Election 2008

If we are going to overhaul, change, or toss out the Electoral College, that is a discussion that we ought to have at a national level. Cynical attempts to manipulate politics for the sake of partisan gain, however, should simply be beyond the pale. Fortunately, it looks as if GOP proposals to choose California’s presidential electors based on a proportion of the popular vote are not going to gain traction. 

Such ploys seem like even more of a naked grab for power when one remembers that in the wake of the 2000 and 2004 elections Republicans scoffed at the very idea that the Electoral College needs fixing and insisted that Democrats were crybabies for wanting to look anew at the system we use to elect the President.  The same thing can be said for Texas’ unporecedented statewide redistricting a few years back. Just try to imagine the reactions from the right if the party affiliations were switched in either of these scenarios.

Many pundits are holding the contention that the 2008 presidential election will be “a knockdown, punch em in the nose campaign” between New York Senator, Hillary Clinton, and former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani. The two had faced off in the 2000 campaign for the Senate before Giuliani withdrew from the race citing health concerns and other personal matters. Most polls show the two are running neck and neck in the state, with some viewing Clinton as the favorable alternative to Giuliani, who many see as out of step with the moral conservatives of the Republican party. Many who observe and comment on the campaigns see “an overabundance of New York attitude” in the anticipated match up. It was unclear as to whether Clinton’s last minute citizen bid to the State of New York in order to run for Senate qualifies her as being a New Yorker by standards of many in the state.

Reuters

Democratic senator and presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, today announced plans to increase the capital gains tax and dividend taxes in an effort to alleviate the tax burden on the middle class.   Obama noted in a speech today that “We need a tax code that’s fair — a tax code that rewards work and advances opportunity.”  Senator Obama’s plan is based on the notion that the majority of the income strata should hold the most capital, allowing surpluses to “bubble-up” to the highest tiers of the economy.  The current tax system places capital at the apex of the income brackets, allowing surpluses and other potentials to “trickle down” to average wage earners.

Obama, who is trailing in recent polls against Senator Hillary Clinton, announced his plan as demographic studies suggest the economy is a top concern among likely voters.  This comes as the Federal Reserve lowered short-term interest rates by 50 basis points, sparking the largest single day returns on investment markets in four years.

Chris Dodd was featured on todays Diane Rehm show stumping for his bid for the presidency in 2008 and to promote his new book, “Letters from Nuremberg.”  Dodd’s father, Thomas Dodd, was a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials examining atrocities committed by the Nazi’s during World War II.  Spattered with letters from the elder Dodd to his wife, the letters also highlight some of the inner diplomatic wranglings over the constructs of the tribunals.   Dodd’s book highlights how the Greatest Generation paved the way to moral authority and dignity represented in the International Court and other judicial examinations of war crimes today.  Finally, Dodd recollects on the relevancy to current times, citing the choice the U.S. is faced with between security and the civil rights.  Dodd reflects that the United States has lost its moral authority in the current scandals surrounding Abu Ghraib and various detention and rendition practices.  Dodd comments that the processes in place in Guantanamo, for examples, are reprehensible.

GOP front runner, Rudy Giuliani, today ran a full page ad in the New York Times blasting Senator Clinton for her remarks regarding testimony by Gen. David Patraues on the progress of the war effort in Iraq.  Mrs. Clinton commented that Gen. Patraues’ testimony required a “a willing suspension of disbelief.”  The ad by Giuliani declares; “These times call for statesmanship, not politicians spewing political venom.”  It was unclear whether statesmanship was tantamount to a strategy to resolving the conflict in Iraq.

Reuters

Democratic presidential candidate, Barak Obama, called for the withdraw U.S. combat soldiers at a rate of one brigade per month, ending combat operations by the end of 2008.  The statements come after the Gen. David Petraeus, the senior commander in Iraq, told the U.S. Congress that he recommended reducing U.S. combat troops to pre-surge levels by next summer, a move Mr. Bush is expected to endorse in a speech tomorrow.

Despite opposition from family members of the victims of 9/11, GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani, spoke at commemorative ceremonies in Manhattan marking the 6th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. “I think it’s an absolute disgrace to invite him to speak,” a former deputy fire chief of New York’s seventh division said, “He’s the primary reason why so many of these guys are sick and some have died.” Many had protested that they saw Giuliani’s appearance politicized the tragedy. Democratic candidate, Hilary Clinton, herself a senator from New York, also attended events today, but did not speak.

CBS

Democratic presidential candidates held a debate that was broadcast in Spanish by Univision - the largest Spanish television station in the United States.  Much of the debate centered on immigration issues, with the theme countering Republican’s hard-line stance on the issue.  “I believe [the immigration issue] is being used to bash immigrants and that must stop,” said Hillary Clinton.

Hispanics are the largest and fastest growing minority group in the United States and their demographic is seen as key to winning the election in 2008.  President George W. Bush won 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, however, a recent poll by USA Today/Gallup suggests the majority of Hispanic voters identify with Democrats.

Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson are the only two candidates fluent in Spanish.  Senator Joe Biden did not participate in the debate due to a recent return from Iraq.

Reuters

A new survey out by the Pew Research Forum indicates that religion is not as strong of an issue in the upcoming presidential campaign season as are the Iraq war and domestic issues.  According to the poll, the war in Iraq and economic issues are the highest ranking priorities to likely voters.  Among white evangelicals, however, polling tracked higher for moral issues, such as abortion and gay rights.  The candidates most widely perceived as religious, according to the poll, were Republican candidates Rudy Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.  This is in contrast to previous election cycles, where the evangelical base was courted by the GOP.

Reuters

Greetings! This is my first post on the FPA Elections blog. My name is Derek Catsam and I am FPA’s South Africa blogger and writer . However, much of my professional work is on politics in both the US and Africa and my graduate training is as much as anything in US Political history, so I feel comfortable weighing in periodically on the interminable nomination process.

At The New Republic  Jason Zengerle has a withering piece on someone he calls “The Ultimate New Hampshire Supremacist,” a rather ham-handed appellation given what words usually  precede “supremacist” in the American political dialogue. Nonetheless, many of his criticisms hold water.

I am a New Hampshire native and so have seen the retail politics that precede the general election in a way that someone living in, say, Texas (where I now hang my hat) is likely to ever get to witness. At the risk of self indulgence, allow me to republish here a couple of things I have written elsewhere on this issue over the last year or so:

So South Carolina has announced that the Palmetto State’s primary will now be held on January 19. Inevitably this is going to cause New Hampshire to react by moving its date forward, because by Granite State law the First in the Nation Primary is sacrosanct and must antedate all others. Last year in a post called “Wicked Pissah” I commented on this precise issue. I feel that my argument holds up well, plus you can never underestimate just how lazy I am, so I am going to quote the whole thing:

New Hampshire’s hold on the first in the nation primary is growing increasingly tenuous, at least as far as the Democratic Party is concerned. I am pretty mixed about this. As a New Hampshire native and still semi-jingoist, I believe that tradition ought to matter, that the particular style of retail politics that the New Hampshire primary imposes on candidates is good for democracy, and that New Hampshire stepped up to the plate long ago when it was not a particular honor to be first but rather a duty and when in any case candidates were chosen by the parties rather than in any meaningful way by the public. Why now should the Granite State be shoved to the side, or at least diminished, in the candidate selection process?

At the same time, New Hampshire is not exactly representative of our great democracy. The state is about 99% white. Ethnically, socially, geographically the state is not as diverse as the presidential selection process warrants. New Hampshire may be the most libertarian-inclined state in the country and so having its citzens choose the candidates for each party’s nomination seems to have a warping effect sometimes. I understand all of these points intellectually, even if my heart and sense of loyalty indicate that New hampshire deserves to maintain some status, however honorific, in the primary season.

But here is what I do not want to see happen: A move toward early, frontloaded superprimaries in which the party’s choice happens quickly without voters being able to see candidates be hardened by a selection process. I do not want to see retail politics, the politics of the spaghetti supper and pancake breakfast and candidates trudging through the snow and gingerly walking on the ice and giving speeches in high school gymnasiums, give way to the saturation of blanket television ads and speeches in giant auditoriums delivered to the voter only via television, if then.

New Hampshire still has a role to play. Rather than place Nevada’s caucus between that of Iowa and the primary in the North Country, why not leave things as they are, but, as they plan, bring South Carolina’s primary closer on the heels of New Hampshire’s and have Nevada be that week as well, preserving New Hampshire’s role, at least symbolically, but allowing candidates to make South Carolina or Nevada more significant as well, thus increasing diversity of voices?

The reality is that the parties are going to have to intercede, they are going to have to ruffle some feathers, and some of these smaller states are going to go away feeling slighted. My guess, not that different from what I concluded last year, is that New Hampshire will be allowed to maintain its status, but only nominally, with a series of larger primaries following New Hampshire’s in such quick succession as to push the “First in the Nation” status into practical irrelevancy while allowing the state to maintain its symbolic grip on primacy.

Perhaps I am being cynical,  but for all of the criticisms about New Hampshire’s “first in the nation” status, I see little indication that any of the states that desire to move up in the process are any more interested in improving the quality or representativeness or democracy of the primary system. What the boosters from these states want is their piece of the pie, the attention, the status, the venerated place in the news cycle that New Hampshire and Iowa garner for increasingly longer periods of time every election cycle. Things are going to change, probably with this election or at most in time for 2012. But let’s be wary of other states entering the fray and claiming that they deserve the mantle of setting the stage for what is to come based on some solipsistic sense of being truly representative of the American will. Tradition need not mean everything. But perhaps it should mean something.

Michigan governor, Jennifer Granholm, signed legislation that would move the states presidential primary to January 15, soon after key states of New Hampshire and Iowa.  The move, however, violates national charters and candidates have pledged to boycott campaigning in the economically crippled state.  Granholm notes that the move will force candidates to address manufacturing issues in Michigan, which has the highest rate of unemployment in the nation.

Fred Thompson will officially launch his presidential campaign today with a commercial slotted to preced the GOP debate tonight on Fox News.  Thompson will also appear on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and release a web cast on his campaign website.

Memorial Day marks the “official” start of the 2008 presidential campaign season. Fred Thompson, the long awaited GOP candidate, is launching his bid for ‘08 soon, and many candidates were working the early primary states this weekend. Senator Clinton was out honing her new stump speech in New Hampshire, with her husband, former president Bill Clinton, at her side. Barack Obama was also out tailoring a message of “trust in government” in New Hampshire before taking his message to Iowa later this week. In a recent survey conducted by the New York Times, democrats are generally confident of a victory in ‘08, but remain slightly nervous by possible lingering memories and experience issues. GOP voters, however, see lackluster choices in their party front-runners, noting “The Republicans need to get their spunk back.”

NYT