What am I?? Chopped liver?? :D

Michale.....

:-)

-CW

"At the core of this convenient setup is "deniability" for the candidate. While surrogates are out there telling the public that the opposition hates puppies,..."

You know that nobody will ever say that about Obama,,, He said how much he liked them in his autobiography , well he did say they can be "tough" but well...

LOL

From the movie Hombre

Audra Favor: Have you ever eaten a dog, Mr. Russell?
John Russell: Eaten one and lived like one.

May I call you "Don"? Hope so, because with our respective last names, I just know I'm going to type "ei" sooner or later and get yours wrong....

First, allow me to welcome you to the site. Your first comment was held for moderation, but from now on you should be able to post your comments instantly. Unless you post two or more links per comment, in which case it will be automatically held for moderation to cut down on comment spam.

As to your points, I am not going to answer them immediately, because you have given me an idea for today's column. So please allow me to write and post it, and then I'll return here and continue the conversation. And let me thank you, up front, for providing me with an idea for a followup column to this one.

:-)

-CW

Genius! Let us know when it comes to market!

-David

Republicans ***AND*** Democrats...

A point that never seems to gain any traction.. :D

Michale.....

--

I don't want to eliminate negative campaigning. I just want to keep it mostly out of the legislative process.

I think a legislature should represent the full range of views of the population, roughly in proportion to their respective numbers. Then, the legislators should deliberate: actually work on how best to reconcile their respective principles. To the extent that deliberation fails, legislators should compromise: advance the higher priorities of all legislators at the expense of their respective lower priorities.

Instead, we seem to have a dynamic that ranges along a spectrum from grandstanding to obstructionism.

I blame the institutions. First and foremost, I blame completely-separate single-seat geographic-district plurality elections. The legislators don't even remotely represent the range of views of the populace. In a plurality election, voters choose (D), (R), or (null). Only the top two candidates have any possibility of winning a simple single-seat election. A third-party vote is just a protest vote.

But the unproportionality of the elections can't be the whole story. A good set of legislative institutions should be able to produce deliberation and compromise among whatever set of legislators the electoral process brings forth.

I still blame the institutions, of course. Second, I blame the lack of multiple degrees of entrenchment of laws. We have three: regulations, statutes, and the Constitution. But in the legislative process, only one of those is at stake. Constitutional amendments do involve action by Congress, but that option normally is out of the picture (except as a rhetorical excuse for not doing what you supposedly favor). As it is, there's no incentive to get more than 61 senators and 218 representatives on board. So there's no benefit in considering the principles or interests of any other legislators, if they can hold together enough to meet the threshold for passage. There should be legislative actions requiring numerous levels of sub-majority and super-majority support, so that no matter how many legislators you have on board there's a possibility of getting by with fewer and doing an action a bit lower on the scale, and a possibility of getting the support of a few more to allow for a stronger action. That would give something to negotiate about.

--

What got me started on this rant was a mention of the Violence Against Women Act on the radio. It sounds as though it was always reauthorized without dispute before, but now the Democrats in the Senate have put in some provisions the Republicans are sure to reject, as a way of getting traction for the "war on women" campaign theme.

That's how things work under the current rules. The options are to play hardball politics in a way that utterly stinks, or simply lose. Perhaps to their credit, the Democrats are habitual losers. Of course, they may just do it out of sheer incompetence. Here we have an example of them doing it the way the system virtually requires, which will almost certainly gain them some advantage. I can't blame them for that, since the results of just losing are worse. But it still stinks. They should at least be trying to change the system, too.

The question is what they should be trying to change the system to. I think my suggestions are necessary, but far from sufficient.

Your article neglects a significant historical difference in negative political advertizing, viz. the use of ever increasingly sophisticated polling methods to guide the ads. Along with the constant of human vulnerability to manipulation by hateful and/or fearsome ads, the effectiveness of these ads is enhanced by information gained from polls and focus groups.

Political operatives want to know what we think so they can tell us the lie we will believe. Or in more detail, they put up an ad campaign trashing something someone said or did, do a poll to see if it is helping their polling numbers, and based on that decide how to modify the ads and spend more money on placing them.

The problem with PACs, SuperPACs, and lobbying is that the people who bankroll the campaigns are the people whose wishes are heard by the candidates who get elected. To the extent that candidates who get elected have integrity they care and try to follow the wishes of their constituencies. But that's not how they get elected or stay in office. That because the great bulk of their money comes from a relatively few big contributors. And it's the money that gets them elected.

One way to undercut that is to eliminate the value that they get by spending that money on the ad campaigns guided by polls. Reducing access to accurate polling information will make those campaigns less effective, i.e. the value gained by money special interests can be reduced by denying political campaigns polling information.

Don

Forgot to say, hadn't heard about the pig charms, but one wonders if this saying wasn't later "cleaned up" to be: "in a pig's eye"... you can easily see what the original would have been. Heh.

Also, forget who (Harrison, maybe? Not sure if B or WH...) but the coolest campaign gimmicky thing was when a candidate was ridiculed for living in a log cabin (long before Lincoln used it), and "drinking hard cider". He then adopted the slur as a campaign slogan and started handing out little bottles shaped like a log cabin filled with hard cider. Heh heh.

:-)

-CW

Coincidentally enough, the Jackson campaign was the first ever to use campaign paraphernalia such as buttons and scarves (and even wallpaper, believe it or not!)....

:-)

Your friend have anything from 1828? Or 1832? I'd love to see such items!

-CW

Sorry, forgot to add the visual

http://sweasel.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/mmmm.jpg

:D

Michale.....

Or, get your TV thru other means.. Sans commercials :D

I highly recommend that option. I don't think the wife and I have seen a television commercial in 8 years..

The newly-defined "super PAC" structure is this year's big change, of course. But this is really just a new bottle containing some very old wine (or, perhaps, "whine").

And yet, when the Citizens United ruling came down, the howls around here reached a crescendo!! You would have thought that End Of Days was amongst us to read the posts around here..

Go figger, eh? :D

While surrogates are out there telling the public that the opposition hates puppies,

or, in some cases, EATS puppies. :D Ya gotta admit, THAT one was pretty damn funny... :D

The only real difference in 2012 may be the sheer amount of money being spent on the outside groups. Citizens United has opened the floodgates for such money to pour into these "unofficial" campaign organizations, and they will be spending hundreds of millions of dollars before we all head off to the polls in November.

The funny thing is, the floodgates of money only seem to be going to Romney. The Obama campaign seems to be lucky just to get a plug nickel...

It's simply the Hoo-Hum season... Democrats will scream and yell that Republicans want to murder seniors in their beds and Republicans will yell and scream (as opposed to scream and yell) that Democrats want to take terrorists to tea....

((((yaaaaawwwwnnnnn))) Let's see what's on ONCE UPON A TIME tonight. Love that Rumplestiltskin... :D

Michale.....

I think it might be fun to start a superPAC and re-release such a charm modified to the current campaign. Purely for nostalgic reasons of course...