Electoral Vote Prediction Wednesdays!

Welcome to the inaugural Electoral Vote Prediction Wednesday! Hopefully this will become a recurring feature. Like most prediction things, this will probably end up telling the dear reader more about what I think about the Presidential race than any thing close to reality. I have done my cursory look at the polls and am feeling pretty good about an Obama landslide, even though McCain is the Lazarus of the 2008 election. Not letting that get in my way, I feel like the electoral college will come out thusly:

Obama-412

McCain-126

Insanity? Probably. But it is the first prediction, and I am feeling frisky.

Here is the breakdown state by state. Starting on the East Coast

Obama-ME, NH, VT, MA, CT, RI, NY, NJ, DC, PA, WV, VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, OH, MI, IN, IL, WI, MN, IA, MO, ND, SD, MT, CO, NM, NV, WA, OR, and CA.

McCain-KY, TN, AL, MS, AR, LA, NE, KS, OK, TX, WY, ID, UT, AZ.

At this point, I see Obama taking the Coastal South including the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. I also think Obama will make gains in the Northern Plains and Mountain States of the Dakotas and Montana.

Remember there are no hard and fast rules here, and if anything I played really fast and loose with this prediction (Ah, mixing metaphors and playing with the meanings of words). We will just call this the Landslide Prediction Version 1. Version 2, if it appears likely will have other states switching like Mississippi and maybe Arizona.
We will return to this next Wednesday. Maybe.

Do Not Try to Disarm

I was reading a long today about potential vice presidential candidates for Obama. A common theme in every article regarding vice presidential candidates is how each candidate neutralizes potential attacks against the top of the ticket. For example, some folks say Obama should choose Wes Clark or Jim Webb because they will help inoculate him against attacks on his foreign policy credibility. Another example is that Obama should choose McCaskill or Sebelius to help himself with women. This type of reasoning is flawed for a number of reasons. Perhaps the greatest problem with this reasoning is the belief that simply having a person who has military experience or is a woman is enough that one will not be attacked on that issue. John Kerry proved this not to be the case. Anyone can be attacked on any point regardless of what that person specifically embodies. The attack isn't what is important, the given candidate's response is the crucial matter. Relatedly, simply being a war hero (using that term in the loosest possible sense as most in the media and politics do) or being a woman doesn't forward a winning political argument in and of itself. This is best seen in John McCain in the current cycle, but John Kerry and Al Gore also embody this point. Specifically, relating to McCain, what about flying attack aircraft (the awesome A-1 Skyraider and the A-4 Skyhawk), getting shot down, and spending years in a POW camp does not seem to me to provide any relevant experience to being President of the United States. The only tenuous link is to the commander in chief powers, but flying aircraft, getting shot down, and spending years in a POW camp means one specifically does not have the experience leading large groups of people similar to being the civilian commander of the armed forces. Now, I realize that McCain retired a Captain, and his Navy career extended beyond his time in Hanoi, but the point is still there. It is incumbent upon McCain to make the argument why that experience matters. Simply having it means nothing. Ultimately, Democrats should stop making this mistake, and instead should seek a Vice Presidential nominee who is going to best make the arguments (read as rhetorical skills) the Democratic Party needs to win the White House and increase our majorities in Congress. It doesn't matter if that person has a great biography.

On a similar note, regarding the connecting of experience to arguments, Obama does this very well when talking about his experiences as a community organizer exposed him to all sorts of people and helped him gain a greater understanding of what people face on a daily basis in this country. This is a great example of what we need in a candidate and vice presidential candidate. Just being a community organizer or a war hero means nothing on its face.

A Loaded Question

Shouldn't the Right wing world view, and its detachment from anything approaching "reality", be enough to disqualify a right wing President such as John McCain?

Sometimes I think McCain is actually smart enough not to believe the insane points of view of the far right. Other times not so much.

Part of the problem facing the Democrats this election bears on this point. Out of touch needs to become the watchwords. However, the republicans are attempting to make their greatest weakness, their being completely out of touch with the times and with the destruction their policies have wrought, into a slam on McCain's age. I am sure they believe this will inoculate them from electoral disaster in the fall, and it might if the Democrats don't step up to the plate on hammering this point home.

Also, at some point, I will begin making electoral college predictions. These will be completely by the seat of my pants with no real methodology behind each prediction, other than cursory looks at whatever polling data is available and my own gut feeling on it. I will update my predictions repeatedly as we get closer to the election stopping on the Monday before. Maybe if I think about this more, I can schedule when I make a prediction, but I am not making any promises.

What 60s bands still deserve respect?

So I was ponderin' the 1960s today. Part of my thoughts involved how much Boomers ejaculate themselves over their music. Really want to start a fight with someone over 50? Tell them their music sucks. You won't hear the end of it. In light of this, I had the question that makes up the title of this post. What bands from the 1960s still deserve respect? Or for a finer point, what bands from the 1960s are true classics, not just Boomer viewed classics. My list would probably start with Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones. All of which are obvious, although I would say a case could be made against each as well (My case against the beatles would be all their music sounds the same, be it early or later stuff, and their innovations were coming anyway. They were also sell outs, both early on and as their career progressed but that is another argument.) The whole goal here is to develop the canon of 60s bands, who were the most essential at the time and for later development of popular music.

Joe Loserman

Why is it so hard for the Democrats to beat this guy? To shut him up so that he has no credibility with the American people? Obviously the narrow majority in the Senate figures into this equation, but Lieberman really is a terrible politician and shouldn't be that hard to smack down.

Wouldn't an effective strategy for beating Lieberman be emasculating him the same way he consistently was emasculated by the Right during the 2000 election? It just seems like that the easiest way to get rid of Lieberman would be, in the next Congress, when the Democratic Majority is larger, to simply amend every bill cutting any money in it for Connecticut placed there by Lieberman. Couple this with a full out assault on Joe Lieberman as a person to the point he has no credibility left. If the Democrats were daring, they would implement this strategy now. Daring and aggressive are two things that haven't defined the Democrats for some time though.

Things I am thinking about today

Misogny versus Racism, which is more pernicious, what are the roots of each, what can be done about each. Are they the same type of problem? At first glance it appears so, but I am guessing, to more or less quote a more or less wise man, "its a bit more complicated than that",

North Korea. How does this specific political economic equilibrium exist. I don't get it. Sure it is a one party state or a personalistic dictatorship, but I really don't understand how it exists. On some level political economic structures have to be supported by more than just the will of one person, which is what makes North Korea so puzzling to me. Obviously I am just ignorant about the situation, but I would like to know more.

The Weather. What the hell. Seriously, can we have more Thunderstorms and tornadoes please? Jesus. Whatever.

What the hell?

Senator Clinton, I am watching your speech, and I got a question. Where the hell has this been? Thematically, this speech is amazing, and you have a fantastic delivery. This speech really shows great instincts and is a great speech. Also, this speech just shows how bad of a candidate McCain is. If you can just hold this feeling right now, we, the Democratic party, need you on the campaign trail

Rhetorical difference between liberals and conservatives

Rereading my last post, I had this thought.

I wonder if there has been any studies done on differences in rhetoric use by political parties that compares the parties' rhetoric against each other. Essentially, I wonder if there is any variation in the parties' rhetoric attributable to the parties' positioning on an ideological scale. It seems to me that the Democrats, and probably left of center parties in general, say "we" a lot. Republicans on the other hand say "you" a lot. Now, one could assume that over time, as parties were able to test the efficacy of certain rhetoric, there would be convergence of rhetoric such that there wouldn't be a distinguishable difference. Nonetheless, the topic intrigues me.

Collapsing Conservatism

I believe I have mentioned in the past the ongoing discussion, that seems to have slowed a bit lately, amongst intellectual righty bloggin' types about the intellectual bankruptcy of conservative ideology at the current moment. I have had two posts on this topic brewing for awhile, but haven't really found the desire to write either one. Well, now I so desire. I am sure one of those intellectual righty bloggin' types have already covered this but none the less here is my view from the Central time zone. I think there is an extreme self centeredness at the heart of right wing ideology today. More than likely it has always been there, but it seems ever present now. To exemplify, I am going to use an anecdote from some former roommates of mine, good conservatives all, even if one wouldn't admit it.

At the time of Hurrican Katrina, these smart young men could not wrap their heads around why the black folks of New Orleans just didn't leave the city before hand following the evacuation order. Further, they couldn't stand the fact that "those people" then had the audacity to expect the federal government to bail them out of the disastrous situation in which they found themselves. Now I somewhat share sympathy with the idea that it is stupid to let people live below sea level on a coast. I am not sure if I have blogged about how I do not think we should be rebuilding massive parts of NOLA or not, but this story isn't about me, so lets return to my conservative roommates at the time.

In light of their stated opinions regarding those trapped in New Orleans at the time of Katrina, I pointed out that everyone everywhere in the United States expects the government to bail them out from disasters, whether it is hurricanes in the East, Tornadoes in the Midwest, or forest fires and earthquakes out West. Politically, this is one of the things we expect our government to do. As an aside conservatives might want to add rebuild after disasters to their mantra of the goverment should only build roads and defend the nation. Returning to the point at hand, my conservative roommates response was very similar to my point about living below sea level, but broader. Simply, they did not believe that people should live in areas in which such natural disasters existed if those people couldn't afford to rebuild themselves after such a disaster. We are coming up on the ultimate point, so hold on. When I pointed out that they likely would not be able to afford to rebuild after a disaster such as Katrina, their rejoinder was that they wouldn't live anywhere like that anyway.

What is important about this anecdote is that in the course of a conversation with two conservatives, is that their justifications for their beliefs ultimately rested on the idea that disasters wouldn't happen to them. The discussion kept coming down to what my friends and roommates as individuals. Broader intellectual points be damned, bad things just weren't going to happen to these two roommates so obviously the government shouldn't do anything to help anyone. This must be the much discussed "optimism" of conservatism. To me, it seemed exceptionally self centered and the reasoning infantile. It should make sense that if this is the ultimate foundation of American conservatism, and as it waters down this does seem to be the message, then it makes sense that conservatives are intellectually bankrupt right now.

Stupid Media Actions

I really hate complaining about the media. I think it is a waste of time. However, I am going to break my hatred of complaining about the media to ... complain about the media! My basic problem comes from something I just saw on Hardball. Jonathan Alter, how I really respect, just gave a lengthy hypothetical of possible was Clinton could withdraw from the race after Tuesday's end of the primary. After reviewing possibilities such as Clinton joint appearing with Obama in Minneapolis as a way for Clinton to appear gracious at the end of the election, Alter proceeded to bash Clinton for not doing his hypothetical. In fairness to Alter, he did mention how he suggested his hypothetical to someone at the Clinton campaign, and then shockingly, they didn't do it. Perhaps this gives him some justification for bashing Clinton. I mean, her campaign didn't follow Alter's BRILLIANT suggestion.

It just really gets my goat (I don't know what that means) when the persons in the media create hypothetical situations and then bash any given candidate for not following that hypothetical. Boo on you Jonathan Alter, Boo on you. And to think that I read all of your book about Roosevelt.

Woo Who?

So Obama has won it. That is good I guess. I will miss Hillary's never ending campaign though. I think the whole process has been very good for the Democratic party. An end was necessary though. One thing on my mind now that the primary is ostensibly over, is the need for Clinton's voters to become Obama voters. As I mentioned before, I think this will happen.

However, other commentators, one's with actual platforms from which to broadcast their ideas have been discussing the need for Obama to woo Clinton's supporters. These calls generally focus on the two to three groups that Obama must win over. These groups are women, working class whites, and Reagan Democrats.

Before discussing these groups, it should be pointed out that any call for Obama to woo Clinton voters must also explain why those voters didn't vote for Obama in the first place. Given the minuscule policy differences between Obama and Clinton, Obama's wooing shouldn't be too difficult as there should be no major hang up for Clinton voters to switch their support. However, as was well documented in the final primaries, a portion of Clinton supporters appeared to be voting for her because she was white. It seems to me that there isn't much Obama can do to woo these voters. Their support is just lost. Now, in this election, that shouldn't be as big of a deal as it has been in past elections, as many of those who would never vote for a black man are already Republicans, who wouldn't vote for a Democrat of any skin color. The main take away point here is that Obama cannot woo the voters who voted against him because he was black, and the explanation of voter motive is necessary to any discussion of the efficacy of Obama's wooing efforts. This point is dodged by many of those calling for a woo-athon by Obama as they do not want to confront the ugly reality of Hillary's support as the race progressed to its conclusion.

Now, returning to the three groups. I am not sure how Obama can woo working class whites for many of the reasons I laid out above. I think these voters are for the most part low information voters and therefore can be further subdivided into two categories. First, the aforementioned racists. The only information necessary for these voters to make up their minds is the color of the skin of the candidate. That is it. Obama will never win these voters. The second group of low information voters would be non-racist ones. This group of Clinton voters voted for her based off her name recognition alone. They didn't really every get to know Obama or care about him. They heard the name Clinton, and that was all they needed to make a decision on how to vote. These voters can become Obama voters after they get to know Obama more and more. So these voters should definitely be targeted for wooing, but this can be done in the manner of a normal political campaign.

Moving on to women, I don't know what can be done here. I am guessing that the numbers of women who are going to only vote for Hillary is pretty low. Basically, the core of her support, women over 65 doesn't form that large of a voting bloc in the US. The 2007 population estimate says there are approximately 22 million women over the age of 65. Assuming they break 60/40 for the Democratic party with no independents, that means that around 13.2 million of them are Democrats. This isn't a constituency to be sneezed at in an election where the Democrat might get 65 million total votes. In such a case, those 13.2 million voters would be almost 20 percent of the Democratic total. Very obviously this is an necessary constituency for Obama to woo, but there are several questions that are unanswered here. First, how many of these voters are Clinton and Clinton only voters? Probably not very many. Second, of those in this group who have qualms about Obama, what can he do in a practical manner, to address their concerns about his candidacy? I would assume there is very little he can do beyond continuing to wage an aggressive campaign against John McCain drawing the appropriate contrasts between McCain and himself on the issues important to these voters.

The last group to discuss is the fabled Reagan Democrats. They are not really fabled, they do exist, but there are two problems with them for this election. 1) They are old, and not that much of the population anymore; and 2) Most of them are Republicans now. A person who was 18 in 1980 would now be 46. This means that every Reagan Democrat out there is at a minimum 46 years of age. This is a relatively advanced age. I realize that young keeps getting defined upward, but 46 is not very young. The second issue is that these voters are Republicans. If they voted for Reagan twice, H.W. once, if not twice, Dole and all the rest of the Republicans for president and/or Congress. They are Republicans now, regardless of whatever party they nominally identify with. This is not a constituency that really exists in a meaningful way for the Democratic party. Efforts to woo them are a lost cause, and surely Ms. Minnesota and D.C., Geraldine Ferraro, is not the best person to consult as to what is the best way to approach this constituency.

I don't have a conclusion.

The Party or the Person

Now that the Rules and Bylaws Committee has ruled, there is talk that Clinton supporters are still angry. The question becomes, regardless of what the Clinton campaign does, whether those supporters are going to support the person or the party. I realize that Clinton wants to hold herself out as the last hope to her supporters to use that position as leverage against the rest of the Democratic party. Whether her supporters understand their role in this drama is another question. If they choose to remain loyal to Hillary, and only Hillary, they are choosing the person over the party, and ultimately should be held responsible for their lack of commitment to the ideals of the center left as embodied by the Democratic party. Obviously, there is no mechanism for holding them responsible beyond shaming and guilting them into realizing that they really don't care about universal health care or ending the war in Iraq or the political makeup of the Supreme Court becuase they refuse to accept the outcome of the process. Such absolutist thinking is detrimental to the Party and ultimately to the country.

For these reasons, I think that on a micropolitical level, by which I mean interactions between Obama supporters and Clinton supporters on an interpersonal level, Clinton supporters choice of the person over the Party, will collapse. It is untenable in a face to face interaction for someone to maintain loyalty to Clinton, whom they have likely never met, over the ideals which both Clinton, Obama, and as previously mentioned, the Democratic Party, represent. I would probably be writing the same about Obama supporters if the results had turned out the other way, and by results I mean the votes.

Hillary's Assassination Talk

Hillary's assassination comment is regrettable, and it is rather sad that she is getting pilloried for it. Frankly, she deserves it. Many americans probably believe that we do not have a history of political violence of any note. I think that is mistaken on two fronts. First, we do have a long history of assassinations and assassination attempts against presidents in the United States. Secondly, we have a long long history of other political violence.

In the first instance, every president since Nixon have had at least one assassination attempt, according to the ever reliable wikipedia. Now, some of those are less credible than others, but that doesn't make them less important. For example, the plot to blow up George H.W. Bush in Kuwait or the guy shooting at the White House hoping to kill Clinton are not the same as Squeaky Fromme trying to shoot Ford, or Hinckley trying to impress Jody Foster. The fact still remains that while Eisenhower and Johnson were both not shot at, every president since Roosevelt has had some form of attempt on their life. That seems like a pretty decent history of political violence regarding assassination of presidents.

The second history of political violence is much less talked about. Within this group would be America's history with lynchings at the end of the 19th century through the early 20th century. This history is not was much discussed within the polity of the United States and has much greater bearing on why Hillary's comments are so offensive. In light of this history of white people attacking black people simply wanting to be americans, the statement should not be made.

I know that Clinton's point was not to suggest what came across, but she should have been more mindful of the context of this election, and the history of the United States, before she made the statement.

Lost in the When will another woman run fray.

So over at Salon, Katharine Mieszkowski writing on Broadsheet wrote THIS

With Hillary Clinton less likely every day to be the Democratic nominee for president, the guessing game is to try to predict when the first American woman will serve as commander in chief.

I have seen much more of this discussion lately, wherein feminist commentators discuss when we will see the next woman to run for President, and whether or not it will be another "generation" till it occurs like the 24 years between Ferraro and Clinton.

I have several issues with this discussion. First, dabbling within the identity politics kiddie pool, this commentary seems to almost lament the fact that Clinton's not getting the nomination is going to set women back for another generation. How this operates I do not know, and is rarely explained. This line of commentary does not assess real factors, like the differences in the numbers of women politicians in 1984 and 2008. I am assuming that there has been a real increase in the number of women politicians holding potentially presidential springboard offices since 1984. In the specific article above, the author describes a hypothetical next woman presidential candidate with the admonishment that "she might not even exist." I am sorry, but Kathy Sebelius, Janet Napolitano, and Claire McCaskill are all future potential presidential candidates for the Democrats. At least, they should consider themselves such.

Another issue I have with this feminist handwringing is that, again playing identity politics, blacks have NEVER gotten as close as Ferraro did in 84, or as Obama has now. A fair question is who would be the next black candidate in the position of Clinton or Obama? To be fair, I would say Deval Patrick and Harold Ford might be in that position, but I think neither are as close as the three women I mentioned.

War and Resources

One thing that occurred to me this morning upon reading Andrew Leonard's latest post at How the World Works at Salon was how wrong those who predicted resource wars have been. The standard claim, grossly oversimplifying, is that as resources run out, countries would go to war to secure resources necessary to their economies. Resources like oil. I personally do not know if we are at peak oil or not. I just don't feel qualified to make that determination. I do know, however, that the United States is not going to fight wars to secure oil in the future. The basic calculus has to be the cost of a war to secure oil versus the price of alternatives to an oil based economy. The reality is that the cost of war, including the physical costs and reputational costs, is simply too high for such a war to be an effective instrument of policy. It will simply be cheaper to develop alternatives in the United States and on the world market than to use an expensive blunt instrument of state policy such as war to secure energy for the economy of the future.

What of the Iraq war? I know many on the left see the Iraq war as exactly the type of war I am saying will never happen. The fact of the matter is that the primary motivations for the Iraq War did not develop out of the board rooms of the administration's oil buddies, but instead came from the think tanks of the neoconservative hawks. The claimed benefit of using Iraqi oil to pay our costs in the was not a motivating factor, but instead just some lagniappe.

CNN's Headline T-Shirts

CNN.com now has a feature where you can order a T-Shirt with a headline from cnn.com on it. This makes me wonder if now that they have an even greater financial interest in their headlines, are they going to start coming up with loony headlines simply to sell T-shirts? I think we have the first evidence in a headline they have up today to a story that has been around for a couple of days. The headline says "Crazy ants chew through electrical cords." The story has been about an ant infestation in Houston, Texas.

Frankly, I think this is a great development for news organizations.

Banner Year for Democrats?

A banner year for Democrats or a banner year for Liberals?

A lot of people in the proverbial liberal blogosphere have looked at the recent victory by the Democrat in the Mississippi special election as evidence of the impending liberal landslide in the fall. I think many in the blogosphere are conflating a Democratic landslide in the fall with a liberal landslide in the fall. They are two different things, and this distinction needs to be constantly kept in mind or liberals are setting themselves for grand disappointment in 2009 when their agenda doesn't get enacted in its entirety. Now, normally, I don't care about individuals' levels of disappointment. However, in this instance, I think this issue is important because of what it can mean for the Democratic party. To provide an alternative to the Republicans the Democratic party needs to show itself to be different in many ways. Simply becoming doctrinaire and dogmatic as to what the party believes is a surefire way to repeat the mistakes of the Republicans. The Democratic party needs to be inclusive of those more moderate to conservative members of the party who are going to be entering it as the Republicans continue to collapse. Part of the distinction the Democrats can draw is as a party that respects intellectual and political difference within reason and as a place of respectful discussion of issues and national policy. I am not talking about tolerating Joe Lieberman's though. Lieberman is a specific example of someone who has used his position as a Democrat (in the past) to attack other Democrats, and the Democratic agenda, by playing to the repentant sinner archetype in American politics.

A link

I want to throw this up and I will comment on it after while.


http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/29/autos/gas_engine_improvements/index.htm

I put this up a week or so ago, because what I found most interesting was the "Experts" cited in the article. All of them are from the American automobile manufacturers. No independent experts, no Japanese experts, no German experts. All of these "experts" come from companies who have been hemorrhaging money for some time now, and whose primary products are singularly unsuited to a world of high gas prices. Of course they are going to reach the conclusions they reach in the article, that the gasoline engine is here to stay. If you are GM and you don't have 10 years experience building hybrids like Toyota, you are going to see hybrid technology as expensive and complicated. The article was hilarious.

Oil Independence

I think it is time we change our rhetoric on oil independence. It has been common since 9/11 for many people to talk about the need for foreign oil independence because the money going to the middle east helps fund terrorism. On a geopolitical level, this logic makes sense. In fact, some version of this idea has been around since at least the 1970s with the first oil shocks, in that it has been viewed as a bad thing for the United States to be so dependent upon foreign oil. I think it is time for a change in the way we think about this issue though. Namely, we need to stop talking about getting off foreign oil, or achieving foreign oil independence, and start talking about achieving oil independence in general.

It seems readily apparent that tying our economy to one commodity such as petroleum has been a terribly bad idea as we begin to see the effects of that choice upon the broader economy. Reduced consumer spending is going to become a reality as long as we live in a period of the 100 dollar fill up. It is obvious to me as well that slowly things will simply change. Humans have lived through periods of expensive energy before, namely any period before the invention of the automobile and the exploitation of petroleum as a means to power those automobiles, and will be able to adjust to a new reality of expensive petroleum based energy sources. It is likely though, that this period will be economically painful. These reasons make the necessity finding new energy bases for our economy imperative. One place I think we should start is instead of talking about independence from foreign oil, we should be talking about moving away from using oil altogether. Changing our rhetoric will be easy. However, I do not know how we will ultimately achieve the specific change in policy, and at the risk of sounding flippant, I am sure something will come up.

What I mean more accurately is increasing costs of petroleum energy sources make alternatives much more viable as technological and market development reduce costs of those alternatives. The result of this is two cost lines on a graph, one the increasing cost of oil based energy sources and the other a decreasing cost of bringing certain technologies to market that will coalesce around a new point that will be how society then becomes based. For example, from say 1920 to 1960, roughly, trains and streetcars were the primary mode of transportation for many people in this country whether locally or long distance. Following the beginning of construction of the interstate highway system, and all federal highways in general, and the development of the jet liner, the system of transit in this country moved to an automobile/bus/airplane equilibrium. We are now in a position, due to rising oil prices, in which that equilibrium is unsustainable, and will change again.

Hopefully it will change back to trains.

I like trains.

Okay to be Racist!

So, talkingpointsmemo.com has the headline up that Obama loses working class whites to Clinton in a landslide.

What is interesting to me about this to me is that I think the Jeremiah Wright business has obviously hurt Obama amongst working class white voters, but not quite in the way most people think. Frankly, I think that the Jeremiah Wright business has given working class voters a reason to vote on their baser instincts. Namely, voting out of racism. Any squeamishness those voters would have had about Obama before could have been swallowed to vote for him in absence of the Wright controversy. However, since Wright has been all over the news, those voters can now say to themselves and the media, well I really don't agree with Wright, so I am not voting for Obama for that reason. In reality they were uneasy voting for a black guy in the first place, and are just using Wright as convenient excuse. The reason I believe this to be true is that if Wright was really as damaging to Obama overall as it appears based off Obama's loss amongst working class whites, then Obama would have lost whites across the board, and just not within that one subset of the white vote. Obviously, Obama hasn't lost support amongst whites across the board, so it leads me to think that the Reverend Wright business is operating only amongst working class whites for a reason beyond just what Wright has said. The intervening variable I believe is operating is latent working class white racism. The Wright controversy has made it okay to express that racism by giving it the veneer of reasoned argument of "well I really disagree with what Wright said."

On another note, I was listening to one of the things Wright said at the national press club about the way white kids and black kids learn and think. At one point, Wright claimed that white kids primarily think and learn with the left brain, whereas black kids think and learn with the right brain. I trust that Wright is educated enough to have read a study on this point somewhere. The problem with this logic, and any study designed to show this, is that it is impossible to prove. Well, maybe not impossible, but damn near. In complicated bio-chemical reactions like what takes place in the brain, one would expect to find some type of structure that leads to this claimed differentiation. However, I almost guarantee no such a morphological difference exists between the brains of white and black children. I suppose if one really wanted to test this proposition, one could try teaching children of both races the same topic and use one of them fancy machines (MRI? EKG?, I dunno, hence fancy machines) to see if there is any difference in the areas of the brains stimulated by that topic. I would be willing to make a hefty bet that there wouldn't be such a difference.