I was thinking about drive-by campaigning, as I mentioned in a post yesterday. And I was thinking about Ron Dellums’s frequent absences and disappearing acts, and the recall Dellums talk that seems to get louder and louder with every week and month. With drive-bys and Mayor Dellums on my mind, it occurred to me that “drive-by governing” is an apt phrase for what he is trying to do. After all, he did warn us he that wouldn’t be a 24/7 mayor.
If you’ve been paying attention to the Wisconsin Democratic primary campaign, you’ve probably heard that Clinton has been running ads arguing that Obama is scared to debate her in Wisconsin, and he has run counter-ads saying that his priority is getting out and meeting the voters directly, and he has pointed out that she wasn’t even getting to Wisconsin until Saturday, while he has been campaigning there for pretty much the whole week leading up to the primary.
This is standard stuff — with Clinton now perceived as the underdog, it’s to her advantage to call for more debates and hope that Obama makes an amateur error (she also thinks that debates are her strength, while campaign rallies are his strength, and most people agree with that assessment). But she didn’t exactly help her case today when the campaign announced that she’ll be leaving Wisconsin Monday morning instead of Tuesday morning, spending a total of about 48 hours there. People seem to think this means that she doesn’t expect to do well there, and is focusing her attention even more on the Ohio and Texas contests in early March.
Anyway, this reminded me of when Bill Clinton used to boast of stopping “drive-by deliveries,” by fighting for legislation that required insurance companies to pay for at least a 48 hour hospital stay after a mother gives birth. I wonder how Wisconsin voters feel about the “drive-by campaigning” that his wife is now doing in their state.
We’re hearing a lot about the 796 Democratic Party superdelegates these days, since it is possible that they will end up acting as a kind of tiebreaker. Assuming that neither Clinton nor Obama will be dominant enough in upcoming contests to win the nomination on elected (or “pledged”) delegates alone, the nomination will come down to the superdelegates. They may end up deciding to back whichever candidate has more pledged delegates, in order to foster party unity and follow the “will of the voters,” but it is also possible that they will end up choosing a nominee who actually had fewer pledged delegates than another candidate.
So who are these 796 superdelegates, who have the potential to choose the Democratic Party nominee? Well, all Democratic members of Congress are superdelegates, as well as all former Democratic presidents (i.e., Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the only surviving Democratic presidents). Others are party officials, either in the Democratic National Committee or at the state level. One sometimes hears superdelegates referred to as “party elders,” which conjures up an image of wise and impartial guiding hands.
If that is your impression, then think again — ABC News introduces us to one superdelegate, Jason Rae of Wisconsin, who was being courted by Chelsea Clinton over breakfast this morning:
Rae may be a typical college junior but he is certainly not the typical DNC super delegate.
He is only 21 years old — he has never voted in a presidential election because he turned 18 after Election Day in 2004.
Since the race between New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is so tight, Rae has become a power broker of sorts, as both campaigns push hard to lock down the support of super delegates.
Rae said he and Chelsea Clinton talked about electability and mobilizing young people to get involved in politics. He said she spoke about what states her mother can carry in the general election and what demographics favor her candidacy. The two talked about how the campaign’s operations were going in the states and what she is seeing on the ground.
The breakfast lasted about 30 minutes. Rae said he had to hustle back to campus and get to his afternoon classes.
Rae was elected as a DNC member at the Wisconsin state party convention in June 2004. He was 17 years old at the time but there are no party rules that say a DNC member has to be of voting age. Rae ran against and defeated the president of the state firefighters’ union and a state legislator.
Rae has been called on his cell phone by former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who tried to woo him to the Clinton side and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who was pushing for Rae to endorse Obama.
Rae is presumably an extreme case. One assumes that almost every other superdelegate has voted in a Presidential election at least once in his or her life, but this is just one more example of the disturbing things you discover when you start overturning rocks in our fine democracy. Most elections are won by a wide margin, so we don’t have occasion to inspect the nuts and bolts of the process very closely.
Then something like the 2000 election happens, and suddenly you realize that someone really can win more votes than the other guy and still lose the election, or that a Presidential election can hang on hanging chads in a handful of counties in Florida. The same is true of the party nomination systems — in most cases, one candidate ends up running away with the nomination, so we don’t need to worry about whether a low-turnout caucus is really representative of the will of that state’s Democratic Party electorate, or whether superdelegates should really account for more than 15 percent of the decisive votes at a nominating convention.
As with so many things, the more you learn about how the sausage gets made, the less appetite you have for it.
Oakland, California and Newark, New Jersey have a lot in common; in some ways they are like mirror images of each other on opposite sides of the country. They are both mid-size cities that crouch in the shadow of a larger and more glamorous neighbor across the water. They are both major regional ports. They are both former industrial powerhouses that have suffered in the last half-century as jobs disappeared and many residents fled to suburbs or other cities. They are both known for their social strife and high crime rates. They are both in the middle of major revitalization efforts, especially around their downtowns. And they both have relatively new mayors, Ron Dellums and Cory Booker, who talk idealistically about working with citizens to turn their cities into models for the nation.
So how do Oakland and Newark differ? Well, nobody who currently lives in Oakland will find this description in Friday’s New York Times at all familiar:
NEWARK — Thursday night’s State of the City speech was the annual occasion for Mayor Cory A. Booker to highlight his accomplishments and broadcast his grand plans, but for many here — including, to a significant extent, Mr. Booker himself — the actual state of the city can be summed up in a single digit: 2.
That is how many murders there have been in Newark so far this year, down from 12 at this time last year. And, as Mayor Booker exulted, 109 fewer people were shot last year than in 2006, earning Newark plaudits from a national police executives’ organization.
Mayor Booker, like Mayor Dellums, uses plenty of inspirational rhetoric. Some examples from the Times article are: “In 2007, we kept our focus, we kept our momentum and we continued to march toward what I believe to be Newark’s certain destiny: to be America’s leading city in urban transformation” and “We believe that we will create miracles in our sacred city. Let the world watch us rise.” The Newark Star-Ledger reports that he finished his speech with “I believe, I believe, I believe in Newark.”
But unlike in Oakland, there are signs — preliminary, but real — that Booker might be earning the right to boast. And if the comments on the Star-Ledger’s report are any guide, many Newark residents are feeling pretty optimistic that things really are getting better. Contrast that with the comments on the San Francisco Chronicle article about Dellums’s State of the City address, which are dominated by pessimism and calls for his recall or resignation.
I don’t want Dellums recalled myself, but instead of spending his time chasing Federal funds and campaigning for Hillary Clinton, I wish he would take a close look at what cities like Newark are doing that Oakland isn’t. No one expects miracles or instant results, but more than a year into his term, it would be nice to see something to give Oakland residents a reason to believe.
For those wondering how California polls in the past few days can be so all over the place, and how the Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina polls could have done such a bad job of predicting the results, I suggest thinking about this article in the LA Times:
The audience, admittedly, was captive. But in a year of record turnouts for the presidential primaries, perhaps no place saw a bigger uptick in voter registration than Los Angeles County jails.
At least 917 inmates registered to vote over the last month, said sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore. Of those, 881 filled out applications to vote by absentee ballot in the California primary.
The jailhouse registrations marked a sharp increase in voting levels for inmates.
For the congressional elections two years ago, Sheriff’s Department records show only 16 inmates were registered to vote. In 2004, the year of the last presidential contest, 121 inmates were registered after a get-out-the-vote effort by the American Civil Liberties Union.
“People have the legal right to vote if they [have not been convicted] and have no prior felony convictions,” Whitmore said. “We look at it as part of the process, part of the inmate services we provide.”
This is a good example of why it’s hard to apply estimates about turnout and “likely voters” to the current campaign — not only are more people voting than in previous primaries, but also different people are voting than in previous primaries. Demographic groups that had previously been underrepresented — for example, inmates awaiting trial in county jails — are voting in unprecedented numbers. It’s no wonder that pollsters are having trouble predicting results, when no one really has any idea how many people — or which people — will end up voting, given the heightened attention and enthusiasm we are seeing this year, especially on the Democratic side.
If you take this from Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:
There’s one guarantee I can make right now about tonight’s results. They are going take make either Zogby or SurveyUSA look like complete fools. Which one I’m not completely sure, but definitely one of them.
Consider this spread. Zogby has his final California number as Obama 49%, Clinton 36%. SurveyUSA has Obama 42%, Clinton 52%.
…and combine it with this from the Zachary Coile at the SF Chronicle’s politics blog:
Want to know who will win the California primary? You’ll probably be waiting until Wednesday morning — and maybe longer.
“The East Coast is going to tune in the next morning and we are still going to be counting,” said Stephen Weir, the president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials and the top election official in Contra Costa County.
…then it sounds like things could be uncertain for quite a while. Let’s hope they figure out the results of the California primary quicker than they figured out the results [sic] of the 2000 election in Florida.
Of course, if the spread does end up being as wide as Zogby or SurveyUSA are predicting, rather than falling somewhere in the middle, then it’s possible that exit polls and early precinct results will produce a clear popular vote winner in California by this evening. But I wouldn’t expect to know what the delegate breakdowns will be until sometime tomorrow, since most delegates are awarded based on proportions within congressional districts, rather than proportion of statewide vote. If the vote is close, we could end up with a situation akin to the 2000 general election — one candidate could win the popular vote in the California Democratic primary, but the other candidate could come away winning more delegates.
Ah, democracy — ain’t it grand?
So, Jack Nicholson called me last night. Unfortunately, I wasn’t home, and he forgot to leave a number where I could call him back. He doesn’t call me very often, so it was nice to hear from him. I guess he wants me to vote for Hillary Clinton today or something.
I can think of few celebrities I would be less likely to take voting advice from. The guy’s a Lakers fan for chrissake! What kind of judgment does that show?
Now, if I had gotten one of the Scarlett Johansson calls, that might be a different story — never mind Barack Obama, she might be able to get me to vote for Pol Pot if she asked nicely enough.
Obama supporters seeking camaraderie, or Edwards refugees seeking a new home, or history buffs keen to see the Last Kennedy Brother Standing, take note: Ted Kennedy’s national tour promoting Barack Obama will be passing through Oakland on Friday:
Kennedy to Host Community Gatherings in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Los Angeles and Oakland
Chicago, IL - On Thursday, January 31, 2008 and Friday, February 1, 2008 Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) will host “Change We Can Believe In” community gatherings in New Mexico and California. Senator Kennedy will make stops in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico on Thursday and Los Angeles and Oakland, California on Friday.
Details still to come. here:
Beebe Memorial Cathedral
3900 Telegraph Avenue
Oakland, CA 94609Friday, February 1, 2008
Doors Open: 2:00 p.m.
Residents of Oakland often wonder how Ron Dellums spends his time. One might as well wonder how J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon spend their time, but Chronicle political reporter Carla Marinucci offers one answer, near the end of a blog post suggesting that Dellums’s relationship with Clinton could actually be a liability for her campaign, given the state of Oakland today:
Dellums campaigned for Clinton in the East recently, we hear in hopes of gathering chits to get some appointment in a Hillary administration.
I don’t have particularly strong feelings about Mayor Dellums supporting Senator Clinton, but I hope he doesn’t cite his connection with Hillary Clinton as one of his accomplishments for the City of Oakland when he reports on the state of the city Monday. I’m sad to say that it wouldn’t entirely surprise me if he does, especially given his anticipatory statement that “last year we started forging key partner-ships…”
From the New York Times’ political blog, the Caucus:
How big is Oprah in South Carolina?
Barack Obama’s campaign has just moved its Oprah event on Sunday from an arena in Columbia seating 18,000 to a football stadium with a capacity of more than 80,000.
Tickets, which are free, went quickly on Monday, when they were first available, and the campaign had to shut down its distribution system. Now, the campaign says, tickets aren’t even necessary, although it hopes people will RSVP through its Web site.
I wonder what the record attendance for a campaign event is.
