Thursday, June 28, 2012

Big News Day

It's a big news day today.

1. The Colorado wildfires continue to burn out of control. The Air Force Academy is now directly threatened as is most of the town of Colorado Springs if the fire comes much closer and manages to jump I-25. There have been some rather sick folk who have cheered the fire and hoped that it would continue until it burned down the Focus on the Family Campus and other Christian related structures. The Boulder fire is not much better as it climbs the ridge just to the West of that town.

2. The full House of Representatives will vote on whether to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress today. About a dozen Democrats have stated that they intend to vote yes. No whip count has been available for the Republicans, but it is somewhat expected that nearly all of them will fall in line with the leadership. What happens after the vote is anyone's guess. Most likely there will be a drawn out negotiation and then probably some sort of court fight over these documents.

3. The Supreme Court will release its ruling on Obamacare today. Speculation has been all over the map and about the only thing that people seem to agree upon is that Chief Justice Roberts is writing one of the opinions. The general assumption has been that it is the majority opinion that he is writing so most speculation has been that either the court split 5-4 for the conservatives or 6-3 for the liberals. I've seen it postulated that Justice Ginsburg is writing the other major opinion which has fueled speculation of a 5-4 Conservative ruling. Of course, whether this is to strike down the whole thing or just the mandate is also a matter of speculation. The opinion will probably be released around 10 am so this should be the first thing we hear about.

*UPDATE*

SC ruled 5-4 that Obamacare is constitutional, although the mandate is unconstitutional under the commerce clause. It survives under Congress' power to tax. Chief Justice Robers sided with the four liberals while Justice Kennedy sided with the conservatives.

*SECOND UPDATE*

The House voted 255-67 to hold AG Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. 110 Democrats did not vote, including the entire Congressional Black Caucus (who walked out before the vote). But 17 Democrats did vote with the Republicans. The House has now indicated that they will hire an independent counsel and challenge the citation of Executive Priviledge in court.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Hell in Colorado

Some bad fires have broken out over the past week in Colorado but yesterday things blew completely out of control.

The worst up until yesterday had been the High Park Fire in the mountains west of Ft. Collins. This fire has burned over 80,000 acres, destroyed over 250 homes and killed at least one person.

However, this changed yesterday when the Waldo Canyon Fire exploded. This fire started outside the city of Colorado Springs (second largest city in Colorado) on June 23 but was thought to be mostly contained on June 25. However, the winds whipped up that night and the fire has now crossed into the Mountain Shadows neighborhood of Colorado Springs proper. 32,000 people have been evacuated (including the Air Force Academy). More are expected to be evacuated as the fire progresses.

Also of concern is the Flagstaff fire. This fire is only 300 acres in size but it started just 2 miles outside of the city of Boulder and is progressing in that direction. It has only about one mile (thankfully unpopulated) to the summit of the ridge where the wind could jump it over the last mile into the city.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Bellweather State Mythology

One of the greatest myths that exists in Presidential elections is the idea of a historical bellweather state. Political analysists are always looking for an easy model for them to study that would allow them to make their predictions easier: "So goes Florida, so goes the nation", etc. In each individual election, yes there are probably several states that genuinely reflect the mood of the national electorate, but these states are not static. The national character changes just as state character changes. As such, calling any state a historic bellweather is foolish.

The historic bellweather state of the 20th century was Missouri. Starting in 1904, Missouri has gone for the winner of the national election in every year except 1956 and 2008. Missouri is nominally a southern state, even though it stayed with the Union in the Civil War. But they have enough northern influence that they trended Republican. However, whenever southern Democrats would rise up (or northern Democrats who embrassed the South such as FDR and JFK) and take the national leadership role (Johnson, Carter, Clinton), Missouri would fall back on it's Southern roots.

Yet ever since the 2000 election, Missouri has not felt like a state in play. The state has remained close, but it feels as though Missouri (like much of the south) is now just a red state and they just happened to be right in 2000 and 2004 because the Republican won. John McCain only won Missouri by about 4,000 votes, but with Barack Obama winning nationally by 7 points, if Missouri were a true bellweather, Missouri should have gone Democratic easily.

The only two other states that have a potential track record as a national bellweather are Ohio and Nevada. Going from the same 1904 benchmark that Missouri used, Nevada has had every election correct except 1908 and 1976. Ohio can actually stretch back longer to 1896 and only gets it wrong in 1944 and 1960.

Nevada has had a nice balance between a conservative ranching population, libertarian business folk, and a large blue collar working class population in Las Vegas. This has worked well in nearly every election and even 1976 was something of an aboration as Jimmy Carter failed to win any state west of Missouri save Texas and Hawaii. The only real threat to Nevada's status as a national bellweather is that her population balance has tipped in recent years with the explosion of growth in Las Vegas. This has increased the size of both the blue collar union population and Hispanics looking for work. These two increases have shifted the state to more of a Democratic footing. The only way that this will be tested this year is if Mr. Obama loses nationally but retains Nevada.

Ohio has been an important state to Presidential elections. Going back all the way to 1856, no Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. Ohio failed to get it right in 1944 and 1960, although Dewey only won Ohio by 0.37%. Nixon won by a more comfortable margin of 6.56% in 1960, although he lost nationally by 0.16%. The steady loss of manufacturing jobs from the north end of the state has resulted in a steady reddening of the state over the past few years. However there is still a large blue collar population who stick with their Democratic roots. They've also been aided by a small but significant growth in the liberal middle and upper class population around Columbus. Ohio could probably be best described as swinging easily with the economy. If things are going well, it sticks with the party in power. If the economy stinks, lets try someone else. That doesn't necessarily mean that it will go with the winner, although it makes for as good a trend as anything else.

In this particular election, I don't believe any particular state will tell you how things are going to go. It is better to look at things as a whole. 2008 was best defined by the fact that Indiana and North Carolina went blue. 2012 might be well defined as to how the race does in states such as Wisconsin and Michigan (either in that they change or to what percent they stay blue).

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

The Full Nixon

An old adage in politics: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.

Operation: Fast and Furious was a government operation that has gone very, very badly. The operation was, in theory, an attempt to use American weapons to track, and be able to prosecute, the crimes committed by Mexican druglords. In its essence, a branch of the Department of Justice (ATF) authorized the sale of American manufactured weapons (assault rifles and such) on American soil (mostly in Phoenix) to known agents of Mexican druglords. These weapons would then be smuggled across the border and then be traced and tied to the various cartels when used.

Things blew up when an American border patrol agent, Brian Terry, was killed during one of these smuggling operations by the weapons in question. This caused a blow up because it exposed the operation long before it was ready and what the ATF did was technically illegal. However, the pebble that really started the avalanche was when the House Oversight Committee sent a request to the DOJ asking what they knew about the operation. On Feb. 4, 2011, the DOJ responded with a letter denying any knowledge of the operation. The committee went through the normal procedure of questioning the various ATF folks and found that someone in the DOJ did know about the operation and had signed off on it.

This started the climb up the ladder. Certain low level operators handed over things and gave testimony that this operation was known about at the highest levels (i.e. AG Eric Holder). Mr. Holder was summoned several times to testify and each time he evaded key questions. He promised to submit whatever documentation the DOJ had on the operation but those documents have not been forthcoming. Frustrated, the Committee scheduled a vote (for today) to hold Mr. Holder in Contempt of Congress in an attempt to force the handover of these documents.

At the eleventh hour, Mr. Holder petitioned President Obama to cite Executive Privilege over the documents in question. This request was granted. It is this point that may have turned this into a full Nixonian production. Only the President is covered by Executive Privilige. Cabinet folk and all other appointed positions are equally beholden to both the President and Congress. By invoking EP, Mr. Obama is stating that he was aware and personally involved in whatever these documents involve. Yet Mr. Holder has testified before Congress that the President had no knowledge of anything involving this operation. Someone is lying and now interest in these documents is going up as much as Congress' interest in the Nixon tapes.

The best case for Mr. Obama at this stage is that he is misapplying EP and it was an honest mistake. The EP is retracted or overturned and Mr. Holder will be held liable for anything incriminating found in these documents. Worst case scenario is that the President was directly involved in something illegal and that this is a full blown attempt to save himself (a la Nixon). If this is the case and the EP is overturned due to improper use (which again there is 1970's precedent for) and the documents show this, Mr. Obama could be set up for some very hard questions and potential criminal charges.

The one thing I am sure of is that there won't be any move towards impeachment unless Mr. Obama wins a second term. Even then, the Republicans won't do anything overt unless they have absolute concrete evidence of wrongdoing. The bad taste that was left in everyone's mouth following the Clinton impeachment left both sides wary of moving in this direction for purely political motives.

However, Mr. Holder may not fare so well. Much remains to be seen and I would expect a lot of courtroom fury over the next several months as well as a lot of annoying -gate references.

Rats Off the Coal Scow

It was announced yesterday that three prominent Democrats from West Virginia would not be attending the Democratic Convention in North Carolina. Of course, they made their usual excuses about needing to do work for the people, getting the economy back in order, etc. But I think most people are intelligent enough to realize that they see the President as a liability in their state and don't want him to drag them down as they attempt to get reelected. The three politicians include Governor Earl Tomblin, Senator Joe Manchin, and Representative Nick Rahall.

One could just chart this up to the quirkiness of West Virginia (where Mr. Obama had no shot of winning anyway) if it wasn't the bit of news that Representative Mark Critz of Pennsylvania has also announced that he will be skipping the Convention. Critz's district is in western PA (PA-12), just outside of Pittsburgh. It was Jack Murtha's district before his death in 2010.

There is one common thread uniting these men though: coal. West Virginia's economy is heavily dependent on coal as is western Pennsylvania's. As part of the green energy initiative, funding and support for the coal industry has gone down while EPA regulations on coal use have gone up. Reducing the pollution produced by burning coal is certainly a laudable goal but when the economy is already in the toilet, doing anything that reduces jobs in a hurting industry (especially one that is the backbone of a state) is going to make you unpopular there.

As noted before, West Virginia is already lost so no real harm, no foul there. But Democratic strength in Pennsylvania is anchored by Philadelphia and heavy union turnout in Pittsburgh. If this turnout is depressed in any way, it could make the contest for Pennsylvania much closer than it should be.

As an aside, this is my 666th post. OOGA BOOGA!

Friday, June 15, 2012

Mystery: Part 3

Two more themes for those interested in Mystery! The first is the spiritual father of the show: Lord Peter Wimsey. Lord Wimsey actually was shown on Masterpiece Theater back in the 1970's and it was so popular that it inspired the folks at WGBH in Boston to start up their own show based on mystery literary content.



The second is Reilly: Ace of Spies. I know very little of this one, but the theme is the Romance from the Gadfly Suite by Dmitri Shostkovitch and it is quite beautiful.



If I could find a copy, I'd put Rumpole of the Bailey in here as well, but I haven't found a seperate recording of that theme as of yet.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Cute HP Houses

I find these amusing.



Via TeeTurtle

VERY GOOD!

You can only truly appreciate this if you've watched Dora, although I'm sure others will still find it funny. My only complaint is that it should be longer.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Useless Statistics

Much like baseball, politics has a statistic for everything. I'm sure you could find how left-handed politicians did when facing off against right-handed incumbent Senators in off-year elections.

One such statistic has been making the rounds lately: since 1956, no President has been reelected while getting less of the Electoral College vote than he did when first elected. I did a quick check on this.

Eisenhower: 1952 - 442, 1956 - 457
Nixon: 1968 - 301, 1972 - 521
Reagan: 1980 - 489, 1984 - 525
Clinton: 1992 - 370, 1996 - 379
W. Bush: 2000 - 271, 2004 - 286

Arguably you could include Johnson in this as well. He and Kennedy were elected with 303 votes in 1960 and Johnson crushed Barry Goldwater in 1964 with 486 votes.

However, this doesn't really mean much other than the opposition ran bad candidates against an incumbent or things were going fairly well (sometimes both). FDR passed his 1932 total (472) in his 1936 reelection (523) but fell in both his third term (449) and fourth term (432) elections. Wilson only barely squeeked by Charles Hughes in 1916 (277) by 3,800 votes in California after romping Taft and Roosevelt in 1912 (435).

Barak Obama won in 2008 with 365 Electoral College votes, which means that he can lose 95 votes and still win reelection. I personally think that 365 is impossible to achieve again but 270 is very possible. Statistics like this make for amusing parlor games, but are not viable in reality. After all, President Kerry would like to remind everyone how that if the Washington Redskins lose their last home game before the election, the incumbent party also loses the White House (they lost 28-14 to the Green Bay Packers).

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Two Small Elections

There are eight states that are going to the polls today for various issues. None are of any major significance but two are somewhat interesting.

The first is a special election in Arizona's eighth congressional district. This was Gabrielle Giffords old seat that became vacated when she opted to retire while dealing with her recovery. This area is strongly Democrat and should be a fairly easy victory for the Democratic nominee Ron Barber. The Republican is Jesse Kelly, a military veteran running for his first significant office.

The second is a ballot measure (issue 2) in North Dakota to eliminate the state property tax. The background of this is that North Dakota has been taking in large amounts of money through sales and corporate taxes because there has been a large oil business boom. The state has seen so much revenue coming in that members of the legislature decided to try and eliminate the property tax as an extra boon to their citizens. This measure was defeated in 2009. Independent groups then grabbed the idea and collected enough signatures to get the measure put on the ballot. Limited polling data has shown that the measure would be defeated with many citizens citing fear that if the boom economy collapsed, the state would be left completely bereft of revenue. I shall be curious to see what the final numbers are.

*UPDATE*

As expected, Ron Barber won AZ-8. The vote was a little closer than I expected (52-45), considering that Mr. Barber was Ms. Giffords former aide and had also been shot in the attack.

North Dakota's elimination of property tax (issue 2) also failed by a whopping 76.5 to 23.5.

Friday, June 08, 2012

June Trends

About six weeks ago, I gave my first early handicapping of the race between Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama. Charting a few things, I thought I would update on how the landscape has changed in that time.

I've added some degree of freedom since that first post. Rather than just have it be Obama, Romney, and Toss Up, I've added "slight" and "lean" to the mix (which is more in line with how things are done at RCP.



I've made three changes to the map since I first added the degrees of freedom at the beginning of May. I originally had both Ohio and Colorado as "slight Obama" and Wisconsin as "lean Obama". There have been several polls in May and early June that have shown a very tight race in Ohio and Colorado so I thought it better to move them into "Toss Up" status. Wisconsin has been a bit harder to track but with as well as Walker did, I thought it best to downgrade Wisconsin by one notch (but still keep it in the Obama column).

I've seen some sites and polls suggesting that things are tightening in Nevada and Michigan as well, but not enough to suggest moving things around.

If you give slights and leaners to each side, Mr. Obama leads Mr. Romney in the electoral college 253-206. Mr. Obama would only need another 17 electoral votes to win and the easiest path to that would be to take either Florida or Ohio. Conversely, Mr. Romney could take Florida, Ohio, and Virginia and he would still be 4 electoral votes short (i.e. needing one of New Hampshire, Iowa, or Colorado). At the moment, that would seem to present a steeper hill for Mr. Romney.

You can play around with the numbers yourself by giving various states to either side using this site.

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

RIP Ray Bradbury

The author of the Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, and numerous short stories died yesterday at the age of 91.

In honor of this great man, I'd like to pass on a little wisdom that my father gave to me on my wedding day:

If you ever go back in time, don't step on anything. Because even the slightest change can alter the future in ways you can't imagine.

Walker Wins Recall

The media got some egg on their face last night. As the exit data began to be released, the media started getting all breathless, reporting that the exits showed a race that was a statistical coin-flip, 50-50, etc. I'm sure they were hoping that they would get several hours of going over the data and keeping viewers in suspense as they vied to be the first one to call it.

However, in a scene highly reminiscent of the 2004 election, the exit polling turned out to be way off. The race was called less than an hour after the polls closed with only about 20% of the vote total in and Mr. Walker leading by 20 points. Dane and Milwaukee Counties (Madison and Milwaukee respectively) narrowed things a bit as they finally came in in larger numbers, but Mr. Walker still walked away with a 7-point victory (53-46) (making Marquette University the winner in the polling predictor contest). Mr. Walker actually exceeded his 2010 vote total by about 125,000 votes (out of about 2.5 million cast) and his margin over Mr. Barrett (who was his opponent in the 2010 contest) grew by an additional 47,000 votes.

Overall it looks like the GOP went 5 for 6 in the recall race. The lone bright spot for the Democrats is that they appear to have won the recall race against 21st district (Racine County) state senator Van Wanggaard. His challenger, John Lehman, is up by about 800 votes (out of 71,500 cast). This will probably go to a recount but that kind of margin seems pretty big to overcome given the sample size. That will give the Democrats a 17-16 edge in the Senate. However, that doesn't mean quite as much as the senate will remain in recess until after the November election, when half of the senate (16 seats) will be up for reelection.

The talking heads (as predicted) were already trying to read the tea leaves and try to figure out how Mr. Walker's win would affect the national race in November. Mr. Obama came out well ahead in the exit polls taken, but since the polls were so far off, those numbers are effectively useless. My own take is that Walker's win will have close to zero impact on the race. Mr. Walker won because he had done an acceptable job to many people and more than a few others, while they may have disagreed with his policies, did not like the idea of removing a man mid-term who had committed no malfeasance. If anything, I think the decent state of the economy in Wisconsin will allow Mr. Obama to retain the state as Mr. Romney's economic argument will seem a lot less dire.

In other races, Mr. Romney won all counties in all five of the primary contests. He won 169 delegates from California, 50 delegates from New Jersey, 20 delegates from New Mexico and 25 delegates from South Dakota. Montana doesn't actually allocate delegates until its convention on June 16. This brings his hard total up to 1397 and his overall total (including unbound pledges) to 1436 or 125% of the required total.



The only other interesting bit of news out of the elections was that two cities in California (San Diego and San Jose) voted to cut pension allocations for city workers as a means of balancing their budgets. I doubt there is any real correlation to what was going on in Wisconsin and this, but with union pensions being the narrative of the day, the news gets a bit more play.

Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Last Call

Today is the last call for primaries. Yes, Utah will still have its contest on June 26, but with 49 of 50 states done after today, elections are effectively over until November.

Normally this day would have come and gone without too much fanfare. Mr. Romney has enough delegates to be the nominee as does Mr. Obama, so the contests in CA, MT, NJ, NM, and SD don't count for much. I've not even heard of any interesting primaries in the lower races, although I would think that California must have something. But the day's news is being consumed by the recall election in Wisconsin.

There are actually several recalls going on in Wisconsin today. The one against Governor Walker is grabbing all the headlines, but there are also recalls against the Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch and four Republican state senators. Polling has been highly favorable to Walker with the final polls showing him with anything between a 3 and 12 point lead. Polls close at 8 pm CDT (9 pm EDT).

Early reports have turnout being heavy but subdued. The general feeling is that Wisconsinites are suffering from election fatigue, having had congressional recall elections and a nasty state supreme court judicial race in 2011, only to be followed by the general primaries, the recall primary, and the recall election in 2012.

Many talking heads will be parsing the data from today's results, trying to find a way to apply it to the November general election. This is most likely an exercise in futility but that's what they are paid for. About the only substantial thing that has come out of this is that the Romney camp has stated that they will be tapping into the GotV mechanism that Gov. Walker has built in preparation for this recall. The theory being that they will force the Obama campaign to spend more money than planned to retain Wisconsin, bleeding it from other needed states, such as Ohio and Florida.

*UPDATE*

A local station is reporting that turnout may reach 65% of registered voters. Could be a long night of vote counting.

Monday, June 04, 2012

Now It's Official

Three states awarded delegates at conventions this weekend. Washington State gave Mr. Romney 34 delegates, Uncle Ron 5 delegates, and Mr. Santorum 1 delegate. Missouri awarded Mr. Romney 19 delegates and Mr. Santorum 6 delegates. Louisana assigned 23 delegates but those are officially designated as uncommitted by the state convention.

All in all, Mr. Romney added 53 delegates to his total, bringing his hard count up to 1133. When you factor in the unofficial commitments, his total jumps to 1168, meaning that he is now the official nominee. Louisana would probably have put him over the top in the hard count if preference were factored in so it cuts for him either way.

There are four primaries tomorrow and one state convention that will add to Mr. Romney's totals. However, all eyes will be glued to Wisconsin to see if Governor Walker is recalled and if not, what his margin of victory is. There will be much flapping by the talking heads in trying to parlay the results into some sort of trend regarding the Presidential election so that will dominate the news feeds for the next couple of days.