Big Doings in the Golden State

Earlier this summer, the California Supreme Court ruled gay marriage bans unconstitutional under state law. The Supreme Court gave the various state counties ninety days to find a system for implementing the ruling, which would require that the state grant same-sex couples the same rights to “marriage” that heterosexual couples have. A variety of conservative groups urged Attorney General Jerry Brown to obtain an injunction enjoining enforcement of the court ruling, pending the results of November’s Proposition 8. Proposition 8 is a proposed amendment to the state constitution which reads, in full, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Brown refused, saying that getting an injunction would be difficult, and that same-sex marriage was the law of the land.

Brown further earned the ire of conservatives when he changed the title of the proposition from “Limit on Marriage. Constitutional Amendment” to “Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry Initiative. Constitutional Amendment.” This is actually the correct wording, since the state supreme court ruled that same-sex couples do have the right to marry, but the constitutional amendment would take away that right.

Meanwhile, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proved that he is just as tough with the State Assembly as he is with the Predator. The state is in a budget crisis that is very similar to the federal budget crisis that actually shut down non-essential federal offices in 1995. The Assembly is trying to find a way to close a $15 billion gap in the 2008-09 budget: Schwarzenegger wants to cut all state programs by 10% and keep tax rates where they are. Democrats want to keep state funding where it is and raise taxes. (California’s annual budget is a little over $100 billion.) Schwarzenegger, like George H.W. Bush before him, rode into Sacramento on a platform of “no new taxes,” funding his capital projects by floating bonds — bonds that will someday mature and whose holders will come calling.

In order to force the Democrats’ hand, Schwarzenegger has refused to sign any legislation into law until a budget is passed, which means “any budget that Schwarzenegger likes.” The governor has made one exception to this rule: he will sign into a law a bond issue that would provide $9 billion in funding for his pet project, a high-speed train between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

We’ve been told for years that such a train will be coming Real Soon Now. Arnold wants a legacy beyond the one he already has at Blockbusters around the nation.

California voters will also deal with parental notification for abortion, an initiative that was rejected in 2005 and 2006. Apparently proponents think that California’s voter base has changed wildly in two years?

Meanwhile, the battle for Schwarzenegger’s cybernetic chair is beginning already. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and Attorney General Jerry Brown (formerly mayor of Oakland, Governor of California, and three-time presidential candidate) have all indicated that they would like to run for governor when Der Gubernator’s term is up in January of 2011.

The Buckeye Ground Game

Fall in Ohio usually means changing leaves, a crisp breeze, and Ohio State Buckeye football. However, this fall, the best ground game in the state may not belong to the scarlet and gray.

While all of us, including yours truly, overanalyze polls and election models, there is something happening in Ohio and elsewhere across the nation that could be much more predictive of which man becomes the 44^th President of the United States.

One the main advantages of the protracted primary fight between Senators Obama and Clinton was that it laid the Obama organization for the important fall campaign to come. As the long primary process dragged on, Democrats gained in registration all over the country. Coupled with gains in Democratic registration, Senator Obama got at least a two-month head start on Senator McCain in the all important ground game. As polls tightened during the month of August, the mainstream media wondered why Obama was not using his superior resources to outspend Senator McCain on the airwaves. But as the pundits chirped, Senator Obama’s ground game was quietly being built behind the scenes.

Recent reports have shown that Senator Obama has more field offices than does Senator McCain in all of the battle ground states except for Florida. Topping the list of battle ground states with the most field offices is Ohio, with 57 field offices according to a campaign email on September 3. To find out more, I decided to visit one of these field offices over the Labor Day weekend. The Shaker Heights, Ohio field office, one of the main arteries for the Obama campaign’s efforts in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, was bustling with enthusiasm. I was told by a staffer that the Cleveland area alone had eight teams of eight full-time paid staffers, roughly as many as the Kerry campaign had in the whole state of Ohio in October of 2004. Many of these staffers are very young, but gained invaluable organizing skills in three, or in some cases, four or five primary states this past winter and spring.

As I hit the suburban streets to canvass, I was actively recruited to come back during the month of October and the weekend before Election Day. A little known Ohio law that was passed in 2006 has created an early voting period from September 30 to November 3. With the state’s registration deadline being October 6, this law has created a unique window between September 30 and October 6 where one can essentially have “one stop registration and voting.” Many believe that this period could give Senator Obama at least a hundred thousand vote advantage before a single vote is cast on November 3. Senator Obama’s campaign took advantage of similar laws during the primary season in states such as North Carolina and Montana, organizing its supporters to get out and vote early. This strategy allows for more micro-targeting on Election Day itself as many supporters have already voted and can concentrate all their efforts on getting others out to vote. This strategy also will be especially valuable in urban areas, where many voters may find it much more convenient to vote early and avoid Ohio’s infamous long election lines.

Meanwhile, Senator McCain will try to make up for lost time and attempt to match President Bush’s famous 2004 ground game. Bush’s voter outreach efforts were credited with bringing hundreds of thousand of new evangelical voters to the polls in Ohio and Florida. (Bush won Ohio by only 118,000 votes in 2004.) It remains to be seen whether or not McCain can overcome a lack of enthusiasm from his base and match these efforts in 2008. Sure, 90% of Republicans are behind McCain, but voting for McCain is not the equivalent of having the enthusiasm to go out and motivate others to vote for McCain. McCain’s selection of right-wing conservative Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate is an attempt to narrow this enthusiasm gap.

Overall, efforts on the ground will always fail to get attention when compared to polls and ad campaigns. However, like in football, politics is won in the trenches. As such, Obama’s ground team is ready for an all-out push to begin September 30, just three days after the scarlet and gray take their ground game into the Big Ten schedule.

My Conditions for Voting Republican

I’ve been stewing over the last several days about this election season. Who can blame me? Political feelings are at their height with the two conventions so close together, and so people from all sides of the political continuum find this to be a very convenient time to throw their opinions into the public forum. I’ve wanted to do it in a more complete manner than by simply typing in heated status updates on Facebook, but haven’t entirely known what to say until now. I suppose this bit of writing is a first attempt at expressing my political expectations and reactions so far for this season.

In the end I decided on a sort of list of ‘demands,’ things that the Republican Party would have to do or work towards if they wanted to gain the vote of a slightly left-of-center independent voter such as myself. Here they are, in no particular order:

-Ditch the Rove: There is no one, and I mean no one, in the Republican machine whom I despise more (even including Cheney and Bush) than Karl Rove. The man must be absolutely soulless to have come up with the Republican election scheme of divide and conquer, watering down a complex world of issues and concerns, and slandering your political opponents through a mix of 3rd party “swift boaters” and sleazy push-polling tactics. Seriously, I see the man or hear his voice and I feel a mix of nausea and rage all wrapped up together. I understand that there are other masterminds and think-tanks involved in Bush’s otherwise unexplainable hold on power over the last eight years, but Rove is the most vocal and the most visible. If McCain had told Rove ‘thanks, but no thanks’ from the very beginning of his campaign, I would have had a great deal more respect for him, but as it happens, McCain has involved Rove in his campaign, I don’t know in what exact capacity, but he’s behind the scenes somewhere. I will not vote for a Republican, even at the state level, until that jerk-off is publicly shunned by the party leadership.

- Drop the “I’m-so-white-it-hurts” smack talk: Did Palin say anything about the issues in her VP acceptance speech? Or did she just walk up to the podium, give a shout out to her sisters in the AK, form gang symbols with her hands and challenge Harry Reid to an all-out rumble with John McCain? This is another tactic widely used by Republicans in recent years: when you realize that you either have no new platform or your platform is so extreme that it will scare off the majority of American moderates, just talk trash about the other party and hope that no one notices that you said nothing about the actual issues. Sarah Palin did just that at the convention. I know that there have been accusations from the Republican side (and even from people like Jon Stewart) that people are only following Obama because he is promising change and hope and a place on the Big Rock Candy Mountain, but that is not at all why I have supported him from the beginning. I supported him because he was more concerned with talking about the issues as if we were in this together. Imagine that. Americans of all creeds and races sharing many of the same problems. Could it be because, despite our ideological differences, we might share a common humanity and country? Why don’t we drop the smack talk, Obama says, and focus on our approaches and solutions to the issues? What a fresh idea!

- Rupture with the Rapturists: I understand that religion, faith and morals will always have a place in the public forum. There are ideals that many of us hold very close to our hearts and consider the foundations of our lives. I have a problem, though, when religious leaders realize how much power they can potentially exercise from the political podium rather than from the pulpit. I strongly disagree with the recent practice of Republicans going before religious leaders (and only conservative religious leaders at that) to accept their blessing from that leader. It reminds me just a wee-bit too much of the Holy Roman emperors going before the Pope to have him bless their kingship. Let me reintroduce a neglected idea: a person can be a very capable leader and public administrator without holding to religiously orthodox views, or any religious view for that matter. Even John Paul II was not fond of the Republican Party’s policies, a mood shared by the current pontiff, facts that many conservative American Catholics tend to conveniently ignore. It’s one thing when religious leaders and institutions try to voice their concerns in the public forum of American politics. They have every right to do so, so long as they frame their arguments as the concerns of their particular group. When I’m told by those leaders that I’ll rot in Hell for voting for a candidate who happens to be pro-choice with an otherwise amazing platform, I tend to shy away from them. I’m an adult, and I have the right and the ability to form moral judgments for myself. Don’t try to guilt me into voting for your Republican candidate by threatening my soul with eternal damnation.

- Stop Rudy from talking about 9/11: Seriously, Rudy, shut your mouth. You were rightfully popular for your immediate response to said national tragedy in the days and weeks following, not to mention for your record against crime in New York City, but quit framing the entire political discussion in terms of “I’m the hero of 9/11, so if you vote for the other guys, you’ll find a 737 barreling into your city’s office buildings.” Your party does not hold a monopoly on the willingness and ability to exercise military resources to protect this country. I believe that Joe Biden and his years of foreign affairs experience is just one of many other potential examples to demonstrate that Democrats know a thing or two about national security. What fear mongering and baiting we’re hearing when Bush implies that the other party will leave you for dead to the terrorists, or will let the terrorists win! For those of you who argue that the Republicans have a stronger record on national security and the use of military force, and that they were simply arguing that they would be the more experienced party for handling security issues, I have just one question. Why didn’t the Republicans just say that, rather that insinuating that a vote for the other guys was a vote for defeat? The first involves cool and calm dialogue, the second fear and powerlessness. It’s obvious that they were trying to scare people into the GOP camp.

- Stop parading minorities and women around on the platform to get votes: From the moment I saw that McCain selected a woman to be his vice presidential pick, I suspected that it was raw, political pandering for the votes of former Hillary supporters. It reminds me of how Bush selected people like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice for his administration, two highly-qualified public servants to be sure, but also people who were conservative enough to have very little in common with most of the African-Americans whom they were breaking ground for. I know that some critics wondered if Bush had selected them mostly to make his administration and party look more progressive and diverse. Palin strikes me as more of the same. It’s like they thought that the progressive women who had sincerely hoped that Hillary would shatter the glass ceiling would vote for McCain to get back at the “patriarchal” Obama-Biden ticket. Does McCain expect those same, progressive women to review Palin’s beliefs on contraceptives and gun control and not be paralyzed with fear? Yes, Palin has experience as a governor and mayor. She’s not, admittedly, completely green. But I really believe that her selection by McCain was more about her reproductive organs and hard-hitting hockey mom rhetoric rather than anything that she has previously accomplished. Yet another Republican minority member or member of the historically-excluded gender using their power to go against what most of their confederates believe in. Nice going.

Last, but certainly not the least:

- Kick the Neo-cons to the curb, baby: These people, the neo-conservatives, are not in the mold of Reagan. They are not like Ike was, and they are not your traditional, fiscal conservatives. They are frightening, frightening people whose political motivation lies in the apparent humiliation of the American military during the Vietnam War, and they would love nothing more than to pay the world back (except for Britain, of course) for that loss of power that we experienced. And how do they plan to do this? One, by turning the world into an American commercial and quasi-military empire. In this way, they are no better than Vladimir Putin and his recent nationalistic expeditions into Georgia, and Putin has wasted no time in pointing out the hypocrisy of us chastising Russia for invading a sovereign nation when we did the same with Iraq. Two, they believe that stronger executive power will absolve the office of the Presidency of the embarrassment it suffered during Watergate. If only the judicial and legislative branches of government would bow down obediently before the president and his cabinet, they argue, the loss of faith in the office of the Presidency that happened when Bill Clinton was gettin’ his piece would never have happened. This means, of course, that the two branches which are designed to introduce our ideas for legislation and to protect and define our rights by law are being subordinated by the branch which can, according to neo-conservative theory, do whatever the hell it wants, so long as there are signing statements and war powers to fall back on. They’re not interested in your well-being. In fact, they have a distaste for your intelligence and your criticism of the executive office. In their model, as well, only the biggest businesses are vital to the success and well-being of the American dynamo. Without big money and investments to trickle down to the middle and working classes, America is hopeless and worthless (and that includes you, the average, middle-class American voter who was too stupid not to invest money in the stock market to make yourself independently wealthy). They are not Christian in practice, even if they sometimes promote that image for their policies. They are cold-hearted, aggressive and extremely ambitious. We should be terribly afraid of them and angry with them. They tend to destroy everything grass-roots and diverse about this nation. And they were behind the scenes of most of the Republicans in the primary, including McCain. If you think that McCain will bring change, think again. The cancer that made Bush’s presidency such a disaster has spread to the McCain camp. Don’t think that he won’t be influenced by them.

So there you have it, my demands, my manifesto, so to speak. These days, I feel as if I am defining myself by what I hate in the Republican Party rather than what I admire in the Democratic one. Many people reading this would probably think that I am a die-hard Democrat. That’s not true. They don’t fully speak for me. I am an anti-Republican by virtue of the things listed above, and in this two party system of ours, what other alternative do I have when I turn away from the current stench of the GOP? You tell me.

Bob Barr: Is he 2008’s Ralph Nader?

Most of us should remember the 2000 Presidential Election. After the Supreme Court finally said, “No more recounts, Bush wins,” the Democratic Party proceeded to lay blame at various sources. Instead of looking at Al Gore’s own weaknesses, the Democrats instead chose to blame hanging chads, Katherine Harris, the Supreme Court, Jeb Bush, and of interest to this article, Ralph Nader. Many Democrats believed that had Nader not been on the ballot in Florida, enough of his supporters would have instead voted for Al Gore and changed the ultimate outcome. Whether that is the case is for neither here nor there because what matters is the perception. There could be a repeat of this situation this year, but the spoiler will not be Ralph Nader, but rather Libertarian candidate and former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr. Instead of spoiling the Democrats’ Presidential hopes, Mr. Barr could prove spoiler for Republican hopes.

Why does Mr. Barr have this potential? After all, the Libertarian Party’s 2004 candidate Michael Badnarik only received .32% of the national vote and did not play a significant factor in any state. However, unlike Badnarik who had no political experience when he ran for President, Mr. Barr served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 8 years, losing his seat only as the result of gerrymandering orchestrated by the Democratic controlled state legislature.

It is important to note that Mr. Barr is a traditional conservative at heart, not a Libertarian. He is pro-life and pro-2nd Amendment and sponsored the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (he has later apologized to the Libertarian Party for this). He is also a vocal supporter of the war on drugs (he has also reversed his position here), supports a speedy withdrawal of forces from Iraq with no permanent military installations, supports low taxes and low government spending, and introduced legislation to impeach President Clinton related to possible fundraising violations months before the Monica Lewinsky scandal came to light. And make no mistake, Mr. Barr’s hard-line right wing/libertarian positions are probably not going to take any votes away from Barack Obama, except for conservatives that may vote for Senator Obama only because of his stance on the Iraq war. Instead, at issue is whether Mr. Barr can take enough votes away from John McCain that could potentially sway the outcome in several states.

Obviously, the narrow margins that President Bush won Ohio and Florida in 2004 make them prime targets for Senator Obama in 2008. Assuming Ohio margins stayed similar to 2004, Mr. Barr would need only about 2% of the vote to hand the state to Senator Obama. A recent Quinnipiac University poll of Ohio voters showed Senator Obama at 44%, Senator McCain at 43%, and Mr. Barr at 2%.

Although Mr. Barr’s impact in Florida is less likely than in Ohio, it is still feasible if Mr. Barr were to get 4 or 5% of the vote. Another state of interest is Georgia. President Bush won Georgia easily in 2004, but one would think that Mr. Barr would be able to do extremely well in his home state. If Mr. Barr were to win at least 10% of the vote and African American turnout surged for Senator Obama, the state could potentially swing into Obama’s column. Another state which could be of interest is Indiana. Senator Obama has made a strong push in the state, while McCain has virtually ignored it. If Indiana becomes competitive, Mr. Barr may be able to take enough votes away from McCain to give Obama the win. Finally, Mr. Barr also has the potential to run strongly in several competitive mountain west states, including Colorado and Nevada.

Of course, all of this assumes that Mr. Barr is able to create a legitimate national presence and actually have an impact on the national election. Honestly, the time is ripe for him to do just that. This is a year that a similar candidate, Ron Paul, was able to create decent publicity during the Republican primaries. Republican candidate John McCain is by no means a conservative, and he won the nomination more because Republicans thought that he could win, than because he espoused their ideals. Unfortunately, the limits of our two-party system will lead many people who would ideally vote for Barr instead to cast their votes for Senator McCain, whom they view as the lesser of two evils. However, it is still feasible that if Mr. Barr gets his name and face out to the public and gets his views heard, he could create enough of a noise to win up to 5% of the national vote. While this would not be enough to win any electoral votes, Mr. Barr could run strongly enough to swing at least one important state and thus the election.

John McCain, meet John McCain

John McCain’s claims to be more in touch with the average American than Barack Obama dissolved into a pool of goo earlier this week. In an interview with The Washington Post’s Politico blog, McCain couldn’t remember how many houses he owned. Barack Obama seized on this in a speech and in an advertisement produced within 48 hours of McCain’s gaffe. Newly-unfurled vice presidential candidate Joe Biden wasted no time in similarly lambasting McCain. The seven houses incident is merely one more example of how John McCain is not the person he claims to be.

The media, thankfully, have abandoned the “maverick” narrative that has been attached to McCain since the 1990s. Back then, he may have been a “maverick” compared to the rest of the Republican party: he didn’t care that much for religion, for example. The “maverick” McCain of 2000 has morphed over the last eight years into a Republican-nomination-getting machine. McCain’s lust for the presidency is so gratuitous that he has all but forgotten what George W. Bush did to him in South Carolina in 2000. Back then, “someone” started rumors there that McCain had fathered a black baby (in fact, McCain and his wife adopted a baby from Bangladesh). McCain got over Karl Rove’s dirty tricks, as his mania for the presidency overpowered his sense of moral outrage: the Republican Party is a closed system, and to be nominated, McCain had to do its bidding.

Well into 2008, the media were still reporting that McCain was a “maverick” even though it was painfully obvious by then that McCain was modifying his beliefs in order to pander to particular groups. The old McCain had mysteriously morphed into an evangelical Christian, referring to himself as a Baptist (an evangelical branch of Protestantism) instead of Episcopalian, which is what he really is, according to him. Well, sometimes according to him. McCain is such a maverick that Congressional Quarterly reported that McCain voted with George W. Bush 95% of the time in 2007 and 100% of the time in 2008, as of June. He now claims that he supports the troops, even though he voted against new GI Bill-style legislation because he claimed it would encourage young people not to make a career out of the military.

Now we have a McCain campaign that employs sixty former telecom industry lobbyists, among other lobbyists. Here we have a Mccain who, despite enduring five years of torture in the Hanoi Hilton, voted against a bill that would prohibit the CIA from using interrogation methods prohibited by the Army Field Manual. As Andrew Sullivan points out, Bush’s use of and referral to “enhanced interrogation techniques” mean that, by the GOP’s definition of the word, John McCain wasn’t tortured.

McCain last week repeated an apocryphal story of religion on the part of his captors in Vietnam, even though the story has changed over the years. It may have even been taken from Solzhenitsen.

Whatever “straight talk” used to exist has since evaporated, as McCain has refused to acknowledge reality. The closest he has come to understanding the world around him was in January, when he told supporters in Michigan, “Some of the jobs that have left the state of Michigan are not coming back.” At the time, I found such a statement to be delightfully refreshing. Mitt Romney was, at the same time, insisting that he could bring jobs back to Michigan. (The reality, of course, is that the lost auto jobs are not coming back — at least, not unless NAFTA is repealed, tariffs are raised, and the United States experiences a resurgence in demand for inefficient cars.)

But we haven’t heard that straight talk since January. In 2007, McCain visited Baghdad and pronounced everything hunky-dory, even as two vests filled with explosives made it into the so-called Green Zone, the most secure place in the entire country. McCain entered the world of crooked talk last month in his advertisement comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton. The point of the ad was that Obama is as fawned over by international politicians as Paris Hilton is fawned over by celebrity-watchers, and that by virtue of the fact that they both have the same degree of fandom, Obama is as unqualified to be president as Paris Hilton is. The argument didn’t hold water and everyone roundly made fun of it.

Who is John McCain? It’s hard to say. According to him, he is a maverick politician who is in touch with the average American. According to every other piece of evidence, he is a pandering politician who is out of touch with the average American. He barely understands the Internet. He changes his mind — and even his religion — when it’s convenient. He left the Straight Talk Express abandoned by the highway eight years ago.

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