All Things Political, vol. 7

In this issue: The machine that is Hillary Clinton

So folks are starting to talk (and write) about Barack Obama's stagnating presidential campaign. Even in states where Obama once led, Clinton has slowly but surely eaten up his leads among black voters. This is interesting for about half a dozen reasons, but mostly because I don't think anyone in America would have believed an attractive black candidate could lose the black vote to a white woman.

If you ask my mother, it's because "she was married to the first black president." True enough. Then there's always the "he's not really black" line of thought. That's a separate post (that I'll probably never write). My theory: It's a combo. The name gets her in the door with black voters (when most white women would be left standing on the porch). Questions about Obama's blackness don't lose him votes, but they keep him from being able to take the black vote for granted, further opening the door for Hillary. His complete aversion of race politics exacerbates the effect, since he's essentially a black candidate who wants not to be thought of as a "black candidate," which black voters seem happy to oblige.

The instinct is understandable. Minority candidates are almost assumed to be race candidates until proven otherwise, something Hillary doesn't need to worry about, which is why she can explicity call out the American justice system for discriminating against blacks, while Barack is stuck trudging through his own rhetoric of We-ness, and racial problems that aren't about race.

So we have a white woman who parades her husband in front of black audiences like a walking "I Love Black People" sign, and a black man who does everything in his power to keep race out of his public politics. To cap it off, the former consistently gives performances like this one, which even her haters admit are damn near flawless. And the end result is that black voters, like other voters, judge the two not on race, but on apparent merit.

Even then, one might say, and Barack does all the time, that Hillary got the Iraq vote tragically wrong, while as we all know, he got it right. And that would matter except that A) We're already there; B) People don't primarily blame the Senate for Iraq. That hate is mostly reserved for the President; and C) Hillary almost always comes off as the older, wiser candidate in the "Where do we go from here?" debate. At times, it's just because she gives more nuanced answers. Other times, it's because Barack is trying to bolster his foreign policy credentials by publicly sh*tting on the presidents of allied nations in critical parts of the world, albeit not intentionally.

Supposedly this leaves Barack with two options: wait for Hillary to mess up, which seems less inevitable as time goes on, or go after her, calling into question his own commitment to civility and change. Then there's always John Edwards, one-state candidate that he is. Were he to lose his lead in Iowa he could always take Hillary out with him, the way Wesley Clark did Howard Dean in '04.

Very interesting stuff.

All Things Political, vol. 6

Okay. Someone clearly needs to put down the laPtop and back away from the blog. I'm trying. In the meantime...

Came across some interesting trivia in my research for the last post. The 3rd person in the presidential line of succession, after Dick and Nancy, is one Mr. Robert Byrd, Democrat from West Virginia. This is infinitely fascinating in its implications. First, because if the least popular president of all time were to be incapacitated (God bless us), he would immediately be replaced by the only person in the country less preferable than himself (God help us). Then, if that person were to fall ill, he would immediately be replaced by the Speaker of the House, whom I don't know anything about, so we'll skip her. Now, if something were to happen to her, another Democrat would take her place. But, said Democrat would also be 90 years old, would have voted against the Civil Rights Act, vowed never to serve in the armed forces with black officers, and would once have been a member of the KKK. Finally, if bad luck or old age got the best of Mr. Byrd, Replacement #4 would be what appears from all observations to be a mindless drone of the original president.

Sleep tight.

All Things Political, vol. 3.2

What I'm talking about...

Well whadaya know? It seems someone's actually done a study of the effects of immigration on those lazy, whining, low-skilled workers. Long story short, the rise in undocumented workers in the last 20 years "generally 'explains' about 20 to 60 percent of the decline in wages, 25 percent of the decline in employment, and about 10 percent of the rise in incarceration rates among blacks with a high school education or less."

I suppose one could still argue that if those workers had been responsible enough to go to college, they'd be okay. Because college educations, like skills apparently, grow on trees. (Sidenote: I have about $300K worth of education and I can count my "skills" on one hand, with fingers to spare.) Still, I think there are some very reasonable (and important) questions to be asked about the effects of incorporating 12 million workers into the labor force at once. And it'd be nice if folks could ask those questions without being accused of xenophobia (see previous link) or bigotry.

All Things Political, vol. 5

It occurred to me today how much I've been enjoying this little political kick I've been on. Kinda nice seeing as how I'm a political scientist. So I started thinking maybe I could start up a little blog of my own, a kind of Political Musings from Political Scientists.

But what to call it... Naturally, it'd be called All Things Political. Taking a gander over at allthingspolitical.com, it seems that name's already taken... a clearinghouse for online political and governmental websites. I guess that's cool. Not as cool as my blog would have been though. ;)

All Things Political, vol. 4

I read an article today about how well Ron Paul performed in the last Republican debate. Apparently he's the Ralph Nader (fat chance candidate) of the GOP. Turns out, some of what he said actually made a lot of common sense. But just as I was getting excited about the prospect of another Dean-like underdog poppin' up in the primaries, albeit on the Republican side, I came across this. It seems Mr. Paul thinks none too highly of the negroes, especially the scary male ones.

Oh well.

All Things Political, vol 3.1

More thoughts on immigration...

I just read a Ruben Navarrette article on the proposed immigration legislation in the Senate. In the spirit of full disclosure, I should say upfront that this post is motivated mostly by my (increasing) hatred of Mr. Navarrette, and not by my feeling that I have any more immigration-related thoughts worth sharing. Having put that out there...

1) I was first introduced to Mr. Navarrette while reading an article he wrote about how unfair it is that people still get to pronounce the word wetback when it's not okay to pronounce the words nigger or, apparently, faggot. If those words are reduced to the n-word and the f-word, then, he says, wetback should be reduced to the w-word.

Ordinarily, I would be more diplomatic about this. But since I hate him, I'm going to go ahead and say I find his argument incredibly stupid. Especially because the primary examples he gives to support it are instances of people who pronounce the word while emphasizing that it should never be used as a slur against anyone (i.e. Rosie O'Donnell pronounced it when she was criticizing someone on national television for using it as a slur.)

The other reason it irks me is that I find all the letter-words - the n-word, the f-word, and, I guess, the w-word - quite ridiculous. Hearing fully grown adults talk about "the n-word" makes me feel like we're all a bunch of 5 year-olds referencing the a-word, the sh-word and all the other grown-up words we're not allowed to say. I also think its disingenuous and inaccurate to go on tv and say So-and-So called Such-and-Such an n-word. No, So-and-So called Such-and-Such a nigger, and So-and-So should get his ass kicked.

2) In this most recent article, responding to critics who say illegal immigration depresses wages for the low-skilled, we get the following:

Memo to the low skilled: "Grow up. Stop complaining. And go get more skills. Then you won't have to suffer the humiliation of being driven out of the market by folks with a sixth-grade education who are here illegally and don't even speak English.

WTF??? If ever I wanted to bash someone over the head with a frikkin' bat. A couple things:

A) There have always been, and will always be, low-skilled workers. And in generations past, those workers could actually command a living wage, not to mention health care and the expectation of retirement benefits. Let's not act like people suddenly got lazy.

B) (And even my Libertarian Love Mr. Maher is guilty of this one...) Let's not act like immigrants are inherently dedicated laborers who dream of picking tomatoes for $2/hour in the dead-ass heat of summer. They don't want those jobs any more than American citizens do. They take them because it's what they can get, and because it's better than starving to death in Mexico. How many second generation Mexican Americans (or legal immigrants) do you know who pick tomatoes for a living? (Think about it.) Nobody with a green card is trying to pick tomatoes or scrub toilets for less than a living wage, and the ones that do, do it because they have to.

Admittedly, I have a pretty tender soft spot for the working class (they're the backbone of society, blah blah blah). So I don't take kindly to people who tell them to "grow up" and ridicule them for lodging legitimate complaints about their economic options. Also, as an aspiring writer-academic-social commentator, I'm consistently vexed by how it is that people that I think are idiots get syndicated columns in places like cnn.com. But again, those are personal issues.

All Things Political, vol. 3

Warning: This is a very long post.

I just read a Lou Dobbs article about the May Day immigration marches in Chicago and elsewhere, and, at last, I think I can actually formulate an immigration-related thought worth sharing. After many (many) hours of consideration, I think it boils down to a simple question of Why. Meaning...

At a basic level we have A and B. A thinks he has a right to something from B. B disagrees. (I think) what opponents of amnesty and legalization are missing, what they haven't heard from A, is Why. Why do you have a right to anything? This is important because of the language with which A is making his claim. He doesn't "want" it; he's not asking B for a favor; he has a "right" to it. And (so political theory says) rights have to be grounded in something. I have a right to my home because I payed for it. You have a right to a fair wage because you're contributing your time and labor. A has a right to citizenship because...

And here is where the debate breaks down. I imagine there are 2 bases on which to declare a right. Either A is entitled to something (he earned it, or it's his by nature), or B owes it to him. There are some passionate proponents of Mexican immigrants' rights who take the second approach. Their claims to the rights of illegal Mexican immigrants are based on the history of exploitation and territorial violations between the U.S. and Mexico. At the very least, this kind of thinking has the makings of political grounds on which a group of people could make a claim on a government/state. There's another group of people though - the largest and loudest, the ones who hold up signs at marches - who, if they even try to answer the Why, answer most often with something essentially akin to "because we're here." We deserve to be here because we live here, because we work here, because our families are here.

Emotionally compelling as that reasoning may be, it is politically and legally unstustainable. It effectively asserts that one has the right to do something because they went through the trouble of doing it (or because they do it well). But one cannot assert that one has a "right" to commit an illegal act because one has shown that he can do it responsibly. This does not work in the case of immigration any more than it would work for a driver who argued he had a right to go 70mph in a 50 mph zone because he had demonstrated (through much speeding) that he could do so safely.

Or we can imagine a different example, one where the original commission of an act is illegal, but all subsequent acts are (potentially) legal. This is more in line with much of the public discourse around immigrants' rights. Specifically, illegal immigrants may have broken the law, but many of them have since demonstrated their faithfulness to the virtues and work-ethic America claims to value in its citizens. This should prove them deserving of citizenship.

This is another logic which fails legally and politically, its moral weight notwithstanding. Imagine C robs a bank and uses the money to buy a home and finance his child's education. I cannot imagine any circumstance under which the bank would say to C, "You shouldn't have stolen the money, but since you have it, at least you've invested it wisely. God Bless." I am 100% sure the bank would want its money back, and that it would have the legal grounds to assert its right to reclaim it. Admirable behavior in the wake of illegal activity might constitute a moral argument for amnesty (Now that we've shown we can be good citizens, we should be allowed to stay), but it is not a defense of illegal immigration itself. And it cannot be used to compel legal concessions (i.e. stoppage of workplace raids and deportations).

I find the most compelling basis on which to assert Mexican's "rights" to U.S. citizenship is the basis on which those passionate people referenced earlier (mostly academics) have done so. It has been argued that if the U.S. were to return to Mexican control all of the lands it acquired through unjust wars and treaties during Westward Expansion, Mexico would have the resources to feed, clothe, and house every one of her people. If this is true, A might say to B, "I have a right to live, work and raise a family on this land because it's mine (by nature)," OR, "The opportunities I'm taking advantage of are those you built using resources you stole from me (You owe me)." These are similar to reparations arguments made by Black Americans. At any rate, these are not the arguments you get from the sound bites of interviews on the nightly news.

Perhaps there are some who think that the way to get something you want from the U.S. government is not to go out of your way to point out the centuries worth of exploitation and oppression it perpetrated on your people. Maybe they think you attract more flies with honey, and instead of saying "You're an imperialist and a war-monger," they say "We love America. We want to be Americans too." And they may be right. Unfortunately, what this leaves one with is not grounds for a "right" to citizenship, but rather only a sympathetic story that one hopes will elicit a neighborly response (Sure, come on over.) At that point, I guess there's just the question of whether you want to bet your citizenship on the neighborliness of the U.S. people.

All Things Political (Science), vol. 2

Someone just forwarded me an article about an academic paper that's going to be published citing racial bias in NBA foul calls. To (over-)summarize, in any one game, an all-white officiating crew will call between .12 and .2 more fouls on black players than an all-black crew would, or 4.5% more fouls per year, which apparently results in a real loss of about 2 games per year for the teams with the most black starters.

The most interesting part of all this (as far as I'm concerned) is that someone actually conducted a fairly rigorous academic/statistical analysis of something as non-academic as NBA foul calls. Being that I'm fairly well stuck in statistics/"What can I publish?" mode, my mind immediately set off in search of how I might re-model such an experiment and arrive at different results.

The study controlled for things you might expect to affect foul calls like veteran/All-Star status, position, player "assertiveness", coaches' behavior, etc. If one were going to do a counter-study, they might look at things like flagrancy vs. non-flagrancy of fouls, since the former are much less a judgment call for officials; actual physical style of play (not measured by stats), since some teams/players may just be more physical than others; at what points in the game fouls are most likely to be called, and which players are most likely to have the ball at those times (or to be defending someone who has the ball); etc.

I'm tempted to drop a stat model right here, but I won't. At least not until I figure out how to turn it into a publishable paper, which seems to be 25% of what I care about these days.

All Things Political

Well folks... It's about that time. 16 months and counting til I start looking for a job. Only 2 articles, 2 finals, 1 exam, a proposal, and half a dissertation to write between now and then. So, in the interest of righting my mind for the work ahead, I am tightening my focus on all things political... starting with this:

It seems someone in Maryland thinks The People should actually elect the president. How about that?