I think it would be nice if some enterprising soul were to edit all the Republican campaign videos together into a single reel; it would probably make a pretty good action movie.

FWIW, Kori made the call "on his lunch break", not at 4AM. Perhaps calling someone's home phone number is inappropriate, but I don't see how it justifies the nasty voicemail he received in return. There's no excuse for being un-civil.

Cythera45, your idea of politics is *exactly* what we are trying to get away from. That's why people support Obama; because he isn't doing the Karl Rove anything's-fair-in-politics gutter campaign. Call that naive if you like, but some of us think we can do better than that.

It's not a question of whether right-wingers will vote for the Democratic nominee over McCain. It's a question of whether they'll go to the polls in the first place. If they dislike their nominee, and don't hate the Democratic nominee, many of them will just stay home in disgust. My worry is that their dislike for McCain will be outweighed by their dislike for Clinton, and they'll vote for him in an attempt to keep her out of office. With Obama I suspect that they wouldn't bother.

BabyGrumpus: What you're missing is that 2009 won't be like 2001-2008. In 2009, Democrats will have a majority in both houses and the Presidency. Therefore there won't be any need to "suck Republican cock", as you so colorfully put it. Obama and the Democrats will have the political power and popular mandate to set the agenda themselves. If Obama can do that in such a way that moderate Republicans are happy to go along with it, so much the better for all of us.

Hey Mike,

Glad to have you in the comments thread. Regarding the surge working: I see it working at the tactical level, in that violence has decreased since the surge began. What I don't see happening are the political changes necessary for the nation of Iraq to become stable in the absence of a large US military presence. Given that "surge" levels of US troops can't last forever (even the US military indicates that we will need to reduce troop levels soon, we simply don't have enough personnel to sustain them at this level), what do you foresee happening when the surge ends? Do you think that Iraqi government will have its house in order before then, or do you think that the surge will have to be extended in order to keep Iraq stable? And if it's the latter, do you think the US has the logistical and political stamina to "surge" for the 8-12 years the Iraqi government thinks would be required?

-Jeremy

Why not just take the Post at its word here? It's not as if "anything but Hillary" is an unheard-of position in the right wing of our country.

No matter who wins the Democratic nomination, we can expect strong turnout from the Democrats (who after 8 years of W would happily vote for a ham sandwich over any Republican).

With BHO as the Dem candidate, the Republican turnout will be muted at best (since for any Republican nominee you care to name, a third of the Republican party hates him).

With HRC as the Dem candidate, you can expect most Republicans to show up to vote for the Republican candidate simply to try to keep HRC out of office. Fairly or not, Hillary has been demonized so much for so long that most Republican voters will be motivated to vote against her even if they don't particularly like their own candidate.

So from a strategic standpoint, I think Barack will fare much better in November than Hillary would. The depressed Republican turnout will help other Democratic candidates on the ballot as well.

The other question will be, how many independents accidentally invalidated their vote by forgetting to mark the "Democratic" bubble on their non-partisan ballot?

What are you doing sending all those perfectly good CDs and things to the landfill? Somewhere out there is someone who can use them and would love to have them. Post them to your local FreeCycle list instead, or take them to your local thrift store. Just because anything and everything is available dirt cheap (fresh off the boat from China) is no reason to convert perfectly serviceable products into more environmental headaches.

Asher is right, strategic voting can affect the results of a range voting election. However, if you look at the worst case scenario (where everyone votes 100 for their favorite candidate(s) and 0 for the rest) then what you have is none other than Approval Voting. And Approval Voting isn't a bad way to elect candidates either; certainly both Range Voting and Approval Voting are much better than the status quo.

As I understand it, the Range Voting "quorum rule" is simply this: In order to win, a candidate must have been ranked by at least half of the voters. That rule is necessary, as you say, to avoid having someone write in their own name with a "10" ranking and thereby obtain the highest average rating and win the election with a single vote.

It seems simple enough to me. As far as range voting in general goes, explaining it with "each voter ranks the candidates 1-10, and the candidate with the highest average ranking wins" is a lot simpler to explain than IRV, even if you do also need to describe the quorum rule for completeness.

Since the Democratic party uses proportional representation, and Clinton beat Obama by a small number of votes, this seems more like a symbolic victory than anything substantial. At most, Clinton my narrow the gap between her and Obama by one delegate.

Still, there is something to be said for a morale boost...

(n/t)

I'm not sure you how you'd draw a cartoon about a well rounded person doing healthy, normal things and still make it at all funny.