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 Suffice it to say I agree with Taylor’s policy prescriptions; however, I will say that the use of outdated voting technology in poorer counties seems to be more the result of those counties being poor—and thus devoting their limited resources to things that were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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Colby Cosh notes, in the midst of decrying Howie Kurtz’s lack of permalinks, that the people most upset that George W. Bush doesn’t read The New York Times are print journalists. Fancy that.

Steven Taylor’s Boxing Day edition of the PoliBlog Toast-O-Meter is now available. And, for those of you living in a hole, it shows Dr. Howard Dean with a commanding lead—but facing a serious uphill struggle in head-to-head polling against George W. Bush.

Also of note: Jeff Quinton has the latest South Carolina primary news, while Robert Prather doesn’t see Anyone But Dean (a.k.a. Dick Gephardt) looking much better than Dean himself.

Robert Prather of Insults Unpunished has reevaluated the MSA component of the Medicare reform/prescription drugs bill, and thinks it goes much further toward introducing more of a market-based approach to health care than he originally thought. However, James Joyner correctly points out that the bill’s other provisions greatly expand the role of the government in health care in ways that won’t be easily rolled back and which may lead to subsequent expansion.

Kyle Sing of The Chicago Report posts on Neal Boortz’s scheduled appearance at the 2004 Libertarian Party convention and the fissures in the party that Boortz’s appearance has brought to the forefront. I’m not sure I’d cast the conflict as one between the “anarchist” and “Objectivist” wings—I really don’t subscribe to either philosophy, personally, being more of a pragmatist—but it’s an interesting one nonetheless. And, for what it’s worth, Boortz is something of a cult hero to the Georgia Libertarians, who have put together quite an impressive local organization—the national party could use the backing of someone of his stature.

I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.

Update: Patrick Carver begs to differ with me and Rand Simberg, helpfully pointing out that the Florida state constitution does explicitly recognize a right to privacy. Now, if only Rush would recognize that all people (not just Floridians) have an inherent liberty interest in privacy absent a compelling governmental interest to the contrary—the Lawrence v. Texas standard in a nutshell—I’d be more inclined to be sympathetic.

Via Bill Hobbs comes the bizarre tale in The New York Times of Howard Dean’s rather odd claims surrounding his younger brother Charles, who went missing—and was presumed killed—in the Laotian jungle in 1974, and whose remains have now apparently been identified. Quoth the newspaper of record:

Asked by The Quad-City Times, which is based in Davenport, Iowa, to complete the sentence “My closest living relative in the armed services is,” Dr. Dean wrote in August, “My brother is a POW/MIA in Laos, but is almost certainly dead.”

Charles Dean, however, wasn’t a member of the armed forces at all—he was, in fact, by all accounts a civilian tourist and anti-war activist, something Dean the elder claims was common knowledge:

“The way I read the question was that they wanted to know if I knew anything about the armed services from a personal level,” he said. “I don’t think it was inaccurate or misleading if anybody knew what the history was, and I assumed that most people knew what the history was. Anybody who wanted to write about this could have looked through the 23-year history to see that I’ve always acknowledged my brother’s a civilian, was a civilian.“…

Dr. Dean called the editorial, which referred to his brother as a “renegade,” “one of the greatest cheap shots I’ve ever seen in journalism.”

“It’s offensive and insensitive not to understand what the impact of this is,” he said, “writing about this in such a tawdry way.”

Personally, the only thing I consider tawdry is the attempt by Dean to link his brother, who was apparently playing Hanoi Jane on the cheap and—amazingly enough—got mixed up with the wrong people in the process, with the real American POWs and MIAs who suffered at the hands of the Vietnamese and Laotian communists. Sorry, but to me little wayward Charlie’s vanity trip to Southeast Asia doesn’t exactly scream “empathy with American servicemen,” either.

I’m not sure what galls me more: that Dean thought he could get away with this, that he genuinely thinks that all there is to empathy with our armed forces is the experience of having a loved one disappear, or that Dean’s circle is so far removed from the military that he can’t even name so much as a sixth cousin with some genuine connection to America’s armed forces. What a truly loathsome creature.

The Quad-City Times editorial is here.

Update: Geitner Simmons of Regions of Mind—whose excellent blog I’d read far more often if he pinged weblogs.com when he made new posts—has thoughts on another concern regarding Howard Dean’s candidacy.

James Joyner excerpts at length from a Stuart Taylor National Journal piece on the Supreme Court’s latest entry into the fray of legislative redistricting by state legislatures and the courts, Vieth v. Jubelirer. Much of Taylor’s discussion echos the discussion in the amicus brief of Bernard Grofman and Gary Jacobson, two political scientists who know a thing or two about legislative redistricting.

Also of interest: Erick Erickson’s post on the oral argument in the case.

Both Matt Stinson and Robert Garcia Tagorda (via Matt Yglesias, who has substantive comment at TAPped and who in turn links Jon Chait’s Dean-bashing blog at TNR—got all that straight?) note the Franklin Foer cover story in The New Republic on Howard Dean’s secularism and how that will affect his campaign for both the Democratic nod and the White House.

Robert responds to Yglesias’ suggestion that the eventual Democratic nominee at least pretend to have devout religious faith by wondering whether or not Dean has the temperment to pull it off—and I generally agree with Robert that he probably doesn’t. Stinson (who I’d normally call “Matt,” but we’ve got too many Matts running around in this post), on the other hand, asks the interesting question:

The question left unasked in Foer’s piece is whether Dean might seek to balance against his secularism in the general election with an evangelical-friendly VP. Would a Methodist like Edwards suffice?

My guess would be no—it’d have to be someone who wears his religion on his sleeve for it to make a real impact with the public. An interesting finding of the 2000 American National Election Study is that Americans consistently misidentified the religion of both Bush and Gore: Gore was overwhelmingly believed to be a Methodist, while Bush was believed to be a Baptist. In fact, Gore—like Bill Clinton—was an avowed Southern Baptist, while Bush is a Methodist. (No, I’m not just raising this point to show the American public is stupid. Bear with me.)

Now, let’s play political psychologist and explain why people would have this apparently glaring misbelief. Most people see Baptists, and particularly Southern Baptists, as more evangelical than Methodists—because most, in fact, are; they don’t call the United Methodist Church the “Home of the Ten Suggestions” for nothing. But in the persons of Bush and Gore, the typical relationship was reversed: unlike Clinton, Gore never really wore his religion on his sleeve, while Bush often talked about his personal faith. Coupled with the heuristic that says “the Democrats are more secularist than the Republicans,” and the lack of widespread publicity about the specific branch of protestant teaching the candidates followed, the typical voter would be led to conclude that Bush was a member of more evangelical branch of protestantism (like the Southern Baptists), while Gore was part of a more traditionalist strain (like the Methodists).

Now, let’s look at the 2004 Democratic field. The only serious candidate with a clear religious bent is Joe Lieberman, whose Jewish faith is well-known (and was correctly identified by most voters in the 2000 ANES). The rest aren’t really clearly identifiable as men of faith… and religious voters are much more likely to favor candidates with strong faith (like Bush) over secularists like Dean or other, less devout candidates. Even if a candidate like Edwards who can make some claim of religious belief is on the ticket, most voters aren’t going to think of him as more religious than Bush. So it seems unlikely that religious considerations would be effective for Dean (or another Democrat) in assembling the ticket.

As Steven Taylor notes, a recent poll shows Howard Dean with a (statistically insignificant) lead in South Carolina, where voters will head to the polls on February 3rd. If Dean can hold the lead over a deeply divided field, it may be the knockout punch he needs to secure the nomination—and may go some way to rehabitating Dean’s image in the South.

Dan Hoover of The Greenville News had a lengthy piece this weekend on what the S.C. primary means to the leading contenders, including quotes from several intelligent political scientists, including legendary Southern politics experts Merle and Earl Black and fellow Ole Miss Ph.D. Scott Huffmon.

UPDATE: Of course, South Carolina blogger Jeff Quinton has more links on the SC primary than you can shake a stick at.

Val of Val e-diction thinks the latest unilateral withdrawal proposals by the Sharon government are part of an orchestrated, but clandestine, plan involving the British and U.S. governments as well to force the Palestinians to come to the negotiating table with realistic expectations. I don’t know if I necessarily believe that, but it’ll be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

Daniel Drezner has an analysis of the polling numbers on gay marriage that leads him to believe that an effort to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage will fail. He may be right—if that is, indeed, what the actual amendment proposed does. Of course, there is no real movement on an amendment—and the necessity of an amendment, the proviso attached to the president’s support, has yet to be shown.

One thing to be seen is the Massachusetts legisature’s response to the court decision that legalized same-sex marriage—and whether the court will accept a civil unions provision as a substitute. If the state legislature implements Vermont-style civil unions, and the court accepts them, there’s no immediate federal issue—the only states that have to accept civil unions under “full faith and credit” are ones who already have them. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief until the next state court goes “off the reservation,” and no amendment is necessary.

But what if the Massachusetts legislature does implement full-fledged same-sex marriage? Then it becomes a “full faith and credit” question, which asks the Supreme Court whether Congress can decide what things are subject to full faith and credit—in other words, whether the existing federal Defense of Marriage Act is constitutional. If the Supremes say yes, again no amendment is immediately necessary—however, some states may still face the question of whether their state constitutions require them to recognize same-sex marriages, the same question faced by the Massachusetts court, which starts another iteration.

Now suppose instead the Supremes decide DOMA is unconstitutional. Then necessity becomes the mother of invention—and the question becomes, what form will the amendment take? An outright ban on same-sex marriage is one possibility; another is a narrower amendment that allows the states to decide what marriages performed outside their own states they will recognize.

The other question, somewhat lost in the debate, is how Congress will demand ratification. Dan’s analysis assumes that Congress will require ratification by state legislatures, as is normally the case; however, the procedure used for ratification of the 21st Amendment (the repeal of prohibition)—ratification by special state conventions in 38 states—is also available, which turns ratification into more of a referendum process. In such a scenario, same-sex marriage opponents have an advantage in elections to these state conventions: not only are the opponents more numerous in most states; they also are more passionate about the issue. And unlike other failed amendments—think of the Balanced Budget Amendment, the flag desecration amendment, or even the Equal Rights Amendment—more people genuinely care about the issue. That could be enough to tip one or two states that Dan enumerates into the “yes” column, particularly for a narrowly-tailored amendment that simply says “my state gets to decide whether or not to recognize a same-sex marriage performed elsewhere.”

That being said, Dan is essentially correct to point out that amending the Constitution is a long, drawn-out process with a lot of veto points along the way. But a relatively large, passionate group can succeed in doing so, and I think the chances of a narrow amendment succeeding are fairly strong.

As anyone who’s viewed Signifying Nothing’s sidebar can probably guess, I don’t think much of the homeland security threat level thingy—mainly because it’s a bogus five-point scale, since we all know it’ll never fall below yellow nor go higher than orange (making it a dichotomous variable for all practical purposes, a weakness that James Joyner expounds upon here), but also because it’s essentially meaningless to the public at large. That being said, Dean Esmay does have a bit of a point worth considering.

Steven Taylor’s latest PoliColumn in the Birmingham News attempts to explain the undercurrent of anger in the Democratic Party. In particular, he notes one factor that many have overlooked: the impotence associated with losing control after decades of dominance, particularly in Congress.

The fourth reason for Democrats’ anger, and perhaps the most abstract—but in many ways the most significant—is their deep abiding frustration that the Democratic Party as a whole is experiencing in its role as the minority. Since the 1994 midterm election, the Democratic Party has not controlled the House of Representatives, and only briefly controlled the Senate (and then only because of the defection from the Republican Party of Jim Jeffords of Vermont).

For a party that convincingly, and often by dramatic margins, controlled the House for four decades, and indeed for 29 of 36 Congresses since the New Deal era (1933) and the Senate for all but eight years of that same period, this lack of control is a devastating fact to which I would argue they have not yet adjusted.

To reiterate: Prior to 1994, the last time the Democrats lost control of the whole Congress was in 1953, and that loss of power lasted a mere two years. Given that many members of Congress were in Congress during the era of Democratic domination, it is hard to forget those halcyon days of power.

Of course, anger has been a driving force in American politics since, well, the Mayflower landed, occasional “eras of good feeling” notwithstanding. To the extent there’s more anger in the political ether these days, it probably reflects the relative parity of the parties more than any clear change in tone.

One other point Steven raises in passing is that Democrats “considered [Bush] something of a dim bulb.” This point should not be minimized. Few things are more frustrating than being outsmarted by someone you regard as mentally inferior—and when it’s been happening for three years on a near-daily basis, it’s got to chafe mightily.* Yet there is no sign that Democrats have given up on the “dim bulb” theory—which must make every defeat seem even more frustrating.

Nice to see Congress has nothing better to do these days (via Gary Farber).