Stephen Green ponders whether Howard Dean’s candidacy is stagnating in the face of surges from Wesley Clark (in New Hampshire, as he’s had the whole state to himself while the rest of the Dems pander to Iowans prior to next Tuesday’s essentially meaningless precinct caucuses) and John Edwards (who’s picking up endorsements and favorable media coverage in Iowa).

At this point, the narrative for Iowa is pretty much written:* Edwards surges to a surprisingly strong third-place finish, and Dick Gephardt fails to live up to expectations in his own back yard against Dean, effectively starting the “death bells” for Gephardt’s campaign—with the nails to the coffin coming when he finishes spectacularly poorly in New Hampshire.

So, what’s the New Hampshire narrative? Today’s polls still show Dean with a statistically-significant, but rapidly eroding, lead over Clark. If Dean and Clark finish within single digits of each other, Dean fails to live up to expectations—and has to hope that Clark, Edwards, and Gephardt divide the South Carolina electorate enough for Dean to finish #2 behind Edwards. If, on the other hand, Dean gets a double-digit win over Clark in New Hampshire, that’s probably enough to make him the designated frontrunner and tip the balance in the non-S.C. February 3rd primaries through favorable media.

Stay tuned, things are about to get interesting…

* Update: Ok, maybe not… where the heck did Kerry come from?

VodkaPundit Stephen Green plays with Excel’s mapping feature to draw some electoral college maps on the (not unreasonable) presumption that the relative strength of the Republicans and Democrats in each state is unchanged since 2000. Fun stuff.

Marybeth links a Joel Klein piece on the fun and excitement that is the Iowa caucuses. Classic quotes:

To explain how it all works, Iowa Secretary of State Chet Culver is going around the state holding practice caucuses. At his workshop last Tuesday at the library in Clive, a suburb seven miles west of Des Moines, about 50 people showed up, several of them young enough to be my parents. Most of these folks already knew how caucuses work and just wanted a refresher course. Clive needs to get itself a bowling alley.

As Culver, 37, a former history teacher, began with an hour-long PowerPoint presentation on the history of the caucus going back to 1846, a sign-language interpreter flashed signs — even though not a single person in the room was deaf. It hit me about 15 minutes into the speech that the sign-language guy must have realized no one there was deaf, but by that time it was too embarrassing to just stop. So he kept going, his bravery a further testimony to the lengths Iowans go through just to get David Broder to visit.

At least Bob Putnam would approve!

For the second hour, Culver had the audience stage a fake caucus. It turns out the Republican caucus is really simple. They pass around ballots, count them and go home to watch Everybody Loves Raymond while the Democrats are still reading their rules. I predict the state will eventually be 100% Republican.

Once all the candidates have at least 15%, a formula Culver describes as “needing a Ph.D. in math to understand” is used to determine how many delegates each candidate gets. The percentage of delegates each candidate gets is the number reported in the media. Then the media, for reasons that are unclear, pretend that has something to do with whom the country wants to be President.

Yes, this is exactly the sort of shit Ackerman and Fishkin want to foist on America. Thanks—but no thanks.

Kelley of suburban blight thinks the President’s plan to spend $1.5 Billion to encourage people to get and stay married is a waste of money, as does Amanda Butler of Crescat Sententia. On the other hand, Sully thinks it’s a great idea that nonetheless further proves the administration hates gay people (no, really, I’m not making that up, although it might be a slight exaggeration).

Me? I’m with Kelley and Amanda. Give me the $6 this idiotic program will cost me and every other American and I’ll decide to get married when I damn well please, thank you very much. I even promise not to marry Britney Spears (or Paris Hilton or Xtina) and annul the marriage 55 hours later.

Lefty Joe Conason thinks Bush is going to the Moon and Mars for oil (hint: if you’re looking for hydrocarbons like methane, they’re probably in the outer solar system—they don’t call them “gas giants” for nothing). Righty Brendan Miniter thinks the Mars trip is a great way to solve osteoperosis. Conrad points out that both men are idiots.

Since Ron Suskind’s alleged tell-all book has come out, Paul O’Neill, the ex-treasury secretary whose revelations the book is based on, has taken to the talk-show circuit in an attempt to disavow many of the more sensational quotes from the book.

• James Joyner is among those noting O’Neill’s pointed non-endorsement of the Democratic opposition.
• O’Neill is dragging out the “Ron Suskind’s name is on the cover” defense for the allegations that he leaked Treasury Department documents.
• John Cole notes that many of O’Neill’s revelations aren’t that revelatory, while Matt Stinson compares doves’ jumping on the O’Neill story with hawks’ leaping onto Iraqi WMD revelations as they appear.

Then again, maybe O’Neill’s just preemptively defending himself from the hit squad Kevin Drum thinks has been sent after him by Karl Rove.

As I’ve noted before, there’s a Democratic delegate selection rule that requires 15% support in a congressional district for a candidate to receive delegates. However, as the Commissar notes, the caucus procedure isn’t exactly a single-ballot electoral situation, according to Carl Hulse of The New York Times:

The chairman of the caucus determines the “viability” threshold for groups backing each presidential candidates, which in most cases will be 15 percent of the number of people attending. Caucusgoers then have 30 minutes to divide into preference groups for the candidates. If some groups supporting candidates do not reach the 15 percent level, those people then have up to half an hour to realign with other campaigns.

At this stage, the pressure will be on the newly liberated caucusgoers to enlist with another candidate. In a deeper layer of strategy, some participants might even align with a candidate they are not that wild about to cut into the count of those who most threaten their first choice.

At the end of 30 minutes, the preference groups are counted again and the delegates are apportioned by multiplying the number in the preference group by the number of delegates up for grabs in a precinct, then dividing by the total attending the caucus. In cases of ties, delegates can be awarded by flipping a coin or drawing straws.

The Commissar expects this will lead to some strategic behavior, as groups of voters who might prefer other candidates may coalesce around a single “ABD” candidate to counter the Dean groundswell. Yet there are a couple of obstacles to such a process:

1. This process only happens at caucus sites, rather than at a higher level of aggregation. Gephardt may get the nod at one location, Edwards at another, and Lieberman at a third.
2. The caucuses only elect delegates to county conventions; as The Green Papers notes, the process for choosing congressional district and statewide delegates happens in late April, by which time the nomination will essentially be decided—and thus almost all of Iowa’s national convention delegates are likely to opt for the presumed nominee at that point, rather than following the caucus-goers’ preferences.

So, in the grand scheme of things: Iowa decides virtually nothing, and essentially is as important as today’s eminently forgettable D.C. non-binding primary, yet it’s been the center of media attention for two months. Great.

A few weeks ago, I promised a response to a Jonah Goldberg Townhall.com piece whining about ignorant voters. Now, as Brett Marston points out, Goldberg is advocating bringing back literacy tests on The Corner (just in case you needed another reason besides John Derbyshire not to send Bill Buckley any of your hard-earned cash). Quoth Goldberg, in typical cacophonous Corner fashion:

Hear, hear for Jon [Alder] on that score. But I’d go one better. I think it’s about time we toughened up the requirements for voting. Literacy tests, poll taxes and the like may have once been legitimately suspect because they were used to disciminate against blacks. But today, I simply see no principled reason we couldn’t apply some sort of test to everybody. Indeed, I would be more comfortable having newly naturlized immigrants decide the future of this country at the ballot box than leaving it up to, say, typical white 18-22 year-olds. I know that the immigrants can pass a civics test. I have no such confidence in the kids at my local malls.

Quoth Brett:

Democracy at the NRO. The poor and uneducated need not apply. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Since I know nobody’s going to read my dissertation to find out what I think of the elitist line of argument, let me simply state that:

1. Citizens have no “civic duty” to be informed about politics.
2. Citizens have no “civic duty” to vote.

Not only is it irrational for voters to learn about politics, it’s downright immoral to insist that people participate in the political process, especially since, for J. Random Jackass working at the meatpacking plant, the marginal difference between Howard Dean and George W. Bush is zero—no matter how much Dean and Bush try to tell him otherwise.

You want to know why people say they don’t know enough about particular candidates? It’s because we (political scientists, media types, and what have you) insist that it’s important that they know the minutae of Howard Dean’s foreign policy views or Wes Clark’s tax plan or Dennis Kucinich’s DSM-IV diagnosis. The dirty little secret of politics is people don’t make decisions based on that stuff—even if they do know it. Ultimately, it’s more about “who do I trust more,” “whose politics seem closest to mine,” and “do I prefer people who look like thumbs over people who resemble chimps” than “Bush is going to give me $32.65 more take-home pay a week than Dean.” Which is as it should be. There are enough of us warped political junkies as it is; let’s not add to the population.

Update: Brett Marston has more thoughts on this topic. Incidentally, if you—like Brett—“still want to read [my] dissertation,” it's all online here, along with pretty much everything I’ve written for conferences (or otherwise had my name slapped on).

Stephen Bainbridge has an eminently reasonable column on the pros and cons of Bush’s immigration proposal up at TechCentralStation; he also blogs the reaction from NRO’s Corner (a blog I generally find both too cacophonous and too conservative for my tastes). Speaking just for myself, any plan that has the potential to eventually eliminate the Soviet-style internal security checkpoints that have long been established in the southwest (and apparently have spread to northern border states as well) to combat illegal immigration and drug trafficking would meet with my approval.

It started with Glenn Reynolds linking an interview with libertarian activist Sabine Herold, the spokeswoman for the French organization named «Liberté j‘écris ton nom».

Now, Jeff Jarvis inquires in passing:

I was going to ask whether it was wrong of me to note that this French libertarian is a babe.

What I want to ask is: are we all that sure she’s French? Mlle Herold, if the photos are anything to judge by, apparently is familiar with the use of a razor.

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

Christie Todd Whitman argues on the New York Times op-ed page that the GOP needs to spend more time reaching out to moderate voters. (Hat tip: Martin Devon of Patio Pundit.)

Update: James Joyner isn’t buying.

Some say George W. Bush looks like a chimpanzee. Now, Jeff Jarvis speculates that Howard Dean looks like a thumb. Sounds like a warped version of rock-paper-scissors to me…

Pieter Dorsman of Peaktalk wonders if the United States might be following the path of Canada and the Netherlands, with both the left and the right in those countries becoming disaffected with the centrists who held sway in the 1990s. Definitely a good read. (Digression follows…)

Who says an Ole Miss degree is a ticket to a dead-end career in the retail industry? Not Roosevelt Skerrit, a graduate of the University of Mississippi who is now prime minister of the Carribean island nation of Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic). Skerrit, 31, received a B.A. in Psychology and English in 1997, and is a former lecturer at Dominica Community College. A little more info is in this AP account and this press release. Very cool.

David Levy reports to Tyler Cowen on Brazil’s laughable implementation of its response to US-VISIT. What I don’t get is: if it’s an indignity for Brazilians (and virtually everyone else in the world who enters the United States) to be photographed by U.S. authorities, how on earth do they reconcile the fact that their own passports include photos?

I’m less convinced by the need for fingerprinting, but I suspect fingerprint matching algorithms are much more reliable than face matching ones, and it certainly seems worthwhile to verify that visa applicants are the same people who actually enter the country.

Steven Taylor has the latest Toast-O-Meter update, live from N‘Orleans (I have to say that Steven’s far more dedicated to his craft than I would be in his stead). And who says political science is irrelevant?

At the Southern Political Science Association meeting this week, Merle Black, professor at Emory University, and expert on Southern Politics, stated that Dean had no chance of winning any of the South in the general election, indeed, assuming no radical events, that none of the Nine would be able to win the South, although Clark might could win Arkansas. The entire panel, all experts on Southern Politics, concurred.

According to the SPSA program, the panel included both Black brothers, Harold Stanley, Hastings Wyber, and Ron Weber, and was moderated by Robert Steed… for those of you keeping score at home.

As James Joyner notes, we’re now back to Bert on the homeland security scale. Except where we’re not. Clear? Good.

Incidentally, “yellow” is not to be confused with “Amber.” And that’s capital-A Amber, since it’s named after someone (like Code Adam), and has nothing to do with the color amber.

Update: Mike Hollihan has more on this theme.

Andrew Sullivan’s latest screed against the anti-same-sex marriage right contains this gem of reasoning:

[National Review]’s open-ended anyone-can-apply civil unions proposal would be the biggest assault on marriage since no-fault divorce.

That’s right—it’s Covenant marriages for everyone in Sully’s ideal world. Because we all know that it’s better to have people stuck in loveless relationships than to let them out of them.

The funny thing about Sullivan is that even though I agree with him on the merits (even though, as I’ve said before, I don’t buy at all that gay marriage will inherently have a “civilizing effect” on homosexual relationships), every time I read one of his gay marriage posts I find myself reconsidering my position. By this time next year, he may have turned me into a committed opponent at this rate…

The libertarian/modcon reaction to George Bush’s “Mars shot” proposal has been generally negative , Dan Drezner, and Robert Garcia Tagorda for a sampling; the Crescat crew is conflicted, to say the least). And I largely agree—not so much because it’s an inefficient allocation of resources, although it is, but because the “pork” isn’t really a public good.

When Washington earmarks $X million dollars to build a highway in someone’s district, or grants funds for a flashy new federal courthouse somewhere, at least the pork has a public good quality: everyone benefits, or has the potential of benefitting, in a meaningful way. But the space program doesn’t create a public good; instead, it redistributes money from taxpayers to people with “Ph.D.” at the end of their names—Robin Hood in reverse—with only the vague promise that the public will see benefits. (Whatever benefits there are, however, will likely be patented, with the royalties devolving to the contractors—not the government to compensate for the “seed money” from the grants.)

The small upside in this is that at least we’re trying to help Dennis Kucinich find his way back home… who says Americans aren’t a generous people?

Note to potential presidential candidates: don’t go on obscure Canadian political panel shows—your comments may return from the past to bite you in the ass.

Link via Matt Stinson.

Well, I have to give Howard Dean (or at least his M.D. program) some credit: at least he doesn’t think life begins at childbirth like his fellow Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark does (also see James Joyner ). Clark not only believes that life begins at childbirth—he thinks that was the Supreme Court’s holding in Roe v. Wade (which, er, it wasn’t—in fact, the court found that third-trimester abortions were almost never constitutionally protected, something often lost in the grand abortion debate). I’m about as pro-choice as they come, but I can’t go so far as to endorse borderline infanticide. Though, I have to say that scholars who buy the legalist model will love Clark’s endorsement of stare decisis as the sole legitimate approach to judicial decision-making.

I think Howard Dean’s advisors had the right idea by telling Dean to shut up for a while. Clark’s problem is that he can’t do the same, because his persona still isn’t well-defined enough.

Did Sen. Clinton get too much—or not enough—heat for her (badly delivered) joke in a fundraising speech that Mahatma Gandhi worked for two years at a St. Louis convenience store?

My gut feeling is that it was rather innocuous. But it does raise the interesting question of double standards: as Keith Olbermann asked David Brock (no relation to my co-blogger, Brock Sides) on Countdown this evening, what if it was Bill Frist, or another Republican without a “bigot paper trail,” who made the remark instead of Hillary Clinton? Brock evaded the specific hypothetical, but I think it would have fit into the “Republicans are bigoted” narrative—lending itself to the sort of wire or NYT story that says the comment, while minor, fits into a long line of statements by Republicans (Lott, Thurmond, Santorum…). By contrast, nobody’s story on Hillary’s comments is going to bring up Robert Byrd’s segregationist past or his more recent “N-word” episode.

That raises the larger question: that of whether the dominant narratives are biased. “Republicans are mean” is a pretty easy narrative to fit any story about Republicans into: the administration wants to “put arsenic in drinking water”; Republicans are “cutting benefits.” But there’s not really a “Democrats are mean” narrative: nobody left of NewsMax would write that “Democrats’ plans for higher trade barriers will impoverish the third world,” “the Clinton Administration’s plan to increase regulation of NOx particles will cost the economy $X billion per life saved,” or “Kyoto, if fully implemented, would only decrease global temperatures by 0.X degrees Celsius in 2100.”

I don’t really know the answer to that. And it’s possible Republicans benefit from other dominant narratives: a Republican who took Howard Dean’s position on the war might be ascribed more credibility. These media narratives may just be the long-term results of what John Petrocik calls “issue ownership”: efforts by the major parties to sieze the position held by the median voter on particular issues. It is possible that because Democrats “own” racial issues, they insulate themselves from attack for being insensitive on race, just as Republicans’ ownership of law-and-order issues can protect them from the “soft on crime” charge.

Meanwhile, Steven Taylor didn’t see how the joke might be construed as funny.

First we have MoveOn.org’s silliness; now, Matt Stinson and Dan Drezner rightly are among those who condemn Ralph Peters for his absurdly over-the-top, not to mention downright offensive, New York Post column that explicitly compares Howard Dean’s followers on the Internet with the Gestapo and brownshirts. It’s sure going to be a busy week for the PR wings of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the ADL…

The California Yankee has been keeping up with developments in the rather unusual Supreme Court case known as M. K. B. v. Warden, et al..

Link via VodkaPundit, who has two theories on why the case is being hidden from public view. Also see the New York Times account by Linda Greenhouse (linked by Ca. Yankee in another post).

Try as they might, MoveOn.org’s webmasters seem to have trouble keeping “Bush=Hitler” videos off their website. Matthew Stinson thinks the organization is rapidly becoming the John Birch Society or Council of Conservative Citizens of the left, while One Fine Jay ponders whether or not MoveOn.org is a “mainstream” Democratic organization.

Then again, we all know Bush is the worst Reichschancellor in history, so maybe they have a point…