This year one of my entries - the article on "Seven Reasons NOT to Invade Iran" - had reached Finalist status qualifying for making the RPLA Awards (Gold first, Silver second, Bronze third), and last night the FWA held their awards ceremony (alas, due to pandemic this was not done at a fancy banquet with artistically done desserts but online, so ice cream at home was served).
Ta-da.
It always feels good to get recognized - especially by peers to whom I am grateful - for your creative endeavors.
So now, I hold dear the award won, and move on to writing the next blog article... about the heartbreak of having a beloved car model hijacked by Michigan gun nuts. DAMN THEM. Ahem, excuse me... going for the Gold this time (owstophittingme).
Okay, so everybody likes to make lists during elections.
Here's my list - brief and arbitrary and totally biased - of how the 2020 Democratic primary nominees should be ranked going into the next election cycle.
Big Hitters
(The front-runners who stayed in place and those who impressed)
Joe Biden
Kamala Harris
Bernie Sanders
Elizabeth Warren
Dark Horses
(The ones who did better than expected or at least didn't embarrass themselves onstage)
Cory Booker
Pete Buttigieg
Julian Castro
Should Plan On the VP Short List
(The ones who showed competence but not enough oomph to get past the main leads, if they were even allowed to show at the first round in the first place)
Michael Bennet
Steve Bullock
Kirsten Gillibrand
Jay Inslee
Amy Klobucher
Tim Ryan
Should Drop Out Now and Run for Governor or the Senate
or Something
(Beto in particular is having a Rick Perry moment on the national stage. Just... go back and win Texas instead, okay?)
Bill DeBlasio
John Hickenlooper
Beto O'Rourke
Joe Sestack
Eric Swalwell
Should Drop Out of The Party and Go Work for Fox Not-News as the Token Fake Democrat
John Delaney
Seth Moulton
Tulsi Gabbard
Seriously, Why You Here???
Mike Gravel
Wayne Messum
Marianne Williamson
Andrew Yang
I'll be making Honest Bumper Stickers to reflect this better. Soon. Maybe.
Did you all survive? Are you all okay? Are you all going to cope with the mournful awareness that Jon Stewart is no longer here to save us from ourselves?
...oh, you're here for the other thing. Hold on, switching gears...
To the 3200-plus survivors of this blog's drinking game, I hope you are all okay and that the night wasn't as bad for your livers and nervous systems as I feared it would be. I hope you drank responsibly and sobered up by replaying the Canadian election debates on YouTube (yeah, weird timing eh?)
In hindsight, I missed a few possible zingers worthy of a drink shot. I completely failed to realize the Fox Not-News moderators would bring GOD - "Did you receive word from God on what to do?" - into the debate. Considering the emphasis on abortion last night, pandering to the religious base should have been a given.
Anyway, I digress. Let's get to the facts: who won the Republican Suck-Up To Fox August Debate of Sound and Fury?
Well, for starters the Aspirin / Hangover Cure industry won... /rimshot
Okay, okay. I'll settle down... sheesh...
First thing to note: the Republicans do not debate over matters in a rational or oratorical fashion, at least not anymore. The modern GOP debate - much like modern campaigning since the late 1960s - relies more on emotion than on logic. If a pundit / columnist / media observer thinks a candidate responded well by using facts, that is no guarantee that candidate won the argument or the night. The winner(s) is/are going to be the candidate(s) who made compelling emotional arguments or at least pandered well to the base on stirring up resentment and contempt.
Second thing to note: if you want notes, the Washington Postwrote up a transcript of the night, a handy reference tool to help highlight what was said and notice what wasn't.
Personally, I avoided directly watching the debate. Cowardly, perhaps. But as someone who DOES NOT drink, I would not have endured long the voices of certain candidates I now furiously despise. I would have honestly smashed the flatscreen TV in rage if I had spent more than ten seconds listening to either Jeb or Huck.
It was easier for me to track along with live-blogs and on Twitter, as the night progressed I was able to read responses and see by what was joked about or what created a "Oh GOD No" blast how the candidates were faring.
Just by my twitter feed alone, I determined that Trump had an even night. Yes, he answered some pretty direct and harsh questions about his own brash persona. Yes, he did not have rational or reasonable answers for half the questions he took. But the twitter responses implied he bulldogged through the night, remained relatively unflappable. For Trump, that's a win (then again, when it's him it's always a win, and it's HUGE). And given how the general view of the audience was how Fox Not-News was going after Trump with a prison shiv for most of the night, Trump and his people are likely coming out aggrieved and angry at the cable network as part of the Establishment punting Trump to the curb.
As the twitter feed progressed, I could see which candidates were getting the most upticks - the more liked responses, or the most despised - in terms of announcing their presence with authority. The ones who were making any kind of impression period, which is what most of the low-tier candidates are in dire need of doing to gain traction in this crowded race.
The ones getting the positive reviews from the punditocracy I follow on Twitter were Rubio and Kasich. Kasich was getting described as the only serious adult in the room, someone acting and reacting with answers that made sense (if even he was sticking to the GOP agenda). Rubio was getting points on Twitter for poise and reasonableness (when immigration came up he shared in the groupthink against illegals but found room to argue for the legal immigrants, a tone clearly lacking in the otherwise hateful discussion). Just to note, the ones I follow on Twitter lean center-left, so that means these two may not have won over the Far Right base that much...
On the other side, Walker and Jeb Bush were getting hammered by the Tweetists. Walker came across the feed as underperforming, a little too quiet (meek would be too harsh a word). Jeb stumbled on a couple of questions and didn't deliver as many barbs: he was trying to act like the adult in the room (where Kasich was) but acted more milquetoast than concerned dad. In terms of emotional performance, Jeb failed: he showed little of the charisma and geniality his older brother excels at (remember, Dubya is a Passive-Positive and a guy who can work a room), nor any of the authoritarian reasonableness of his father (Bush the Elder as political enthusiast).
The overall impression from Twitter was that Jeb was uncomfortable on-stage: not a good sign.
For the other candidates, the Twitterrati I follow were less kind but that was to be expected because this group - Rand Paul, Huckabee, Cruz, Christie, Carson - tend towards the extremist positions that the people I follow can easily mock. Among them, the important thing was to feed the party base and in that count Huckabee and Cruz delivered the most blows. Huckabee pandered hard to the religious base - arguing for personhood rights to fetuses - and Cruz went in hard on war-mongering in the Middle East. Rand Paul made a few attempts to pummel Trump - where Trump punched back - and otherwise stuck to his libertarian script. From what I was following, Christie got beat up a few times and didn't impress. Carson did not make much of an impression across the Twitter feed, although the debate reviewers documented he got decent air-time.
That was just the twitter feed though. How did the actual Beltway media respond to who won and lost the night?
The New York has a round-up of select reviews per candidate:
Of the positive round-ups, Rubio and Kasich got consistent high votes. Among the Far Right pundits, the winners were Cruz, Huckabee and Christie, with Carson getting the Mister Congeniality award. Paul got pummeled, and Walker and Jeb were criticized for their underwhelming stage presences.
The overall impression of winners and losers, in my humble opinion?
Given how the debate focused on pretty divisive issues - abortion, immigration, slashing Social Security and social safety nets, the drumbeat for more war - the overall loser was the Republican Party. There was nothing in last night's debate that would help appeal the GOP towards the moderate voters needed for the general election.
When polling Americans on their political priorities - following this Gallup poll - the highest numbers are on the economy, on employment in general, with wages and income inequality somewhere in the mix. But when you look at the debate's transcripts, when you look at the reviews and the twitter feed, you'll notice the candidates spent little time on those topics.
click to zoom, I hope
And what were the biggest topics last night? Going after illegal immigrants big time, an issue bound to drive Latino voters straight into the arms of the Democrats in 2016. The second big issue was abortion, an issue on the Gallup poll that DOES NOT EVEN EARN A PERCENTAGE POINT, it's not even a Top 10 issue for a majority of Americans and yet the Republicans are treating it (again) like a major issue: all because the Far Right religious base has gotten tired of getting shunted to the side on abortion and are finally pushing the party leaders to answer them.
Problem is, just look at that poll: most Americans don't CARE for abortion as an issue because in a lot of ways they've already settled on it. Most don't like abortion in practice, but recognize there is a need for it in specific cases. That's why the safe spot on abortion is the "safe legal but rare" position: it acknowledges restrictions on the procedure but allows it to exist. The Far Right - stuck on absolutes as necessity, and viewing abortion as a cardinal sin equal to genocide - can't accept it... so they're pushing hard on this issue in a way most Americans won't like. This is going to bite the Republican Party on its collective ass if the Far Right succeeds in making this a Top Three issue: this is why I view the GOP as the biggest loser in last night's showing.
In terms of the candidates themselves, how I would rank them (as a moderate, yes Eric I am one shut up) and how the Republican voting base would rank them as winners down to losers of the night:
My Take
Likely GOP Voter Base’s Take
Kasich
Trump
Rubio
Cruz
Trump
Huckabee
Cruz
Walker
Walker
Christie
Paul
Carson
Carson
Rubio
Christie
Paul
Bush
Kasich
Huckabee
Bush
Jeb! just really didn't win over a lot of people, neither pundits nor pollsters.
What can I say? I'm swamped with getting more NaNoWriMo done...
Losers: I mentioned them in an earlier post. The elite pundit class - especially the conservative ones who came to power during the Reagan administration 30 years ago - really got their butts kicked for publicly anointing their preferred candidate Romney when the stats said otherwise, and even going out of their way to mock the statisticians who focused more on polling results and provable trends.
Winners: Nate Silver and every other statistician who worked on the numbers, stuck to the arithmetic, and proved themselves far more accurate than the pundits who preferred "narrative" and "gut instinct" over facts. Arithmetic, bitches.
Next, the guy making xkcd will chart with unnerving accuracy the flow of Karl Rove's tears.
Winner: the Word of the Year, thanks to Bill Clinton and Nate Silver. Arithmetic.
Loser: Karl Rove. The "genius" for the Republicans, the man responsible for coming up with a winning strategy to get George W. into the White House, exposed by his own network on Election Night being completely out-of-touch YET AGAIN. Why Rove keeps getting treated as a genius is beyond me: his game-plan of playing to the base and do just the bare minimum to get enough independent voters to side with you (the "50-plus-one" plan) is half-lazy, half-reckless, and it relies too much on luck and a broken electoral system. Outside of 2004, when Rove tricked the Democratic leadership to back a weak candidate in Kerry (vulnerable to attacks on his military record and pro-Iraq War vote), this guy really didn't win anything (if it weren't for the Butterfly Ballot in Palm Beach County, Gore would have won Florida and the 2000 election). Rove's one true skill seems to be bluffing. Too bad Obama's a better game-player than Rove, eh?
Losers: The vote suppressors. In battleground states where the Republicans held control of the state legislatures and governorships, there were clear and open attempts to suppress minority, poor, and college-age voters in a blatant and coordinated effort to weaken the turnout of Obama's voting base. Like Pennsylvania. Like Ohio, repeatedly by a Sec of State John Husted who kept defying the demands of the courts (if anyone needs to see jail time over this, it's Husted). Like Florida, where Rick "Yes, I HATE This Guy" Scott tried to slash the voter rolls claiming non-existent fraud, and cut back on early voting days in an effort to cut back voter turnout in key counties like Dade and Broward. Good news is, it looks post-election that their efforts were for naught. In fact, by pushing so hard so publicly to disenfranchise voters across the nation, it seemed to have the effect of getting even more minority voters and college-age voters out to vote... more voters 2012 than there were in 2008.
Winners: Obama's ground game crew. Every volunteer, every campaign office organizer, every person who manned the phones and canvassed the neighborhoods and registered the voters. This was the antidote to the vote suppression efforts. If the Republicans wanted to suppress the vote: make sure there were enough registered voters to overwhelm any suppression. If the Republicans wanted to cut back on voting hours and early voting days: get more people to vote with absentee ballots that get around the restrictions. If long lines were gonna form up at the precincts: make sure the voters know that they have the right to stay in line even past closing hours. It worked.
Losers: Every Republican candidate who wanted to ban abortion and dismissed rape as an issue, especially the Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock. They got their asses handed to them and kept the Senate safe for the Democratic Party. As a side observation, a major Florida amendment ballot tried to limit abortion access to where the only exception allowed was "the health of the mother". Yes, the ballot DID NOT have an exception to rape/incest, which happen to be very popular exceptions for a vast majority of Americans (even the ones who profess being pro-life: even they know how serious the problem rape and incest are). Result: the ballot went down to defeat by a solid majority. Lesson to the GOP: DO NOT DISMISS RAPE AS A SERIOUS ISSUE.
Losers: Rick Scott. Thanks to his voter suppression efforts, our state was even more ill-prepared for the election turnout than in 2000, making us more a laughing stock than we were back then. Also, 8 of the 11 amendment ballots he and his legislative buddies pushed onto the election suffered major rejections, especially the amendment that tried to Court-Pack the state judicial system to make it more partisan (the amendments that passed were three tax exemption ballots for veterans, widows of veterans and first responders, and low-income seniors: I argued against them mainly because of their origins, the revenue cuts may prove minor given how these changes benefit a slight minority of the populus). Better still, the effort to get three State Court Justices voted off the bench - a clear attempt at forcing vacancies that Scott could fill with cronies - came back with all three judges getting 3/4ths of the vote to RETAIN, a huge slap in the face to Scott.
In short: BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
The big talk I'm hearing right now is how to kick Scott out of office in 2014 when he comes up for re-election. If the state Republicans had any sense, they'd look at Scott's poor polling and run a viable primary candidate to kick him out before the whole state does...
Winners: Marriage equality advocates and Pot Legalization advocates. Two states (almost three, I think one state is still counting ballots) voted in FAVOR of gay marriage rights, while one more state voted down a ballot that would have overturned a legislative pro-gay law. Two states voted to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, a huge salvo in the fight to end a broken and ineffective War on Drugs.
Winners: Women. Women candidates won elective office in huge numbers across the nation at both the state and federal level. Lemme double check, but I think nine women won Senate seats this election, a huge uptick in gender representation in the Upper House of Congress. Guess what, pundits? There was a War on Women, and the women fought back.
Losers: Senate Republicans. Not only did they fail dramatically to garner a slim hold of that wing of Congress - which would have combined with their solid hold of the House - but they lost major leadership from either retirement (Kyl, indy Senator Lieberman) or losing to more liberal Democratic candidates (Scott Brown losing to Elizabeth Warren). The incoming Democratic Senate make-up is going to be more liberal than ever before, and more than likely to weaken if not eliminate the Cloture rule (and by extension the filibuster), the biggest weapon the Senate GOP had in obstructing Obama's policy agendas.
Winner: Me. The blog traffic to my site bounced from single-digits to the hundreds thanks to my article on the Florida 2012 amendment ballots. Especially a huge crowd of viewers conducting search terms from Japan. Wow. Now, if I can get you new viewers to consider the fine possibility of buying my ebooks... wait, don't go! Sniff, it gets so lonely here...
Loser: Well, yeah, had to mention him sooner or later. Hi, Mitt.
Winner: Barack Obama.
And now, with his Anger Translator Luther:
Luther: "“I mean, you know how much money they spent trying to get rid of this? Millions, son! I said millions!"
Losers: Speaking of those millions, the billionaires who shipped tens of not hundreds of millions of dollars into unregulated SuperPACs in an effort to make Obama a One-Termer. What you all get for your value, dawgs? NOTHING! ALL THAT MONEY WASTED BWHAHAHAHA!
Instead of being afraid of how Citizens United may make it easier for the wealthy to win elections - which 2012 proved the opposite - there needs to be a genuine investigation into what happened with all that money that got funneled into Karl Rove's and others' SuperPACs. There seems to be a lot of waste happening there: not many ads made, almost no ground game like how Obama organized, a great number of reports of how the people "managing" the SuperPACs walked off with huge salaries and bonuses they paid themselves... I'm serious. Campaigning has turned into a BILLION-DOLLAR industry and there's little oversight: it's the perfect scam for con artists...
Winners: every person in Dade and Broward Counties who stood in line for 7,8, God love 'em probably 10 hours on Election Night. The Obama campaign made sure the word got out that the law ensures any person standing in line at the Closing time (7 pm EST) had the right to stay in line and get their vote in, no matter how late it got past that. This is democracy in action. While it was a damn shame they had to wait so long, God Bless Them for doing so. And next time, let's make it easier on them to get their votes in and counted.
