South Dakota Politics

Washington Post Blasts Democrats on Trade

And so do I, in the Aberdeen American News.  Typically, the WaPo is a little bit behind my curve.  But here is what they say:

The intellectual poverty of a free-trade deal's opponents

Saturday, April 19, 2008; Page A14

HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says the Bush administration's free-trade agreement with Colombia may not be dead, even though she has postponed a vote on it indefinitely. If the White House doesn't "jam it down the throat of Congress," she said, she might negotiate. Ms. Pelosi wants an "economic agenda that gives some sense of security to American workers and businesses . . . that somebody is looking out for them" -- though she was vague as to what that entails. Nor did she specify how anyone could "jam" through a measure on which the administration has already briefed Congress many, many times.

Still, in the hope that Ms. Pelosi might in fact schedule a vote, it may be worth examining once more the arguments against this tariff-slashing deal. Perhaps we should say "argument," because there is really only one left: namely, that Colombia is "the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist" and that the government of President Álvaro Uribe is to blame. As AFL-CIO President John Sweeney put it in an April 14 Post op-ed, union workers in Colombia "face an implicit death sentence."

Colombia is, indeed, violent -- though homicide has dramatically declined under Mr. Uribe. There were 17,198 murders in 2007. Of the dead, only 39 -- or 0.226 percent -- were even members of trade unions, let alone leaders or activists, according to the Colombian labor movement. (Union members make up just under 2 percent of the Colombian population.)

This hardly suggests a campaign of anti-union terrorism in Colombia. Moreover, the number of trade unionists killed has fallen from a rate of about 200 per year before Mr. Uribe took office in 2002, despite a reported uptick in the past few months. (Arrests have already been made in three of this year's cases, according to Bogota.) And evidence is sparse that all, or even most, of the union dead were killed because of their labor organizing. As Mr. Sweeney and other critics note, precious few cases have been solved, which is hardly surprising given that Colombia's judicial system has been under attack from left-wing guerrillas, drug traffickers and right-wing death squads -- a war, we repeat, that Mr. Uribe has greatly contained. But in cases that have been prosecuted, the victims' union activity or presumed support for guerrillas has been the motive in fewer than half of the killings.

An April 10 letter to the editor from Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch suggested that we would not make such arguments "if death squads with ties to the U.S. government were targeting Post reporters for assassination." We like to think that our criticism would be energetic but fair, especially if the government was responding aggressively to such a campaign and the number of killings was declining. No fair-minded person can fail to note that Colombian unionists are far safer today than they used to be.

There are two important countries at the north of South America. One, Colombia, has a democratic government that, with strong support from the Clinton and Bush administrations, has bravely sought to defeat brutal militias of the left and right and to safeguard human rights. The other, Venezuela, has a repressive government that has undermined media freedoms, forcibly nationalized industries, rallied opposition to the United States and, recent evidence suggests, supported terrorist groups inside Colombia. That U.S. unions, human rights groups and now Democrats would focus their criticism and advocacy on the former, to the benefit of the latter, shows how far they have departed from their own declared principles.

When Does A Human Life Begin?

Professor Schaff engages with a reader in his recent post on the question of whether an embryo is in fact a human being.  I join with my colleague on this question.

I presume that those on both sides of this question agree that there are such things as human beings; that human beings have certain inalienable rights; that among these rights are the right to life and liberty.  The right to chose would seem to rest on the latter.  Human beings are mortal creatures, each of whom comes into being and comes to an end, at least in this world. So when does a moral person, a human being with rights, first come to be?

Some defenders of abortion have argued that this happens only with the advent of a recognizable personality.  That occurs somewhere around the first or second year of life.  This solves the problem of abortion, but has the unfortunate consequence that a new born baby isn't a person and therefore can't be murdered.  The argue thus reduces to an absurdity: you or I could just as certainly have been killed when we were one day old as when were were first learning to say "want juice."  No one would have made such a silly argument if there were any way to fix the beginning of personhood at birth or some prior stage of development short of conception.

It is perfectly obvious, in light of modern biology, that an individual human being comes into being at conception.  Consider this question: what color was Sherlock Holmes hair?  I do not remember if Arthur Conan Doyle ever answered that question, but he could have answered it any way he liked because Holmes did not really exist.  I do exist, and so does Professor Schaff and his anonymous interlocutor.  And even if all three of us were died orange or shaved bald, we would still be blond or brunet or what have you because our hair color depends on our genes not on our appearance. Now: when did the question of my hair color first have an answer?  It was at the moment of my conception, when my mother's and father's genes were sorted out to produce a unique cell, with all the genetic information and the machinery to develop into fully functioning adult in time. 

So we have this single cell, back in 1957, about the time that Sputnik was launched.  It existed.  It was genetically distinct from my mom.  No one could say yet what color my eyes or hair would be, but if they had said something, it would have been true or false.  So I was in fact, at that early moment, some kind of being.  And what kind of being?  Not a canine being, or a bovine being, but a human being. 

The question then is whether I had the same rights, at that moment, as any other human being.  My ancient faith teaches me that all human beings are created equal.  That faith is frequently challenged.  It was challenged by Judge Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates.  But I hold to it, as Lincoln did, and so I cannot agree with Professor Schaff's anonymous interlocutor. 

Life: A Discussion

A little over a week ago I wrote a defense of the proposition that human life begins at conception or shortly thereafter.  My argument is essentially that the embryo, even in its early stages, has the genetic make-up of homo sapiens, i.e. a human being, and is therefore justly accorded all rights that come with being a human being (what we often call "human rights"). 

A reader who wishes to remain anonymous has given an intelligent rebuttal.  I present part of it here, edited for length with his permission.

You said:  "I have yet to see the argument that it is not homo sapiens."

Agreed, presuming that there is an "it" in the first place.  But that's precisely the debate:  is it an it?  Meaning, is the fetus sufficiently separate and distinct from its mother to render it a unique individual?  Your conclusion that the fetus is a homo sapien is based upon this premise, but I don't see that it's properly accepted as a premise at all. 

Science cannot tell us when the fetus attains individuality from its mother.  Separate DNA or heartbeat does not necessarily conclude with individuality.  One can just as easily create rationalizations supporting the other side of the debate.  Nor will any future scientific discovery answer the question.  It's more of a social or cultural issue than a scientific one. 

Your conclusion that the fetus is a separate and distinct human being also relies upon another questionable premise:  if a fetus is a human being, then a fertilized egg is a chicken; or an acorn is an oak tree. Right? (snip)

I think it's a cop out to base one's abortion opinions on science.  I wish we could all just cut to the quick, and admit that something much more abstract is at the heart of it -- ethics, morality, individual philosophy, etc.  Science means nothing in the absence of a concensus on definitions.  We need to address the abstract issues first, before the scientific issues mean anything at all.  (snip)

You said:  "This would represent the rejection of the notion that unelected judges should set the abortion code for the nation without any direction from the Constitution or the traditions of the common law."

Any court or judge that has ever upheld a right to abortion has done so because of that court's understanding and interpretation of the 14th Amendment.  So it's just wrong to say that such courts have acted "without any direction from the Constitution."  It's just the opposite.  They have been directed specifically by the Constitution. (snip)

Incidentally, I too support the overruling of Roe, not because I believe the Roe court was "wrong" about the 14th Amend, but because I believe it's a state's rights issue.  Like I was saying earlier, the question of "when does life begin?" is a social or cultural question. The political process is the way we answer those sorts of questions in America.  So, ultimately, I agree with you when you say "Each state can come to its own resolution of the issue and therein respecting the diversity of opinion on the subject."  That's what federalism is all about.

I replied to the commenter on the Roe aspect thusly (edited for grammar):

Of course the Supreme Court is a bit confused as to where there is a right to privacy.  In Griswold, the founding "privacy" case, they couldn't agree whether it was in the Ninth amendment, the 14th amendment or "emanating from the penumbras" of the whole Bill of Rights.  If the Court can't even figure out where a right comes from, that suggests that it isn't really a constitutional right.  In Roe, the court essentially punts on the question of where the right to privacy comes from, arguing that both the 14th Amendment and 9th Amendment arguments have validity. 

One can base anything on the Constitution, one supposes.  But we have the ability to then judge whether that is a credible or incredible basis of argument.  The argument in Roe leans heavily towards the incredible.

Let me add that in interpreting the 14th Amendment (or most everything in the Constitution) one should consider the intention of the authors, the plain meaning of the text, and the history of the common law.  This grounds the Court's in sound judgment rather than capricious will. 

On the other matters, it is precisely my point that separate DNA and the individual potential of the embryo is enough to substantiate its individuality.  The fact that it is dependent means little as babies and those gravely sick are also dependent on others but recognizably humans with rights.  Also, a fertilized egg is a chicken in an early stage, as is the acorn for an oak tree. We give things different names for things in different stages.  We call one thing a caterpillar and another a butterfly, but they are the same being.  We call a young human a baby or a toddler.  We call an older human an adult or even elderly.  But they are all human.  Finally, it wasn't my argument that we should use science to define humanity, it was Bob Schwartz's, albeit somewhat in jest. This is why I framed the original post by writing, "I will leave aside the notion that we should leave it to the scientists to determine what it means to be human (so much for the humanities) and consider this conundrum on Mr. Schwartz's own grounds."

Dame Fortuna has smiled on us and given us this Peter Lawler essay today on precisely this subject.  Give it a read.

I commend this emailer for a smart reply. 

 

Because I Can

Canadian band Arrogant Worms:

The Party of No Policy

Here is one description of tonight's debate between Senators Obama and Clinton, by Reid Wilson at Politics Nation:

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania -- For two candidates who profess to be most concerned with bringing their country and their party together, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton spent more time at last night's debate raising issues that divide the Democratic electorate than those that unite them. Last night's encounter, which marks nearly two dozen times the two have shared a stage, focused more on political questions than policy discussions, an indication, perhaps, that the intended audience was not Pennsylvania voters but rather the several hundred super delegates who have yet to publicly endorse a candidate.

Barack Obama & The Deathly Hallows

Professor Schaff posts on a current analysis of the electoral college, which appears to favor McCain over Obama.  This will please Republicans given to wishful thinking.  Something else that will please them is John Judis' article in The New Republic. 

To win in November, a Democratic presidential candidate has to carry most of the industrial heartland states that stretch from Pennsylvania to Missouri. That becomes even more imperative if a Democrat can't carry Florida--and because of his relative weakness in South Florida, Obama is unlikely to do so against McCain. Ruy Teixeira and I have calculated that in the heartland states, a Democratic presidential candidate has to win from 45 to 48 percent of the white working class vote. In some states, like West Virginia and Kentucky, the percentage is well over a majority.

Some Democrats insist that Obama need not worry about these states because he will be able to make up for a defeat in Ohio or even Pennsylvania with a victory in Virginia or Colorado. But in Virginia, McCain will be able to draw upon coastal suburbanites closely tied to the military. These voters backed Democrats like Chuck Robb and Jim Webb, who are both veterans, but they may not go for Obama. And in the Southwest, McCain will be able to challenge Obama among Hispanics. So to win in November, Obama will have to win almost all of these heartland states. Which is a problem, because even before he uttered his infamous words about these voters "clinging" to guns, religion, abortion, and fears about free trade, Obama looked vulnerable in the region.

It is a standard product warning on any electoral analysis done before the summer conventions that all of this may change at any moment.  Political analysts are very prone to predicting the results of previous elections instead of the one they are trying to game.  But it's not clear that everything has changed in recent years, and past trends do show some ominous signs for Obama.

Like or not, Obama is certainly a very liberal candidate coming out of a very radical social environment.  It is frequently said that he presents himself as a moderate, but I don't think that is true.  Up until now he has presented himself as a change agent, a breath of fresh air.  That has worked very well against a Clinton, of whom we have all see plenty.  It would work equally well against George W., if he were running for a third term.  But of course he ain't because he cain't. 

John Kerry had a shot against George W. in 2004 largely because of his war record.  That explains his bouncing up to the stage and reporting for duty.  But Kerry's war record had a flip side with a lot of long hair rock and roll on it.  Being anti-war is perfectly respectable, but it's not the same thing as being for something, and Kerry could never tell us what he was for.  Kerry couldn't win Ohio, or Florida, and so he couldn't win. 

Obama can't even carry a majority of the Democrats in those two states or, one expects, in Pennsylvania. Can he carry them against McCain, a war hero with no baggage?  Yes, if McCain collapses.  If his age or something else becomes a crippling issue, then Obama wins.  If McCain is as strong or stronger in November than he is now, if he continues to appeal to independents, I am not sure how Obama wins. 

McCain The Favorite?

Richard Baeher argues that the electoral college map favors John McCain, especially versus Barack Obama:

Barack Obama is a far weaker candidate in many of these targeted states, but in particular in Ohio, Florida., Missouri, Arkansas, and West Virginia. McCain takes Arizona off the table against either nominee. Obama is polling better than Clinton in the competitive southwestern states and Iowa, as well as in Oregon, but trails badly in Virginia, which has elected a string of Democrats in recent years to statewide office. Some Democratic Party officials have written off Florida if Obama is the nominee (in some surveys he trails in the state by 10% or more, though he only trails by 4% in the Rasmussen survey). The Rasmussen survey shows McCain with a 7% lead over Obama in Ohio. Obama lost badly in that state's Democratic primary (by 10% to Clinton) winning only 5 of 88 counties. Now having insulted rural voters for their attachment to guns and God, the state has become even less friendly turf for him.

The Electoral math looks this way: if Florida and Ohio are safe for McCain, and Virginia and Missouri are too, as they now all appear to be, then McCain has a base of 260 Electoral College votes of the 270 he needs to win. He would need to only win 10 from among the states Bush won last time that are in play this year: Colorado (currently tied), New Mexico (3 point Obama lead), Iowa (4 point Obama lead) and Nevada (4 point Obama lead), and several tempting blue states in which McCain is currently competitive: Michigan (18), Pennsylvania (21), New Jersey (15) Wisconsin (10), Minnesota (10), Oregon (7), and New Hampshire (4), among them.

Hillary Clinton may be on to something when she argues that she is the stronger candidate in November for her party.

Unfortunately, to increase his popularity John McCain is advocating silly policy, namely a moratorium on the collection of the federal gas tax.  This policy is merely a salve, making us feel better but not getting at the underlying cause of high fuel prices, namely the shortage of supply coupled with an increase in demand.  All McCain's policy will do is cause a shortfall in the federal highway fund while making no headway toward a sensible long term energy policy. 

Common Sense from the Left on Environmental Policy

Yes, you read that right.  The political left, and especially the British Left, seems to be grasping an inconvenient truth: that a lot of "green" policies are hurting the poor around the world.  Consider this by Simon Jenkins in The Guardian:

The consequences of [the government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO)]  have been much trumpeted on these pages. It says enough that one car tank of bio petrol needs as much grain as it takes to feed an African for a year, or that a reported one-third of American grain production is now subsidised for conversion into biofuel. Jeremy Paxman pleaded the cause of this latest green wheeze on Monday's Newsnight, while the United Nations food expert, Jean Ziegler, screamed for it to stop: "Children are dying ... It is a crime."

The transport secretary, Ruth Kelly, said this week: "The government has consistently stressed that biofuels are only worth supporting if they deliver genuine environmental benefits." Yet she must know that, at present, the opposite is the case. Kelly pleaded that rescinding her policy might impede investment and "weaken our influence over the direction of EU policy". She did not mention biofuels' threat to rainforests, food self-sufficiency and global warming generally, through needing costly fertiliser and road transport. Nor did she mention the role in her decision of such lobbies as the British Association for Biofuels and Oils, and the National Farmers' Union.

Just in case you missed this part, let me repeat it: One car tank of bio petrol needs as much grain as it takes to feed an African for a year. It is very likely that biofuel production is already resulting in starvation in parts of the world.  And on top of that, it's bad for the environment.   Here's a helpful chart:

How's that for green policy!

And then there is this piece from Guernica:

In the spring of 2003 about 8,000 tribal people and low-caste farmers living in the Kuno area of Madhya Pradesh, India, were summarily uprooted from the rich farmlands they had cultivated for generations and moved to 24 villages on scrub land outside the borders of a sanctuary created for a pride of six imported Asiatic lions. “I’ll never forget when we left,” recalled village headman Babulal Gaur. “Even the men cried that day. Is it fair to do this to 1,600 families for a few lions?”

By then almost 500 villages occupied by a total of 300,000 families around India had experienced similar forced relocation to protect the habitat of tigers, rhinos and Asiatic lions residing in the 580 national parks and sanctuaries that have been created in India since the colonial period.

Now I like lions as much as the next guy.  But this kind of policy turns on capricious and manifestly false principle: that human beings are not part of the natural environment.  When a people has lived for centuries on a piece of land, they are as much a part of the biosystem as any of its flora and fauna, and have as much right to respect.  That doesn't mean that all habitats should be open to human dwellings, hunting, etc.  But moving 8,000 is a high cost for the fanciful idea of a pristine environment. 

Moreover, as with biofuels, there are powerful interests behind some of the policies that have nothing to do with tigers. 

While the alleged purpose of the evictions was wildlife conservation, teak and eucalyptus plantations eventually replaced more than 40 of the evacuated hamlets. As it has in Botswana, Kenya and elsewhere, conservation in India has become a convenient and respectable cover for less savory motives when the very same national government that removes native people from their land in the name of conservation has no compunctions about giving up ecologically sensitive areas to large-scale development projects.

The fig leaf of conservation was eventually spread to cover a World Bank-funded eco-tourism lodge proposed by the Taj Hotel Group. In December of 1996 Adivasis filed for an injunction with the Indian High Court and called for a general strike in the Nagar Hole to stop the Taj project. A month later the High Court found the Taj Group in violation of conservation laws, a ruling that was upheld on appeal. The half-finished, abandoned structures of the Taj in the Nagar Hole represent one of the very few Adivasi victories anywhere in India.

In The Outlaw Josey Wales, Chief Dan George's character, Lone Waite, describes the fate of his people this way: "They called us the civilized tribe.  That means that we were easy to sneak up on."  Apparently, "indigenous people" means much the same thing. 

South Dakota Poll: A Bit Premature?

The poll showing Barack Obama with a twelve point lead in South Dakota may have been a bit premature.  A couple things to note.  First, this poll was done before the "clinging to religion" controversy.  Time will tell if that effects voters here in South Dakota.  Second, when one looks at the methodology, the poll is based on a sample size of only 267 South Dakotans.  That's not awful, but it is a fairly small sample size, which explains the six-point margin of error.  The methodology does not tells us whether they screened for likely voters.

Barack Obama won the North Dakota caucuses, so it is reasonable to conclude he is favored in South Dakota.  But one should not put too much stock in this one poll. 

South Dakota Obama Campaign Says "bitter" Comment "essentially" Accurate

Argus Leader excerpt:

Since [the poll was taken], Obama has had to explain comments he made at a San Francisco fundraiser in which he characterized rural voters as "bitter" because of economic distress. Those people, he said, "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment." Both Clinton and the presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, have attacked Obama for the remarks.

"If everything is still in play on June 3, and Hillary Clinton comes here, she might be able to use those comments about guns and religion to her advantage," Simmons said.

Obama apologized for the remarks and said he could have chosen his words more carefully. Nathan Peterson, Obama's state director in South Dakota, said the "essence" of those remarks were accurate.

"I think many South Dakota voters understand that Washington has left them behind," he said. Peterson predicted that Clinton would suffer for trying to use the words to her advantage.

The Consequences of a Too-Rapid Withdrawal from Iraq

A must-watch video from Austin Bay, via Instapundit.

Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey writes:

Once again, the American media got caught with its pants down and their, er, aspirations showing. They wanted the military operation to represent a breakdown of the government so badly that they reported it as a defeat even as the Iraqi Army adapted and prevailed against the militia members. They still have yet to acknowledge that the Basra and Umm Qasr operations have largely met their goals, and have driven Moqtada al-Sadr even further outside the political arena.

John McCain is a Cylon!

One of the characters on SciFi's Battlestar Galactica, Col. Saul Tigh, has recently discovered that he is a Cylon, a "skin job" or biological counterfeit of a human being.  Here he is:

I think he looks disturbingly like John McCain.  Of course, if you are following BSG, you know that that is not necessarily a bad thing.  With McCain as President, the Cylons will probably have to call off the attack. 

Violent Video Games and the First Amendment

Sibby has a piece on the recent 8th Circuit Court of Appeals case, Entertainment Software Association v. Minnesota.  Doug Wiken backs Sibby up (one of the seventy signs of the apocalypse).  Both are reacting to a post by Phyllis Schlafly. 

Minnesota passed a law imposed a $25 fine on minors under 17 renting video games rated "M" or "AO", i.e., adults only.  A district court issued an injunction in 2006, and the 8th Circuit has now affirmed that injunction.  The Court held that video games are protected speech, even for children.  Therefore the State must show a compelling interest in the act, and show that the act was narrowly tailored to achieve that interest (i.e., did the least that it could have done).  Says the Court:

Whatever our intuitive (dare we say commonsense) feelings regarding the effect
that the extreme violence portrayed in the above-described video games may well
have upon the psychological well-being of minors, Interactive Video requires us to
hold that, having failed to come forth with incontrovertible proof of a causal
relationship between the exposure to such violence and subsequent psychological
dysfunction, the State has not satisfied its evidentiary burden. The requirement of
such a high level of proof may reflect a refined estrangement from reality, but apply
it we must.

Schlafly et. al. above object that there is plenty of evidence to show that violent video games are harmful to minors.  But of course, it is hard to come up with "incontrovertible proof" of anything. 

I confess that I have no opinion on the harmful effects of video games, but I am skeptical.  Having grown up watching thousands of Nazis dispatched in World War II movies, and various bad guys done in by the Lone Ranger's silver bullets, I have never come close to shooting anyone.  I grant that the violence in video games is much more graphic and real than anything I saw as a child, and that there is a danger here.  When I first fired a rifle, I was profoundly shocked by the sound and sensation of it.  Someone playing video games on a computer with a good sub woofer might be better prepared to make the jump to real violence.  Perhaps these games do "desensitize" the player, but I am doubtful that this is a major social problem.

On the other hand, I think the Court was altogether wrong to block the Minnesota law.  Video games are not the kind of expressive acts that First Amendment protections were designed for, or at least not in the case of minors.  They are examples of a kind of commerce that legislatures should be allowed to make judgment calls about. States allow adults to purchase and consume alcoholic beverages, but not persons under 21.  Why 21 and not 20 or 22?  States make similar decisions regarding tobacco and pornography.  Those are judgment calls, and they are what legislatures, and not courts, should be all about.

This is not to say that minors enjoy no first amendment protection.  But religious and political speech, art and poetry, are one kind of thing; Postal 2: Apocalypse Weekend is something else.   

In this case that the burden of proof should go the other way.  ESA should be required to show that their games are harmless to minors.  If they could meet that very high standard, then the law would be revealed to have no rational basis.  Otherwise, the Court should defer to the legislature.  I disagree with Schlafly and my blogosphere colleagues in so far as I think the harmfulness of the video games should not be a judicial question.  But then I am a judicial minimalist.  I think courts should avoid judgment calls on matters like this. 

McCain: Conservative or Moderate?

Here is an article that attempts to challenge the notion that John McCain is a political moderate.  Evidence?  His positions on abortion, same-sex marriage, and guns.  Apparently McCain is pretty bitter and clinging.  While many commentators have opined that McCain's problem is tying down his party's conservative base, this article claims that it is McCain's conservatism that may be his downfall. 

I have defended McCain's conservative credentials here.  My conclusion: McCain adopts many conservative positions while he himself is not conservative by disposition.  For conservatives, I suggest, that should be enough.  This is especially true when the conservative party, the Republican party, is not politically popular. 

Yet McCain's voting record suggests a degree of moderation, as moderation is commonly defined.  Based on his lifetime ACU rating, McCain was the 39th most conservative Senator serving in 2006.  That is approaching the middle.  Look at this Wikipedia entry.  McCain has a moderate record based on various ratings. 

• National Journal's studies of roll-call votes through 2006 assigned McCain a lifetime rating of 72 in the political spectrum, relative to the then-current Senate, with a rating of 1 being most liberal and 100 being most conservative.^[129] (McCain did not receive a National Journal ranking in 2007 due to missing too many votes because of campaigning.^[130])

• A 2004 analysis by political scientists Joshua D. Clinton of Princeton University, Doug Rivers of Stanford University, and Simon Jackman found McCain to be likely the 51st-most liberal Senator.^[131]

• The Almanac of American Politics, edited by Michael Barone and Richard E. Cohen, rates votes as liberal or conservative, with 100 as the highest rating, in three policy areas: Economic, Social, and Foreign. For 2006, McCain's ratings are: Economic = 64 percent conservative, 35 percent liberal (2005: 52 percent conservative, 47 percent liberal);^[132] Social = 46 percent conservative, 53 percent liberal (2005: 64 percent conservative, 23 percent liberal);^[132] Foreign = 58 percent conservative, 40 percent liberal (2005: 54 percent conservative, 45 percent liberal)^[132]

By most measures, McCain is a moderate with definite conservative leanings.  By contrast, Barack Obama has famously been ranked by National Journal as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. 

Here is a question. Tim Johnson and Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin pride themselves on their bi-partisan and moderate credentials.  So why are they endorsing the most liberal man in the U.S. Senate over someone whose moderate credentials are quite solid?  The only explanation is partisanship.  Now, party loyalty is an important value.  But is this how they will act if Obama becomes president?  Will they value partisanship over the moderation they are so proud of? 

New York Times is Bitter About Italy

Here is their headline on the Italian elections:

Economy Ailing, Frustrated Italy Picks Berlusconi

Well, it's nice to know why the Italians made such an obviously irrational choice as to put a "center-right" coalition back into power.  I supposed those bitter Italians were clinging to this "idiosyncratic billionaire," thus allowing him to "snatch" back power. 

But with a weak economy and frustration high that Italy has lost ground to the rest of Europe, it was unclear whether Italians voted for Mr. Berlusconi out of affection or, as many experts said, as the least bad choice after the nation weathered two years of inaction from the fractured center-left.

Still, Italy now returns to a singular sort of personal politics with Mr. Berlusconi as the unquestioned protagonist.

Rejecting the sober responsibility of the departing prime minister, Romano Prodi, Italians chose in a moment of national self-doubt a man whose dramas — the clowning and corruption scandals, his rocky relations with his wife and political partners, his growing hairline and ever browner hair — play out very much in public.

The "sober responsibility of the departing prime minister."  This isn't a news story.  It's venting. 

So what has the New York Times so irritated?  Well, it turns out that the bitter Italians are clinging to the idea of a less leftist political system, one more like the U.S. 

But in some basic ways, the election signaled a decisive shift in a nation whose politics have been unstable because of the narrow interests of its many small parties. Mr. Veltroni, heading the new Democratic Party, the result of a merger of the two largest center-left parties, had refused to run with far-left parties, as Mr. Prodi had done.

As a result, the ANSA news agency reported that the number of parties in the lower house of Parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, would drop to just 6 from 26. For the first time since World War II, there will be no one in Parliament representing the Communist Party, which has long played an important part in leftist politics here. Mr. Veltroni, in fact, started his political career as a Communist.

Experts on the left and the right said — and in some cases lamented — that the election had shown a shift toward a more American- or British-style system of two dominant middle-ground parties.

Well, now that is depressing.  No wonder the Times is bitter. 

Chris Matthews: Thune For VP

Chris Matthews calls the McCain VP race for John Thune:

Chris Matthews has made his call -- John Thune, a freshman senator from South Dakota, will be John McCain's running mate on the Republican presidential ticket.

Matthews informed the world -- as well as Thune himself -- of his prediction while the MSNBC commentator interviewed the senator a few minutes before President Bush delivered his latest comments on the war in Iraq.

Thune firmly established himself as a comer within the GOP when he knocked off then-Senate minority leader Tom Daschle in 2004. Telegenic and relatively youthful (he was born in 1961, just like Barack Obama, another member of the Senate's '04 class), Thune almost assuredly is on the working list that McCain recently revealed he's put together of vice presidential possibilities.

In other Thune news, the Senator is working to increase funding for law enforcement on the reservations:

In U.S. Senate action, an amendment to the 2009 federal budget by Sen. John Thune seeks an additional $200 million over the next five years to be spent on improving public safety on America’s reservations.

Those dollars include $25 million per year for tribal law enforcement, tribal court systems and tribal detention centers, plus $15 million a year for extra U.S. Attorneys to prosecute crimes on reservations.

Bored Press II

Here I described the effects of a bored press, namely the hyping of minor stories about presidential candidates. Here is a good example from a Clinton event apparently gone bad:

Hillary Clinton was forced to cut her normal stump speech short when a chatty and meddlesome crowd kept her from grasping their attention. Clinton, who was addressing the Philadelphia County Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, spoke for just over five minutes, despite having the press arrive almost two hours beforehand. (snip)

Whether or not Clinton’s reception at the dinner had anything to do with her recent attacks on Barack Obama remains unclear. 

Let us ponder the sentence, "Whether or not Clinton’s reception at the dinner had anything to do with her recent attacks on Barack Obama remains unclear."  What this reporter is saying, in a news story mind you, is that there really is no evidence that there is a connection between this poor reception of Clinton and anything she might have said about Obama.  Yet he feels compelled to invent conflict where there is no evidence for it.  By even raising the issue he implies, absent any evidence, that there actually is reason to think that these two phenomena may be connected.  Why does he do this?  I guess that's what sells newspapers, or rather what generates internet hits. 

Obama: Immanentize The Eschaton.

Lots of commentary on the Barack Obama "rural people cling to religion and guns" comments in San Francisco.  You can see commentary from Rod Dreher, Tom Daschle (via Denise Ross), Mickey Kaus, Jay Reding and our own Ken Blanchard.  These are all good.  Give them a read. 

Much of the commentary has referred to Thomas Frank's book What's The Matter With Kansas.  For a solid review of that book, see James Nuechterlein.  The essential error with Frank's book, from Neuchterlein's point of view, is that it is stuck in the 1930s when economic issues dominated everything.  Frank, and by extension Obama, cannot believe that middle and lower class rural folks might actually put their cultural conservatism ahead of their economic interests (assuming voting Democrat is in their interest). 

Obama seems to believe that people turn to cultural issues not because there is a good argument that those issues are actually the most important issues.  Not because people have actual reasons for holding culturally conservative views.  No, they are simply angry, i.e., irrational.  They are trapped in a kind of Marxist false consciousness where the capitalist elite have propagated the ideologies of religion, race and xenophobia to destroy the class consciousness that would otherwise prevail.  It was wrong when Marx made this claim, and it is still wrong when Barack Obama makes it. 

Michael Young notes Obama's attempt at damage control in Indiana.  Here is what Obama said:

People don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody is going to help them. So people end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. They take refuge in their faith and their community, and their family, and the things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington.

"But they don't believe they can count on Washington."  This is of a piece with what we know about Obama's church and his publicly stated desire to create "a kingdom of heaven on earth."   Obama's religion is of a decidedly worldly sort.  The problem, as it seems Obama diagnoses it, is that people have an inadequate faith in the power of the state to do good.  If they just put their faith in men like Barack Obama, and the power of the government, he will then lead us to a promised land where justice and right prevail.  As Lisa Schifferen intimates, Obama's own religion seems to have little to do with a personal conversion and freedom from sin and more to do with converting society and freeing us all from social sin.  Yes, Obama wants to immamentize the eschaton.

See Barack Obama counter the charges of "elitism."  He is good.  Very good. 

SDP Jazz Note: Greg Abate Coming to Rapid City

My friend Ken Laster, whose In The Groove: Jazz and Beyond is the best jazz podcast available, tips me off that Greg Abate will be appearing at The Elks in Rapid City on May 16th and 17th.  As fate would have it, I will be in New Orleans at that time.  This is a personal tragedy.  I would certainly have made the trip to see that show. 

Abate (saxophone and flute) is a modern apostle of hard bop jazz.  His CD Monsters in the Night presents a marvelous set of compositions, and some very fine playing.  You can get the CD at the link above.  If you are in the area and like good jazz, don't miss it.   

Obama's View of Small Town America II

My Keloland colleague Cory Heidelberger has a mostly reasonable defense of Barack Obama's recent incendiary comment about bitter, small town Americans.  But I think Cory sort of misses the point of the criticisms.  Mickey Kaus has identified Obama's comments as a "Category II Kensley Gaff."  A KG (first classified by Michael Kinsley) is when a politician makes the mistake of saying something that is true, but unpopular.  A Category II KG is when a politician makes the mistake of saying what he thinks, regardless of whether it is true or not.  I concur with Kaus's diagnosis. 

There are two questions here.  The first is whether Obama's comments were true.  Cory has this:

There's no hicks-and-rubes talk there, just an honest assessment of why some people feel and vote the way they do. As was the case in his March 18 speech on racism and Reverend Wright, Obama once again demonstrated his ability to see how a lot of our politics has its roots in economic issues.

Cory is surely right that a lot of politics has its roots in economic issues.  But it is a very tangled plant growing from those roots.  I would be interested to see a correlation demonstrated between small town economic problems and religion, gun ownership, anti-immigration and anti-trade sentiment.  The fastest growing neighborhoods in America are the exurbs, mall-centered communities detached from urban centers.  Churches are doing very well in these places, and I am guessing that Cabela's does a lot of business there. And I suspect that the folks who run the risk of hunting with Dick Cheney aren't really bitter about their economic prospects. 

The bigger problem with Obama's comment, taken as a serious analysis of political and economic facts, is the idea that small towns have been neglected and that, if only the elites had paid attention, the prospects of small towns would have been better.  Does any reasonable person think that if Obama is elected President that Groton and Ipswich will suddenly start to grow again?  A lot of small towns in America have economic trends going against them, but the biggest problem is very simple: the people living in them aren't having very many babies.  If Obama can fix that, I'll vote for him.

The second question is whether Obama's gaff tells us what he really thinks about small town people.  Given Obama's twenty year relationship with a man who preaches that America is the great Satan, his wife's dismal view of America, and now his view of small town Americans as clinging to religion, to guns, to prejudice, to anti-immigrant sentiment and anti-trade sentiment, I think we have a pretty good idea what Obama thinks about most of America.  Cory was right to call Obama's comments "honest."  That is precisely the problem.

And it seems pretty clear that Cory agrees with Obama. 

The plutocrats and their fundagelical tools would love nothing more than for this and every election to be about nothing more than guns, gays, and religion. As a fanciful tangent, let's imagine what would happen if we gave the Radical Rich Right its fondest wishes and then some. Instead of an economic stimulus package, have the federal government send every American a handgun and an assault rifle. Deport every homosexual. Require everyone to go to church. We could do all that, and we'd still be in a recession. We'd still have a trade deficit. We'd still have stagnant wages. We'd still have corporate welfare. Another gun in my house and fewer gays down the street won't help pay the bills.

This is what we call demonizing the opposition. The other side doesn't disagree with Cory because they are wrong, they disagree because they are wicked people.  The views described above are sheer fantasy.  They have nothing to do with any party or organized group in American politics.  Small wonder that Obama's association with Reverend Wright doesn't bother Cory.