Change.gov

I've been busy lately, and the 7 to 8 readers of CDR have suffered. I have a few things to say, and I intend to write some posts over the next couple of weeks.

I've had a lot of bad election nights over the last eight years. The worst may have been the New Orleans Mayoral election in 2006.

But last tuesday was different. For once, I was celebrating on election night. I was in a hotel ballroom at the Inter Continental and wasn't avidly following the returns from each state. Instead, I started out the night confident of victory and socialized with friends I've made over the last several years. I did watch Obama's speech at Grant Park, but with all the noise and commotion, it was hard to hear the whole thing. At one point during the speech, it all of a sudden occured to me: this war is actually going to end.

It really struck me when I went to the Obama Administration's official website, change.gov, and saw the new official Iraq policy of the American Goverment:

Barack Obama and Joe Biden's Plan

Judgment You Can Trust
In 2002, as the conventional thinking in Washington lined up with President Bush for war, Obama had the judgment and courage to speak out against going to war, and to warn of “an occupation of undetermined length, with undetermined costs, and undetermined consequences.” He and Joe Biden are fully committed to ending the war in Iraq.


A Responsible, Phased Withdrawal
Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 – more than 7 years after the war began.

Under the Obama-Biden plan, a residual force will remain in Iraq and in the region to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq and to protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel. They will not build permanent bases in Iraq, but will continue efforts to train and support the Iraqi security forces as long as Iraqi leaders move toward political reconciliation and away from sectarianism.


Encouraging Political Accommodation
Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that the U.S. must apply pressure on the Iraqi government to work toward real political accommodation. There is no military solution to Iraq’s political differences, but the Bush Administration’s blank check approach has failed to press Iraq’s leaders to take responsibility for their future or to substantially spend their oil revenues on their own reconstruction.

Obama and Biden's plan will help create lasting stability in Iraq. A phased withdrawal will encourage Iraqis to take the lead in securing their own country and making political compromises, while the responsible pace of redeployment called for by the Obama-Biden plan offers more than enough time for Iraqi leaders to get their own house in order. As our forces redeploy, Obama and Biden will make sure we engage representatives from all levels of Iraqi society—in and out of government—to forge compromises on oil revenue sharing, the equitable provision of services, federalism, the status of disputed territories, new elections, aid to displaced Iraqis, and the reform of Iraqi security forces.


Surging Diplomacy
Barack Obama and Joe Biden will launch an aggressive diplomatic effort to reach a comprehensive compact on the stability of Iraq and the region. This effort will include all of Iraq’s neighbors—including Iran and Syria, as suggested by the bi-partisan The Iraq Study Group Report. This compact will aim to secure Iraq’s borders; keep neighboring countries from meddling inside Iraq; isolate al Qaeda; support reconciliation among Iraq’s sectarian groups; and provide financial support for Iraq’s reconstruction and development.


Preventing Humanitarian Crisis
Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that America has both a moral obligation and a responsibility for security that demands we confront Iraq’s humanitarian crisis—more than five million Iraqis are refugees or are displaced inside their own country. Obama and Biden will form an international working group to address this crisis. They will provide at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries, and ensure that Iraqis inside their own country can find sanctuary. Obama and Biden will also work with Iraqi authorities and the international community to hold the perpetrators of potential war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide accountable. They will reserve the right to intervene militarily, with our international partners, to suppress potential genocidal violence within Iraq.


The Status-of-Forces-Agreement
Obama and Biden believe any Status of Forces Agreement, or any strategic framework agreement, should be negotiated in the context of a broader commitment by the U.S. to begin withdrawing its troops and forswearing permanent bases. Obama and Biden also believe that any security accord must be subject to Congressional approval. It is unacceptable that the Iraqi government will present the agreement to the Iraqi parliament for approval—yet the Bush administration will not do the same with the U.S. Congress. The Bush administration must submit the agreement to Congress or allow the next administration to negotiate an agreement that has bipartisan support here at home and makes absolutely clear that the U.S. will not maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

CDR

She-Bush coming to the Pelican state?

WDSU is reporting that Palin is coming to Louisiana next week for a fundraiser. If it's just a fundraiser, that makes sense, I guess. Cheney was here yesterday, which had nothing today with turning the state red, just raising money for my goof-ball Congressman. But with 30+ days left in the campaign, why do they need one of the big guns to headline a fundraiser in Louisiana? Can't the repub donors in the state make do with a D-list surrogate like Fred Thompson?

Maybe I'm trying to read too much into this, particularly since the McCain Campaign is criticized by dems and repubs alike as "all tactics, no strategy."

By the way, I think Jon Stewart came up with the best nick name for Alaska's Governor: She-Bush.

CDR

Spittin' Mad

Few people make me spittin' mad, and Senator Saxby Chambliss is one of them. Please see the below piece from 538. I don't think the world's greatest deliberative body will miss him if he is forced into early retirement.


Monday, October 6, 2008
In Georgia, Small Improvements in Black Voter Participation May Make Big Difference

Perhaps the only happy consequence of the segregation era is that a number of Southern states like Georgia are required by the Voting Rights Act to keep statistics on registration and turnout by the race of the voter. Those statistics suggest that black voter registration is up materially from 2004.

Here are the numbers. In November 2004, black voters represented 27.4 percent of Georgia's active registered voter pool. As of October 1st, that figure has increased to 29.0 percent.

Now, that might not seem like all that big a difference. But suppose that the black vote is split 95/5 between Obama and McCain, and the nonblack vote is split 30/70. (Obama probably will not win 30 percent of the white vote. But since Georgia also contains material numbers of Hispanic and Asian voters, winning 30 percent of the nonblack vote is probably reasonable).

In 2004, also according to statistics from the Georgia Secretary of State, black voters made up 25.4 percent of election day turnout (this means that they participated at slightly lower rates than white voters). Applying those 95/5 and 30/70 voter splits to the 25.4 percent figure would work out to a 7.0-point win for John McCain, about where polls seem to have Georgia now.

Now suppose that black and nonblack voters each turn out at the same rates as they did in 2004, but that we account for the increase in black registration. According to our math, John McCain's 7.0-point lead is now cut to 4.9 points.

But that is probably too conservative an assumption. Newly-registered voters -- and nearly half of Georgia's newly-registered voters are black -- turn out at higher rates than previously registered voters. In addition, one would assume that the opportunity to vote for the first African-American nominee might be just a little bit of a motivating factor for black voters. Suppose that African-Americans represent 29.0 percent of Georgia's turnout, matching their share of active registrations. Using the splits we described above, McCain's lead is now cut to 2.3 points.

Even this, however, may be too conservative. For one thing, the registration window in Georgia is not yet over ... it concludes today. The statistics I cited above only reflected registrations through September 30. There is typically a surge of registrations in the final few days before the deadline. In 2004, Georgia's active voter rolls increased by about 150,000 persons in the first four days of October, before the registration deadline closed. That was more than they'd increased in the entire month of September.

So suppose that by tonight, black voters have increased to 30 percent of Georgia's registered voter pool. Plugging that 30 percent number in, McCain's advantage is a mere 1 point.

Think these numbers sound unreasonable? Early voting is underway in Georgia, and according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, black voters do not represent 30 percent of Georgia's early voter turnout. Instead, they represent almost 40 percent. Although early voting figures can be idiosyncratic , Barack Obama certainly seems to be having little trouble getting his vote out. Indeed, Barack Obama is winning Georgia right now.

A related question is whether the pollsters are underrepresenting the black vote in their turnout estimates in states like Georgia. I think they might be. In their past two surveys of Georgia, SurveyUSA pegged black voter turnout at 25-26 percent. This is a pretty safe assumption, since it exactly matches the Secretary of State's turnout estimate from 2004. But this isn't 2004. I would be surprised if black turnout wasn't at least 27-28 percent, and somewhere in the 29-31 percent range is entirely possible. If those numbers are achieved, Georgia is pretty close to being a toss-up. And if it is a toss-up for Barack Obama, it is probably also a toss-up for Jim Martin, who is attempting to unseat Saxby Chambliss from the Senate.

Georgia is not quite a tipping-point state. In order to win it, Barack Obama will have to have made at least some inroads with Southern whites, and if he's done so, that will mean that he's won states like Virginia and North Carolina and won't need Georgia's electoral votes. But I'd guess that it represents a more plausible pickup opportunity for Obama than states like West Virginia and Montana, which are nominally closer in the polling. And if these black voter registration numbers are replicated throughout the South, Elizabeth Dole, Saxby Chambliss and Roger Wicker could all face tough re-election battles, substantially increasing the Democrats' chances of winning 60 Senate seats.

-- Nate Silver at 7:15 AM

The Alaska and Arkansas National Guard

"She's been the commander of Alaska's National Guard, who's been deployed overseas...that's foreign policy experience."Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesman

From Poppy Bush's Acceptance Speech at the 1992 Republican Convention:
The President: My opponents say I spend too much time on foreign policy, as if it didn't matter that schoolchildren once hid under their desks in drills to prepare for nuclear war. I saw the chance to rid our children's dreams of the nuclear nightmare, and I did. Over the past 4 years, more people have breathed the fresh air of freedom than in all of human history. I saw a chance to help, and I did. These were the two defining opportunities not of a year, not of a decade, but of an entire span of human history. I seized those opportunities for our kids and our grandkids, and I make no apologies for that.

Now, the Soviet bear may be gone, but there are still wolves in the woods. We saw that when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The Mideast might have become a nuclear powder keg, our energy supplies held hostage. So we did what was right and what was necessary. We destroyed a threat, freed a people, and locked a tyrant in the prison of his own country.

What about the leader of the Arkansas National Guard, the man who hopes to be Commander in Chief? Well, I bit the bullet, and he bit his nails.

Audience members. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

I'm serious, that crowd reaction was written into the trancript that I found on the internets.

Geo Bush 41 is not running for his second term, McCain is running for his first. I'm sure if I looked hard enough, and reached back 16 years, I could find multiple republican flip flops. But I still think it's kind of funny that the republican party of 16 years ago did not hesitate to mock Bill Clinton's experience commanding the AR Nat'l Guard.

But the real point is that a governor is given command of his/her organized state militia (at least that's what's legally called in La) for domestic purposes. Essentially, the governor can deploy them to supplement law enforcement, do minor drug intervention, and to respond to a natural disaster. All of these situations do provide a governor with experience that could qualify them to be commander in chief. This is because the governor in these situations is acting as the civilian chief of an armed service and has authority over its uniform commanders. It's a small scale and very simplified version of the command relationship between the President and the Armed Services.

Here's how Bill Clinton Spun his experience in '92 as reported by the Boston Globe:

Appearing earlier in the day with Gore on "CBS This Morning," Clinton pointed to his role in commanding the Arkansas National Guard to argue that he has the necessary experience to be commander in chief.

"I had to command the National Guard in some very difficult positions," Clinton said in response to a viewer's question. He explained that he had called the guard out and authorized the use of force to quell a riot of Cuban refugees in 1980. "I did so to try to save lives," he said. "I didn't have any problem with doing that."

The McCain campaign is stretching the truth (by that I mean they're lying) when they claim that it is "foreign policy experience." When a governor commands his/her national guard, it has nothing to do with foreign policy. Governors don't make decisions about foreign deployments (whether they be to combat environments or on training missions),they don't deal with foreign troops or officials, and they don't have to deal with status of forces agreements. When National Guard units are mobilized for combat duty, they are federalized and the governor is removed from the chain of command.

I guess that plan B is to talk about how close Russia is to Alaska:

"We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state."

Addendum: I wrote this post last week, before all of the GOP hand wringing (or perhaps they're just lowering expectations) came out.

Addendum Addendum: I'd like to include these quotes that ABC's "The Note" published this morning:
"It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia, as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America -- where do they go? It's Alaska." -- Sarah Palin, to Katie Couric.

"To be very clear, there has not been any [Russian] incursion in U.S. airspace in recent years." -- Maj. Allen Herritage, spokesman for the Alaska region of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, to the AP.

"She doesn't have any role in that process. . . . The authority to launch and respond to a Russian incursion lies with the Alaska NORAD Region commander." -- Herritage, to the New York Daily News.



CDR

Hope Posters

You can pick 'em up at Dirty Coast.

I've got tons more, so if you are having an event in NOLA and want to distribute them, leave a comment on this post.

CDR

Deadlock!

Here's my prediction for the presidential election:

Obama wins every state that Kerry won except for New Hampshire. He also manages to flip Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado to the Democratic side. That leaves the race deadlocked at 269 electoral votes each.

I think I'm on pretty solid ground here..I'm not making this prediction because I want to see the 12th amendment invoked for the first time since 1824.

CDR

Vernon Palmer

After Larry Ponoroff issued this apology, do you think Vernon is going to return his Legion of Honor to the French Government?
Having read his text book on obligations, none of this surprises me.

CDR