The Bundlers and Predicting Presidential Elections

Last summer when McCain's star had fallen, I had a feeling he would still win the presidency based on articles I was reading about his campaign support.   Early in Bush's second term, I began to read McCain had lined up the "Bush Bundlers."   The three best sources I have found for following the money are The Economist, The Financial Times, both conservative London newspapers filled with ads for expensive wristwatches and the International Socialist Review (no wristwatch ads at all).  The ISR quotes the Economist and the Financial Times often.   All three magazines seem to focus on the same information and believe the same subjects to be important.  I don't know why this amuses me so much, but it does.

At any rate, last summer, because these three sources assumed the race would be between McCain and Clinton and that McCain would ultimately win, I accepted this view.  And I have discovered the more I ignore issues, personalities, polls and the like and just watch the money, the better are my predictions.  Of course issues, personalities and polls can influence how much money a candidate receives, but the flurry of daily excitement about who has photos in drag and who has used cocaine and whose teenager is pregnant may impact polls, but money straightens all of that out.

I don't think McCain won the primaries because of his extraordinary personal story.  He had this same extraordinary story when he ran in the primaries against George W. (whose personal story is like Prince Hal's, but without the heroic ending) and it did him little good then.

Also, it is not nearly as important how much money you have as how much you know you will get.  That is why, when McCain was broke last summer, if he really had lined up the bush bundlers, we knew he would pull through.

So how did we go wrong on Clinton and why is Obama still alive even after the traditional August mauling designed by Lee Atwater?  My feeling is that bundlers are less of the picture this time around.   

For now, the bundler contributions to Obama and McCain are about even-- $75 million for McCain and $63 million for Obama.  Obama though has raised a total of $390 million to McCain's $175 million.   This Obama tally is a huge number.  Bush spent $367 million in 2004. The difference is Obama has received half of his money in contributions of $200 or less and McCain has received only 25%.  And Obama has twice as many small contributors, 187,000 to McCain's 94,000.

I suspect McCain will get a big contribution boost in these last two months before the election.  I still think McCain will be able to spend more in 2008 than Bush did in 2004.  Also, "independent groups" will muddy the waters and the RNC had about $70 million to spend at the beginning of July.  Some of the more disgusting campaign contributors will time the money for the last month so it does less damage to their candidate by being disclosed after the election.  Look for a couple of hundred million being spent to remind us that Obama is part Negro (not in those words, of course, but the message will be clear) in the next two months.

Hillary for VP

I was at my son's wedding reception in St. Louis this weekend when a rumor swept the hall that Hillary had been chosen as Vice President nominee by Obama. I think Randall (the one whose life, I argue, has not been a failure) got a call from his wife and started the rumor. I told several people myself. Later we all ran to the TV and the internet to confirm the story, but no one else seems to have heard of it.

Dr. K thought Obama would pick Caroline Kennedy or a Republican Chuck Hagel so he was surprised. I thought ultimately Obama would pick Hillary so I felt vindicated. But now it appears my gloating was premature. However, I still think she should be chosen.

I am not a big fan of Hillary's and did not vote for her in the primary, but I think she would be a good choice for several reasons. First, it would be the democratic thing to do. She did after all get the second most votes. The Constitution originally gave the Vice Presidency to the second place winner, regardless of party, so this is not exactly a new concept. Second, she appears to have a base of support different from Obama's. I don't know why this is, really, but if it is so, it would be ticket balancing. I assume Obama will carry New York without Hillary, but I do know my wife, mother and sister all supported Obama and they would be happier with her on the ticket. Third, my wife, sister and mother all supported Hillary and I don't want to have to hear about it if Obama picks someone else and loses.

In the primaries, just 1.3 million Texans voted Republican compared to almost 2.9 million who voted Democrat. The Nation magazine has an article this week that makes the argument that Texas could turn blue. The enthusiasm shown by Hillary supporters, especially on issues like health insurance and mortgage relief, at the county convention make me think a Texas upset might be possible.

Dear Raulito, please give a message to our new President if you see her.

Well, Raulito, this arrest of the Women in White is not good news. That's fidelista stuff and we need to turn over a new leaf. While you are at it, I suggest you go ahead and cut loose all 75 of the dissident husbands.

We want a new level of tolerance to go along with our distributism. After all, I'll bet when each of those husbands gets his own little plot of land, gardening will become more interesting that protest and with all of the changes you will be making, there will be little to protest against.

I know, I know, George W. and his predecessor have their own violations. I have met with protesters who spent six months in the Federal Prisons for protesting at the School of the Americas.

And of course the Berrigan Brothers. And all of those conscientious objectors.

And then there are those reservists and soldiers who change their minds about going to Iraq. Some were recruited as minors.

I sometimes teach with one of Mumia Abu Jamal's lawyers.

Yes, Raulito, it is true, the Human Rights Watch faults the United States for Guantanamo, torture, secret prisons, detainee abuse, incarcerating a bigger percentage of the our population than anywhere else, death penalty, juvenile life without parole and abusing the rights of non-citizens. Whew.

Cuba, though, appears to have the worst record in Latin America. You have the death penalty and bad prison conditions like us, but Human Rights Watch gives you bad grades on other things:

Cuba remains the one country in Latin America that represses nearly all forms of political dissent. There have been no significant policy changes since Fidel Castro relinquished direct control of the government to his brother Raul Castro in August 2006. The government continues to enforce political conformity using criminal prosecutions, long-term and short-term detentions, mob harassment, police warnings, surveillance, house arrests, travel restrictions, and politically-motivated dismissals from employment. The end result is that Cubans are systematically denied basic rights to free expression, association, assembly, privacy, movement, and due process of law.

I highlighted that second sentence, because I want you to know everyone is hoping you will show Fidel how it's done.

I also know that George W. has been unwilling to talk to you, but maybe a little more distributism and some fewer long-term and short detentions will make it less embarrassing to hang out with you.

Hillary and Obama have both said they (with conditions) they will talk to you. And Nixon went to China; so maybe McCain would work things out with you.

If you see any of them, would you mention the problems we have with people drowning trying to cross the river near Brownsville and the tent city in Raymondville and all of these death penalty prosecutions in Brownsville. We could really use some help.

Undervaluing Hillary?

I looked forward to going down with Dennis Kucinich's ship. I never guessed the Texas primary would matter and I thought Kucinich would at least be on the ballot. After the choice became Clinton, Obama, Edwards, I moved on to Obama. The Clinton's were too far to the right for me and I did not trust Edwards' born-again class warrior image. Also, just like many voters take a mindless position in favor of the tallest candidate, I have a mindless preference for a candidate who can give a speech.

I liked Huckabee better than Romney, Jesse Jackson better than Dukakis, Everett Dirkson better than Barry Goldwater.

I never heard Edwards give a good speech. Maybe television doesn't do him justice, but all I heard was monotone and platitudes. It is hard for me to see him as a trial lawyer, but I know some good coaches who can help him.

Clinton's speeches grated on my ears (more on this perception later), but I expected less of her because she was a big-firm lawyer and they are not supposed to be able to talk.

Obama, by contrast, can talk. He is a hot Billy Sunday preacher, a cool Walter Cronkite commentator, a Salvation Army heart to heart peddler of charity, a Laurence Tribe constitutional professor. Pick the crowd and he has the words.

Does this mean he can talk his way out of the half a billion dollar sludge machine that will slam him this Fall? I don't know, but if he gets the nomination, at least I won't have to listen to rank amateurs shouting at the television monitor ad nauseum.

Now let's get to the beef. Kathy says none of this matters. I might as well be asking how tall candidates are and I always undervalue the women candidates.

In fact, she says, everyone undervalues women in leadership, men and women alike.

There is support for this position. An op-ed columnist, Nicholas Kristof, made this argument in the New York Times last month:

In one common experiment, the “Goldberg paradigm,” people are asked to evaluate a particular article or speech, supposedly by a man. Others are asked to evaluate the identical presentation, but from a woman. Typically, in countries all over the world, the very same words are rated higher coming from a man....

Female leaders face these impossible judgments all over the world. An M.I.T. economist, Esther Duflo, looked at India, which has required female leaders in one-third of village councils since the mid-1990s. Professor Duflo and her colleagues found that by objective standards, the women ran the villages better than men. For example, women constructed and maintained wells better, and took fewer bribes.

Yet ordinary villagers themselves judged the women as having done a worse job, and so most women were not re-elected. That seemed to result from simple prejudice. Professor Duflo asked villagers to listen to a speech, identical except that it was given by a man in some cases and by a woman in others. Villagers gave the speech much lower marks when it was given by a woman.

I don't have any reason to believe I'm immune to the Goldberg Paradigm. On the contrary, I'm old enough to remember when women in power were unusual and I saw that world as normal. We said about the girl debaters, they were like dogs who could walk on their hind legs; we were impressed, not because they could do it well, but because they could do it at all.

There was not a single woman senator when I graduated from High School in 1969. Nor was there a single woman governor. The only women who had ever been governor replaced their husbands and they were the ilk of Ma Ferguson and Lurleen Wallace.

We had Sarah T. Hughes, but she was a novelty.

By the time I got to law school women were a pretty large minority, but when I started practicing law, there were still almost no lawyers in the courtroom. Docket call was held back in the judge's chambers where the lawyers smoked and told blue jokes (and racist jokes, for that matter, but that is another story).

So can I open the mind to the possibility that I should value and like Hillary more than I do? That she will be a better president than I can perceive because I am suffering from this syndrome? That I should have liked Ann Richards better than I did? And Molly Ivins? And for that matter Sappho, the Brontes, Dickenson and Angelou?

Why not Hillary?

Kathy is supporting Hillary. I think she thinks men are not fit to run anything, much less the country. Maybe she's right.

Hillary’s not my first choice because I stayed disappointed with Bill all the time he was running and in office. Remember when he went back to Arkansas as governor to execute the retarded guy? It seemed like, if I remember correctly, he was trying to shore up the white male vote in South Carolina. Then he gratuitously attacked some woman African American singer to work on that base some more.

After he got in office, he wiped out aid for dependent children, brought us the anti terrorism and effective death penalty act, bombed an aspirin factory in the Sudan and built a wall across from Tijuana. With friends like these….

So maybe Hillary will be better. We can always hope, but her performance so far has not been very encouraging.

Maybe she will act faster to get everybody some health care, but I am not encouraged by her first effort.

Also, I don’t trust that she won’t move to the right during the general election and her presidency and make sure we have plenty of more years of war.

The right-wingers keep promising me that both Barack and Hillary are secret socialists. I doubt that. With all of the banking and defense contractor money sloshing around, I suspect they are both what they seem to be: cautious conservatives.

So why don’t I just avoid the process? No way. Hey, I even voted when we had two frat brothers from Yale running against each other last time. Both were rich kids with apparently limited skills, but I sucked it up and voted for the one with long catsup stained face rather than the one with the drooling Hapsburg jaw.

In truth, I think this may be more of a choice than we have had in a long time. I am willing to aim low enough to vote for Barack first, and then Hillary, if need be.

Your cheatin' heart

Some thoughts about the Democratic Primary: I went as an Obama delegate to the Precinct 9 delegation at Putegnat Elementary School in Brownsville. About three quarters of the folks who signed up were for Hillary, including my wife, Kathy. Two Hillary delegates told me they came for her because they wanted health insurance; I began to wonder if I were on the wrong side if she could and would really deliver on this promise.

In truth, I think the Hillary supporters will be betrayed on this issue (among others), but I am also afraid we Barack supporters will be betrayed as well. Both candidate's plans do promise to ban the insurance companies from using "pre-existing conditions" to keep people from getting insurance.

However, both plans seem to be like the Texas Auto Insurance mandate. Everyone has to get it, but the insurance companies won't pay on claims unless they are sued, so very few get any benefits. Medical health insurance companies will get universal payment of premiums, but there is small likelihood of universal benefits being paid.

Obama supported a single-payer plan five years ago and (I think) this is the only way the people in my precinct will get insurance. Unfortunately, Barack has now backed away from a single payer plan. Both candidates now have a plan that will guarantee everyone will get largely useless health insurance to go with their largely useless automobile liability insurance.

Anyway, we'll go our merry way on to the conventions, but in the end, I suspect there will be coal in the Christmas stocking.

I'll dutifully continue to support Barack through the convention, but I want him to know, I have a hunch that four years down the line, most people in Precinct 9 will still be without medical care, no matter who wins. I hope I'm wrong. I think he is the least likely to disappoint, but of course, the only sensible thing here is to aim low.