When the brave, visionary leaders of the new United States gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to form a more perfect union, they emerged with a Constitution. Amazing though it was, the Constitution was marred by an enormous and horrible flaw. Those brave, visionary leaders could not bring themselves to count the Black slaves who lived among them as more than three-fifth human nor could they give them a vote. Nor would the descendants of those slaves have the vote until the passage of the Voting Rights...

It looks like Jean Schmidt has dodged another bullet. In 2004, Schmidt lost her Republican primary bid for the Ohio State Senate. The loss was a source of glee for many of her fellow Republican activists in Clermont County, the mostly suburban, somewhat-rural county east of Cincinnati’s Hamilton County. In spite of having been a township trustee and a State Representative from the county’s most populous areas, she lost the county in that race. Her political career was seen as dead. But...

Fox News and NPR have called Ohio for Senator Obama. If that holds true, as I’m sure it will, the race is over. Back in January, 2007, I advocated having Ohio put at the very beginning of the primary process. That advocacy was under-girded by two key facts: * There have been 51 presidential elections since 1804. Ohio has voted with the winner 43 times, an unmatched predictor of electoral success, an 84.3% success rate. Since 1960, that rate goes to 92% and since 1972, when the parties began...

Fox News has just called Ohio for Barack Obama. That’s not a surprise. I live in Hocking County, an hour southeast of Columbus, in the midst of the state’s 22 Appalachian counties. This area is represented by a Democrat in Congress and went for Hillary Clinton in the Ohio primary. White, working-class Appalachians were seen as Hillarycrats or PUMAs, voters who would bolt the Democratic Party and Barack Obama to vote for John McCain today. But in the weeks running up to today’s election,...

My projection of Electoral College… Obama: 409 McCain: 128 [Cross-posted at my personal blog]

I just heard an item on NPR about a woman from West Virginia who gave birth prematurely while out of state. She’s a big McCain supporter and wanted, in her phrase, “to do the right thing” by voting for the senator if she could. So, the social service people at the hospital where the woman delivered the child at 3:30 this morning contacted local election officials in her community, who sent two people–one Republican and one Democrat–to hand-deliver a paper ballot, which...

If the election day goes as expected, come January 20, a Democratic president will be supported by an overwhelmingly-Democratic Congress. When something like this happens, as it has with less frequency in recent decades, it’s the closest we get to a parliamentary system in the United States. Under a parliamentary system, of course, the majority party or parties who form majority coalitions to control the legislative mechanism of a country, “form a government,” installing legislators...

The moment that Vice President Dick Cheney gave his public endorsement of John McCain and Sarah Palin for president and vice president on Saturday, the Obama campaign talked it up and went to work producing a commercial touting it. It’s understandable why the Obama folks would want to call attention to Cheney’s nod for McCain and Palin. Cheney has even lower approval ratings than President Bush and viewed suspiciously by Americans for his secretiveness, his alleged tweaking of intelligence...

So what? It’s seen as an indication that the nation, the economy of which is in something of a free-fall, has negotiated a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), often accused of making steep demands on client nations. If the move and IMF loan can arrest Iceland’s decline, that’s good. My apprehension has been that Iceland would go through with loans for which it was negotiating with Russia. The last thing we want to see happen right now is for nations to become beholden...

Pointing to this article in the UK’s The Telegraph, blogger Ann Althouse wonders, “If there is an Obama landslide, how will the GOP retool?” My thoughts, expanded slightly from my comments there: Although the circumstances surrounding it meant that the 2008 presidential election was and remains the Democrats to lose, this was an opportune year for the Republican Party to retool. In fact, if they were to have any chance of victory in November, retooling was essential.

Okay, I admit it: Part of my indifference to tonight’s debate stems from the fact that I voted yesterday. Ohio, like twenty-nine other states, allows for early voting. It began here on October 6. I like voting early. No line. Walk up, show your identification, fill out two forms, vote, and walk home. So, in a way, for me the election campaign ended yesterday afternoon. But there’s another reason I was indifferent to this evening’s debate. The fact is, this thing is over. Back in...

…and nobody (or almost nobody) showed up? The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry, was in Madison, Wisconsin, where Ann Althouse notes, he came to campaign for Barack Obama. Kerry drew all of 250 people. This, Althouse points out, stands in stark contrast to the 80,000 who came out to see him when he made his own bid for the presidency in 2004. What gives, apart from the fact that Kerry isn’t running for president? I mean, shouldn’t the man who received more...

So much gets lost in the sound bites and finger-pointing of presidential campaigns that it’s sometimes tough to know what the respective candidates really believe–or seem to believe–on various issues. This morning’s Columbus Dispatch has an excellent and readable overview of the McCain and Obama tax proposals. You can find it here. The last few paragraphs especially interested me: William A. Raabe, a tax professor at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business,...

MEMO To: Senator John McCain From: Mark Daniels Re: Unsolicited Advice It’s over, Senator. You know it and I know it. Karl Rove knows it and has fairly well admitted it. So does anybody who knows how to count. And the debate didn’t help. Bitter as the pill is for you to swallow, it is over. In 2000, you were downed by the scurrilous Bush campaign. This year, you’re being mowed down by a political phenomenon and, more significantly, a financial earthquake. Whatever merits or flaws...

The November issue of Consumer Reports, the publication of the independent Consumers Union, contains their analysis of the health care proposals of John McCain and Barack Obama. As the magazine points out, “both plans lack key details.” But, considering what the candidates have said and filling in the blanks with plausible speculation based on the state plans on which Obama and McCain have based their announced programs, the magazine looks at how people in three different situations might...

Accolades: I’ve seen every vice presidential debate since they began. This was the best one ever. It was certainly the most substantive. While both candidates engaged in misconstructions of their opponents’ positions and records, neither was egregious in this. Sarah Palin Didn’t Crash and Burn: I admit that my expectations of Palin going into the evening’s debate were extremely low. I’ve said on this site that while her selection by McCain for his running mate was...

…But I hope that they’ll speak against it. It absolutely creeps me out! The children are sweet, but what religious-like zeal drives adults to compose hymns to a presidential candidate, countenance the songs being taught to them, and watch approvingly? I know that many evangelical Christians meld their faith with their politics and I’ve often spoken against it, both as a Christian and an American. But this video finds approaching politics with a kind of religious fervor. The hope...

…to tell the story of three preachers on a bamboo bike.

[This is a portion of the first part of a series I'm doing over on my own blog regarding the current US financial crisis and our grappling with it.] Only those willing to be seduced are seduced. Nobody persuaded into doing the wrong thing can credibly argue, “He tricked me,” or, “She jumbled my thinking,” or “The devil made me do it.” The evil all around may pull at us, but we are the ones who cave into our inborn tendency to do the wrong thing, no matter what...

In Austria. But giving sixteen year olds the right to vote seems ill-advised. [See my personal blog.]

This promo currently appearing on the Big Ten Network purports to show the conference’s head football coaches on home visits to high school recruiting prospects. I love Penn State coach Joe Paterno’s bit of intense thespianism at the end. Also love Jim Tressel’s, “You do know about our Buckeye leaves…” [Crossposted at my personal blog.]

A few quick reactions to the McCain-Obama debate. “If you like this kind of book, this is the kind of book you will like.” That book review is often attributed to Abraham Lincoln. A paraphrase of it will do in talking about how the debate went on Friday night. If, before the debate, you loved Obama’s positions on the war and domestic issues, you probably still love them. And if you were keen on John McCain going into the debate, you’re probably still keen on him. Neither candidate...

The skepticism of fellow The Moderate Voice blogger Polimom is understandable. All the pieces are in place for John McCain to, sometime tomorrow, be portrayed as the hero who brokered a resolution to the financial crisis acceptable to The White House, Congressional Democrats, and recalcitrant conservative Congressional Republicans. It seems so pat, so obvious, and it just might be true. But I don’t think so. Conservative anger at the proposed White House bailout plan is enormous. Yesterday,...

The thing about a political stunt, I told my son last night, is that if you get away with it, it’s no longer a stunt. It’s bold leadership…keeping in mind that the first mark of a leader is that she or he has followers. John McCain suspended his campaign yesterday, attempting to at least project an image of leadership, if not enacting its substance. Is anybody following? Before giving the obvious answer to that question, it should be said that there is a kind of sense to John McCain...

That’s the title of a useful post written by Asbury Theological Seminary professor, Ben Witherington, on his blog. It may surprise those fed on a regular diet of wrong impressions created by some who claim to speak for all evangelicals or disinformation spooned out by some in the media regarding evangelicals, other Christians, and all theists. Witherington’s advice breaks stereotypes and is non-partisan. One might even call it moderate. His main pieces of advice to evangelical Christians...