Akkam’s Razor

Mark Nickolas has posted that Hillary needs to run for President of Appalachia, confirmed by her strong performance last night in West Virginia. It is tempting to disregard this electoral preference on surface faultline demography like race, age, poorest, or education, but Josh Marshall at TPM hints at something more.

Any voter who is demographically reflective-of or self-identifies as a Reagan-Democrat (coined by political consultant and Hillary pollster Stan Greenberg) will be referred to as a Bush-Democrat.  Although they are many, they must be constantly reminded of their legacy in perpetrating the Revisionist Reagan haigiography, and of the failure of their particular brand of conservatism.  If these Bush Democrats (or as Pat Buchanan rightfully observes, Hillary Democrats) decide to vote against their own economic self-interests and switch to McSame, let them reap the ‘rewards’.

Once again, there is a discussion spanning multiple disciplines that requires attention regarding the importance and relevance of experience.

There's a VERY legitimate argument that both Romney, Giuliani, as well as the Democrats, if they are smart, should be having with regards to McCain…

He's already hinted that he's likely to be a one-termer.  At the risk of practicing ageism or age discrimination, he's quite old.  His captivity as a POW has certainly had a physical effect on him (particularly melanoma), and if the claims of George W. Bush circa 2000 (8-years ago) are true, his mental health. 

There's naughty language here, but as usual, Penn and Teller are correct, and Frank Luntz is an asshole.

The Village (established DC beltway insiders) despises the bloggers, aka the netroots, and will take any chance to cut them down, especially since every word of Brooks, Broder, Cohen, Freidman, and the rest, gets eviscerated with each publishing of their latest sage advice. 

Let's examine Brook's latest (9/25):

Now it's evident that if you want to understand the future of the Democratic Party you can learn almost nothing from the bloggers, billionaires and activists on the left who make up the "netroots." You can learn most of what you need to know by paying attention to two different groups - high school educated women in the Midwest, and the old Clinton establishment in Washington.

A friend of mine sent me a link to a WaPo story on Mitt Romney's successor application to the GOP's Voter Vault.  The developer of the program, Alex Gage, provided his services to Ken Mehlman, then chair of the RNC, and Karl Rove.

His pitch was simple: Take corporate America's love affair with learning everything it can about its customers, and its obsession with carving up the country into smaller and smaller clusters of like-minded consumers, and turn those trends into a political strategy. The Bush majority would be made up of thousands of groups of like-minded voters whom the campaign could reach with precisely the right message on the issues they considered most important.

[…]

As a test, Gage was asked to produce targeted messages in several Pennsylvania judicial races in the fall of 2003. Why? The state offered a diverse mix of geography and ethnicity, and it almost certainly would be a battleground for both parties in 2004.

When the election was over, the Republican National Committee commissioned a poll to figure out whether Gage's suppositions about why people voted were accurate. Gage's models predicted voters' tendencies with 90 percent accuracy, according to Dowd, and Gage was hired to microtarget the 16 or so battleground states in the 2004 election.

This is an interest that is near-and-dear to me, inclusive to my academic, professional, and political interests. 

Based on this poll, if one presumably only cares about what "the base" thinks, you could truthfully claim that "most people" do not want a stated timetable for our troops to withdrawal from Iraq.  This is how "the [bizarroworld] math" is calculated.

Suddenly, it's understandable how one could say that most people support the economy, that most people support the President, and that most people think Scooter Libby should be pardoned, so long as you only listen to people that agree with you and fund your campaigns.

Bush said the following on 60 Minutes tonight (Sunday):

Q: If you have the authority to put the troops in there no matter what the Congress wants to do.

BUSH: I think I’ve got, in this situation I do, yeah. I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I’ve made my decision. And we’re going forward. 

At this point, it doesn't matter - Iraq is being escalated just like Vietnam.  Iran and Syria are next.  The New York Times will report that the plans have been in the works for three weeks tomorrow. 

…and you have Jim Webb, the Senator-elect from Virginia, in this ballsy exchange with the Commander-in-Chief:

At a recent private reception, President Bush asked Sen.-elect Jim Webb (D-VA), “How’s your boy?” referring to Webb’s son Jimmy, who is serving in Iraq. Webb answered, “I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” to which Bush responded, “That’s not what I asked you.” Webb “coldly” shot back, “That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President.” Webb later confessed that he was “tempted to slug” Bush.

That, is a maverick.  Definitely not "stay the course".  Not like John McCain.

Stats from the Pennsylvania website for vote returns… (all returns from the Election Returns site at state.pa.us)

Governor, PA: Rendell wins over Swann (58/42) (Actually it was 60.3/39.7)

Senator, PA: Casey beats Santorum (55/45) (58.7/41.3)

House of Representatives, PA-07: Sestak beats Weldon (60/40)  (56.4/43.6)

Not too bad, huh?!?

And so it begins…

You've seen the earlier voter suppression efforts here, and I've also covered a little 2004 incident regarding a caging incident.

Perrspectives has a pretty good roundup of the GOP's "72-Hour Operation", alternatively called the 25% strategy:

Every year, like clockwork, strange occurences occur…

This is Democracy?  Fight back!  Vote.