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Friday, October 22, 2004

The candidate who cried "wolf". 

Bush-Cheney 04 is now launching a new ad called "Wolves", :
the AP says the spot is, "reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's 'Bear' ad that was credited with framing the 1984 race, (and) shows a dense forest from above. Scurrying is heard as the camera plunges deeper into the woods and pans sunlight-speckled trees. Shadows move through the brush before animals are seen amid the forest. Then, the ad reveals the type of animal: a pack of wolves rest on a hill. As the commercial closes, the cunning and ruthless predators stir, crawling toward the camera."
How ironic that BC04 would literally cry "wolf", after having done so metaphorically for months now, with their politically-motivated and politically-timed terror alerts.

The Democrats are responding with eagles and ostriches; according to ABC News, the DNC ad states: "The eagle sours high above the earth; the ostrich buries its head in the sand. The eagle knows when it's time to change course; the ostrich just stands in its place. Given these challenging times, shouldn't we be the eagle again?"

I say the Democrats could run a couple of other animal response ads:

"Chimps", in which a bunch of chimps (made up to resemble Bush, Cheney et al) sitting around a table with a map of the middle east on the wall starting throwing their feces at it, with the feces landing on Iraq, while a large gorilla (with an Osama beard) gets away and runs out the door.

The tagline could say "While President Bush and his cronies monkeyed around with our national security, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda got away" or something like that.

(I suppose to get it aired, they'd have to substitute tomatoes or something for feces, although it wouldn't be as appropriate).

Or they could hire Joe Flaherty to reprise his Count Floyd character. They could show an excerpt from "Wolves" and Count Floyd would howl and go "oooh..isn't that scary, kids?" and then say, "but not as scary as what George W. Bush has done to this country, etc. etc."

Oh well, perhaps Bush and Kerry should schedule a fourth debate, to be shown exclusively on Animal Planet.



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Thursday, October 21, 2004

Just voted in Florida. 

It's an activity that most of the political world has been obsessing about, so I figured I'd mention it. It's nice to have the early voting option, and comforting to know that no matter what happens between now and Nov 2, my vote will have counted. At least I think it will - I am in Florida, after all.

Most of you are probably aware of this, but thanks to the touch-screen voting, it's nearly impossible to accidentally undervote. I purposely did not cast a ballot for my Republican US House Rep, Mike Billirakis, who ran unopposed. When I finished making my choices, a review screen came up listing my choices, with the House race in bold red letters indicating I hadn't made a selection. When I selected "OK" on this page, I received another "are you sure?" page noting that I had not voted in all the races.
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Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Funniest. Site. Ever. 

Everyone loves to type LOL, but folks at a computer screen rarely actually laugh out loud. At least I know I don't. But I actually did when I came across this site. And make sure you check out the options on the pull-down menus.
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Early election prediction time. 

I'm still proud of my election-eve prediction in 2000 (Gore 48.4, Bush 48.2, Nader 2.8 - actual numbers Gore 48.4, Bush 47.9, Nader 2.7), which can be documented here and here. I only was wrong on three states in the EC (I had NM and WV in the wrong columns, but they were a wash), giving Gore a 271-267 win (my second post linked got the EC math wrong when I flipped TN & IA), with the key difference being I had New Hampshire going to Gore and not Bush, which meant Bush won 271-267. (Technically, Bush won 271-266, as one of the DC electors abstained in protest). Even my comment about absentee ballots putting Bush over the top in Florida seemed eerily prescient. I should have gone to the track that day.

Anyway, the odds are that I won't come that close to accurately predicting the outcome again, but that won't stop me from trying, some 13 days out. So here goes:

Popular vote:

Kerry 50.2
Bush 48.3
Nader 0.9
Others 0.6

Electoral College:

First off, thanks to reapportionment, the states Bush won in 2000 would give him a 278-260 edge. These states will change from Bush to Kerry in 2004: Florida 27, Ohio 20, and New Hampshire 4, giving Kerry a 311-227 Electoral College win. I do not see Bush picking up any Gore 2000 states.

Based on the popular vote spread above, I may be a bit conservative with Kerry's total, as I'm also tempted to add Nevada to Kerry's list, worth another 5 votes. Other states I would not be shocked to see go Kerry's way: West Virginia, Virginia, and Colorado, although I think CO is trending a bit away from him now. If a Kerry tsunami hits the polls, I could also see him nabbing Arizona, North Carolina and even perhaps Missouri and/or Tennessee.

In the best-case Bush scenario that I see, he could end up with a near-tie (or even slight win) in the popular vote, and hold on to Florida. He might poach Iowa from Kerry as well. But this would make it 277-261 Kerry, which is why I think it's more likely that Bush wins the popular vote and Kerry wins the College, rather than the other way around.

I think Pennsylvania is solidly in Kerry's column, and Ohio is all but there as well. Bush is polling a consistent 47 in Ohio, and Nader is not on the ballot. Florida is truly up in the air at this point, but it probably doesn't matter.
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2002 is not evidence of a weakening Incumbent Rule. 

Never before have the voter preference polls been more scrutinized than this year, thanks to the convergence of three factors: the explosion of political analysis on the internet, the increased interest in this year's election, and of course, the very close nature of this year's race.

One of the "rules" of polling that has received a lot of attention lately is the "Incumbent Rule". Put simply, because undecided voters historically break in large numbers away from the incumbent, the polling number to look at is not the margin between the incumbent and the challenger, but rather the percentage of the vote the incumbent is receiving in the poll. There's a logical sense to this, in that voters are familiar with the incumbent (especially an incumbent President), and have strong opinions of him (or her). On the other hand, the challenger is usually more of an unknown, so there's a natural hesitancy to strongly declare support for him. This results in incumbents typically ending up within a range of +1 to -3 in their final vote percentage relative to their final polling number. To really fully grasp the dynamic here, I urge you to read this piece by "The Mystery Pollster", a must-read blog for anyone who follows the polls.

Put in the context of this race, polls that show Bush ahead of Kerry, say 47-44, are actually bad news for Bush since he probably wouldn't end up with much more than 48%. And currently (with the exception of the flawed Gallup poll and a couple of others with questionable "likely voter" screens) Bush is polling in the 46-48 range despite being level or slightly ahead of Kerry.

This well-established polling rule has caused quite a few Republicans heartburn lately, and they've yet to refute the theory convincingly. Their only hope seems to be Bush's favorite mantra, that "9/11 changed everything". And as evidence of this change, they point to the unexpected (by the polls) Republican success in the 2002 mid-term elections. Here is one example and here is another.

But there are several reasons why 2002 doesn't have predictive value for 2004:

1. 9/11 was barely a year before the 2002 elections. It's been over three years now.

2. The election took place during the run-up to removing Saddam. The Republicans ran on this issue, as well as 9/11, and gee, who wouldn't want Saddam out of power? Of course, now we know full well the cost of removing Saddam, in terms of American lives lost, billions spent, and America's diminished prestige in the world.

3. Related to #2, the Democratic turnout was depressed, as the base was demoralized by the Democrats in Congress who were so eager to get the issue of Iraq "off the table" in the final weeks of the election that they gave Bush a blank check for going to war without much dissent. The theory was that getting an Iraq resolution out of the way in early October that year would allow the Dems to run on economic issues. It did, but their base was demoralized by the Iraq cave-in, and stayed home. And it was this turn of events that led to the rise of Howard Dean in 2003, whose success led to the Democratic Party being more aggressive on the issues, and which led to the energization of the Democratic grass roots for 2004.

4. Mid-term elections always draw a disproportionately conservative electorate relative to presidential elections, which of course favors Republicans.

I don't doubt Republicans were more on their game in GOTV (Get out the vote) efforts in 2002 after they were whipsawed in 2000. But simply attributing the disparity in Republican vs Democratic turnout that year to their GOTV efforts and ignoring the factors set forth above is ludicrous.

The bottom line is that 2002 is no template for 2004. 2000 may not be either, but it's more of an apples-to-apples comparison than 2002 is. And until the Incumbent Rule is proven wrong, it remains a valid way of looking at the 2004 election.
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Quote of the day. 

"This president likes to say he's a leader. Mr. President, look behind you. There's no one there. It's not leadership if no one follows."

John Kerry, today in Waterloo, Iowa.

Although I still like the line he used the other day in a Tampa rally, in my neck of the woods: "You know, if Halliburton made flu vaccines, you'd have more flu shots here in Florida than you do oranges."

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The kids are alright. 

Stop the presses, call off the campaigns, the presidential race is over.

Join me now in song: "I believe the children are the future/teach them well and let them lead the way/show them all the beauty they possess inside".

But just don't let them read this.
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Bush has another Intel problem. 

Bush has always had a problem with intel (both his own and that provided to him), but now he has a problem with Intel. More specifically, Andy Grove, Intel's CEO and tech titan. To paraphrase James Carville, it's the flu shots, stupid:
“The flu vaccine — this is where I get rabid,” Grove says in his deep, rumbling voice.

He blames the Bush administration for a colossal bungle. As nearly everyone now knows, the country relied on just two suppliers for flu vaccine, Chiron and Aventis Pasteur. This month, British authorities impounded the 48 million doses Chiron made in its Liverpool, England, factory, saying they are contaminated.

That's left the USA with a severe shortage and ignited a flu vaccine craze. People are desperately joining queues in ways not seen since Tickle Me Elmo first went on sale. Michigan and four other states have issued emergency orders carrying penalties of up to six months in jail for health officials who give a flu shot to anyone not considered a high-risk priority.

.....

But, actually, without vaccinations the flu would contribute to 51,000 deaths a year in the USA, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Sept. 11 attacks killed 3,030.

And here's what gets Grove, author of the management book Only the Paranoid Survive, to his boiling point. When it comes to bioterror or epidemics, “You look to government to protect you from that, and the government looks to the science and technology infrastructure,” Grove says. “And this government can't even prevent an ordinary failure of the business market for causing probably more American deaths than terrorism. It is a manifestation of a government that has no appreciation for science and technology.”
Grove goes on to hit Bush on stem cell reasearch and his general aversion to scientific concerns.

Kerry may have a winning trifecta of issues in the last days of the campaign - the flu vaccine issue, the possible military draft, and Bush's expensive plan to partially privatize Social Security. Is Kerry demagoging a bit on these issues? Sure. But no more so (and cumulatively less so) than Bush and Cheney have demagoged issue after issue, mostly relating to the fear of terrorism. It's no time for unilateral disarmament in the political wars, and while I'd prefer for there to be serious, sober debate on the issues, it ain't happening now (and probably won't in my lifetime).
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I'm back (kinda sorta). 

At least for a little while. A few things have caught my eye that I feel like opining about, and I'm trying to keep the number of NBC (No Bruce Content) threads I start on RMAS in check. I make no promises to be prolific, but those of you who read regularly in the past might want to periodically check in between now and the aftermath of the election.
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