reflectivepundit

Where Things Stand: Clinton Has the Better Chance to Win the General

by David Epstein

As the primary season winds down, it's useful to take a look at the whole picture on the Democrat's side. In just about all respects, the race was a tie, as illustrated in the figure below. After the last set of primaries, Obama leads in the popular vote by 50.1% to 49.9%.* Due to the arcane delegate allocation formulas, this lead is magnified to 52.5% to 47.5% in the pledged delegate count.

As the figure shows, these leads are miniscule compared with the range of possible outcomes. Still, if that were all we had to go on, Obama could make a claim that, no matter how close, he's the winner, and that's that.

But this isn't taking place in a vacuum. The point of a primary is to pick the candidate with the greatest chance of winning the general election. Period. And to this end, Clinton has the strongest cards on her side of the table. First, as the figure shows, she leads in the electoral college votes of the states she's won by a whopping 308 to 221, or 58.2% to 41.8%. Moreover, as I explained in my last post on this topic, Obama has a "J-curve" problem; he's winning the states that were either strongly democratic or strongly republican in the past two elections, while Clinton is winning the swing states. If you're a democratic strategist, this makes you worry that he won't run as well in Clinton in the states that count for reversing the results of the last two elections.

Again, this argument has nothing to do with the race of voters, the race of candidates, their gender, and so on. It's just the obvious set of numbers to look at when you're trying to prove which candidate will do better in the general election. Obama should make a substantive argument as to why he thinks he's better positioned to win in November, or so the right thing by the party and just exit the race in favor of Clinton.

* Of course, these days, you can't give primary results without explaining how you're dealing with all the "tricky" state results. I'm counting Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington by estimates of the popular vote, since no official results were released. I'm counting Florida straight up, as this is, statistically, about where the result would have been if you extrapolate from similar states. And for Michigan I'm using the "10% rule," which says Hillary would have won by about 10%, as she did in the other big Midwestern industrial states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey. Note that this is less favorable to Hillary than counting only her votes in Michigan and none for Obama, or counting her votes and giving him the "Uncommitted" vote. Either of these methods put her in the lead for the popular vote, but I don't think they're realistic, and as a superdelegate I'd want a fair estimate of what the result would have been if those two states had voted regularly, like all the others, and this is probably the best guess.

Bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri and Al Qaeda: Irrelevant?

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Last summer President George W. Bush spoke at an Air Force Base in Charleston, S. C. It was another of his “al-Qaeda speeches” in which he emphasized the grave terrorist threat from al-Qaeda, its affiliates in Iraq and elsewhere to justify the continued Global War on Terror—especially in Iraq. By my count, in that particular 3505-word and less than 30-minute speech the President mentioned al-Qaeda 91 times, Osama bin Laden 23 times, and Ayman al-Zawahiri and other al-Qaeda and alleged al-Qaeda leaders 18 times. Since then, bin Laden’s core terrorism organization that is hiding out and operating from the mountains of Pakistan regained strength according to the National Intelligence Estimate. But whereas President Bush, his administration and the news media hyped every bin Laden message, when al-Qaeda Central was weakest and trying to recover from its post-9/11 fate, Washington’s decision-makers and the media have all but ignored bin Laden’s latest communications—in spite of his organization’s reported revival. Thus, when the second bin Laden audio tape in two days was released last weekend, it was not commented on by high administration officials and not included in the media’s “breaking news” items.

At first sight, one would applaud this waning attention to the publicity-hungry al-Qaeda leadership. After all, terrorist strikes and the threat thereof are most of all means to intimidate foes and impress friends and potential supporters. Moreover, leaders of terrorist organizations strive for legitimacy on the domestic or the world stage—or both. When the heads of government react publicly and swiftly to such communications, they treat the bin Ladens and al-Zawahiris of the world like legitimate leaders and unwittingly enhance their status among those in whose name they claim to act.

Yet, I wonder about this sea change from public over-attention to al-Qaeda messages to mostly ignoring such communications in public discourse.

The following lines are from an on-line ABC News report by Brian Ross and Rehab El-Buri (headline: “New Bin Laden Tape: Who Cares? Al Qaeda Leader Losing Relevance”) about one of bin Laden’s latest audio tape releases:

“Isolated and in hiding, Osama bin Laden's taped messages no longer have the power to send shivers through the Western world. The release overnight of his third audiotape message of 2008, timed to the 60th anniversary celebration of the founding of Israel, provided proof the al Qaeda leader is alive but also showed his desperate attempt to remain relevant.

‘He's definitely found himself on the back burner,’ said former FBI agent Brad Garrett, an ABC News consultant. ‘It's a case of measured irrelevance. We used to do back flips when one of his tapes would arrive but no longer,’ Garrett said.”

Someone Should Tell Bush What "Appeasement" Really Means

by David Epstein

The discussions so far of the outrage caused by Bush's remarks in Israel center around the President's breaking the norm of not conducting domestic politics on foreign soil. What has received less attention so far is the fact that Bush is using words that he -- and his speechwriters -- apparently doesn't know the meaning of.

Read the statement in question again:

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.

We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

The senator in question is William Borah (R-ID), and if you know what you're talking about, then the word you expect to hear describing his comment is "hubris," not "appeasement." To appease someone is to concede something to them in return for the expectation of future concessions; this was Chamberlain's mistake in the Munich accords. What Borah was suggesting was -- well, it's hard to know exactly what he was thinking of, but he certainly wasn't saying that we should have bought Hitler off in return for promises of good future behavior.

So what should we make of Bush's remarks? Do they mark a shift in US policy that we will no longer have talks with bad guys since this is nothing more than appeasement? Will we break off all communications with North Korea tomorrow? Will we disavow the negotiations with Libya that recently bought us success? Of course not -- no one expects Bush to make sense any more. And it's probably better that way; we're much better off for the next eight months having the rest of the world ignore all of Bush's comments regarding US international policy.

By the way, Bush's stupidity has a ripple effect on all the right-wing drone commentators -- they don't know what they're talking about either. One of them got called out, hilariously, by Chris Matthews here.

Clinton's Argument in a Nutshell

By David Epstein

With her big victory in West Virginia, Hillary has reminded the punditocracy of her considerable strength in certain sections of the country. Yes, West Virginia is overwhelmingly white and Protestant, but more important than that, it's also one of the states that Democrats lost narrowly in the last election.

And this, in a nutshell, is the crux of Hillary's argument to the superdelegates. Take away all the race-related aspects of the situation for a moment and just concentrate on a simple truth: to win in November, Democrats will have to do well among the states in play; the swing states, that is -- those states that were the most evenly divided in the past two elections.

To determine which candidate is best equipped to win in the swing states, I took the primary results to date, dropped Michigan, and compared Hillary's percent of the vote vs. Obama this year against the percent won by Kerry in 2004. As the graph below shows, there is a clear trend: Clinton is strongest in the swing states, and Obama is strongest both in states that Democrats won handily last time, and in those states that they lost heavily last time.

Clinton is especially strong in the big swing states. Look, for instance, at the states which were within 3 percentage points of being split 50-50 in 2004. Twelve of these states have had their primaries to date, and Clinton has won 8 of these to Obama's 4, representing 114 electoral college votes to Obama's 36.

This is not to gainsay Obama's obvious strengths as a candidate, or his proven ability to get support from voters of all races. But it is the superdelegates' job to pick the candidate most likely to win in November, and in a race that's a virtual dead heat in the popular vote -- after the West Virginia results Obama leads 50.3% to 49.7% -- there's a strong swing state argument in favor of Clinton's getting the nod.

Hillary versus Barack: Gender Bias Stronger than Racial Prejudices

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Mothers Day seems the perfect occasion to bemoan the now obvious fact that I was wrong all along to assume or hope that this was the year in which Americans would finally elect a woman to the highest office in the land. Had I not ignored the lessons of history, I would have avoided the disappointment over what is now inevitable—that another man—Senator McCain or Senator Obama and not a woman--will be sworn in as the next president of the United States. After all, African-American males got the constitutional right to vote many decades before women--regardless of their race. Little wonder, then, that contrary to every day life bias against strong and successful females has been more pervasive than prejudices against black males, when it comes to competitive advantage in politics, business, education, the arts, and other walks of life.

The deeply seated bias against and the subsequent stereotyping of successful women struck me the other day, when I read a story about the fall of Zoe Cruz, the most successful female Wall Street executive, who had been in line to become the boss of the investment firm Morgan Stanley.  These are a few excerpts of Joe Hagan’s excellent article: 

”Of all the recent firings on Wall Street, Cruz’s is the one that’s still vehemently debated… The fascination comes from the fact that Cruz is a woman, and that she had climbed further up the Wall Street food chain than any other woman ever had. She was fired at a time when women on Wall Street were starting to wonder—after more than a quarter-century of getting M.B.A.’s and slugging it out in the firms’ trenches—when one of them was finally going to make it to the CEO’s office… 

From the beginning, she had the uncompromising ferocity that seems to be characteristic of nearly all women who achieve great success.

Cruz was more “alpha” than most of the women she started out with at Morgan Stanley. She wasn’t oblivious to the fact that Wall Street, especially at the time, was dominated by men, but she was determined not to acknowledge it. She loved the game, and she was good at it—she didn’t see what her gender had to do with it.”

If that sounds a lot like the portrayal of women who manage to climb up the ladder in local, state and, particularly, in national politics, the reactions of males (and, I assume, some of their female collaborators) at Morgan Stanley is even more revealing in understanding the fall of Zoe Cruz and the failure of the once favored Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

Pundits Close to Get their Dream Contest: McCain versus Obama

By Brigitte L. Nacos
The pundits, the correspondents, and the boys and girls on the bus(es) on the roll for John McCain and Barack Obama are now close to realize their dream for this election year: media darlings McCain and Obama will face each other in November. While the stars of television, print, and blogosphere rejoice, I couldn’t stop laughing when I read Jim Rutenberg’s New York Times article “Pundits Declare the Race Over,” in which he mentions Tim Russert and Walter Cronkite and the Drudge Report as if they were one of a kind. Nothing could be further from reality: Russert and Drudge are no Walter Cronkite! Nor are the other non-journalists among the fourth estate who love to call themselves “correspondent,” “journalist,” or “press.” But whether one likes it or not, today’s pundits have enormous power—because of their  perceived and real influence on the general public, on voters, and on the media-obsessed political class.

I wonder when the know-it-all guardians of our national interest will begin to second-guess their concerted efforts to demonize Hillary Clinton and their contribution to her now all but certain defeat. Soon, they will not have Senator Clinton to kick around any more to feed their constant stream of irrelevant but hyped up “breaking news” about the presidential contender they love to hate.

Without Hillary Clinton in the mix, the mainstream media and especially the cable networks' political infotainment casts will soon need to pick a Hillary substitute to keep their good-versus-evil campaign narrative going.

Much Talk, No Action on the Need for Energy Independence

By Brigitte L. Nacos
In his latest column in today’s New York Times, Thomas Friedman addresses once again our dependency on foreign oil and the “need to do everything possible to develop alternatives…” I couldn’t agree more. This country’s dependency on oil imports and the leading petroleum exporters in the Middle East and elsewhere has influenced important aspects of U.S.foreign policy for a long time and, more recently, the so-called war on terror as well. Senator McCain was right, when he recently admitted—albeit inadvertently, what others said before—that oil was at the root of the Iraq invasion. Our leaders’ refusal to work towards independence from oil and invest in alternative energy sources is closely related to their ties to “big oil” authoritarian governments and to oil corporations—not only since George W. Bush and Dick Cheney moved into the White House. The current debate on the pro and con of a summer moratorium on the federal gasoline tax avoids once again a public debate about the larger problem, namely, to make the development of renewable energy sources one of this country’s top priorities.

For years, Tom Friedman and some of his colleagues have written and spoken in favor of changing our energy policies. But even the most urgent appeals were not heeded by our leaders. During the current campaign, the news media could have played a crucial role in elevating energy independence and related environmental protection to one of the major policy topics and forced candidates to spell out their positions in great detail. Instead, air time, column inches, and blogosphere posts have been devoted to superficial coverage of this important topic and irrelevant campaign incidentals. So far, the golden opportunity to fully inform and educate the electorate and force the candidates’ hands on putting energy high onto their agendas was missed by the media. And few seem to care—in spite of the rising price for gasoline.

I am convinced that nothing will change unless we, the people, take the lead. Most of us and perhaps all of us can make small and by now well-known but not yet widely embraced changes in our daily lives to save energy. If millions of car-drivers would embrace a “drive less this summer” habit, this would impact our gasoline consumption measurably. If millions would at least some of the time use public transportation instead of their own cars, this would decrease gasoline consumption as well. 

But more is needed, namely, a from-below movement for energy independence through clean and renewable alternative energy sources. The Internet is an ideal vehicle to start such a movement that would depend on the interest and enthusiasm of the young generation. One of my students wrote a term paper this spring on the “One Million Voices” demonstrations against the FARC in Colombia that began with an initiative on the social network site Facebook.

Why not try to initiate and organize along the same lines to create a movement for clean and renewable energy to free us from our dependence from petro-exporters and at the same time protects our environment?

I am hoping that a reader of this blog thinks along the same lines and takes the lead on this.

Hillary v. O'Reilly: Round 1 to Hillary

by David Epstein

Just a quick post to state the blindingly obvious: Hillary did a fantastic job in part one of her much-anticipated interview with Bill O'Reilly on Fox tonight. She was alternately jovial, tough, and serious, and breezed through a number of sticky questions like the pro she is.

One particular exchange caught a lot of what she did right: the part about tax rates. This is always a tough issue for Dems, since people hate to have their taxes go up. But O'Reilly led her into the issue by mentioning that taxes were going to go up for people like him and Bill Clinton, i.e., rich folks. That immediately took a lot of the pressure off Hillary, who admitted that top rates would go up from 33% to 36% and 39% on people making over $250,000.

Then when O'Reilly tried to make one of those absurd right-wing "in the good old days" kind of points about tax rates, Hillary nailed him, pointing out the rather clear-cut fact that upper tax rates used to be much higher when O'Reilly was a kid not lower. O'Reilly had to admit that they didn't pay a lot of taxes back then, *because they were much less wealthy*. Well, duh. Sometimes I think he must wake up at night thinking, "Did I really ask that question?"

So, part 1 was a smash hit. Let's wait to see how part 2, on foreign affairs and the war, goes tomorrow night.