Friday, April 27, 2012

This Election is for the Dogs



A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a new meme on Facebook comparing the diaries of a cat versus a dog. The meme revealed stereotypes I wasn’t aware of-- namely that dogs are happy and carefree and cats are miserable. I didn’t realize that cats had such a bad reputation, but I guess this should’ve been clear to me as someone who’s had both as a pet. The cat terrorized me during my formative years, constantly scratching me, while the dogs I’ve owned have generally friendly and loving. It’s worth noting that I once had a dog who bit my brother so bad that he needed stiches, though my brother was being a little aggressive with her. Either way, the general public has spoken and the consensus is that dogs are man’s best friend and cats are impolite and vaguely French. I bring this up today because dogs have recently been injected into the political narrative, with Romney and Obama trading attacks over the treatment of our canine friends.

During the primary it was revealed that the Romneys used to crate their dog on the roof of their car during long road trips. This image seemed to reaffirm the stereotypes about Romney, that he lacks basic compassion and he’s just generally uncomfortable with the social norms that govern the lives of average Americans. Surely the Romney's luxury sedan is plenty big enough to fit his 5 children and a dog. It’s weird, to say the least, that Romney would strap a pet he supposedly loved to the top of his car, exposing the dog to the elements. The dog was supposedly very skittish about riding on the top of the car, and it just seems cruel. If PETA had considered endorsing Romney before, his pro-roofing of dogs position may have scared them off. Etch-a-Sketch Romney is willing to renege on most of his beliefs, but the family has held firm that Romney's dog enjoyed the experience.

In order to inoculate Romney from this canine controversy, the Romney camp pointed out that in Obama’s memoirs he discusses eating a dog as a young child. While the Romney scandal illustrates his disconnect from the average American, the Obama scandal similarly seeks to reify Republican tropes about Obama. Namely that he’s un-American and some sort of weird Muslim foreigner. He didn’t own dogs as a kid, but instead ate them, presumably for lunch at his madrassa right after he spent a morning forging a birth certificate. Not only is Obama a socialist, but he wants to serve Scruffy for breakfast.

We are beginning to see the shaping of the overarching political narrative of the election, Obama is un-American and Romney is aloof. Romney is heartless and Obama is weird. Of course, it’s patently ridiculous. Obama’s scandal plays on racist stereotypes and seeks to make an issue of his cultural circumstances and Romney’s is just strange. Both men are presented as outsiders, do all Mormons put their dogs on the roof? Do all black people eat dogs? These stories do little to illustrate who would be a better president, but these are the types of battles that shape elections. Voters make their judgment’s based on their opinion of a candidates personality and ludicrous anecdotes like these go a long way to shaping peoples perceptions.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

The Curious Case of the Brooklyn Nets


At some point this season when the Knicks were scuffling, I began flirting with the New Jersey Nets. Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t committing sports heresy and shifting my allegiance, but there was something nice about rooting for a bad team that was supposed to be bad. I was into the Nets parade of overpaid role players, including video game mainstays Anthony Morrow, Gerald Green, Shawne Williams, and Johan Petro.  The Nets were horrible this year, and their future looks grim, but it’s also a future rife with change; the Nets are moving to Brooklyn. Monday night marked the Nets last game in New Jersey, and now they have a couple more cosmetic games to close out the year and then they will cease to exist.

Monday’s game was a surreal affair, with a parade of Net “legends” in the building to close the door on a franchise that has suffered a lot of losing throughout the decades. The Nets move dredged up a question that confronts the very raison d’etre of sports fans. What are they rooting for? Are they rooting for a team name? A location? A collection of players? The Nets move illustrates that all of these things are transient, if a New Jersean continues to root for the Nets they’ll be pledging their allegiance to a company.

Teams move all the time. The Seattle Supersonics become the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Montreal Expos become the Washington Nationals. In a way these teams are like Benjamin Button, they simultaneously grow older and younger. When did the Nationals lose their Exponess? When the last remaining player from Montreal left the team? The second they packed up and fled to Washington? Or are they still the Expos in some intractable way? Are there people in Montreal who stay glued to Baseball Tonight waiting to see whether the Nationals pull out a win in Extra Innings?

Teams that move these days tend to move because the market can’t support them. But think of the Dodgers and the Giants who fled the biggest media market in the world for the sunny skies of the west coast. There are still folks in Brooklyn who haven’t gotten over the loss of the “bums”. In New York, the Mets filled the void for some National League rooters, but it’s hard to imagine they engendered the same passion as some fan’s first love had. Presumably some fans stayed loyal to their original team, as evidenced by the smattering of Giants fans at Citi Field this past weekend, but how do you remain faithful to someone who has jilted you.

Further muddying the waters is the case of Minor League Baseball teams. In short, the minors serve as a repository for Major League team’s prospects, where they can hone their skills. What makes it strange is that Minor League teams don’t pack up and leave, but instead change affiliations semi-regularly. For example, the Norfolk Tides were the Met’s AAA affiliate for years, but the Met’s contract ran out and now the Tides are part of the Orioles Organization. They play in the same stadium, they wear the same jerseys, but their fundamental essence has changed. Presumably there are people in Norfolk who root for the hometown team, and the minor leagues are transient by nature, but it must have been strange to go to that first game where the team appeared the same but entirely different personnel.  It’s the direct inverse of the Nets situation.

I’ve written several pieces about the strangeness of sports fandom. It’s a pretty silly to emotionally invest yourself in the success of a group of people who have no relationship to you.  And yet, it inspires passion and dedication. It’s ridiculous, but it’s fun.  The larger questions raised by the Net’s move remain ineffable to me. I don’t know why I root for the Mets or the Knicks or the Jets, I just do. It’s almost like I root for the institution. I look back on events that took place well before my life with pride. I couldn’t imagine what it’d be like to lose a team. In the Net’s case, they will remain the Nets and their move is across a short distance. There are places in New Jersey where Brooklyn is just as far as the Net’s current home of Newark. The Brooklyn Nets will have many of the same players, the same coaches, the same management, and yet they will be different. 

Monday, April 23, 2012

The French Presidential Election


At some point last week, I was considering writing a preview of the 1st round of the French Presidential Election. Most of the speculation I saw considered Socialist candidate Francois Hollande the frontrunner for the first round of voting, and also to defeat incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round 2 weeks later. Hollande would be the first Socialist president in 17 years, and only the second one since World War 2. More interestingly, much of the leftist blogosphere was abuzz with speculation that the Communist candidate Jean-Luc Melanchon would finish in a strong 3rd place, relegating the anti-immigrant National Front candidate Marine Le Pen to a weak 4th. In my hypothetical column from last week I was going to excitedly report on the strong support of Mr. Melanchon, note how a wide swath of the French populace was rejecting the center through their support of Mr. Melanchon and Ms. Le Pen, and argue that Melanchon’s apparent triumph over Ms. Le Pen illustrated that the people of France had moved beyond petty identity politics and instead embraced Mr. Melanchon’s form of Left Wing populism over Ms. Le Pen’s neo-fascist right wing populism.

This point was even more remarkable because of last months Toulouse shooting. To review French Muslim Mohammed Merah killed 7 people in March supposedly in retaliation for France’s involvement in the Afghanistan War. The shootings briefly gave Mr. Sarkozy a small lead in the polls, and would seem to strengthen Ms. Le Pen’s anti-immigrant argument. That the French people were seemingly able to rise about the politics of fear in the wake of a tragedy seemed to indicate a national bravery and a recognition of the real roots of the economic problems facing France.

Well, It’s a good thing I didn’t write that article, because the French people gave us the exact opposite result in yesterday’s vote. It wasn’t Mr. Melanchon that finished in a strong 3rd, but Ms. Le Pen who garnered 18% of the vote, the highest total ever for the National Front. Mr. Melanchon finished a weak 4th with 11%.  Mr. Hollande got about 29% and Mr. Sarkozy got about 27% and they will face off in 2 weeks. Despite the fact that the right-wing candidates got a higher percentage of the vote, Mr. Hollande is still the front runner. Sarkozy only wins about 50-60% of Ms. Le Pen’s vote according to polls, and Ms. Le Pen has spoken harshly about Mr. Sarkozy. She considers him to be a part of the classical liberal elite, and Mr. Sarkozy will have to figure out how to appeal to Ms. Le Pen’s voters without alienating the center of his coalition. Further, Ms. Le Pen has a vested interest in Mr. Sarkozy losing, she wants his coalition to implode and hers to become the ascendant voice of the right wing. In contrast, Mr. Melanchon told his supporters to unconditionally support Mr. Hollande in the runoff.

The dichotomy between Ms .Le Pen and Mr. Melanchon has been one of the defining features of international politics for quite some time. Both tap into resentment among the lower classes. The right wing blames it on ethnic minorities or some other boogeyman while the Left Wing points out serious inequities in the free market. In short, the right sells the politics of fear, while the left sells the politics of class struggle.

The French election takes place within a geopolitical context similar to America’s. The economy is in shambles, and there is growing fear about the country’s future. It illustrates the relatively small effect that an individual leader has that the rightwing Sarkozy is bearing much of the same blame that the left wing Obama is facing hear in America. In many ways individual policies matter far less than the circumstances one faces once they are in office. Mr. Hollande offers much of the same policies as Obama does, but in France they are seen as needed reforms as opposed to the status quo(though I guess it’s worth pointing out that 4 years ago Mr. Obama’s policies were seen the same way).

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Secret Service Sex and Government Scandals Du Jour

One of Mitt Romney’s countless gaffes during the Republican primary was his assertion that “corporations are people, my friend.” He said it in response to a heckler who implored him to raise taxes on corporations in response to Romney’s assertion that he wouldn’t raise taxes on people. The flap was classic Romney, seeming to illustrate his fundamental differences with the average American. The statement dredged up complicated issues about corporate personhood, but essentially Romney’s statement was true. He meant that while corporations seem like faceless entities, they are comprised of a collective of people. Therefore to raise taxes on a corporation would be akin to raising taxes on the folks whose salaries are paid for by corporate profits.

If corporations are the faceless boogeymen of those on the left, then government plays the same role for those on the right. Republican’s constantly rail against incursions by the government without recognizing that the government is comprised of fellow citizens, many of them elected by a majority of the locales they represent. One key difference is that corporations exist to make profits, while the government theoretically exists to protect people.

Government gets a horrible rap from many folks. Many people’s interactions with the government are negative, they get a parking ticket, they wait on long lines at the DMV, they have to pay taxes, but they don’t recognize all the good things government does on the macro scale. The government built highways, brought electricity to rural populaces, it fights fires, it cleans our streets, it isn’t just some nebulous entity that wants to restrict freedoms.

There have been several scandals in the past couple of weeks that seek to solidify the idea that government officials take advantage of the public trust and live like fat cats off tax dollars. The most controversial is the scandal about several Secret Service members’ peccadillos in Colombia. Apparently the Secret Service operates on a “wheels up, rings off” system, and they commonly run wild while they travel around the world protecting the president. This scandal came to light when a Secret Service member wouldn’t square up with an escort in the morning, the escort then began to reveal a sordid tale of widespread drug use and solicitation of sex workers.

Clearly this is a story that doesn’t reflect well on the Secret Service and House Government Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has promised to bring down the hammer. An implicit part of the scandal is that Secret Service workers are living hedonistic lifestyles on the taxpayer’s dime. But let’s apply Mitt Romney’s “corporations are people” standard, these Secret Service agents weren’t serving in an official role while they were partying and while the money they used to procure these illicit goods is taxpayer money, it was dispersed to these agents for their service in protecting American interests abroad. Conservatives hate to have the government tell people how to spend their money, unless it’s government workers.

The other scandal is over the General Services Administrations lavish Las Vegas convention. Apparently about a half dozen senior members of the GSA used government money to fund a wild weekend in Vegas for them and their spouses. Again, there’s little to find defensible about the GSA’s actions, but let’s recognize that this isn’t a function of governmental abuse, but rather the actions of some misguided and selfish employees. Conservatives use the reprehensible actions of some to pillory the idea of government. It’s fundamentally cynical, and it’s silly.

Let’s be frank, there are tons of selfish people out there. Whether they choose to butter their bread from ill begotten corporate profits or misappropriated taxpayer dollars, you can’t use the misdeeds of some folks to discredit all the good work these institutions do. Corporations are made up of people and so are governments, we are often flawed, but we’re all we got. We want corporations to innovate, to make money, and we want government to help people. There’s no simple dichotomy, and the discussion could probably be substantively more valuable if we stopped thinking of both as sort of monolithic beings and instead recognized that in some ways we are corporations and we are government(there’s no better illustration of this than Mitt Romney himself).

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Perhaps because I was suffering from a terminal case of senioritis when I was supposed to be learning AP Statistics, opinion polls have always seemed both magical and unbelievable to me. While I understand that pollsters create wildly intricate models to mirror the expected composition of the electorate, I’ve always thought it was incredible that pollsters could make sweeping pronouncements based on the thoughts of 2000 people across the country. I mention this as we turn to the general election, because from now until November we will be subjected to a deluge of polls. We’ll see nationwide polls, polls of the battleground states; we’ll get to intimately understand the difference between likely voters and registered voters. In the coming months, political pundits, both professional and amateur, will scrutinize each and every one in an attempt to glean some information about the state of the race.

Since Santorum dropped out of the race, we’ve already been hit with the first wave of polls. The results are fairly varied, Obama by 5, Romney by 5, Obama by 2, or a statistical dead heat, but they seem to indicate that this will be a close race. This seems to be par for the course of contemporary American politics, the last 3 presidential elections have been incredibly close, even the Obama “landslide” of 08 was only a 53-46 Obama win.

That point is significant. 08 was a dream year for the Democrats, Bush had saddled the country with a tanking economy that was unarguably his own, McCain was a candidate who alienated some in the Republican party and he ran with an albatross around his neck in the form of Sarah Palin. These factors combined with a Democratic candidate who tapped into youthful enthusiasm and convinced many apathetic voters to come to the polls, illustrate that American politics is sharply divided among partisan lines and nothing can really change the mind of about 40+% of either sides base of support.

With that said, I think we’re in for a very close election. The Republican primary was met with glee by many Democrats, including myself, who saw it as stripping away the veneer of Romney’s electability. But Romney has won the day, and Republicans are fired up about beating Barack Obama. For whatever reason, Republicans see Obama as an apocalyptic character. If you check the comments section of almost any news site, you’ll be met with a litany of comments saying the 2012 election is a transformational election, a battle for the very heart and soul of America(This is standard election year fare). Some speculate about a civil war if Obama is reelected and others assume he’ll institute martial law in the event he loses. I’m not sure fears about Romney’s conservative bonafides will be enough to prevent many Republicans from flocking enthusiastically to the polls.

I can almost commiserate with these conservatives. I remember the 2004 election and my overwhelming desire to see Bush knocked out of office. I saw the 04 election as a real turning point in American history, we could either continue down the crazy rabbit hole of the Bush policies or right the ship slightly with a Kerry presidency. While this seems somewhat emotional and overwrought looking back on it, it’s actually kind of true. Without a second Bush term would we’ve been subjected to the horrors of Katrina, to a global financial collapse, to the continuation of unwinnable wars in the Mideast? Republicans are right that this is a transformational election, America is at an undeniable crossroads. The next President will decide if America accepts the austerity of the "Ryan plan" or if we'll reaffirm that government has a crucial role to play in providing for the well being of many citizens.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Ann Romney: Unemployed Like the Rest of Us.

Only two days after Rick Santorum exited the race, the first skirmish of the general election has broken out. “Democratic strategist” and CNN pundit Hillary Rosen knocked Ann Romney for “never working a day in her life.” Ann Romney joined Twitter and said “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work,” and suddenly it became the biggest political story of the day.

The Huffington Post has as its banner a story that basically mocks the kerfuffle and calls it meaningless, but I’m not so sure. In recent weeks I’ve seen stories that say that Democratic consultants consider Ann Romney to be a wild card in the race. She’s perceived as an effective communicator and far more personable than her husband. “Republican strategist”, Romney ’08 advisor, and CNN pundit Alex Castellanos said “She’s terribly important in that she is actually Mitt’s connection to the base. His link to the base doesn’t come from ideology. It comes from family values channeled through Ann. She’s the authentic core of Romney’s conservative principles.” Romney strategists also see her as vital in their appeal towards women. So, Ann Romney was going to have a significant role in this election even before this recent skirmish.

Rosen’s criticism reveals the Democrats antidote to the “Ann Romney problem.” The narrative they want to shape is: regardless of how personable Mrs. Romney is she’s still fundamentally out of touch with the average American. She hasn’t faced the pressures that face ordinary Americans because of her personal wealth. There are many mothers with 5 children who simply don’t have the choice to stay home and raise their kids as a full time mother. It seems that public opinion is against Rosen, but she’s brought up the issue of the Romney’s wealth. Ann Romney can choose to not have a job during a time when many Americans are desperately seeking one. The Romney's wealth promises to be an issue that is reiterated and reargued again and again in the coming months.

Also implicit in Rosen’s comments is another criticism of the Republican’s “war on women.” As Romney tries to shift away from the primary debates over contraception, the Democrats will want to continue to harp on the idea that Romney’s views on women are outdated. Rosen has set up a schema wherein the Romney’s live in a “Leave it to Beaver” world. Women, and their families, are best served by a stay at home mother who isn’t granted the freedom to lead an independent life. This is a point that I think comes down to a fundamental difference of opinion, many conservatives would have no problem with the previous statement, while many liberals would probably see it as hopelessly outdated.

The battle is also interesting for the mediums in which it occurred. Rosen was on CNN, a channel that runs commentary on the Presidential election 24/7. In CNN’s effort to have interesting and informed pundits fill their roundtables, they’ve basically farmed out journalism to political hacks. Instead of giving unbiased coverage, cable news networks reporting is normally just a reiteration of the debate by supposedly unaffiliated consultants. Mrs. Romney’s response through Twitter illustrates a new battlefield for the 2012 election. Twtiter, with it’s real time response capability, will likely be the battleground where debates are shaped and controversies are rebutted. Twitter is a volatile medium, there is little editorial presence, and there will likely be some major gaffes committed by both sides in the social media spheres. We can look forward to 7 more months of these silly battles. To paraphrase Winston Churchill “We will fight them on the television, on the internet, on the radio, on the message boards, on the blogs, we will fight.”

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Santorum Stops

Rick Santorum seems to have spent the Easter holiday in a state of deep reflection because today he finally suspended his campaign. He took a break from campaigning over the holiday to spend it in the hospital with his daughter Bella, and today he announced that he would essentially quit the race. The move comes after a lull in the campaign where it became apparent that Santorum had no realistic shot at the nomination. The media and the Republican establishment had seemingly moved on, but Santorum insisted on fighting on.

His continued candidacy was significant because it signified Romney’s inability to “seal the deal.” Even in the apparently decisive Wisconsin primary, Romney still won by only about 7%. The Santorum campaign won 11 states and he consistently won the “conservative” vote according to exit polls. Santorum’s strength in the South and the Midwest may illustrate Romney’s weakness with evangelicals. Santorum was unapologetically the candidate of the Christian right, pledging to ban online porn and he helped shape a ridiculous Republican narrative about contraception. Santorum has long been a hero of the Christian right, rising to prominence because of his opposition to gay rights and his role in the Terri Schiavo controversy, but his rise to prominence seems to show that some Evangelicals have a problem with Romney’s Mormon faith.

Last week I wrote that Santorum was living a political dream in his reincarnation as a credible Republican candidate for president and the sentiment still stands. If nothing else this race will probably make him a much richer man. His name recognition has certainly risen and he his calendar will be filled with speaking engagements in front of conservative groups. The author of two books, he will likely write another and see it rise higher on his hated New York Time’s bestseller list. 08’s Republican alsoran Mike Huckabee parlayed his success into a FoxNews talkshow, and Santorum will definitely be remade into a television pundit. Santorum’s decision to drop out before a potentially devastating defeat in his home state of Pennsylvania, ensures that he leaves the race with his political clout intact.

As a news outlet that believes in creating “fair and balanced” content, the Redel Traub Report never unleashed it’s vitriol against Santorum. For instance, in this very article I wrote about Santorum’s “opposition to gay rights” as opposed to his “homophobia,” we do this because we recognize that not all of our readers share our opinions unequivocally. We recognize that framing the debate in such a way better reflects the political reality. Santorum was a major player in the Republican primary and marginalizing him because he has different social values than the RT Report is irrelevant because he was fighting for the support of people with different social values than the RT Report. I’m trying to capture the state of the Republican race, not editorialize on well-tread culture war issues.

Santorum certainly has some political skill. He fought Romney with deep infrastructural deficiencies and kept the race relatively close. He was a representative of a Democratic leaning state for 2 terms. He won 11 states after being mired in the low single digits for much of the prelude to the Iowa Caucuses. After the Iowa Caucuses, I compared Santorum to Tim Tebow, and the analogy still seems apt. Like Tebow, much of Santorum’s success was due to the weaknesses of the opposition, but he still does some things well. Coincidentally Tebow was felled by the New England Patriots who play in Romney’s home state of Massachusetts.

Romney is also a skilled politician in some ways. He proved he could win independent and left-leaning votes by winning the governorship in Massachusetts. Romney’s had a bunch of success in the business world and to some people that makes him qualified to talk about the economy. The things that hamstrung Romney in the Republican primary will help him in the general and he may make things tough for Obama. He also has many personal and political weaknesses, but so does Obama in many folk’s eyes.

Right after Santorum’s announcement, Obama spoke in Florida. He gave a stirring defense of government’s role and attacked Republicans for offering more tax cuts for the wealthy. He also attacked Romney, though he referred to him as “someone who shall not be named.” These kind of speeches will be a daily occurrence in the coming months. Romney and Obama will barnstorm across the country, raising money and informally attacking one another. The Republican race is officially over, and if you thought it was crazy, just wait for the general.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Punking James O'Keefe: Hidden Cameras and Voter ID Laws

Andrew Breitbart protégé James O’Keefe seems to be keeping Breitbart’s memory alive by continuing the tradition of generating supposedly inflammatory but fundamentally meaningless controversy. O’Keefe, the amateur filmmaker and conservative activist who rose to prominence by secretly filming ACORN workers, has struck again. This time he has produced a hidden camera video recording of him receiving Attorney General Eric Holder’s ballot during the DC primary, in an effort to illustrate the need for the requirement of IDs to vote.

For O’ Keefe this is seemingly a big victory. His work has earned him the masthead on Drudge for the majority of the day, perhaps the greatest honor a conservative can receive. It’s been a tough couple of months for O’ Keefe, his benefactor, Breitbart, died. Then a former accomplice, Nadia Naffe, has charged him with sexual assault. To top it off, an attempt in to get a dead man’s ballot during the New Hampshire primary fell flat because he used the wrong middle initial. He received a living person’s ballot, and apparently law enforcement is still investigating the incident. With all these hardships in recent weeks, it must have been nice to get back to his first love: creating dishonest and misleading videos.

The video goes like this: O’ Keefe walks into a polling station, identifies himself as Eric Holder, gives Holder’s address, and gets a ballot. On first blush this video seems remarkable. If a public figure like Eric Holder’s identity can be coopted to vote with such ease, it seems like surreptitious voting could be a real epidemic. But in reality, O’Keefe’s video was completely unrevelatory. Anyone who’s ever voted in a state that doesn’t require ID knows full well that actions like O’ Keefe’s are eminently possible. That's the whole point behind the Voter ID controversy: they don't require ID. I don’t need to see a hidden camera video of this reality, because I’ve lived it.

What makes the video even less interesting is the fact that the voter fraud O’Keefe seeks to expose is basically meaningless. One can try and surreptitiously vote if they are willing to put themselves at risk for 5 years in prison or a 10,000 dollar fine, but one vote hardly seems worth it. Heck, even 100 or 1000 votes just doesn’t seem worth the risk. Furthermore, there is no historical evidence of this kind of fraud. According to NYU, results from the carefully scrutinized 2004 presidential election in Ohio indicated that the voter fraud rate was 0.00004%, which is better than the odds of winning the Mega Millions, but still not great. In terms of voting fraud, new voting machines that don't leave a paper trail and have shown themselves to be vulnerable to manipulations are far scarier.

Just like the ACORN video, O’Keefe has illustrated that if you walk around and act like a jerk, people often won’t call you on it. These voter ID laws are serious business, and are just another example of the GOP trying to disenfranchise traditionally Democratic voters. In some ways they are reminiscent of the “poll tax” which prevented many from voting in the segregated south. O’Keefe’s work comes off like a comical sideshow, but it’s much more insidious that that. His work helps to confirm people’s worst fears, and perpetuate feelings of Republican victimhood that flies in the face of reality.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

On to the General

You can tell that the Republican nomination has been sealed up by the relative pittance of media coverage it has received in recent weeks. After wins in Alabama and Mississippi, Santorum appeared to be surging, but Romney headed him off with wins in the key battlegrounds of American Samoa and Puerto Rico. The recent contests in Wisconsin, Illinois, Maryland, Louisiana, and D.C. were met with none of the fanfare of earlier contests. The cable news channels didn’t block off their programming for minute-by-minute election analysis, but instead peppered it in amongst stories about Trayvon Martin, Obamacare, and in Fox’s case, the evils of the liberal media and Rock and Roll(presumably).

The media’s cutback coincided with the calcification of the trope that Romney’s delegate count made him inevitable. That Romney had a significant and, perhaps, uncatchable amount of delegates was clear as day after Super Tuesday. On one of those newfangled television/computer boards they use on CNN, John King clearly illustrated the almost miraculous path Santorum would have to chart to even remain semi-competitive, and narrowly prevent Romney from having the 1144 delegates needed to nominate by the convention. Far be it for me to comment on the structure of the Republican primary, but it seems slight unfair. Romney, who has 60% of the awarded delegates, has only won about 41% of the combined popular vote. In contrast, Santorum has 23% of the delegates with 28% of the vote, Gingrich has 14% of the delegates with 20% of the vote, and Paul has just 3% percent of delegates though he has won 11% of the vote. It seems that Republicans reward infrastructure, Rick Santorum won several places where he didn’t have a delegate attached to him and thus has nothing to show for it. The Republican primary seems to be proportionate in name only, and let’s not kid ourselves, this thing was in the bag for Mitt before the voting even begun. It was fun to watch the horse race, but the fix was in.

Santorum has vowed to continue the fight against Romney, despite the fact that he has no realistic chance to win. I don’t begrudge Santorum, he’s living a political dream and he’s hitting the snooze button on that nagging alarm. After Santorum’s crushing 20% defeat in his senate race in ’06, I’m sure he didn’t think he’d ever have a relevant political moment again. In the early days of the 2012 campaign, Santorum still seemed to be a non-entity. He didn’t excite anyone, or bring any interesting ideas to the table. The clearest evidence of this is that he was the last “non-Romney” to ascend to that position. But that fact actually worked in his favor, Romney didn’t have time to turn the attack dogs on him in Iowa, and he squeaked out a victory. With a little blip in South Carolina, Santorum remained Romney’s chief political rival from that point forward. This race has reinvigorated any hope he’s had to carve out a meaningful future for himself. He may see himself as a future James Dobson or Pat Robertson type, or maybe he’ll find himself in a John Ashcroft roll, but the election has certainly raised his national stature. Santorum used to be a sort of national joke; the scatological phrase attached to his name the first thing one found on Google about him. Well this race has changed all that, in fact now when you Google Santorum it’s the 4th link. Santorum has traveled the country and built a reasonable sized base of true supporters. It’s not like Romney’s really had any big success, even his knockout win in Wisconsin was only 43-38. So it makes sense why Santorum wants to continue this magic carpet ride.

But now we move to the general election and it’s sure to be wild. As everyone seems to be realizing, the ruling in Citizens United has created a monster and there will be untold millions spent on this race from secretive groups. This will have the net effect of debasing the discourse, though the discourse was already pretty debased. In my estimation, Romney enters the general as a pretty weak challenger; his negatives went way up during the primaries, and he seems to have neither calm conservatives or retain independents. That said, Obama is a pretty weak incumbent. His polling numbers aren’t great and people seem to agree that the country is on the wrong course. Republicans are certain to coalesce around Romney to some degree, and it figures to be an extremely hard fought, and painful to watch, election.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

A Miracle on 34th Street: A People's History of the Knicks

As a fan, specifically a Knicks fan, the 2011-12 NBA season has been one of the craziest I can remember. It’s been a roller coaster that, not only, spikes and plunges, but that at times felt like it was veering off the tracks, and at other times almost captured the Platonic ideal of what a rollercoaster should be.

Let’s recall that in early December it seemed that this season wasn’t even going to happen. I was busy lamenting the cruel irony that the Knicks most promising season in years was going to be snuffed out. But it’s darkest before the dawn, and the players and owners reached a 11th hour deal and suddenly the NBA was back. The Knicks made a surprising move, signing Tyson Chandler and amnestying Chaunchey Billups. The move gave the Knicks a defensive presence in the middle, but left them without an experienced Point Guard.

Friend of the blog Jake Langbecker was nice enough to take me to the Knicks opener on Christmas Day. The Knicks beat the Celtics, with an exciting 4th Quarter comeback led by Carmelo Anthony. The Garden was going bananas that day. I’m told it felt like a playoff game, though I have no personal experience to validate that.

The Knicks couldn’t follow up on the promise of opening a day and limped out to a sluggish beginning. Their lack of a true point guard, and a team wide shooting slump, made them excruciating to watch. Every Knicks possession followed the same pattern, a bunch of standing around followed by a jumper clanging off the back iron. The Knicks were miserable, and the season seemed like a lost cause.

Pushed to the brink, coach Mike D’antoni was forced to adjust his lineup. With Toney Douglas in shambles, D’antoni was forced to experiment with the undrafted Jeremy Lin. In a game against the Nets, Lin exploded for 20+ points and provided the Knicks with a quarterback for their offense. Lin became Linsanity, he was a juggernaut, a shooting star on an improbable course. He became, perhaps, the most famous basketball player in the world, he dominated ESPN and the various spheres of social media, notably this very blog. For a fan whose rooting career has been one disappointment after another, Lin’s success was like hitting the lottery. Finally, I was being repaid for my years of loyal fandom for subpar teams. Lin led the Knicks on a 7 game winning streak, bringing them back to .500 and giving fans in New York a reason to believe. It wasn’t just Lin, they’d begun to receive contributions from role players like Jared Jeffries and Steve Novak, but it seemed like Lin was the catalyst. Lin was even able to end the squabbling between MSG and TimeWarner, they came to a deal at the height of Linsanity.

The Knicks came back from the all-star break with a dominant win over the Cavs, but then the wheels fell off. Throughout Linsanity there was consternation over how Carmelo would fit into the revised Knicks offense. The answer seemed to be: not well. The Knicks dropped 6 in a row, basically setting them back to the point they’d been before Linsanity. On the day of the trade deadline coach Mike D’antoni resigned, amidst rumors that he sought to trade Carmelo.

D’antoni was deposed, and Mike Woodson, the teams defacto “defensive coordinator” was installed in his place. It amounted to a sort of coup d’etat by Carmelo, but it seemed the whole team was rejuvenated. Now the Knicks won 5 in a row. Their defense, long ignored under D’antoni, was fueling their offense, and the Knicks put up 4 straight blowouts.

The Knicks streak ended, but their good play continued. They ripped off a 3 game winning streak, but they were without Amar’e Stoudamire and Jeremy Lin. Stoudamire was done until the playoffs, but Lin was supposedly day-to-day. Without Lin, Anthony seemed rejuvenated, his scoring touch restored.

Then on April Fools Eve, the fates played a cruel prank. Lin wasn’t day-to-day, but out for 6 weeks with a torn meniscus. The Knicks were written off as finished by many, and the season seemed to take another sharp turn.

Allow me to provide some, perhaps misguided, optimism. There have been signs of life in recent games and maybe the Lin injury won’t prove fatal. After the ecstasy of Linsanity, he has slightly regressed into an above average point guard. He’s good, but he hasn’t been that transcendent force. Lin was a reasonably weak defender, and his injury may cause the Knicks to double down on their defensive formula.

Another reason for optimism is Carmelo Anthony’s revival. I’ve gotten the impression that Anthony is moody. His attitude reflects on his play in dramatic ways, and his return to unquestioned superstar has been good for his ego, and subsequently his play. Let’s remember that the team Anthony has now is basically the team that Lin carried to 7 straight wins, plus Baron Davis and JR Smith. Smith provides streaky scoring, and a surprising amount of defense. Davis is an established NBA Point Guard with a track record of success, though his health is a concern. Iman Shumpert has been a defensive force all year, but in recent games he's picked up his scoring. The Knicks are still a talented team, and I think they can win in the playoffs with defense and a superstar performance from Anthony.

I’m also happy about the return of Toney Douglas. The 3rd year guard has regressed this year. His shooting touch has been robbed by an offseason shoulder surgery, and he hasn’t been right the whole year. Douglas needed this surgery because of his brave, and foolish, habit of trying to run through every screen that’s set on him. That said, he’s a good defender and last year he tied a Knicks record with 9 three pointers. That night, in his hideous orange shoes, he looked like the future. Perhaps he can regain that form. Douglas has taken his fall from the rotation gracefully. He seems to be a team leader, and he sits closes to the coaches on the bench. Douglas will need to provide about 15 minutes of quality Point Guard play a night for the Knicks to have success, but that doesn’t seem outlandish.

As I’ve said before, I’m a sports optimist by necessity. What’s the point of watching sports if you do so out of spite. I’m not sure the Knicks will even make the playoffs, but I hope they will and I’d rather watch Knick games then almost anything else. I’m going to watch, and root, and hope, because that’s what sports is about. Jeremy Lin came out of nowhere to put the Knicks on the map, maybe the Knicks can follow that roadmap and carve out some success sans Lin.