O Senator, My Senator

My take on Hillary Clinton:

I was ultimately surprised by the selection of Senator Clinton to maybe the top cabinet post in Obama's new administration. I was even more surprised by the awful roll-out they had for her, where everyone new about it two weeks ahead of time. But since whatever Hillary Clinton does will probably not have a huge impact, we should all be paying attention to something much more important: Who New York's next Senator is.


I believe that upstate NY will not truly receive the attention it needs from its US Senators (god knows Schumer didn't do much for us, and Clinton even less) until someone who HAS upstate NY in their best interests is either appointed to or wins a seat.

Some folk say Byron Brown, current Mayor of Buffalo -- I say: "You're kidding, right?" Brown's tenure in Buffalo has been a disaster, with the Mayor having been caught politicizng things that shouldn't be politicized (the latest is hiring is city hall goons to knock off Harvey Garret from the WSNHS's board).

And contrary to popular belief, knocking down a bunch of shitty houses doesn't qualify you as a reformer. It just makes you someone who knocks down shitty houses.

Maybe it's the social worker in me, but until Buffalo does something to address the ROOT of the problem -- the fact that too much of this city is in deep poverty, or functionally illiterate, or unemployed -- until these things are taken on, it won't matter how many empty vacant lots occupy spots where drug deals used to take place in abandoned houses. It won't matter.

And Byron Brown hasn't done that. Therefore, he should have no place legislating on behalf of our great state, let alone governing our city.

Ideally, Brian Higgins, a true champion of Buffalo and WNY, would receive the appointment to Clinton's Senate seat. But it probably won't happen.

The Emerging Democratic Majority

Here's something to ponder:


A lot of Republican party apologists have been discussing how 2008 is like 1992 (complete with Clinton Administration familiars running around the picture in regards to Obama), and how 2010 will be akin to the 1994 Republican landslide in terms of mid-terms, or at least on par with the Democrats in 2006, which helped longshots and previously unknown figures like Jim Webb and Jon Tester (Virginia and Montana, respectively) into the national spotlight.

But 2008 is not 1992 -- and while history may get repeated every now and then, 2010 will not be as favorable to the Republicans as some may believe. Here's why:


1) There is no strong Republican leadership a la Newt Gingrich


Republican leadership right now is not in shambles, but it is in a difficult situation, complete with a divided party in regards to what direction the GOP takes. John Boehner is facing a challenge for his post as Minority Leader -- and while it will likely fail, it indicates the divide that has risen all the way to the upper echelons of GOP leaders.

The big race though is for the chairmanship, where current chair Mike Duncan wants everyone to forget about the shitty job he's already done and give him another two years. Michael Steele, failed Lt. Gov, failed Senate candidate in Maryland, and current GOPAC Chairman is his biggest challenger right now. Some people are making a big deal right now cause he's one of the five black Republicans left in this nation, but I don't see that as a factor.

2) Barack Obama has heeded the mistakes Bill Clinton made in his first two years

Clinton was overly ambitious and a little too ideological before the 1994 mid-terms, which allowed Republicans to capitalize on his mistakes and make a mockery of the
administration. It is clear that Obama is already being much more careful about making sure to look bipartisan and take a bipartisan approach, even with the Democratic majorities in congress (In a way, Obama MUST do this due to the magnitude of the problems the new President will face).


3) Democrats will still hold an advantage in terms of the Senate seats which will be up for grabs in 2010


The Pennsylvania race is one example -- if Arlen Specter wins, it'll be another moderate Republican back to the senate that Obama actually has a chance to work with. If he loses the primary, this one becomes a potential Democratic pickup. No win situation here for GOP hardliners. 2004 Dem pickups like Ken Salazar in Colorado have high approval ratings, and are likely safe.

GOP held seats in Alaska (Murkowski) and Kentucky (Bunning, who narrowly scraped by last election) will likely be competitive -- we might see Palin attempt to run for Senate, and Bunning will probably retire making it an open seat).

North Carolina, a trending Democratic state, as well as Florida, have Republican
incumbents who may face tough challengers. Democrats like Russ Feingold and Patty Murray have enough of a cushion (both got 10+ point wins in 04) to probably be safe.

The GOP will almost certainly see some kind of gain in the House, but I see a filibuster proof Senate for President Obama in his final two terms. After everything is said and done, we will have either 58 or 59 Democratic Senate seats heading into '10.

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PREDICTION: Token Celebrity who runs for national in office in 2010...

1998: Jesse Ventura
2003: Ahnold Schwarzenegger
2008: Al Franken
2010: Donald Trump

Thought of the Day

Western New Yorkers must REALLY be satisfied with the status quo --- Career politicians Stachowski, Ranzenhofer, and Volker were all re-elected to the State Senate.

Election Review!

First off, let me point out that in the vast universe of polling out there --- one national tracking poll nailed it. That is, understandably, Rasmussen Reports, who called it at 52-46 on the day of the election. Spot on, Scott Ras.



Secondly, my own prediction --- I got Ohio wrong, where I thought that McCain was going to edge Obama by the narrowest of margins. My reason for this was that even when Obama was leading 6-8 points in the national polls, his Ohio margins just wern't getting up to those same numbers. He would be leading by 1 or 2 in Ohio, or it might be a dead tie the same day Gallup or Ras showed him leading by 6-10 points.

But Obama's ability to heavily turn out urban voters -- white and black -- put him over the top, and counteracted any significant strengths McCain had in rural areas. Barack Obama performed 9 points better among Urban white voters according to Pew Research, and it showed.

Like everyone else, I also got Indiana wrong. That was probably the biggest surprise of election night, in addition to the new official revelation that Obama has in fact, won Nebraska's second congressional district, earning him a single more electoral vote. This is fascinating because it points out an oddity in the American EV system, where Maine and Nebraska allocate their EVs by congressional district, rather than a winner-take-all that the other 48 states use. I hope all the data comes in soon so we can see what the EV count would have been had the entire nation used the congressional-district method. In 2000 and 2004, the result of the election wouldn't have been changed from using that method.

I was satisfied with my other predictions -- I got Nevada, Colorado, Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina correct. Nevada was a big surprise to me -- simply because the margin of victory, which many polling companies showed was a single digit race, ended up being a 13-point landslide for Barack. Wonder what happened in the polling there.


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Regarding local races, I'll be the first to wipe the egg of my face in regards to the NY-26 congressional race. After two close ones with Jack Davis and Tom Reynolds, I was expecting the anti-Republican sentiment and Kryzan's strong ability to close (as shown in the primary) to evolve itself into a Democratic victory. But that's not what we saw -- instead, Chris Lee won comfortably. If anything, this goes to show that either Kryzan was an extremely unappealing candidate, or that NY-26 is more conservative than originally thought.

I nailed the Stachowski-Delano race --- WNY made a good choice putting in someone who actually understands the issues and will be a good Finance Committee chairman.

Unfortuantely, Konst went down to Volker, and Mesi, who at least had a better grasp of the issues than Delano, lost a close election to Ranzenhofer.

Brian Higgins continues to be an asset to Buffalo, and that was recognized with his massive victory against Humiston.

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Under a Barack Obama presidency, we have the opportunity to see a real change in government. Like any politician, we need to hold President-Elect Obama accountable in increasing government transparency, getting rid of the Bush Executive Orders that are certain to come in his final months, and beginning the process to end the Iraq War.



As for this blog, I will continue discussing national and local politics, most likely with more emphasis on the latter as the campaign season has ended. But I will be keeping up to date with everything Obama does, and giving you the straight-talk as to how I see things as the months go by.

If you have anything you want to yell at me about, send me an email: WBNYSLATTERY at GMAIL dot com.

The Final Update

A Final Update / What To Look For




In this final update, I'll make my predictions for Election Day tomorrow, in addition to some final observations and personal analysis of how the race is folding up.

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Right-wing pundits and media members complain, with good reason, that the media has already called this race for Obama. And looking at the coverage, they pretty much have. The media reports on the polls, and the polls are overwhelmingly in favor of Obama. Could the polls be wrong? Possibly. But ARE they wrong? Probably not.

Obama's decisively winning the polls in enough states that put his Electoral Vote (EV) total over 270 --- the amount needed to win the nomination. The remaining 100 or so EVs up for grabs in states like Missouri, Florida, Ohio, Montana(!!!), Nevada, and North Carolina are really all for show if the polls aren't lying right now.

There is but one way John McCain can win -- and that is if his overall national support is much higher than the polls are saying -- if there really is a mass number of "undecided" voters that are secretly preferring McCain, or if the fabled "Bradley Effect" will be real come the evening of November 4th.

A trend like this in favor of McCain will not just be in Pennsylvania or Florida, but across the entire nation. Here's how you'll be able to tell -- before your friends -- that we might be in for a long election night:

6:00 PM - Indiana is decisively called for McCain as soon as the polls close, or if the state is called for McCain within 15-20 minutes. The polls in Indiana have narrowed considerably, and while I still expect McCain to win, I expect it to be a victory under 5 points, which means the state wouldn't be called for a while.

7:00 PM - Virginia wil undoubtedly be too close to call. The state won't be called for a long time, but if it DOES get called for McCain within an hour or so, it might not be a good sign for Obama.

7:00 PM - New Hampshire. If New Hampshire is too close to call after an hour, or if McCain has a lead in the state, then it is likely Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida all either be too close to call, or leaning towards McCain.

All this in the first 2 hours of election coverage, from 6 to 8 PM EST. I am skeptical something like this will happen. Very skeptical. I believe the media will be afraid to call the battleground states too early, and will err on the side of caution as voting will not be finished on the West Coast (battlegrounds like Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico). The media does NOT want to be seen as spoiling this election like 2000. Unless a state can be DECISIVELY called for one candidate, expect stations to let votes get counted for a couple hours in each state.

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Regarding strategy, I don't think there was much McCain could have done. He's thrown the kitchen sink, and the local radio right-wing nutballs are in full-scale panic mode. This afternoon I was mostly listening to WNED and OnPoint, but I tuned into hear WBEN's own Sandy "Bigoted Conspiracy Theorist" Beach, and no later than 10 seconds into listening did I hear the Obama / Hitler comparisons. Must be mandatory on WBEN.

I think about a week ago is when most voters finally made up their minds, or at least started leaning towards one candidate or the other --- no October Surprise (ILLEGAL OBAMA AUNT LIVING IN SECTION 8 HOUSING?) caused enough headlines to scare away uncommitted voters from Obama's column.

I also conclude that early voting has been a success for the Obama campaign. African Americans and younger voters have turned out in higher numbers than 2004, and while it doesn't predict election day trends, it's a good sign. Though I expect some states (North Carolina, for example) to have a Republican lean on actual Nov 4th voting.

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LOCAL RACES

The local races have been interesting to watch in the final week of campaigning --
Stachowski's campaign went from practically invisible to finally doing some GOTV efforts, visibility in concentrated urban areas (a LOT of Stachowski support on Buffalo's West Side), and the media finally digging into the fact that Dennis "Hambeast" Delano has never actually taken a stance on any issue, in addition to refusing to debate. I predict Stachowski narrowly retains his State Senate seat -- by a 5 point margin or less.

Unfortunately, I think Dale "Strom Thurmond of the NY GOP" Volker will retain his seat against Kathy Konst, though Konst may outperform in terms of the vote count. I don't think I've seen a more dismally run campaign than Konst in my entire tenure of living in Buffalo.

I think the Joe Mesi / Mike Ranzenhofer matchup is really a tossup, but I give the edge of Mikey based off a Siena College poll released yesterday, which showed Ranz leading by 3 points. Mesi has run a strong campaign, and a severe anti-Republican sentiment this year may end up throwing Ranz out of the NY Legislature. I'd bet on the Republican in this race, but Mesi may very well provide an upset.

Another term of Sam Hoyt is all but guaranteed. Good! I think.

The NY-26 race between Kryzan and Lee is coming to an end, and I give a decisive edge to Alice "Love Canal" Kryzan in this one. I was a Powers volunteer during the primaries, so I was a little lukewarm towards Alice at the beginning, but she's proven herself to be a competent campaigner, a deepyl intellectual person who understands the nuances of policy, and a true, unashamed liberal. Chris Lee will NOT be up late waiting for results in this one -- Kryzan wins easily.

In Ny-27, my congressional district, Brian Higgins should thoroughly romp Brett "Tanning Is Good 4 U" Humiston. The only question is who will Higgins select as his campaign manager when he takes over for Schumer's Senate seat? (hey, I can dream, right?)

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And finally --- my Presidential Electoral Map for tomorrow night. When it's all said and done, this is what I think it will look like (disclaimer: I will likely be dead wrong, but I reserve the right to brag if I do get it right).

OBAMA: 334
MCCAIN: 204

Fountry Cirst

We're under one week to go --- aaannnddd not much has changed since last week.


The new line from the pundits is that "THE RACE IS TIGHTENING." Not really. Instead of an 8 point lead, we might have a 5-6 point lead on our hands, but Barack Obama hasn't lost any support. The national tracking polls have shown a slight rise for McCain, which, let's face

it, was pretty much inevitable when McCain was polling between 42 and 44 percent for the past seven months.

Nate Silver pointed out recently that the IBD/TIPP polling company -- their 18-29 year-old subsample was suspicious -- in that one day, the poll showed that age group choosing John McCain over Barack Obama by a 75-25 margin. Hmmm. Simple margin of error is not enough to cause that kind of a swing, so there had to be something wrong with their methodology.

Today, IBD/TIPP has --- uh, 'corrected' their process, I suppose. Here's a statement from the company itself:

"Raghavan Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica, told me he was equally surprised by the results, saying the widespread perception that Obama is leading by a large margin in that group “is my perception, too.” He blamed the result on a small sample size. Each daily tracking poll includes about 1,000 interviews spread over the prior five days; each day a new set of survey respondents is added and the oldest set is discarded.

Ideally, Mayur would like to have 75 of all those respondents fall into the youngest age range. Some pollsters would have preferred more; this age group makes up 13% of the adult population, though its voting rate historically has been lower than average. His sample fell far short even of his lower goal, typically including just 25 to 30 respondents from age 18 to 24 — meaning just five or six new interviews with these young voters were being conducted each day. “We are not able to get to speak to as many as we would like to in that group,” he said.

He blamed that on several factors. For one thing, nearly one-third of adults in that age range lack landline phones, and Mayur’s pollsters don’t dial cellphones. (He points out that when calling cellphones, the chance that the person who picks up lacks a landline and is in the relevant age range is quite low.) Furthermore, among those who do live in households with landlines, young people may be away at school or in the military, Mayur said.

This small sample size at first didn’t trouble Mayur, as Obama led among these voters in the first three tracking polls. But when the results started to break McCain’s way as suddenly and dramatically as they did, Mayur began to question his own methodology. On the day McCain’s lead widened in this group to 52 points, Mayur added a footnote to the 18-to-24-year-old group: “Age 18-24 has much fluctuation due to small sample size.” He says he didn’t add a similar one to the Jewish subgroup, with just half the sample size as the young voters, because the Jews in his sample consistently stated a preference for Obama, as he expected."

The bigger problem is his solution:

"This week Mayur took two steps to expand the sample size of young voters. His pollsters are asking those who answer the phone to put the youngest member of the household on. They are also dialing households expected to have young voters, found by cross-listing white-pages listings with drivers’ registration data. “We have always preferred using random-digit dialing sample,” Mayur said. “I am adapting to this new challenge with these modified tactics.” In the two polls since the change, the trend has reversed itself: Obama now leads by double digits. "

The first step is fine, but its flaw is that it's not a random person under 30, it's just the youngest in the household. If I live in a home with two folks under 30, it's not random. You might think this is minor, but it matters. Soooo --- we can conclude the guy's sampling was suspiciously low on voters aged 18-29, his new weighting is still lower than the youth vote will probably be, he didn't technically fix his sample size at all.

And the worst of all, he didn't fix anything until a suspicous sample forced him to. And the way he fixed it is error-ridden and un-transparent. More new problems could emerge from it, and it certainly doesn't address whatever sampling error caused the problem in the first place.

Death by a thousand papercuts. Don't look at the IBD/TIPP poll anymore.

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Barack Obama had a nice soft-lens, inoffensive 30 minute infomercial tonight that has little (probably zero) potential for backlash that was clearly aimed at uncommitted voters who were already leaning towards Obama. The hardliners against Obama are pretty much set in stone -- they're feeding off every possible attack they can get on the guy.

Today, WBEN Right-Wing Demagogue Tom Bauerle just went off -- calling Obama a--- and I quote ---- "Radical Kenyan-Born Marxist." He then proceeded to equate Obama and his followers to HITLER. Yes, he went there.

My point is -- the constant attacks from the right-wing, from Palin and McCain about Obama's associations, and all of the Republican surrogates calling Obama a Marxist -- these are not attacks that can make undecided and independent voters more likely to vote for McCain. They are attacks that will do nothing but fire up the anti-Obama base, which isn't enough to carry the election.


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Finally, regarding undecided voters waiting until the last few days: McCain will likely win this group, but not by any significant margin like 2 to 1. At best, McCain could win this group 60-40, and gain 2 points on election day. But among late deciders, history shows that they rarely go to one candidate by any huge margin.

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More to come this weekend. Election day on Tuesday -- if you live in a state which allows early voting, I highly recommend doing it. Waiting 2 hours in line to vote is better than waiting 5.

Politico has a fascinating article up right now that any Obama supporter worrying about getting complacent should NOT read. It’s called “Blame Game: GOP forms circular firing squad,” and it gives an inside look to what McCain insiders, campaign workers, and several high profile GOP strategists are saying – that McCain is not looking good for the Arizonan.

Even the campaign itself, which is supposed to be upbeat and confident about their ability to win, sounds nearly defeated in this statement:

“We have a real chance in Pennsylvania. We are in trouble in Colorado, Nevada and Virginia. We have lost Iowa and New Mexico. We are OK in Missouri, Ohio and Florida. Our voter intensity is good and we can match their buy dollar for dollar starting today till the election. It’s a long shot but it’s worth fighting for.”

I honestly don’t understand the reasoning behind saying that they have a “real chance” in Pennsylvania. By all accounts, they’re down 7-8 points in the Keystone State, and have a better chance at picking off Colorado or Virginia. The campaign also seems to assume that they’ll win North Carolina (likely, but not set in stone by any means).

It’s a campaign where the lack of any coherent long term strategy is starting to become apparent – McCain’s got nothing. It’s been a series of tactics to win media cycles that have proven fruitless. More than anything else, he’s hoping to either get a hold of some kind of narrative which will allow every GOP surrogate and campaign official to be on message and attack Obama relentlessly (Remember how the Democrats seized upon McCain’s housing gaffe, where he couldn’t remember the number of mansions he owns? That’s what his campaign needs, only against Obama).

But we likely won’t see that materialize – instead, we have GOP talking points ranging from charges of socialism to associations with former 60’s radicals. The best route that is left for Republicans to take is to hold out an audacity of hope that Obama’s supporters will not turn out heavily on election day, and that there will be some kind of “Bradley Effect” that will put an extra point or 2 on McCain’s totals.