James Joyner finds large gatherings of bikers to be something of an inconvenience but nonetheless, in this instance, in service of a worthy cause. He’s got a link to a WaPo account of the Rolling Thunder biker rally, which I suppose will be nothing new to those of us with Harley aficionados in the family. I was previously unaware that Rolling Thunder made political endorsements, however.

Dan Drezner takes a look at the results of the survey of the blog-reading habits of media professionals he conducted with Henry Farrell, and has some surprising findings.

One minor caveat to his analysis: I don’t think the Daily Kos counts as a “newly emerging blog,” as it’s been around longer than I have, although the current “community” format for it inspired by Kuro5hin (and powered by the same software, Scoop) is relatively new.

Like Brock, I can’t be excited about the Libertarians’ nomination of Michael Badnarik. And his enthusiasm for non-alcoholic beer makes me wonder about some other possible faults he may have—like, perhaps, support for the designated-hitter rule or liking the taste of broccoli.

Elsewhere: MNSlog misidentified Brock as a Republican (thanks for correcting it ☺), Q and O considers this evidence that the LP is a collection of “losertarians,” and Brian J. Noggle reminds us that he and his wife met Badnarik earlier this year in a basement. Oh, and some dude named Glenn Reynolds has some links. Heh.

I learned from Mike Hollihan that the Libertarian party has nominated Michael Badnarik for president.

So despite my threats, I won’t be voting Libertarian in November. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for someone who doesn’t respect the eighth amendment.

UPDATE: According to the Blogcritics article linked to above, "Badnarik is clearly a genuine connoisseur of N/A beer." Like I said, he's a crackpot.

Here’s a statement to ponder (no fair reading the source first):

The Madrid railway bombings were perceived by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to have advanced their cause. Al Qaeda may perceive that a large-scale attack in the United States this summer or fall would lead to similar consequences.

That, to me, reads pretty much like a statement of fact: al-Qaeda may believe (correctly or incorrectly) that a large-scale attack on the United States will advance their cause. I think they’d be incredibly wrong on that point, but, nonetheless, I think it’s a fair statement for a politician to make.

Robert Garcia Tagorda documents nicely Al Gore’s minor Ahmed Chalabi problem—namely, that he also treated Chalabi as a credible figure in the Iraqi exile community, at least until it came time for him to follow Howard Dean down the road of ex-DLCer dementia.

For the record, I found Chalabi less than credible, and was hardly a fan of Judith Miller’s Iraq WMD reporting, largely based on information provided by Chalabi’s pals, at the time either.

Both Nick Troester and Brian J. Noggle note Michelle Malkin’s Wednesday TownHall.com column on the literati set’s embrace of Jessica Cutler (“Washingtonienne”) and Ana Marie Cox (“Wonkette”). I’m not sure I agree with everything Malkin says, but I too find something slightly unseemly about this glorification of skanking one’s way to the top.

Apropos of the same topic, Sara Butler wonders if Culter’s actions are another strike against female interns in Washington who want to be taken seriously.

Update: Joy Larkin agrees with Malkin as well.

Geitner Simmons finds David Broder finally figuring out that those of us who somehow figured out that McCain-Feingold was a disaster waiting to happen were right.

Of course, many of the parties involved—President Bush included—thought the Supreme Court would bail them out of having made such a terrible piece of legislation. They were wrong, and now we’re all stuck with the consequences—the establishment of sham media organizations (NRA News, Air America Radio) to circumvent advertising restrictions, the undisclosed funnelling of cash to 527 organizations, the granting of even more institutional advantages to incumbent politicians, and the further emasculation of the American political party system. Coupled with the Court’s unwillingness to curtail the increasingly fraudulent redistricting practices of state legislatures, one might realistically despair of the prospects for legitimate republican government.

Well, the big election north of the border is finally on, after months of buildup. Matt Yglesias has an ongoing discussion in his comments; I generally agree that it’s the Liberals’ election to lose, and the structural features of Canadian politics favor the Liberals emerging as the largest party—even if they don’t receive an absolute majority of the 308 seats up for grabs. There is widespread disaffection with the Liberals—in part due to several financial fiascos, in part because neither current prime minister Paul Martin nor ex-premier Jean Chrétien had a large fan club to begin with, but that’s unlikely to translate into a plurality win for the new Conservative Party of Canada, and the largest party is almost certain to be the one invited by the governor-general to form a government.

Realistically, there are about five possible governments that could emerge:

• A majority Liberal government. If you’ve got money to wager, this is the odds-on favorite, even with the horrible approval ratings the Liberals have. Requires an outright majority (155+ seats).
• A Liberal-New Democratic Party coalition. The problem with this arrangement is that Martin is trying to move the Liberals to the right and repair relations with the United States; the NDP is populated by hardcore leftists and harbors strongly anti-American sentiments, which would radically complicate Martin’s attempts at rapproachment. Realistically only likely if the Liberals win below 150 seats, but still have a plurality.
• A minority Liberal government, depending on floating support on individual pieces of legislation. Probably unstable over the long term, but more politically palatable than a Liberal-NDP coalition, and increasingly likely if the Liberals are very close to a majority (say 150–154 seats).
• A (probably short-term) Conservative-Bloc Québecois government. Both parties favor devolution of power from the federal government to the provinces, and a short-term agenda focusing on these issues—increased provincial autonomy, reform of the Senate to make it an elected body—might be palatable. In the long term, though, the contrast between the Canadian nationalist Conservatives and the Québecois nationalist Bloc along with the contrast between Conservative laissez-faire economics and BQ social democracy, would force new elections—but ones where both parties would be institutionally advantaged due to an elected upper chamber acting as a check on the (presumably Liberal) new government.

Anyway, this one will be fascinating to watch, and—thankfully—it’ll all be over in about a month, unlike the slow-motion trainwreck on this side of the border.

Well, this award will definitely make Michael Moore even more insufferable than he is already. And, here’s your “laugh test” moment:

“I did not set out to make a political film,” Mr. Moore said at a news conference after the ceremony. “I want people to leave thinking that was a good way to spend two hours. The art of this, the cinema, comes before the politics.”

I’m sure that’s what Leni Riefenstahl said too.

The nice thing about being a lazy blogger is that if you want to fisk something, chances are someone else—in this case, Nick Troester—will have beaten you to it. But, lest I be accused of excessive laziness, allow me to pile on. The piece in Slate is called “Why We Hate Voting: And how to make it fun again,” by Thomas Geoghegan. Here’s a free hint: anyone who confuses civic duty with “fun” isn’t very normal to begin with. Shall we commence?

Usually, the outcome of a presidential election “depends on the turnout of the Democrats.” So says Nelson Polsby of the University of California-Berkeley. For once, I agree with a political scientist. I take Polsby to mean “Democrats” as a term of art for “most people.” By “Democrats” he means people with hourly jobs, high-school dropouts, high-school grads, single moms, single dads—anyone at or below the median household income.

But let’s narrow “Democrats” to people way down the income ladder, whose voting rate is usually less than 40 percent. Waitresses. Claims adjusters. College kids with loans. If the turnout among these people hits 50 percent, the Republicans are in trouble. Get it up to 60 percent, and Bush won’t even come close.

Actually, I think Dr. Polsby means “Democrats,” as in people who are predisposed to vote for Democratic candidates. In political science terms, we call these people “party identifiers”—they have a psychological attachment to their preferred political party. And we’ve called them party identifiers ever since 1960, when The American Voter came out.

I’ll grant that some earlier research, known as the Columbia school or sociological approach, argued that vote choice was largely a function of socioeconomic status, but The American Voter showed demography to be a rather distant causal influence on vote choice. Only African-Americans (a group oddly omitted from Geoghegan’s definition of “Democrats,” though perhaps this omission is understandable when you realize that he’s dealing with the limosine liberal set who read Slate) show the sort of bloc voting in American society that Geoghegan attributes to American social and economic groups. Union members and “blue-collar” workers, for example, are only weakly Democratic, as are singles, on the order of 60–40. And even then there can be significant cross-over effects; the “Reagan Democrats” were hardly a myth.

I know that the country’s turned to the right. But we’d still have the New Deal if voters were turning out at New Deal-type rates. (Between 1936 and 1968, voter turnout in presidential elections fell below 56 percent just once. Since 1968, it has never exceeded 56 percent.) So how can Democrats get the turnout of all eligibles up to 65 percent?

I doubt that seriously. One important causal factor Geoghegan omits is the lowering of the national voting age in 1970, which brought in a new cohort of voters who were unlikely to vote. Moreover, recent scholarship suggests that low apparent turnout in the U.S. is due to an increase in the non-eligible population (felons and non-citizens, which aren’t part of the “voting age population” used for redistricting) and the use of frequent elections (U.S. jurisdictions average at least one election per year, including local and state elections and primaries, while most other industrialized democracies only have elections, on average, every two years—and typically have elections for national office at different times from elections to local offices). The fact that the U.S. holds elections on weekdays rather than weekends is also an important factor in lowering turnout.

What are Geoghegan’s remedies?

First, offer two ballots, a long one and a short one. Let’s call the short one Fast Ballot. President. Congress. Governor if there’s a race on. That’s all. You’re done. Someone else will vote the long ballot.

Nick already explained what an idiotic idea this is. But in many states (including, I believe, Illinois), you can vote a party-line ballot just as easily. It seems more productive to encourage the adoption of (or return of) party-line boxes on ballots, then. (You can thank the Progressives for getting rid of party-line voting in many states.)

His second remedy apparently revolves around making the entire election process an excuse to go on a bender. No, I’m serious:

One free drink. Let’s take the 10 biggest population centers. In each one, set up a business-type council, full of media types and celebrities, to push voting. In September and October, have them sign up bars and restaurants to put up a red-white-and-blue logo on Election Night. What does the logo mean? With your ballot stub, first drink is on the house. Soon everybody will want to have a logo, the way in the New Deal, businesses showcased the Blue Eagle. Put the word out on college campuses. Get them to compete to throw the biggest party. Pump it up, the way we’ve done with Halloween.

No doubt, the Progressives are rolling over in their graves at this idea (you can thank them, too, for laws that require bars and liquor stores to be closed on Election Day in some states). In most (all?) states, it’s illegal to offer an inducement for voting—even if that inducement is given without regard to vote choice. From a theoretical point of view, I don’t think such laws are worthwhile—in fact, I actually wrote a paper on Philippine politics once that argued (in part) that citizens ought to have the right to sell their vote to the highest bidder. Regardless, this proposal is simultaneously idiotic and impractical (and illegal, to boot; not that that’s ever stopped any campaign tactic in the past, mind you).

Furthermore, the premise that any of this will help the Democrats is, simply put, absurd, and borders on patronizing: apparently, Geoghegan conceives of the Democratic base as a bunch of louts who can only be encouraged to vote if they are given a really dumbed-down ballot and are promised a pint of Pabst Blue Ribbon for their trouble. If this is what Democratic elites think of their own supporters, they should count their lucky stars if any of them bother to show up in November to cast a ballot for John F. Kerry—assuming he deigns to accept the nomination before then, that is.

Back in March, I reported that Memphis Congressman Harold Ford, Jr., was among those in attendance at a coronation ceremony for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington.

According to local reporter Jackson Baker, Ford is denying having been at the ceremony. Baker quotes Ford as saying, “Unfortunately, public officials’ names often get used without their permission.”

Be sure to check out the blog of Moon-watcher John Gorenfeld.

Like Moe Lane, I generally take Seymour Hersh’s journalism with a huge grain of salt—and immediately suspected a fresh round of “inside the beltway” fingerpointing as the source for the latest revelations, which purportedly trace the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib all the way to Donald Rumsfeld’s desk. Now, however, I’m not so sure. And, clearly if Rumsfeld (or his inferiors, like Defense Undersecretary Stephen A. Cambone) condoned or specifically authorized the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib, he/they should be fired and prosecuted—and if the president won’t can him/them, Congress can and should impeach and remove Rumsfeld (and/or Cambone) from office.

More at OTB and Matt Yglesias.

It’s a little early to nominate entries for Best Blog Post of 2004, I suppose, but I think it will be hard to beat Mark Kleiman’s list of five epistemic principles for thinking about politics:

1. Being aware of your own tendency, and those of your allies, to demonize the opposition.
2. Being more skeptical of news that tends to confirm your presuppositions, and more credulous of news that tends to challenge them, than is comfortable.
3. Trying to imagine how the people whose actions you dislike can see those actions as justified.
4. Discounting somewhat, in figuring out how far you're justified in going to make sure your side wins, your subjective certainty that you're right. Given that means and procedures are immediate and easy to see, while outcomes are hard to see, this means giving more weight to means and procedures, and less to outcomes, than a simple decision analysis based on your current beliefs would justify.
5. And still, in spite of your carefully-cultivated doubts, fighting hard for what you believe in, because if the people capable of irony allow irony to demobilize them, the fanatics will win.

Hei Lun of Begging to Differ, in response to a commenter of Jeff Jarvis’, hypothesizes that the only voter whose intended vote choice has been changed by Howard Stern’s tirades against the Bush administration—never mind that many of his tormentors are Democrats in Congress and in the FCC—is named Jeff Jarvis. That sounds about right.

Some polling outfit made the mistake of calling James Joyner. Hilarity ensues.

Alex Tabarrok links to a debunking of the rather lame “smart states voted for Gore” hypothesis—on the basis that there’s no state-level IQ data for anyone to reach such a conclusion.

However, there is individual-level data in the 2000 American National Election Study, conducted by the University of Michigan, and this data supports an opposite conclusion: the mean level of both intelligence and political information-holding for Gore voters was lower than for Bush voters. Not much lower, mind you, but the difference is statistically significant.

Steven Taylor has apparently decided his life isn’t complicated enough, so he’s decided to rile up the legions of Confederate apologists in the blogosphere, using that whole “logic” and “documentary evidence” thing to prove—quelle horreur—that the Civil War, was in fact, about slavery, and there’s no way to explain it otherwise. Start here, then go to the front page, because there’s a zone-flood in progress.

Josh Chafetz asks the $64,000 question in American public opinion polling:

[W]hat, exactly, is the point of continually doing nationwide polls when all that matters are the states? I mean, I know nationwide polls are a lot cheaper, but just making up the results would be cheaper still, and only marginally more relevant.

Well, I don’t know that nationwide polling is truly irrelevant; the state-level poll results would be close to a simple linear function of the national polling number, although the effects of campaign advertising—concentrated in the “battleground states”—will cause divergence from linearity.

But due to statistical theory, and the closeness of presidential elections, you’d have to survey a lot more people to get accurate state-level data… realistically, a sample less than 500 per state is useless, which means polling 25,500 people (including D.C.) per survey—and you’re still getting a sampling error of ±4.5% per state. So the best that you can do is pretty much what’s done in practice—you do national surveys augmented by state-level surveys in states that are a priori believed to be close.

Will Baude, at the prompting of Jacob T. Levy, ponders the Three-Fifths Compromise. I don’t have a better theory than Will’s; I always just figured that’s the offer the southern delegates proffered after a few rounds and that’s what stuck.

I suppose another possibility is that it reflected the assumed ratios of voting populations around 1787—so as to balance voting between relatively free North with the more populous but part-slave South—but I don’t have the numbers in front of me to prove it.

James Joyner is perplexed by the current Israeli political situation:

Matt Yglesias points to Shinui Party chairman and minister of justice, Yosef Lapid’s threats to leave the coalition and force new elections if Sharon doesn’t come up with a new plan and notes, “If the Likud insists that the plan be halted and Shinui insists that it be implemented, then there’s going to have to be new elections which, presumably, Likud will lose.” I haven’t seen any Israeli opinion polls and it may well be that they’re sufficiently fed up with Sharon as to want to dump him. Still, a Labor victory seems unlikely to me.

The Sharon plan was rejected because it wasn’t far enough to the right, seeming to give too much away in exchange for nothing. Labour is much more conciliatory. So, if anything, I would predict that Likud would drop Sharon in favor of a more hard-line leader. Likud would likely win fewer seats in the Knesset than it has now with extreme right fringe parties picking up more support. Lukud would then form a coalition which would be drawn even further to the right.

There are a few different dynamics going on: for one, the Sharon plan was only voted on by members of the Likud party (and a small fraction thereof—on the order of 10% of the membership)—it has not faced a popular referendum, which probably would be much more supportive. After all, Likud was essentially founded as an aggressively Zionist, “greater Israel” party that basically rejected the idea of “land for peace.” For another, the plan got less support than one might otherwise expect due to a terrorist attack on Gaza settlers on the eve of the vote.

The big questions are:

1. Whether the parliamentary Likud can continue to support the Sharon plan, despite its repudiation by the Likud base. If Likud stays behind Sharon, he can take the plan to the voters and, if necessary, swap the religious parties in the coalition for Labor—who do support the plan—or carry on as a minority coalition for a while, scraping together votes as needed. If Likud doesn’t stay the course, then the party will probably fragment and either the Sharonists will join with Labor and Shinui in a coalition, or new elections will be called.
2. How the parties would fare in a new election. If Likud dumps Sharon (who has legal troubles, in addition to the Gaza plan, as a handicap), it is doubtful that they will pick up nearly as much support as they now have, which opens the door for a Labor-led coalition under Shimon Peres, most likely with the left-wing Meretz and Shinui on board—a coalition that is likely to go even further than the Sharon pullout, but probably would continue the security fence. On the other hand, if Sharon sticks around, the Likud will probably do better—but will have a tough time articulating a position on the Sharon plan, which may lead to the fragmentation anticipated above.
3. Whether Sharon’s domestic legal troubles will force a change at the top for reasons orthogonal to the pull-out plan.

Contra Yglesias, it looks like the Likud rank-and-file don’t seem to “get” it: by sabotaging the Sharon plan, despite its overwhelming public support, they have pretty much opened the door for either a Labor-led coalition that will go even further or an irreconcilable split within their own party between the “land for peace” wing represented (ironically) by Sharon and the Netanayu rejectionist wing. This suggests poor long-term thinking on the part of Likud voters.

Nor do I quite understand the cheap shot that Yglesias takes at the Bush administration, except on the domestic politics “hammer-nail” theory. There’s only so much mucking around in Israel’s internal politics that an administration can do before it backfires, and the current push for the Sharon plan has been rapidly approaching that line as it is.

Unlike those TV shows you like that get yanked from the air, the one-and-only PoliBlog Toast-O-Meter is back, in time for the annual worldwide commemorations of the Struggles of the Proletariat. Appropriately enough, the trials and tribulations of the presidential campaign of wealthy “consumer activist” proletarian hero Ralph Nader are prominently featured.

David Adesnik has an odd standard for courage among political scientists:

It takes guts for a political scientist to actually predict something. That’s because all that political scientists really have are their reputations, and they can’t afford to put those on the line. So here’s a shout out to Larry Sabato, who isn’t afraid to put his money where his mouth is.

Other than referring David to my post on explanation and prediction, I’d only warn readers that what really takes guts is to get between Larry Sabato and a camera.

Maureen of Blog or not? is also unimpressed with the WaPo “let’s go interview Red Staters and Blue Staters” exercise, previously mentioned here.

James Joyner sides with Julian Sanchez against Radley Balko on the merits of government inspections of restaurants.

I’m pretty sure some libertarian—I want to say it was Charles Murray, in What It Means to Be a Libertarian—made an argument for optional regulation (not just for restaurants, but also in any regulated business): companies could choose to be regulated by the existing regulatory regime, or opt to not be regulated. In the latter case, the non-regulated companies would be required to display some “not regulated” symbol or disclaimer; of course, they could also opt for a private regulatory regime (like the ones Balko proposed hypothetically), and businesses would presumably show their “private stamp of approval” next to their “not regulated” symbol.

This is not unlike how university accreditation works in the U.S., although there is no legal requirement to put up a big “we’re not accredited” sign (at least, not that I’m aware of, although there are other meaningful disincentives—like denial of federal aid to students).