The website for my book on the 2008 election, An Election to Remember, is now live. It will be updated with reviews, sample chapters, press material and a Q&A section. I decided to purchase two domains in case people forgot “an” in the title: anelectiontoremember.com and electiontoremember.com. Both of them will work and provide you with the same content.
You can purchase An Election to Remember at Smashwords for $4.99.
“Let me first apologize to my wife.” A phrase that is heard all too often these days. We saw it with Senators Larry Craig (R-ID) and David Vitter (R-LA). We’ve seen it more recently with Senator John Ensign (R-NV). None of these men have resigned from office (Craig chose not to run for re-election in 2008). The one politician that did resign, Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York, is a Democrat. Today, Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) came out of hiding to reveal that he has been having an affair with a woman from Argentina. He should follow Spitzer’s example by resigning from office immediately.
The news conference held today came after a week of the governor gone missing. His staff believed that he went hiking in the Appalachian Trail, although they did not know for sure, and his family was not even told of his location. This left the state of South Carolina essentially leaderless for an entire week while the governor was having his affair in a foreign country.
“One desperately needs a break from the bubble,” Sanford told the press. He had “profound frustrations” in regard to the stimulus package, in which a state court recently forced him to accept funds that he had wanted to reject. Despite disapproval from people within his own party at a state level over the stimulus funds, he claims that it was “not for a further political office.”
In the press conference Governor Sanford spent over three or four minutes apologizing to people without saying what he was apologizing for, although it was fairly obvious. “I’ve let down a lot of people,” he said. “God’s law is indeed there to protect you from yourself.”
He claims that the relationship “began very innocently in just a casual e-mail back and forth.” The woman in question became a “dear, dear friend from Argentina.” When asked if he has broken off the relationship, he responded “no” and when asked if he was separated with his wife he said that “I don’t know how to define that.” Apparently his family knew about the affair before his trip to Argentina.
As the governor poses the question: “where do we go from here?” Indeed. He has resigned from the Republican Governor’s Association as their chairman. Why should he leave it at that? There is a consequence for claiming to be morally superior to others. Your (supposedly) higher standards require higher punishment. Based on Governor Sanford’s history of criticizing President Clinton and calling for his impeachment, he has a duty to resign. Not just for the hypocrisy. He neglected his duties as governor, misled his staff and the people of South Carolina for his own selfish desires.
The Wall Street Journal (not exactly a liberal newspaper) has a chart on their website detailing the job creation under each Republican and Democratic president of the past 50+ years. What’s not surprising? Democrats create jobs while Republicans do the opposite. According to the WSJ’s numbers (which come from the LaborDepartment), every Democratic president that followed a Republican created more jobs than his predecessor did. At the same time, every Republican that followed a Democrat created fewer jobs than his predecessor. Also not surprising – George W. Bush was the worst president in job creation since the Labor Department started keeping track of these numbers.
Courtesy of DailyKos
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record
Maybe Hillary Clinton and John McCain should become running mates? Not only are they using the same talking points against Obama on the campaign trail, they’re proposing the same plans! Weeks after John McCain announced a plan to cut an 18 cent gasoline tax that would do little to save people money on $4 gasoline, Hillary Clinton outlined the exact same program.
The problem? All of the pandering does little to save consumers money, and may actually result in even HIGHER gas prices. Anyone who has a basic understanding of economics would know that higher demand means higher prices. So by eliminating the 18 cent gasoline tax, demand would rise and so will price. The result: oil companies will make more money at the expense of our highways and consumers.
What else is wrong with the Hillary/McCain proposal? It would cost the federal government an estimated $9 billion over the 3 months that the “gas tax holiday” would occur. Not only would we not be repairing our highways over the summer, we would be putting our entire infrastructure at risk. The bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last year proves we can not afford either Hillary or McCain to be president. It also would result in an estimated 300,000 job losses. So much for jump starting our economy, Hillary.
The race for the Democratic nomination is coming to a close. As the likely nominee, Barack Obama leads in every possible metric: popular vote, delegate count, number of states won, number of primaries won, and number of caucuses won. World War I was dubbed “The War to End All Wars”. Indiana is shaping up to be the “Primary to End All Primaries”… at least for the 2008 election season.
The reason I say that is because without the states of Indiana and North Carolina, it is not possible for Hillary Clinton to catch up in either the delegate count (for which she trails him by roughly 150 elected delegates) or the popular vote (which he leads by 500,000). If the polls are any indication, Hillary is looking to lose North Carolina by upwards of 150,000, which will erase the gains she made from winning Pennsylvania.
As such, Indiana is seen as a “tie-breaker”. No matter the outcome of the Indiana primary, Obama will lead in the popular vote and delegate count. Indiana and North Carolina (the 15th largest and 10th largest states, respectively) are the last major states to vote. After these two primaries on May 6, there are only small states with comparatively low populations: Kentucky (26th), Oregon (27th), West Virginia (37th), Montana (44th) and South Dakota (46th). Obama is favored in the second largest of these, Oregon, and the smallest two, Montana and South Dakota. Hillary will only gain a negligible amount of popular votes and delegates in these states.
Hillary’s last best hopes were in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. Winning Indiana is not sufficient enough to do much, considering Obama’s win in North Carolina will come from a slightly larger state and with a much higher percentage of the vote. However, the polls in Indiana have Obama up anyway. Four recent polls had Obama up between 1 and 5 percent. He even was beating John McCain, according to an Indianapolis Star poll, in a state that hasn’t voted for a Democrat since 1964!
There are several reasons why Obama should be favored to win Indiana. First, Obama has never lost a state that borders Illinois. He won Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri by varying amounts of 1% to 17%. The second advantage that he has in Indiana is the number of black voters and where they are concentrated. While the percentage is smaller than Ohio and Pennsylvania, they will remain a key component of any victory. The third Obama advantage comes from the most impressive part of his campaign: his ability to motivate young voters.
1. Chicago spill-over: The biggest advantage Obama has in Indiana is the spill-over affect of his homestate and border state, Illinois. Northwest Indiana is an extension of Chicago, included by the U.S. Census as part of the metropolitan area reaching from Wisconsin to Michigan City, Indiana in LaPorte County (three counties to the east of the Illinois border).
Obama should carry the three Chicago suburban counties of Lake (Gary, Hammond), Porter (Portage) and LaPorte (Michigan City, LaPorte) with heavy turnout from African Americans, young and liberal voters. The demographics in this part of the state favor him heavily, and should easily counter more rural (and less populated) areas that will favor Hillary. The Chicago media market has influence in this part of the state.
The fourth county that will undoubtedly be affected by Chicago influence is St. Joseph County. This includes South Bend, Mishawaka and Notre Dame. While St. Joseph County is not technically part of the Chicago metropolitan area (it is outside of it by about 30 miles), St. Joseph County is safely inside Chicago’s sphere of economic, media and political influence. Combined, these four “Chicago spill-over” counties of Indiana make up a full 1/6 of the state’s population at an approximately 1,006,000. St. Joseph County will also be included in two other Obama advantage regions detailed below.
2. The black vote: Since blacks are so heavily Democrat, they will make up a larger percent of the primary electorate than their overall percent of the state’s population. In other words, even though blacks make up roughly 12% of St. Joseph County, they will probably make up about 20% of the vote in the Democratic primary. Lake County, which includes Gary and Hammond, has a surprisingly low black population considering the stereotypes (although still significant). 25% of Lake County’s nearly 500,000 residents are African American. Marion County will be the single largest county where Obama will get his votes. 24% of its nearly 900,000 residents are African American.
3. College towns: Despite widespread belief that Indiana is a farm state, most of its 6.3 million residents live in cities and towns. It also has an above-average number of high school and college graduates in the United States. Many of these towns are lifted up by large numbers of college students from in and out of state, as well as international students. Again, this is an Obama advantage. Obama tends to do better in states where voters are more educated.
Obama will win the college towns of Bloomington (IU – 40,000 students), West Lafayette (Purdue – 40,000 students), Muncie (Ball State – 20,000 students), Indianapolis (Butler – 5,000 students; IUPUI – 30,000 students), and South Bend (Notre Dame – 12,000 students; IUSB – 7,500 students). Indiana also has an extensive community college system known as Ivy Tech which accounts for 110,000 students across 23 campuses.
