Because we can, because we care
I have been ignoring most of the political world lately. Most of the news in somewhere between useless and objectionable, so rather than waste time with it I have simply done other (better?) things.
However, this little video about how Hillary can win the election caught my eye.
Lets face it, sometimes you have to admit defeat.
2004 was a painful year to be a democrat. Despite what many on the left saw as a prime opportunity to oust a president weakened by an increasingly unpopular war, the party went down in ignimonious defeat. The democratic nominee, Mass. Senator John Kerry, spent the majority of his campaign bouncing between launching attacks at the Bush White House and defending himself against trumped up charges about his war record. As a result, he was never able to connect with voters in any meaningful way, and the final choice effectively became a vote for or against George Bush.
Fast forward to 2008, with a re-invigorated democratic party hoping to ride a wave of economic nervousness and anti-war resentment to a big November victory. The hype is much the same as it was leading into the 04 race; young voters will turn out in big numbers, people are sick of Bush and the War, Americans want change, etc.
Yet no matter how good things are looking for the Democrats at this early juncture, whether or not they can actually take advantage this time around depends largely on how they communicate their agenda to the voting public. After all, they seemed to have everything working in their favor in 04, and they still couldn’t seal the deal on election night. They won’t have Bush to beat up on any more, and regardless, that hardly worked the last time around. To win the presidency, being not as bad as the other guy won’t be enough; they will need a nominee that can convince voters that their goals and ideas are a better way forward for the country.
Enter: Barak Obama. The junior senator from Illinois is seemingly everything that John Kerry was not; an electric public speaker who stays away from negative politics, choosing to paint a hopeful picture of the future rather than disparaging the past. He speaks in broad generalities that make for great twenty-second clips on the evening news; evincing an easily-digestible message of “post-partisanship” that makes people feel good about voting for him.
He’s easy to like and hard to attack; his short record and ability to deflect divisive issues makes him somewhat of a new-age Teflon man. His campaign slogan, “Change we can believe in”, is perfectly crafted to reflect the sort of campaign he’s running. It allows him to distance himself from an unpopular government without actually attacking it, promising a new tomorrow without actually saying what was wrong with yesterday.
In this way, he is able to build a broad coalition of democrats, independents and first-time voters; promising them change while downplaying any actual policy positions that might divide his “new majority”. He is an everyman; a smiling face that appeals to many and angers few. As a result, he is extremely electable.
Does this make his candidacy feel a little vapid and light-weight; lacking the concrete policy substance of a John Edwards or John McCain? Does this make him harder to pin down on real issues? Certainly, but George Bush’s pre-election proposals weren’t exactly fleshed out, and he won at least one election in the last eight years. Which is more than any Democrat can say.
Iowa has declared Obama and Huckabee the victors of the first primary. However, the battle to the nomination has just begun. Each candidate must now try to repeat their success in New Hampshire. MSNBC has a great article detailing some of the history for how this has worked for each party in the past. If the trends continue things may be looking up for Obama but down for Huckabee.
We are also still in only the very early phase of the primary season. These first wins might be a great morale boost for each candidate, but hoping one result will carry over to the next could spell trouble if either makes that misstep. Romney and Clinton are probably the two most likely candidates do be unphased by an early loss and push back with the greater weight of their financing to strike back either now or later in the race with devastating force.
In recent news, Ron Paul has managed an extraordinary feat. He has made history by receiving $6 million in donations to his campaign in a single day. This brings a whole new level to the unstoppable determination of Ron Paul supporters to push him toward dominance.
An excellent article covering the exact details of this event can be found on the Wired Blog Network. Here are two excerpts from the article.
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul made history Sunday by raising $6 million in online contributions in 24 hours, breaking the record for the most money raised by a national candidate in a single day, and potentially putting Paul on track to surpass the fourth quarter fund raising of all of his competitors in both parties.
The $6 million number beats the 2004 record set by Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, who raised $5.7 million after he gave his nomination speech. The fund raising is all the more impressive because Paul is relatively unknown among rank-and-file Republicans, trailing in offline polls, while Kerry’s record was set after he became the official Democratic nominee.
And though this is a historic moment Ron Paul had little to do with the actual fund raising. It was entirely organized by volunteers who support him.
Despite this amazing bit of news, Ron Paul is still largely uncovered outside of the internet when you consider other candidates. If you doubt me, check Google Trends and compare the volume of search traffic and news coverage between any set of them. Although it seems like the tide is just beginning to be too great to be held back.
It is still very early in the game, but this is one election I am excited to watch. Even if very few of the candidates do much to excite me.
Mike Huckabee seems like a really rice guy. All political and ideological issues aside, he comes across as warm and like-able; someone who genuinely believes in his own message. Set against the backdrop of his cold, false-sounding, flip-flopping competition, he becomes even easier to warm up to.
His witty, disarming performances in nationally televised debates have been enough to make even the most jaded politico crack a smile. And despite the fact that he’s up against vastly-better funded campaigns and more recognizable national figures, he’s still managing to creep up in the polls. It’s as if someone forgot to tell him that he’s a massive underdog that has no business factoring into the primary process, let alone winning the whole thing.
Taken all together, it’s enough to make you want to root for the guy. That is, until you examine his policy proposals.
There’s a reason none of the experts expected Huckabee to seriously figure into the presidential race; his policies simply don’t stand up to close inspection. Worst of all is his “Fair Tax” proposal, which would do away with all Federal income, capital gains, and estate taxes, replacing them with a universal sales tax of roughly 25%.
At first blush, the idea has its appeals. No one would ever have to file a tax return again. There would be no corporate tax loopholes, no arcane exemption structures, and no IRS. And of course, there is a certain “fairness” to taxing people’s consumption as opposed to their earnings. Like Huckabee himself, the proposal is charming to a certain degree.
Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work. The idea is fundamentally flawed, and would create more problems than it solves. First of all, replacing the income tax with a consumption tax in effect shifts the tax burden from the rich to the middle class. After all, people of lesser means tend to spend a greater deal of their income than those currently in a higher tax bracket.
Second, it puts the economic incentive on the wrong end of the loop, so to speak. One of the weirder incongruities of economic growth is that individual savings don’t really help the economy; in order to spur growth, you want citizens to try and earn as much and spend as much as they possibly can can. Taxing people’s earnings won’t convince them to work less. Think about it, have you ever heard someone say “I don’t think I’ll work overtime today, taxes are too high”, or “I know there’s a more efficient way to do this, but why bother? The government will still get a cut”? The bottom line is, under the current system, the citizen is still rewarded for efficiency and hard work; which is also true of the fair tax system. The difference is on the spending end; higher sales taxes will induce people to consume less, which any economist can tell you is not good for the GDP. The Fair Tax would have people stocking away a greater proportion of their earnings, which sadly, isn’t actually a good thing for the economy.
Finally, the end result of Huckabee’s proposal would be a gargantuan tax cut across the board. While this fits nicely into a small government, conservative world-view and holds broad appeal for many right-leaning thinkers, for it to work it would have to be coupled with matching spending cuts. And as we have seen in recent years, the only thing Republicans and Democrats in Washington can agree on is that they will not, under any circumstances, cut spending. So unless we’re willing to swallow another trillion dollars in federal deficits, the Fair Tax just won’t bring in enough revenue to keep to government running.
This proposed tax overhaul is a perfect microcosm of Huckabee’s campaign; initially intriguing, honest to a fault, and doomed to fail. It’s sad, really, because we haven’t had someone in the Oval Office who didn’t make half of the country foam at the mouth for a very long time. Huckabee appears to be the kind of personality the middle majority could rally behind, if only his actual policies weren’t so flawed.
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