Starry, Starry Plight: Obama and the Space Program

Space enthusiasts are watching and listening carefully to find out how President Barack Obama will support NASA during his administration. Earlier this year he gave the space agency a glowing endorsement:

When I was growing up, NASA inspired the world with achievements we are still proud of. We cannot cede our leadership in space. We need a real vision for space exploration. Let’s also tap NASA’s ingenuity to build the airplanes of tomorrow and to study our own planet so we can combat global climate change. Under my watch, NASA will inspire the world, make America stronger, and help grow the economy.

Before we dive into recent developments, a brief review of NASA under George W. Bush is in order. NASA achieved some laudable feats in the last eight years, notably:

• It greatly expanded the International Space Station (ISS) to add more solar panels, laboratories, and living space (with contributions from other nations, notably Russia and Canada).
• It successfully landed two Mars rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) that have been sending pictures back for 5 years, much longer than originally anticipated.
• It repaired and upgraded the Hubble Space Telescope, which has sent more than half a million images back to Earth.
• It developed the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, which will take astronauts to the Moon and Mars.
• It launched the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has produced sensational images of Mars.

In particular, the string of successful trips to Mars stands in stark contrast to previous missions. Historically most attempts to explore the Red Planet have failed, including one notorious disaster in 1999 caused by a mix-up of measurements made with the metric and English systems.

Yet since the achievements of the Apollo program that landed astronauts on the Moon, there hasn’t been a program that has evoked the same widespread level of interest here and abroad. Indeed in March President Obama made reference to this in an answer to a reporter’s question about the shuttle program

NASA has yielded — or the space shuttle program has yielded some extraordinary scientific discoveries. But I think it’s fair to say that there’s been a sense of drift to our space program over the last several years. We need to restore that sense of excitement and interest that existed around the space program. And shaping a mission for NASA that is appropriate for the 21st century is going to be one of the biggest tasks of my new NASA director.

Sadly as of this writing, The White House’s Technology Page does not include any mention of the space program. Obama has not yet appointed a new NASA administrator, though rumors have been circulating this year about the possible pick of astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson. Anyone who has seen Tyson on PBS’s NOVA scienceNOW cannot deny his charisma and enthusiasm for astronomy and space exploration. Tyson is currently the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York and is famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) for advocating the demotion of Pluto from a planet to a “dwarf planet.”

Financial support for NASA remains strong despite the severe worldwide recession. The fiscal year 2010 budget of $18.7 billion is $2.4 billion above the 2008 amount. The first priority listed in their budget summary is climate change monitoring and research. President Obama has repeatedly mentioned addressing global warming as a top issue, as noted in my last article.

NASA scientist James Hansen continues to be a fierce advocate for action to combat global warming. In 2006 he complained that the Bush Administration was trying to silence his dire warnings for political reasons. In December 2008, James Hansen and his wife Anniek Hansen sent an open letter to then President-Elect Obama (and his wife Michelle Obama) urging him to phase out traditional polluting coal plants, support an aggressive carbon tax plan, and encourage R&D of modern nuclear power plants.

Many people are sad to see the end of the successful space shuttle program, currently scheduled for 2010. If and when the shuttle program is canceled, Florida residents may bear the brunt of the employment fallout with 8,000 or more jobs on the line. However a congressman and congresswoman from Florida have introduced legislation to keep the shuttle program alive a bit longer.

The new Orion spacecraft and companion Ares Launch Vehicles are presently in the testing phase. NASA expects to fly the first missions in 2014 or 2015, leaving us with at least a four-year gap in the government’s space transportation system. (Private companies will carry supplies to the ISS, and the Russian Soyuz will be used to rotate crews.)

The James Web Space Telescope (JWST), often described as the successor to Hubble, is currently in development and expected to be deployed in 2013. NASA intends to keep Hubble in operation until at least that time, to avoid any interruption in data collection. JWST is substantially larger than Hubble, though lower in mass. Hubble detects light in the optical and ultraviolet ranges, and can be repaired in space, while JWST will collect data only from infrared light. Nevertheless, JWST will allow scientists to peer substantially further back into the distant past, closer to the origin of the universe.

There have been reports that Obama might combine some space programs from NASA and the Pentagon. The Pentagon’s space budget is significantly higher than NASA’s total budget, and some observers wonder whether the space vehicle gap might be filled in by the military. The merger discussions have been fueled by the fear that China has strong military intentions for its own space program.

While the U.S. must be mindful of threats to our security from other nations, a strong militarization of NASA would be an unfortunate turn of events. NASA was founded during the Eisenhower Administration to conduct non-military space activities. Obviously there is already significant overlap in personnel, and technology flows in both directions. But it would be very sad if NASA becomes distracted or subverted by security issues.

Other controversies still brewing include:

• Arguments about whether robots or humans should be sent to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.
• Whether we should ever bother going back to the Moon.
• Calls for President Obama to fire NASA’s inspector general Robert Cobb — a recent New York Times editorial accused him of being unethical and ineffectual.
• How much we should cooperate with other nations’ space programs.
• An oldie but a goodie–whether NASA should even exist given all the problems we have to solve on Earth.

Despite the criticisms and controversies, the space program is a vital part of our national identity. It has inspired generations of students young and old, capturing their imagination like nothing else. The dream of human flight and exploration will not go away as long as birds take wing and stars and planets twinkle. NASA must survive and thrive during Obama’s time in office, so we may continue to watch over our pale blue dot from space and keep looking at the stars.

(Thanks to Michael Conway for suggesting the title of this article.)

Climate Change: Penguins, Polar Bears & People

The western Antarctic Peninsula, that limp arm jutting out of Antarctica towards the similarly limp arm of South America’s Patagonian tip at Tierra del Fuego, is warming faster than any place on Earth. Wintertime temperatures have risen a staggering nine degrees Fahrenheit in 50 years. The polar seas off the peninsula, similarly, have risen nine degrees in just 13 years, defying expectations.

On Penguin Island, researchers with Lindblad Expeditions have recorded a 75 percent plummet in the number of Adélie penguins since 1980. Across the island, where normally 600 southern giant petrels can be found, now only 75 have been seen nesting.

It is the North Pole, not the South Pole, that has received the bulk of climate change reporting in the past two years, making Mother Jones recent coverage all the more interesting. The polar bear, as identifiable with the Arctic as Santa Claus, was reported to be dying out, evermore stranded on ice floes that have taken it to the endangered species list. Once a fantasy, the Northwest Passage is becoming a new reality, and Canada and Russia are investing billions building ports in their once-godforsaken northern reaches, ready to take advantage of new shipping routes.

Oil, the ultimate cause of this melting ice, has apparently found its own solution to the rising trend of pirates in the Gulf of Aden and the Strait of Malacca: Skip the pirates, sink the icebergs and burn a path through a newly watery ocean. Adding insult to injury, new oil was discovered under areas once covered by sea ice.

The South Pole, on the other hand, gets a lot less press coverage. While the potential for exploitation and one-day settlement may exist on Antarctica, economic interests are not as obvious as with the better-known Arctic. The land remains far away and mysterious, a two-mile high continent of ice larger than Europe that receives less precipitation than any place on Earth.

University of Chicago climate theoretician Ray Pierrehumbert worries that the most devastating impact of climate change could be on natural ecosystems that have little direct dietary or monetary value to humans, much like these petrels and penguins. He doesn’t believe the impact on natural ecosystems has gotten enough traction in the press. “The systems that are hardest hit by climate change are natural systems,” Pierrehumbert says. “We just don’t have a good track record of even helping salmon survive dams. That’s a much easier technological problem than helping polar bears survive the loss of sea ice. My question is, how much do people care about animals?”

These poor penguins, while appearing cute and cuddly and cartoon-friendly, live in an obviously endangered ecosystem. Several species could be going the way of the great auk, and the flightless birds are declining faster than Pittsburgh, the shrinking steel city that has made them its mascot.

MEDIA GETTING BETTER

Pierrehumbert does take heart in the public reaction to the bleaching of the coral reefs and the listing of the polar bear under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Additionally, he and other experts and media figures agree that journalistic coverage of climate change is better than it once was. “Ten years ago, the main fault was that the media would always try to balance any opinion by one scientist with some opinion by someone else,” says Pierrehumbert, who believes the mass media are doing a better job of respecting serious science of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Science is just not open to debate like more familiar topics for journalists, such as politics, which require a sense of balancing two sides in the name of objectivity. “There may be 99 people who say ‘A,’ and may have very good reasons for saying ‘A’ is the right thing, and if you only quote one person who says ‘B,’ you don’t get the idea of the actual weight of the evidence,” he says.

Andrew Revkin of The New York Times notes that more than ever before, scientists have immediate access to the general public, managing Web sites such as realclimate.org, climatepolicy.org, and climateethics.org to set everything straight. But certain challenges remain.

Julia Whitty of Mother Jones states: “We know that since 2000 atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased 35 percent faster than expected, despite the pledges of 180 nations to rein them in. We’re aware that polar seas are defying the laws of expectation, warming, in places, a staggering 9 degrees Fahrenheit since 1995, opening the door for non-native plants and animals to cross the polar thresholds and claim new waters for themselves. We get that all this bodes poorly for penguins and humans alike.

Don’t we?”

GET THERE WHILE YOU CAN

Not that the Antarctic is suffering from any lack of interest among the tourist crowd. Whether directed by the wiles of computer animation in March of the Penguins, too much expendable cash, or sincere concern for this last, vanishing frontier, tourism to the uninhabited continent is at an all-time high. Making Julia Whitty’s coverage in Mother Jones all the more interesting, she reports that the tourists are starting to get in the way of the ornithologists trying to chart the continent’s birds while the penguins are still there.

The public still gets too much of the story and the science wrong and there is disagreement both on which direction the media should take or whether the media is the place where change can be directed at all.

Pierrehumbert says he spoke to Revkin about what makes a climate change story worthy of The New York Times, and they both agreed that the public only had so much interest in hearing the same story about, say, a certain species headed for extinction because of man-caused global warming. “There are only so many things that are really new. The problem is not primarily that the news media is not telling the new stuff; it’s that people don’t understand the old stuff. It’s not the job of the news media to tell people about the old stuff. You have to have enough hooks in the news to tell people that this is still an issue,” the scientist notes.

Anthony Perl, a Canadian urban studies professor, used an ironic metaphor to describe the public’s ignorance of climate change science, citing shallow reporting by the media. “I think that only the tip of the iceberg is being fully discussed in the mainstream media, and all this stuff below the water line is somehow unclear,” Perl said. “Until science is clear, the story is not ‘ready.’ And I’m afraid the media has bought into it. By its nature, science is a question of uncertainty.”

In Perl’s search for a solution to the North American energy and climate crisis, he wrote a book advocating a radical departure from the gasoline-powered private automobile and the jet plane to a transportation system based on electrical mass transit: buses, mass transit light rail and high-speed intercity trains, much like in Europe or Japan.

Perl said some scientific studies have shown airplanes may cause many times more damage from carbon emissions pollution than previously thought because jets send their emissions directly into the high atmosphere while they’re in flight. He said such emissions have two to eight times the impact of ground-level engines. But the science is not universally accepted and goes against the official word of the airline industry, leaving the media skittish. “It’s a big piece of news that routinely gets ignored,” Perl said.

Max Boykoff, however, an Oxford University research fellow, warns in Nature that climate change must be reported more carefully to help distinguish widespread scientific agreement from legitimately contentious issues. “To the extent that mass media fuse all climate-related issues into a gestalt as ‘the climate change debate,’ the public is poorly served. It contributes to continued illusory and counterproductive debates within the public and policy communities.”

SORTING THE DUBIOUS FROM TRUE PERIL

Pierrehumbert says it is hard for the media and the public to grasp the epoch time scale of climate changes, compared to the relatively short-term effects and recovery from traditional man-made environmental degradation. “It’s not like other air pollution problems where if you fix it, the thing turns normal in a couple of years. Every time we ratchet up the CO2 level, you’re committing the earth to climate change at that level for a 1000 years, and some aspects of it actually last for more than a 1000 years and you just can’t ratchet it back.”

There is little doubt in the scientific community that the steady rise in CO2 levels are courtesy of human activity, namely, fossil fuel combustion. The impact of this warming is much more debatable. Will icebergs sail across an underwater Florida? Pierrehumbert said that is dubious. But how high will the oceans rise? What just will the climate of the next hundred years look like?

“We have turned our atmosphere into an artifact. With the atmosphere now composed of so many greenhouse gases, we don’t know what the future holds,” said Scott Stine, a geoscientist at California State University, East Bay, who studies climate through the ancient lake beds of the Great Basin.

“Scientists see persistent disputes as the normal stuttering journey toward improved understanding of how the world works. But many fear that the herky-jerky trajectory is distracting the public from the undisputed basics and blocking change,” wrote Revkin.

A blissfully ignorant public could not be called out anymore than by Whitty’s piece on the Antarctic pleasure-seekers aboard her lady the National Geographic Explorer.

A vocal contingent of confused ignoramuses and global warming denialists were aboard this tourist ship, as Whitty recalled, able to see with their own eyes drastic changes to the Antarctic landscape from just 20 years ago and still peering over the bow in disbelief about “this global warming business.” “The two groups manage to exhibit all five stages of climate-change denial: There’s nothing happening; we don’t know why it’s happening; climate change is natural; climate change is not bad; climate change can’t be stopped. The true believers discover each other mostly through shared incredulous silence.”

GORE: CARBON-FREE BY 2018

Al Gore himself believes political will could be built to move to a carbon-free electricity system in 10 years, the same amount of time it took for man to reach the moon after a similar, seemingly radical call by President Kennedy at the dawn of the 1960s.

“There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenges of a present danger,” Gore wrote in a recent issue of Mother Jones. Such a call to action is possible, Gore wrote, and carbon levels can be returned to the “magical” threshold of 350 CO2 parts per million in the atmosphere, as addressed in a separate essay in the magazine. (The atmosphere historically contains 275 CO2 parts per million, and now is up to 385 parts per million and climbing.)

The Europeans have been taking these issues seriously for a decade, and in 2008, both major American political parties put up candidates who promised to address the issue seriously. The victor, Barack Obama, has vowed to make the issue integral to the nation’s economic recovery. As the Earth’s climate worsens for mankind and other species, the American public must follow their lead in recognizing the problem.

But obviously, difficulties remain and an unscientific debate has been allowed to go on for too long. The media are less at fault for this misinformation than they once were. But steps should be taken, whenever new science is released, to gently and firmly repeat the basic premise behind this global warming business: Humans, by burning massive amounts of carbon fuels, have released gases that warm the earth, setting off climatic changes with potentially devastating consequences we are only beginning to understand.

As Charles Darwin said, offering similar advice in regards to that other supposedly debatable scientific theory, evolution: “[T]hus only can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.”

Age and The Electoral College

Senator Obama continues to dominate in our latest Electoral College projection. If the election were held today, we would project Senator Obama to defeat Senator McCain by a margin of between 311-227 electoral votes and 378-160 electoral votes.

State	Electoral Votes (EV)	Obama-McCain (%) (538 and Pollster)	Total Obama EV		Percent Seniors (>= 65 Years Old)
PA	21	7.5	264		15.2
CO	9	6.2	273	Likely Obama	10.1
VA	13	6.1	286		11.8
OH	20	4.7	306	Lean Obama	13.5
NV	5	4.6	311		11.1
FL	27	1.8	338		17.0
NC	15	1.3	353		12.2
MO	11	0.6	364	Toss up	13.4
ND	3	0.6	367		14.6
IN	3	-0.9	378		12.5
GA	15	-3.4	393		9.9
MT	3	-4.0	396	Lean McCain	13.9

As you see in the above table, we also looked at the percentage of the population in each battleground state that is over the age of 65. Based upon the data above, we are able to make sense out of what states McCain is currently targeting.

First, let’s look at the Likely Obama states:

Pennsylvania vs. Colorado

Many, including myself, have questioned why McCain has given up on Colorado, but double-downed on Pennsylvania. There are of course several reasons, including Pennsylvania not having early voting and having more than double the electoral votes as Colorado. However, the fact that Pennsylvania is the second oldest state and Colorado is the fourth youngest state undoubtedly played a large role in this decision.

Ohio vs. Nevada

Again, there are many reasons outside of age that led McCain to target Ohio while ignoring Nevada (such as electoral votes). However, demographic trends, including the fact that Ohio is in the upper-quartile of population above 65 years of age and Nevada is in the lower quartile, definitely seems to have played a factor in this decision.

What other states could surprise?

Florida and Georgia

In opposite directions, the states of Florida and Georgia could surprise. Based upon age alone, Florida, which has the oldest population of any state, could swing toward Senator McCain in ways that are not being factored into the weighting of current polls. In addition, Georgia, could end up being a toss-up state if younger voters come to the polls in record numbers. We already know that African Americans are surging in turnout in Georgia. If younger voters join in, Georgia may surpass states like Missouri and Indiana in likelihood to go to Senator Obama.

11/2 Swing State Power Rankings

With only two days left until Election Day, Demockracy is pleased to give its updated ranking of the top five swing states. Today’s rankings will be based on where the candidates were yesterday and where they will be today:

5. Missouri

Obama held what was most likely his last Missouri rally in Springfield, Missouri last night. While probably not a tipping point state, Missouri currently looks up for grabs.

4. Pennsylvania

McCain and Palin both visited the Keystone state again yesterday, and McCain will be there again today. While Obama still seems to have a significant advantage here, an upset here is probably McCain’s only realistic shot at 270 electoral votes.

3. Virginia

Sarah Palin and John McCain did a swing through Virginia yesterday, and Hillary Clinton will be there today. If Obama wins Virginia and Pennsylvania, McCain’s path to 270 will be virtually impossible.

2. Florida

John McCain will hold a Miami rally tonight, and Joe and Jill Biden will make three campaign appearances in Florida today. Florida appears to be the real stake-in-the-heart state that the Obama campaign wishes to drive into the McCain campaign’s electoral heart.

1. Ohio

Joe Biden spent most of yesterday in the Buckeye state, and Barack and Michelle Obama will spend the full day there today, with stops in Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. In addition, Sarah Palin will also make three Ohio stops today. Ohio looks to be ground zero again.

10/31 Swing State Power Rankings

In honor of All Hallows Eve, today’s Swing State Power Rankings will focus on the five states Demockracy believes will be most likely to keep us up past the bewitching hour on Election Night with dirty tricks, hanging chads, and provisional spooks…

5. Pennsylvania

Unlike most swing states, Pennsylvania does not have early voting. Therefore, polls could be flooded. Long lines and dirty tricks may ensue.

4. Missouri

Missouri is known for Election Night chaos. In 2000, polls were held open for several hours to accommodate those who still hadn’t been able to vote. These problems resurfaced this February on Super Tuesday.

3. Colorado

As one of the top-tier tipping point states and one of the last competitive states to close its polls, Colorado has the potential to keep us up with fright! If the election is not decided by the time Colorado begins to tabulate their votes, expect all eyes to turn to the Rockies.

2. Ohio

After 2004, how could Ohio not be near the top of the list? A maldistribution of voting machines caused seven or eight hour lines in some areas. For instance, many students at Kenyon College didn’t get to vote until 2 am, AFTER Ohio had been called for George W. Bush. Why? There was one working voting machine for thousands of voters. Ohio has a new Secretary of State this year, but election irregularities would not be a surprise. Obama has called thousands of lawyers to the Buckeye State.

1. Florida.

2000. Hanging Chads. Supreme Court. December. Enough said…

10/29 Swing State Power Rankings

Today’s Power Rankings will be based solely on early voting numbers. So far the top states in terms of percentage of 2008 early voters divided by total 2004 voters are:

5. Florida

Over 2 million voters, or 27% of 2004 total voters, have voted so far in the Sunshine State. Democratic early voters outnumber Republican early voters 45%-40%. This is significant because Republican early voters far outnumbered Democratic early voters here in 2000 and 2004.

4. Georgia

Over 1.2 million voters, or 36.4% of 2004 total voters, have voted so far in the Peach State. African Americans make up 35.4% of early voters.

3. Colorado

Over 800,000 voters, or 37.9% of 2004 total voters, have voted so far in Colorado. Democrats and Republicans are virtually even in the number of ballots requested, and the large majority of early votes have come from absentee voting (80%).

2. North Carolina

Over 1.4 million voters, or 39.7% of 2004 total voters, have voted so far in North Carolina. There have been nearly double the number of early Democratic voters compared to early Republican voters, and African American voters have made up 28% of early voters in the state.

1. Nevada

Nearly 350,000 voters, or 41.4% of 2004 total voters, have voted so far in Nevada. A large majority of early votes have come from Clark and Washoe counties. Similar to North Carolina, Democratic early voters in these two counties outnumber Republican early voters by a margin of nearly 2-1.

Battleground Snapshot: Florida

Of all the states that are still realistically in play, pride-of-place belongs once again to the Sunshine State–at least in terms of electoral votes. A person would have to have been living on Mars (or, at the very least, not involved enough in the unfolding political drama to be reading these words) not to know that Florida’s 27 electoral votes constitute a whopping ten percent of the total necessary to secure the White House. So why aren’t both campaigns running more exclusively in such a plum target?
The short answer is, all other things being equal, that it would indeed make a lot more sense to follow Hillary Clinton’s leftover advice from the primary campaigns and focus on fewer, riper targets like Florida and Ohio (for the Democrats) and Pennsylvania (for the Republicans). Trouble is, all things are not equal–especially in Florida. Most people who don’t live in the state (as does this author) think of it in understandably thumbnailed terms as a place disproportionately represented by seniors, Hispanics, and the hospitality industry.

By those metrics, of course, it should be a ripe state for Democratic plucking. However, there are some small problems with this. First, the term “Hispanic” (always offensive, but perhaps nowhere more so than here) would presume to lump citrus farm laborers and light industrial employees in the central portions of the state together with the large and growing population of more Republican-friendly expatriates from Cuba. Mr. McCain’s high-profile waffling on immigration reform probably hurts him with both camps, but the shocking bellicosity of his foreign policy stance probably wins back most of the latter group.

Second, the senior vote, which normally leans Democratic, is complicated by the obvious demographic (not to say ethnic) disparities between the candidates. However, Mr. Obama’s choice of Joe Biden for his running mate, and Mr. McCain’s failure to pick either Charlie Crist or Joe Lieberman, have both tilted the senior vote back toward Obama. In addition, the Obama campaign has recently done a much better job of targeting McCain’s senior-unfriendly positions on Social Security and health care.

Next, the heart-of-Dixie voters are, of course, solidly pro-McCain, and make no mistake: they constitute nearly as sizable a voting bloc here as in other, more demonstrably “southern” states nearby. According to a recently published demographic breakdown, Florida ranks 13th in the nation for military veterans and seventeenth in the nation for both self-identifying “Evangelical Christians” and the percentage of voters registered as Republican. All of these statistics may be attributed to the Dixie vote.

In a “normal” election (is there any such thing?), the three most heavily populated counties in the state, down in the southeastern corner–Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach–are supposed to go heavily for the Democrat (together with the counties containing Daytona, Gainesville, and Tallahassee). The bulk of the state is supposed to go heavily for the Republican, and the gigantic, monolithic suburb that stretches from Tampa Bay to the Atlantic Ocean along the Interstate 4 corridor is supposed to decide who wins. But this year there are signs that the normal coalitions may be significantly more fluid. For example, a ballot initiative that would constitutionally prohibit gay marriage seems to have had little traction in pitching up the culture wars, particularly against the backdrop of a recent story ranking the state third in the country for foreclosures. By contrast, the Jewish senior vote has been comparatively cool in its support for Senator Obama, even after his selection of the wildly popular Joe Biden to be his running mate.

It’s possible to find good news for both candidates in the literal state of the race here as well: One recent report indicated that the in-person early voting has been breaking by an improbably large 2:1 margin for Obama, and a second has suggested that Obama’s lead in this department has already surpassed the built-in advantage that Republicans always enjoy with mail-in absentee ballots. By contrast, the polling for the state has been improbably volatile in the same time period that so many other places seem to be in the middle of a clear blue trend. In addition, the McCain/Palin team is hopeful that the Mahoney scandal, coupled with the emergence of the campaign’s latest narrative–“Obama the redistributor”–will rally their demoralized troops on Election Day.

Under any scenario, Florida may be an unusually big plum (or would that be a big orange?), but it is also an unusually difficult one for either party to count on. With so many factions, so many media markets, so many contradicting agendas and galvanized constituencies, with such high-profile voting irregularities and clunky machines, and no scientifically repeatable metric for anticipating who will turn out and who won’t from race to race (compare 2000 to 2004), it would seem that any candidate basing his or her electoral fortunes on Florida is making an enormous, not to say reckless, gamble.

And if one needs further proof of Mr. Obama’s command of the electoral map, consider that he and he alone may comfortably reach the 270 electoral vote total without the need to recount hanging chads.

10/28 Swing State Power Rankings

Based on campaign visits, polls, and the visceral reactions of Demockracy writers, we’ll be doing state power rankings for the final week of the campaign. Here are the rankings for Monday, October 27:

5. Pennsylvania

Although not competitive in the polls, three out of the four presidential candidates visited here Monday. This alone guarantees the commonwealth a spot in the top five. However, because of recent polls, we can’t legitimize putting it any higher.

4. Colorado Over 100,000 showed up strong for Senator Obama in Denver on Sunday. Although Senator McCain has reportedly pulled some resources out of Colorado, it still remains relatively close. Obama was here in an attempt to seal the deal.

3. Florida

Florida appears to be trending back to McCain and is again a true tossup state in our eyes. Having 27 electoral votes, its sheer size keeps it near the top of the list. Joe Biden will making two stops in the sunshine state on Tuesday.

2. Virginia Virginia continues to lean heavily toward Senator Obama. With 13 electoral votes, it is the largest Bush state that looks very likely to turn blue this year. Senator Obama will be here on Tuesday to try to put this state away.

1. Ohio Ohio jumps to the top of our list day, largely because Obama launched his “closing argument’ speech/message in Canton, Ohio on Monday. This fact, combined with relatively tight polls that are trending slightly in Senator Obama’s favor, give Ohio the top spot for today. We believe that all the signs are on the wall for Ohio to be one of Obama’s final stops next Sunday or Monday.

Race, Ethnicity, and The Electoral College

Senator Obama continues to have a commanding lead in our latest Electoral College projection. If the election were held today, we would project Senator Obama to defeat Senator McCain by a margin of between 306-232 electoral votes and 378-160 electoral votes. In other words, Obama has as good of a chance at a landslide victory (>= 375 electoral votes), as he has of being in an election similar to the last two (winner <300 electoral votes).

State	Electoral Votes (EV)	Obama-McCain (%) (538 and Pollster)	Total Obama EV		Percent Minority (Non-white and Hispanic)
NM	5	7.0	260		30.9
VA	13	7.1	273	Likely Obama	29.6
CO	9	6.5	282		16.5
NH	4	6.2	286		5.2
OH	20	3.9	306	Lean Obama	16.0
NV	5	2.6	311		26.0
FL	20	2.3	338		23.6
NC	15	2.1	353		30.0
MO	11	1.6	364	Toss up	16.1
IN	11	0.2	375		14.3
ND	3	-0.4	378		9.3
MT	3	-3.6	381		10.4
GA	15	-4.2	396	Lean McCain	38.0

As you see in the above table, we also looked at the race and ethic breakdown of all competitive states. Based on the data above, there are six states that have a significant minority population that could affect the results in that particular state. Let’s look at each state:

Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia

Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia all have very large African American populations and a small, but growing, Latino population. If African American turnout surges nationwide because of Obama being at the top of the ticket, these three states are where the effect will be felt the most. While Virginia and Georgia may not be close enough to be swayed by a large African American turnout, North Carolina appears to be close enough where black turnout will be one of the main factors in determining who wins the state. Early voting in North Carolina and Georgia may give us some clues about potential turnout. So far, African Americans are making up 38% of the early vote in Georgia and 28% of the early vote in North Carolina. Most polls are assuming much lower African American turnout in both states. If African Americans make up even 25% of the vote in North Carolina and 35% of the vote in Georgia, North Carolina will likely swing to Obama, and Georgia may be too close to call.

New Mexico and Nevada

New Mexico and Nevada both have very large Latino populations, and New Mexico has a significant Native American population as well. Both of these groups have traditionally not had as high of a turnout as whites or even African Americans. However, there is a belief that turnout may be on the upswing this year as Latinos participated heavily in the Democratic primary process. Overall, these states, particularly New Mexico, do not contain many “Joe Six Pack” voters who may be influenced by last minute race-baiting. If Obama can win the Latino vote by a 2-1 margin, he will win New Mexico comfortably and be the favorite in Nevada.

Florida

Unlike New Mexico and Nevada, Florida has several politically distinct Latino groups. Older Cuban voters in South Florida tend to be Republican, but the younger generation is more divided. Non-Cuban Latinos in Florida, like elsewhere in the country, are more Democratic leaning. In addition, Florida has a sizable African American community that will likely turnout in large numbers for Senator Obama. Because of the divide between younger and older Cubans, the turnout rates of younger Cubans will have a large effect on the proportion of the overall Latino vote that Obama gets in Florida. If Obama wins nearly half of the overall Cuban vote, he’ll have a good shot of winning the state.

Economic Development: Lessons From Boston

Before I came to academia, I worked for eleven years in the field of economic development, a profession which is about many different things but, above all, about stealing some other city’s businesses with public money. By the time I was smart enough to form my own doubts about the job, I’d gotten good enough at it to be hired by the City of Fort Lauderdale to run their dedicated “Corporate Headquarters Recruitment” program–itself intended to exonerate the seven meanest, richest people in south Florida from standing accountable for their stupidly over-built downtown office market.

My first assignment (after one of the meanest and richest had gotten done refusing even to accept my business card, that is), was to spend a week in Boston–presumably stealing everything but the drapes. It was the first job because it was also supposed to have been the easiest one. What business its right mind would choose to stay in one of the most expensive markets in the world, both in terms of labor and tax burden, when new technologies enabled it to swap these out for beachside condos and blended drinks on Las Olas Boulevard? We’d even hired a marketing firm to pre-screen fifty or so contacts in Beantown who’d agreed at least in principal to consider the idea.
Know how many we got?

For five grueling days, I crisscrossed the greater Boston area, from Newton to Randolph and back to downtown, glad handing corporate real estate professionals in industries ranging from telemedicine to fiber optics to clutch plates, and not a single one of them expressed even the cursory interest that it would have taken to accede to an all-expenses-paid junket to South Florida. None of them. Zilch. Nada.

What could possibly have gone wrong? I mean to say, we were both cheaper and sunnier–the two things that Republicans have been telling us a business demands from its hosts, at least going back to Reagan and Stockman and the first ugly invocation of the words “supply side.” To hear them tell it, a chance to save half or more on both the labor and the tax-line items and sit on a beach after work every day to boot should have been the pitch that lobs itself. And yet there they were, their cars bogged in slushy parking lots, all but laughing me out of their offices.

It’s a single anecdote, of course, but it’s a powerful one, precisely for what it teaches us by counterexample about the fundamentally wrong-headed assumptions behind Republican economics. In their headlong rush to the sandy slopes of Mount Business-Friendly, Republicans have forgotten one of the most long-standing and crucial rules of Business: You get what you pay for.

True, costs are higher in Boston. But in Boston those higher costs are offset by the appeal of a significantly better-trained and more professionally minded workforce, having gotten that way through the benefit of some of the most well-funded educational infrastructure on all of planet earth, joined to its workplaces with some of the best physical infrastructure on earth, with most of both either directly paid for or at the very least subsidized, with public money.

That this story is such a cruelly perfect microcosm of America’s fading star on the global economic stage is a suggestion that hardly requires a rehabilitated economic developer to make: We’ve transformed the United States into the low-priced knockoff of the world, a place where leisure is vastly more important than ownership in one’s efforts, business decisions are based on instant gratification, college graduates can’t answer simple questions about the geography of their own country, and only those born into families of power and privilege are allowed to seek the highest office in the land without being dismissed as egocentric celebrities. And the world has taken notice, even if we haven’t, outsourcing all but its most menial tasks to places we’d never have dreamed of losing our jobs to, even ten years ago. And all the distressed mortgage buyouts on the planet aren’t going to fix that.

No, the way back to greatness for the United States is to start taking a few more lessons from the supposedly high-cost, anti-business climate up in Boston, and not through slashing taxes on those fortunate few who already pay some of the world’s lowest taxes for persons of their station. The way to fix this quieter, bigger mess of lost American industrial prominence is to redouble our investments in physical and social infrastructure.

And the way to start is to elect Barack Obama on November 4th to be our nation’s forty-forth President.

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