Bow-wow-wow!

So there is a whole lot of phony outrage over President Obama bowing to the Emperor of Japan. The outrage is calculated to play in Ohio and Michigan who unfairly blame the woes of the American manufacturing sector, particularly auto manufacturing, on the Japanese (rather than the incompetence of the American managers, who deserve the blame).

This is not the first time Obama's approach to royalty has come under scrutiny. For deference to the Saudi King, he is berated by conservatives (who try to forget the total abject toadying of the Bush family for the past 40 years). Same thing for Michelle Obama's embrace of the Queen, regarded as an affront to the British because... wait for it... it was not deferential enough. Bottom line, there is nothing Obama can do that will not be criticized by the right-wing press. Best to ignore them and concentrate on any audience that matters. In this case, the audience was the people of Japan. For them, bowing to the Emperor is like standing at attention when the US Flag is saluted. This was regarded as entirely appropriate by them, and as a sign of respect for Japan only. The interpretation of the bow as some sort of subservience to royalty is simply off the mark. It is noteworthy that the only context where an American ought to be observe some symbolic lack of deference to monarchy - with our former monarchs in Britain - the President played it correctly.

Moreover, the bow tothe Japanese Emperor was a magnanimous gesture because everyone knows that Barack Obama is - by far - the more popular and more powerful of the two leaders. He is the nobel prize winner for peace unlike, er, the present Emperor's father. Also, Obama's relative height meant that any less of a bow would not actually lower his head below the Emperor's, which was kind of the point of the gesture. The trick was to make the bow respectful, not mocking or clumsy. That was well done. Anything else would have been a bit insulting, really. By contrast, Dick Cheney's "firm handshake" in 2007 is indicative rather of Cheney's lower standing in the world and his own insecurity. It is also very clear from the facial expressions of the Emperor and Empress that they were absolutely delighted, an image seen all over Japan. Isn't that the whole purpose of meeting these figureheads in the first place?

So, congratulations to the protocol folks at the State Department for getting it exactly right. A symbolic gesture of respect to the Japanese people through a bow to their Emperor, genuine respect to the Chinese by engaging Hu as if it were a superpower summit. By the way, the London Times heartily approved in an article very much worth reading. Note that the conservative Times also approved of the embrace between the Queen and the First Lady at the time, noting with a sort of hushed awe that the Queen embraced Michelle back.

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Justice at Last!

What excellent news comes from the Attorney General this morning: Khalid Sheikh Mohammend and four other plotters connected with the 9/11 attacks will be tried in federal court in New York. This is eight years in coming, and a half dozen years after these criminals were apprehended. It is about time!

The Republicans are outraged. Atty General Mukasey (formerly a federal judge in New York) claims that this is a reversion to a pre-9/11 mindset that refuses to acknowledge that we are "at war" with terrorism. Of course this is false. Shifting from trials in military commissions to trials in real courts has nothing to do with the tactics and strategy employed to defeat terrorists. The reason for the outrage is the fear that Bush and the neoconservative legacy will be further undermined. The trials will, they know, bring out real details about the torture inflicted on these accused persons.

I am excited. This is the chance we have been waiting for since the 9/11 attacks, to show the world what American justice is really all about. I hope the courts do a good job. The conservatives who oppose this have really emboldened the terrorists. Their message is, "You terrorists are too big, scary, and powerful for our meager institutions. Not soldiers or criminals, but a terrifying new hybrid. We will change our values and principles to accommodate you, because they are too weak." This Attorney General and this President say otherwise. America and her institutions are strong enough to handle these terrorists.

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Taking on Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck is getting more and more powerful, and this is a problem for this country. Thankfully, some are taking him on with vicious parody.

First, you might have seen Jon Stewart's send-up on The Daily Show:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The 11/3 Project
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

And recently, South Park did one too. I hope this helps raise "Glenn Beck is dangerous" awareness.

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The Cold War Ended 20 Years Ago Today

If one can point to a particular date on which the Cold War ended, it would be November 9th, 1989. Twenty years ago today, the East German government lifted travel restrictions on its citizens and they responded by practically ripping down the Berlin Wall with whatever hammers, axes and picks they could find. Events moved so rapidly that fall it was nearly impossible to keep up. You can see it in the eyes of some of the E. German border guards in the video clip. They're stunned, in shock. They don't know whether to be upset that their authority is now gone or be thrilled that they too are free for the first time in their lives.

When all this was happening, I was coincidentally taking a course on the politics of the Soviet system. At the beginning of the course things were already starting to happen. Our professor asked us when we thought Germany would be reunified. None of us, including the professor thought it would happen within the next 20 years. Most of us thought it would be 50 years. As it happened, it was all over bar the shouting by the end of that semester and the last official i's were dotted and t's crossed in a little more than a year.

I think too, that the European Union played a significant role in the speed of the reunification. Both Thatcher and Mitterand were reluctant to allow a rapid reunification. The EU provided a safe context in which a reunified Germany could emerge. In a very real sense, the presence of the EU meant that E. Germany wasn't only merging with W. Germany but with all of Western Europe. That fact made Thatcher's World War II era language of "Anschluss" sound a bit silly (referred to reunification by the same term used to describe Hitler's annexation of Austria instead of by the term the Germans on both sides were using "Wiedervereinigung"). It also gave Mitterand a way to see how he could work an angle for French benefit out of the whole deal.

From a German perspective, it meant that E. Germans were in the EU for 14 years before their Polish, Czech and East-Central European neighbors were admitted. The advantage in that is easily visible. I visited the former E. Germany a couple of years after reunification and it reminded me of the worst hit parts of the "Rust Belt" in the American Great Lakes area. Friends of mine who now live in Germany (one in Berlin) have told me that parts of the former E. Berlin are quite fashionable neighborhoods now. Progress in Poland the Baltics (based on my own visits there) has not been nearly as pronounced.

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10.2%

Unemployment formally has befallen more than 1 in 10 Americans. Including underemployment, we are looking at closer to 18% by most reports this morning. 1 in 5 Americans are having enormous trouble with their personal economic situations. This is a really, really big deal.

But it's not a new development. We hit this number, more or less, in April after four months of losing almost 700,000 jobs per month (you may not remember this figure because the reported numbers were initially smaller, but all were adjusted upward). By July, job losses had slowed to about 200,000 per month. This last month 190,000. This is a significant number because job losses happen every month even in the best economy. What is supposed to happen also is new hires. That's not happening yet. So we're seeing fairly normal loss numbers (according to Labor Dept spokesman last month), but not fairly normal gain numbers yet. Combined with economic growth that is now occurring in a GDP context, including the manufacturing sector and others, it is largely good news. Economic activity is returning. Factory orders are going up. Housing prices are, in some areas, beginning to rebound.

Of course, politically, all eyes are on the 2010 elections. In presidential elections, the "table" for the election is largely set by mid-summer. In offyear elections, the table gets set a bit after labor day. By this I mean that the public gets a fixed idea of what the state of the world is, and of what issues matter to them, by late September. After that, candidates can't argue about how the world is, they can only argue about what they will do about it. Recall in 1992 that the economic recovery began quite obviously in September 1992, but Clinton could run on recession because the public wasn't going to change its perception. So the real question is whether the public perceives that the recovery is underway by September 2010. Probably so.

In fact, the danger for the Democrats is that the existence of economic recovery becomes a non-issue by the summer. "What have you done for me lately" is a real danger. So, ironically, it is worth it to the Dems to not proclaim "victory" until the Summer.

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Conventional Wisdom in Politics

So we keep hearing that VA and NJ always or often vote against the President's party in the subsequent year. At electoral-vote.com, they have a chart showing this happening 14 of 16 times since 1980. So let's push it further. Here are my thoughts:
1. If VA or NJ voted against the incumbent president's party but consistent with that state's vote in the previous year's presidential election, the election shows continuity, not a shift against the president's party.
2. Does it matter what happened before 1980? I don't see why 1980 is a cutoff for measuring unless we know something happened, or unless we with to hypothesize that some change must have happened in 1980.

Here are my expanded data:

Year	Prior Pres Elect	VA Vote Pres	VA Gov	NJ Vote Pres	NJ Gov	VA	NJ
2009	D	D*	R	D*	R	2	2
2005	R	R*	D	D	D	2	1
2001	R	R*	D	D	D	2	1
1997	D	R	R	D*	D	1	0
1993	D	R	R	D*	R	1	2
1989	R	R*	D	R*	D	2	2
1985	R	R*	D	R*	R	2	0
1981	R	R*	D	R*	R	2	0
1977	D	R	R	R	D	1	-1
1973	R	R*	R	R*	D	0	2
1969	R	R*	D	R*	R	0	0
1965	D	D*	D	D*	D	0	0
1961	D	R	D	D	D	-1	0

The coding is: 2 means state voted against incumbent president and changed its party preference from the previous election. 1 means the state voted agaisnt the incumbent president but consistent with its prior presidential electoral vote. 0 means it voted for the incumbent president, consistent with its prior presdential electoral vote. -1 means that it voted for the incumbent president and inconsistently with its prior state vote agaisnt that president.

What we see is (1) the pattern is not so strong as remarked and (2) it really only relates to a handful of elections.

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Election of 2009, cont'd

So Republicans won a governor's race in Virginia for the first time since 1997 and recaptured the Governor's seat in New Jersey from the very unpopular Corzine, albeit probably with barely 50% of the vote. Good news for the GOP, sort of. But in the nationalized contest in NY-23, the Dems are going to pick up a House seat from the Republicans, and the Maine anti-gay referendum remains too close to call at this hour (No has led most of the night, but it's still early). For reasons that are hard to fathom, at the same time, we see medical marijuana in Maine passing by over 60%. War on drugs is over. War on love still being waged by conservatives.

2009 will go down as a split decision, between D and R, but a big loss for social conservatives. The only social conservative to win, McConnell in VA, only did so by pretending he wasn't. Sarah Palin also is the big loser. Her public endorsement of Hoffman in NY-23 was a bust. The endorsement that mattered was the unknown derided Scozzafava (Republican, but pro-choice and called a RINO by the blackshirts of the party) dropping out to endorse her Democratic opponent over the weekend.

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The Election of 2009

2009 is an off-off-off year election. The voters are going to the polls for statewide races in NJ and VA, and in congressional elections in a handful of open districts, where only NY-23 is attracting any attention. If you only knew that unemployment was at record highs and that the party in power in Washington (Democrats) was also the incumbent party in both VA and NJ governor's races (and connected with NY-23 where the President picked the incumbent Republican congressman for the Sec of the Army, thus leaving a vacancy), you would predict the president's Democratic party to lose. You would double down if you realized that Virginia's race featured no incumbents - and the NJ Democratic incumbent Corzine is an ineffective former Goldman Sachs multi-gazillionaire tainted by association with a sick and widespread corruption scandal including the illegal sale of organs who also raised taxes on a lot of people. That is what is going to happen - the Republicans will win these races, in all likelihood.

But you would also predict that all the major candidates of the out-of-power party - the Republicans - would be running against Barack Obama and ideologically against Democrats and liberalism. That is not happening.

In Virginia, the Republican candidate who actually could have quite first-rate right-wing credentials is running as a centrist, making his pitch not to his base, but to swing voters in Northern Virginia. In New Jersey, the Republican candidate is running with ads quoting Barack Obama, and there is a third party candidate (Daggett) who is spoiling the race as a centrist who is pulling votes from the Republicans. In NY-23, a safe GOP district, a 3-way race developed between a centrist republican, a Democrat, and a "Conservative" party member. The conservative party member will likely win buoyed by a civil war within the national GOP ranks over whether to support him or their own less conservative nominee.

So what does this mean? It means that these 2009 are not playing out a referendum on Obama or the Democrats. It means that Republicans who think that 2009 victories point to an ideological tilt or to 2010 victories are mistaken at their peril. With unemployment at levels not seen for more than a quarter century - and in some places, not since the Great Depression - you would expect the party in power to take a beating. But Barack Obama is still over 50% in popularity and conservatism is showing no signs of expanding its appeal to the electorate, an electorate which still wants more government action, and an electorate that is not voting on social issues. The GOP quietly put the tea party nonsense away when the real campaigning began after Labor Day.

In Maine, there will be referendum on whether to block the legalization of gay marriage authorized by the legislature earlier this year. It is running "too close to call" in every poll, and Maine's Republican grandees - Snowe and Collins - are keeping mum about it. The referendum has seemed to be a waste of time to most Maine residents.

In January 2009, Barack Obama made a bargain with the American people: support me and I will fix the economy. In 2010, with the economy on the mend, expect to see his and his party's fortunes soar again. 2010 will be the national referendum on Obama; this 2009 election is not shaping up to be a national referendum. The GOP has avoided making it that, for good reason.

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Abdullah Abdullah to Boycott Runoff

Abdullah Abdullah is going to boycott the run off in Afghanistan.

OK, I'll get right to the point. I've always thought that boycotting elections was a sign of weakness. Why boycott an election if you think you're in a strong position? Even if it's going to be rigged, you get your people out there, rev them up, and set up a wave of protests against the rigged election like happened in Iran recently. By boycotting the election you are essentially saying that the best chance you have of getting attention is by quitting. That's not a sign of strength.

Abdullah Abdullah looked very strong after Karzai was forced to participate in the run off. But by pulling out, it makes it look like he expected to lose and expected that his supporters would not support him in challenging the outcome.

It's unfortunate that Abdullah has done this to put it mildly. By doing this he implicitly admits that Karzai really is the stronger candidate but publicly acts to undermine his legitimacy. I can't see how you could justify this as being good for the country except if you think that bringing down the entire democratic structure (such as it is) is preferable to working to reform it.

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The Hague and a Failure of Justice

If I hear one more time on NPR that Radovan Karadzic has "refused to attend" his war crimes trial, I am going to deliberately run over a small animal. Mr. Karadzic is not in a hotel. He is in prison. He can be forcibly taken to the trial and, if need be, manacled to his seat.

Something is seriously wrong in the Hague. Milosevic's trial was four years and counting when he died. The Karadzic trial is expected to last two years. This is excessive, surely. Equally bad, they seem unable to punish anyone. A woman was convicted of war crimes and sent to Sweden where, apparently, serving 2/3 of your sentence is considered good enough for government work. Plavsic is, therefore, already returning home to a heroine's welcome in Belgrade. What has happened in a place where the trials exceed the punishments in length?

Here in the USA, we have some experience with excessively long civil and criminal trials, but they are not fixtures in the system. Their emergence has been unexpected and the judiciary is trying to figure out how to tamp it down. Not so in Europe, it seems. The Hague operates like most European courts.

I get the sense that the European civil law system, as a whole, is totally broken, perhaps beyond repair. Criminal trials routinely take years. There is no right to a speedy trial in Europe, it seems. In Italy, you basically have to be convicted twice before you can be sentenced. French Appellate courts (courts of cassation) have the power to remand, but not to reverse - meaning that decisions are interminable.

The liberal sentiments are so excessively written into the law that accused persons -like Karadzic - are treated like honored guests. The contempt power of courts seems nonexistent. Punishments are bizarrely lenient. I am not advocating the overcrowded rape-and-murder factories of our American prisons, most of which are rightfully condemned by international human rights organizations. But there must be some middle ground between 25-to-life in Angola for murder (or the death penalty) and 5 years in a Swedish spa.

Part of the problem, I fear, is that the Euro-lawyering profession itself is undereducated. European lawyers need only the equivalent of a bachelor's degree. Judges also are not chosen from the practicing bar, but are specially and separately trained in college and -also- have the equivalent of a 4-year-degree only. They are by design just bureaucrats. This means that the academic study of law is insufficiently integrated with the judiciary. In the USA, judges and experienced lawyers routinely participate in academic legal discussions.

I have tried for some time to figure out why the European justice system works so badly, and I am finally convinced that Europe needs a judicial revolution.

Now, I am *not* arguing that the American system needs to be adopted. I do believe the American system is better overall, but it has enormous faults too. The core of the American system - the adversarial system - need not be imported. But a few reforms seem necessary.

Part of the problem is that Europe's professional judges lack the disinterested impartiality of jurors, and the lack of an (unpaid) jury means that there is no incentive to finish trials quickly. Some form of citizen participation in criminal trials would be a great help.

Also, the American judicial system is by and large dominated by the bar, which has proven to be a pretty good thing in criminal law for a few interesting reasons. Our system is adversarial, the bar is overwhelmingly civil, not criminal, and prosecutors play very little role in it. Most of the elite lawyers' participation in criminal matters is pro bono representation of indigent defendants or theoretical advocacy. So the judiciary is more acccused-friendly and is a counterweight to the legislature and executive that are pro-prosecutor. The European bar needs to organize itself. Having judges selected from the bar, rather than through special schools with no professional exposure involvement to the bar, is crucial.

Europe needs to create post-university law schools with special training and specialized academic faculties, not just have a law department as part of the poli sci department. The 3-year law school is most useful because the third year is the place where academic study of law can really take place after a couple of years of intensive training.

Above all, Europe needs to construct and independent judiciary. The Napoleonic-era desire to make courts into mere bureaucratic adminitrators of Napoleonic-code justice (mere instruments of the code) is a failed experiment. The independent judiciary with its own contempt power and political power is the better model. Judicial power, feared and hated by French revolutionary reformers as tied up with King and Pope, needs to be restored and reinvigorated.

This is not bash-Europe day for me. What Europe must not lose in this process is its great desire to protect human rights. But the system is out of balance and, I fear, by design. The most visible part of the european justice system, the Hague, is a total fiasco. Thousand-page indictments and multi-year criminal trials have to stop. Due process cannot become an end in itself. It is not necessary to adopt an adversarial system with its philosophical constraints, but something must be done to alleviate the problem that the judges are charged with the roles of investigating, prosecuting, and defending the rights of the accused all at the same time. Shifting some of these burdens to a more profesionalized bar and leaving the judges to manage the efficiency of the system (ah, docket and calendar control!) will do a great service.

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What is the EU and What is it Good For?

Hi Everyone,

A recent story in The Economist wonders aloud who will "wake up Europe." They decry eight "wasted years" and seem annoyed the the EU has not become something much more or at least different than it is today. But what I found interesting about the article was that it didn't go into a lot of detail about what the EU was or what The Economist wanted it to become or why.

These are important questions if we are to set appropriate expectations and define measures with which we can judge how well the EU has met them. So what is the EU? The European Union is a confederation of democratic states with varying periods of complete sovereignty prior to joining the EU.

First and foremost, it is a free trade area with a a common currency (used by most of the member states that have been in for more than 5 years) and an increasingly integrated economic market. This degree of economic integration is largely possible because of the high degree of regulatory harmonization that has taken place in the EU over the last half a century.

More than half of the regulations and laws that govern the day to day lives of Europeans are passed at the EU level rather than by the governments of the member states. These regulations are pass by a directly elected European Parliament and a Council of Ministers made up of the elected Cabinet Ministers of the member states.

So that's what it is. What's it good for? This system has unified the economies peacefully that countless kings, dictators and generalissimos have tried to unify through war for more than 2000 years. The EU has formed the keystone of a regional system in Europe that has preserved a more complete peace for a longer period of time across a wider cross section of the continent than any other international arrangement in history.

In my opinion, if the EU does nothing from now until the end of time it will be playing a critical and beneficial role in the lives of Europeans. It doesn't need to be a super state or a world power. It doesn't need to be a counter weight to the USA. It doesn't need to have a President. Even if the EU completely stagnates and ceases all change and institutional development, it will be fulfilling its most important role... establishing a peaceful and democratic order in which individuals may prosper and be happy. Everything else is just details.

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Joe Lieberman is Such an Asshole

Joe Lieberman said today that he will filibuster Harry Reid's bill with the opt-out. So much for party unity and all that. It's all about Joe, all the time. It looks like we will have to do this with Snowe's vote, not with Joe. He makes me angrier than all the Republicans. Does anyone remember now that Joe Lieberman was Al Gore's running mate for the Democratic nomination in 2000? The Democratic platform that Lieberman ran on called for guaranteed access to health care for all children and allowing persons 55 years or older to buy into Medicare. It also called for Universal Health Coverage.

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Momentum for Health Care Reform

The logic of elections and political power is finally bearing itself out in the health care reform debate. With control of the white house and large majorities in both houses of Congress, including 60 votes in the Senate, it was always within the power of the Democrats to pass sweeping reforms. It also has been their biggest issue for 20 years. This is what Democrats, what Obama, were elected for. So it is not too surprising that they are in a position to get it done.

What is surprising is how well it is working. Pelosi, Obama, and others did not lose their nerve (not so sure about Reid - he was better in the minority by far). And we are now on the verge of getting the legislation to the floor. What's better is that the question is now now "will there be a public option" but - likely- what kind. Moderate Dems are realizing that there is no way to demand cost containment but oppose the public option at the same time. Snowe is looking for a compromise. On the Democratic side, the question is whether Landrieu (LA), Nelson (NE) and Lieberman (FU) will vote against the whole package if it has a public option of some kind. The expectation is apparently now that they will "work against" having one, or work to water it down, but will not oppose the legislation altogether if one is included. It helps a lot that the Dow is at 10,000 and next week the numbers will come out showing the Great Recession is officially over, and that economic growth has resumed. True, there is still lots of pain, but the belief that things are going to improve - i.e., HOPE - is what elected the Democrats in 2008, and will bring them renewed political victories in 2010.

All this is not inside baseball. It is all about whether we will finally get health security for Americans, or whether we will continue to live in a country where most people's health insurance covers too little, and where we have no real choice (most of us get a "choice" of the one plan our employer offers -I can "choose" only one PPO or one HMO, for example). The irony is that only government employees really get more choices these days.

This is a big deal. So far, the President has done a bad job of selling the bill, but it's getting better. The insurance industry has helped out a lot. Private for-profit health insurance has committed atrocity after atrocity, and their unpopularity is a millstone around the neck of their GOP allies.

This is phase one: passing the bill. Phase two is capitalizing on the reform politically in 2010 and 2012.

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This is Who, RBR

To answer the question RBR just posed - who is the anti-gay-rights initiative in Maine appealing to?



Well, today, the Vatican announced that it would provide a special mechanism for whole Anglican parishes or dioceses to join the Roman Catholic church en masse and retain some of their Anglican traditions - such as the book of common prayer - and their married clergy (but not bishops who are married, or priests who are [openly] gay, or ordained women). This bears some resemblance to the Eastern Rite and Uniate churches - the churches with married priests and Orthodox (not Catholic) rite that for historical reasons make obeisance to the Pope and are included in his RCC fold. As Catholic as you wanna be.



As a liberal Episcopalian, this is rather good news. Instead of dividing my house, the conservative reprobates can just leave. By sucking up the hardest core of conservatives, it will drain away the driving force behind talk of schism. Remove the agitators and the support for schism becomes shallow indeed. This will probably kill the Anglican"covenant" movement too. Lose the far right and the rest can find common ground. Go in peace, friends (but definitely go).



On second thought, however, it's a strange move for the Roman church. Apparently, only two things are important to being a Catholic (1) proclaiming fealty to the Pope and (2) excluding women and (openly) gay persons from full membership in the community. This is not much of a Rock now, is it? To say that these two issues are so much more important than all the others is, in the end, pretty sad. It is another betrayal of Vatican II which embraced modernity, if not (yet) liberalization of these issues.



It also is a setup for failure. As has been pointed out by many, the "market" doesn't need another church to exclude gays or subordinate women. That niche is oversubscribed. And if that's how you define yourself, then your congregation is just going to gradually grow old, male, and die. You can say a lot about homophobia, but you can't call it a growing movement. The more the Roman catholics tie themselves to heterosexual patriarchy, the smaller their future will be. There's a reason why the leadership on anti-gay issues is increasingly among protestant fundamentalists. It thrives only in a sealed terrarium of religious intolerance.



Of course the biggest issue is not the "gay" issue, but the "women" issue. Gays are only - at most - 10% of the population, and openly gay Christians are a much smaller percentage of the whole. Women, however, are a solid majority of churchgoers everywhere, and definitely the majority of active members.



Here's the rub: the Vatican's new position today has nothing to do with the holy Spirit, and everything to do with conservative politics. If I were trying to keep people from giving the gospel faith a chance, I couldn't think of a more devious strategy.

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A WWII Vet Speaking About Equality For Gays In Maine

This is a great clip of a WWII vet speaking about whether or not Gay people should have the same rights as anyone else. This is yet another demonstration of why the current incarnation of the Republican party is so marginalized and likely to continue to be so until it undergoes a revolutionary purge of the Religious fanatics that dominate it today. If they can't win over an elderly, white, male, war veteran on a social issue who are they appealing to? The fringe of the fringe? Hate mongers?

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Run Off in Afghanistan

So the President of Afghanistan did not really win reelection outright in the first round after all. With enough fraudulent votes for Karzai invalidated to drop his support to about 48%, Karzai will now face a run off against Abdullah Abdullah, a former member of the Northern Alliance and former Foreign Minister of both the transitional government and Karzai's government.

Abdullah Abdullah was a close associate of Ahmad Massoud who was assassinated by Al Qaeda on September 9, 2001. Now, the Northern Alliance guys are not pussy cats. There are accusations of human rights violations and several of the "tribal warlord" types in the north-west don't really like them. But this faction does have long standing ties to Russia, the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, Turkey, Iran and India. Those could prove be useful contacts for the next Afghan administration - and their American allies.

I think this is a great chance for the Obama administration that they will accept democratic outcomes even if they are inconvenient. First and foremost because I doubt Abdullah Abdullah will be terribly unfriendly to American policy objectives. And what's more, if the US had resisted this or quashed it (probably what the Bushies would have been tempted to do), it would have fatally linked us to an illegitimate and increasingly corrupt and unpopular Karzai. This way, whether Karzai wins or loses the US can at least plausibly claim some neutrality in the election and hopefully reinforce the legitimacy of who ever the winner of the second round is.

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Gay Rights March on Washington

There was a significant but not overwhelmingly important gay rights march on Washington today. It will not be more impressive than West Hollywood or the Castro district (SF) on Halloween. There is no doubt that many in the gay community want gay rights to become the civil rights issue of the 2010s. This march was part of that. Notably, Barney Frank was not on board with the march. As we know in California where gay rights groups are divided as to whether to bring an initiative for gay marraige in 2010 or 2012 - and they are idiotically having their fight through the press- the gay community is VERY internally divided.

Who can be surprised? For decades and generations, the gay community has been divided between those who were more out or more in the closet. The community has divided mightily and personally on strategies of infiltration, collaboration, or confrontation. In this respect, the gay community is more divided than the black community ever was - since for blacks, the ability to just "fit in" and be hidden was never an option.

My strong inclination is to oppose, at this time, a nationalization of the gay rights movement. first, it has been organized on the local and state level for the last 2 decades, and it has been very successful. Second, gay rights groups do less well the larger the forum of contest is. The biggest success is at the local level, then smaller states, then larger states, then nationwide has been the hardest of all. I agree with Barney Frank in principle that the state-by-state movement is working well and should be continued.

Here's my thought: Imposition of equal rights by federal fiat will ultimately be necessary in the benighted South run by its Republican-Baptist theocracy, but it will be a much harder and more politically expensive battle if the East, North, and West are not yet fully on board. Even national issues are really more local than they seem. I am heartened, for example, by the fact that Senator Reid just wrote an open letter to President Obama demanding repeal of don't ask-don't tell in the military. A mormon senator from Nevada? Well, Nevada is trending Democratic, is very libertarian in its social policies, and Harry Reid wants gay money from California next door. Which he will now get, I presume. But this is really about local positioning by Reid, not really about national policy (since Obama is not expected to move in that direction quickly and Reid is not really expected to push him - this is about positioning Reid vis-a-vis Nevada and California).

So maybe big marches on Washington should be postponed for 5-10 years. March on Sacramento first.

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Why the Census and Redistricting Really Matter

There's an excellent post by Tom Schaller on 538.com that contains a number of nuggets of neat information. The post is about the "generic congressional ballot" (GCB) which is a nationwide aggregate survey of party preference in congressional elections. The question is simply "will you vote D or R?" We are so far away from the 2010 elections that only the broadest trends of red/blue have any vague predictive value now. My personal take on election polling is that polls more than six months out are as useful as predictions of the weather - on a particular day - six months out. Right now the GCB is trending more Republican than it has since 2005. But, as I like to point out, unemployment is at 10% and the Democrats are slogging through very hard agenda items in Congress. Next summer, with a year of legislative accomplishments behind them and a recovering economy, I would expect the GCB to tilt Democratic again.

Most politicos are waking up to the fact that the conventional wisdom that the president's party loses seats in the midterm elections didn't hold true in 1998 or 2002. In fact, other than big-change elections in 2006 and 1994, there has been no such "natural" drift in midterms for almost 20 years. Many things affect what may be a change, but here's the basic analysis: we no longer have coattail driven presidential politics, where the president's personal popularity sweeps in a set of reps who would never have won otherwise, and who therefore lose in midterms. We have presidents and parties much more politically aligned and polarized than in previous years. Thus the presidential popularity and vote share more closely match congressional vote shares. The 1994 and 2006 elections were examples of the president's unpopularity being reflected in Congress.

What is fascinating is the comment by a noted pollster that, in this decade, he simply subtracts 2 from the Democratic column in the GCB because Democrats are concentrated in fewer districts. Because of the GOP advantage in statehouses in 2000-2001 redistricting period (and the unbelievable mid-term redistricting in Texas later), Democratic-voting districts are more democratic than Republican districts. So much is the tilt that pollsters simply discount some Democratic strength in polling. Remember that the main use of gerrymandering is to arrange a situation where your party has 51% majorities in most districts, leaving the opposition to have supermajorities in a few districts.

Now realize that - despite this - the Democrats have surged to big electoral majorities in the House in 2006 and 2008.

So in 2010, we will see another round of redistricting. Odds are that, unlike 2000, the Democrats will control the process in Ohio, Iowa, California (somewhat), Colorado, and New York, and will have acquired some veto power over the process (e.g., control of one legislative house or governor's seat) in Virginia, Montana, and Nevada. This will make the House trend more Democratic in the next decade. The big question is what happens in Texas. Texas will get up to 4 new seats depending on how the math is figured. 3 is likely. Right now, the Texas lower house is split almost 50/50 for the first time in years. Dems have been reorganizing and gaining strength there as internal migration and demographic change in Texas has brought in non-Texans from around the USA and minority groups, including the Katrina refugees. If the Democrats can take over a legislative chamber in Texas in 2010, this will be very huge.

Note that the Senate is not gerrymandered. So with advances in gerrymandering technology (data and computers) the Senate has become almost more responsive to changes in national politics than the House.

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This is going to drive Republicans NUTS

Hi Everyone,

By now you have probably heard that President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. I guess he will be going back to Scandinavia again. This time with a more successful story line.

It is extremely telling that the Nobel committee compared awarding the prize to Obama to their award to Gorbachev. They see Obama's presidency in the context of the over throw of a tyrannical system - namely Bush's approach to world politics.

This award is certainly as much a slap in the face of George W. Bush and his approach to foreign policy as it is a recognition anything Obama has accomplished in the first several months of his presidency. As such, it will drive Republicans UP THE WALL. There will be a chorus of complaints about how Obama isn't really serving American interests but the interests of lilly livered lefties who would give aid and comfort to "terrists."

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Yes ICANN!

I found this interesting.

The US government has relaxed its control over how the internet is run.
It has signed a four-page "affirmation of commitments" with the net regulator Icann, giving the body autonomy for the first time.
Previous agreements gave the US close oversight of Icann - drawing criticism from other countries and groups.
The new agreement comes into effect on 1 October, exactly 40 years since the first two computers were connected on the prototype of the net.
"It's a beautifully historic day," Rod Beckstrom, Icann's head, told BBC News.

First of all, I didn't even know the U.S. basically ruled the internet like that. Second, some people seem to think this doesn't fix any of ICANN's problems.

Third ... does this affect day-to-day life on the internet at all? Can someone give me a primer?

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