ProcrastiBlog

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mike Gravel, former Democratic and current Libertarian candidate for president. (Via Matthew Yglesias, who needs the traffic.)

Via Matthew Yglesias, the best, most practical government reform idea I've ever heard: increase the size of the House of Representatives.

In 1789, the House had 65 members, each representing about 30,000 constituents. That number grew consistently for the next hundred years. In 1913, the size of the House was fixed at 435 members. At that time, each member represented about 200,000 constituents. Since then, the population of the U.S. has more than doubled. The average size of a congressional district is now 700,000 constituents.

Increasing the size of the house and decreasing the average size of a district.would have the following salutary side effects:

1. It would be cheaper to run for office, making more districts competitive and decreasing the need for fund-raising (and, thus, the influence of money).


2. It would decrease the influence of individual law-makers, thereby decreasing the amount of money to be gained from corruption.


3. It would make both Congress and the electoral college (which is based on congressional representation) more proportional and, thus, more little-D democratic.

To illustrate that last point, consider Wyoming and New York. Wyoming has about 500,000 residents, 1 House member, and 3 electoral votes. New York has about 19 million residents, 29 House members, and 31 electoral votes. A vote in a presidential election in Wyoming is worth about 3.7 times as much as a vote in a presidential election in New York. If we doubled the size of the House of Representatives, a vote in Wyoming would be worth only 2.5 times as much as a vote in New York. If we reduced districts to 30,000 constituents each (this is the lower bound specified in the Constitution and would yield a House with more than 10,000 members---picture the Galactic Senate in Star Wars, hopefully with fewer Gungans), a vote in Wyoming would be worth only about 1.1 times as much.

Now obviously that last scenario is not going to happen. In fact, it's hard to imagine the current Congress voting to make any change that would significantly reduce the influence of its own members. But the change doesn't have to be that dramatic: literally any increase would be a change for the good. And the population keeps increasing, so the problem will just get worse and worse. Why not shoot for, say, 50 new members after every census, with a target of keeping or slightly reducing the current average district size? It would not require a Consitutional amendment: the size of the House is determined by statute, just as the number, size, and shape of congressional districts are.

For more information, check out thirty-thousand.org.

P.S. While I'm at it, you may notice at left a badge for Change Congress, a somewhat goo-goo attempt by Lawrence Lessig for create a movement to political reform. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this (just as I wasn't sure, as much as I admire Prof. Lessig, whether I really though he should run for Congress), but, if it doesn't cost me anything, I might as well cast my lot with the wild-eyed dreamers of the world.

The media did all they could for the last month to make this a winner-take-all race, but now everybody wants to talk about delegates. Go Obama! W00t!

Thank you, New York Times!

Given Democratic rules, it is entirely possible for one candidate to win a majority of Feb. 5 states, and enjoy the election night ratification that comes with a TV network map displaying the geographic sweep of that person’s accomplishment, while his (or her) opponent ends the night with the most delegates.

On the Republican side, it is possible for one of the candidates to win the overall popular vote in California, but end up with fewer delegates than a rival, since most of the delegates are awarded in winner-take-all Congressional district races.

Read the whole thing (as they say).

So, yeah, I'm a crank, but I'm not alone:

At the end of the day, you need delegates to win. A strategy to win delegates seems like a smart strategy.

The current fake tally is:

Democrats
Clinton: 3
Obama: 1
Edwards: 0

Republicans
Romney: 3
McCain: 2
Huckabee: 1

The current real tally is:

Democrats
Obama: 38
Clinton: 36
Edwards: 18

Republicans
Romney: 59
McCain: 41
Huckabee: 26

So who's the front-runner again?

That said, less than 3% of the total delegates have been allocated on the Democratic side (it's about 6% on the Republican side—presumably because red states like South Carolina and Wyoming get proportionately more delegates). What I expect will happen is that Clinton (and probably Romney) will win a slim majority or plurality February 5 ("Super Tuesday") and more-or-less clinch the nomination. (I am willing to make a wager on that proposition. Anybody?)

In the end, I don't think the "emotional moment" in New Hampshire or "momentum" have much to do with Clinton's success. I think she has solid, proven support amongst the Democratic electorate, which just happens to be slightly larger in magnitude than Obama's.

In retrospect, the real question will be: why did Obama do so well in Iowa? With Huckabee, you can point to the evangelical factor. What's the deal with Obama?

Via Andrew Sullivan comes this strange and interesting fact: Barack Obama was awarded more delegates (12) in New Hampshire than Hillary Clinton was (11). Despite the fact that the media covers the primaries as win or take all contests—and, thus, Clinton was victorious and Obama came in second—by the delegate apportionment metric the contest was a tie: they each got 9 pledged delegates. For some reason, Obama has one extra superdelegate, so he came out slightly ahead.

In fake terms, the tally is 1 for Obama, 1 for Clinton. In real terms, the tally is 25 for Obama, 24 for Clinton, and 18 for Edwards. (In really real terms—because the superdelegates are seemingly predetermined—the tally is 183 for Clinton, 78 for Obama, 52 for Edwards.)

On the Republican side, note that Mitt Romney—who "lost" two contests in a row—has the delegate lead with 24 to McCain's 17 and Huckabee's 14. If he keeps losing like that, he'll win.

The takeaway from all of this is that the way we choose presidential candidates in this country is deeply and truly weird. Not only is the media narrative disconnected from the simple human and intellectual reality of the campaign (so that getting choked up becomes an emotional breakdown, or saying something sensible becomes a "gaffe"), it is disconnected from the political reality of the process: the one and only thing that matters here is who has more delegates. But instead we get to hear about who came in first and who cam in second and by how much and how that makes everybody feel...

Rudy Giuliani on Bernard Kerrick, the mobbed-up, bribe-taking, tax-evading, mistress stalking, ex-personal driver, ex-police commissioner, ex-Iraq occupation official, and ex-failed nominee to a George Bush's cabinet*:

If I have the same degree of success and failure as president of the United States, this country will be in great shape.

He continued, "My shit tastes like lollipops, 9/11, 9/11."

* And remember: you can personally authorize torture and still be confirmed to George Bush's cabinet.

Joel Stein, everybody's least favorite ex-Entertainment Weekly columnist, covering the Republican fringes:

Representative Tom Tancredo ... tells me after a debate in New Hampshire, one of his staffers walked up to a guy in a shark costume and asked him if he was a Ron Paul supporter. "No. They're all nuts," replied the shark. "I'm just a guy in a shark suit."

So, the U.S. is trying to eradicate Afghanistan's opium crop again. The sheer, neck-snapping cluelessness of this leaves me practically speechless. All at once, we are trying to:

a) Make the Afghans like us, get them to appreciate our good will, and therefore convince them not to join or lend assistance to the Taliban.

b) Destroy their livelihoods.

In an additional sign of brilliance, the U.S. government* conflates the drug trade with the profits that the Taliban skims off the drug trade. Basically, the Taliban is shaking down rural farmers and drug traffickers by "levying taxes." Does the Bush Administration think that, if the drug trade were ended or replaced with equally profitable legal transactions, the Taliban would just stop shaking people down?

Really?

This is like trying to reduce robbery by deciding that nobody is allowed to have money.

* In olden times, instead of "the U.S. government" or "the Bush administration," I would say "we," as in "we Americans" or "our U.S. government, of, by, and for the people." Nowadays, when somebody says "we" and means "the U.S. government", I think: "Who's we? Speak for yourself, buddy."

[UPDATE] If you like a dash of facts with your outrage and colorful metaphors, see Mark Kleiman (via Mr Yglesias). Bottom line, our policy priorities should be: first, defeat the Taliban, distant second, control the drug trade. And: steps taken to control the drug trade should probably have some measurable effect on the drug trade greater than or equal to their (deleterious) effect on priority the first.

Do me a favor here... is it really 2007? And is Richard Cohen really writing this column on how George W. Bush is a "neoliberal"? Are there no limits to the sage pundit's lazy contrarianism?

Cohen says he "never really knew what [neoliberalism] meant", but the term should be revived because George Bush is "more liberal than you might think." The evidence for this is: (a) No Child Left Behind (a bunch of meddling, liberal do-gooderism), (b) all the incompetent blacks, women, and Latinos in his administration (hiring poorly qualified minorities is just so liberal), and (c) conducting a botched foreign war and justifying it with high-flown Wilsonian rhetoric (losing wars is just so liberal).

Mr. Cohen, I do know what neoliberalism means (if you want to know, you might have Googled it; it's not that complicated). George Bush is not a neoliberal. And items (a), (b), and (c)—while they ring nicely of the conservative caricature of The Left—are not evidence of neoliberalism. Quite the opposite in fact.

I understand the urge to paint George Bush as "not conservative" (this has been Andrew Sullivan's bread and butter for about four years), but "not conservative" is not "neoliberal." (Duh.) And what we really don't need right now, at this point in history, is a supposedly "not conservative" columnist in the Washington Post using the word "liberal" as an essentially meaningless all-purpose insult.

Today's NY Times article about Harry Reid contains the single most idiotic piece of argumentation I've ever heard from a Republican (and that's saying something):

Representative Peter Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, said: “If Harry Reid believes that this war is lost, where is his plan to win this war?”

Shorter David Brooks: We are not brains!

(Sorry about that pay wall.)

Correct me if I'm wrong: are these Congressmen (of both parties) actually complaining about how hard, nigh impossible, it is to work five days a week? Is Jon Tester ("We shouldn't complain about a little inconvenience. I got a lot of people in my state working two five-day weeks") the only Senator who understands how ridiculous that sounds? There are poor people who work two jobs. There are middle-income and rich people (and graduate students!) who work nights and weekends (but not mornings!)...

Here's an idea: if you don't like the hours, you don't have to be a Congressman! I'm sure your top-tier law firms and lobbying outfits will give you a week off every month.

Ann Althouse wonders about the polar bears:

How many people look at that picture and think the polar bears were living on some ice and it melted around them and now they are stuck?

And, yes, I realize a polar bear can drown... if, say, it's exhausted and swimming over 50 miles. But basically, these things can swim 15 miles easily, at a speed of 6 miles an hour, and they use the edge of an ice floe as a platform from which to hunt. Where's the photograph of the bear chomping down on a cute baby seal?

And, no, I'm not denying that there's global warming, even as I sit here a double pane of glass away from -12° air. I'm just amused at human behavior, such as the way it is possible to feel arguments at us. In particular, we are susceptible to argument by animal. We love the animal, if it's pictured right, in a way that pulls our heartstrings.

I was kind of wondering this myself... I suspect the contextual implication of the picture below is completely false, but at the same time it somehow primes us to the deeper truth it signifies...

Note to George Bush: It's called the Democratic party, and you sound like an asshole. (What's new?) (Via les commentaires de Sausagely)

The presidents from JFK to Bush I (1960-1992) were all born between 1908 and 1924. That is to say, over 32 years the presidency was held by an age cohort (the World War II generation) of just 16 years. Both Clinton and George W. Bush were born in 1946, a gap of 22 years from the next-youngest presidents (Carter and George H.W. Bush). The only failed major-party nominees who fall into this gap are: Walter Mondale (b. 1928), Michael Dukakis (b. 1933), and John Kerry (b. 1943). Nobody born between 1924 and 1943 has even come close to being the president. I don't have the time to look up all the 12 million people who are running in 2008, but I'm sure John McCain is the oldest and he was born in 1936. If he is elected (and he won't be, knock wood), he would be the first (and almost certainly the only) president born in the 1930s. What's the deal? Were all the children born of the depression jerks or what?

Now that I look at it, there's a similar gap from Eisenhower (born 1890) to Johnson (born 1908). Since there's only one or two presidents a decade, on average, it sort of makes sense that the birth distribution would be uneven. But still, isn't it strange that an entire generation didn't bring forth one worthy man? Who's the all time best Washington politician born 1924-1946? Bernie Sanders? Daniel Patrick Moynihan? Dick Cheney?

LizardBreath makes the case for carrying puppets:

My knee-jerk reaction to "hippies", any sort of silly, embarrassing leftists, is that while I don't want to be seen with them, I probably agree with them about most things. Even if their politics are reflexive and not well thought out, they're using basically the right rules of thumb, and on any issue that I haven't thought out thoroughly myself, I'm more likely than not to come down on the same side as they do. Where I haven't figured out an opinion that I can solidly back up yet, and usually where I have, I'm lining up with the people dressed as sea turtles...

You can't successfully get anything right by trying to avoid agreeing with silly people. There are too many silly people, and they're all over the map -- no matter how sane, or well reasoned, or intelligent some position is, some absolute ninny out there agrees with it. The best thing to do is not to let prejudice affect your decision-making. But if you're going to be swayed by prejudice, and we all are, trying to avoid idiots is going to lead you astray -- better you should align yourself with the gang of idiots who you think have the best track record generally.

Follow those liberal idiots!

Michelle Cottle at The Plank speculates on the Democratic primary race:

The safe-money bet is that we'll hear this minority v. chick storyline approximately 7,500 times if both senators [Clinton and Obama] indeed make a play for the White House, which has me wondering: What will this mean for the oh-so-white guy currently rounding out the Democratic triumvirate of top-tier candidates, Johnny Reid Edwards?

Will Edwards suffer from not being included in the media frenzy certain to rise up around Hillary v. Obama--all those inspirational stories about American social progress and the chance to remove the asterisk from the assertion that "anyone can grow up to be president"? Will some people come to resent Edwards as another entitled white guy trying to spoil the party?

Alternatively, will all the talk about race and gender and trailblazers and cultural barriers ultimately turn people off or make them question the qualifications (or, god forbid, the electability) of the two aspiring "firsts"? In the end, will Edwards benefit from being the candidate utterly without novelty appeal in this race?

John Edwards, here's your winning campaign slogan... You can have it for free. "John Edwards: He's a man. And white."

P.S. This is the exception that proves the rule: I have no opinion about the 2008 presidential race. I don't plan to have one until Q1 2008 (at least).

Twenty-four hours later my comment still hasn't shown up. (And, no, it didn't include any slander, profanity, or links to pornography.) Despite the fact this post is lighting up the left-of-center blogosphere like a Christmas tree, it has only 16 comments so far. Nice participating in your community, Time.com...

I formulated a response to this Joe Klein drivel which has been shit-canned to the Time.com moderator queue for the last four hours*. In the meantime, BooMan has published the definitive take-down:

Friends do not let friends drive drunk. In the case of George W. Bush and the neo-conservatives, they not only are insisting on driving intoxicated, they won't let us out of the car and they respond to all requests to slow down by stomping on the accelerator. In this situation the only rational thing to do is to wait for them to come to a halt at a stop sign (if they are sober enough to avoid running it) and smack them in the head with a sock full of pennies. We need to take away the car keys, Mr. Klein.

You can call me an "illiberal leftist and reactionary progressive", you can say my "naivete on national security--and the left wing tendency to assume every U.S. military action abroad is criminal--just aren't very helpful electorally." You can talk all the shit you want. But you are still letting your friends drive drunk and criticizing anyone that wants to do something about it.

* I will take this opportunity to say that moderating blog comments is clueless and completely beside the point. Wake up, people! I am the Time Magazine Person of the Year! Why won't you publish my brilliant writing?