When California’s Supreme Court decision nixed a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage the question immediately raised by some talk show radio hosts was: will this be back now as a big campaign 2008 wedge issue?

The likely answer: back…yes…….but not quite..because voters have a few teenie-weenie other things on their minds this year. The Associated Press has come to the same conclusion:

[NOTE: An earlier version of this story had this link attributed to the New York Times. That was an error, due to a reference from a Times story on the ruling that was cut in favor of using the more recent AP piece. We regret the error.]

Yesterday’s California Supreme Court decision striking down a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage reintroduces a hot-button social issue into the presidential campaign.

Republicans used same-sex marriage to great political effect in 2004, putting proposed bans on the ballot in Ohio and other states to get conservatives to the polls. But now it will have to compete for attention with the economy, the Iraq war, and other issues.

Indeed, there were already rumblings yesterday reflected in some news reports and on some talk shows of some thinking of trying to put a new measure on the ballot and of a court challenge to the California ruling.

But the dynamics are different this year:

And impact of the gay marriage issue could be muted, not just because neither the Democratic front-runner, Barack Obama, nor the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, support gay marriage, but because McCain’s opposition to a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage - on federalist grounds - makes it more difficult for the right to get a lot of traction out of it.

Still, the issue is likely to come up in some races (or be raised by the so-called “independent” groups that make commercials to support or negatively define candidates). And you can already see how even this clear-cut California court ruling can be spun.

“California Court Strips Children of Right to Mother and Father,” declares the headline of Cybercast News Service’s hot-button-pushing article which declares “the court does not recognize that children have any right whatsoever to a mother and a father. In the decision, the California court sees children primarily through the eyes of same-sex couples who want to secure custody and control of children. The court makes emphatically clear that it deems this to be a right of same-sex couples that is equal to–and identical to–the right of married mothers and fathers to adopt or conceive and raise their own children.”

Spin is spin is spin…

So will it become another wedge issue used against the Democrats as hot buttons are pushed and voters cast their votes on this issue?
Read the rest of this entry »

Z.L. (usually lowercase) stands for Zachor Livracha (may his memory be for a blessing).

Washington Post:

Rep. Tom Lantos, 80, a California Democrat whose experience during the Holocaust shaped his concern for human rights and his staunch view in favor of U.S. military intervention abroad, died early this morning, a spokeswoman told the Associated Press. He had esophageal cancer and died at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.

Lantos, born in Budapest to Hungarian Jews, served 14 terms in the House of Representatives. He is the only Holocaust survivor elected to Congress. His district included southwest San Francisco and much of San Mateo County, where he was known for supporting the socially liberal agenda of his constituents. Last year, he announced he would not seek reelection because of his cancer treatment.

Lantos was a powerful figure on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, where he had been the senior Democratic member since 2001 and its chairman since 2007.

For years, he sided with Republican neoconservatives who believe the United States should assert democracy abroad and use the military to intervene when a moral imperative or national interest is at stake.

In 2002, he supported the congressional resolution that authorized President Bush to invade Iraq and played a decisive role to gain Democratic support for the measure.

On the House floor at the time, he noted his own past as a Nazi-resistance fighter. “Had the United States and its allies confronted Hitler earlier, had we acted sooner to stymie his evil designs, the 51 million lives needlessly lost during that war could have been saved,” he said. “Just as leaders and diplomats who appeased Hitler at Munich in 1938 stand humiliated before history, so will we if we appease Saddam Hussein today.”

But after the Democrats gained control of Congress in 2006, Lantos became increasingly critical about the direction of the war and called for large withdrawals of American troops. He also held more than a dozen hearings on the situation.

The (NYC) Jewish Week:

Capitol Hill veterans describe Lantos - courtly, loquacious but tough - as a throwback to an earlier generation of lawmakers who were able to work across party and ideological lines.

The reaction from Jewish groups to the news was swift.

“For years people have looked to Congressman Tom Lantos as the conscience of the United States Congress,” said Rabbi Steve Gutow, executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA). “Chairman Lantos was a leader on so many issues of concern to the Jewish community such as anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and Israel.”

William Daroff, vice president for public policy of the United Jewish Communities (UJC), said Lantos “was a great friend of the Jewish community and the Jewish Federation system. As Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Lantos steered a steady ship during a particularly tumultuous time in American foreign policy.”

“We mourn the loss of Congressman Lantos,” said Nathan Diament, Washington director for the Orthodox Union. “He was a proud supporter of Israel and a proud Jew. His presence will be sorely missed.”

In announcing his expected retirement last month, Lantos said “It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a Member of Congress. I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country.”

Change is the lodestar of this presidential campaign season.

The notion of change is, of course, an integral part of the campaign of practically every non-incumbent candidate, but the degree to which it suffuses the 2008 contest is extraordinary.

For starters, the Democratic nominee will be either a woman or an African-American for the first time, and there is a very good chance that one of them will be the next president.

As the result of a presidential regime whose signal accomplishment has been to alienate the public, long-term economic trends that further threaten the viability of the middle class and a feeling that today’s challenges are beyond the grasp of institutions that are supposed to help see us through hard times, voters thirst for change even if they are unsure about what that should be.

Barack Obama, of course, has turned what seemed to be an improbable quest into the big story of the primaries because of the power of his own message of change.

But not commented on is what this message means to Washington insiders – the media bigshots, consultants and other camp followers – who are confronted with the prospect of having to deal with, as well as possibly accommodate, Obama’s army of bright-eyed idealists for whom politics is a passion and not a paycheck.

These are the insiders whom Atrios derisively calls the Villagers. They are the permanent, self aggrandizing inside the beltway clique for whom change, except for the abstraction of a stump speech or television commercial, and the quadrennial shuffle of used-up candidates in and out, is anathema because this clique grows more incestuous by the campaign cycle and views the voting public as a bunch of rubes to be diddled.

The Hillary Clinton and John McCain organizations are joined at the hip with this clique, while Obama can be viewed as a threat to its monopoly on how the game is played and how the players are rewarded.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some odds and ends, in no particular order, as we motor away from Super Tuesday into The Great Unknown:

Silliest Concern Going into Super Tuesday: That Hillary Clinton would win California because the people who attended a primary eve Grateful Dead fundraiser for Barack Obama would be so wacked out the next day that they wouldn’t make it to the polls.

Silliest Concern Coming Out of Super Tuesday: That evangelical blabbermouth James Dobson will have a major say in the November election.

The Ugly Rearing of Head Award: Goes to the return of the destructive identity politics have has dogged the Democratic Party in the past. Exit polls showed that most women voted for Clinton and most blacks for Obama.

Amazing Factoid: Obama has more money on hand than all of the other candidates in both parties combined, or at least until Mitt Romney writes himself another check.

Speaking of Money: Romney has spent $1.6 million per delegate.

The Big Super Tuesday Dig Award: Goes to former White House mouthpiece Ari Fleischer for saying that “There is no doubt . . . we hope and pray every night to run against Hillary Clinton.”

The Gratuitous Super Tuesday Dig Award: Goes to Clinton for saying that “I want to thank all my friends and family—particularly my mother, who was born before women could vote and is watching her daughter on this stage tonight.”

Phantoms of the Opera: Come Democratic Convention time, will those blackballed Michigan and Florida delegates matter?

Read the rest of this entry »

Has anyone speculated on how many of the millions of absentee ballots that have been cast across the Super Tuesday states were cast for John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Bill Richardson or Dennis Kucinich, all of whom have withdrawn from their party’s race for the presidential nomination?

This article outlines the mess in New Jersey, where some counties are allowing absentee voters to vote a second time if their first ballot was cast for a candidate who is now out of the race. But most of the state’s counties are not allowing that re-do.

When New Jersey moved its primary forward from June to February, the common conception was that Garden State primary votes might carry more weight early in the 2008 Presidential race.

Now, in some counties, those votes might carry none at all.

A judge in Ocean County ruled Thursday that voters who cast absentee ballots for candidates who have since withdrawn from the 2008 presidential race can get replacement absentee ballots before Tuesday’s primary.

But the ruling only applies specifically to Ocean County, and the decision for the rest of the ballots is up to the clerks of the other 20 counties in New Jersey.

This California paper editorial says that second chances shouldn’t be allowed.

The pollsters will tell us how previous Edwards and Giuliani supporters voted at the precincts today, but we’ll never know how things might have been different if the absentee voters had been able to designate their second Super Tuesday choices.

There also could be quite a few Californians who would like to change their votes on candidates or ballot measures because of what they have seen in late TV ads, last-minute mailers or even newspaper articles. But all things considered, it’s probably best that the absentee votes are locked in. That’s because the mailers that reached your door late last week or Monday are about as trustworthy as a flea-market laptop.

Here’s the Los Angeles Times’ Pat Morrison on the topic of early birds missing out:

The chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party sent an e-mail reminder that “absentee ballots will save valuable time and money in the final weeks of the campaign and help busy people to remember to cast their ballots.”

Save time? Excuse me. The country asks its citizens to sit up and pay a little attention to politics every four years, rather than choosing a president by the venerable “one potato, two potato” method, and you can’t spare the time to check the headlines for a few more days? If voters can’t get to the polls before or after work, California law requires employers to give them a maximum two hours’ paid time off to vote.

Save money? What’s a stamp cost now, 41 cents? As for remembering, with political news wallpapering the world, who can forget that there’s an election on?

A call from my mother this morning prompted me to ask this question.

First, she wanted to know if I’d voted yet. I said no - I’m in Ohio - our primary isn’t until March 4.

Then she told me that she and my father had long ago cast their Connecticut absentee ballots - for John Edwards.

Then she told me that she’d heard that California was in receipt of at least 2 million absentee ballots already and that, given it’s California, very likely, many of those are for John Edwards.

So - now what?

We make such a big deal - rightly so I believe - that every vote should count.

We make such a big deal - rightly so I believe - that too few people and often only the hardest of hardcore wonks and voters in any political party vote in primaries.

We make such a big deal - rightly so I believe - about the insecurities in our voting system that we’ve encouraged record numbers of people to vote absentee.

And then, John Edwards (and Rudy, Fred, Dennis, Bill Richardson - did I miss anyone?) drops out. Before Super Tuesday. But after millions of people have cast absentee ballots. Many of which will be for him.

So - now what? Any good suggestions? Other than being upset, angry, not surprised or otherwise shrugging it off?

In what is shaping up as one of the most dramatic moments in American political history, pre-Super Tuesday primary polls show the race between Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination is tightening, while Republican Senator John McCain is apparently poised to solidify his hold as the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Polls and interpretations vary. Is there an Obama surge? Or has Obama’s momentum stalled? Is Clinton’s hold slipping away? Or is she so far ahead in the states that matter that Obama’s showing will be mere stagecraft? And can hard-core conservatives and talk show hosts deprive McCain of what now seems within his grasp?

The Washington Post shows a nail-biter on the Democratic side and growing GOP consensus that McCain is the one:
Read the rest of this entry »

Did any of the Republican presidential primary candidates tonight during the final GOP debate before Super Tuesday sound like they really want this job, have dreamed of this job, have desired and thought about what they could accomplish for so many in such a role before, oh, say, they started running for the job (including John McCain)?

If they have, it is not coming through.

I’ve heard GOP talking heads describe their field as having people who would make “fine presidents,” but don’t we deserve better than fine?

Are Americans really prepared to elect a Black president? According to this op-ed article from France’s Sunday newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche au Quotidien, if Barack Obama does manage to reach the White House, ‘it will be because his case eases the very conscience of the country … and something really essential will have changed in the United States.’

“Is the United States ready to elect a Black president? In two centuries, only two Blacks have been elected governors. … If Obama does maintain his lead throughout this campaign, it will be because his case eases the very conscience of the country.

The Chronicle of Gilles Delafon

Translated By Pascaline Jay

December 23, 2007

France - Le Journal du Dimanche au Quotidien - Original Article (French)

Is the United States ready to elect a Black president? In two centuries, only two Blacks have been elected governors in the country. So President? … probably not.

Yet a week before the kickoff to the race for the White House, the Democratic senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, born of a Kenyan father, is favored in the polls. He now outstrips his rival Hillary Clinton in the state of Iowa, where the first primary will take place on January 3rd. [Actually, Iowa holds a caucus rather than a primary ]. He’s also catching up in New Hampshire, where voters will decide on the 8th.

Better still, he’s so far the only Democrat that can beat all of his potential Republican rivals on Election Day. This is the hour of Obama. With his freshness and his spirit of “openness,” he says that once elected, he’s prepared to reach out to Republicans, such as Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Prudence is called for, however. Iowa is an epiphenomenon blown out of proportion by hungry media pugilists. Barely 130,000 voters will decide these polls, and they are hardly determinative. Four years ago, Democrat Howard Dean was the odds-on-favorite in Iowa until he confronted maneuvering by supporters of John Kerry. [Most would argue that it was Dean’s famous “scream” and the reaction of the media to it that did him in].

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US

George W. Bush started out to be Ronald Reagan, morphed into Richard Nixon and, toward the end, is starting to resemble Herbert Hoover.

The shanties, shacks and cardboard shelters in communities spawned by the Great Depression and known as Hoovervilles are showing up in 21st century America as a result of the sub-prime mortgage crisis that has doubled foreclosures of homes in the past year.

“Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes,” Reuters reports, “sits ‘tent city,’ a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.

“The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis.”

Cross-posted from my blog. Read more here.

Dracula has risen from the grave.

Just when you think Dracula is dead, he rises again. He rises to prey, suddenly on the unsuspecting and unprepared — and suck their blood.

Now, just when Californians thought a widely-condemned and widely-characterized-as-partisan attempt to make California a special place where the usual rules of winner-take-all electoral college Presidential tallies would not apply was dead….it has arisen again.

With new fat-cat (Republican) financiers.

Its aim: to scuttle the winner-take-all electoral college vote distribution in California. Or, some believe, to suck the Democrats into battling it when it’s on the ballot as an initiative and to suck their financial resources so there will be fewer big bucks left for the general election, even if the initiative is beaten back.

Max Follmer writes in the Huffington Post:

Democratic Party activists responded with renewed concern Monday to the news that reports of the death of a GOP initiative to divide California’s electoral votes had been greatly exaggerated, and that a new round of financing from wealthy Republicans had resurrected the proposal.

The Republican proposal would alter the method of apportioning California’s 55 electoral votes, moving from a winner-take-all system based on the popular vote to one that awards one vote for each congressional district a candidate wins.

Such a plan would alter the political geography of the current presidential contest, shifting as many as 20 consistently Democratic electoral votes from safe Republican districts into the GOP column.

Party leaders in Washington and Sacramento moved quickly to launch a revived push to kill the initiative once and for all, setting up a new effort to challenge the legitimacy of the signatures being gathered to qualify the measure for the California ballot.

Opponents are also simultaneously laying the groundwork for an eventual legal fight over the constitutionality of the proposal.

The aggressive push back from Democrats reflects the deep concern throughout the party about the consequences of the California ballot initiative.

“I think Democrats should plan for the worst and hope for the best,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist spearheading the opposition to the GOP plan. “I don’t think Democrats can ever breathe easy in this campaign.”

Read it all.

The AP reports:

Republican donors have given about $540,000 to help qualify a ballot measure that could give the 2008 GOP presidential candidate a bounty of electoral votes from California.

The group needs to gather about 650,000 valid signatures by the end of the month to qualify the measure for the June ballot. That effort will take at least $2 million, according to David Gilliard, who is managing the campaign.

Gilliard said the campaign has less because it has been raising money for just 10 days.

“A lot of the people on there are capable of contributing quite a bit more,” he said. “They’re also the types that are able to attract others.”

Darrell Issa, a wealthy Republican congressman from the San Diego area, gave $50,000, according to the fundraising report filed Tuesday with the secretary of state’s office.

Floyd Kvamme, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who is supporting Rudy Giuliani for president, also gave $50,000. Jerrold Perenchio, the former head of Univision, gave the same amount.

Currently, California gives all 55 of its Electoral College votes to the statewide winner in the presidential race.

The proposal would change that so the statewide winner received two electoral votes and the rest were apportioned to the winner of each of the state’s 53 congressional districts.

So far there is no word about whether these Republicans (and Republicans elsewhere in the country) are going to clamor for the same rule to ALSO be put into place in states such as:

–Texas
–Florida
–Michigan
–Ohio
–Wyoming
–Idaho

or any of the red states on THIS MAP.

The strong, civic desire to give voters a fair shake seems to be curiously restricted only to California (which coincidentally usually votes Democratic and has a lot of electoral votes) with big chunks of money for the initiative coming from (coincidentally) Republicans, including a Giuliani supporter (again, probably just happenstance).

Read our previous posts on this issue HERE
and HERE.

UPDATED AGAIN: ‘We can’t stop it’ - Officials all but concede defeat to wildfires as estimated 1 million evacuate

SAN DIEGO - Faced with unrelenting winds whipping wildfires into a frenzy across Southern California, firefighters conceded defeat on many fronts Tuesday to an unstoppable force that has chased an estimated 1 million people away.

Unless the shrieking Santa Ana winds subside, and that’s not expected for at least another day, fire crews say they can do little more than try to wait it out and react — tamping out spot fires and chasing ribbons of airborne embers to keep new fires from flaring.

“If it’s this big and blowing with as much wind as it’s got, it’ll go all the way to the ocean before it stops,” said San Diego Fire Capt. Kirk Humphries. “We can save some stuff but we can’t stop it.”

MSNBC: Area larger than New York City now in flames; smaller blazes merging; Bush declares federal emergency.

It would not be surprising if the most important single primary in 2008 takes place in California. But don’t look for it to be the presidential primary on Super-Duper Tuesday Feb. 5. Look instead to the state primary on June 3, up to now a low-profile event that could become fraught with significance if some California Republicans succeed in getting a highly controversial proposition on the ballot.

If successful, it would ensure the party’s nominee 20 or so electoral votes from California next fall, even if the GOP candidate loses the state for the fifth straight election. And if the 2008 election is as close as the last two been have been, that could be enough to keep the White House in Republican hands.

The political weapon of choice for the GOP is a plan that would distribute electoral votes to congressional district winners (one per district, plus two to the statewide winner of the popular vote) instead of the winner-take-all format that nearly every state currently favors. The plan was submitted as a ballot proposal to California election officials in July by a law firm that has represented the state Republican Party.

The district plan has been employed for years by two small states, Maine and Nebraska, with results consistently the same as winner-take-all. But if the plan were applied in California in 2004, the state’s electoral vote would have shifted dramatically–from 55-to-0 for Democrat John Kerry (a 10 percentage point winner in the state’s popular vote) to 33-to-22 Kerry, with Bush taking one electoral vote for each of the 22 congressional districts that he carried.

In one swoop, Bush would have won more electoral votes in California than he did in capturing the highly-priced battleground state of Ohio (worth 20 electors).

And in one instant, the nationwide electoral vote tally would have shifted in Bush’s favor from 286-to-251 (with one “faithless” Democratic elector in Minnesota) to a more commanding 317-to-221. The district plan would have transformed Bush’s narrow Electoral College victory–where Kerry could have won the election by taking Ohio–into a decisive triumph.

If applied nationally over the last generation, the district plan would have reversed the outcome of the 1960 election, electing Richard Nixon rather than John F. Kennedy, would have produced a 269-to-269 electoral vote tie between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford in 1976, and would have consistently tightened the Electoral College outcomes in every presidential election from 1960 to the end of the 20th century–with the winning candidate losing electoral votes and the losing candidate gaining some each time.

However, in both 2000 and 2004, the district plan would have actually expanded George W. Bush’s electoral vote margins–from a razor-thin five in 2000 to 38, and from 35 in 2004 to 96.

MORE

So who was behind the GOP effort that recently collapsed to pass an initiative that would make California’s votes be distributed via proportional representation rather than the more traditional winner-take-all method?

According to the Los Angeles Times, it was a prominent backer and bank-roller of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani:

A close friend and major fundraiser of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has identified himself as the mystery financer of the proposed California initiative to apportion the state’s 55 electoral votes by congressional district instead of winner-take-all.

He is New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. He said he provided the $175,000 to initially finance the petition drive to get the measure on the June 2008 ballot. But as The Times’ Dan Morain revealed in an exclusive story on this website last night, the drive has foundered on internal disputes and lack of further financing.

Here in California, expect this to be a story with “legs.” And it will not be something that will look good for Giuliani or the Republicans because it seemingly underscores what Democrats and those critical of the plan have said from the outset: this did not seem to be a plan to make for more effective government, but to bring to power one party in government by instituting this only in California — not demanding it in states such as Ohio, Florida, Texas and others. MORE:

The petition drive’s backers had remained a mystery since the effort was first revealed here in a July Top of the Ticket item. Democratic critics portrayed it as a power grab to wrest away some of the state’s electoral votes, which have all gone to the Democratic candidates for the past four presidential elections. Some 19 of the state’s 53 congressional districts would seem likely to vote for a GOP presidential candidate, enough to swing some recent national elections.

The Giuliani response is predictable:

A Giuliani campaign spokeswoman, Maria Comella, said today that Singer’s donation “was completely independent from our campaign.”

That kind of explanation will not be accepted at face value by many voters, unless they believe furry bunnies hide painted eggs in their houses on Easter Sunday. These are the days of government credibility gaps. There have been too many stories in the past decades of dirty tricks and the use of the phrase “plausible deniability” in news stories and in popular culture, such as films.

Singer oversees Elliott Associates, an $8 billion investment fund. He is also chairman of Giuliani’s northeast fundraising operation that produced a third of the New Yorker’s $33.5 million campaign war chest in the first six months of 2007. Singer and his employees have donated at least $182,000 to the Giuliani campaign so far this year.

“I made the contribution without any restrictions,” Singer’s statement said. Some Democrats have threatened legal action, complaining that federal campaign finance laws were violated if the Giuliani campaign was involved.

Tonight, Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, issued a statement demanding to know “the truth about Rudy’s involvement in and knowledge about this shameful effort to disenfranchise voters.”

The problem for Giuliani: it won’t just be Howard Dean and the DNC that will be pressing this. But the L.A. Times now has a red hot, story that it broke and developed. Other outlets will want to do their own or find new twists. And Times editors will legitimately ask their reporters if there is more to learn — and see if they can track down how this idea came about, whose idea it was, and who signed-off on it.

The only certainty: it was not an initiative brought about by high-minded citizens who sought more effective elections for California.

See our earlier post HERE which also notes that Democrats also sought this unsuccessfully in one state (but didn’t try to do it in Massachusetts, New York or New Jersey).

UPDATE: The San Francisco Chronicle did some work on this story as well:

The Chronicle reported earlier this week that Missouri-based attorney Charles Hurtt III was the legal agent for a tax-exempt corporation called “Take Initiative America,” which provided the sole donation - $175,000 - into the effort to qualify the measure for the California ballot.

But Hurtt and his organization would not reveal the source of their money - even as Democrats in California threatened legal action and charged the GOP-backed effort smacked of money laundering. They suggested there were numerous links between the ballot effort and the Giuliani campaign, and challenged the former New York mayor’s campaign aides to reveal where the money originated.

Giuliani spokesman Jarrod Agen told the Chronicle earlier this week “we are absolutely not involved in that effort. We’ll play by whatever the rules that Californians decide are in their best interest.”

The Presidential Election Reform Act would have changed the winner-take-all election rules for the 55 electoral votes in Democratic-leaning California. It would have required the electoral votes to be distributed based on the popular vote winner in each individual congressional district. Many political observers said that would likely have provided an unexpected windfall for Republicans - perhaps as many electoral votes as could be gained in a major state such as Ohio or Pennsylvania - and possibly changed the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.

PREDICTION: This story will NOT play well with Californians for the GOP or Giuliani and will not advance the state Republican Party’s chances during Election Day. And, as noted, it will NOT play well with independent voters and make Giuliani and the Republicans more endearing to them. Just watch upcoming polls.

The newest Census figures put a statistical face on the sickening truth about health care in America. Even as household incomes go up, some do the number of uninsured. The creeping crisis has moved beyond the poor into the middle class.

A record high 47 million Americans were priced out of health care, even as the poverty rate went down and median household income rose to $48,200 in 2006. Uninsured families earning more than $75,000 a year increased by 1.4 million.

As profits of HMOs, health insurers and drug companies soar, more and more employers are cutting down or eliminating coverage as a job benefit, leaving families to fend for themselves in a market of rising premiums and discrimination against the most vulnerable.

“Middle income Americans are now experiencing the human suffering that comes with being uninsured. It makes any illness a potential economic and social catastrophe,” says Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, of the Harvard Medical School, a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Yet politicians keep tinkering with the current system. Of all the Presidential candidates for ’08, Dennis Kucinich is the only one proposing a single-payer system to eliminate the one out of every three dollars spent on health care that goes to insurers’ overhead and profits.

But rumblings of revolt can be heard. In California,
a new statewide poll shows voters rejecting moderate health-care reforms proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislators and leaning, instead, toward a state-managed “single-payer” system.

But it will take much more public demand to overcome the largest lobbying expenditures in American history to keep the system as a cash cow for companies that profit from it.

Cross-posted from my blog

California Republicans are pressing to replace the “winner take all” awarding of electoral votes in California and convince voters to approve a proportional distribution.

Which raises the question: is this more fair or an attempt to change the rules of the game in just one state while most other big electoral states (some of them favoring the GOP) continue to award electoral votes in one big chunk? The New York Times has a piece that outlines the story here:

California Republicans are floating a ballot initiative that would change how the state awards its 55 electoral votes, a whopping prize that Democrats have come over the past four presidential elections to regard as theirs.

Under the current format, the winner of the state’s popular vote takes all electoral votes. The initiative proposes to award one electoral vote for every congressional district a candidate wins, with the statewide winner getting two more electoral votes.

Is this being done to make it more fair? Or can there be other reasons? The story goes on:

Had such a system been in place in 2004, President Bush would have come out of California with 22 electoral votes instead of zero. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) would have gotten only 33.

“It has a gut-level appeal to it,” said Kevin Eckery, a GOP consultant supporting the initiative, which would be put before voters in June. “It sounds fair, and it is fair.”

Democrats emphatically disagree and are mounting their own campaign to derail the initiative, which strategists say could easily alter the outcome of the 2008 contest.

“You’re looking at between 19 and 22 votes that would shift to the Republican side,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist mobilizing against the proposal. “The electoral math becomes very challenging.”

Have the Democrats ever tried to do this in states where they weren’t winning? Actually, yes…in North Carolina.

So how many other of states are doing it?

Only Maine and Nebraska currently assign electoral votes in the manner proposed in California. Colorado voters in 2004 soundly defeated a proposal to adopt the same system.

That plan was a brainchild of Colorado Democrats, who had seen all of their state’s votes awarded to the Republican candidate in five of the previous six elections despite reliable Democratic showings in some districts.

“It failed miserably,” said Craig Hughes, research director of RBI Strategy & Research, a Democratic consultancy. Hughes said the proposal was hurt by ambivalence among Democratic Party leaders, some of whom thought Kerry could carry the state. In addition, “voters take the electoral college very seriously,” he said. “Going out and doing a one-state solution becomes very risky for voters, and they get very, very hesitant about voting for a massive change that has big implications. You could be tipping the presidential race.”

And how do Californians react? A poll shows most think it’s a good idea — until they find out a bit more about what it would have done and might do:

‘Californians are only beginning to hear about the idea, but a statewide Field Poll this month found 47 percent favoring the change, with Democrats evenly split at first blush. Democratic support faded sharply when pollsters pointed out what the new system would have meant to the GOP in the last presidential election.

That made Republicans like the idea even more, of course, and at the close of questioning overall support for the change stood at 49 to 42.

Which raises a question. What does California’s Big Guy think? Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has made it clear he doesn’t like the idea because it’s changing rules in the middle of the game.

And, indeed, there are two points about this idea:

(1) Many Americans have long felt there must be a better way to go than the electoral college set up as it exists. But most of the calls over the years have been for election by popular vote (usually by political partisans who feel there candidate would have triumphed). There has been no massive clamor across the country for proportional representation of electoral votes or even a substantive call for it by pundits (mainstream media or new media) over the years.

(2) If the change takes place and it’s only in California and a few smaller states, many will consider it changing the rules of the game in only part of the game and a bit hypocritical. If the idea is a valid one, then why not do it in California plus other big states — such as Ohio, Florida, Texas and Massachesetts? Will the GOP be pressing for the same fair distribution of electoral votes in states where it usually wins? At this point: it looks like a tactic to shave off California votes while still taking winner take all votes in states where it usually wins.

According to the Times, winning a “no” is usually not that hard if a proposal starts out with less than 50 percent. BUT the Times notes that those trying to get the California rules changed have pointedly tried to get it slated in June — and NOT in Feburary:

The electoral initiative would not appear on the ballot until June, when relatively low turnout for local primary contests might amplify the effect of motivated Republicans.

“The fact that they picked the June primary is not coincidental,” Lehane said. “In addition to gaming the electoral college so they can rig it, they’re also trying to game the election cycle.”

This doesn’t qualify as voter suppression, but once again (if the Times story is correct) the GOP is trying to bring about change by mobilizing its base rather than opting to seek broad across-the-boards consensus and support from a large spectrum of the electorate.

Law professor Jonathan Turley writes this:

The proposal to divide California’s electoral votes has served to remind citizens of the continued dysfunctional role played by the electoral college — which should be eliminated by constitutional amendment. The idea of passing state laws to divide votes between candidates is at least an improvement — moving away from the winner take all approach. In California, it is clearly [being] advanced for partisan reasons to help the next Republican nominee. However, despite the motivation, it is a worthy goal.

Meanwhile, the LA Times, in an editorial, has rejected the GOP’s idea and backs a Democratic counter proposal to award votes via the popular vote:

It’s odd, to say the least, for such a sweeping alteration of California’s voting power to come up in the middle of a presidential campaign. The primary is Feb. 5, the general election is the following Nov. 4, yet the ballot measure changing the rules of the game would reach voters right in the middle, on June 3. Even Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger questioned the timing. GOP candidates must have discovered that they aren’t making any headway here. But the responsible course is to reconsider their message, not to look for ways to blunt the state’s voting power.

Democrats, in response, are dusting off a proposal to circumvent the electoral college by committing all of California’s electors to the winner of the nationwide popular vote — but only if states representing a majority of electoral votes do likewise and thus render the electoral college moot. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is going a step further, calling for a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college.

Either move would be smarter and more equitable. Republicans should support one or the other, and drop their current ploy, if they truly want to put presidential elections in the hands of voters once and for all.

SOME OTHER INTERNET SITES COMMENTING ON THIS DEVELOPMENT INCLUDE:

Going To The Mat, Wizbang Blue, Ed Morrissey, California Majority Report, Klyfix’s Journal, Global Artist Village, James Joyner, Through The Wire, Random Thoughts From Reno, Johnny Camacho’s Blog, Talking Points Memo,Unhinged Rants, Don’t Split California, Out of the Blue Into The Black, A Foolish Consistency, Soccer Dad, Vivian J. Paige, Current Events From A Poor Man,