Fixing Florida and Michigan

On May 31st the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee will decide what to do with contested Florida and Michigan delegations. The draconian move of stripping all their delegates created a political nightmare for the Democratic party. If they had been smart they would have followed the Republican party's lead and only deducted half of their delegates.

It would be unfair to fully honor the results of the uncontested elections since no one was allowed to campaign, but it is impossible to have a new vote. A solution must be found using the results of the renegade primaries. I recommend instating the pledged delegations as they now stand but giving each delegate only half a vote. The DNC already uses half-vote delegates. (Delegates from American territories like American Samoa, Guam, and Puerto Rico only get half a vote.)

The voters in Florida and Michigan should not be punished, but the party officials who caused this nightmare should. In addition to instating the pledge delegates, the DNC should strip the states of all their superdelegates. It was the elected officials and party leaders in Florida and Michigan who violated the rules, and they should pay the price for it.

Righting the Ship

The Republican party is in bad shape. They recently lost 3 special elections in very Republican districts and are set to lose dozens of House and Senate seats. The question is how to right the ship. The party needs to turn back to its philosophical roots but not lose sight of the future. Here is my humble advice.

1) Clean your House

The Republican party has promoted itself as the party of family, God, and morality. Yet a series of sexual and political scandals have turned it into the party of hypocrisy. To gain its moral high ground the GOP needs to adopt clear standards and a zero tolerance policy. The short-term gain of allowing a disgraced congressman to keep his seat is not worth the long-term damage to the brand. The Republican leadership should loudly and publicly force convicted members like Vito Fossella and Larry Craig out of office.

2) Neo-Conservatism is the Antithesis of Conservatism

The Neo-Conservative movement has highjacked the Republican party and flown it into a mountain. War is too incredibly costly to co-exist with conservatism. You can't shrink the federal budget or cut taxes if you are spending trillions on war and weaponry. The GOP needs to go back to its small government roots, and aggressive Neo-Conservatism just can't be part of it.

The Republican party can still be committed to the goal of spreading freedom with a combination of tax incentives, tariffs, embargoes, and strategic military strikes. We should have free trade agreements with countries like Colombia and India which are moving towards democracy and not with totalitarian nations like China and Saudi Arabia. But preemptive wars and occupations are just too costly.

3) Cut the Pork

Earmarks are terrible. They are terrible for politics, terrible for accountability, and terrible for fiscal responsibility. The ballooning number of earmarks and the "Bridge to Nowhere" killed the GOP brand. They were a perfect example about how the Republican party lost its roots and its soul. Campaigning on the elimination of all earmarks would be a great way to show the base that you are listening.

4) Small Government Means Local Government

It should be the Republican ideology that it is best when a problem is solved at the lowest possible level. It is better when a problem is solved within a family than within a neighborhood, or within a town, a county, a state, or finally, the federal government. The message is: "The Democrats want the federal government to run your elementary schools; the Republicans want your local PTA in charge." The stated goal should not be so much to cut government services but to decentralize them.

The flipside is that the Republican party needs to tolerate it when states do things the national party does not like. Injecting the federal government into the medical marijuana issue or the gay marriage debate undercuts the whole Republican philosophy. It should not be a battle about what the federal government allows you to do, but about what the federal government is allowed to do.

5) Return to Realism

The GOP needs to once again be the party of speaking the cold hard truth. John McCain is well positioned to help the party in this regard. From the Iraq War we learned that a lie repeated enough will be believed, but not forever. Lying about weapons of mass destruction, war progress, and the economy has destroyed the Republican brand and made it look like a party of crazy old kooks.

6) Get on Board with Universal Healthcare

John McCain's healthcare plan is simply horrible. It may sound nice on paper but in the long run it would be a disaster. It doesn't matter how many tax credits you give or how many companies are competing in the market. If you have been diagnosed with a costly lifelong condition no insurance company will cover it if they can choose not to.

Healthcare is becoming a huge issue and will continue to grow in importance as the economy softens and healthcare costs soar. The USA is the only first world country with out a universal system, but it pays more per person than any other. The current system has failed, and reform will happen. It is time for the GOP to get on board and help shape the reform or be crushed by it. Germany, Switzerland, and Japan all have good market based universal healthcare systems which the GOP can model and champion.

A Bit of Comedy - Possible VP Picks (McCain edition)

McCain/Warner
John McCain and 81 year-old Senator John Warner
More Experience Than God

McCain/Jindal

John McCain and 36 year-old Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal

You want youth, here's your F-ing youth

(He should help to secure the very coveted Southern Roman Catholic Indian-American vote, since all 12 of them are part of Jindal's extended family).

McCain/Romney

John McCain and Former Governor Mitt Romney

Our Mutual Hatred Fuels Our Powers

(They would create a huge economic surge for the lagging food taster sector)

McCain/Cheney

John McCain and Vice President Dick Cheney

Stay the Course

or The Experience America does not Deserve

The Clinton Campaign is a Spoiled Child

Recently a lot of praise has been used to describe Hillary Clinton and her campaign. She has been called tough, strong, a fighter, a brawler, tenacious, determined, and gritty. Since May 6th she has continued to fight on, even though it is nearly impossible for her to win. And while she done some commendable things during this race, I have another way to describe her campaign's behavior: It is acting like a spoiled child.

Most pundits would be shocked and embarrassed if their children were acting like members of the Clinton campaign. What must not be forgotten is that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are supposed to be on the same team. They both should have the same goal: electing a Democrat in November (a goal Hillary Clinton seems to have forgotten).

Picture, if you will, the primary contest as a game of soccer and the Clinton Campaign as your child. They start the game with the attitude that they are entitled to win. When they starting losing they try to unfairly get the rules changed (wants Michigan and Florida to now count). With the game almost over, your child again and again attempts to claim victory even though they are down 4-7. They claim they should win because they had longer ball possession, blocked more penalty kicks, or scored more goals in the second half. They complain endlessly how the referees (the press) are being unfair. They lie repeatedly and use dirty ticks. With the game over, they ask their coach (the superdelegates) to overturn the score and declare them the winner anyway. And finally, they refuse to get off the field and shake hands with their opponents.

Hillary Clinton is not fighting for her life. She is not engaged in a suicidal last defense of the Maginot line to keep out the Nazis. She is in a contest against a member of her own party, a person who shares her ideology and goals for this country. There is nothing commendable about waging a scoured earth campaign against your own teammate. What we have been watching is not a tenacious fighter, but a spoiled child throwing a temper tantrum after losing fair and square.

Beat the Pollsters (NC: Obama wins 54% to 46%, IN: Clinton wins 53% to 47%)

Given that Democratic primary has been more about demographics than policy, I'm going to use past exit polls and demographic data to predict what will happen tomorrow. I suspect that my simple analysis could easily beat the large polling companies.

Let's start with North Carolina:

NC is 22% African American. In the rest of the south, the percentage of the Democratic electorate that is African American tends to be between 135%-196% greater than their overall share of the population. The average is 166%. If the trend holds I would suspect African-Americans will make up 36.5% of the electorate tomorrow.

State	AA% of Population	AA% of Electorate	Percent Increase
Georgia	30	51	170%
Virginia	20	30	150%
Louisiana	32	48	150%
Alabama	26	51	196%
Mississippi	37	50	135%
Tennessee	17	29	171%
South Carolina	29	55	190%

It has been reported that 40% of all early voting has been by African American. I read that the Obama campaign has made early voting a large part of their campaign efforts so I suspect the overall AA percentage of the Democratic electorate will be slightly less than 40%.

North Carolina is better educated and wealthier than Mississippi and Alabama but slightly less educated and poorer than Georgia. Obama got 26% of the white vote in Mississippi and Alabama but received 43% of the white vote in Georgia. Given the current tone of the campaign and the election trends, I suspect Obama should receive about 34% of the white vote in North Carolina. So here is my breakdown of how North Carolina will look tomorrow:

Vote	Overall	Clinton	Obama
Africian American	36%	10%	90%
White (and Others)	63%	66%	34%
Overall	100%	46%	54%

Headline: Obama Wins 54% to 46%

Next let's look at Indiana:

Indiana should be very similar to Pennsylvania and Ohio, which Clinton won by 10 points. All three are rust belt states and in all three Hillary Clinton has been endorsed by the most prominent statewide Democratic office holder.

Indiana is less educated than Ohio and Pennsylvania and has few African Americans. This is good for Hillary Clinton. The only positive demographic figure for Obama is that Indiana has fewer citizens over 65. I'm assuming these slight differences will balance out. Given all this, Hillary Clinton should win Indiana by about 10 points.

The wild card element is how much the Chicago's media market overlap into Northern Indiana should help Obama. I think the effect will be noticeable but not game changing. While Indianans should as a result "know" Obama better, Obama should be very recognizable figure to most voters after this long primary battle. I would be surprised if the proximity factor helped Obama pick up more than an extra 2-4% of the vote.

Headline: Clinton Wins Indiana 53% to 47%

The Gas Tax is Great

John McCain's and Hillary Clinton's plan to suspend the gas tax has been called everything from a "political ploy" to the "dumbest thing ever." The only thing it has not been called is a good idea. Why? Because the gas tax is great. It is shocking to hear a Republican attack the best and fairest tax in the country.

The gas tax is used to pay for the building and upkeep of our nation's roads and highways. If you don't drive a car, you are not using our highways; therefore, you aren't made to pay for something you don't use. If you drive a lot, creating a lot of wear and tear on our roads, you are made to pay your fair share.

For years this is how Republicans have been telling us they want taxes to work. The gas tax is fair, because the amount you pay is based on the amount to use. The gas tax is universal; no one-- not even criminals, drug dealers, or tax dodgers-- can get out of paying the gas tax. The gas tax is good because it discourages you from doing something which is bad for the air we breathe and bad for our health. And finally, the gas tax is simple. You don't need some huge IRS bureaucracy to monitor the gas tax. Instead of talking about suspending the gas tax we should be talking about how to make all our taxes more like the gas tax.