at another college, or am I an even more complete idiot?
He went there, then many years later went to graduate school, got an MA in history, and taught at a community college.
Right. I had the "return to academia" thing down, but I had St. Johns as the end, rather than the beginning, of the trajectory.
He remains a comparatively writer.
Be glad you're anonymous, O anonymous writer of 123.
Sorry, District Unfogged, but I'm spending Super Tuesday working toward a deadline, possibly in a bloggy conference room with the media elite.
129: it was me, I confess. I meant to say "comparatively boring writer". Dissing Aristotle in an inarticulate and ungrammatical manner makes me the rightful recipient of w-lfs-n's wrath.
Also, I admit I was sort of trolling. Aristotle is a great philosopher, but I find philosophy boring compared to the multi-level literary/philosophical/spiritual adventure of Plato.
To us Plato is an authoritarian obsessed with order, but while he was alive both Athenian politics and the Greek international system were bloody and chaotic. Contemporary anarchism, by contrast, is nested within an excessively efficient order which breaks down only occasionally.
Emerson is brilliant today.
I don't think Deep Ellum is going to happen for me tonight, folks. Sorry. Hope you have fun. GOBAMA.
aw cmon Brock stop by. We're heading over now.
I'd probably "stop by" if you were somewhere near me, but you're a really long way away, so that's not really an option. How late will you be there? I might try to make it over there later, but I'm thinking probably not before 10ish or so. Will people still be around?
So could us boondock dwellers have a super T thread
If anyone in L.A. is heading over to the Obama party at the Avalon, send me an e-mail.
Super Boozeday liveblogging: Obama on fire in Georgia; my drink on fire at the bar.
134: I will keep you and mcmc informed.
Not sure how I feel about East Coast results being announced while polls are still open elsewhere. Concealed behind my reservations is my glee at the Georgia result, news of which I wish to be spread the length and breadth of California with all possible haste. GObama!
The Georgia results were mostly a foregone conclusion; Obama's been way ahead in the polls there for weeks.
Also! Bill Schneider's eyebrows? Hilarious!
He looks like a muppet.
NYT says it's now more or less over for Obama. Clinton's the nominee.
Also, Huckabee appears to be winning everything.
144: What? I don't see that. The polls aren't even closed in the west.
I don't see that either, Brock.
Brock is trying to influence the election by dissuading Western Obama supporters from going to the polls.
Shame on you, Brock!
136: There's another LA Obama party at Tangier; I'm going to that one.
Oh. I see 145 and conclude that you're jerking my chain. Chain successfully jerked. Jerk.
Brock's nefarious plan has been thwarted. Thank God!
Wait, no, these NYT polls areflying all over the place. I guess that's what happens when you only have 1% of precincts reporting. I swear that 10 minutes ago Huckabee was leading in every single state for which they were showing Republican results. I wish I had a screen-capture. And 144 was no chain jerk--Hillary was also showing big leads everywhere by GA. But things look more normal now.
Clinton announces Colin Powell as running mate.
136: Shoot me your phone on email, jms. If I hit Tangier en route home, I'll say hi, and we can have had an LA meetup.
148: I predict Obama will carry Western Obama. (It's a US protectorate, right?)
Clinton begins to learn at a geometric rate. Becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time.
Oh, and sorry Boston folks, but I can no longer make it out even if you're still there at 10. I have to go home to tend to my sick wife. You can rest assured I'll be certain she appreciates how resentful I am about it.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has passed.
Although, to append 152, the numbers are still moving around a lot, granted, but it still appears that Obama is having his ass handed to him. I fear the race is going to be over tomorrow morning.
Huckabee appoints Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as running mate for "unity ticket".
159: Don't forget, delegates are handed out proportionally.
Let us medidate on the fact that there will be no further masturbation to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Obama gives speech from burning schoolhouse, says "Come with me if you want to live."
No more masturbating to, with or on this guy.
164: For over a month now, looks like.
Delaware: could it be any tighter? Sexy!
That doesn't prove that Delaware could be tighter. You big-staters think all small states are alike.
Anyway, Delaware seems to have tightened since Tweety posted that comment.
I do make big strong statements, it's true.
This is what democracy looks like?
Delaware tightens for Obama!
Looks like it's loosening, actually.
mcmc there is no doubt we will be here at 10
I can't tell if 177 is supposed to be dirty. I kinda hope so.
178: The oudemia family voted exclusively for Obama. If only my family's Teamster dominance had persisted. Hélas.
I have this strange feeling of betrayal about the northeast even though I knew full well that was to be expected. "WTF, Massachusetts, Alabama supports my candidate and not you?!?"
It seems to me that these results are quite racially polarized, except for those that are caucuses rather than elections.
That's not a good sign for Obama in the general election.
NoDak for Obama! I wonder if he took Elgin.
Racist Massholes. Your football team sucks.
Well, I'm going to bed. But with 15% of DFL precincts and 10% of Repug. precincts reporting, Obama has more votes than the whole rest of the field combined here!
From what I've heard of exit polls, the decisive factor has been neither race nor gender, but age. Obama does well with the under-50s, and Clinton with the over-50s.
Not sure how I feel about East Coast results being announced while polls are still open elsewhere.
100% uncool, IMC*O. A while back ('92?), they tried not to do that, but apparently that's all gone to hell.
Also: can someone explain why Mitt Romney keeps robocalling us, here in a two-Democrat household in the bluest part of the country, pimping him as a "change conservative" with "true conservative values" and as someone who's going to Do Something about those pesky illegal immigrants? DO NOT WANT.
*Californian.
Orrin Hatch sounded really, really unconvincing in his flacking for Romney on NPR.
"Oh, Romney never thought he would win many of the states on Super Tuesday! There's still 24 left to go! And remember, Utah and Idaho still haven't closed, and I hear McCain isn't winning by as much as he could have in Arizona. Also, the center-left coalition that swung West Virginia was a black day for our party."
I'm sure everybody else has noticed this about a hundred times, but it still freaks me out. If you have a Google search box in your browser toolbar (at least on Firefox) and you type "obama " (the space after obama has to be there), the second auto-completion Google suggests is "muslim".
Also, the center-left coalition that swung West Virginia was a black day for our party.
This would be the center-left coalition that swung WV to Huckabee?
Yes, that was Hatch's point. Although at the same time he believed that if Huckabee were to disappear his voters (presumably the "center", with McCain being the "left") would recognize that Romney is the only conservative left.
195: overheard this morning on the bus:
"I can't believe anyone would think about voting for someone with a name that is almost exactly the same as one of the most wanted men in the world! It's Barrack Hussein Obama! That's crazy! It's as if people have lost their minds!"
So Romney's new plan is to kidnap Huckabee?
195: But if you follow the search results, you get debunking pages, which I think is a net Good Thing.
It seems Romney supporters have been given catcher's mitt foam hands.
Romney needs to learn how to pause at applause lines.
Correction: Those look like regular baseball gloves, not catchers mitts.
The Romniks' performance on that "They haven't!" call-and-response bit was pathetic.
w-lfs-n callout: as it turns out the guy at this bar makes his own bitters
I, for one, am pleased that my vote in the Virginia primaries might matter after all. (Though I haven't seen any numbers; but Tim Kaine is campaigning hard for Barry O. Certainly that helps.)
Not even a savvy big-stater. Tsk, tsk.
They're doing this weird caucus thing for the first time, and I don't really understand how it works. Plus there's been very little polling. While Richardson was in the race he was a prohibitive favorite, but now that he's out it's up for grabs.
This would be the center-left coalition that swung WV to Huckabee?
News here was saying that McCain wasn't on the ballot in WV, or something, and threw his votes to Huckabee so Romney wouldn't win.
w-lfs-n, you can sleep on my couch when you come visit to try this bar.
Looks like WV has some sort of runoff system, where there are multiple ballots until someone gets a majority. I guess McCain didn't get a majority on the first ballot and threw his votes to Huckabee on the second.
Looking at that cool county thing on the NYT site, I see that Obama won only one county in NY.
You can't get mucj of an idea how the delegate results are going to go, though.
Looking at that cool county thing on the NYT site, I see that Obama won only one county in NY.
Yes, and note which one.
216: Blargh! Really? I am Pauline Kael! I don't know anyone who voted for Clinton. Ok. I do. But he is a named partner in a law firm.
Obama wins Kansas. (Not a huge surprise, but still.)
218: You don't know anyone who admits to voting for HRC. And the youth vote skews heavily Obama, doesn't it?
I see that Edwards beat Obama in some Oklahoma counties.
Obamabama!
My caucus went 12-9 Obama. A friend of my mother's switched to Obama at the last minute. The state seems solid Obama. Minnesota Dems are more lively than they've been since I remember.
Our caucus leader has a son in Iraq, and that's her issue.
Oklahoma is another state where Obama only won one (rather predictable) county.
222: Not surprising. The best thing about Oklahoma is that it ends.
Do Oklahomans hate all Kansans or just the black ones?
Arizona seems to be shaping up as north v. south, with HRC taking the southern counties (and thus far ahead in the statewide vote).
Odd that Hilary mentioned American Samoa in the list of states she won.
I like some of these turnout numbers - The Bronx - Dems 135K, Repubs 5K, and Obama almost took Brooklyn 48-50.
Huck seems to be doing well in the South. If I were sure it would lose, a McCain-Huckabee ticket would make me almost deliriously happy.
Odd that Hilary mentioned American Samoa in the list of states she won.
Maybe she promised them statehood.
Also, the Clinton/Obama breakdown in MO is pretty interesting. Obama wins the cities, and Clinton wins everywhere else.
Honkies for Clinton?
Aaaaand the polls just closed in CA.
Honkies for Clinton?
Honkies for Honkies, mate.
Obama wins the cities, and Clinton wins everywhere else.
This is true in other states as well. Look at Tennessee.
Which site is showing county-by-county numbers?
Which site is showing county-by-county numbers?
NYT. With cool maps.
Re MO, I remember a big last minute movement toward McCaskill in '06. CNN just said that St. Louis is notoriously slow at vote counting, which I suppose explains similar late large changes this time too.
It took me 1 hour & 40 minutes to be allowed to vote today! There was much queueing camaraderie. I suppose I should be pleased that the youth are voting. Also, if any of you people lived in Palo Alto, I would tell you to come have drinks with me. However, I'm happy for all of you that you don't.
We found the beer for apo. Mmmm, tastes like bacon! A rauchbier.
can someone explain why Mitt Romney keeps robocalling us, here in a two-Democrat household in the bluest part of the country, pimping him as a "change conservative" with "true conservative values" and as someone who's going to Do Something about those pesky illegal immigrants?
He keeps robocalling Mr. B.'s place of work. Which I remind you is actually a defense contractor. Apparently they put his robocall on voicemail and made fun of it.
Go Romney.
Romney needs to learn how to pause at applause lines.
Actually, no he doesn't. He needs to learn a new career for the next few years, though.
Who has delegate breakdowns? Give to me! Give to me now!
Rats. I was over in Brookline, but I couldn't remember where Deep Ellum is. Now I'm in Chelsea. It's nice and warm and this chair is so comfortable.......zzzz
Just returned from the Austin meetup. (Not all of us have Sifu's stamina IYKWIM.) Me, M/M/, Heebie, Jammies, Neil tEW, pdf123456789, and Pantene, who we met for the first time. (Verdict: thumbs up! And such nice Patene-glossy hair!)
On to the TX primary!
He needs to learn a new career for the next few years, though.
Luckily he seems to be pretty good at that.
246 -- They don't count votes by congressional district, so it might be several hours before we get delegates.
Clinton's lead in Missouri has been narrowing. But she seems to be winning in San Jose.
Grrr...CNN let the xenophobic ersatz populist take over. Bring back that dreamy Soledad O'Brien!
stras: My understanding is that delegate counts will remain even more tentative than everything else, but here's CNN's projections.
CNN's projections include superdelegates for some damn fool reason so it's really hard to tell.
If you go by states this is great--clearly focusing on the caucus states for Obama was worth it--but I'm nervous about her margins in high pop. states.
If Obama wins California, the Obama = RFK comparisons will become incessant.
252: Yeah, California looks ugly.
CNN's delegate count page is clear as mud. Stupid delegates! Make more sense!
CNN's exit polling has Clinton winning 2/3 of Hispanics and 3/4 of Asians in California, so it's going to be tough for Obama. God damn immigrants.
251: OK, that CNN chart is both awesome and annoying - don't show me superdelegate counts for places that haven't even voted yet! Superdelegates are fickle! You might as well tell me about what shape the clouds are right... now!
Also, NYT has delegates right there at the top of their main page, and the totals are much higher. So maybe that includes even more superdelegates? !?!?!
No one won big, as expected. The primary will go on. More fun threads!
Ogged? Can you tell us who has locked up the Persian Mafia?
I will never recover from the Republican's having been permanently awarded the color red.
God damn immigrants.
If Clinton wins, I'm blaming the Iran War on you, Shiite.
258: Stupid html. I wrote /CherHorowitz after my comment.
CNN's exit polling has Clinton winning 2/3 of Hispanics and 3/4 of Asians in California, so it's going to be tough for Obama.
Ugh. The Asians surprise me a little.
I think this was the first time I recall seeing Asians discussed as a voting bloc.
Pantene does indeed have a seriously good head of hair.
The Asians surprise me a little.
Why don't you just come right out and call them inscrutable Tim? Racist.
Ugh. The Asians surprise me a little.
Not me.
If I were sure it would lose, a McCain-Huckabee ticket would make me almost deliriously happy.
I'd be deliriously happy if any Republican ticket was guaranteed to lose, even if they nominated my grandfather.
Richardson won Treutlen County, Georgia? WTF?
264: I suspect they're being all too scrutable. Alameida mentioned on a different thread that some Asian communities have issues with African-Americans. I forgot that, or maybe assumed it wasn't true anymore in the US.
Multiculti porn has led me astray.
I think the surest way to doom for McCain would be to pick Huckabee. Huckabee will freak out the moderates that McCain has mind-control powers over.
270: Oh, but a "Fuck Limbaugh" ticket would be sooo great.
As I understand it from the press, every Asian active in US politics is a crafty but naive businessman who bundles contributions to Clinton by coercing his illegal-immigrant employees. This might be a biased view that I'm getting.
The world of porn is nothing more than a liberal utopian's flight of fancy, Tim. Such dreams will come to naught.
Alameida mentioned on a different thread that some Asian communities have issues with African-Americans. I forgot that, or maybe assumed it wasn't true anymore in the US.
Don't know about the rest of the country, but boy is it still true in So. Cal.
I gotta admit that McCain's grandma is cool. She's probably a heinous old witch, but how can you not like 96 year old women who are still walking around under their own power and standing upright?
Ygleisias just said that Obama appears to have won whites and blacks in California, but lost on the huge Hispanic/Asian margins. Who knows how good his data is, or if it holds up, but that's...weird and cool.
I don't have a strong opinion about who should win the nomination (or rather, I have multiple strong opinions that are in constant conflict), but if Clinton won the nomination because Hispanics and Asians hate black people, that would piss me off.
Ok Im cool. The delegate count stays very close up to the convention, the superdelegates split 50-50,
and Clinton uses her buddies on Rules and Credentials to have Michigan and Florida put her over the top.
It'l be fine.
The world of porn is nothing more than a liberal utopian's flight of fancy, Tim. Such dreams will come to naught.
But it's just such a beautiful dream.
I gotta admit that McCain's grandma is cool.
Cool, but dead. That's his mom.
McCain's grandma
That's "mother." Recall that McCain is 1,000 years old.
'dude, your grandma is cool!"
"dude! that's my mom!"
"DUDE! How old ARE you?!?"
God, I hate my species. I'm writing in Xenu.
but if Clinton won the nomination because Hispanics and Asians hate black people, that would piss me off.
Now now, what is democracy?
Swear to god, though, an Obama vs. McCain presidential contest freaks me out, in so many ways.
That is all.
Oh, right, his mom. What can I say. When you get to that age, you're just "grandma," and there's nothing you can do about it.
When you get to that age, you're just "grandma," and there's nothing you can do about it.
NOW NOW, DON'T BROOD ABOUT THAT BIRTHDAY, DEAR
287: How is it ageist? Only if you think that being grandma is a bad thing.
288: No worries, I'm cool with it now.
It's like B has never read the comments before.
Saiselgy makes a good point about Obama's surprising strength in rural areas, to which I would add that this seems to only be true in the Midwest and West. In the South and Northeast his support is concentrated in places where there are lots of black people and highly educated liberals, so basically big cities, college towns, and parts of the rural South. Further west, though, the dynamics are different, and I suspect this has to do at least partly with the much smaller black populations in those states.
248, 263: *blushes*
That was a lot of fun, connecting internet handles to people IRL. Must get out more.
pdf23s, I have googled lojban for tomorrow's perusal. I need my beauty rest, after all.
Looks like some of Josh Marshall's readers have been making similar observations from a somewhat different perspective.
Who are the people who are still voting for Edwards? According to the NYT, he has 10% of the vote.
If Obama wins California, the Obama = RFK comparisons will become incessant.
I find this comparison both compelling and ominous.
Seems to be just in California, too. In most other states he's down around 1 or 2 percent.
I hope that means those early results are the absentee/mail voters, but I don't know.
Big news of the night, via Chris Bowers:
Obama has instructed his South Carolina organization to fly to Texas
I told ya. Now I wanna hear some serious offers. Mail me some pot and I'll vote twice.
what's going on w/ Missouri? CNN just had Obama in the lead but others seem to have called it for Clinton.
Looks like some of the MO precincts that haven't reported yet are from counties where Obama is winning, but others are from counties where Clinton is winning. Down to the wire.
Of course, who "wins" MO is pretty meaningless, since they'll be practically tied in delegates. (Of course, Obama will want to have a few more elected delegates to overcome HRC's superdelegate lead.)
uhh, folks 50.5 vs 49.5 in a Missouri race that is about delegates don't mean much.
California called for Clinton, but Obama could get the majority of California while losing the popular vote.
307, 308: Quite true, of course, but the news media seem to think it's about states, and they have a lot of influence over how things get perceived.
We should all take a moment to enjoy how much the Republican Party hates the Republican Party. McCain-Huckabee '08!
297: The "ominous" part of the comparison occurred to me as well.
Yes one of the counties that has a lot of votes left to count in Missouri is Boone, which is where U of Missouri is and Obama is winning big. (And I think it is bigger than the other counties left, so I think it will go Obama.) This one is bigger in perception than actual delgates, Bob.
307-09 -- Yep. But it's not just the media. Winning and losing are well understood concepts, and matter in public perception. One delegate count I saw had O and H tied in NH. If the narrative had been "tie" instead of "Comeback!" there might well have been a different dynamic.
also, we don't have delegate counts, & I've got to obsess about SOMETHING.
Boy, things are sure not looking good for Obama in California.
While we wait for California, we can knock around looking at counties won by Ron Paul.
316: There's a bunch of them in Montana, I see. And a few in Minnesota.
Huckabee cleaning up in the Branson part of Missouri (of course it is right across the border from Arkansas). It is worth seeing who real Americans are supporting.
308:s/b majority of California delegates
A long and complicated analysis, combining Newberry and a comment at Bowers. The most likely Repub ticket will be McCain/Huckabee, really alienating an important Republican constituency. Call them secular anti-war technocratic budget balancers, they will be available to the Democrat. Think Bruce Bartlett. Silicon Valley/Wall Street Republicans.
You would win them with deficit hawk rhetoric.
320 -- I think that's sound, and I also think that turnout ends up making a huge difference. The question is whether we're better off with younger voters coming out for Obama, or every toothless redneck coming down out of the hills to vote against the Wicked Witch.
320:Think Henley, Sanchez, John Cole
The True Libertarians are already furious, and the McCain/Huckabee ticket will make their brains explode. But they will stay home unless offered a positive reason to vote Democratic.
Not just "Libertarians." I hang out at the trader/broker blogs. They loathe Bush, hate the war, but don't want their taxes raised. Wall Street is buyable.
Too high a price for me, but others...
Somehow I doubt winning Marin but losing every other county in California would benefit the Obama campaign much.
I am choosing to believe that the reason Calif. looks SO awful now is that it's disproportionately early votes reporting. Look at the Edwards #s.
The NYC meetup was great. Free round on the house! Take that, all of you haters who called it a lame bar (which it is, but that's why they were so grateful faor our business that they gave us a free round. and they welcomed us graciously and even set up the tables in an L formation in advance around the TV.)
And I have a total non-creepy crush on Buck. And I also have Jackmormon's thermos.
Wait, now Obama's up in Plumas County too.
I'm sick of the talking heads' (primarily Begala, it seems) spinning HRC's MA victory as a big upset for Barack. Yes, he had big time endorsements. But a whopping one poll gave BO an edge. Barack winning MA would have been an upset.
Yes, the NYC meetup was great. Also: WTF, CA?
Obama winning Marin would make me take another look at Clinton.
AP called California for Clinton. WTF is up with Missouri?
Also: WTF, CA?
329: We've decided to blame the Asians.
NM results are starting to come in. Small Clinton lead so far.
I'm going to bed.
This will go to the convention, and will go crazy. Clinton is not going to lose because Michigan & Florida are not counted. She will get them credentialed as is, unless somehow a deal is struck.
For the sake of us all, the Obama people better start imagining a compromise on MI & Fl that fair people can accept.
I just got an email from the Obama campaign. Here's the spin: "we have won more states and delegates than Senator Clinton" (emphasis mine).
I am choosing to believe that the reason Calif. looks SO awful now is because of my not going to the meetup. It's kind of like how my propitiatory abstinence from beer during the superbowl doomed NE. Someone switched the jinx rules and didn't tell me.
Trinity County goes for Obama. Take heart, Obamans!
NO ONE IN MY GRAD PROGRAM VOTED FOR CLINTON.
A number of California counties haven't changed vote counts for an hour or more -- which leads me to guess that we were only looking at early votes. We should do better with the late votes -- and we sure as shit ought to win Alameda County, if those Californians are going to get all caught up in identity voting. In which county, apparently, not a single vote has been counted.
They should have a primary or caucus. With people's names on the ballot, & campaigning, & get-out-the-vote operations, & everything.
Obama has the weirdest coalition I've ever seen: black people + kids + people w/ PhD's + rural areas but only if it's cold & there aren't too many black people.
Speaking of Pauline Kael: a group going heavily for clinton doesn't actually mean they hate Obama in particular or that they're racist. Some people really, really, really like Hillary Clinton. I don't know that many of them--just a couple of aunts, uncles, great aunts & great uncles really--but they exist.
a group going heavily for clinton doesn't actually mean they hate Obama in particular or that they're racist.
oh thank god
Except American Samoans, naturally. Mean bastards.
Alameida mentioned on a different thread that some Asian communities have issues with African-Americans.
Dude, I totally saw this on the Chinatown bus last weekend. An older Chinese passenger scammed a young black girl out of her ticket and the people who ran the bus made her buy a new one. All the passengers were backing her up but the guy and the bus driver were talking back and forth and making obvious gestures of to mean "like anyone's going to trust her? she's black."
Obama has the weirdest coalition I've ever seen: black people + kids + people w/ PhD's + rural areas but only if it's cold & there aren't too many black people.
I don't think the cold has much to do with it. Look at Utah and Arizona. He won the rural parts of Nevada too.
a group going heavily for clinton doesn't actually mean they hate Obama in particular or that they're racist
I don't think most people believe otherwise. It's just where there are prior story lines about such tensions. Which is, admittedly, a lot of people.
In any case, that there are racists out there is Obama's problem to solve. He can do it or he can't.
in other news, not everyone voting for Obama is on board with recending the 19th amednment.
Oh, yay, I was wondering where the thermos had gotten to. Thanks, Becks! I'll have to schedule that bridge night now, so as to get it back some day. (Feel free to use it if you like until then.)
335:Tim, that loses for Obama. If Clinton needs MI and Fl to get over the top, her delegates + supers will will will credential them.
And it will be a horrorshow.
If "fuck off" is the plan, let's hope they are irrelevant. Cause it will lose.
I don't think the cold has much to do with it. Look at Utah
Totally. It's 10 fucking degrees outside.
351: Okay, yeah, Utah's pretty cold right now. But I don't think that's what Katherine meant.
only if it's cold & there aren't too many black people.
it would totally be racist to even imply that the "&" in the above isn't necessary
Calls into the local political radio show around here had a lot of voters who were pulling for Clinton because of the universal mandate for health insurance thing. They were older voters, of course, so it's certainly in their interest to support mandates, but that was the key difference a fair number of callers were targetting.
335: Shame on you, Tim. Bob is fighting a valiant fight against the evil secret Muslim wife-beater who plots to replace Social Security with third way jihadonomics, and this is how you repay him?
I would totally vote for a candidate who came out for third way jihadonomics.
350: Yeah, "fuck off" retracted. I'm not sure you're right about what happens if it goes all the way to the convention. I think Obama supporters are much angrier than the HRC supporters--particularly about the war--and that seems like a time when pols will pay attention to anger. But who knows?
We found the beer for apo. Mmmm, tastes like bacon! A rauchbier.
Rauchbier is disgusting.
206/213: I'm there.
You'd have enjoyed the restaurant we ended up at, w-lfs-n. Not only did they have the election coverage on all their flatscreen TVs, they have a Manhattan made with both Sazerac *and* two different kinds of bitters.
It's in Berkeley, though.
Do we know where the convention will be held?
I'm looking at these returns, and I've got that late October '04 feeling crawling up my spine - that cold, damp, sinking feeling that's telling me to lower my expectations, and then lower them some more, and then prepare for the worst. Know what would be worse than getting President McCain? Getting President Huckabee within a couple years of getting President McCain.
Also, about New York, it's a closed primary. I met a number of people (n=3!) who wanted to vote for Obama (and, for one, had even given him money) but couldn't because they were registered as Independents.
Do we know where the convention will be held?
It's in Berkeley, though.
Tu through Fr the East Bay is basically not an option for me, to preserve my sanity; I'm in PA until late owing to classes. What restaurant was it?
Do we know where the convention will be held?
The Democratic convention? Denver.
n=3!
Just simplify to n=6.
I've got that late October '04 feeling crawling up my spine
Me too, stras. Me too.
I was watching the returns until around 8:20 with a bunch of political scientists and economists almost all of whom (say 90%) were Obama supporters, though god knows how many were CA residents or even citizens. Still! Extrapolating from that sample, he ought to have crushed.
I've got that late October '04 feeling crawling up my spine
Well, I'd like to see our turnout and their turnout compared. Has the trend from the early races held up?
355:Islamic Economic Jurisprudence
It seeks an economic system based on uplifting the deprived masses, a major role for the state in matters such as circulation and equitable distribution of wealth and ensuring participants in the marketplace are rewarded by being exposed to risk and/or liability. Islamists movements and authors will generally describe this system as being neither Socialist nor Capitalist, but a third way with none of the drawbacks of the other two systems with none of the drawbacks of the other two systems.[1][2]"
Now connecting this to Obama and his behaviorial economics team would require a longer comment, and I dont know why I should educate the ignorant.
I've got that late October '04 feeling crawling up my spine
Me too, stras. Me too.
Stop it you bastards. I'm trying to stay hopeful over here.
What restaurant was it?
This place. Owned by the same people who run this place and this place.
370: Guess Obama's my guy, then. Thanks, bob!
Well, I'd like to see our turnout and their turnout compared.
The primary is not the general. And if Clinton is the nominee, I predict that the kind of enthusiasm we've been seeing - and the level of turnout that's gone along with it - will not hold up.
Buck up, guys. Don't know if that'll hold up but sounds like the delegate count will be very close.
370: Like you said, secret Muslim wife-beater, out to poison us with the dhimminomics. Don't worry, I read the Book of Bob!
AAAAAH! I just clicked over to Fox News for the first time in months because I heard they called Missouri for Obama. What the hell did they do to their site? It makes my eyes bleed.
Compare the turnout numbers here. Even in fucking Kern county, which is uber-Republican, the Dem and R turnout is about even. In the urban areas, it's ridiculously uneven.
(Kern's the Montana-shaped one down in the middle of the south end. San Joaquin--also heavily Republican--has much heavier D. turnout. That's the mediumish county immediately to the right of the left-hand white space (which is Almeda county, btw.)
The NYT site doesn't have county-level results for NM (and a few other caucus states), but you can find them here.
The link in 380 has congressional district numbers too, btw.
Sorry, html fuckup in 379. Here's the link.
376:Ok then, here is Bowers analysis of what happens after a close supertuesday. You can simply reverse who has a small lead, and figure how many of the 1428 remaining delegates Obama will need to go to the convention with a lock. Ain't gonna happen.
Bowers wanted the superdelegates to precommitt to the candidate with a majority. That ain't gonna happen either, when deals can be struck.
So brokered convention, here we come. Ed Kilgore is stupified, Democrats haven't had a non-candidate-controlled election in decades. Who decides on the speakers? Will Obama delegates be housed at a Days 8 in Boise?
We are in for some fun. Goodnight.
384c: s/b "convention not controlled by a candidate" for "non-candidate etc"
Tired, and kinda weirded out.
Hillary won Harlem?!
district by district results Look at CD 15 (Rangel - uptown Manhattan plus a tiny bit of Queens.
And now Humboldt, Santa Barbara and SF!
362: I knew a few people in Arizona who had the same problem. Registered as independent/nonpartisan and wanted to back Obama, unable to vote.
Boo to closed primaries.
Hey, you want to have a say in who the Democrats' candidate will be, register as a fuckin' Democrat. You don't see me trying to vote in, say, Stanford Wushu's elections, because I'm not a member.
The margin in CA has dropped below 20%. The Bowers link in 384 may be right, but then who knows what funding will do, and how the general public reacts, when Obama sweeps on Capital Tuesday next week. He ought to do well in Washington on the 9th as well.
I wouldn't hold my breath on those California totals. Debra Bowen (SoS) was on the radio this morning saying it'd probably be a couple of days because of the absentee votes. (Which raises the question of who exactly is still voting for Edwards again.)
we sure as shit ought to win Alameda County, if those Californians are going to get all caught up in identity voting.
Not necessarily. Oakland and Berkeley are only about 1/3 the county's population. Last I read, Oakland doesn't have an African-American majority (there isn't a majority of anyone, really), and Berkeley has all those fucking Ron Paul voters. Dunno how strong Obama's support is in, say, Pleasanton.
Obama's people (or, perhaps more accurately, PowerPac people) were busy in the civilized East Bay today. They doorhangered every dwelling in our neighborhood and Josh says they were well-represented on the Berkeley pedestrian bridge over 80 this morning.
Yeah, I find open primaries significantly weirder than closed ones.
It would really be something if we woke up to find that Obama had won California. Or even that it was close.
who exactly is still voting for Edwards
People who don't follow things closely enough to know he dropped out? Purists who want to "make a statement"? God knows.
I've seen more Obama signs around town than I have anyone else signs. Except maybe Ron Paul. But I'd be very surprised if he won Ventura County.
392 -- I think of people in Pleasanton as Republicans. But it's been a long time since I lived in CA.
Obama pulls ahead in NM. Results are starting to come in from the more urban areas that should be good for him.
Funny, I felt like a purist who wanted to make a statement voting for Edwards when he was still in the race. I was debating whether to stick with Edwards (even though he was clearly flailing and his campaigning was getting increasingly tone-deaf) or cast a strategic vote for Obama when Edwards dropped out. Thanks for making that easier, John!
I think of people in Pleasanton as Republicans. But it's been a long time since I lived in CA.
Less so than they used to be, I think, though still probably more conservative than the rest of the Bay Area. That district did throw Pombo out of office, though, so there's still hope.
The BBC are saying different things from what I'm reading in these last few comments.
Look at Mono, right below Alpine county. Clinton has it by exactly one voteat the moment.
398: Yeah, me too.
(Btw, was McCain's bit about "getting closer to the day when Arizona mothers can tell their children that you can grow up to be president" just repulsively assholish, or what?)
Alright guys, it's been super. Super-duper. 'night.
re: 402
They are saying that Clinton has won California. Whereas the comments above seem to be saying that California isn't yet certain.
390, 393: But you'll never be affected by the Stanford Wushu Club President. Everyone in this country will be affected by at least one of the presidential nominees.
I do understand the plight of some people who would like to support candidates from different parties on different years. And I don't see any harm in people voting for different parties on different years, so long as they're limited to one party per year (so as to provide at least some restriction on strategic voting).
But hell, I'd probably support completely open approval voting for primaries, since it would probably produce the most widely liked candidates for the entire country.
406: Oh, Clinton's definitely won California. It's not winner-take-all, though, so the vote totals still count.
406: Oh, it looks like Clinton's won it. But what's interesting is noting how slim her lead is in a lot of places--look at the bay area counties. It's the LA and San Diego areas, which are much more conservative, that seem to be swinging it.
I do understand the plight of some people who would like to support candidates from different parties on different years. And I don't see any harm in people voting for different parties on different years, so long as they're limited to one party per year (so as to provide at least some restriction on strategic voting).
And, indeed, it's quite easy for people to do this simply by changing their party registration.
Btw, was McCain's bit about "getting closer to the day when Arizona mothers can tell their children that you can grow up to be president" just repulsively assholish, or what?
Fixed.
The Chronicle is calling California based on 26% of the vote, which sounds dubious to me. They're also reporting that the turnout was so high in Alameda County that there were still lines at some precincts at closing time and they were running short of ballots.
410: Yes, but I have a very anti-paperwork philosophy, as do many others. And some people just really abhor the idea of party affiliation (as did my friends in AZ for some damn reason).
Although those aren't particularly good reasons for open primaries, I don't see any good reasons for closed primaries either, so I would prefer to err on the side of inclusiveness.
Good reasons from what perspective? One reason behind closed primaries is they're supposed to build party loyalty and penalize people for refusing to declare one, which is a good thing from the perspective of the party. From the perspective of primary as preference aggregation mechanism, the idea is that it's a particular party choosing its standard-bearer, and if you don't share value with that party your preference shouldn't be aggregated with the others. And if you do share values with the party, you should be willing to register.
I had hoped the Republicans would have a brokered convention. Now it looks like the Democrats will. This pleases me not.
I also expect that I'll be getting a bunch of phone calls urging me to vote before next Tuesday's VA primary. Also, not pleasing.
Do you know who you need to be reading? Dave Weigel at Hit and Run. You might not agree with the Libertarian politics but he does great election predictions and roundups. (Some of you might have met Dave at UnfoggeDCon.)
How about from the fuck-what-the-party wants perspective?
How about from the fuck-what-the-party wants perspective?
Write in your choice in the general election.
Party loyalty is still fairly necessary due to today's incredible party discipline, but I'd rather not have that be the case. As for "sharing values with a party", well, I think they're all way too big of tents for anyone to really share values with a party. Especially when most of those values tend to change depending on the region of the country.
But my annoyance really does come down to my own preference. I tend to like the influence of centrists in primaries because the people chosen by strict party loyalists seem pretty annoying, and are too frequently machine politicians who can be kept in office indefinitely (being in Chicago, this is a major frustration).
Yeah, for some reasons the institutions that choose how primaries are run don't take that view. I think they're called parties or something.
416: Oh, and an argument I feel slightly better about regarding primaries as preference aggregation methods:
Primaries do not just choose a party standardbearer, they choose the entire field of potential leaders of the whole nation. They are also the point in the election when the broadest possible choice is on offer to individual voters. That's why I think it would be cool if everyone could go in and select all the candidates they think would make a good president. Then you will end up with leading candidates that the most possible people actually feel good about. Seems like the real point of democracy.
I'm not even sure why the parties would find this so devastating, since it seems that the candidate who has broad enough support among the entire population to win a completely open primary would have the best possible shot in the general. And isn't selecting a candidate that can win in the general election the major point from the party's perspective?
In that case, let's just have a series of preferential rounds and be done with it. I could really get behind that. Alternatively, get the government out of party elections.
422: Fair enough, but it still looks like the majority of primaries are open, not closed, so they must have something to offer. Though this article seems to suggest that the state legislatures often decide whether the primaries will be open or closed, not the state parties (with the notable exception of California since 2001, apparently).
424: That would be pretty cool, with the party mostly acting like a combination of political brand and massive 527, interest groups aggregated at a high enough level to supply funding for national campaigns and universal name recognition. T'would be kinda cool to try out, and interesting to see what sort of electees would result.
Alright, seems like nothing big happened tonight. Not what I was deliriously hoping for, but still leaves me optimistic for how things will look at the end of February. Night night everyone.
Despite the approach of Super Tuesday,
To some it must have seemed a slow news day,
The reporter thought he was quite the wit,
Breathlessly mired in wiener dog shit,
For Our Lord's effigy, it was doomsday.
In Minnesota, Obama is showing 52% of the votes counted for Dems AND Repugs. Ha!
The county caucus I went to was very low key and amateurish. There were two Obama speakers, one Al Franken (Senate) speaker, and one Hillary speaker. None of them had well-prepared speeches and none of them were party pros.
The Obama speakers were under 30 and seemed to be a semi-organized group -- there was a considerable young-people contingent, which is unusual. (Perhaps even more than elsewhere, the Minnesota DFL seems dominate by retirees, which means that I might be the youngest person in the room.)
Their speeches were quite offputting, and talked mostly about bipartisanship, putting our legacy of conflict behind us, etc. They seemed to want people to think that Clinton is the cause rather than the victim of the hostility she receives, and seemed only very vaguely aware that the harshness of American politics can be traced to Rove, Delay, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Atwater, and Nixon.
One of them did mention Atwater, who died 17 years ago and did his dirty work a decade earlier than that, leads me to suspect that the 20-something speaker was working off Obama campaign materials. To have mentioned Rove wouldn't have been bipartisan enough.
So now I'm an Obama-Franken delegate to the county convention. Developing........
I don't see why you should have to do extra work to vote in a primary. here in ohio your registration is just whatever ballot you requested last time. That seems to make sense.
428- MA has a similar system- you can vote in either primary if you're an independent, but that automatically enrolls you in that party. You can unenroll any time before the next election, but if you don't take any action then next election you can only vote in that same party's primary.
Washerdryer: And guess what? That's why we have our elected representatives impose our will on the parties, by mandating open primaries.
Some people really, really, really like Hillary Clinton.
I'm just a little surprised Obama's done as well in the South as he has. IME, southern Democrats really like them some Clintons. My family is a classic example: mom vacillated between Clinton and Edwards for weeks, before finally voting for Edwards, but her sisters are absolutely hardcore Clinton supporters. Always have been; always will be.
(After one of my aunts remarked that "she'd rather vote for a Republican than Barack Obama," I confess that I took extra special delight last night in watching him take Georgia.)
So now I'm an Obama-Franken delegate to the county convention. Developing........
That's pretty damn cool. Be nice to those innocent kids. Don't scare them with your partisan meanness.
With 20/20 hindsight, people like to ridicule Kerry's campaign, but that above-the-fray shit really can work, and it's unclear to me that McCain has the knack for gutter fighting that is the current administration's hallmark.
It interested me, after the State of the Union, to see Obama say this:
Each year as we watch the State of the Union, we see half the chamber clap and half stay seated and half the audience at home tune in but do they listen? Imagine if next year was different. Imagine if next year the entire nation had a president they can believe in.
There are two kinds of bipartisanship. The Democratic kind: "We need to be more accommodating." And the Republican kind: "They need to be more accommodating."
Obama's bipartisanship here strikes me as the correct kind: They need to be standing up and applauding for me.
After one of my aunts remarked that "she'd rather vote for a Republican than Barack Obama,"
There are a lot of those, and similarly a lot of people who would vote for a Republican rather than HRC. No way to tell which group is larger or how much those two groups intersect, but it sure would be interesting if it were possible to get those numbers.
Obama's coalition is weird. It was supposed to be the Tsongas/Dean/Bradley group, interesting, but without the numbers to win,and now there's all these other people who weren't supposed to vote for him voting for him.
"she'd rather vote for a Republican than Barack Obama"
a lot of people who would vote for a Republican rather than HRC
No way to tell...how much those two groups intersect
I believe the intersection of those two groups is called Republican voters.
Yeah, the conventional wisdom has taken a brutal beating this election.
I believe the intersection of those two groups is called Republican voters.
Oh, I think there's a group of potentially Democratic voters who will nevertheless go for the white guy in the race. I just don't have any sense of how large that group is.
I'm just hoping that it's a sly dodge. But One Fat Englishman thinks Obama will be Tony Blair redux.
Obama and the Republicans in Congress have to start by marginalizing the Republican leadership and bullying / bribing a few Republicans to support a popular bill that their leadership adamantly opposes. Republican clout has to disappear. Then Obama will have to root out the large number of Republican plants in career civil service positions. I don't even know if that's going to be possible, since they're career civil service. Maybe they can only be reassigned to fifth-wheel positions in Topeka.
And then, demonizing a few prominent Republicans and blackballing some of the more toxic newspeople would be nice.
It may be that Obama knows that, as a perceived nice guy, he'll be better able to do those things than an attack dog would. I doubt it. Bill Clinton was tough enough in his way, but neither he nor any of the Democrats in Congress ever really seemed to figure out what they were up against. Not even now.
Maybe the militance will come from Congress. Hopefully they will get rid of Steny Hoyer and a few others. Or maybe they should go after Pelosi and Reid themselves.
P.S. MoveOn Eli Pariser's uncle is an old friend, and some internet discussions the three of us participated in may have been what made Pariser make a principled decision not to work with embittered old lefties.
Bill Clinton was tough enough in his way, but neither he nor any of the Democrats in Congress ever really seemed to figure out what they were up against. Not even now.
Give me a break. Clinton came out of '94 believing he was fighting a defensive war. Democrats in Congress felt the same, and many didn't much trust Clinton not to betray them to the Republicans. I'm not sure toughness as such mattered much. And I think both were much clearer about the nature of Republican attacks--the Gingrich years!--than we are.
she'd rather vote for a Republican than Barack Obama"
There are women who would crawl on broken glass to vote for Hilliary. Your Aunt's statement becomes more useful with a named Republican. Would she vote for McCain over Obama? He didn't do well in the South last night.
There's a poll out there that shows voters for both Barack and Hillary are about 70% ok for voting for the other if their's should lose. That's pretty good considering it's before the inevitable post-nomination reconciliation. Every day looks better for a Democratic thumping in November.
It may be that Obama knows that, as a perceived nice guy, he'll be better able to do those things than an attack dog would. I doubt it.
Well, there's another issue at work here. I don't think a black man in the current U.S. gets to run as an angry man. I just don't think it's an option. So (I argue) Obama's bipartisan stance tells us nothing either way about his bipartisan intentions.
Likewise, I have argued, as a woman Hillary doesn't have the option to run as a peacenik, and therefore her war positions - especially her older war positions - don't tell us much. Contra Yglesias and others, I still say that her war vote was necessary for her to maintain political viability in a way that it wasn't for Edwards. It's not a coincidence that aggressive war opponents either decided to forego this race, or didn't do very well in it.
And it's not a coincidence that the Senate votes of all three candidates were pretty decisively pro-war. I don't hold it against any of them - but especially not against Hillary.
Super Tuesday has left me absolutely convinced I'm hungover.
Clinton solved his own personal problem by triangulating against labor, liberals, and the Democrats in Congress. I don't regard that as an acceptable solution to the problem.
Even to this day, now that they have a majority, the Democrats have never figured out how to deal with the Republicans. They neither win, nor put up a good fight, nor succeed in sticking the Republicans with responsibility for unpopular laws, nor succeed in getting credit for having tried to do the right thing.
In part this is because a lot of them are close to the Republicans on many issues. In part it's because a lot of them are small time porkbarrel specialists with no bigger vision than making sure that their big supporters get the artichoke subsidies and sump deductions that they want.
Sometimes I can't figure you out, Tim. It seems that when you reach into your opinion barrel, it's exactly the same very well-worn opinion every goddamn time. But that can't be true, because it's such a horrible thing to say about someone. So I'm left with a mystery.
Brad deLong (Clinton staffer) seems baffled to this dy as to why Clinton was able to get the anti-labor part of free trade, but not the compensatory pro-labor part. Is it surprising that the Republicans Clinton relied on for passage of his initiatives only gave him the part they liked?
Sifu, when you went to the bathroom this morning, did it smell like violets?
Something I forgot to ask people's opinions about last night: Each year we budget a fair amount of money to donate to charity. We were thinking about doing a large campaign contribution instead (despite lack of tax deductibility.)
1) Is this a good idea in general, as opposed to non-profits we usually support (carbon-neutral credits, cancer walks, etc.)?
2) Should we wait until the general and support the Dem or support our candidate in the primary? There's the concern that it being used to fight a fellow Dem instead of against Republicans, but it would probably make a bigger difference in the primary than the general.
3) I want my rubber chicken dinner in return for a contribution.
PF 441: The lesson of political realism often seems to be that we might as well give up. The lesson of what you just said seems to be that the Democrats should only nominate white males.
In Hillary's case, she's been very persistent about not second-guessing her hawkish votes even though it costs her support in the primaries. That indicates to me that she's an actual hawk.
When you have to vote for a candidate in the hope that they don't mean what they're saying, it should tell you how weak and marginal you are. And I've gotten that message loud and clear.
It seems that when you reach into your opinion barrel, it's exactly the same very well-worn opinion every goddamn time. But that can't be true, because it's such a horrible thing to say about someone. So I'm left with a mystery.
I have no idea what that means, so we've each got a mystery to solve.
SP: I'd strngly recommend giving to candidates you like instead of to the state or national party, unless you know a lot about your state party and like it.
I think that at best political giving is better than charity giving. US government denialism has harmed attempts to deal with global warming, and also anti-AIDS campaigns in Africa.
445: When you have to vote for a candidate in the hope that they don't mean what they're saying, it should tell you how weak and marginal you are.
Hmm,, to me this doesn't square with the Republican experience. How come they have succeded with coded messages (or outright lies) in their campaigns?
(Btw, was McCain's bit about "getting closer to the day when Arizona mothers can tell their children that you can grow up to be president" just repulsively assholish, or what?)
Let's make history! Some people say America is still too antiarizonatic to elect an Arizonan man president! Let's prove them wrong!
re: 448
Perhaps because there's a behind the scenes consensus about what issues are really important to them?
I'm not sure that's true [speaking as an outsider] of the Democrats.
The Christian Right, the anti-immigration bigot right, and the little-government right are all starting to realize that they've been had. Only the neocons and the anti-tax plutocrats got what they wanted.
Obama and Clinton aren't sending out any code words or dogwhistle messages that I can see. Clinton tries weakly to capitalize on anti-war feeling, but that's only a small theme in her campaign and is overwhelmed by much louder statements of military toughness.
444:
1. Yes, this is a good idea. In fact, most of the charities I give to (Oxfam, DWB/MSF) either see advocacy work as a part of their mission or are at least unafraid to take political stands.
2. Wait until after the primary, then give directly to the candidate.
Which reminds me:
I'm feeling financially more comfortable now, after having scaled back on charitable giving when I moved. We may even be in a position to refinance our house on better terms.
Where do you guys put your money?
Tim, you're very predictable, but your opinion often doesn't make sense in the context in which you offer it.
There seems to be no level of politically-realistic insider caution that will make you cry "Enough!"
What little charitable giving we do goes exclusively to local charities, with TROSA usually getting first dibs.
I don't give a huge amount to charity. I've given to a couple of political pressure groups [roughly analogous to the US ACLU] and the odd tiny one-off donation to other things.
I fairly regularly give money to homeless people in the street, but the amounts are piffling, and that's not really charitable giving anyway.
Other than that, I don't give anything at all.
453- Pork bellies!
1) If it's long term savings, max 401k and IRAs first. The latter can be invested in anything if the custodian is a brokerage (like Etrade.)
2) Shorter term cash we have in ING direct and Etrade savings. (I can refer you to ING and we each get a cash bonus.) Rates suck now, though- down 1.5 percentage points in the last two months to around 3.5%.
3) Medium term can go into a CD, but rates also suck there- check bankrate.com for the best rates.
We discussed charitable giving in this very good thread a while back.
Where do you guys put your money?
How much management do you want to do?
Where do you guys put your money?
On preview pwned by Witt, so I'll answer the general v. primary question instead. At this point, I think I'd wait for the general to contribute. They've both got a lot of money right now and they'll need a fuck of a lot more for the general.
But there may be a good counterargument.
458: oh hey, I was actually there for that.
I've had a few discussions about Veep choices. Some names that have come up and my initial reactions:
Sebelius: Breaking race & gender barriers at the same time is too much to ask. Also, black man & white woman might trigger further racism. Two women obviously out of the question, alas.
Richardson: Brings in the Latino vote (without having a Latino last name, which avoids some of the racist & xenophobic vote). But for Obama also contributes to the "Democrats are the party of minorities/special interests" trope. Probably somewhat for Hillary, too.
Bayh: Good guy, but we need him in the Senate. (Stolen from Neil tEW's analysis.)
Bloomberg(!): Quite interesting. Brings in Wall Street, the Northeast, and some independents.
Discuss.
Bayh
Gahhh. No thank you. Especially not on a ticket with HRC.
Bloomberg(!)
In my book, switching to the Republican Party disqualifies you from being a Democratic VP.
Sebelius: Breaking race & gender barriers at the same time is too much to ask. Also, black man & white woman might trigger further racism.
Fuck that shit. Increasingly, I want to demand a woman on the ticket. I do not believe there is a large contingent of people who will vote (a) Democrat, (b) Black guy, but not (c) White woman in the VP slot. I just don't. I might be forgiving if someone made an extremely rigorous case for why Obama couldn't have Sibelius (or similar) on the ticket, but it would have to be really, really convincing.
All said while acknowledging that there is a very good chance that this won't matter, as it remains more likely the that HRC will be the nominee.
Apparently Obama got more delegates last night than Clinton.
The lesson of what you just said seems to be that the Democrats should only nominate white males.
Nope. I'm making an empirical claim, not a normative one: I'm claiming that the Democrats won't nominate candidates with certain attributes, not that they shouldn't. I have to admit, though, that my primary evidence of this is the actions of candidates and potential candidates, who I deem to be much better judges than I am of the contents of the American Soul.
In Hillary's case, she's been very persistent about not second-guessing her hawkish votes even though it costs her support in the primaries. That indicates to me that she's an actual hawk.
Obama, likewise, hasn't second-guessed his hawkish votes, but Hillary has certainly, ahem, reinterpreted her votes in ways that suggest, at a minimum, open-mindedness about hawkishness.
When you have to vote for a candidate in the hope that they don't mean what they're saying, it should tell you how weak and marginal you are. And I've gotten that message loud and clear.
Not sure if the "you" here is intended personally or generally, but either way, I think it's pretty accurate. People with my views have been pretty weak and marginal, and thus sometimes have to vote for some pretty odious folks.
But Hillary ain't that odious at all, at least if we are (as you insist) to judge her by her words. She says that her war authorization should never have, uh, authorized war. I entirely support that sentiment, despite its ahistorical nature.
Hillary says she wants to be substantially out of Iraq a year from her ascension to office (though she won't commit to this timetable). That seems to roughly match the best competitive deal on offer at the moment. Unlike you, I don't feel compelled to believe the things that candidates say, but also unlike you, I listen to what they say and don't impose tendentious interpretations on their words.
black man & white woman might trigger further racism
They're campaigning together, not having an affair. Do you think the Republican attack ads are going to look something like this?
it remains more likely the that HRC will be the nominee
I don't know that this is actually the case. Look at the contests remaining in February: Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington, Maine, Virgin Islands, DC, Maryland, Virginia, Hawaii, Wisconsin. I think Obama takes most of those. If this race is going to be decided by superdelegates, as it appears it will, I don't see any clear trends there.
Bayh: Good guy, but we need him in the Senate.
You can't be serious. He's a bloodless warmonger and a corporate tool, easily as bad or worse than Clinton or Biden. He voted for the bankruptcy bill, for warrantless domestic wiretapping, for the confirmation of Michael Mukasey, for the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, and he's been a consistent hawk on Iran, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, and general foreign policy/terror issues.
465: And why not Hillary-Obama or vice versa? Bill Clinton veered far away from the ticket-balancing conventional wisdom when he picked Gore, and it seems to me that Obama-Clinton (or vice versa) has roughly the same effect: It reinforces a message rather than making a lame effort to try to broaden the message - and such a choice would even work to demographically balance the ticket in a non-trivial way.
Also, while the efficacy of money is overblown (see Romney vs. McCain), Obama has a really, really big advantage over Clinton there that he's likely to sustain.
So, Mr. NC (134 delegates, May 6), would your state go more like SC and Georgia or more like Tenn?
Last contest of all is Puerto Rico (June 7, 63 delegates) which might support Clinton with NY's ties to PR and Bill's 1999 commutation of FALN (although Hillary stated her opposition to that during her senate run.)
472: Why would Obama or Hillary take the VP role if they were offered it? They've got pretty sweet deals in the Senate that they'd have to give up for the token VP position. They would also have established themselves as national political players who are presumptive frontrunners for the next nomination. Might as well stay in the Senate, consolidate favor in the party, and then try again at the next contested set of primaries.
472: What message would Obama enforce by putting Clinton on his ticket? "I'm the candidate of change, and here's my running mate, the evil old tumor growing on the underside of the body politic, who is also running for change."
They're campaigning together, not having an affair.
I think this underestimates the power of that image for some. But it might be exactly the same group who'd be too racist to vote for Obama anyway -- obviously a huge overlap.
You can't be serious.
Hey, I said I got that from someone else -- someone else I find generally smart about tactical things, but I'm totally open to other arguments. You make a compelling one (even with the stras hyperbole allowance factored in).
Dodd, maybe, if Obama is the nominee? I like Sebelius a lot, too. But I don't know much about what you look for in a VP, and the conventional wisdom on that seems weak historically.
So, Mr. NC (134 delegates, May 6), would your state go more like SC and Georgia or more like Tenn?
Hard to say. NC is much more like Virginia than it is like SC, GA, or TN. Watch them on next Tuesday for clues.
465 - Totally with you, SCMTim. I got really sad thinking about another eight or sixteen years with no woman in the White House. (Not enough to change my vote, but enough to be sad.)
I also have a vague notion that a woman VP might discourage an Obama assassination.
463: I think Richardson's new Klingon look rules him out.
Also, ow, my head.
Bill Richardson needs to shave his neck.
I think Obama's veep should be Nancy Pelosi.
Either Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton would be a mismatch. One's running on change, one's running on bringing back the 90s, and those contradict.
I think Obama's veep should be Nancy Pelosi.
Part of the VP consideration is setting that person up to run eight years later. In 2016, she'd be 76.
476: There you go. Like I said, a ticket that reinforces a message and has demographic balance: Messianic virtue balanced by diabolic evil, which reinforces the message that all political discourse should take place on a plane of cartoon hyperbole.
Warner or Webb make good tactical sense. Virginia is flippable.
I could be VP. I can submit my diss in October, I'd look awesome at fancy parties, and I'll be 36 in eight years, so I could run for President.
Either Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton would be a mismatch. One's running on change, one's running on bringing back the 90s, and those contradict.
And I think that within the Democratic Party elite group, you're seeing the formation of an anti-Clinton camp to match up with the Clinton camp. That's a tremendous mismatch, and I don't see the anti-Clintonites being comfortable putting one of their best players in the "bucket of spit" slot. But stranger things have happened, inc. (IIRC) JFK-LBJ.
479: I think Dodd is a very interesting choice. Brings in the Northeast (though Obama did very well in CT on his own), and v. good on civil liberties and torture. Maybe too similar to Obama there (not that I think he's going to pick someone pro-torture, both maybe there's some disadvantage to their both having been active on this? I hate that I even have to entertain the idea that having *both* be serious about upholding the Constitution and ending torture could be liability.) I'm pretty ignorant about the rest of his record on the Foreign Relations Cmte.
I like the idea of Mark Warner as Obama's COO, so to speak, but I hate the idea of wasting a great shot at a Senate seat in a red/purple state.
468:
As far as Hillary matching the best competitive deal on the table at the moment, that goes back to my awareness that my position in the American body politic is very weak and marginal.
The consequence of your empirical claim, if true, is that Democrats should only nominate white males if they want a partisan, non-hawkish President. If the consequence of being a woman or being black is what you say, I don't want a black or female candidate.
Hillary has persistently positioned herself as the most hawkish of the Democratic candidates, and that matches her whole political history so if I wanted a hawkish Democrat I would support Hillary. Would I be gullible and tendentious if I did so in that case? I don't think so at all.
By and large I think that you should avoid the word "tendentious" during the rest of this argument.
Either Warner or Webb are really interesting choices.
Webb brings in a bunch of independents who want someone who "will say it like it is!"
He is viewed as a tough fighter. Plus, his military service is hard to argue about.
489: And Webb is an extremely appealing politician, and would be good at selling a "change" platform.
I wonder when the last time was that a VP could reasonably be credited with causing a home-state victory that wouldn't have otherwise happened.
490: I'd look awesome at fancy parties, and I'll be 36 in eight years, so I could run for President.
Even better! But don't you have to be 35 for VP, too, so as to be old and wise enough to take over if necessary?
492: He pretty much just beats the hell out of the where-the-hell-is-the-Constitution drum, but it's a good drum to beat.
497: If we don't have to read the Constitution about things like habeas corpus, we don't need to read it about the VP, either.
and I'll be 36 in eight years
To be eligible for election to VP you have to meet all the requirements of President. Thus, Ahnold can't run for VP, nor Granholm, nor Bill. (Although in theory an under 35 president could be elevated from Speaker where the requirement is only 25 years old.)
496 - I love Webb (and gave him money), but I'm not sure he's as appealing as all that; his approval ratings in Virginia aren't particularly good, and obviously while upsetting a relatively popular incumbent senator in a reddish state is a big deal, there were major, major flukes that made it possible. (And if they hadn't, George Allen would be the Republican nominee today.)
I remember reading somewhere, and casually it seems to be true, that there's always a lot of talk about the second most successful candidate in the primaries being the veep, and it never happens -- it's always someone who wasn't running, or if a candidate, then someone who dropped out early.
Messianic virtue balanced by diabolic evil, which reinforces the message that all political discourse should take place on a plane of cartoon hyperbole.
Political discourse does largely take place on a plane of cartoon hyperbole. The argument for Obama consists in no small part of a rejection of Clinton and the past that Clinton represents; the argument for Clinton consists in no small part of a similar rejection of Obama and his inexperience. Even if Obama ends up making a "ticket-balancing" pick with a more experienced VP, he's not going to go with Clinton, because that too symbolically validates Clinton's criticisms of him. And if he wants to go with a "message-reinforcing" pick, he sure as hell isn't going to pick Clinton to reinforce his "change" theme. Likewise with Clinton. If she goes with a fresh face, that face won't be Obama's, and if she goes with someone more experienced it won't be him, either. The dynamic here has already been cast as "change versus experience," because those are the cartoons our politicians and our news media have chosen.
it's always someone who wasn't running, or if a candidate, then someone who dropped out early
Medium John 2004? Probably the only recent example, though. It was possibly more true in the past due to convention wrangling, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
Correct me if I'm remembering it wrong, but didn't the D primaries come down to Kerry v. Bradley? Edwards was out before it was a two person race, unless I'm confused.
Conflating 2000 with 2004? Bradley ran against Gore.
his approval ratings in Virginia aren't particularly good
What's the knock on him?
I am indeed conflating 2000 with 2004. Now that I think of 2004, though, while Edwards didn't drop out early, there wasn't ever really a two-man Kerry v. Edwards race. Dean looked like he was going to take it until Iowa, and then it was Kerry all the way from New Hampshire on. It's not a great fit for the theory, but I wouldn't call it quite a counterexample.
Man, the elections are starting to run together for LB. Tell us a story, Grandma Lizard.
OT:
Any suggestions for good personal injury/tort lawyers in Boston?
I haven't been following the VP speculation, but I'd have to imagine that Clark would be on Clinton's short list.
The take on last night from this particular province:
1) Californians are not to be trusted (just a reminder)
2) a May 20 primary sucks
3) I get to pimp my ride with Obama stickers anyway
The consequence of your empirical claim, if true, is that Democrats should only nominate white males if they want a partisan, non-hawkish President.
Nope. I clearly stated the consequence of my view above. You get women who campaign like Hillary and blacks who campaign like Obama, regardless of their intentions related to the strategy of governance.
For that matter, you also get white guys who run as racially tolerant, regardless of their intent. This just strikes me as the structure of American politics.
I've discussed Obama's own words about partisanship, and suggested that there are signs that his unity rhetoric masks a useful partisanship, despite the way he has positioned himself.
And to say, as you do, that Hillary has "positioned" herself as the most hawkish is merely to repeat what I said without addressing my opinion of the implications. I stand by my statement that Hillary's Iraq position is roughly the same as Obama's. That seems so clear to me that I'm puzzled as to why this is an argument.
Because you keep saying that Obama hasn't backed off his pro-war position, which is a bit like me saying that I haven't backed off my penis. True in a completely misleading sense.
That seems so clear to me that I'm puzzled as to why this is an argument.
The fact that so many people disagree with you might suggest that you should consider reformulating your interpretive methodology.
Jesus, PF, your way of judging candidates is apparently entirely based on figuring out their systematic deceptions in order to construct their real views, on the assumption that none of them really mean what they say. This is Straussian occultism.
Beyond that, you assert your occult interpretations with complete confidence, while accusing opponents of tendentiousness and simplemindedness both. And for you, this cockamamie scheme is apparently sophisticated tough-mindedness.
If I wanted a hawkish Democrat I'd support Hillary. I don't and I won't. I don't trust Obama either, but he's a better gamble than Hillary. I wasn't even sure about Edwards, who has a hawkish past. America is pretty hawkish, and while doves tend to be Democrats, Democrats are only sometimes dovish.
The trend of deception in American politics over the last century or so is for candidates to seem less hawkish than they really are. Eisenhower and Kennedy might have been exceptions.
515: Cala, are you aware of Obama's votes regarding war appropriations? Or do you think it is absurd in the woman-with-a-penis sense to say that voting to continue to fund the war isn't supporting the war?
516: My interpretive methodology is, when someone disagrees with me, to query them as to why this is so. When I don't get a responsive answer - especially when I don't get a responsive answer when I'm talking about matters of public record - well, I think that says something.
Jesus, PF, your way of judging candidates is apparently entirely based on figuring out their systematic deceptions in order to construct their real views, on the assumption that none of them really mean what they say. This is Straussian occultism.
Well, the word "entirely" is clearly wrong here, but I do think it's foolish to take politicians at their word. In any event: Hillary says she'd like to have the bulk of the troops out in a year, but qualifies that. Obama says he's shooting for 18 months. It would be stupid to say that Hillary is taking the more dovish position, so I don't. But they seem roughly equivalent.
Tim has indicated that he won't dignify my foolishness with a response, but have you, Mr.-I-Listen-To-What-They-Say, got some substantive response to this? Or are you engaged in some kind of Straussian interpretation game to interpret what Hillary really means despite what she says?
518: You've been saying "Iraq vote" without specifying, leading me to conclude that you've been talking about the vote before Obama was in the Senate, which sounded a little strange. (One can vote for continued funding for lots of reasons besides being more hawkish than Clinton, of course.)
PF, you're just assuming that the default position is that Hillary is not a hawk, and that anyone who claims that she is a hawk has to prove it beyond all reasonable doubt. I think that the reasonable default position is that she is a hawk, based on the fact that she's been on the hawkish wing of the Democratic Party during her entire career, and based on her claim not very long ago that the Iraq War was justified but mishandled. Her recent less-hawkish positions are the ones I'd discount.
I don't trust Obama on this either, but he's given me much less reason to believe that he's a hawk. My fingers are crossed.
It's not just about what Hillary does vis-a-vis the Iraq War in process (i.e., not just about whether she'll get out sooner or later than Obama). It's about the proposed war with Iran, which strikes me as very risky and just as fraudulent as the present war. And it's about the general framework of foreign policy.
That's about as substantive a response as you could wish for, and I don't understand what you're whining about. Maybe isnstead of talking to me, you should be going around to Clinton's hawkish supporters trying to change their minds, because you're wasting your time here.
When I don't get a responsive answer - especially when I don't get a responsive answer when I'm talking about matters of public record - well, I think that says something.
Right: that your respondent wonders whether you are the sort of person who thinks that Foucault's Penduleum is misfiled in fiction. HRC voted for the war, she has the most hawkish advisors, and the most visible wing of her machine, the DLC, has consistently staked out the most hawkish positions. That you can gin up an alternate explanation doesn't actually shift the default assumption.
PF, you're just assuming that the default position is that Hillary is not a hawk, and that anyone who claims that she is a hawk has to prove it beyond all reasonable doubt.
In any comment where I've addressed this issue at all, I've said that some of her hawkish positions are dictated by her desire for political viability - just as Obama's "bipartisan" positions are - and therefore contain no informational content as to her intentions. Of course, that's a debateable position, and it involves interpretation.
And I'm not allowed to interpret things. I must believe Hillary's literal language - anything else is Straussian voodoo. So okay. I talk about her actual words. Her current words on Iraq are unambiguous and roughly equivalent to Obama's - as you finally seem to acknowledge. But then you tell me that accepting her actual words on this is foolish - which is, of course, correct, but leaves me in a difficult position since I'm not allowed to interpret her words.
If I were allowed some room to interpret, then even after discounting political necessity, I would be somewhat inclined to agree with your interpretation:
I don't trust Obama either, but he's a better gamble than Hillary.
But I'm not allowed to interpret, so my remaining option is to just shut the fuck up. Which I now will do.
And therefore contain no informational content as to her intentions.
"No" is far, far too strong. People who are required to say certain things are under considerable pressure to act on what they've said.
I guess I'll shut up too, but up until now it's been generally agreed, by hawks and doves both, that Hillary has chosen to stake out the most hawkish position of the Democratic candidates. This isn't based on one or two things she said. It's been a pretty persistent pattern throughout her career.
This isn't a meta argument about hermeneutics. You tried to make a very bold, counterintuitive substantive claim, and nobody accepted that claim, at which point you got snarky. And so did we.
But if Hillary takes hawkish positions to sound tough, won't she be more likely led to take hawkish ations during her presidency precisely in order to sound tough? What I remember about the first Clinton administrations was that the political campaigning seemed to go on well after the elections, well before elections, and basically, forever.
A thought, on Clinton: if her Iraq vote was driven by an election it was driven by an election that was 6 years away. The day she takes office, she'll be closer to needing to seek reelection than that.
525
MY had a post along similar lines a few days ago. Money paragraph:
For Clinton, the politically smart thing to do was to make her best judgment as to whether or not a vote for war would look smart in retrospect, and vote accordingly. Someone in Obama's position didn't face any real political risks in any direction. But the only cynical reason to speak out strongly against the war would have been a conviction that such speaking out would look smart in retrospect. Basically, political and substantive judgments track very closely.
I think this is the meatiest portion of the Saiselgy post:
only Obama did, in fact, do something that looks smart in retrospect. . . It makes a ton of sense, even in the most cynical possible terms, to try to build your political strategy on a foundation of sound substantive judgment.
Which is a longer way of saying that even as political calculus, it's lunacy to support something so obviously boneheaded.
525: The day she takes office, she'll be closer to needing to seek reelection than that.
As would be Obama.
Even with Obama I do not think there will be any substantive reduction/pullout by 2012. There are just too many likely scenarios for a post-occupation Iraq which could be spun as against American interests.
This does not mean I do not see any substantive difference between the candidates on how they will handle the war, I have no doubt they will put in place different plans and preparations and may then differ wildly what they would do in a 2nd term, but as to on the ground presence, I think they will all rope-a-dope until 2012 at a minimum.
I think they will all rope-a-dope until 2012 at a minimum.
rope-a-dope assumes you've got a serious counterattack in the works, and aren't already played out, doesn't it? Largish jump there.
I suspect that Obama will be less aggressive than Clinton in Iran and in optional wars elsewhere. I have trouble believing that he'll be more aggressive.
For a dove, beggars can't be choosers.
430: Laws requiring a party to hold an open primary have, when challenged, been struck down as unconstitutional.
529: Maybe rope-a-dope was not the best term, I really just meant to hang on taking minimum damage until you unleash your real strategy, maybe a pullout or whatever, but not necessarily an attack. I really meant rope-a-doping against the perception of American public and the press as much as whomever we are fighting in Iraq.
530: Yes, I almost added that your mileage elsewhere (specifically in Iran) might vary quite a bit even during a first term.
But bottom line I see >100K US troops in Iraq on Election Day 2012, no matter who gets elected.
I can't figure out why open primaries even exist. If you want to help choose a party's nominee, you should be a member of that party.
I also have a vague notion that a woman VP might discourage an Obama assassination.
Buck and I were talking about this last night at the meetup. With Pelosi as Speaker of the House, a would-be assassin would have to go all the way down the line of succession to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate (Robert Byrd) to get a white man.
The 2008-2012 term of office is going to be a real bitch for whomever is elected. I hope that President Obama won't waste too much energy trying to shore up re-election.
534: Way back in the day, National Lampoon had a mildly amusing piece in which they postulated that Watergate et al had all been orchestrated by Secretary of Transportation, Claude Brinegar after he briefly moved a few spots in line after some resignations, Kissinger being foreign-born etc.
535: I hope that President Obama won't waste too much energy trying to shore up re-election. I live in a different universe than the one that I actually do inhabit.
Good lord, Obama, before he was running and decided to pander to AIPAC was notably pro-Palestinian, for crying out loud. And he voted against the Iraq war and never said anything in a debate about such-and-such course of action would make it easier for "us" to "control" what happens in Pakistan. He's really not a creature of the American political system, and all the ways of thinking that that entails, in the way that Hillary Clinton is. There are too many systemic pressures at work to hope that an Obama presidency won't be imperial, but like Emerson says, there's some cause to hope that it will be a softer imperialism than we've had or would likely have under Clinton.
But what a white man
African-American
Woman
Woman
Former Clan Member
Yes, of course Obama would need to seek reelection too, but Obama didn't vote to support a disaster of a war to aide his electoral chances in a Senate primary.
My worry about Clinton is not just "oh no, red states hate her, she's divisive." It's that she seems fundamentally afraid of the electorate, and Obama doesn't. He didn't just say he opposed the war, he spoke at at least two antiwar rallies. This was not a common thing for Senate candidates to do back then. He's been more cautious in the Senate, but he went to the immigration rallies in 2006 & has said he'll try for immigration reform in his first year despite being the suspiciously foreign candidate. He's better on detainee issues despite being the secret Muslim candidate. He talks about marijuana decriminalization & mandatory minimums; she's as afraid of being "soft on crime" now as she was in the 1990s when it was far more of an issue.
He can be frustratingly cautious too. (I don't like his recent statements on Gaza one little bit.) But overall-- she looks at the electorate like Mark Penn does; he looks at it like a community organizer. THAT's the key strategic difference between them.
I can't figure out why open primaries even exist.
Open primaries push the party's nominee towards someone who would appeal to a median voter in a general election. Also, it turns out that if an independent votes in a party's primary, they're much more likely to vote for that party in the general election.
Former Clan Member
Can we please let this right-wing talking point die? Byrd has publicly, unequivocally apologized numerous times. Anyway, it's 'Klan.'
Right wing talking points don't die, Jesus, they just end up on smaller market AM stations.
Obama, before he was running and decided to pander to AIPAC was notably pro-Palestinian
Really? Mostly the "really" goes to the 'pandering to AIPAC'. Really? I've apparently not been paying enough attention at all. Of course it's possible that a viable candidate can't really get anywhere without doing so, but of more concern is how much it commits the candidate to once in office.
And is Unfogged not the smallest of markets?
I'd just like to note that it was lovely having apo and wrenae over to watch the returns and that wrenae brought lovely gifts and delicious snacks. wrenae is a highly-recommended meeter-upper.
541: I understand the (supposed) effect. Nonetheless, I remain steadfast in my belief that only actual members of a party should be able to determine that party's nominee. Shit or get off the pot, independents.
That works a lot better in a multi-party system, Apo. One of the shortcomings of a two-party system, I guess.
I don't see how the number of parties makes any difference.
I think we're getting off track. The point is that HRC is a warmonger who rips the heads off of babies to speed the flow of blood into her gullet, while Obama shits not just sunlight, but solar panels, and in sufficient quantity as to make us energy independent by 2012.
Because in a (de facto or de jure) two party system you are shut out if you don't really support either of them. This is at least much less true in a multiparty system. If the best you can say for the options is `this one is slightly less of an asshole than that one', it's not such a bad idea to have a way to signal the direction you'd prefer without giving them any sense of mandate.
Though honestly, independents aren't the real issue. Most years, one side or the other is going to be running either an incumbent or a prohibitive favorite, so allowing a huge wave of Republicans to come monkey with the Democratic nominating process (or vice versa) is just insane.
Presidential assassins are, of course, known for their nuanced consideration of the impact of historical circumstance on identity politics.
Can we please let this right-wing talking pointbat-shit orthography die?
Actually, I don't really believe that second part...I was just to lazy to post a correction to my misspelling.
Because in a (de facto or de jure) two party system you are shut out if you don't really support either of them.
Well, yeah. But you aren't shut out of the election, just out of the process of a party selecting its own candidates. Which seems plenty fair.
Does anybody know how Alabama allocates delegates? Absent some peculiar system, it seems flukey (if not impossible) that Obama would win the popular vote 56-42 but trail 21-20 in delegates.
Well, yeah. But you aren't shut out of the election, just out of the process of a party selecting its own candidates. Which seems plenty fair.
Fair enough, I guess, in context. I just think it points to a weakness in two party systems & the polarizing effect.
552: Parties can't even get their members to vote in their own primaries most years, so I'm not too scared of waves of malevolent strategic voters swaying the other party's primaries. Especially since non-presidential nominees also matter, and someone would have to give up their voice in all of the downballot choices just to have a very minimal chance of monkeying with the other party's nomination.
Obama shits not just sunlight, but solar panels, and in sufficient quantity as to make us energy independent by 2012.
My eyes are going whirly.
Jackmormon is Super Obama Girl?
I just think it points to a weakness in two party systems & the polarizing effect.
Not a weakness but an intended effect, I think.
556: There are 10 pledged delegates that haven't been allocated yet which will probably mostly go to Obama. A huge number of pledged delegates from Tuesday haven't been announced yet, and are awaiting who knows what final counts.
Super Obama Girl is such a ripoff of Pamela Geller at "Atlas Shrug".
Whoops, I mean 11 pledged delegates, not 10.
I was the only one at the NYC meet-up wearing Obama paraphenalia. I would totally make a goofy pro-Obama music video, too, if I thought it would help, which I don't.
Does Geller have a video of herself in her superhero getup? I shudder to think.
562--Ah! I see, now that I look at the total number of pledged delegates (on a site with better presentation of the data).
never said anything in a debate about such-and-such course of action would make it easier for "us" to "control" what happens in Pakistan
I have it on decent authority that Obama has personally lived with an actual Pakistani. Don't tell the Republicans.
566: It's her logo I think, or once was. And boobies!
The NYT has flipped NM to Clinton, ahead by .2% with 98% reporting. I blame teo.
And 550 gets it exactly right.
Which doesn't mean that I won't happily don my "Vote for the Baby-Killing Warmonger" t-shirt if it comes to that.
546: Thank you again for hosting! I had a great time, sorry I had to leave. Couldn't let you fellas see me turn into a pumpkin. At home, I stayed up way past my bedtime hoping for some resolution/sign from the flying spaghetti monster/happy ending. None to be had, alas.
You and Rah don't look anything like I expected, but I never know what to expect, so that is totally...expectable. Apo is exactly as I would have expected in person, which is to say: exactly like his online persona.
Speaking of which: Apostropher, have you ever been in the radio biz? Because your voice sounded so familiar to me last night, and I kept thinking I would place it as similar to a relative's, or friend's, or whatever, but never could. It's still bothering how familiar you seemed even though I'd just met you.
Does Geller have a video of herself in her superhero getup? I shudder to think.
When did "shudder" start meaning "masturbate?"
Oops, last line should read "still bothering me" etc etc.
Exactly like his online persona
He just whips his penis out any time he feels like it?
No, he has the internet in his back pocket.
For all her sterling qualities, I fear that JM cannot compete with Ms. Oshry in certain key respects.
He just whips his penis out any time he feels like it?
Only when Katie Couric came on. But I'm not really sure how he intended to use it. When I see Katie Couric and a penis, I just want to slap her with it. Perhaps his intentions were honorable.
572: When crooked ex-Governor Edwin Edwards ran against white supremacist David Duke for the governorship of Louisiana, the bumper stickers read:
"Vote for the Crook. It's important."
Choosing the lesser of evils is often important, even when the lesser is pretty damn evil.
Yes, as a Randian Pam is fiercely rational. She'd pimp out her own mother at the point as soon as that seemed to be the best way to maximize the maternal utility.
Give Couric credit for the public colonoscopy. She pwned FL or Ogged or whoever it was that posted their colonoscopy here.
582: And I'm being hyperbolic. By the standards of recent Presidential candidates, HRC looks pretty damn good. Obama's just a whole lot better.
John, I hate to disappoint, but I think that picture is more Photoshop than reality. Anyway, she's repulsively insane.
When I see Katie Couric and a penis, I just want to slap her with it.
Now that's rollover text.
586: A Jesus of little faith is one hellaciously fucked Jesus.
It may be that she isn't really endowed as impressively endowed as that, but she did once have that graphic posted on her own site.
When I see Katie Couric and a penis, I just want to slap her with it.
Honey, can you loan me your penis? I need to dick whip Katie Couric. Thanks, I'll give it right back.
exactly like his online persona
I like to think I come off much more normal and respectable in person. Sigh. I must be getting worse at hiding it.
have you ever been in the radio biz?
Not in the biz, no. I did student radio at UNC's station from '89 to '92 or so, but I don't think that counts. I do get asked that a lot, though.
It's still bothering how familiar you seemed even though I'd just met you.
I'm everybody's long-lost friend. By the way, IIRC, wrenae has made a handful of self-deprecating comments about her looks, which comments proved to be total bullshit.
I need to dick whip Katie Couric.
The proper term is turkey slap, rob.
I do get asked that a lot, though.
This happens to me, too, when people meet me and hear my voice. For some reason, it's always radio. Nobody ever asks me about television. I can't figure this out.
I can't figure this out.
Are you especially unattractive?
You and Rah don't look anything like I expected
I kept hearing this at UnfoggeDCon 2.0. It's very strange. I hear my comments in my own voice and easily imagine my physical mannerisms - a hulking, brutish strength contained only by the beauty of a gentle soul and a composed exterior, of course - and assume all of these are transmitted in my words. Now if anyone needs me I'll be modeling chainsaws designed for masculine, beautiful people.
So given that the expectation of the day is that super delegates are decisive, should people by writing to their Senators, Representatives, Governors, etc. asking that they support the writer's candidate of choice? As far as I can tell everyone in New York has committed to Hillary, and Hillary won every county but one in New York last I checked, so I doubt my writing will change things, but is this a good tactic in general?
595: I'll be modeling chainsaws designed for masculine, beautiful people.
You have stiff competition from the fairer sex.
Our pork-barreling senior Senator is one of those HRC superdelegates, presumably for pragmatic reasons (I'm not sure he remembers that other sorts of reasons exist). It will be interesting to see whether he sticks to that if the local guy wins big in the caucuses here and goes into the convention with a lead in earned delegates.
||
Presenting: my Winter Mix! Not a best of the year, just what I've been listening to in the second half of it. Mostly indie rock by white Americans.
"Friends", complete with cover art at
http://www.sendspace.com/file/6yl2g9
1. Don't Stop Believin - Petra Haden
2. I'll Be On Your Side - Meowskers
3. Umbrella - Rihanna
4. You Were Brighter - The Marvelous Toy
5. Friends - Ween
6. The News From Your Bed - Bishop Allen
7. Happy Alone - Earlimart
8. So It Goes - The Broken West
9. The Moneymaker - Rilo Kiley
10. Flathead - The Fratellis
11. Last Words - The Real Tuesday Weld
12. Sun In An Empty Room - The Weakerthans
13. D.A.N.C.E. - Justice
14. Trouble - Over The Rhine
15. Magnetic Forces - Castledoor
16. Esophagalopagos - Truman Sparks
17. Things Ain't What They Used To Be - Keith Jarrett
18. Stammheim - The Human Hearts
19. Take Me To The Ballroom - Moonbabies
Mineshaft responsible for 16 directly and 17 indirectly.
I believe that 5 is playing ATM ATM.
|>
A thought, on Clinton: if her Iraq vote was driven by an election it was driven by an election that was 6 years away.
Older folks will recall that Bill Clinton, at 22, took steps related to his draft status to preserve political viability.
I listen to so much music I've picked up here that I feel the need to contribute. Here's "More Songs about Death and Heartbreak" (mostly an apt title, even if a couple of songs are a stretch):
1. I'm Not Afraid To Die - Gillian Welch
2. Lonely Holiday - Old 97's
3. Walter Reed - Michael Penn
4. This Side of the Blue - Joanna Newsom
5. End Of Love - Clem Snide
6. Casimir Pulaski Day - Sufjan Stevens
7. Back to Me - Kathleen Edwards
8. You Got to Die - Blind Willie McTell
9. Gyroscope - The Dismemberment Plan
10. La Petit Mort - Erin McKeown
11. Sad Mood - Sam Cooke
12. Wayside / Back in Time - Gillian Welch
13. This May Be The Last Time - [unknown (to me)]
14. Virginia, No One Can Warn You - Tift Merritt
15. Sea of Heartbreak - Don Gibson
16. Train Home - Chris Smither
17. A Better Wife - Erin McKeown
18. My Idea - Evan Dando
19. (Past Due) - The Weakerthans
20. Family Reserve - Lyle Lovett
I've never done the make-a-zip-mix-and-upload thing before, so apologies if I fucked it up.
Thanks, Merganser. I am very fond of 19 + 20.
Cool I will download some tomorrow.
How does one create zip files? Should they consist of a mixture of mp3s and m4as?
If you put all the files in a folder, you should be able to use a zip utility to compress them. In OS X you can do it from the control-click menu. Then upload using a service like sendspace.com.
MP3's are the most universal, but, you know, free music. Young ben tends to mix his formats promiscuously.
Do make sure, if you have any protected files such as iTunes downloads, to burn-and-rip before uploading.
I don't have any iTunes downloads. About 3/4 of my songs were ripped from CDs using iTunes. Is that ok?
About 3/4 of my songs were ripped from CDs using iTunes. Is that ok?
Well, according to the RIAA, you're a dirty, dirty thief.
599: I lovelovelove the Petra Haden "Don't Stop Believin'"! Are you the person that posted the YouTube video of it before?
608: I am not he. In fact, I should probably credit the Mineshaft for turning me on to that track. Or maybe it's the other way around -- I know I've discussed it here a bunch.
mrh showing up makes me realize that I forgot to put my favorite track of not only this half the year but the entire year on the disc -- "Go Places" by New Pornographers. Not sure how that happened. Ah well, there's next year.
Holy shit. Obama raised over 4.2 million dollars since the polls closed last night.
611: Can't do it from the office computer, but I think I'll send him a few more bucks when I get home tonight. I'd like to see the Clinton campaign demoralized enough to start turning on each other.
611, 613: And yet, it is so depressing: a money race. But yeah, I know. I do.
I don't feel so bad about a money race if it's being raised in small chunks from lots of people to pay subsistence salaries to organizer-type people. It's the cut going to the consultants and the ad agencies that's nasty.
614: At first I thought I agreed, but the only way this is clearly a money race is in the sense that the candidates are trying to raise money and loudly talking about how much money they're raising. It's not nearly as clear that it's a money race in the more obviously negative sense of money dictating the outcome.
It's not nearly as clear that it's a money race in the more obviously negative sense of money dictating the outcome.
No? Isn't that the point of raising the money? To fund voter outreach (influence) efforts?
But that's why I said "I know, I know": you can't reach the people if you don't reach the people.
617: I think the point is that this is close-fought; both candidates need money for viability, and both can get it. This isn't Well-Connected Incumbent crushing Scrappy Challenger.
I would say that no one's getting spent out of this race, but I actually wonder about HRC. Lending herself $5M? She's still the favorite and, presumably, the preferred candidate of the monied establishment - shouldn't she have all the $$ she needs?
I have read that a lot of Clinton supporters are already tapped out, but c'mon - out of cash in early Feb?
Best case for Obama now would be to run the table in the remaining February primaries and caucuses, then have enough momentum, organization, and advertising $$ to win Texas and Ohio on 3/5. If he could do that it ought to be just about over. A fundraising blowout this week seems like a good way to start.
Or at least that's what I'm telling myself. I don't handle suspense very well.
619: What you describe is not very different from "If Obama wins everything, he'll win everything." I guess the point is that he needs A. Momentum and B. A big delegate lead to overome a presumptive HRC superdelegate lead - yes?
I do think there's a weird expectations thing going on where the rest of the month has been ceded to BO by the media, so that the next 10 wins won't count for much for him (in terms of fawning press). Weird. But I don't think the press can trick people into not noticing BO taking 9/10 or 8/10.
To me, it all depends on how often he can pull off the "bring in 100k brand-new Dem primary voters" thing. If he does that, then I buy the premise of his candidacy (and so will everyone else). If not, then I remain fencelich.
620: Yeah, pretty much. To break the current tie somebody has to start putting up a string of wins, and they have to be pretty solid wins or it comes down to who can make the best pitch to the super delegates. As you say, the expectations game is such that Obama now needs to do well the rest of February just to stay on track, but Ohio and Texas are supposed to be Clinton's comeback states, so that looks like the first opportunity for a knockout. And, for that matter, if Clinton gets something like a split the rest of this month, maybe she's got a shot at a knockout on 3/5 herself.
But really I just want the thing to be over before you get a chance to cast a vote that matters. [emoticon deleted]
April 22 is a long, long way away.
Oh, I thought of this earlier, while I was out:
Y'know how everyone is kickin' it Kael-style, with the "I don't know any HRC voters" thing? Dude. My sister and sister-in-law, who never miss Burning Man, are 100% on the HRC wagon. See what I'm saying here? I'm not saying I endorse BM or HRC; I'm saying that it's not just squares voting for The Harpy.
Just noting: Atrios also thinks my 618 raises an important question.
602: My pleasure! And thanks for yours too. I listened to "A Aw Yeah Christmas" more times than I ever would have guessed from the title.
612: Well, I only have a few of his songs, so technically I don't think I could possibly count as an aficionado. But I'd be happy to hear more of his music! (Hint, hint.)
I just clicked on the link; Obama's now at almost over 5.4 million since last night. Unbelievable.
618, 623: McManus will be along shortly to explain the principles of jihadonomics.
625:I am half-seriously considering doing volunteer work for Clinton here in Texas. With my Ninja Charisma Skills T could be worth a few hundred K dollars and a half dozen delegates by myself. My district is plurality Latino, I could start rumours that might make Obama's General Election campaign implode.
We would get President McCain but it would the last time Democrats fell for a mesmerist & mindwarper. And McCain would be bad, but the country would endure. I would hate to leave the broken Obama-shell America to the next generation.
627:Just doing me bit for the cohesion of the Unfoggedetariat.
Every day in the blogosphere I feel a little more like Donald Sutherland, the last unpodded person alive. Soon I have to start faking it.
Emerson same as Farber. The horror.
Every day in the blogosphere I feel a little more like Donald Sutherland, the last unpodded person alive. Soon I have to start faking it.
I forget, bob—do you own guns?
I swim against all currents & tides and root for every reasonable underdog. The job is to afflict the powerful and empower the afflicted, however the positions may shift. Never seen any point in joining a crowd. It rarely needs my support.
Ack!! Bob you are so so culturally illiterate!
[Invasion of the Body Snatchers spoilers ahead]
Donald Sutherland is *not* the last unpodded person in the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He is the *second* to last. Brooke Adams is the last person, and in the climatic scene she looks to him for help only to find him making the weird body snatcher noise that alerts all the other pod people that she is not a pod and must be captured.
I probably first saw that scene around 1980, when I saw 12 and the movie was shown on TV. It had one of the deepest effect on my psyche of any work of art. Up until then, all of my nightmares were based on Boris Karlof's Frankenstein or Bela Legosi's Dracula. After that, I had Invasion of the Body Snatchers nightmares clear up to 1992 when, for reasons not clear to me, I started having Night of the Living Dead nightmares.
And there are two Brooke Adamses! And a Brooks Adams! And a Henry Brooks Adams!
Over at Calculated Risk today they quoted one of the Fed Governors. Basically Gov said yeah yeah we know inflation gonna get out of hand, but we promise to go all Volcker in 2009, so keep them long bonds down, we got a plan.
Double digit short rates in 2009-2011. The early Reagan years, with much lower tax base and huge standing deficits. 30+ misery index (inflation plus unemployment plis interest rates). The Repubs are gonna drop a fucking mntn on the next Pres's head.
All the kumbaya in the world ain't gonna balance that budget.
They're licking their chops at Obama.
I agree with 635. Bush has backloaded his disaster on his successor.
632:Acck Both wrong Not Brooke Adams.
It is Veronica Cartwright that is the last unpodded. Or the other Cartwright,
633: when I saw 12
"I see everything twelve times", Yossarian cried.
635: Yeah, Hillary the Underdog and/or McCain the Fake Maverick would be just what that situation needs.
Shit, it was Veronica Cartwright
Cartwright has been in three of the best horror films of all time: The Birds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Alien. She can bug out her eyes really well.
In my defense, I was 12 (and seeing only 1) when this was imprinted on my brain.
Also, confusing Adams for Cartwright is a much more excusable mistake than forgetting the image of Sutherland at the end of the movie
591: I like to think I come off much more normal and respectable in person. Sigh. I must be getting worse at hiding it.
Well, you weren't reenacting 2Girls1Cup, so maybe I shouldn't have said exactly like your online persona. In fact, I thought: this is the guy you want to have at every party, because he has a funny story to fill in any gap in the conversation.
I do get asked that a lot, though.
Yours is a practiced, mellifluous voice, imo. Maybe because you've told so many funny stories.
595: a hulking, brutish strength contained only by the beauty of a gentle soul and a composed exterior
Exactly right. But my imagination failed me ahead of time, you see. Because I had a dream once that I met you, and my subconscious was unfamiliar with such masculine beauty, so it substituted something less magnificent (think short, blond and airy). Luckily the gentle soul makes you less intimidating, chainsaw notwithstanding. And Rah was just more talkative than I expected, considering his paucity of comments.
I think your other guest may have been the only real person there, as he did not have an imaginary Unfogged avatar in my head competing for recognition.
PLEEEEEEEAAAAAASE become a Hillary door-to-door volunteer in Texas, Bob.
