Fables of the reconstruction

Hillary Should Stay in As Long as She Wants

In my mail today:

Not that anyone cares what I think about it, but people who are calling for Hillary to drop out now (or soon) are mistaken, for a number of reasons, in no particular order:

1. The extended primary battle between Hillary and Obama has been great for the party by objective measures. Democratic voter registration and primary turnout are at record levels. Whoever the nominee is, that bodes well for both the presidential race and for downticket races. Although some independents say they will flip and vote for McCain if their favored Democrat isn't the nominee, so what? We have months to change their minds and, if they are that fickle, we didn't really have their loyalty anyway.
2. Although Obama is winning (and I think will win), it's not a blowout. People say, "She can't win", but the truth is, she's just unlikely to win. She has a big following. It's kind of stupid to say to someone with significant support, "Well, you still have an outside chance of winning, so go away."
3. Legitimacy. The Florida and Michigan Democratic Parties really screwed up, putting us all in a bad position. They really acted badly, and they had to be punished. (See the video below to see how guilty they were in Florida.) Sometimes I think it would have been better if we had stripped them of half their delegates and allowed the candidates to campaign, but really, it probably wouldn't have mattered. They'd still be disingenuously yelling about disenfranchisement. But given the fact that they're willing to wreck the party in order to evade the consequences of their actions, we need to be scrupulous in every area we can. I'm angry at them and I am angry that Hillary has claimed multiple times that Obama doesn't "want people to keep voting", but I understand she's desperate. By Hillary staying in the race through the end of voting on June 3 and remaining open to fair resolutions to the Michigan and Florida messes, we suffer a little short-term pain for long-term gain.
4. This is harder for me to substantiate, but I think the longer battle is actually a net positive for the Democrats in a couple of other, subjective ways. First of all, by not presenting a target for them to shoot at, we're throwing off the right-wing smear machine's timing. Clearly, they have nothing positive to run on, so the general election will be constant Republican slime, trying to drive up the Democratic candidate's negatives. Relatedly, as Obama and Hillary battle it out, they're actually inoculating each other by making milder versions of the same kinds of attacks that the Republicans would throw at them down the road. Having had them raised, how much of a factor could Rev. Wright or Tuzla be in September?

With regard to the nasty attacks, I think I agree with Josh Marshall here:

Hillary doesn't want to run for president in 2nd or 3rd gear. It's beneath her dignity. And I don't mean that sarcastically. It really is. She's a powerful United States senator, former First Lady, etc. She wants to win. And if she's still in it she wants to run full bore with the money you need to run a serious campaign, the crowds, poll numbers, etc. She's not some Huckabee figure who's going to hang around with little chance of winning

It really is all or nothing. You've got to convince your supporters, donors and to at least some degree the media that you're really in it, and in it with a shot. Otherwise you face the classic problem of a cascade failure. Poor fundraising generates bad press stories, which depress turnout at rallies, which create more bad press stories and eventually no press stories, etc. It's no different from the precarious position any campaign faces when the odds aren't looking good.

In other words, she has to keep pushing over the next nine weeks to stay in there. Lightning could strike, she could win 70% of the remaining delegates and then the nomination. Or Obama's lead might increase, and it's a different story. Put it this way: She can only drop out once. While she still has a chance, she'll put it off as long as she can. I think it's great.

$1 Million Bail for $21 Theft

In early 1990, Gary Weaver of Owingsville, KY, bought some things at a store and paid for them with bogus coin, literally: He paid part of the $21 tab with rolls of pennies with dimes stuck on the ends, so the cashier thought they were rolls of dimes.

A warrant was issued for his arrest.  Eighteen years pass. On March 26, he was arrested again under very different circumstances:

Police charged him with disorderly conduct after they said he was cutting himself with a razor because he was despondent over the recent deaths of his brother and mother.

He pleaded guilty and got sentenced to time served - one night in jail. Sad, but it seems like sometimes the quickest way to get people who are a threat to themselves into custody is to arrest them. But when court officials saw the old warrant for Weaver on the theft case, what happened next was less salubrious:

The case, despite a loss of less than $25 if the allegations are true, was charged as a felony.

“How is that a felony?” Weaver’s defense attorney, Kip Guinan, asked today. “It’s clever maybe but not a felony.”

[Assistant Prosecutor Betsy] Sundermann explained that the law in 1990 was that theft charges were felonies if the defendant already had a prior theft conviction. Apparently, Weaver had such a conviction.

[Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge Richard] Bernat then imposed the original bond on the case.

“How much is that?” Guinan asked because he didn’t have the bond paperwork on the 18-year-old case.

The answer was $1 million.

In 1990, Municipal Court Judge Jack Rosen set a $1 million bond on a case where Weaver was accused of stealing $21.64.

Bernat refused today to lower it.

That means Weaver is in the jail – that officials say is overcrowded and in need of replacement – on a bond that is $999,978.36 higher than the amount he is accused of stealing 18 years ago.

Good use of resources, guys.

Rendell: Fox News "Most Objective" Cable News

Oy, Ed:

"I think during this entire primary coverage, starting in Iowa and up to the present -- FOX has done the fairest job, and remained the most objective of all the cable networks. You hate both of our candidates. No, I’m only kidding. But you actually have done a very balanced job of reporting the news, and some of the other stations are just caught up with Senator Obama, who is a great guy, but Senator Obama can do no wrong, and Senator Clinton can do no right.”

He did this because the kind of voters he's trying to appeal to are the ones most likely to be watching Fox.

Update from John Cole:

Ed Rendell, someone I actually like, is on Hardball right now lying through his teeth, claiming the Democratic party did nothing wrong in Florida and Democrats are being unfairly punished. Roll the tape:

Another 78,000 New Pennsylvania Democrats in One Weekend - And Still Counting

According to Jay Newton-Small at Swampland, during the last weekend of voter registration for the primary "33,281 Republicans and Independents changed their voter registration to Democratic and 44,867 new voters registered" as Democrats. (Newton-Small mistakenly says that's one day's take, when in fact it's all registration from that three-day weekend, which all hit the boards of election offices on Monday because they're closed weekends.)

As of today's count, there are 4,119,213 registered Democrats in Pennsylvania. Last Monday, it was 4,044,952, a jump of 74,261.  To give you a sense of scale, only 2.9 million people voted for John Kerry in Pennsylvania in 2004.

Apparently, they're still not done counting. Final totals next week. Why? It hadn't occurred to me, given that I was physically collecting registrations and walking them over to the office, but a lot of people mailed their registrations in. They didn't even hit the office until later that week, and some may still be in transit.

Wow.

Finally, Obama Wins Texas

He's at least 3+ and  perhaps as many as 5+ pledged delegates over Clinton, per Burnt Orange Report.  Complicating matters further, these results don't become official until the Texas Dems' convention on June 6.

Wheeeee!

Update: The AP reports it as 5+, 99 to 94. For those keeping score at home, back on Super Tuesday a spreadsheet prepared by the Obama campaign predicted he would end up with the most pledged delegates at the end. They predicted he'd lose Texas, 101 to 92 pledged delegates. The Obama campaign predicted they'd be ahead by 67 pledged delegates right now; in fact, they lead by 166 pledged delegates, 1,414 to 1,248. They also predicted that after the last primary on June 3, they'd still be ahead by 67 delegates. There are 566 pledged delegates in the remaining contests, including 158 in Pennsylvania.

Amazing Stuff People Can Do

She doodled a cool design on upyernoz's nametag, so I passed mine over and in just a few minutes doodle bean had produced this:

I love it.

Achtung, Baby

But did he wear a Totenkopf uniform?

Max Mosley, one of the most powerful men in world sport, was under pressure to resign as boss of Formula One’s governing body last night after he was exposed enjoying a Nazi-style orgy with five prostitutes.

Jewish groups condemned the behaviour of Mosley, 67, whose father, Sir Oswald, was the leader of the British Union of Fascists and a friend of Adolf Hitler.

Mr Mosley was caught on video by the News of the World with five women in an underground “torture chamber” in Chelsea, where he spent several hours allegedly indulging in sado-masochistic sex.

The Oxford-educated former barrister, who is president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), reenacted a concentration camp scene in which he played the role of both guard and inmate.

Speaking in German and brandishing a leather whip, he beat the women after allowing himself to be subjected to a humiliating inspection for lice and an interrogation in chains.

Mr Mosley, a close confidant of Bernie Ecclestone, who holds the commercial rights to Formula One, paid £2,500 cash for the sex services, the Sunday newspaper claimed.

Only in Britain. Especially given that it's not clear he will resign.

(Via Herr Doktor Professor Schwarz.)

Update: NSFW pic below the fold from here. I like that they censored his ass with a checkered flag. Cute. Love the boots, fraulein!

Mr. Straight Talk

Heartwarming:

On October 26, 1967, Mai Van On ran from the safety of a bomb shelter at the height of an air raid and swam out into the lake where Lieutenant Commander McCain was drowning, tangled in his parachute cord after ejecting when his Skyhawk bomber was hit by a missile.

In an extraordinary act of compassion at a time when Vietnamese citizens were being killed by US aerial bombardments, he pulled a barely conscious McCain to the lake surface and, with the help of a neighbour, dragged him towards the shore.

And when a furious mob at the water’s edge began to beat and stab the captured pilot, Mr On drove them back. Nearly three decades later, a Vietnamese government commission confirmed he was indeed the rescuer and, in a 1996 meeting in Hanoi, McCain embraced and thanked Mr On and presented him with a Senate memento.

Not so much:

Arizona Sen. John McCain refused to apologize yesterday [February 17, 2000] for his use of a racial slur to condemn the North Vietnamese prison guards who tortured and held him captive during the war.

"I hate the gooks," McCain said yesterday in response to a question from reporters aboard his campaign bus. "I will hate them as long as I live." ...

"I was referring to my prison guards," McCain said, "and I will continue to refer to them in language that might offend some people because of the beating and torture of my friends."

McCain made it clear that his anger extends only toward his captors. As a senator, he was one of the leaders of the postwar effort to normalize U.S. relations with Vietnam. ...

But the racial slur used by the senator has a long, painful history that is felt by many Asian Americans. ...

The horrors of the past cannot be an excuse for hurting people in the present, said Guy Aoki, president of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, an anti-defamation group.

"If Sen. McCain had been captured by Nigerians, could he call those people `niggers' and think he wasn't going to offend everyone who is black?" Akoi asked. "We can all feel for what he went through, but if that's his level of sensitivity, I'm very disappointed."

As someone said today, John McCain was a brave POW, but that was 40 years ago, and now he's just a hateful old man.  Duke Cunningham was an ace, but that was 40 years ago, and now he's a corrupt politician in prison.

Neither Obama Nor Clinton Are Especially Liberal

Being an Obama supporter, I catch the most craziness from Hillary fans. Some of it is really wacky shit.  I refrain from pointing it out because I really don't want to join the circular firing squad. I am sure sane people who like Hillary could also enumerate craziness from some Obama fans.

In the interest of fairness, one of the persistent slams I hear against Hillary is that she - and Bill - are basically Republicans, and that Obama by contrast is a good progressive. I don't buy it. I think both Obama and Hillary are in the positions they are in today - within striking distance of the Presidency - precisely because they are not especially liberal. The Clintons' record of triangulation is well known. But Obama's kumbaya message extends quite explicitly to navigating a middle way on a whole host of domestic policy issues, and as far as I can tell, that's triangulation.

Neither a President Hillary Clinton nor a President Obama would govern from the left. I don't support Obama because he's a good progressive; I support him because I think he can win and Hillary can't. It irritates me that Hillary has also shown herself to be quite ruthless, but in an incompetent way. If you want to play hardball, you better fucking win. If you play hardball and lose, don't expect a lot of sympathy.

EschaCon '08: The EschaConning

Had a great time at the main event today. Got to talk to Scott Horton, Krugman, Thers, Molly and Sinfonian, and see NTodd, Digby, Jane Hamsher, Athenae, Ted Rall, and Echidne. There were a couple crazy-uncle moments, but most of the people there were smart enough not to react and just let them pass. Good liveblogging done here.

Texas Tonight

I am off to the Marriott Courtyard for Day II of Eschacon '08. I had forgotten that today is the day that Texas finally determines its caucus delegate allocation. Burnt Orange Report will have coverage.

Reaping the Whirlwind

James Joyner points to a report that members of the Iraqi national police are switching sides in the battle of Basra, because they were Mahdi army infiltrators all along. Also, Eric Martin notes that Maliki  is so weak that he's been forced to backpedal on his demands:

Not only is Maliki extending the deadline, but he's throwing in some cash incentives to sweeten the pot.  Those aren't the negotiating tactics of a party with the upper hand.  The Sadrists, thus far, don't seem overly enthused with Maliki's offer.

Other good news, from Joyner:

A front page WaPo story by Sudarsan Raghavan and Sholnn Freeman reports that U.S. mech infantry forces (Stryker brigades) are not only taking part but taking the lead now in Basra. More problematically, AP reports that we’re dropping bombs in Basra. Apparently, someone missed the memo that this is a counterinsurgency operation and that the goal is political reconciliation.

Yesterday, I heard Bush say about the battle (paraphrasing), "Some people call it a second liberation."  Then he smirked. Call it Liberation 2.0. A service pack is expected in May, but American users will be required to pay for future upgrades. Many more liberations like this, there won't be much left to liberate.

Kevin Drum has a cheat sheet designed to help you figure out who's who in this mess. For example:

ISCI = SIIC = new name for SCIRI = Badr Corps = "aristocratic" Hakim family = exiles during Saddam Hussein's reign = pro-Iran = generally in control of army and security forces = pro-U.S. = ally of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Dawa Party.

So Maliki, our ally, is allied with the pro-Iran Badr Corps, making ... Iran our ally.  At the same time, Iran's been simultaneously providing support to Sadr, while also peeling off his most militant commanders, retraining and rearming them, and turning them around right back into the fight against the U.S. So Iran is backing all horses, controlling the pace, marginalizing both Maliki and Sadr. I caught Mike Ware on CNN yesterday, leaning forward into the camera like he wanted to reach through the screen and choke Blitzer until he understood the implications: The U.S. has been forced into the position of actively aiding the Iranian goal of consolidating its power in Iraq, because that's the only way the fighting will ever die down enough for us to leave. He called the idea of withdrawing in a year "delusional", because it will take longer than that for Iran to checkmate us, he said sardonically.

I think this is the logical outgrowth of what I was talking about last February.

Bob Casey to Endorse Obama; Obama Bus Tour Coming to Philly

NYTimes Caucus:

Senator Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania, one of the state’s last undecided superdelegates, plans to endorse Barack Obama during a rally at the Soldiers and Sailors Military Museum and Memorial in Pittsburgh this morning.

After the announcement Senator Casey will join Senator Obama on his six-day bus trip across Pennsylvania, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. Senator Casey’s support for Mr. Obama goes against the wave of support for Hillary Rodham Clinton among many of the state’s top Democrats, like Governor Ed Rendell, Rep. John P. Murtha and Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia.

The endorsement also comes at a crucial time for Obama, who has been trailing Clinton in Pennsylvania polls by double-digit margins but who also has bought at least $1.6 million worth of television advertising statewide in the last week, more than double Clinton’s expenditure.

Obama strategists hope that Casey can help their candidate make inroads with the white working-class men who are often referred to as “Casey Democrats.” This group identifies with the brand of politics Casey and his late father, a former governor, practiced - liberal on economic issues but supportive of gun rights and opposed to abortion. (Obama favors some gun-control measures and backs abortion rights.)

This is moderately helpful for Obama, but I remain skeptical that endorsements do all that much for candidates this time around, even in terms of major-donor fundraising. I spoke to a guy last night who works for one of the bigger contributors out there, and he said people like him were questioning their relevance in an age when a candidate can raise $91 million from small donors online in just two months.

Katharine Q. Seelye of The New York Times says it’s “do or die” for Mrs. Clinton in Pennsylvania. And despite her early lead in the polls, Mr. Obama’s bus trip proves he’s not conceding the state.

A strong showing, if not a victory, would keep his accumulated lead in delegates and in the popular vote more or less intact. And it would puncture Mrs. Clinton’s argument to superdelegates that he is a flawed candidate who cannot compete in the big closely contested states.

“We win if we lose by only five points,” said an Obama backer who is not authorized to speak for the campaign. “The immediate goal is for us not to lose by 10 points. But if she loses by a point, she’s out.”

I think that's right. The latest poll has Hillary up 49 to 39. That leaves 12 percent undecided, so a lot can happen in the remaining 24 days. And because of the new registrations, I think it's likely that polls  understate Obama's support. I'm not predicting an Obama win; I'm saying I have no idea what will happen. What I am confident in saying is that turnout will break all records.

So I guess Obama will be in Philly on Wednesday, the last day of the 6-day bus tour. When John Kerry came to town in '04, there was an ocean of people on the Parkway, spilling out onto the numbered streets, watching on jumbo screens. I can't even conceive what this will be like.

Local Programming: Eschalive Saturday Night

This coming Saturday, March 29th:

It Died With an Awful Sound

Ogged's right, this is awesome. A Japanese orchestra performs Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" using traditional and modern instruments:

NFL Changes Schedule to Help McCain

Anybody think they'd do this for the Democrats? Nah, me either.

Since 2002, the NFL has held its season opener on the first Thursday night after Labor Day. This year, the game runs smack into the final night of the convention, when McCain will officially accept the nomination and give a nationally televised speech from Minneapolis.

While the NFL has yet to announce its schedule for the 2008 season, it's apparently not going to shy away from having its season opener on the scheduled day, with the game likely featuring the Super Bowl champion New York Giants.

So, the NFL and NBC have agreed in principle to have the kickoff at 7 p.m. ET instead of the traditional 8:30 p.m. That would mean, except in the event of an overtime, that the game would end before NBC's expected one hour of convention coverage for the night.

Pennsylvania Democratic Voter Registration Tops 4 Million, Will Go Higher

Dan Balz:

Figures released by Pennsylvania's Department of State on Monday night showed that Democrats have topped 4 million registered voters, the first time either party in the state has crossed that threshold. Democrats have added 161,000 to their rolls, a gain of about 4 percent; Republican registration has dipped about 1 percent, to 3.2 million.

The total so far is 4,044,952. Those are just the ones they've processed as of 11 a.m. Monday. They're not done counting yet.

No political party in Pennsylvania has ever hit 4 million registered voters before. Out of 8.2 million total registered voters, 120,000 are new voters. Again, to give you a sense of scale, Kerry won Pennsylvania in 2004 by about 144,000 votes.

About 43,000 people signed up as Democrats in one week:

According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, 19,639 new voters signed up in the period between March 10 and 17, the latest statewide data available. Of those, 14,256 registered as Democrats.

Also, 29,060 people changed their party affiliation to Democrat in just those seven days.

[The total Democratic] numbers don't reflect the major voter registration push that the Clinton and Obama campaigns waged this past weekend, leading up to yesterday's deadline.

(Emphasis added.) That means the last three days of registrations aren't in yet. To give you an idea of what that means, I only worked two of those days and I signed up 190 people, out of 294 total registered between Saturday, March 15, through Monday, March 24. That is, I signed up more people in two days this weekend than I had in the previous week. If those numbers hold up statewide, we might have another 50,000 new Democrats when the counting stops.

Balz says that this turns the conventional wisdom on its head: Rather than being a net negative for the Democrats, the continued competition between Hillary and Obama is jacking up Democratic voter registration.  I agree.

The most obvious effect is that, all else equal, people who vote in the Presidential primary will also vote in the general. Also, people who vote for the Democratic presidential candidate in the general may be more inclined to vote a straight ticket. In this case, "all else equal" is the big caveat. If the losing Democratic candidate's supporters are embittered or otherwise turned off, all else is not equal. Also, for the downticket races, there is this:

Many of the voters who recently changed registrations were likely "Weak identifiers" who were on the fence anyway and are less partisan, said Berwood Yost, director of the Floyd Institute for Public Policy at Franklin and Marshall College.

"I guarantee you these are not people who vote their party line," he said. Borick and Yost doubt the registration changes will have much of an effect on contested races down the ballot for the Legislature or Congress.

Okay, I can accept they won't vote straight D. But for the Congressional races, campaigning by the Democratic nominee they switched to vote for might change that.

Assignments for reporters:

1. If there is polling data, how do the new and changed Democratic voters in Pennsylvania intend to vote?  The same question applies to every other state.

2. What are the total new and changed Democratic registrations nationwide for competitive Congressional districts?

The Protocols of the Elders of Obama

During the past week, someone I know showed me an envelope that had been anonymously mailed to a Jewish group here in Philadelphia. It had no return address, but the postmark was somewhere in Ohio. Inside was a packet of photocopies of webpages about how Obama was a secret Muslim, Obama would work to destroy Israel, etc. I was told that this kind of material had been received by a number of Jewish organizations, and the material was being passed around the older members of congregations (many of whom don't have internet access and had never seen the stories before).  The younger members of these groups are trying to explain that these are smear jobs, but it's not clear that it's working.

Today, this:

The Clinton campaign is distributing an article in the American Spectator (!) about Obama foreign policy adviser Merrill McPeak and his penchant for.. well, the article accuses him of being an anti-Semite and a drunk. Principally, the author takes McPeak to task for supporting a Middle East map that would require Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 border. It also makes the case that McPeak supports the Walt-Mearsheimer view of the influence of the Israeli lobby on foreign policy.

The author's sudden conclusion: "Obama has a Jewish problem and McPeak's bigoted views are emblematic of what they are. Obama can issue all the boilerplate statements supporting Israel's right to defend itself he wants. But until he accepts responsibility for allowing people like McPeak so close to his quest for the presidency, Obama's sincerity and judgment will remain open questions."

As one keen observer pointed out to me, if advocating the pre '67 border map makes one an anti-Semite, just about every iteration of the U.S. government since 1967 would qualify.

I think it's time some journalist starts looking into this.

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

Saw this bumpersticker for the first time the other day:

Like the suggestion that Obama should be the VP, this has the air of a Hail Mary play to it.

Republicans in Pennsylvania Switching to Vote for Weaker Dem Candidate?

Mac at pesky'apostrophe sez I'm a swell guy for registering people (thanks!) and relates this:

I heard some woman on the local news this morning actually admit that she had switched parties [Republican to Democrat] so she could vote for the candidate she thinks is more likely to lose to McCain, because she so deeply fears a Democrat win.  I think she said she was voting for Obama. I don’t know, that seems kind of futile [not to mention silly] since polling indicates that either one of them would do well against McCain. And then what if she’s wrong?  What if she votes for the candidate who beats McCain in the general election?

I don't doubt there are a few people who did this. But anecdotally, my experience talking to people this past week did not suggest it's happening in large numbers. All of the people who switched registrations told me they were independents, and many of them said they were long-time voters who never had declared for a party before in their lives. My impression was that they were liberals who had never become Democrats because the party was insufficiently principled for them. One woman, clearly angry, waited until after dark on the last day to switch. When I asked her what was wrong, she said bitterly that the Democrats were totally in the pocket of corporations and the wealthy, and that her switching would likely not help anything. Nevertheless, she switched. I asked her what her affiliation had been, and she said Green.

On the other hand, every person who self-identified as Republican refused to switch. Some of them, young men mainly but also some women, were very defiant about it, as if I would care. (Some of the Hillary people were the same way.) One older gentleman stopped and said he wasn't going to switch because he had always been a Republican, started to walk again and then turned back to assure me he would not vote for McCain, and in fact he had not voted for anyone for President since Poppy Bush because of the disgraceful behavior of his party.

Of course, caveat: I was wearing an Obama t-shirt and Obama pins, standing under an Obama sign, outside a Whole Foods, in the heart of white liberal Philadelphia. It's not like the people walking by were a representative sample of Pennsylvania voters, and my obvious affiliation might have caused some Republicans not to admit it. The people claiming to be independents might have been lying and were actually devious Republicans. But to get even more deeply unscientific about it, they didn't look like Republicans to me.  On the other hand, I was never surprised by any of the self-identified Republicans. They fell into three main types: Older white men in suits driving expensive cars who acted bemused or slightly offended by my asking if they wanted to register as Democratic, as if I had suggested engaging in a public sex act. Young, neatly dressed white men with business hair cuts, who mainly were the defiant ones. And 30- or 40-something women with great hair and very expensive clothing and accessories who sneered or snickered. If it's Prada, it's definitely GOP.

And after that unrigorous observation let me dive into completely unfounded speculation:  First of all, I think Mac is right that if you were a devious Republican inclined to monkeywrench the Democratic nomination, you should rationally be deterred by the prospect of inadvertently picking the wrong one. Then there is the collective action problem. People often don't vote at all because they don't think their vote will matter. How much less likely would you be to vote in another party's primary, when you can't know if there are enough people like you to make a difference?

But the real reason I think there aren't a lot of nefarious Republican party-switchers is this: Most people are tribal. I think of the sneering, well-coiffed women. Or the older man who thought his party was abysmally led, but it was still his party. These people are the most loyal members of their party and identify as Republicans on a personal level that would make changing their registration very difficult psychologically. Enough of these conservative diehards would have to overcome that psychological hurdle, as well as ignore the real possibility it wouldn't work or even backfire, for a large enough number of them to affect the outcome of the Democratic primary. I just find the idea very implausible.

I Feel Safer Now

No one could have foreseen this:

A gun belonging to the pilot of a US Airways plane went off as the aircraft was on approach to land in North Carolina over the weekend, the first time a weapon issued under a federal program to arm pilots was fired, authorities said Monday.

The "accidental discharge" Saturday aboard Flight 1536 from Denver to Charlotte did not endanger the aircraft or the 124 passengers, two pilots and three flight attendants aboard, said Greg Alter of the Federal Air Marshal Service.

"We know that there was never any danger to the aircraft or to the occupants on board," Alter said. ...

[Aviation consultant Mike Boyd] said Saturday's incident could have been much worse. "If that bullet had compromised the shell of the airplane, i.e., gone through a window, the airplane could have gone down," he said.

Of course, nitwits like this guy want every flight crew armed. Since the possibility of a terrorist attack like 9/11 is now effectively zero, the only result of such a policy would be more accidental discharges and intentional shootings in situations that now can be resolved with less than lethal force.

Update 3/25/08:

A bullet fired by a US Airways pilot as his plane was landing in Charlotte penetrated the left side of the cockpit and went completely through the aircraft's exterior shell, according to a report by Charlotte airport police.

The shot was fired at about 11:20 a.m. Saturday, when Flight 1536 from Denver was at an altitude of roughly 8,000 feet and about eight minutes from landing at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport. It was carrying 124 passengers and five crew members.

An airport police officer observed that the bullet pierced the left side of cockpit interior and went through the exterior of the Airbus A319, the police report said. The exit point was visible on the left side of the nose of the aircraft.

From reading around, apparently the consensus is that while putting a hole in your fuselage is not considered best practice, unless it hits a fuel tank it's not going to kill you. But this shot easily could have taken out a window while they were at a higher altitude or hit something critical in the instrument panel, which would be fatal.

Get the fucking guns off the fucking flight deck.

Voter Registration: Final Day

Today is the last day that Pennsylvanians can register to vote in the Democratic primary on April 22. The Obama campaign had a huge number of volunteers on the streets of Philadelphia signing people up. We had so many cards coming back that the Philadelphia County Board of Elections office agreed to stay open until midnight to accept registrations.

It was an amazing day for me. I had four clipboards going at my spot on South Street, and people occasionally still had to wait in line. Which they did willingly. On the corner of 11th & Chestnut, my friends got 35 registrations in 90 minutes. I averaged about 16 per hour. Several people took forms for their friends to fill out, then brought them back. One guy took a form home to his pregnant wife, and I stopped at their house to pick it up on my way back to the office. I was out from 1:30 to 8 p.m.

Total registered today: 123

Total registered 3/15/08-3/24/08: 294.

Update: Read this guy's experience today. And the comments.

Superdelegates Aren't Undecided, Just Waiting

Mr. Super Delegate sez:

The majority of undeclared Supers are just that - undeclared.  It doesn't mean they don't have a clear preference.  Keep that in mind when people are talking about the need for the candidates to lobby or not lobby the Supers more often.  Because the truth is, it's really not that necessary.

According to reliable sources, the guy really is a superdelegate. He explains the (obvious) reasons why superdelegates who have a preference have not yet declared it.

B+ Drunk

88%DRUNKARD

(Via Maryc at World o' Crap.)

Voter Registration: Day 9

I did other stuff for the Obama campaign today that took precedence over voter registration, given that I already met my personal goal for signing up Democratic voters. Tomorrow is the last day. I am devoting the entire day to working for the campaign.

Total so far: Still 171.

Voter Registration: Day 8

Amazing response today. People are really aware they have to register by Monday. Independents who have never in their lives been registered as party supporters are switching.

Voters registered today: 67.
Voters registered since Saturday, March 15: 171

My goal was 150 by Monday.

More tomorrow.