Well, it seems that the Republican National Committee thinks so. Essentially, they’ve stopped using their money to pay for John McCain’s campaign ads.
Why? Because there are a whole bunch of other elections on US election day, and some of them are as important as the one for the White House. Most obviously, there’s the congressional races, where Democrats are likely to pick up seats in both the House and Senate. The Democrats have been fantasizing about getting 60 Senate seats. 60 votes allows them to override a filibuster (assuming that they can keep their own party in line). They probably won’t quite get there, but they will pick up Senate seats. Unseating incumbent Senators is ridiculously difficult, so some wins should entrench the Democrats with a Senate majority for some time to come.
But beyond that, there’s also the races for state legislatures and governorships. While you might not think that these matter terribly much from a national perspective, they have long-term effects on the shape of the federal congress. If a federal Senator dies in office, the state Governor gets to appoint his successor, at least until the next election, where incumbency again makes the appointee difficult to defeat. Furthermore, the geographical shape of US congressional districts is set (in most cases) by the relevant state legislature, and in recent years such redistrictings have resulted in considerable jerrymandering. So, particularly in the larger states, controlling the legislature at the time redistricting happens can give a substantial advantage for future congressional elections.
So, even if the US presidential election becomes a bit of an anticlimax, there will be lots to pore over after their election day.
I guess the real question is, whether we actually thought McCain was ever in the race to start with.
I agree, The President is but one position, and there is great importance in other positions within the US system. On gerrymandering, I played a flash game from the University of Southern California’s Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab that acts as a good little primer to the topic if you have a spare 30 minutes or so: -
The ReDistricting Game
It’s a bit of fun, and it covers off on the key tactics of the major parties when redistricting occurs.
PinkyOz
Indeed, in 1998 Florida got Jeb Bush for Governor, and Katherine Harris was elected Florida Secretary of State. It seems unbelievable, but their system allowed her, the power of office, to be strategically and partisanly engaged in a democratic presidential election: she was appointed (george) Bush’s Florida campaign co-chair. What harm can result? Per wiki:
The rest is, as they say, history, and well worth contemplating as a perversion of democracy. Just remind yourselves, Bush’s margin of victory in Florida was officially tallied at 537 votes (cf the thousands Harris prevented voting), and while Gore won the popular national, as distinct from the electoral college, vote by over half a million, he failed to win the popular vote in his home state, Tennessee. Had he won Tennessee, he would have won the election without Florida.
So yes, local issues can matter big time in the US system. We were all this !! close to not having Bush, and Cheney, and Rumsfeld, and all that followed. One final irony from that history-unmaking, anti-climactic, US election: “Under the recount rules initially requested by Gore, Bush would have won, and under the rules requested by Bush, Gore would have won”
I find it truly amazing that the US can claim to be a democracy. The voting system over there is basically a joke. It least they have retired the 19th century voting machines of hanging chad fame. They have replaced them with electronic systems that are just as pathetic. However the problem goes deeper than that. I understand that the bloody states run the federal election! Presumably this was part of the deal back then along with the electoral college system for President.
This is the country that holds itself up as a shining beacon of democracy, freedom and all that. Even now, after the debacle of 2004, the entire process is suspect from dodgy registration and roll eviction procedures to queues a mile long caused by inadequate facilities. No wonder they are bringing in the army to keep order.
Huggy
Heard a report the other day that Florida will use a manual system this time where every vote can be counted visually. No chads. Have to mark a ballot paper apparently. Must follow it up.
A bit OT but anyone notice how Obama’s ctahcing up to McCain – in terms of aging? The latest Time cover has him look ten years older since the start of the year. And he still hasn’t done even one day at the World’s Worst Job.
.
Politics – yuk.
Huggybunny, it is even worse than that. It is the county which controls the election. Ballot papers, or even method of voting, can change from county to county. The ballot for president may also (on the same piece of paper) include a ballot for things as mundane as the county dogcatcher.
For people who are accustomed to the system as run by the Australian Electoral Commission, & the uniform style of ballot paper, and the efficient method of counting, in Australia, well, such a person is in for one helluva shock to see just how badly the electral process is mismanaged in the USA.
One expects something similar to Australia… the shock for an Aussie upon seeing just how things work electorally in the USA is akin to the shock one experiences when encountering abject third world poverty for the first time.
Much as I hate to suggest the Executive wing is more important that the Parliamentary/Congressional – and there’s no doubt the Senate result and many state results will be vey significant in various ways – I still think none of them come close to being as important as the one for the White House. Particularly for the rest of the planet outside of the USA and perhaps especially this time.
Andrew: perhaps. However, I’d like the chances of getting the US to ratify a global warming treaty a hell of a lot more if the Senate had 60 Democrats in it.
RM, or anyone: This fillibuster thing, and cloture: if it’s operation is clear in your mind, and it’s possible to be simply explained under the three paragraph rule, and you’ve got three paragraphs worth of time, and could bear to, could you please explain, especially how it might work here, do we have any mechanism to attenuate tyrrany by a slim and deal-du-jour susceptible majority in the senate? I’ve done the wikipedia thing but my brain hurts after trying to follow the Bush v Gore 2000 shenanigans. Taa.
Danny: under US Senate rules, there are no time limits for debates, so Senators can blabber on for as long as they like on a topic. Effectively, no bills can pass while this occurs, so it’s a way to prevent a bill from passing.
However, a filibuster can be interrupted by a “cloture motion”, which requires 60 Senators to vote to pass it. That’s why the Democrats want 60 seats, or very close to it (in which case moderate Republicans like Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter might well vote for cloture on some issues).
My understanding is that there are no such provisions under Australian Senate rules. A procedural motion to put a bill to the vote immediately can be passed by a simple majority. So, no, we cannot “attentuate tyranny” through filibusters. In practice, I’m not sure that the US Senate has used it for that purpose terribly often either.
RM: Taa for that. So we have the, almost-poetic-in-it’s-brutality, “I move that the member no longer be heard.”
Indeed, Rob, the classic use of the filibuster was by Southern Senators to “attenuate the tyranny” of civil rights bills!
I wish I could share your confidence that Obama is going to win. If the USA had mandatory voting I’d be starting my celebratory street dancing round about now. I know that the polls of likely voters are extremely encouraging, but I’m worried about that term ‘likely voters’. I’ve seen some persuasive debunking of the ‘Bradley effect’, but it seems to me that this is of a different order – this is for President of the United States.
I know that religious nutjobs, moose shooters, and those that can’t bear the thought of a black man in the white house will be enthusiastically out in force. I’m not so confident that the typical conservative American currently expressing a preference for Obama in polls will actually feel like voting on the day. Looking forward to being convinced otherwise.
Rob:
Don’t forget about conservative southern and mid-western Democrats – they will make the final numbers smaller for the Dems than it would appear
Jenny #13, people who saw Obama’s reply to Joe the Plumber may well be out in force also. Without knowing much about McCain, lots of people are against the idea of being taxed into submission.
steve at the pub:
I suppose so, though I must admit to being very surprised at the reaction to the idea of progressive taxation, particularly when applied to businesses that net (not earn) over $250 thou. I can’t believe they’d be many suburban plumbing businesses doing that well. But I guess to the Americans, ‘socialism’ is just a nasty, nasty word.
Call me deeply cynical, but I too fear there are great numbers of good ole boys and girls aching for an excuse that they can wear to vote agin Obama, and the Joe the Plumber Moment filled up the available neurons, gave the desired result, the excuse to go with fear and prejudice, and from there on till ballot, it’s finger in the ears time.
Progressive taxation is one thing, taxation to ensure equality of outcome is another. The Joe the Plumber answer indicated Obama believes in the latter. Why bother working hard in mud, shit, skinned knuckles, pounding heart to near blackout point, keeping recalcitrant young offsiders focused on work, if you are going to have the living farck taxed out of you to equalise you with the guy who divides his time equally between plumbing & patronising the TAB?
Socialism is a nasty nasty word to many people. In a tight election campaign it is one I would certainly play down. The USA has far more of a culture of work hard & get ahead than does Oz, and even here if I was running I would avoid even the spectre of it.
The economics of plumbing in the USA seem to be very different to what we are accustomed to. There wouldn’t be a plumbing business within cooee of me netting as low as $250,000 (inept Steptoe & Son types excepted). Joe the plumber’s boss had “sales” of $100,000 last year, which wouldn’t be enough to be any more than a “one man & a toolbox” operation in Australia. Never mind on-costs of employing, never mind costs of running the operation & buying stock, $100,000 = $50,000 each. No plumber would get out of bed for that here, never mind be a boss.
Obama doesn’t have to win over the good old boys.
There’s plenty of electoral college votes available in the west to push him over the line, and he’s significantly ahead in all the polls in places like Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico.
Absolute rubbish, and you know it. Obama made it very clear that taxes will stay the same or go down for the 95% of people earning under $250k, and that includes Joe the Plumber, who probably earns around $50k. The wealthy have had it good under Bush. This needs to be reversed, and Obama is the one to do it. McCain certainly won’t. He’s a friend of the wealthy CEOs and corporations.
satp, re “taxation to ensure equality of outcome is another” – if you rephrase that as “taxation to help keep rising inequality of outcome in check” I’d say that there is some amount of evidence to support a real need for doing just that (the OECD released a major report recently discussing the side-effects of high levels of income inequality, none of them good).
Silkworm, the quote from Obama did not make it that clear. It came out more like, “Joe, I gotta tax the fuck outta you, coz if we redistribute the wealth everybody is in clover”
Obama realised halfway through the question how bad it would look for him, and he should have pulled up a better line than “We have to redistribute wealth”.
RM: I hope you is right, that not far beneath those sophisticated western exteriors beat lots of hearts of a good ole boys and gals just waiting to burst into
Poor Jud is Dead‘SurreyVP with the fringe on top’ song.I’m shudderin’ and wailin’ at just the thought of a President Palin.