The SoapBoxers

Presidential race

Empire State Building turns blue. Obama wins. (Photo credit: Lisa Bettany {Mostly Lisa})

Barack Obama rolled to a fairly comfortable win on Tuesday night, winning in excess of 300 electoral votes.  Florida is still undecided, but leaning slightly to Obama.  If he wins that state, he’ll end up with 332 electoral votes.  Obama dominated the battleground states, with his win in Ohio punctuating the victory.

The base of the Democratic party, the states which Democratic candidates have won in each of the last six elections, now accounts for 242 electoral votes.  In essence, this means that the 2016 Democratic candidate starts with 242 electoral votes in his/her pocket and need to only capture 28 more from Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia.

Currently, the Republicans win amongst white males and get beaten by Democrats in most other demographic groups.  If the Republican platform remain the same, this could create a problem, as the racial/ethnic makeup of the country is changing, with Caucasians becoming a smaller percentage of the population every year.  The Republicans must make more of an effort to the issues that are important to women and racial and ethnic minorities.

Congress

The new Senate will consist of 54 Democrats (this includes Bernie Sanders), 45 Republicans, and one Independent.  Former Maine governor Angus “Burger” King won the Senate race.  While he has not disclosed which party he will caucus with, most insiders feel he will side with Democrats.  The Democratic party actually gave no support to the actual Democrat in the race, fearing a splintered vote would allow the Republican to win.  Two of the higher profile losses were Akin and Mourdock gaffe-ing their way to defeat in races where they had a good chance to win.

The Republicans will maintain their majority in the House, with numbers approaching their current strength of 240 members.

Speaker of the House John Boehner was quick to say “The American people also made clear there’s no mandate for raising tax rates.”  That’s true, speaker Boehner, but tax rates WILL increase at the end of the year unless congress and the president agree on a solution.  The Bush-era tax cuts and the FICA reduction will be expiring. 

While there have been rhetoric about bi-partisanship this morning, there will surely be a tense battle as we approach the fiscal cliff at the end of the year.  Buckle your seat belts.

Meanwhile, in Iowa

Iowa’s representation in the House dropped from five to four.  This meant that Republican incumbent Tom Latham and Democratic incumbent Leonard Boswell went head-to-head in a new district.  Latham won, and overall the voters elected two Democrats and two Republicans.  Iowa’s Senators – who were not up for re-election and long-term members Chuck Grassley (Republican) and Tom Harkin (Democrat).  The governor is Republican, the state legislature has one house controlled by each party, and Obama won the presidential vote.  Iowa is purple.

In 2009, Iowa’s Supreme Court struck down a ban on gay marriage, declaring it unconstitutional.  All seven members of the court joined the unanimous decision.

Iowa’s Supreme Court justices are appointed by the governor (from a pool nominated by commission).  They are on the ballot for retention after one year on the job, and then again every eight years.  In 2010, it happened that three of those justices were up for retention.  A well-funded effort to have them removed from office narrowly won.

The same group tried again this year, running ads against Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins.  This time around, voters chose to retain Wiggins.  I think 2010 was a serious wake-up call to a lot of voters, making them aware of the dangers of politicizing the judicial process.  If a political group could make judges fear for their jobs – and kicking 43% of the court out in one election could definitely instill such fear – then might the judges be fearful of making unpopular decisions, even if they were the legally correct decisions?  Let our judges be just, even when their decisions are not popular.

For the moment, the attempt to replace the justices and replace them with ones who might over the decision seems dead.

There’s a second way to negate the decision, and that would be to amend the state constitution.  However, that’s a pretty cumbersome process.  It involves passage of both houses of the legislature in two consecutive sessions.  A session is two years.  With the Democrats appearing to be in control of the state senate, the issue seems to be off the table until at least the 2015-2016 session.  This means that the very earliest it could reach the voters is 2017.  Barring a change in the makeup of the legislature (members leaving to to death, illness, scandal, etc) or a reversal by the supreme court, it seems that gay marriage will be legal in Iowa for a number of years.

Election day has finally arrived.  For those of us in the battleground states, it will signal the end of political ads and the returns of ads for Ruffles, Charmin, and Tide.  Hooray for Charmin!

The mainstream media likes to talk about the national polls, but as I have said in the past, these polls are completely worthless.  There’s no prize for the candidate who wins the national popular vote.

Most of the polls have had President Obama maintaining a lead in the electoral college (based on his performance in various state polls) for several months now.  While it’s true that Obama’s leads are within the margin of error in many states, he will most likely win most of those states.  As long as the polling errors are not matter of systemic bias (unintentional or intentional) and are simply independent errors, these polls should be erring on the side of Obama roughly half the time and on the side of Romney half the time.  The fact that the margin is within the poll’s margin of error does not necessarily mean that the trailing candidate is the one getting the short end of the stick – the poll could also be understating the lead of a candidate.

There has been much talk about Ohio.  Without it, Romney has a nearly impossible task in front of him.  I see Obama winning Ohio, due in part to election day weather.  There is very little chance of rain on Tuesday in Cleveland and Cincinnati, and this helps Obama.  Every inch of rain on election days boosts Republicans by 2.5%?  Why?  This is simply a bus vs. car issue.  Taking a bus somewhere in the rain is a worse experience that driving a car, because of how wet you get walking to and from bus stops.  Two demographics that use public transit more than others are the poor and inner city dwellers (poor and non-poor alike).  Both of these groups skew to the left.

Election Fraud

There has been much talk about voter fraud and the possibility of requiring IDs to vote.  I really think people are missing the forest for the trees.  Studies have shown that in-person voter fraud is very rare.  Absentee fraud is far more common.

The real danger, though, is people who are being disenfranchised.  There are shenanigans every year.  Among the tricks this year and notifying voters of alternative voting methods (phone and email) that are not actually legitimate, throwing away voter registration forms for a particular party, and sending in a fraudulent absentee ballot for a vote, so that when the voter appears at the poll in person, they will not be allowed to vote.

At this point, I would suggest that you never trust anyone to help with your registration – handle it yourself.  Even taking the precaution of waiting for the registration card in the mail isn’t good enough, as it would be very easy for the perpetrators to send out counterfeit cards (which, of course, would be worthless when trying to prove you are registered).

Some international observers recently have been critical about the US election process.  With some of the tricks that get pulled by partisans, and the outright lies in many campaign commercials, I do think our election process falls well short of the standards we should strive for.  Today’s voters may have more information than at any time in the past, but in many cases, they aren’t more informed – they are misinformed.  Take a few minutes to find the context for quotes and “facts” and you’ll be a more educated voter.  We should strive for a future when voters are correctly informed and when every eligible voter is allowed to cast a vote – even when their party differs from yours.

Kosmo and I are both are deep into the NaNoWriMo effort. I have not seen Kosmo’s update, but so far I am on track with this year’s event with 7828 words so far. This is just barely above the 1667 words per day. It has been fun. My one piece of advice is based on my lessons learned. For the actual NaNoWriMo effort, do not spend time reviewing what you have already written. I have spent many hours in the past reading and editing my work with very little progress to the 50,000 word goal. That is only advice for the month of writing. When you are trying to create a novel, most of your time is reading and rereading your own effort to knock the edges off of the sharp corners and make sure the work in internally consistent.

This year I started with a four element outline, just four major events that I am trying to weave together with a good connecting steam of actions and descriptions. I am almost a fifth of the way into the work with the joining of the first two events underway and background for the next event already sort of in place.

To keep up the pace of writing, I have been trying to get two uninterrupted hours each night. The weekend days provided several writing opportunities, but many more interruptions than the week nights. I have even snuck in a couple of minutes typing before heading to work. I hope all of you are getting similar opportunities.

On Football, the traditional power houses are slowly floating to the top, both in college and in professional ranks. In College, Alabama, Kansas State, Notre Dame and Oregon are the major undefeated with Louisville being the ugly duckling undefeated. In the pros, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Chicago, the New York Giants, San Francisco and New England are back in the top. Denver, Atlanta and Houston are new comers, but not very surprising.

I have noticed plenty of chants for the replacement referees. A little sooner than I expected, but it just depends on if you think your team is being short changed. We are in the final stretch for the college teams and the half way point for the pros. Now we should start seeing the games in the mud and snow, which to me is real football weather. I personally cannot wait for Johnny’s college update.

For a few years now, Martin Kelly has been participating in NaNoWriMo.  This year, I’m also taking the plunge.

What are the odds of me hitting the 50,000 word goal by the end of the month?  Not good.  Not good at all.  However, I’m hoping that the exercise will allow me to find small pockets of writing time and take advantage of them, so that I can continue the good habits after November is over.  I have several book ideas at the moment, but have struggled to find time to write.

If you want to buddy me on the site, go ahead.  Here’s my profile.

My book is tentatively titled “Shuffle”.  My main idea behind the book is that the main character’s life has been shuffled like a deck of cards and he’s going to live the time out of sequence.  This is likely triggered by an event in his 20s, to avoid having his youth messed up to much.  In a nutshell, one day he’ll be 42.  The next day he’ll be 25.  A few weeks later, he’ll be 70.  The idea came from the combination of several things – Quantum Leap, Memento, 11/22/63, and more importantly, the “random” button on XKCD.

The one thing missing at the moment is a plot.  I came up with this idea on the spur of the moment a few days ago.  Is the main character the protagonist or the antagonist?  If the story is going to be interesting, there really should be some sort of conflict.  But what sort of conflict?  Romantic troubles, or someone trying to kill the character.  (On second thought, those two ideas really aren’t mutually exclusive).  Heck, I’m not even settled on the gender of the character, much less the name (although I could always just go with Pat).

OK, need to finish this up and get back to my writing.  My word count at 11:30 on the first day of NaNoWriMo?  7.

Mitt Romney can’t lose.  President Obama won’t let him.

A person once asked on Facebook “Does the presidential debate make a difference?” At first I thought about Regan’s debates. He didn’t just impress the People, he connected with them. His ideas resonated with the audience. His humor even garnered laughs from his opponent. President Reagan was likable, presidential, and his ideas became our ideas. I think the vast majority agreed the government wasn’t the solution it was the problem. His one and only debate in 1980 possibly won the election for him. What got him reelected was his ideas worked. When Reagan ran for reelection the economy was turning around. People saw their lives improve, the Iranian hostages released, and no more gasoline rationing.

Mitt Romney has ideas not tag lines. The first debate Mitt Romney devastated his opponent. Mitt didn’t do this with general terms like hope or change. Change can mean anything and different people have different hopes. Romney did a wonderful job explaining why cutting taxes works. Romney did an excellent job explaining what reduces violence including gun violence. Romney connected with the People with ideas.

Mitt Romney was very specific. He was specific on the effect of taxes and economic behavior. He was specific on national defense. Romney was very specific on what policies and promises President Obama failed in. Romney’s ideas are measurable. Reducing permanently unemployed and unemployed is measureable. Not cutting spending on national defense is measureable. Reducing taxes and limiting deductions is measureable. All these ideas are attainable and relevant.

People notice the greatest economies are in states with oil and oil exploration like North Dakota and Texas. Romney’s ideas for energy independence are attainable and relevant. Green technology is not there yet. Romney’s ideas are time-bound. Green technology isn’t there yet, clean coal and clean oil production is.

S Specific

M Measurable

A Attainable

R Relevant

T Time-bound

Romney is SMART and smart. President Obama’s hope and change could mean anything to anyone. While this may have helped him get into office it hindered his ability to get reelected. People have wonderful imaginations which lead to great disappointment when their ideas of change are not achieved. Hope is quickly erased with every policy that don’t match their idea of change. Failing to be specific is a failure of leadership.

President Obama did do measurements correctly but when it’s not coupled to specifics it is useless. He promised that if we pass TARP we won’t see 9% unemployment. He wasn’t specific on how this was to be achieved. We know throwing money at a problem doesn’t fix it and it didn’t fix employment it made it worse. He promised green jobs and energy independence. He failed and added billions to the debt in the process. He promised to cut taxes but only provided 18 tax incentives and extensions. Every April I pay more taxes and the President’s so-called “tax-cuts” are not relevant to the working middle class.

The last debate on foreign policy should have been a slam dunk for Romney. The Libyan embassy attack was and continues to blow up in Obama’s face beyond any Lewinski scandal or Watergate cover-up. Romney could have gone on the attack with near impunity but he chose not to and played it safe. With what I consider only a fair performance Romney still gained in the polls.

President Obama is not time-bound and is asking for four more years to somehow find success with the same failed policies. President Obama’s attempts to impress have failed to connect with the People. President Obama has failed in every debate to sound presidential, SMART, and smart. Debates matter and President Obama did everything right to ensure a Romney win on November 6.