Steven Taylor links a piece in today’s New York Times that looks at Terry McAuliffe’s plan to create a consensus nominee by front-loading the primary calendar. The plan looks likely to backfire by producing a presumptive nominee who is, according to writer Adam Nagourney, “bruised by the nominating fight and confronted with the challenge of uniting a deeply divided party.”

It doesn’t exactly help that many of the candidates’ strategies have, of late, focused on pitting Democratic factions against each other, with Clark’s recent attempts to play to African-Americans against Dean, Gephardt’s appeals to the unions, and Dean’s nonsensical—and continual—alienation of the party’s centrist and conservative elements.

You know, the only thing I ever lost at summer camp was my pocket knife.

Steven Taylor of PoliBlog gets to the bottom of the whole Clark/disenfranchisement discussion. Suffice it to say I agree with Taylor’s policy prescriptions; however, I will say that the use of outdated voting technology in poorer counties seems to be more the result of those counties being poor—and thus devoting their limited resources to things that were perceived as more important than voting machines (like economic development, law enforcement, and public education), at least in the minds of most prior to the 2000 ballot controversy—rather than any deliberate action to systematically disenfranchise voters. Outside a very small number of academics, virtually nobody even knew, much less cared, that punch-card ballots had higher error rates than other voting methods until it became an issue in Florida.

If you are under the age of 70, and—at any point in your life—decide you “feel old,” there’s an easy remedy: come to Ocala, Florida, where you’re virtually guaranteed to be the youngest person in any given establishment.

Update: Matt Stinson may have had more fun in Ocala during a single meal than I had in two years of high school. Sounds about right.

I’ve been in a bit of a blogging rut lately; I think our extended downtime in mid-December somehow got me out of the “blogging groove,” so to speak. That, and being at the semi-proverbial “ass end” of the Internet, along with holiday and no-job stress, is severely cramping my style.

Original thought, maybe, soon.

That’s the question D.C. Thornton is contemplating in deciding whether to return to the Republican Party. He writes:

If I want the Republicans to remain true to small government, low taxation, the ability of individuals to govern their own lives and pursue happiness as they see fit, and counter racism, the work has to be done from the inside. Ranting from the outside does nothing to change anything.

I doubt Darmon can do it on his own—but if enough like-minded Americans from diverse backgrounds do the same, libertarian-leaning Republicans can accomplish what the Christian right did in the 1980s—fundamentally remake the Republican Party in their own image. The downside is that the “libertarian right”—perhaps a bit of an oxymoron—doesn’t have anywhere near the level of institutional backing that the Christian right did when it mounted its takeover.

Brian J. Noggle adds more potential subversives for you to be aware of, in addition to those evil Almanac-toting folks.

Dad and I saw Master and Commander today, which was most enjoyable—even if I could have done without the ER/Black Hawk Down at sea bits. Swordfights? OK. Arms being amputated with meat cleavers? Merci, non.

Lots of people—sometimes, even me—have trouble remembering where their keys are. Venomous Kate apparently has problems keeping track of her vibrator. I guess Hawai'i is more exciting than the mainland after all.

Ken Waight’s Lying in Ponds, which combines semi-regular “weblog-style” entries with daily analysis of America’s leading newspaper pundits, is one of the more worthwhile diversions in the blogosphere, even if I don’t share Waight’s apparent antipathy toward partisanship.

Partisanship has numerous functions in democratic society. In the electorate, it creates a psychological attachment between voters and politicians by providing a convenient “brand label” for voters, and a shortcut for voters who don’t have the time or inclination to research the qualifications of down-ballot candidates—even though it’s not immediately clear what meaningful difference there would be between a Republican and Democratic sheriff.

At the elite level, much of the role of partisanship is about communicating a consistent message to the public—the key part of Lazarsfeld and Katz’s “two-step flow” of political information. In essence, the public uses cues from elite figures to help inform and decide their own positions on political issues. Strong partisans, like Paul Krugman and Ann Coulter, are part of this process—as are more conflicted pundits like Tom Friedman. If there’s a risk associated with pundits like Krugman and Coulter, it’s that they give an exaggerated version of their own party line that often borders on caricature. But I don’t believe they are quite as harmful as those like Waight, who are bothered by the most partisan pundits’ apparent singlemindedness, seem to think.

Dan Drezner, subbing for Andrew Sullivan, discusses problems with forecasting models and the media members who latch onto them. One notable oversight in forecasting: virtually all of the existing models predict the nationwide vote, rather than the outcomes of state elections to the electoral college—a particularly problematic consideration when dealing with close elections, like that in 2000. The ones that do make state-level predictions are rather dated.

More to the point, as Matt Yglesias points out, aggregate-level models are often inherently problematic. The problem that Yglesias calls “specification searching”—or what I’d call atheoretical modelling, with a healthy dose of stepwise regression to boot—is endemic to the whole class of forecasting models, because fundamentally they are inductive exercises, focused on finding the best combination of variables to predict the observed outcome. Most good social science (or science in general, for that matter), by contrast, is deductive: establish a truly explanatory theory, develop specific hypotheses, and operationalize and test them.

That isn’t to say, however, that unemployment doesn’t belong in the model at all; it may, for example, be the best available indicator of a theoretical construct like “voters’ perceptions of the national economy.” But as someone whose research interests are more centered on individual-level explanations of behavior, rather than attempting to explain aggregate outcomes, I sometimes wonder if aggregate-level models trade too much scientific value for their parsimony.

See also James Joyner, who points out that small sample sizes aren’t necessarily problematic when the universe is also small. However, in a small sample the good social scientist will be particularly attentive to the potential issue of outliers—atypical observations that can lead one to make conclusions that aren’t justified on the basis of the data as a whole.

Robert Prather notes the increasing enthusiasm for introducing High Occupancy/Toll lanes for congestion relief in the Washington area.

Prompted in part by my new cell phone, which includes a built-in web browser, I’m pleased to announce the debut of Signifying Nothing Mobile. There isn’t a lot of support for navigating between posts yet, but hopefully I’ll be able to add that soon. Any reports of success or failure would be appreciated!

Matt Stinson finally stops teasing us and announces his big plans for the new year. Très cool.

Will Baude has yet another 20 Questions interview, this time with Reason writer/blogger Julian Sanchez. Plenty of good stuff there; go RTWT™.

While waiting in line at Books-A-Million today here in Ocala (a long wait, since the computers crashed due to a power spike), an elderly woman noticed that I was buying a copy of the latest book on Southern politics by the Black brothers, Merle and Earl, The Rise of Southern Republicans (a real find in a general-interest bookstore). The woman, who I really didn’t want to get into a political conversation with,* informed me that she hoped Bush would be reelected in 2004, and that she considered two Democrats particularly “dangerous”: Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton. I nodded, smiled, and seriously considered backing away slowly.

She didn’t seem quite as interested in the copy of The Economist’s “The World in 2004” I was buying.

This is my entry in today’s Beltway Traffic Jam.

I think Michele has the better of the argument in contrasting Lair’s and Meryl’s reaction to the U.S. sending aid to the earthquake victims in Iran with her own. Personally, I think it’s worthwhile even if not a single Iranian mind is changed about America—the point of charity, after all, isn’t to make the beneficiary think better of you for doing it.

Update: Add Glenn Reynolds to the list of people who can’t seem to make the people/leaders distinction—even if I agree that the U.S. efforts to play arbiter are unlikely to be effective.

While Stephen Green points out that the latest Zogby numbers show Howard Dean in statistical dead heats in both Iowa and South Carolina (but with a commanding lead in New Hampshire), James Joyner retorts that Dean’s lead is more durable than the numbers indicate:

...this is now Dean’s race to lose. While he’s not running away with anything, he’s got a huge lead in New Hampshire and a small one everywhere else. Meanwhile, there is no consistent number two. More importantly, he’s absolutely dominating the money primary.

More to the point, the rules are such that you can effectively discount anyone not named Al Sharpton* unless they get double-digits, because the Democrats’ delegate allocation system works at the congressional district level—and, as I keep pointing out, you have to get 15% in a congressional district to win delegates from it. This effect will massively inflate Dean’s standing at the convention.

Like James, I’m becoming more convinced than ever that South Carolina will be pivotal. And, barring a seismic shift after Iowa, I can’t see any S.C. scenario that Dean can’t spin as a win—realistically, he needs to be blown out by 10% or more by a credible candidate (at this point, either Clark or Gephardt), which just ain’t happening with Edwards still in the race and a lot of Republicans coming out to vote for Sharpton. A narrow ABD victory gives Dean the line that he “polled well in the South,” even if he only gets a third of the primary vote.

Eugene Volokh, in a post defending Strom Thurmond against the charge of child molestation, notes a handy table that lists the age of consent in all fifty states, and comments:

I also suspect that the table is mostly designed for people who like to have sex with teenagers, but it seems to be pretty accurate, and I’ve found it useful even for more academic purposes.

Now, I’m not an expert on such matters, but it seems to me that having sex with teenagers is quite a popular activity, particularly among college students; the only thing I can figure is that law professors—the only academics who, as a group, don’t have much contact with the 17-21 demographic—are unaware just how much sex goes on among undergraduates.

Dave of dave’s not here thinks the arguments of some in favor of reinstating the draft don’t hold up against scrutiny. Me? I’d be even happier if Congress killed the Selective Service System—and the ridiculous line-item in the budget attached to it—once and for all.

I safely arrived at my dad’s house in a secure, undisclosed location in southeastern Marion County, Florida last night. Traffic on both I-10 and I-75 was horrible, albeit fast moving—though I-10 could use an extra lane from Pensacola to I-75, as left-lane traffic was continuously stacked up trying to pass the few stragglers in the right lane.

Anyway, if you’re a regular SN reader within, say, a two-hour radius of Ocala (roughly anywhere north of I-4, south of I-10, east of Tallahassee, and not in the Atlantic Ocean), the first beer’s on me.

Stephen Green and Matt Stinson note the latest whining from Howard Dean about his fellow candidates picking on him.

Also of note: Dean’s Bushian energy policy coverup. Truth to power indeed.

Update: Steven Taylor points out that DNC head Terry McAuliffe couldn’t do much about the attacks, even if he were inclined to do so. And, the Diktat has the Stalinist perspective, as always.

Dan Drezner will be playing the role of guest-blogger for Andrew Sullivan this coming week. I knew there had to be a reason I added Sully to the blogroll…

Rosemary Esmay apparently is familiar with the same driver I saw today on I-10 between Mobile and Pensacola who apparently thought the left lane was his own personal playground—even when the right lane was clear a mile ahead of his pickup truck.

Also of note: I think I saw more Mississippi state troopers today than I’d seen total in the 5½ years I’ve lived in the state.

Steven Taylor links approvingly to a Jonah Goldberg column lamenting the lack of political knowledge in the electorate.

At some point, I’ll have meaningful thoughts about the column (i.e. something to say beyond “Goldberg’s wrong”). Unfortunately, now isn’t that time; for some reason, driving through a landscape of endless conifers in eastern Mississippi and western Alabama has sapped my ability to compose coherent arguments.