Colbert Report on Fox Commentator
A short clip that highlights the craziness that is Fox.  In the segment Colbert calls the Word he makes us laugh and cuts through the fog from Fox News writer Suzanne Venker, who blames the sexual revolution for why so many women can't get married.  His concluding point brings it home.

 

Truthdig covers the same story in more detail.  Fox is now leading tours back through their imaginary dream world version of the 1950s.

Rethinking the Uninformed Voter
During the most recent election it was not uncommon to hear pundits ask with incredulity how anyone could still be undecided, the suggestion being that those sometimes called low-information voters were so uninformed that all the attention they were getting from both campaigns could only be seen as a dumbing down of democracy.  Even one of my favorite talking head, Jon Stewart, piled on in this way.

It turns out that to the degree that our political communication system turns to focus on low-information voters we might be strengthening democracy, at least if recent studies of the impact of uniformed fish on other fish is applicable.

Iain Couzin, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton, and his team recently discovered that when a uninformed fish are added to a school of fish that previously included strongly opinonated minorty and a less opinionated majority of fish...the impact of adding uniformed fish was to moderate the impact of the strongly opinionated minority, to reduce the ability of a strongly opinionated minority to influence the majority (as they had successfully done before the uninformed fish were added to the equation).  Here is how the researchers concluded their own study:

"Our work provides evidence that uninformed individuals play an important role in consensus decision-making:  By enforcing equal representation of preferences in the group, they promote a democratic outcome.  This provides a new understanding of how informational status influences consensus decisions and why consensus descision-making may be so widespread in nature.  Furthermore, these results suggest a principle that may extend to self-organized decisions among human agents."

While it is still unclear, and to-be-tested, whether or not this finding does suggest a principle applicable to human behavior, the idea has intuitive value.  Consider your widest circle of friends interacting during the recent campaign, perhaps your Facebook community or neighborhood or parish.  When strong partisans were the dominant voices in a room, their influence could sometimes be substantial, as less strongly partisan community members were influenced. 

However, when the room included more low-information voters, the conversation changed, different questions were made salient, and more perspectives heard...often resulting in influence flowing in more, and more varied, directions...and reducing the ability of the strong partisans to influence the majority.  Seems more than plausible to me. 

What We See Pales in Comparison to the Stories We Tell
Paul Krugman reminds us that, even with the sudden absence of campaign ads, post-election does not mean we have moved beyond the problem of branded information—sound bites designed to mislead us, to encourage us all to share ‘conventional wisdoms’ that are inconsistent with the best available data. 

In this column Krugman reminds us that those who most passionately argue against a return to the Clinton era tax rates on the most affluent and long for a return to the 1950’s when men were men, are wrong on at least two accounts.

First, our nostalgia for the 1950’s does not support the claim that taxing the affluent or attacking union labor leads to economic growth. 

“Above all, the success of the postwar American economy demonstrates that, contrary to today’s conservative orthodoxy, you can have prosperity without demeaning workers and coddling the rich….  [I]n the 1950s incomes in the top bracket faced a marginal tax rate of 91, that’s right, 91 percent, while taxes on corporate profits were twice as large, relative to national income, as in recent years. The best estimates suggest that circa 1960 the top 0.01 percent of Americans paid an effective federal tax rate of more than 70 percent, twice what they pay today.”

And nostalgia for the 1950s overlooks other characteristics an era where median family incomes doubled (1947-1973):  unions were stronger than today and that meant corporate leadership negotiated in good faith more often, Paul Ryan types criticized the 1950s at the time in the same terms they criticize America today as they call for a return to the 1950s, and our corporate leadership—perhaps humbled by their experiences in WWII—lived much like the rest of us, sharing neighborhoods and schools, parks and shopping districts.

“Squeezed between high taxes and empowered workers, executives were relatively impoverished by the standards of either earlier or later generations. In 1955 Fortune magazine published an essay, “How top executives live,” which emphasized how modest their lifestyles had become compared with days of yore. The vast mansions, armies of servants, and huge yachts of the 1920s were no more; by 1955 the typical executive, Fortune claimed, lived in a smallish suburban house, relied on part-time help and skippered his own relatively small boat.

The data confirm Fortune’s impressions….  Today, of course, the mansions, armies of servants and yachts are back, bigger than ever — and any hint of policies that might crimp plutocrats’ style is met with cries of “socialism.”

Does this mean we should return to the Clinton era tax rates?  No.  It does, however, mean that as we discuss our options we will all be better served if reject self-interested misinformation designed to confuse us and protect some options from serious scrutiny. 

Nostalgia can be a dangerous thing.  The older I get the better it was may feel good and support some incredibly powerful-feeling rants, but it is still more hat than cattle.  It makes it even more difficult to move forward to sort out the conflicts we face together.  Because it also makes it more difficult to understand where we have been and the progress we have made, as Krugman reminds us at the conclusion of his column.

“There are, let’s face it, some people in our political life who pine for the days when minorities and women knew their place, gays stayed firmly in the closet and congressmen asked, “Are you now or have you ever been?” The rest of us, however, are very glad those days are gone. We are, morally, a much better nation than we were. Oh, and the food has improved a lot, too.

Along the way, however, we’ve forgotten something important — namely, that economic justice and economic growth aren’t incompatible. America in the 1950s made the rich pay their fair share; it gave workers the power to bargain for decent wages and benefits; yet contrary to right-wing propaganda then and now, it prospered. And we can do that again.” 

Out on a Limb
As we watch the president and the speaker give and take on the fiscal cliff negotiations, I am drawn to making this prediction.  If they are successful at negotiating a deal here, this will signal that they have both decided to work together and found a way to work together.  That will mean that they will then take on a wide variety of must-do challenges:  immigration reform, tax reform, budgetary reform, and more.  Like Clinton and Gingrich, they will come together to put country first.  And as a result, I predict that there is a better than even chance that John Beohner will be a leading candidate for the Republican nomination in 2016.  If it is on the basis of what I describe here, this will be good news for America.

Appreciate Multiple Perspectives
One of the core insights among those who study conflict is that one of the most important dimensions of most conflicts is that disputants often fail to see the fact that there is nearly always several perspectives on any truly controversial question.  Failing to see this, we default into the familiar position that anyone with a perspective unlike mine must be wrong, unpatriotic, or hitler.  It is any surprise, in this context, that we struggle to respect and honor competing perspectives?

In this silly illustration we can see that seeing the second perspective does not diminish your own.  And neither perspective is 'right.'  However, if we imagine our current elites playing the roles of the two characters in this conflict we might here...the land-seekers are lazy takers who cannot be trusted and the boat-seekers are claiming public resources needed for the survival of many as their own private island.  Instead, step back and recognize that our perspective, the one that we argue passionately, is inescapably linked to our powerful or power-poor status and position. 

Thank you Nancy Hartsock for standpoint theory and Dave Louscher...who always said, 'where you stand has a lot to do with where you sit.'  If we can do a better job keeping ourselves in perspective, maybe we can learn to appreciate competing perspectives and honor our opponents.

Hurting the Families and Communities that Build Hostess
Daily Kos has run a powerful, clear, and first-hand account of the collapse of Wonder Bread.  Unsurprisingly, it had nearly nothing to do with union workers refusal to support the company they and their families had built over multiple generations. 

The prevailing stories about the collapse do not, as the 70's commercial said, 'pass the squeeze test.'

The Daily Kos story is short and well worth reading.  Stolen pension funds, CEO golden parachutes...

UA Zips Soccer Takes on NCAA and Opponents
Three years ago, Zips soccer made it to the national championship game and lost.  Two years ago they returned and became national champions with a victory.  Last year they returned again and finished the season as the second best program in the country.  This year they were ranked first in the coaches poll and second in the 'strength of schedule' poll.  For reasons that make no sense, however, they were seeded fifth in the NCAA tournament that starts this Sunday against Michigan.  Could the NCAA be any less worthy of respect?  Could the NCAA be any more perfect as a illustration of what sportsmanship does not look like?  Zips soccer has to just focus on the games, but analysts do not and this is yet another reason to completely restructure the NCAA leadership, to finally put the athletes and the games first.

 

 

If the NCAA, like this father, would put the kids first, we would all be better off. 

 

And, speaking of sportsmanship, we all need to remember that, in a democracy, sometimes the other side wins.  The peaceful transition of power is one the things that makes democracy work.

 



Frank Rich on Romney and the GOP
In New York Magazine, Frank Rich analyzes the systematic and ongoing flight from candor, data, truthfulness, and analysis that is crippling one of our most important political institutions, the GOP.

"All politicians lie, and some of them, as Bob Kerrey famously said of Bill Clinton in 1996, are “unusually good” at it. Every campaign (certainly including Obama’s) puts up ads that stretch or obliterate the truth. But Romney’s record was exceptional by any standard. The blogger Steve Benen, who meticulously curated and documented Mitt’s false statements during 2012, clocked a total of 917 as Election Day arrived....
 

The most histrionic indicator of the GOP Establishment’s enlistment in the post-fact alternative universe was the pillorying of Nate Silver, whose FiveThirtyEight statistical model (and accompanying blog) in the Times analyzing all major national and state surveys on a daily basis consistently found Obama a fairly prohibitive favorite in the race. Conservative commentators disgorged thousands and thousands of words to impugn Silver as a liberal hack, accusing him of slanting the facts to fit a political bias. Freud couldn’t have imagined a clearer case study in projection. For backup, the anti-Silver forces turned to the likes of Jay Cost of The Weekly Standard, whose learned, lengthy, and chart-laden explanations of why Silver and the polls were wrong could be considered scientific in the same way creation science is.

An even sadder case was Michael Barone, the once-respected co-author of The Almanac of American Politics who in 2008 compared Sarah Palin to FDR and who this year abandoned his fact-based standard for a faith-based standard underestimating minority turnout; he predicted a 315 electoral-vote victory for Romney. Like Rove, Barone called nearly every battleground state wrong. (The professional pollster most admired by the right, the GOP-leaning Rasmussen, didn’t bat much higher.) Silver got all 50 states right."

As the Dalai Lama put it, 'my religion is kindness.'  And Jesus said, 'love your neighbor as yourself.'  As a student of politics, I am not doubt odd in many ways, but for me, one of the cornerstones for being kind is to speak more honestly, to work hard to be candid and present, to reject intentional efforts to mislead, systematic campaigns designed to confuse and frustrate in order to disempower. 

In our collective efforts to find ways to live together in peace and prosperity, one foundation stone, upon which all of our problem solving and collective action depend, is the ways we communicate with each other.  It is in that arena, on that score, that we need to rediscover a capacity to be kind.

We all shoulda had a V8
Frank Bruni, reprinted in today’s Akron Beacon Journal, unpacks the deeply sexist prevailing narrative for thinking and talking about the David Petraeus extra-marital affair and resignation story. 

“It has to be more than mere coincidence that Bill Clinton had an affair with a White House intern; Newt Gingrich with a congressional aide (now his wife); John Edwards with a woman who followed him around with a camera, creating hagiographic mini-documentaries about his presidential campaign; and Petraeus with a woman who made him the subject of a biography so worshipful that its main riddle, joked Jon Stewart, was whether Petraeus was “awesome or incredibly awesome.”

These mighty men didn’t just choose mistresses, by all appearances. They chose fonts of gushing reverence. That’s at least as deliberate and damnable as any signals the alleged temptresses put out.

Petraeus’ choice suggests an additional measure of vanity. Broadwell exercises compulsively, as he does. She’s fascinated by all matters military, as he is.

“Petraeus once joked I was his avatar,” she told the Charlotte Observer a while back. So by his own assessment, he was having an affair with a version of himself.

And yet it’s the women in these situations who are often subjected to a more vigorous public shaming — and assigned greater responsibility…..

An article in Slate asked “how could he — this acclaimed leader and figure of rectitude — allow such a thing to a happen?” The italics are mine, because the verb is a telling one. “She went a bit ga-ga for the general,” the article later observes, adding: “She may have made herself irresistible.”

Such adamant women, such pregnable men. We’ve been stuck on this since Eve, Adam and the Garden of Eden. And it’s true: Eve shouldn’t have been so pushy with the apple.

But Adam could have had a V8.”

David Brooks, reprinted in the same paper, provides a very thoughtful analysis of the political challenges facing the president and Republican leaders willing to put county before party. 

“But the point is the only way to get things done in a divided polarized country is side by side — an acceptable Democratic project paired with an acceptable Republican one.

The fiscal-cliff talks are just the first chapter in this long process. In this first episode, the Democrats should get higher revenues from the rich (elections have consequences) and the Republicans should get some entitlement reform. But the main point is to lay the predicate for the bigger deals to come.

This is about horse-trading. It’s about conducting meetings in which people don’t lecture each other; they deal. It’s about isolating those who want an economic culture war. It’s about making clear offers and counteroffers.

If you want a great example of how these deals might work, check out a new paper at Third Way (www.thirdway.org/publications/613) called “The Bargain.” It offers a perfect model of how you might structure a series of big trades to move the country back on the growth path — on innovation policy, tax policy, spending policy and so on.

The more you put on the table, the more trading is possible, the better the atmosphere and the more you might get done. If you only put one idea on the table at a time, then everybody gets gridlocked and nothing gets done.

The economic crisis interrupted him last time, but Obama still has a chance to build a great middle-class economy. It’ll take a dealmaker, not a warrior.”

All of us, our leaders and ourselves, need to do the work to push past the sound bite mine fields of the culture wars and commit to seeing through the fog so we can all get serious about recovering a progressive democratic society with living wage jobs, a working safety net, and strong transportation, education and health care infrastructures to support families, communities, and prosperity. 

The election has shuffled the deck only slightly, but removing some of the worst Tea Party knuckleheads should help leaders in both parties return to problem solving, on the basis of compromise and collaboration, so we can choose a V8.

Anyone who loves games like chess, try Chinese chess at this site.

An Interesting Take on Why We Should Support Gay Marriage

Paul Krugman Gets the Politics and Economics Right on the Fiscal Cliff
The best mass media analyst of our political-economy helps us clear up the fog again, turning down the noise machine in favor of policy debates that focus on job creation.

"Recent events have also demonstrated clearly what was already apparent to careful observers: the deficit-scold movement was never really about the deficit. Instead, it was about using deficit fears to shred the social safety net. And letting that happen wouldn’t just be bad policy; it would be a betrayal of the Americans who just re-elected a health-reformer president and voted in some of the most progressive senators ever....

Contrary to the way it’s often portrayed, the looming prospect of spending cuts and tax increases isn’t a fiscal crisis. It is, instead, a political crisis brought on by the G.O.P.’s attempt to take the economy hostage. And just to be clear, the danger for next year is not that the deficit will be too large but that it will be too small, and hence plunge America back into recession.
      

Deficit scolds are having a hard time with this issue. How can they warn us not to go over the fiscal cliff without seeming to contradict their own rhetoric about the evils of deficits?

      

This wouldn’t be hard if they had been making a more honest case on the budget: the truth is that deficits are actually a good thing when the economy is deeply depressed, so deficit reduction should wait until the economy is stronger."

 

With fewer Tea Party knuckleheads in Congress there is a chance we can return to the less hysterical questions we need to debate about tax policy, deficit spending, and job creation...questions that do not, and never did, have anything to do with a march toward socialism...unless the pre-Bush tax cuts world that was dominated by Reagan and Clinton is to be reconstructed as a socialist nightmare.

Unite around rejecting Fox News Misinformation

This daily drum beat is likely the most significant reason that elite polarization has divided regular folks more than it usually might.  We ignore the power of madison avenue at our peril.

Have we finally moved beyond race after re-electing President Obama?
In his 2010 book, Color Blind, Tim Wise (in the words of Publishers Weekly):

'In his follow-up to Between Barack and a Hard Place, Wise continues to explore his provocative contention that Obama's commitment to transcending racism has made it "more difficult than ever to address ongoing racial bias" in America. By refusing to openly confront racism, Wise argues, the President has ceded the ground to conservatives, allowing them to "manipulate racial angers unmolested and unchecked."'

 

 

 

Publishers Weekly continues...

'While many progressives are disappointed that Obama has, in their view, capitulated to corporate interests and not forged his own New Deal, Wise makes the opposite charge. He believes that Obama is in fact too eager to follow FDR's lead in subordinating racial issues to the fight against poverty. Obama's endorsement of New Deal measures like social security, FHA home loan programs, and the G.I. Bill downplays the extent to which these programs were and continue to be "intensely racialized."

 

'Wise also contends that the pervasiveness of racism has a subconscious effect on Americans that can only be altered by forcing the issue into the open.'

Let's Hope this Election Means Less of Rick Santorum
When I heard that Rick Santorum blamed the Romney loss on homosexuals, I thought he must have been misquoted or taken out of context.  Sure, he is a well-known homophobe, but even he would not put his name behind such a loony idea, right?  Wrong.  In fact, his actual statement is worse than the headline.  I hope that the Tea Party losses and re-election of Obama, Sherrod Brown, and others signals the declining influence of the crazies within our grand old party.  We would all benefit, most of all the GOP.

Here is what Santorum said, as reported in The Daily Currant: 

‘The conservative catholic politician told CNN this morning that something about the official numbers "just didn't add up" and was forced to draw the only obvious conclusion:

"I see the hand of the homosexual in this massive election fraud," Santorum explained, "Romney was tied or leading in most polls before the election. And then he loses?... Homosexual dirty tricks. It's is the only explanation that makes sense."

Santorum said he wasn't sure how gay activists managed to steal a national election, but he's confident they are capable of such a feat:

"Homosexuals aren't like you and me. They don't have respect for democracy. Your average homosexual has no moral compass whatsoever. If anyone is capable of this fraud, its them."’

Shockingly ignorant, on so many levels, mean-spirited, counter productive, and as we saw this week part of an overall electoral strategy that might be described as a maximum cost-minimum gain strategy.

Random Notes
Research on the mass media has shown that it does not do a very good job of telling us what to think, but is does have a significant impact on what we think about. 

If learning to think, being educated, being free is not about the capacity to think or about knowing facts, but about choosing what to think about, what to pay attention to (and seeing this choice in order to reject the unconscious default pathway to thinking about the world in a self-centered way and recognize that there are alternative things to think about and pay attention to...yes, stealing from David Foster Wallace, Part I and II see earlier blog), then the power of the mass media in nothing to take lightly.

Read New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander.  Powerful and smart.

I just picked up a 2007 book that looks promising, but have not yet read it.  Anyone read Talking About Race: Community Dialogues and the Politics of Difference by Katherine Cramer Walsh and willing to share your thoughts?

Ran into this data today.  Similar to data after earlier elections showing that red states have the highest divorce rates and lowest IQs.  What does this data really tell us?  And if does not provide significant explanatory value for questions we consider important today, since we know it also insults those who bring competing perspectives into our democratic deliberations, does circulating this (and snickering about it) distort political communication and weaken democratic deliberation? 

 

And for those with a love of historical context, you can read President Nixon's plans for national health care, in his own words here.  Thanks to an old friend for sending this to me today!  Wow.  Please note, once you get to the page, on the right menu you can choose to download the document in a much more reader-friendly format.



Consider these...

 

Not a Branding Problem.  A Problem Problem.

Conor Friedersdorf, writing for the Atlantic, highlights perhaps the most important lesson from this election for all of us, republicans and democrats.  We cannot allow elites, on either side, to cynically and shamelessly distort our information system and expect democracy to remain both possible and desirable. Friedersdorf’s piece is short, but well worth considering carefully.

The information bubble, within which sound-bite sabotage is honored in place of thoughtful analysis of data, Friedersdorf describes is not a uniquely republican problem.  It is, however, accurate to observe that this problem is not evenly distributed today.  It is absolutely wrong to conclude ‘both sides do it,’ if by that you mean both do it equally today. 

With a longer historical perspective we can see that there are times when both sides have done it, though at any given time one is the vanguard and today the vanguard are “conservative information elites pander[ing] in the most cynical, self-defeating ways,” in part because it turns out to be “profitable” (if not a successful electoral strategy) to broadcast and publish “inane bullshit.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates, also in the Atlantic, made a similar observation in his blog.

Romneys 16 percent of the Latino vote does not merely approach the black vote in Ohio, it nearly mirrors Bush's 16 percent of the black vote from 2004. This should scare the hell out of any non-delusional GOP operative.

I am hearing a great deal of talk about "appealing to Hispanics" and "appealing to women." But I am not hearing much about endorsing actual policies. What happened last night is not a matter of cosmetics. This is not false consciousness. This a real response to real policies. Mitt Romney actually endorsed Arizona's immigration policies. You can't fix this by flashing more pictures of brown people.

This is not a "branding problem." This is a "problem problem." Latino voters didn't go crazy. Latino voters went voter.

Friedersdorf reminds us that for the months leading up to the election there was a controversy, only in the conservative media, over putatively skewed polls.  Nate Silver at the New York Times (whose projections turned out to be spot on accurate) was the primary target of conservative information elite wrath.  Of course, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart hits another home run on this one as well.

“Barack Obama just trounced a Republican opponent for the second time. But unlike four years ago, when most conservatives saw it coming, Tuesday's result was, for them, an unpleasant surprise. So many on the right had predicted a Mitt Romney victory, or even a blowout -- Dick Morris, George Will, and Michael Barone all predicted the GOP would break 300 electoral votes. Joe Scarborough scoffed at the notion that the election was anything other than a toss-up. Peggy Noonan insisted that those predicting an Obama victory were ignoring the world around them. Even Karl Rove, supposed political genius, missed the bulls-eye. These voices drove the coverage on Fox News, talk radio, the Drudge Report, and conservative blogs. 

Those audiences were misinformed.

Outside the conservative media, the narrative was completely different. Its driving force was Nate Silver, whose performance forecasting Election '08 gave him credibility as he daily explained why his model showed that President Obama enjoyed a very good chance of being reelected.” 

Friedersdorf is also correct to point out that this self-defeating information exile was not merely about misinforming voters about one election.  It is more systematic and that is what makes is an even more serious threat to democracy, a threat that should make democratic partisans pray for a return to health of their republican opponents, before this disease cripples our entire body politic…or, as then Senator Obama said,

“With the rest of the public, I had watched campaign culture metastasize throughout the body politic, as an entire industry of insult—both perpetual and somehow profitable—emerged to dominate cable television, talk radio, and the New York Times bestseller list.” 

Are we finally catching up with the president’s analysis here…and ready to recognized that he is a moderate on all issues save this one…making democracy work by battling the elite-driven information distortion he called ‘an entire industry of insult’ and Friedersdorf calls highly profitable for private sector information elites, but a cynical pandering that a self-defeating public-sector leadership strategy?

“Conservatives were at an information disadvantage because so many right-leaning outlets wasted time on stories the rest of America dismissed as nonsense. WorldNetDaily brought you birtherism.  Forbes brought you Kenyan anti-colonialism. National Review obsessed about an imaginary rejection of American exceptionalism, misrepresenting an Obama quote in the process, and Andy McCarthy was interviewed widely about his theory that Obama, aka the Drone Warrior in Chief, allied himself with our Islamist enemies in a "Grand Jihad" against America. Seriously?

Conservatives were at a disadvantage because their information elites pandered in the most cynical, self-defeating ways, treating would-be candidates like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain as if they were plausible presidents rather than national jokes who'd lose worse than George McGovern….

…A lot of cynical people have gotten rich broadcasting and publishing red meat for movement conservative consumption….

It ought to be an eye-opening moment. 

But I expect that it'll be quickly forgotten, that none of the conservatives who touted a polling conspiracy will be discredited, and that the right will continue to operate at an information disadvantage. After all, it's not like they'll trust the analysis of a non-conservative like me more than the numerous fellow conservatives who constantly tell them things that turn out not to be true.”

Congratulations Mr. President.  Keep reaching across the aisle, because we need to move forward together, republicans and democrats, south and north, rich and poor, white and black, gay and straight.

Looking for a very thoughtful post election analysis?  You found it here.  And if you like this Atlantic article, you will love the Rachel Maddow show on November 7, 2012.

Wondering...Citizens United opened the flood gates for unfettered domination of political communication by elites, but watching Karl Rove invest millions in TV ads in the DVR era makes we wonder if techology might not accomplish part of what the Supreme Court struck down.  How many of us mute or fast forward through the millions of dollars of TV ads?  If the answer is not a trivial number, we be witnessing a seachange in how we run political campaigns.

Canvassing and the Other One Percent
It was a spectacularly sunny day.  A day when you walk just a bit slower, because you recognize you want to soak up this moment.  I had to adjust my hat when we were walking south, because the sun was that bright.  Neighbors were out working on their homes and cars. Kids playing games in the streets.  A day to remember.

Nine of ten doors we knocked on, no one answered.  Maybe more.  Of those who did answer, nine of ten were either uninterested, visibly annoyed at being canvassed yet again, or told us that the person we were looking for was not home.  We were left with the other one percent.

Canvassing is a sobering experience.  With all the talk about the importance of the modern ground game in elections, we somewhat romantically expected to feel like the vanguard as we collected our packets and mapped out our routes.  Four hours later, feet sore and fingers frozen, we wondered if we’d had any impact at all.  Far from delivering the state, I was in a state of shock.

We walked through a neighborhood on the south eastern edge of downtown, butting up against the university.  Houses were run down, for rent signs in every other window.  The streets and sidewalks were torn up, weathering for lack of human attention well beyond the lived-in look.  You had to watch your step to avoid pot holes, sink holes, wadded up panties, piles of shattered liquor bottles and fast food debris.  What else about my life, beyond my neighborhood sidewalks and well-tended yards, do I similarly just take for granted?

The people walking on the streets were a mixture of mostly young and seriously haggard middle-aged folks.  A union guy about my age came to the door, unwilling to mask his annoyance at being bothered yet again, repeating to me the line about early voting that he had already heard for weeks, making my script about rides to the polls tomorrow sound bureaucratic and insensitive.  I felt like I was knocking on Thoreau’s door and failing to behave like a neighbor, collecting taxes or not.

A women, maybe 35, craned her neck to hold her head in the barely opened door to tell me that she had ‘spoken to someone from your office just yesterday.’  I laughed and noted she would probably hear from someone tomorrow as well.  I got the sense that this registered with her, perhaps inspiring her to plan to be out of the house tomorrow.  She did not return my laughter. 

About a third of the doorways were littered with the signs of previous canvasses ignored.  Old and yellowed flyers crammed into the jam of a door that has not been opened in a while.  How many times do I read and consider the flyer swinging from my door handle?  I need to remember to never allow my impatience to show when someone takes the time to knock on my door in the future, even if the game is on or a pot is on the stove or I was reading a great book.  In fact, I should welcome them and engage with them, since the alternative appears to be bombardment by a mountain of commercials.

A 19 year old student cheerfully reported that she had already voted early as she shifter her hips to block her very large dog from escaping through the screen door she was holding open with one hand.  Another student, likely a football player or at least the size of one, with a big dog and a puppy, told us the same.  Already voted.  As I waited on one street corner for my partner, I could hear construction workers digging a ditch for a new gas line commenting about the election, and stealing a glance and grin at me, but I could not quite make out what they were saying.

The much sought-after ground game that is said to be what will make the difference.  I am glad to be part of it and to experience it as a walk through my neighbor’s neighborhoods.  Engaging for real is concrete, interactive, and messy.  Stepping out takes the gloss off all the images of democracy that squeeze out the complexity and the multiple layers of contestation and no-time-for-this-today.  The other one percent knocked the wind out of me today and I liked it.  The election is tomorrow, let's hope all of our neighborhoods win.

Canvassing got me thinking...then a friend posted the following on Facebook and it just cascaded beyond my control...

“If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.”

David Foster Wallace

Profound insight into how politics and power work.  So I read it and thought about it and ended up listening to a recording of a speech he gave in 2005.  And that speech was just absolutely amazing.  Really hit me hard...in a very good way.  I highly recommend it.  The speech is called 'This is Water.'

This is Water
Some Thoughts Delivered on a Significant Occasion about Living a Compassionate Life

David Foster Wallace speech

Part I

Part II

Here is a site that provides the full text of this speech, if you are like me and prefer to have a text to follow and write on as you listen.

Who was David Foster Wallace?

David Foster Wallace was an award-winning American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He is widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest.

Born: February 21, 1962, Ithaca
Died: September 12, 2008, Claremont
Education: Amherst College, University of Arizona, Cornell University, Harvard University
Awards: MacArthur Fellowship, Whiting Writers' Award, Lannan Literary Award for Fiction

Books
Infinite Jest
1996

The Pale King
2011

Mute the Commercials, Reject the Noise, Reflect and Vote
Every election is important.  Every election we tell ourselves that this one will be the election that defines our generation, because there are only a few public acts of such monumental scope.  If you have not yet voted, see my blog from yesterday for links to information on where and when you can vote early...and vote.  

President Obama has worked hard to ensure no families lose our homes or savings because we have been denied health insurance, saving millions of jobs by ensuring that GM did not disappear, helping women get paid equally for equal work, ending our war in Iraq and bringing Bin Laden to justice.  He has increased our stature on the world stage, presided over more than two years of a consistent increase in jobs each and every month, and most importantly to me, he has and continues to put reaching across the aisle to get things done on the top of his priority list. 

He shares our values: American, Christian, and Capitalist.  Regardless of whether an idea is a Republican idea (like the individual mandate) or Democratic idea (like the Lilly Ledbetter Act), he is, like most Americans, pragmatic and moderate...just interested in getting the job done, and he did. 

Against some of the most difficult odds faced by any president, he delivered.  He got things done.  We are on a path to recovery.  Jobs are growing.  Wall Street is booming.  Our young men and women are returning from Iraq and soon from Afghanistan to help us rebuild our own roads and bridges and schools.  Check out the video as a final statement that is entirely positive and, no matter which candidate you support, remember to vote.

Confusion about Rules of the Game Threatens Democracy
Sadly, it appears that the widespread confusion in Ohio about who can vote early, when and how, may not be accidental.  It is certainly expected to impact voting in a partisan way and this should concern all of us, regardless of party. 

Our Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted has changed early voting days and times several times, as recently as two weeks ago when he added limited weekend early voting only after the Supreme Court ordered him to do so.  This and his efforts to extend times in Republican areas and limit them in Democratic areas required the court to intervene more than once to compel Husted to do his job.  

On a parallel track, we are seeing intense and penetrating mobilization by tea party supported True the Vote and their Ohio affiliate the Ohio Voter Integrity Project in what are clearly designed to intimidate and suppress voter turnout, particularly Democratic voter turnout.

These two powerful forces, combined with the widely debunked myth of voter fraud, have resulted in placing the rules of the game at center stage in this election, rather than strengthening these rules in a bipartisan fashion as the foundation stone that allows us to trust the process and accept that in a democracy sometimes the other side wins. 

This chaos and confusion is not random or accidental.  It is already doing harm to our trust in democracy and the rule of law.  For now, our most powerful individual response it to be sure to vote, then bring friends and families to vote.  Click for information on where and when and how to vote…in Ohio…or in Summit County. 

 

After voting, the next most powerful response is to pay attention to, and support efforts to expose and oppose, voter suppression.  Regardless of party or candidate, we should all be able to agree on the importance of protecting everyone's right to vote and an electoral process we can all trust...because sometimes the other side wins.

 

 

Unpacking Romney on GM Before We Vote
Below (IN BLUE and italics) is the entire and unedited original editorial that Mitt Romney wrote for the New York Times on November 18, 2008 under the title “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”  My comments, updating the story, are in black and indented. 

 

Why go back to the original editorial?  Regardless of which candidate or party anyone supports, we need to call leaders when they claim x in 2008 and then tell us in 2012 that he actually claimed the opposite of x.  In this instance, the multiple pivots has been particularly confusing, so we owe it to ourselves to sort this out before we vote, rather than discover after the election what we should have known before.

If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Clearly the very first sentence is at odds with the position Romney is trying to pivot to today.  He cannot now claim credit for saving the auto industry through the bailout after stating in no uncertain terms here that the bailout will mean the end of the auto industry.

But, in the second debate, Governor Romney said this: “You took them bankrupt and that was a process that was necessary to get those companies back on their feet so they could start hiring more workers.  That is precisely what I recommended and ultimately what happened.”

You can hear Romney saying exactly this in the debate exchange over GM at this link.  Listen for yourself, compare it to the original editorial here, and make your own call.

You can read a very thorough and hard-hitting October 31, 2012 New York Times editorial that traces the candidates multiple pivots and position changes on this issue from the original editorial to the pivot during the Republican primary to another pivot in the second debate and, pivoting yet again, to the ads he is running in Ohio today.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

But in the bankruptcy made possible through a government bailout, during a financial crisis when private capitalwas simply not available, GM has ‘drastically restructured itself.’  The drastic restricting has allowed GM to become strong again, to hire more workers, and the 1 in 8 Ohio jobs linked to the auto industry did not disappear. 

Read in this business journal why the GM bailout might be the president’s finest hour.  And in this business journal why the restructuring will not work.  Either way, there is no question GM was drastically restructured.

I love cars, American cars. I was born in Detroit, the son of an auto chief executive. In 1954, my dad, George Romney, was tapped to run American Motors when its president suddenly died. The company itself was on life support — banks were threatening to deal it a death blow. The stock collapsed. I watched Dad work to turn the company around — and years later at business school, they were still talking about it. From the lessons of that turnaround, and from my own experiences, I have several prescriptions for Detroit’s automakers.

First, their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. That means new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Furthermore, retiree benefits must be reduced so that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that of foreign producers.

In the business journal noted above they point out that the “unions struck GM in 2007. The resolution of that strike moved retiree health care from the company's balance sheet to the union's. The company off-loaded $50 billion in obligations by creating a fund with $30 billion of its money. That also closed much of the expense gap between GM and its Japanese rivals in the U.S.”

That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota’s Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product — it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.

Second, management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries — from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations.

This is precisely what the White House did.  Here is how the business journal put it: “The government hired the right guy to run GM. Ed Whitacre, the CEO who built SBC Communications, the smallest of the regional Bell phone companies, into the new AT&T, was an inspired choice as GM chairman. He promptly fired GM CEO Fritz Henderson.”

The new management must work with labor leaders to see that the enmity between labor and management comes to an end. This division is a holdover from the early years of the last century, when unions brought workers job security and better wages and benefits. But as Walter Reuther, the former head of the United Automobile Workers, said to my father, “Getting more and more pay for less and less work is a dead-end street.”

Reducing enmity requires both parties to be willing, labor and management.  This is where Romney’s party choosing in Wisconsin and Ohio and elsewhere to take away the right of workers to bargain collectively demonstrates a one-sidedness to this call to work together.

You don’t have to look far for industries with unions that went down that road. Companies in the 21st century cannot perpetuate the destructive labor relations of the 20th. This will mean a new direction for the U.A.W., profit sharing or stock grants to all employees and a change in Big Three management culture.

The need for collaboration will mean accepting sanity in salaries and perks. At American Motors, my dad cut his pay and that of his executive team, he bought stock in the company, and he went out to factories to talk to workers directly. Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms — all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat.

Investments must be made for the future. No more focus on quarterly earnings or the kind of short-term stock appreciation that means quick riches for executives with options. Manage with an eye on cash flow, balance sheets and long-term appreciation. Invest in truly competitive products and innovative technologies — especially fuel-saving designs — that may not arrive for years. Starving research and development is like eating the seed corn.

Smart.  But it seems like the approach he is critical of here is exactly the approach he took to the extreme as CEO of Bain Capital, an approach his Republican rivals called 'vulture capitalism.'

Just as important to the future of American carmakers is the sales force. When sales are down, you don’t want to lose the only people who can get them to grow. So don’t fire the best dealers, and don’t crush them with new financial or performance demands they can’t meet.

It is not wrong to ask for government help, but the automakers should come up with a win-win proposition. I believe the federal government should invest substantially more in basic research — on new energy sources, fuel-economy technology, materials science and the like — that will ultimately benefit the automotive industry, along with many others. I believe Washington should raise energy research spending to $20 billion a year, from the $4 billion that is spent today. The research could be done at universities, at research labs and even through public-private collaboration. The federal government should also rectify the imbedded tax penalties that favor foreign carmakers.

But don’t ask Washington to give shareholders and bondholders a free pass — they bet on management and they lost.

It does appear to have turned out to be a free pass.  Management was fired.  The organization was drastically restructured.  And the federal loans have been paid back in full, and more important, GM is hiring.

The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs. The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk.

In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, was a candidate for this year’s Republican presidential nomination.

This is the background needed to make sense of current Romney ads claiming that the president's failed bailout, that Romney himself also takes credit for (?), is responsible for Chrysler shipping jobs to China...a claim that Chrysler denies and has resulted in auto industry executives speaking out against Romney's current ads, calling them "cynical campaign politics at its worst."  Read the recent New York Times editorial for even more on the context.