A Few Presidential Thoughts

• Now, I love me some Barack Obama. But if he is finding that his position on gay marriage (opposed, but willing to leave it up to the states) is essentially the same as John McCain's, then...well, I am disappointed.
  
• John McCain is 72 years old. All four of my grandparents are older than John McCain. And unlike John McCain, all of my grandparents retired in the 1980s, when knowledge of computers for work was not yet obligatory. And yet, somehow, not only do all four of my grandparents know how to use computers, all four of them read my blog. One of my grandmothers is even on Facebook. So what's the problem, Johnny Boy?
  
• Apparently Cindy McCain has trouble not plagiarizing recipes. While annoying, it does make me realize that one of the few positive effects of a Hilary Clinton nomination might have been that Parents magazine could have realized that presidential spouses have skills besides baking cookies.
  
• A six percentage point difference is not "a small lead." 51-48, now that was a small lead. 50,456,169 to 50,996,116, now that was a small lead. But 48% to 42% is just...a lead.
  

How To Lose Gracefully

I like to think that I have backed more losing candidates than most. My own personal genealogy of support in the 2000 presidential campaign went something like this:

November 1999: I enthusiastically join the board of the nascent Connecticut for Paul Wellstone committee.
January 2000: Wellstone drops out, I cheerfully switch to Bill Bradley. Much campaigning ensues.
March 2000: Bradley loses badly on Super Tuesday, and the writing is on the wall. I begin migration to Al Gore, although I am privately bitter at some of Gore's dirty tricks.
Fall 2000: Somewhat reluctant, but sincere, campaigning for Al Gore. Wrote self-righteous op-eds in student paper about subject. Directed my energies towards a congressional candidate (who then lost, of course), since Connecticut was firmly Democratic for the presidential line.
November 2000: Voted happily for Al Gore. Bush won.

My pattern was most obvious in 2000, but just about every presidential election for which I was a sentient human being went down more or less like that. Jesse Jackson in 1988. Tsongas in 92. Nader in 96. Dean (with qualms) in 04. So, to summarize, I know a thing or two about how to back a losing candidate.

It sucks. No doubt about it. Most of us who worked on the Bradley campaign are still bitter about Al Gore eight years later; he can win as many Nobel prizes as he likes, but I'll always think of him as something of a jerk. There is a generation of Bradley supporters, largely people my age who were in college at the time, who checked out of active Party politics after that election. I did. So I can sympathize with Clinton's supporters, many of whom feel bitter and disempowered. I don't blame them if their heart isn't in the fall election. Losing sucks; it makes you feel both stupid and unappreciated.

But if you, dear abstract Clinton supporter, even THINK about voting for John McCain this fall....well, I'm not sure such people exist outside of the Clinton's politicking machine and the fantasies of a bloodthirsty mainstream media. But if you do exist, dear sir or madam, please ask yourself if you are supporting McCain because you like him better than Obama, or fundamentally distrust Obama, or whatever it is--or if you voting for McCain just out of spite, to make yourself feel better. If the latter is the case, well, from one loser to another, stop being so goddamn selfish.

As for me, I can say that it feels absolutely fantastic to be winning for once.

Electoral Hangover

So, not the greatest day for Obama yesterday. He certainly closed a big gap with Clinton, but at the risk of echoing her talking points, it's also true that he poured a lot of money and effort into the state, and it wasn't as successful as it should have been. Ultimately, it seems like the failure was in my newly adopted city. He won Philadelphia county, but only 65 to 35. And he won two of the adjoining counties, Delaware and Chester, but by smaller margins. And he lost Montgomery and Bucks. Montgomery especially surprised me, as it is pretty affluent and home to lots of colleges. The redoubtable Kos (who usually drives me nuts) has an analysis that explains the losses pretty well, I think.

One question: has anybody seen Ted Kennedy recently? In the lead-up to Super Tuesday back in February, Senator Kennedy was everywhere, and was being hailed as the saviour of the Obama campaign. Since then, it's been zip. Caroline Kennedy has certainly been on the trail a lot, but no Ted. Given that I imagine he still carries a certain weight with white working class Catholic men--the demographic everyone seemed to be worrying about here--I would have thought he would be deployed to Pennsylvania.

My guess is that Obama has long since started campaigning for the general election. And since one of the angles the Republicans seem to be taking on him is his status as the "most liberal senator" (whatever that means), I'm guessing that he is not going to publicly deploy Kennedy again unless it is absolutely necessary to win the nomination.

I suppose that's okay. But not okay is the fact that I suspect this explains why Obama did not campaign for the LGBT vote in Philly, as I wrote in my last post. Every Democratic candidate knows that the gays are going to vote for the Democrat, no matter what. So if Obama is confident in the nomination, he's going to avoid placing himself in situations that give ammunition to homophobic Republicans. Clinton, on the other hand, is in full-on pandering slash-and-burn mode, and so she's going to cheerfully do whatever she can to make the LGBT community forget about Don't Ask Don't Tell, DOMA, and the other niceties of the Clinton administration.

Let me tell you, it gets really old, election after election, to have your vote taken for granted. Of course I'm going to vote for the Democratic candidate, and of course the Clintons were much more pro-gay than George Bush Sr. or Bob Dole would have been. But in electoral politics, passive voters are only going to get you so far: what matters the most is having committed activists on your side, out there spreading the word.

Report from Pennsylvania

First of all, there were 35,000 people out for the Barack Obama rally last night in Philly. By way of comparison, the Pope gave a mass for 46,000 down in Washington, DC earlier this week. So that's pretty crazy.

It's hard to tell how this election is going to go on Tuesday. The polls are all over the place, and as a newcomer to the state, I don't have much of a feel for what the ground feels like. A few observations that might be of interest to my comrades elsewhere.

1. My immediate neighborhood could not be more demographically friendly to Obama. It is a mixture of middle-class African Americans, the particularly-liberal wing of white university folks, and then, if that wasn't enough, a sizable community of recent African immigrants (an Obama constituency if there ever was one). So that's what Obama is starting with here, and sure enough, judging from lawn signs and conversations, the neighborhood is mostly pro-Obama. But, and this is interesting, there is definitely a strong Clinton contingent as well. It's hard to speculate who they are; the neighborhood does have a smattering of white ethnic non-university-affiliated people left over from population trends of previous generations. There are also lots of party activists around here, and that is a demographic that tends towards Clinton-supporting in my experience. Obama really needs to max out his vote totals in Philadelphia, so it is not great that things are as split as they are.

2. That said, I know quite a few people in Philadelphia who have switched from Clinton to Obama just in the last few weeks. It seems mostly to be backlash from her negative campaigning, particularly Bittergate.

3. Obama made some bad mistakes in mobilizing the LGBT vote in Philadelphia. This is really too bad, because as I say, he really needs to win Philly by huge margins, and we queer folk are an important part of the city's political scene. And yet, when the local gay newspaper tried to interview the two candidates, only Clinton responded. Plus, my friend who is more involved in this stuff than I am tells me that when the Liberty City Democratic Club was meeting to decide on an endorsement, the Clinton campaign sent Chelsea to represent. The Obama campaign didn't send anyone. They did arrange to have Melissa Etheridge address the group on his behalf, but that's not the same as a high level representative in person. Both of these things are stupid moves. As the Obama campaign is not stupid, and is very well-organized, one gets the feeling that they are taking our vote for granted. Not cool, and a wasted opportunity. Sure enough, Liberty City endorsed Clinton.

4. Mayor Nutter, who has been a vocal Clinton supporter, is very popular in Philadelphia right now. That's too bad.

My prediction is Clinton will win in the five points realm. That's still great for Obama, as he was originally behind by almost twenty points just a few weeks ago. One other possibility is that Clinton will get a bunch of the undecideds and inflate that margin, as happened in Ohio. Or, on the other hand, the momentum will keep swinging to Obama, and there might be an upset. Hard to tell, especially for a newcomer like me.

And So It Begins

Attention Pennsylvania residents: are you registered to vote? As a Democrat? You need to be so, by March 24, in order to vote for Barack Obama in the April 22 primary. This is not an open primary, so you cannot be registered as an independent. Visit here to register! And if you want to do more, there are voter registration drives happening all over the state this weekend. Mary and I will be out there with a clipboard ourselves.

Speaking of primaries, my father, who teaches economics and has a blog on the subject, has an interesting post about prediction markets. These are markets--online I guess?--where people bet on things happening. So it's similar to opinion polls, except that people actually have money riding on predicting the right outcome. He claims not to be an expert on the subject, and I am even less of an expert, but one interesting factoid is that right now, in the prediction markets, Obama is the 70 percent favorite to be the nominee, versus Clinton at 30. Not exactly scientific, but not bad news either!

No Comment

I just like this picture. That's all.



But I am going to miss Mittens Romney! Rumors that I spent some time posting anonymously on right-wing bulletin boards promoting his candidacy are completely unfounded. But man it would have been fun to run against him in the general election. The fact that he never gained any traction in the Republican primary, despite his enormous financial advantage and presidential background, is the one thing that lets me know that Republicans do have a glimmer of a soul within them.

Super Bowl/Tuesday/Candidate

My, that was quite a Superbowl yesterday, wasn't it? The "wife" and I saddled up to the television last night for the festivities we like to think of as the Oscars for straight people, armed with two large pizzas and a twelve-pack of Diet Coke. It's the first time in five years that Mary was able to watch the game in such comfort; in London the tradition is for expatriates to go down to a bar Leicester Square at some ungodly hour in the morning to watch the game. I have to admit I was rooting for the Patriots. I did live in New England for five years, after all, and plus Bill Belichick was a classmate of mine. You should have seen Billy B. doing a keg stand back in the day.

Speaking of the Oscars, cross your fingers for a resolution to the writer's strike this week! As a member in good standing of the United Auto Workers (Local 2865) I am duty-bound to support the Writer's Guild, east and west. But I need my glitz and glamour! I haven't seen enough of the movies, as usual, although my sense is that it is a slim crop this year. I haven't even seen No Country for Old Men yet, although I did see There Will be Blood, which was excellent. The soundtrack was spectacular and thoughtful. No surprise there, as P.T. Anderson is a musicologically-inclined man. The Penderecki-style theatrics were particularly apt, I thought, connecting the elemental force of oil with other elemental forces yet to come. There's an argument in this movie that violence and energy are one and the same, a thought I find both true and frightening.

But to end more positively, I hope those of you voting tomorrow go out and cast your votes for Barack Obama. I've been a fan since I saw him speak at a rally a year ago in Los Angeles. With Obama, as for so many presidential candidates, you have to make a calculated guess as to the gap between performance and policy. As a left-winger, I never trusted that John Edwards's own personal beliefs matched his lovely rhetoric. And with Hilary Clinton, we know from past experience that whatever promises she makes now are contingent upon maintaining the power of the centrist, DLC wing of the party. Part of my decision to support Obama was trusting that no matter what he might say to get elected, his own personal beliefs were most like mine. As Christopher Hayes argued in The Nation, he's one of us. I recognize the danger in relying upon that kind of mystification, in hoping that this category of "us" that Obama and I might share is all that I hope it is.

But as a scholar of performance, and political performances in particular, I also support Obama because of the quality of that performance. I mean that literally: Obama wears great clothes, picks great tunes, runs well-produced commercials. I like that he speaks in paragraphs, listens closely, and gives the appearance of some sort of interior life. Clinton has some of these abilities as well, but for my aesthetic taste, Obmama's performance is vastly superior. Aesthetics matter, and when good taste collides with a progressive past and sufficient hope for a progressive future, I'm sold.

Ike? Bob...

Via Dial M, a fabulous article in the Chicago Tribune in which an intrepid reporter asked two musicologists to analyze the songs played by the various presidential candidates at their rallies. The musicologists in question are Phil Ford himself, and this other hack who may or may not be my dissertation adviser.

Phil (not me, the one with immense blog readership and a job) asks for the musicological blogosphere's reaction. See his post for the full list. I have to agree with their takes on the situation, adding only that I find Romney's list to be especially interesting:

A Little Less Conversation (Elvis remix)
Aint No Stoppin' Us Now (McFadden & Whitehead)
Head over Heels (The Go-Go's)
Love that Dirty Water (The Standells)
Beautiful Day (U2)
I'm Free (The Rolling Stones/Fatboy Slim)
Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder)
Sweet Caroline (Neil Diamond)
Vertigo (U2)
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet (BTO)
Dancing in the Street (Martha and the Vandellas)
Pride (In the Name of Love (U2)
Such Great Heights (Postal Service)
Only in America (Brooks & Dunn)
Don't Stop Believin' (Journey)
I've Been Everywhere (Fred Mollin)
Life is a Highway (Rascall Flats)
Down On the Corner (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
Good Vibrations (The Beach Boys)

Phil notes that you ideologically you could easily switch Mitt and Hillary's lists, which is very interesting. But man, Mitt's list is really something. Have you ever seen such a random hodgepodge of songs? I mean, there is absolutely no coherence! There are soul songs, country songs, pop songs, boring dance remixes...it's breathtaking how little sense it makes. And while I'm not surprised that Mitt would have a different song for every rally, just as he's had a different policy position for every campaign, I am surprised that so little thought was put into the choices. The BTO number was totally used by Al Gore in 2000, "Dancing in the Streets" is commonly interpreted by many in the context of sixties race riots, and if there is any song that has come to be viewed in the last year as the ultimate signifier of nothingness, thanks to The Sopranos, it would be "Don't Stop Believin'." And don't even get me started on "Good Vibrations"...ick!

ANYWAYS, I've got a lot of dissertation to write, so I'll stop with Mitt. But thinking about all of this has actually given me some good ideas for a paper I'm giving at SAM next month, which compares television appearances by Rosemary Clooney and Joseph McCarthy. There is a great article by Andrea Friedman on the use of gossip and innuendo by McCarthy's enemies, as best exemplified by the famous Murrow broadcast that coyly cast asperisions on the relationship between McCarthy and Cohn. The point is that it wasn't just conservatives who used the lavender menace to their advantage, liberals gleefully did as well. This discussion of campaign songs reminded me that Adlai Stevenson broadcast a rather creepy commercial in the 1952 election that portrayed Eisenhower and Senator Robert Taft as lovers. (Ike, you may or may not be happy to know, is most definitely the top.)

The video unfortunately is not on YouTube, so I can't easily embed it, but you can watch it courtesy of the Museum of the Moving Image. I'm not quite sure what to make of the background music, which I think is Chopin. I don't think it's an Ivesian take on Chopin in skirts, but rather is just there to sound kind of generically sentimental. The commercial ends with a short song that isn't too interesting. Other commercials from this campaign more directly interact with popular music of the period--there are several such commercials sung by a singer I don't recognize (any help?) such as "I Love the Guv." This one, though...well, see it for yourself.

Go Watch! You'll be presented with a bunch of ads on the right; choose the one on the Democrat side, the fourth one down with the two hearts.

FIRST MAN: Ike.

SECOND MAN: Bob.

FIRST MAN: Ike.

SECOND MAN: Bob.

SECOND MAN: I'm so glad we're friends again, Bob.

FIRST MAN: Yes, Ike, we agree on everything.

SECOND MAN: Let's never separate again, Bob.

FIRST MAN: Never again, Ike.

SECOND MAN: Bob.

FIRST MAN: Ike.

SECOND MAN: Bob.

FIRST MAN: Ike.

ANNOUNCER: Will Ike and Bob really live happily ever after? Is the White House big enough for both of them? Stay tuned for a musical interlude.

(Piano music)

MAN SINGING: Rueben, Rueben, I've been thinkin',
Bob and Ike now think alike—
With the Gen'ral in the White House,
Who'd give the orders, Bob or Ike?
Let's vote for Adlai--and John!