The news out of Iowa can’t be good for Howard Dean. The pressure’s now on for a convincing Dean resurgence in New Hampshire, which will be hard, given both Wesley Clark’s full-time campaigning in the state and John Kerry’s surge in Iowa.

Why did Dean sputter in Iowa? The easiest conclusion to draw is that Dean’s attempt to tap a well of anger among Democrats has failed, at least in Iowa, because Democrats as a whole aren’t quite that angry. According to the New York Times‘ account, Dean was unable to capitalize on anti-war sentiment:

A survey of voters entering the caucus sites Monday suggested that what had been Dr. Dean’s central appeal — his opposition to the war in Iraq — did him little good on Monday night. Just 14 percent said the war in Iraq had shaped their final decision, even though 75 percent said they opposed the war.

Dr. Dean’s showing also raised questions about what had been one of the most intriguing elements of the Dean candidacy: that he had recruited thousands of first-time voters who could transform the nature of American presidential politics. Although half the voters on Monday were attending their first Iowa caucuses, 36 percent voted for Mr. Kerry, compared with 22 percent for Dr. Dean and 24 percent for Mr. Edwards.

The question is now: what about New Hampshire? Clearly, Clark, Dean and Kerry are poised for a fight, with John Edwards in much the position he was in Iowa—any finish above fourth place can be spun as a win, as the key state for his fortunes is South Carolina—a state in which Dean has no traction and where, as Columbia’s The State reports, Kerry now has to scramble to rebuild an organization he dismantled to focus on Iowa and New Hampshire.

Of course, every reporter and political wonk’s fantasy is a brokered convention—something that isn’t in the cards quite yet, given that not a single delegate has been allocated so far. But, nonetheless, Vincent Kennedy McDean might be well-advised to tone it down a notch or two—while politics, like pro wrestling, is a rough-and-tumble sport, in only the latter do the “heels” often win.

Radley Balko shows the faces of the people who will, in all likelihood, decide the Democratic nomination. Here’s a hint: they look like Howard Dean’s cabinet in Vermont did…

Kevin Drum reckons the soft underbelly of the Bush presidency is Dick Cheney:

I’m going to stick with my suggestion that the Democrats could gain some traction by making Cheney a bigger issue in the campaign than vice presidents usually are. It would require a subtle touch, of course, but let’s face it: nobody likes an evil genius operating out of a hole. There ought to be something there we can take advantage of.

On the other hand, Unlearned Hand isn’t buying quite yet:

First of all, I think most Americans just won’t believe any claims that the Vice-President is exerting so much control. It goes against all conventional wisdom on vice-presidencies, and that’s a lot of inertia to overcome.

I’m not so sure about that; vice presidents have become more salient figures over the past 10–15 years than they used to be (see, e.g., Al Gore), although I’ll agree that the size of Cheney’s role is unprecedented. I’m rather inclined to think that vice presidents ought to have larger roles anyway, within the limitation that their primary job is to not die before the president does.

Cheney’s large role, in a lot of ways, is probably due to the relative inexperience of Bush in national politics. Interestingly, though, the “Ex-Governor – D.C. Insider” pattern has applied to every presidential ticket since Ford’s.

Second, it can easily be spun (perhaps correctly) into proof that Democrats know they can’t win by going after the President himself. Karl Rove could have a field day running ads that say “They are picking on the President’s staff because they don’t want to go head-to-head with George W. Bush.”

Well, it’s one thing to go after Andy Card and another to go after Cheney—the latter’s name, at least, is on the ballot. And I think there are legitimate issues that can be aired about Cheney’s role vis à vis Halliburton. I don’t know that I buy them necessarily (Cheney is hardly the first beltway insider to “descend from heaven” into a cushy job in the private sector, to borrow the Japanese coinage), but it’s a legitimate topic for discussion.

Third, I think Cheney’s presence is actually reassuring to a lot of people. To the extent that people do buy into the “Bush is dumb” rhetoric, many of them think having Cheney around makes for a perfect complement: Bush gives them the leadership and machismo that reassures a frightened nation, Cheney provides the organization and runs a lot of the policy analysis.

Perhaps that’s the case. On the other hand, I think the public perception of Cheney is that he’s on the verge of death—hardly a reassuring image. On balance, I tend to agree with Kevin and think Cheney’s a liability, at least on the image side.

Personally, though, I think Democrats could make much more hay with the Creepy Combo of John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge—at least with libertarian-minded voters like me who are deeply skeptical about Homeland Security’s smoke-and-mirrors operation and Ashcroft’s ties to the fundies and the CCC types. With a reasonably credible candidate at the front of the ticket (at this point, it’d have to be Edwards or possibly Kerry), that sort of message might sway my vote.

This is today’s OTB Traffic Jam entry.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find it in Daniel Davies’ account, but the case of Katharine Gun, a former British intelligence officer who has become something of the “Valerie Plame” of the anti-war movement on the other side of the pond, seems rather open-and-shut.

Gun, an admitted opponent of the war in Iraq, is charged with violating the Official Secrets Act by leaking a memo, apparently from the NSA, soliciting help from their British counterparts at GCHQ in conducting intelligence operations against several U.N. delegations—something which, to the best of my knowledge, is not illegal in either the United States or Britain. But, you know, she’s being made a “scapegoat” (i.e. being charged with a crime she’s almost certainly guilty of) because of the “embarrassment” to the government (i.e. she broke the fricking law).

Anyway, if you’re inclined to venerate criminal acts, you’ll probably enjoy this Bob Herbert op-ed which plays the martyr card to the hilt. If not, well… scroll down, there’s better stuff here to read.

Update: Jacob Levy also has an interesting take on Mr. Davies’ clarion call.

Tyler Cowen finds evidence that Mississippi is the most corrupt state in the Union. You don’t say…

The scary part: the figures don’t even include the non-quite-illegal-but-downright-unethical influence peddling that goes on in these parts, like ex-attorney general Mike Moore’s long campaign to enrich his law school buddies.

One thing many people elide, or perhaps just forget, when talking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is that he was a minister—his faith, above all else, informed his actions. Rarely was that more clearly on display than in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, where he considers whether his leadership of protests against segregation in Birmingham was “extremist”:

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that an men are created equal …” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—-the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.*

As Michael Totten today points out, there is no shortage of extremists today on either side of the political spectrum. They ought to give pause to reconsider what kinds of extremists they will be.

Update: Big Jim notes that it’s someone else’s holiday too down heah, as they say.

Among Democratic contenders for the nomination, Wes Clark has so far had the Memphis airwaves to himself—apparently in an effort to build momentum going into the February 10th open primary in Tennessee, which is only 3 weeks away from Tuesday. Is Clark planning a “Southern strategy” of his own? Or is this a misallocation of resources? Only time will tell, but if he does well in both New Hampshire and on February 3rd, he should be well-positioned for a win in Tennessee in the race against presumed front-runner Howard Dean.

Steven Taylor observes that the latest poll numbers, which show both Kerry and Edwards with statistically-insignificant leads over Dean, are essentially meaningless; he’s still predicting a Dean victory.

Steven Taylor has posted the pre-Iowa edition of the Toast-O-Meter™. Also of interest: Jeff Quinton is keeping his eye on all things South Carolina.

Robert Prather thinks the best solution to the District of Columbia’s electoral quandry is something I’d call “electoral retrocession”: the district’s residents would be considered residents of Maryland for the purposes of electing senators and representatives.

I can see several potential problems with this arrangement:

1. The residents of the District of Columbia would have no say in the redistricting process of Maryland.
2. Although it’s likely Maryland would treat D.C. as a unified entity in creating a single-member district, there are nefarious reasons not to do so—for example, by attaching majority-white but still overwhelmingly Democratic Ward 3 to the Montgomery County suburbs to further dilute Republican voting strength in the Maryland suburbs.
3. The amendment, as proposed, requires Maryland’s assent to become active. No other constitutional amendment has ever required the assent of a particular state to become effective. (The only reasonable explanation for this provision: Maryland might legitimately argue that its equal suffrage in the Senate is being deprived by the amendment.)
4. Any state on the threshold of losing representation has an interest in not supporting the amendment.
5. The Democratic Party’s interests are better served by whining about the lack of representation of D.C. than adding a single guaranteed-to-be-a-Democrat member of the House of Representatives—especially if the net effect is to reduce the number of guaranteed electoral votes for the Democratic presidential nominee by three.

The first two problems could be solved by making D.C. residents eligible to vote in senatorial contests in Maryland, and adjusting the amendment to allocate a single representative to D.C. exclusively (while having no effect on Maryland’s representation in the House). The House could expand its membership by one (from 435 to 436) by statute to solve the “threshold” issue. The last problem could be solved by giving the Democrats the “carrot” of retaining D.C.’s 3 electoral votes—which, combined with an extra House member, are probably more valuable to the Democrats than two senators they’re most unlikely to get any other way.

Also on the D.C. topic: the D.C. Board of Elections has released ward and precinct-level results for the non-binding D.C. primary. I’d imagine some political scientist who knows something about ecological inference might just be able to use the precinct-level data to predict Al Sharpton’s likely share of the African-American vote in other states, if he were bored enough.

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

As Will Baude (among others) notes, Charles Pickering got a recess appointment to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals today, bypassing the anticipated filibuster of his nomination by the Senate for now. While national Democrats have strongly opposed the nomination, he has attracted significant support from many Mississippi Democrats—who, unlike their national counterparts, usually need at least some support from moderate-to-conservative whites to stay in office.

Also, feel free to read my past Pickering posts.

Both David Janes and Pieter Dorsman have interesting posts on the case of Maher Arar, a citizen of Canada and Syria who was detained in New York on his way back to Canada from a trip to Tunisia. Arar was subsequently deported to Syria, jailed, and released, according to this CBC timeline. Katherine R, one of the bloggers at Obsidian Wings, has also been dissecting the story for a few days now (more here).

I honestly don’t know what to make of all of this. I have a sneaking suspicion that elements of the Canadian intelligence apparatus were trying to get the U.S. to do some of their dirty work for them, because the Canadian government would never let them get away with it on their own, but there’s also the distinct possibility that U.S. authorities were freelancing. It’s all deeply weird.

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…)