An amendment to an earlier post, and ruminations about blogging

I feel the need to amend what I said earlier:

As I've seen stated in numerous other places, if Kerry wins, we can't expect things to change all that much in terms of foreign policy (except that Kerry will most likely avoid insulting our allies).

This is vague to the point of inviting misinterpretation. What I should have said was: "If Kerry wins, we can't expect him to pull out of Iraq, nor to make any substantial changes to American foreign policy. Kerry will certainly try to patch things up with Europe and others of our allies who are pissed off at us due to Bush and Rumsfeld's buffoon-style diplomacy. We can also expect Kerry to engage in the occasional humanitarian gesture, as Clinton did. However, the main thrust of American foreign policy will not change: namely, the furthering of American corporate interests in the rest of the world. Kerry will merely be nicer about it." Some of this is essentially identical to what Juan Cole was saying, as well as some other online people I know, so I think in the effort to put it in my own words, I almost lost the original point.

It seems to me that this could turn out to be a real pitfall of blogging: When you're trying to use writing to make a point, the act of writing itself causes your conception of your subject to evolve. The best way of dealing with this is to think about your writing for a while, and then do a rewrite. But blogs don't seem to be very conducive to this. I suppose I should get used to using the "save as draft" button, but the other point to consider is the sheer speed of the blogosphere--by the time a person has time to think over and rewrite a post, the rest of the online world has already moved on.

Al-Qaeda doesn't care who wins...

Juan Cole hits the nail on the head this morning:

Al-Qaeda does not care who wins the elections. If the US withdraws from Iraq (which could happen willy-nilly under Bush as easily as under Kerry), that would be seen as a victory by al-Qaeda. If the US remains in Iraq for years, bleeding at the hands of an ongoing guerrilla insurgency, then that is also a victory for al-Qaeda from their point of view. They therefore just don't care which candidate wins.

However, many on the GOP side insist on using the "Kerry is the al-Qaeda candidate" meme--one of their many childish, fear-mongering strategies in this campaign. Anyone with a brain ought to be skeptical whenever this sort of rhetoric comes up. Continuing on:

They [al-Qaeda] hate general US policy in the Middle East, which would not change drastically under Kerry. To any extent that al-Qaeda is giving serious thought to the US elections, it would see no significant difference between the candidates. But given its goal of creating more polarization between the US and the Muslim World, it is entirely possible that the al-Qaeda leadership would prefer Bush, since they want to "sharpen the contradictions."

As I've seen stated in numerous other places, if Kerry wins, we can't expect things to change all that much in terms of foreign policy (except that Kerry will most likely avoid insulting our allies). This is unfortunate--for the rest of the world.

There is still the domestic situation, though, where a Kerry presidency would clearly be superior.

A Tale of Two Forgeries

Take the two following situations:

1) The Bush administration used forged documents to support it's position that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.

2) CBS News used forged documents in a piece investigating George W. Bush's draft dodging heroics during the Vietnam war.

I'll ignore the question of whether or not the documents used by CBS actually were forged, because it doesn't matter if they were or not--simply making the allegation that they are forgeries has effectively diverted the debate away from the issue of Bush's National Guard service.

Why is the public so ready to accept Item #2 and not Item #1? What is wrong with people? How can it not be obvious what is being done here?

Polls, Redux

Looks like I'm not the only one thinking about the role of polls in elections today. This from Tom Tomorrow:

And yet. What does it mean when poll results vary wildly--when Bush has a double-digit lead in one poll, and yet the race is apparently neck-and-neck in another? Perhaps these polls have a twelve point margin of error, which is to say, they're complete guesswork. Perhaps one of these polls is trustworthy and the other uses questionable methodology--but the very fact that questionable methodology can exist takes us back to my initial point: I don't trust polls.

To Poll or Not to Poll?

Skimming through the news this morning, I noticed a couple of articles of interest. First:

Gallup poll shows double-digit lead for Bush, with momentum

A new Gallup poll puts President George W Bush 13 points ahead of challenger John Kerry in the US presidential race.

The spread -- 55 to 42 per cent -- is among likely voters, Gallup said, and the poll was conducted between 13-15 September.

Among registered voters, the spread is 8 points -- 52 to 44 per cent.

And second:

What If the Polls Are Wrong?

Election Surveys That Screen Out
'Unlikely' Voters Might Be Outdated
September 17, 2004

Presidential elections are poll-driven. The candidate ahead in the surveys usually gets better coverage, and the results energize supporters. The one behind often comes across as doing little right, and campaigns and constituencies lose confidence.

But what if the polls are wrong, and we aren't surveying the real likely electorate?

This might be more than an academic issue. A number of polls this presidential race show a gap in the preferences of registered voters vs. likely voters. In these models, the president usually does better with likely voters, the figure most news organizations emphasize. To get to likely voters, all polling organizations use what is called a "screen," asking questions to determine who is likely to actually turn out on election day.

These screens differ greatly, as there is no consensus among experts on what works best. "This is an art, not a science," says Peter Hart, the prominent Democratic polltaker who has helped conduct The Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey for 15 years.

This controversy will be fueled by today's just-released Gallup poll that shows George Bush with a 13-point lead over John Kerry. That is at variance with other surveys this week, which suggest a tight race with a much smaller Bush tilt. But the likely voters margin also is considerably larger than the eight-point advantage in Gallup's registered voters in this survey. The likely voters match-up invariably gets more attention.

Really, the reason this all bothers me is not just that the results are leaning towards Bush. The question on my mind is "Does public opinion lead the polls, or do the polls lead public opinion?" (The WSJ article seems to be dancing around this issue, although they're probably more worried that Bush might not actually win.)

The question gets more problematic when push-polling is factored into the equation. Push pollsters actively try to manipulate the results of their polls by using slanted questions. For example, "Would you vote for such and such a candidate who has recently been assocated with such and such horrible scandal or crime." (Although, in point of fact, push pollers are usually more sophisticated than this crude example would indicate.) The expected answer is "No!"

Push polling is obviously a subversion of the democratic process, but to what extent do more legitimate polls influence public opinion, rather than simply reporting it? Even if a pollster asks a perfectly unbiased question, such as, "If the election were held today, which candidate would you vote for," the poll will likely show that one candidate has a slight lead, and this will in turn impact the public perception of the campaign, and even the campaign itself. (It also helps further the media's portrayal of the election as a horse race, but that is a whole other issue.) It could be argued that, since an unbiased poll really does reflect public opinion at a certain point in time, that it therefore cannot have a negative impact on the campaign. But this fails to acknowledge the concern that public opinion often resembles the movements of a school of fish: when part of the school starts moving in a different direction, other parts follow. In this analogy, the following parts of the school are what are commonly referred to as "undecided voters". The poll makes them aware of which direction the other fish are swimming, thereby allowing them to follow along, rather than deciding for themselves which way they are going to swim.

Still, it might not be obvious at first why this is a problem. But consider this: If conducting an unbiased poll can tend to push voters towards whichever candidate has an edge, this puts pollsters in the position of being able to favor the leading candidate, without actually conduting a biased poll. All they have to do is wait until their favored candidate has a slight edge, conduct their poll at that time, and then loudly proclaim the results. And how do these pollsters figure out when their favored candidate is ahead? By following the small number of genuinely legitimate polls. So a genuinely unbiased poll can bias the campaign, even though it doesn't intend to.

It's also rather interesting to speculate what an American Presidential campaign would be like without polls, but I've already spent too much time writing this. :)

"The War is Lost"

I've seen this posted in several different places today, but it definitely bears repeating. This comes from Sidney Bluementhal at Salon.com, his article "The War is Lost". I'll try and be nice about copyright issues here, and only quote some excerpts. But the article is fairly short, and worth reading in full (and even worth sitting through the obligatory day-pass advertisement):

[snip]

Retired Gen. Joseph Hoar, the former Marine commandant and head of the U.S. Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."

"I see no ray of light on the horizon at all," said Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College. "The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after World War II in Germany and Japan."

"I don't think that you can kill the insurgency," said W. Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, the top expert on Iraq there. According to Terrill, the anti-U.S. insurgency, centered in the Sunni triangle, and holding several key cities and towns, including Fallujah, is expanding and becoming more capable as a direct consequence of U.S. policy. "We have a growing, maturing insurgency group," he told me. "We see larger and more coordinated military attacks. They are getting better and they can self-regenerate. The idea there are X number of insurgents and when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The political culture is more hostile to the U.S. presence. The longer we stay, the more they are confirmed in that view."

[snip]

"This is far graver than Vietnam," said Gen. Odom. "There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with a war that was not constructive for U.S. aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile and we're in much worse shape with our allies."

[snip]

Gen. Hoar believes from the information he has received that "a decision has been made" to attack Fallujah "after the first Tuesday in November. That's the cynical part of it -- after the election. The signs are all there."

(Emphasis added.)

That last part is particularly interesting, because of its implications. If the Bush adminstration is waiting until after the election for the attack, then it's fairly obvious that they're worried about it. Either they're expecting the attack to not go well, or they're concerned that it will damage them politically.

Whatever happens, though, it's really starting to look the the USA is stuck in some really, really deep shit.

Voting Day, and Crossover Voting

Today is a primary election, and there are actually some races where I care about the outcome, so I am definitely going to have to stop off and vote later this afternoon.

This primary is, of course, one of those lovely animals where if you vote Democratic in one race and Republican in another, it voids your ballot. Add to this the fact that in many races there are no Democratic candidates whatsoever--all the candidates are Republicans--and you end up with a situation where some races will be decided in this primary, and those who are Democrats will not be allowed to participate.

There's an editorial in the local rag today claiming that this is the fault of the local Democratic Party because they didn't run any candidates in these races. This is correct on the surface, but, as is typical with local rags, they essentially miss the heart of the problem.

The fact is that if the Democrats ran candidates in these races, they would probably lose. Democrats know this, and it is fairly certain that this is a major reason why they decide to not run anyone: Why would they want to fund a campaign that is probably going to be futile? Their funds are limited. Why throw them away on a lost cause?

So the newspaper can yammer away all it wants about the Democrats not running people, but that is not going to change the fact that in most of these races, you will never see a Democratic candidate. I cannot remember ever seeing a Democrat running for Sheriff, for example. The Democrats not running candidates is only the result of the problem, not the cause. The real problem is people not having a voice in the election just because they are inclined to support the minority party. It's a very simple problem. I can't vote for Register of Deeds (or whatever) because I am a Democrat. If I want to, can vote Republican in this primary, and then I will have a voice in the Register of Deeds race. But then I won't have a voice in other important races, such as State Assembly. Meanwhile, right-leaning voters will not be having this problem.

If I were living in a primarily left-leaning area, this same problem would exist, except in that case it would favor left-leaning voters. But it wouldn't be any more fair than it is here. Not allowing crossover voting inevitably denies a voice to a large proportion of citizens. The solution is trivially easy: allow it.

First Post

Well, well.

Just starting out, and at this point I have not a whole lot of clue what I'm doing. But if I actually end up liking this blog thing, that will change.

I guess the main reason I'm starting this is that, for some reason, I felt like talking this morning, but not in my usual spots. I've been posting online for a long time in various places, almost all of them really interactive, and I was feeling a bit more monologous today. Not really interested in engaging in a dialog, although I plan on leaving the "allow comments" option turned on, since I don't want to be a total asshole about this. :-)

At this point, I don't know if this blog will turn into something worthwhile, or just end up being a place for me to bitch incessantly. I suppose it may end up being a bit of both. I do get ambitious sometimes.

It's also interesting to speculate as to who might end up reading this: Will I point it out to my friends and acquaitances on the online forums? Or maintain it as a totally separate realm? Or even make it part of the sphere of my "normal" offline life? At this point I'm leaning towards the first option, as the name I chose for this blog, "Chunks, Eggs en Prix," is actually an anagram for my moniker on other forums. But we'll see. And for now, the only people who are going to see it are those who happen to stumble across it while browsing on Blogger. However that works. Hmph. Yet another thing to investigate.

Ha. So far, so good. I kind of like this, actually.