I was surprised to see the official Obama store offering a somewhat in-your-face item of campaign gear, the Still a BFD Tee.
Political campaigns don’t usually want to be seen to be selling anything even a tiny bit edgy. Guess someone there has a sense of humor.
(Thanks to DH for showing it to me.)
David Brin writes excellent science fiction, and now he’s branched out in to fantasy — political fanatsy: Why the Candidates Should (But Won’t) Stipulate.
I just wish they’d stipulate some basic facts and statistics so we could have real debates about policies based on consistent, real-dollar numbers. But that makes scary ads a lot harder.
Meanwhile, I look forward to Brin’s suggestions as to how we apply Uplift to the radical elements that have taken over the GOP.
As someone who thinks politics is about stuff worth being passionate about, I probably ought to like this over-the-top pro-Obama video starring Samuel L. Jackson more than I do.
Don’t play this in an environment where people are likely to be offended by a common Anglo-Saxon vulgarism.
A part of my discomfort is getting a child actor to swear for the camera. But a bigger part is that I happened to see the video shortly after seeing Conor Friedersdorf’s Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama.
I am voting for Obama, because it’s clear that Romney would be so much worse — even on torture issues (how can we even be having this debate?). But along with some real bits of good (half a loaf on health care, saving the auto industry, lattter-day conversion to gay rights) Obama has done real and long-lasting evil to international law (drone killings of foreigners) and domestic civil rights (drone killings of US citizens, excessive invocation of the so-called state secrets privilege in court cases about vacuum-cleaner wiretapping, arguing for vastly excessive Presidential powers, and refusing to prosecute torturers and other lawbreakers in the former administration 1). So I agree this election matters. Conceivably as much as Gore-Bush did. But it’s harder to summon the passion about it when the lesser of two evils is such a mixed bag on the issues I care about.
I will say one thing for the video, though. I laughed at the end when I saw who paid for it. I wasn’t expecting that.
Although the picture is not entirely clear, it does appear that Barack Obama is drawing ahead in national and especially swing state polls. But can we trust the polls?
Before the 2008 election, there were numerous discussions of the Bradley effect — the name given to the propensity of black candidates to get fewer votes than their pre-election poll numbers would predict.
One hypothesis explaining the discrepancy was that some white voters were reluctant to tell pollsters they were going to vote against the black candidate, but did so in the privacy of the voting booth.
On the other hand, there were also suggestions of a “reverse Bradley effect” in which black candidates did better than polls suggested in states with many (over 25%) black voters. Explanations included the reluctance of black voters to tell pollsters who they were voting for, and under-sampling errors in the polls.
According to Wikipedia, the 2008 Presidential election did not provide evidence of a Bradley effect, but did provide some limited evidence of a reverse Bradley effect. This may be why talk of the Bradley effect is off the table.
But 2008 was seen as an historic moment: electing a black President would not end racism but it would be a big marker en route to that goal, and decisive statement about how the US had changed since 1960, not to mention 1860. Now we’ve been there, done that. Does that re-open the door to the Bradley effect? Maybe not. Maybe we’re past all that. But I don’t think that one data point proves it.
How Romney Packed The Univision Forum:
Salinas told BuzzFeed that tickets for each forum were divided between the network, the respective campaigns, and the University of Miami (which hosted the events) — and she said both campaigns initially agreed to keep the audience comprised mostly of students, in keeping with the events’ education theme.
But after exhausting the few conservative groups on campus, the Romney camp realized there weren’t enough sympathetic students to fill the stands on their night — so they told the network and university that if they weren’t given an exemption to the students-only rule, they might have to “reschedule.”
The organizers relented. One Democrat with ties to the Obama campaign noted that Rudy Fernandez, the university official charged with coordinating the forums, is a member of Romney’s Hispanic steering committee. Fernandez did not respond to BuzzFeed’s questions about whether he gave preferential treatment to Romney’s campaign.
In any case, Romney’s team was allowed to bus in rowdy activists from around southern Florida in order to fill the extra seats at their town hall.
Obama’s campaign, meanwhile, stuck to the original parameters and allowed a large chunk of the tickets to be distributed to interested students on campus. The result was a quiet, well-behaved crowd — and a lot of no-shows. Minutes before Obama’s forum was to begin, producers began frantically directing university staff and volunteers to sit in the empty seats.
From a national campaign view, should we understand this as an example of the Romney campaign’s superior tactical skill, as showing Team Obama’s greater honesty, or both?
From a local perspective, I think Mr. Rudy Fernandez, or whoever else was in charge, should be willing to answer reasonable questions from the press about the logistics and whether the University was even-handed or not.
(And I guess I should have gone to see Obama even though Univision wouldn’t give me a press pass.)
After leaving me alone for about a month, 1 the robocall from Independent Voter Research struck again during dinner. Male voice, same script as before, except they asked about the Florida Senate race too. Candidates for both President and Senate were presented in alphabetical order by last name, so Obama was 1, Romney 2 but Mack was 1 and Nelson was 2.
I wonder if they will call again tomorrow?
Previously: The (866) 540-3140 Mystery (8/15/12) and “Independent Voter Research” Mystery Continues (9/12/12).
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