A lot of people have compared Obama’s run this year to the final two seasons of the West Wing, in which a charismatic young congressman upsets a Washington insider (Jeb Bartlett’s vice president). The parallels are striking, but they may be getting ahead of themselves: those West Wing seasons provide a blueprint not for how to defeat an incumbent of the other party, but for how one party can hold the White House for more than eight years.

A lot of people talk about wanting to see Democrats succeed Democrats. FDR supposedly set the standard for this: he was so great, the theory goes, that the country kept on electing Democrats out of gratitude. But the historical record suggests that a leader’s greatness doesn’t necessarily benefit his party. Churchill was great, right? The British rewarded him with an electoral defeat even before World War II ended. Truman, who acceded to the Oval Office on FDR’s death, fought a re-election battle in 1948 so tight that, as we know from the famous photograph, newspapers called the election for his opponent. In 1952, seven years after the death of the man who lifted America out of the Great Depression and won World War II, his successor was so unpopular that he did not even run.

In the post-war era, elections where a sitting vice president competes have been the most closely fought, bar none: 1960, 1968, and 2000 were all decided by less than one point in the popular vote. George HW Bush’s triumph over Michael Dukakis in 1988 is the obvious exception to this rule - and, incidentally, the only time when a sitting vice president won (we’ll talk about Gore in a moment). But after seeing the documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, I’m convinced that Bush’s victory hinged on the use of some of the dirtiest campaigning in American history as well as Dukakis’ pronounced weaknesses as a candidate. With a stronger candidate, Democrats would have been able to exploit the structural weaknesses of the GOP’s position in that election.

Here’s another way to put it: since FDR, only once has a party held the White House for longer than 8 years, even the dreaded Republicans.

Americans are fickle. We love outsiders. Dwight Eisenhower, fixing Washington’s mess. John F. Kennedy and the freshness of youth. Jimmy Carter. Ronald Reagan. Barack Obama.

Incumbents tend to win, and they tend to win big. Eisenhower 1956. Johnson 1964. Nixon 1972. Reagan 1984. All of those were 15-point victories or greater.

But after 8 years in the White House, Americans are bored of you no matter what you’ve accomplished. Even a successful administration carries burdens, and one dogged by war, recession, or scandal can be a weight around your neck (Johnson/Humphrey 68, Nixon/Ford 76). As vice president, you have big responsibility but little ownership over what transpired in the previous eight years. Your position, politically, is complex and tenuous. How far can you go in criticizing the president without looking like a hypocrite? How far can you go in campaigning with him without looking like you’re just a clone, a wannabe? Meanwhile, the “outsider” can hit you freely.

Yes, Democrats by rights won the White House in 2000 in an election that confirms my theory on closeness of VP-versus-outsider elections but seems to overturn my theory about it being difficult for the VP to win. But it didn’t have to be that close. Let me throw out a counterfactual question: if Bill Bradley had upset Gore in the Democratic primaries, could he have scored a more decisive victory over George Bush?

Luckily, we probably won’t be facing those kinds of questions in 2016. Assuming Obama wins re-election, Biden will be 73 in 2016, and my feeling is that he will not run. That will leave the field, to an extent, open. So here’s my secret formula for holding the White House: have a Democratic “outsider” upset an insider in the primaries. Best of all would be to have Biden actually compete in the primaries and lose to a young charismatic Democrat from the West, especially a woman or a Latino.

If you want real political theater, the outsider could hit the Obama administration on some of its failures, then stage a reconciliation with Obama around the time of the convention and campaign with him throughout the fall. That worked pretty well with Obama and the Clintons this fall, eh? Picture that on steroids.

This is also a decent way to keep moving the country left. The outsider, especially coming from the West, could criticize the Obama administration for not doing enough on the environment, not doing enough on alternative energy, etc. Find me a lifelong gun owner and we’re in business.

That leads me to my first practical suggestion for you post-election: keep your eye open for young leaders. We need to identify them soon. You think this campaign was long? Bullshit. Richard Nixon was running for president from the moment he lost in 1960. People started talking about Ronald Reagan as presidential material in 1966. People were forecasting a Clinton presidency in the 1990s as early as 1986. It’s not too early to start watching people, figuring out who might be our outsider eight years from now. Because if history serves as any guide, no matter how well Obama does or how popular he is we’ll have trouble holding the White House in 2016 unless we switch our game up and keep em all guessing.

Wish it were the war criminals in the White House that had those warrants out, but this time it’s about Sudan’s al-Beshir. Having been the object of warrants for prosecution for his violations of international law and of Sudan’s laws, the president of that country is making no pretense of avoiding the results of his crimes.

Today, the arrest of journalists made another scar on the face of justice in Sudan. Violations of the rights of Sudan citizens is par for the course in al-Beshir’s career.

Sudan’s parliament on Monday approved an independent electoral commission in a crucial step towards free elections due next year that was immediately overshadowed by a mass arrest of journalists.

The line-up of the nine-member commission, appointed by the presidency and submitted to parliament for approval, was passed by 298 votes to 12 objections more than three months behind schedule, said an AFP reporter.

The names were drawn up by the three-man Sudanese presidency, head of state Omar al-Beshir, First Vice President and leader of the semi-autonomous south Salva Kiir, and Vice President Ali Osman Taha, after lengthy disagreement.

The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed by north and south after a two-decade civil war, calls for elections no later than 2009 as part of a democratic transition, but myriad parts of the accord have hit major delays.

Just minutes after the parliamentary vote, police arrested more than 60 journalists protesting against the censorship which flouts the freedom of expression enshrined in Sudan’s interim constitution.
(snip)
Both north and south approve the new electoral commission chairman, Abel Alier, a former vice president of Sudan under Jaafar Nimeiri, who ruled the country from 1969 to 1985, and a lawyer from the dominant southern Dinka tribe.

His deputy, Abdallah Ahmed Abdallah, is a professor of agriculture from Khartoum University who was also a regional governor under Nimeiri.

The commission will be tasked with making all the provisions and setting a date for elections despite growing fears that polls will be delayed.

For the last eight years, the U.S. has done nothing to bring this criminal under the court’s jurisdiction, or to stop the atrocities his regime has committed.

The soft spot the U.S. war criminals have for their counterparts has not gone unnoticed. Immense improvement is foreseen for this country when the executive branch is cleansed of criminal elements that have ruled there during the right wing hold on our highest offices.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

Over the next two months, Mr. Paulson must impose some coherence and clarity on the bailout. Otherwise he will only fan anxieties and mistrust, which will undermine the effectiveness of his good decisions and amplify the fallout of his bad ones. With markets gyrating wildly, and the economy deteriorating rapidly, the nation needs clear leadership and a sound plan.

After spending the entire length of today’s lead editorial demonstrating just how badly Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has handled the economic crisis and ensuing attempts at a “bailout,” the New York Times undermines its point with this half-hearted admonition. Honestly, if the Times editorial board knows of a good decision by Mr. Hanky, might they have shared it?

The nation does need clear leadership and a sound plan, but, to date, the nation has gotten neither. As pointed out in this very editorial, any “modest easing the bailout initially brought about in the credit markets is now being reversed over doubts about the Treasury’s stewardship of the plan.” Paulson’s actions have been reactive and woefully behind the curve; he lacks anything like a coherent strategy, and the moves he has taken seem less motivated by an interest in protecting wage-earning Americans than in protecting Paulson’s pals and ideological biases.

There is also zero transparency—something many econ-watchers consider of utmost importance to stabilizing credit markets. . . not to mention the stock market. Beyond the lack of oversight as to what the banks are doing with the billions in bailout cash that they have received (much will end up going to bonuses, balance sheets, and the buy-ups of competing banks), it has now been revealed that there was another $2 trillion (!) dispensed by the Fed that is completely opaque.

Paulson has refused to use any of the TARP cash to help homeowners facing foreclosure, even though that might slow the bleeding and even stimulate some local economies, and now he has also rejected using his precious kitty to help the auto industry. Though it’s true that an auto-industry bailout administered with a similar chaotic attitude and the same lack of rules and requirements would do little in the long run to fix systemic problems in this sector, deciding that Goldman Sachs was “too big to fail” but GM is not is as stupid as it is hypocritical.

Given that record, I have no need to extend the rhetorical lifeline the Times so generously offers. Clear leadership and a sound plan cannot come soon enough, and given the noted rapid deterioration of the economy and the number of Paulson’s remaining days, it probably won’t.

——
(cross-posted on guy2k and capitoilette)

From the New York Times today, it seems President-elect Obama will have to give up most forms of modern communication once he is inaugurated:

But before [Barack Obama] arrives at the White House, he will probably be forced to sign off. In addition to concerns about e-mail security, he faces the Presidential Records Act, which puts his correspondence in the official record and ultimately up for public review, and the threat of subpoenas. A decision has not been made on whether he could become the first e-mailing president, but aides said that seemed doubtful.

For all the perquisites and power afforded the president, the chief executive of the United States is essentially deprived by law and by culture of some of the very tools that other chief executives depend on to survive and to thrive.

This is disheartening. Modern forms of communication like email, instant messaging, blogging, and more recently social networking and twittering have revolutionized the way we relate to each other. While it might be a stretch to expect Obama to become the first twittering or blogging president (we can hope!), certainly indispensable tools such as email (invented in the 1970s and thoroughly mainstream by the 1990s) shouldn’t be beyond the grasp of the President.

Without these tools, Obama will be forced to relate to the outside world through his circle of aides and advisers, who it seems will have access to email. While this might look no worse than a clumsy work-around to some - allowing Obama to access essentially the same lines of communication - I’m not so sure. Again, the Times:

“Given how important it is for him to get unfiltered information from as many sources as possible, I can imagine he will miss that freedom,” said Linda Douglass, a senior adviser who traveled with the campaign.

Even more than the campaign trail, the White House can be a bubble far removed from the outside world. Having access to information only through aides and advisers is guaranteed to remove a President from reality, at least slightly. Given that 1.5 billion people use the Internet (nearly 1/5th of the world’s population), cutting the most powerful man in the world off from our society’s most important communications device seems downright dangerous.

Both security and disclosure laws seem to be the issues holding back Presidential email, and these are two valid concerns. Still, there are no problems that can’t be solved. I know our intelligence services use email and other online communication tools constantly. If they can handle sensitive data online, so can the White House. In my view, we should strongly consider updating whatever rules apply to allow the first truly 21st century President (possibly post-modern, too) to use 21st century tools so he can do his best to govern a 21st century country.

But maybe I’m making too much of this. Is it important for America to have an emailing President?

(also posted at MyDD)

Watching the G20 mix it up over the worldwide economic crisis really made me wonder why the occupied White House wanted to make it so obvious that the world is waiting for them to crawl back into the hole they’ve dragged it into. Still more, why ask responsible world leaders in to plan, and announce before you got started that you will oppose the regulations you were supposed to enforce in the first place?

Once again, it looks from the performance being put on as if there’s some serious disability behind this country’s dysfunction in the highest office. It’s tempting to write off the disasters as incompetence. But that’s not enough to explain the bumbling wreck at the country’s helm.

Today I am glad to see an op-ed from Eliot Spitzer, who was such a star as prosecutor in the office of Attorney General, then Governor, of New York before he let personal weaknesses bring him down. He details the efforts he put forth to keep Wall Street from self-destruction, which would have been managed if the laws had been enforced. The opposition of the White House destroyed those attempts to use the laws, and brought this country into another disaster so large it has afflicted the economies of the world.

Those of us who raised red flags about this were scoffed at for failing to understand or even believe in “the market.” During my tenure as New York state attorney general, my colleagues and I sought to require investment banking analysts to provide their clients with unbiased recommendations, devoid of undisclosed and structural conflicts. But powerful voices with heavily vested interests accused us of meddling in the market.

When my office, along with the Department of Justice, warned that some of American International Group’s reinsurance transactions were little more than efforts to create the false impression of extra capital on the company’s balance sheet, we were jeered at for attacking one of the nation’s great insurance companies, which surely knew how to balance risk and reward.

And when the attorneys general of all 50 states sought to investigate subprime lending, believing that some lending practices might be toxic, we were blocked by a coalition of the major banks and the Bush administration, which invoked a rarely used statute to preempt the states’ ability to probe. The administration claimed that it had the situation under control and that our inquiry was unnecessary.

Time and again, whether at the state level, in Congress or at the Securities and Exchange Commission under Bill Donaldson, those who tried to enforce the basic principles that would allow the market to survive were told that the “invisible hand” of the market and self-regulation could handle the task alone.

The reality is that unregulated competition drives corporate behavior and risk-taking to unacceptable levels.

The laws written to prevent another Great Depression from ever happening again were dubbed by the rowdies in the White House as quaint and outmoded, useless regulations that Wall Street could ignore without hurting anyone. Knowing that this behavior was irresponsible, and counter-indicated by experience over decades, the law enforcement powers in New York were brought into play, and lost. The device of pre-empting state efforts to enforce laws has been a favorite of the administration, and has been very destructive to efforts to prevent disasters. It has also been brought into play to prevent recovery of damages for injury from faulty products. The lawless in the White House won this round, while the country lost.

The trust this country has lost among world powers will have a chance to revive in the new administration. It would be easier if the administration’s representatives were eliminated entirely from any role in the hard efforts ahead for President Obama. They have shown they are not wise, and not trustworthy. We can’t ask economic leaders of other countries to accept discredited functionaries, and shouldn’t ask our own citizens to accept them, either.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

Earlier this week, I attended a seminar led by Episcopal author Diana Butler Bass.  She spoke about current conflicts within mainline Protestant churches and where they are leading us in the future.  Bass started by drawing a horizontal axis with “conservative” on one end and “liberal” on the other.  The much-publicized fight over the ordination of gays illustrates this dichotomy. 

She then drew a vertical axis and labeled it with “conventional” at the top and “intentional” at the bottom, making the claim that most church conflicts happen on this axis, not on the liberal-conservative one.  The example she gave was one of the most divisive issues that can be found in congregations these days - traditional vs. contemporary worship.  More churches have gone to war over whether to have organ or guitar music than over the issue of ordaining gays. 

Bass’ argument was that changing and breaking with long-held traditions is where the church faces its greatest challenges these days.  It’s not about resolving the conflict between liberals and conservatives, a conflict which has been around for over a century and which will never get resolved through arguing.  It’s about transforming traditional practices.

Much of what Bass said about church conflict can also be said about the world of politics, especially when it comes to the recent presidential election.  Certainly, there were issues in the election that fall neatly onto the liberal-conservative axis: taxes, the war in Iraq, abortion, gay marriage, etc.  But John McCain’s own adviser famously said that the campaign was not about the issues, which begs the obvious question, “OK, then, what was it about?”

It was about that vertical axis that Bass drew.  It was about “convention” vs. “intention.”  It was about doing things the way they’ve always been done vs. change.  What will history remember most about the 2008 election?  That it was a mandate to end the War in Iraq?  That it was a victory of raising taxes on the wealthy over trickle-down theory?  That it was a validation of Obama’s almost-universal health care plan?  Hardly.

Those left vs. right issues will certainly be important in the coming years, but they’re not what carried Obama to a resounding victory.  Obama won because the people wanted change.  They wanted something different than George Bush and Bill Clinton and the same old Washington political games.  McCain tried to present himself as the real option for change, but in the end, he lost because he couldn’t help but represent tradition and convention.

What will be remembered about 2008 is that Obama is the first black president.  That he is the first post-Boomer president.  That he is the first tech-saavy president.  Perhaps even that he is the first post-partisan president.  And that he ran (for the most part) a positive and uplifting campaign.  All of these things have nothing to do with being liberal or conservative.  They have nothing to do with this dichotomy that has been placed on our politics throughout American history.   They have to do with something else, something that is bubbling forth from our culture that Obama was smart enough to tap into. 

At the end of Diana Butler Bass’ seminar, she introduced a third axis into her model, making it three-dimensional.  This third axis was the movement from modernism to post-modernism.  Bass didn’t spend too much time trying to describe post-modernism and what the coming years will look like, but she assured us that the church that exists 50 years from now will bear little resemblance to the modern relic that exists right now. 

I think we can say the same for politics and for the world in general.  Whatever things look like in the year 2058, I feel certain that the Obama presidency will be viewed as the beginning of a whole new epoch - and not because of policy, but because of process.  He will go down as a great president not because he will accomplish partisan victories, but because he will transform the methods and practices by which a president governs and leads.

This morning, I downloaded the first of Obama’s Youtube addresses, a true “Fireside Chat” for the 21st century.  I wonder if John McCain even knows how to use Youtube.  I can’t help but marvel at how much things are already changing.

Last night, I had the pleasure of witnessing a spirited discussion between a young Republican working for a lobbying organization and a obliging Democratic operative. The conversation went along the lines of what’s next for the Republican party, a familiar road these days. What astounded me was the depth of denial coming from the Republican activist, a feeling I’ve heard echoed throughout Republican circles I’ve had contact with, both online and offline.

By denial I mean this: Almost every Republican I’ve spoken with or read has not seen the 2008 election of Barack Obama as a clear repudiation of their ideas, just their tactics.

Case in point, in the discussion last night, the problems with the Republican party were framed in terms like “how are we going to get back to our core values,” “who will be the next leader with charisma,” and “how will we hold onto our last shreds of power in Congress.” But these are arguments for reforming the way Republicans present themselves, not Republican ideology itself.

Make no mistake, this election repudiated Republican ideas, not just their dirty, dishonest tactics. Over and over the Republican activist in this conversation would say, “We need to get back to our core values, like small government.” Tell me, when was the last time we actually had a small government president? As these graphs make clear, we haven’t had a Republican shrink the size of the government since before FDR.

The fact is, core Republican values like small government are myths Republicans use to get elected. There is no denying that these ideas have worked in the past electorally, but John McCain ran on the exact same line this year - calling Barack Obama a big government socialist - and he received a trouncing. America rejected the Republican conception of small government, a clear repudiation of a core value.

Bill Ayers was the favorite accusation of the right wing during the campaign, and that now he is talking about it should provide answers to the huge lie that Obama associates with terrorists. An interview with Amy Goodman at DemocracyNow! is worth your time.

I began by asking Bill Ayers to respond to the controversy surrounding him in the presidential race.

BILL AYERS: We actually didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. We recognized that there was this cartoon character kind of thrust up on the screen, and I was an unwitting and unwilling part of his presidential campaign. We tried not to watch it, because, pretty much, it was distracting and kind of crazy-producing. On the other hand, as you played those, there’s so much that’s dishonest in it that it’s kind of impossible to kind of know where to enter it.

First of all, the idea that Bill O’Reilly says, you know, that I was in hiding. I wasn’t in hiding. I was teaching and speaking and writing and doing all the things I do. What I wasn’t doing was commenting on the presidential campaign to the media. And I decided not to do that. We decided not to do that when this all began, because we couldn’t figure out a way to interrupt what we took to be a profoundly dishonest narrative that, you know, had no—we had no purchase. We had no way into it.

And what’s dishonest about it, I mean, there are many things. One is, I was not a terrorist. I never was a terrorist. And the idea that the Weather Underground carried out terrorism is nonsense. We never killed or hurt a person. We never intended to. We existed from 1970 to 1976, the last years, the last half-decade of the war in Vietnam. And by contrast, the war in Vietnam really was a terrorist undertaking. The war in Vietnam was terror on a mass scale, with thousands of people every month being murdered, mostly from the air. And we were doing everything we could to stop it. So, again, it’s hard to know where to start to interrupt that narrative.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Bill, for a lot of younger listeners and viewers who may be not familiar with the Weather Underground—I remember back more than forty years ago I was in the Students for a Democratic Society with you and Bernadine—and could you talk a little bit about how the Weather Underground developed and what were its goals?

BILL AYERS: Sure. When I was first arrested opposing the war in Vietnam was the year that the United States built the war up, 1965. And at that time, I was arrested in the draft board with thirty-nine other students trying to disrupt the normal activity of the draft board. You know, one of the things to note about that arrest is, while thirty-nine of us were arrested and while hundreds of students supported us, thousands of students opposed us, because in 1965 the war was popular. Again, in retrospect, it’s hard to remember that.

In ’65, 70 percent of Americans supported the war. By 1968, 70 percent opposed the war. A lot had happened in those years. Certainly, the activism of the student movement was part of it. Perhaps more important was strong elements of the black freedom movement coming out unequivocally against the war. And perhaps most decisive was Vietnam vets coming home and adding energy to the antiwar movement, starting their own antiwar organizations and denouncing the people who had sent them there, telling us, telling all the American people, that the war was immoral, that they were asked to do war crimes on a regular basis as a part of policy, not by accident. And that just, you know, kind of deflated the whole idea of this so-called noble enterprise.

So here was this illegal, immoral war. In 1968, the sitting president announced that he would leave office at the end of his term, rather than run for reelection, in order to end the war. We felt that we had run a great victory when he made that announcement in March of 1968. Four days after that announcement, King was dead. A couple of months later, Kennedy was dead. And a few months after that, it was clear that the war was going to escalate. And the question was, what do you do? It’s 1968, there’s no end point in sight, and thousands of people are being murdered every month. People did many things. Some joined the Democratic Party and tried to organize a peace wing. Some left the country. Others decided to organize in communities. Some built communes. And we decided that we would build an organization that could resist and create a more militant response to the American misdeeds in Vietnam.

While to most of us it was obvious that the lies were not to be credited, it is good that friends I have heard from - who actually fell into a vague feeling that Obama had a questionable background - will find out that it was always entirely wrong. The wingers will never believe the truth, because it doesn’t serve their purposes. But having the truth out will help.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com )

“Those were eight wasted years of my life son.”  I cannot enumerate the times my Dad uttered this lament to me as a boy and young man.  He was alluding to his four years in the Air Force and four years in the Army.

I was in the last class to receive a Draft lottery number for Vietnam.  Unsolicited, my Mom assured me often she would help me find asylum in Canada if I didn’t want to go go war.  Thankfully, Nixon called off the dogs and my number was too high to be drafted.

Hierarchy gives me gas.  If someone tells me to stand at attention because he has more stripes on his sleeve than me, I am likely to tell him to kiss my ass.  This is one trait my Dad and I have in common.  

I could care less about titles and rank.  I’m a Unitarian Universalist Minsiter.  One time while wearing my robe at a wedding a proper British Catholic woman inquired, “what do I call you Father?”  I quickly spit out, “Chuck.”  She replied, “I’m not comfortable calling you by your first name.”  Devilishly I answered, “Most people call me Father, but my friends call me Dad.  You can call me Dad!”  Recovering quickly from shock, she cackled with exuberant, irreverent glee.  This is now one of my favorite lines to pull on the unsuspecting hierach.

I don’t care about guns or weapons of violence.  I have never owned any.  I am not a total Pacifist.  I do believe in self defense.  I’m not into the grand romance of war.  I don’t go to war movies. 

I don’t buy into the myth that “serving my country” equates to being in the military, dropping bombs and fighting wars.  Surely, the Peace Corp or AmeriCorp is at least as valuable a service to our nation as being a soldier.  I question the unassailable wisdom that we owe our freedoms to the armed forces.  I will grant partial truth to this adage but it strikes me as more propaganda than proverb.  Maybe I am a naive liberal.

Looking squarely in the mirror a good case can be made that the primary function of our military today is to support American economic dominance across the globe.  Books like John Perkins, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” are depressingly sobering.

Even if you poo poo Perkins you have to wonder, why do we need 761 military bases around the world?

Like most of you Veterans Day is just another holiday or a good time to catch a sale.  I never attend parades on this day or utter a prayer on their behalf.

On the weekend before Veterans Day I was down in the famed Pier 39 area of San Francisco.  I avoided eye contact with several vets begging for money on the streets.  Abruptly, I was hit with a case of moral nausea.

Several years ago in preparing a sermon I was incensed to find that over 25% of homeless people in America are veterans.

On Veterans Day the San Francisco Chronicle published a front page story on the 2,000 homeless veterans living in the city, between a quarter and a third of the city’s total homeless population. 

All across the country this morning there will be Veterans Day parades, fluttering flags and heartfelt speeches. We will tell our servicemen and women how much we appreciate their sacrifice, remind everyone that service to our country is the hallmark of democracy and lament the passing of those who sacrificed their lives.

Someone will play taps.

And James Holmes, who served in the 82nd Airborne from 1975 to 1978, will be waking up in an armchair at a shelter for homeless people.

“I spent the last four nights in a chair, one night on the ground in Golden Gate Park and two nights in a (shelter) bed,” he said.

St. Paul exhorts a young Minister that the elders of the church are “worthy of double honor.”  By this he means they are due respect and to be taken care of financially.

Anyone who puts their body, soul, mind and strength at lifelong risk on behalf of us all is worthy of double honor.  They are to be esteemed in word and deed beyond a red, white and blue calendar day.  As of now the lofty ceremonies only highlight a national disgrace.            

Whether the veteran was a willing participant in war or a pawn of the President it matters not.  Whether the war was just it matters not.  Whether the veteran is permanently disabled it matters not.  Whether the veteran is an addict it matters not.  Whether you are a hawk or a dove it matters not.

I call on President Obama to make a one sentence policy proclamation.

“During the Obama administration no American veteran will ever go without proper medical care or go homeless, period.”

J-Moss’s post the other day, that compared the distribution of income inequality and poverty around the US to the electoral map got me thinking. Is it really the poor who vote for Republicans as the maps would suggest, perhaps foregoing the potential economic returns of voting for democrats and instead concentrating on cultural issues. I decided to look into the numbers to see what I could find. The following results are based on my own calculations with data taken from the US Census bureau and CNN exit polling from the 2004 election. All errors are entirely my own.

The evidence from the 2004 election would suggest not, displaying a solid correlation between voting and income, with the higher income brackets increasingly more likely to vote for Bush and the poor voting solidly Democrat. The chart shows the real numbers as they voted.

Voting by income in the 2004 election

Apart from the clear split in voting between those that earn less than 50,000 and those that earned more, you can immediately see that the greatest numbers of votes were cast by those living in the 30,000-75,000 dollar family income bracket.

One possible explanation for this could be a much lower rate of turnout amongst lower income voters, and data from the census bureau confirms this.

Voting by Income if All Income Levels Voted at the Same Rate

So what if lower income voters voted at the same rate as all other income levels. I decided to test this and see how the election result would change if everyone voted at the same rate keeping the same percentage difference between the votes of Bush and Kerry. I created this new chart that has all income groups voting at the national average of 61.4%

The interesting thing about this chart is that even if the poor voted at higher rates, and higher income groups at lower rates, Bush still would have won the popular vote, having won the crucial 50,000-75,000 dollar income bracket, and only slightly losing the 30,000-50,000. The poor being a relatively smaller group of eligible voters would not have brought enough votes to change the popular vote in favor of Kerry.

Now these are national results, and Jim’s question was as much about income distribution as much as it was about the voting habits of the poor. Should it not be the case that in areas where lower income groups make up a greater proportion of the population, their votes carry more weight? My answer would be probably not, because as Jim’s charts also show, in areas where there are greater numbers of lower income households, there is usually greater income inequality, which means that the middle class is smaller and income is distributed more towards the extremes. As higher income people have a greater propensity to vote republican, the greater numbers of the poor are to some extent offset.

So in order to win the election, Obama had to win the 30,000-75,000 dollar income bracket, and this certainly explains Obama and Biden’s relentless talk of rebuilding the middle class.

However, it does leave the question, with poorer voters having difficulty in influencing elections, and both parties courting the interests of the middle class, are the poor left unrepresented. And are the significantly lower rates of voting amongst the poor simply a factor of having little reason to vote? If so, how can the representation of lower income groups in America be increased? I leave these questions for you all to consider

George