Category: Politics - Page 19 - UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

Ralph Nader is a douchebag

Ralph Nader used to have a good reputation. He spoke for those who were rarely spoken for, and represented the interests of those who didn’t have the resources to represent themselves.

And then he ran for president.

Back in the early days of 2000, when it seemed nearly impossible that an inarticulate failed businessman and death-penalty-championing former Texas governor could become president, I actually supported Nader’s campaign. He represented something strikingly different from all of the political insiders the major parties had to offer. “Bush and Gore make me want to Ralph” actually seemed to make sense. But in the end my gut instincts kicked in, and I colored in the little oval for Gore. Not that it mattered.

And then he ran for president again.

By this point, the few loyal Naderites who tipped the 2000 election had wised up along with the rest of us, and his showing in 2004 was as feeble as it deserved to be.

You might think everyone in the country now realizes the futility of a Nader presidential bid (even as a spoiler). But it looks like at least one person still thinks he has a chance.

Things are different this year, though. Anti-Republican sentiment has finally risen to a level commensurate with the havoc their failed policies have wreaked upon us. The Democrats have not just one (which in itself would be a big deal) but two viable candidates who are capable of generating genuine enthusiasm, and both of whom would, if elected, be an historic first. Ralph, this time around, you really have no chance. What compels you to waste your time and money (and potentially other people’s money) like this, not to mention squandering your once noble reputation? I guess in a way, Ralph really is a mirror of America itself. We’ll see in November just how true that is.

What’s really going on in this election?

It looks like my candidate of choice, Barack Obama, sailed to an easy victory over Hillary Clinton tonight in the Wisconsin primary. That’s good news, as far as I’m concerned. I’m also glad to see John McCain taking a decisive victory over Mike Huckabee (sorry, I refuse to provide a link), even though I still find it disturbing that 37% of the voters in the Republican primary were willing to support a candidate who proudly professes his disbelief in evolution. I don’t really want McCain to win the general election, and I know he’ll pose a much tougher challenge to the Democratic nominee than any of the other Republicans could hope to, but I can live with a McCain presidency. If someone as willfully ignorant as Huckabee won, though, I might just have to move to Canada. (And that’s a promise I couldn’t even keep when Bush got re-elected.)

When I saw that Huckabee 37% number, I also noticed the stunning disparity in total number of Democratic vs. Republican voters in said primary:

Source: MSNBC

I know Democrats have been turning out in higher numbers than Republicans this year, and that Wisconsin, although generally considered a “battleground” state, has tended to lean ever-so-slightly left or, if you must, “blue.” But still, this is a huge difference: Hillary Clinton, the decisive loser in the Democratic race, garnered more than twice the number of votes as the winner of the Republican race.

Tally up the total number of votes (with 92% of precincts reporting), and the Democrats had nearly 1,000,000 votes, while the Republicans just scraped above 370,000.

Again, I’m sure there are several contributing factors that increased this year’s Democratic turnout (and decreased Republican turnout), but I think we should not gloss over the fact that the electorate is skewing this strongly to the Democrats. I would have to do some research on how primary voting has split between the parties in past elections before coming to any grandiose (or paranoid) conclusions about all of this, but for now I will just make a mental note of the state of affairs here in February, and compare results come November.

Caucuses… what’s the point?

Tonight I participated in my first ever caucus. I had always been intimidated by them because, well, I had no idea what really went on at them, and I didn’t know anyone who ever went. But reading about them on Barack Obama‘s website, I realized that like a flu shot it’s quick and painless, so I went.

I suppose if I were really active in party politics, it might have been worthwhile. There were lots of people sitting in rows of chairs listening to an amiable guy fumbling his way through whatever he was supposed to be doing. (At one point, someone in the crowd spoke up that no one had seen the agenda, and asked if he could quickly go over it, which prompted him to yell over to someone else at the registration table and ask if anyone had the agenda. This was shortly after he had asked if anyone might volunteer to be secretary for the night’s meeting.)

But most of us were just there to say who we want to be the next president, or at least the person the Democrats put forth to potentially become the next president, so we queued up, “voted” (such as it was) and walked out.

I did actually linger for a few minutes after voting, but mainly because my son was already comfortable in a chair watching the proceedings, not that he even realized — or cared — why we were there. (I’m sure he was just thinking about Super Metroid.) I also wanted to chat with a neighbor who had shown up a few minutes after us.

Although the general experience was about how I had envisioned it (albeit more “church basement”-like, which should not have been surprising, given it was being held in a church basement), I was thoroughly surprised by the voting process itself. I already expected it not to be secret, but I was taken aback at just how informal it was. After signing in, I was handed a small, cut piece of yellow paper (reused from something — it appeared to be part of a flyer) and told it was my ballot. I was instructed to write the name of my candidate on the paper, and then I handed it to someone else holding a large envelope stuffed with similar slips of yellow paper.

And that’s it. About as low-tech and unofficial as can be. Yet somehow I’m supposed to believe, minutes after the caucuses closed at 8 PM, that CNN, MSNBC and the rest had reports from precincts that might, in any way, resemble the tallies of the contents of similar stuffed envelopes from around the state.

I realize that primaries and caucuses are organized by the state branches of the political parties and, what with the whole delegate system, are even more tenuously connected to the party’s nomination process than individual votes are in the Electoral College of the general election. So I suppose in some way this patently ludicrous voting process in the caucus is at least more transparent than the superficial formality of primary elections held in other states.

I guess if I’d stuck around I might have gotten more insight into how my little yellow slip of recycled takeout menu translates into the delegates the party sends to the convention this summer to vote for a candidate on my behalf. I might even have become one of those delegates if I had wanted to. But… whatever. It looks like my candidate is on track to win the state handily anyway, so I’m free to go back to my self-absorbed complacency on the matter, just like any other red-blooded American.

If everyone’s white, do you even realize the racism is there?

I’ve probably mentioned here before that I grew up in Austin, Minnesota, a.k.a. Spamtown USA. Of course I noticed growing up that there were few if any African-Americans in town, but it had never occurred to me that there might once have been, and I was never told of any racial conflicts that had ever taken place.

In fact, race (at least the black/white divide) was almost a non-existent concept in my childhood. In the ’80s there were quite a few people in town of Asian descent, mostly refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, which was a source of its own kind of tension, but I’m sure I was at least 10 before I saw a black person in real life (although by then I knew Gordon, Susan, David and Olivia from Sesame Street quite well).

I’m not sure if I had ever even heard the term sundown town until today, when I happened to be searching online for something completely unrelated about Austin, and I was even more surprised to learn about a disturbing incident that took place in my hometown in 1922.

These days racial tension is going strong in Austin, due in large part to changes that have taken place in the economic environment of the city. So race is mixed up, along with economic class, immigration and labor union issues, into a complex and for the most part poorly-understood stew of thinly-veiled hatred, anger and frustration on every side.

I guess it just goes to show that the history of race relations in this country is far more complicated and troubled than many of us even know. In an election year where, for the first time, both a woman and an African-American have a real chance of becoming our next president, it’s important to reflect on how far we’ve come, and how far we still have to go.

Keith Olbermann on being a counterbalance to Fox News

Never mind what series of links I followed to get to this (suffice to say, I do not make a regular habit of following the inside scoop on TV news), but I just had to share this quote from Keith Olbermann. Even though I rarely get my news from television, much less trust the “cable news networks” (capitalized or otherwise) as a source of any kind of information (whether or not you call what they spew “news”), I have a soft spot for Keith Olbermann and his frequent head-on confrontation of the prevailing bullshit in his industry. To wit:

I’d like it to be the accurate counterweight to Fox. My attitude is not to counterbalance them because they’re conservatives; it’s counterbalancing because some of their stuff is outlandishly in violation of every tenet of responsible broadcasting.