Obama's a Star!

Obama has officially made the big time. I noticed this morning that he's on the cover of both The Enquirer and the Globe. Apparently he is perhaps gay, yells at his wife, has shady friends, and cheats on his wife. Oh, and also, Oprah says its a smear!

The cover photos were also unflattering.

Mainly, I find it amusing, as I find most tabloid covers amusing. But it's interesting that he has enough celebrity to rate "coverage" by these guys. You don't often see politicians that have that much of the public zeitgeist.

Speaking of zeitgeist,
check out this page. It's a list of google searches for clinton vs. obama. Playing around with google zeitgeist is a fun way to waste 30 minutes, generally, too.

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

Ok, that' s all for now...

Voter Turnout

This post is re-created in its entirety as a comment on Impolite Company (http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2867940/26810328) - but I thought I'd post it here, too, if only to boost my postings count.

I've been thinking about voter turnout, and how low it tends to be here in the good ole' US of A, since I first read Morisey's post last week.

First of all, part of the reason we have such low turnout here in the states is a psychological phenomenon called "learned helplessness." The classic experiment used to illustrate this is the one where they would shock dogs randomly. After a while, the dogs just sort of gave up and lay there (read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness)
Basically, I think many Americans don't believe that their vote really matters, so they don't bother. Unfortunately, they're often right - how many Democrats don't vote in Texas because Texas is a red state? That sort of thing.

Making matters worse is that even in the best circumstances, a single individual's vote is rarely going to translate into a direct change in his or her life. If you vote, your guy (or woman) might get elected, and they might vote in a way that benefits you, and it might not get blocked by opposition, and it might eventually trickle down to affect your life. That's a lot of mights, and even when they all fall into place, the cause and effect are separated from each other enough that it's not really apparent.

So, what to do? There's the carrot-and-stick approach, where we either reward folks for voting, or punish them for not voting, say by levying a fine. This works for things like jury duty and income taxes(sort of), but it wouldn't work for voting, for the simple reason that you can motivate people to vote, but you can't really motivate them to vote intelligently. You can't make them care. So if everyone has to pay $25 if they don't vote (or, as Toad a la Mode suggests, gives them a free ice cream from McDonald's if they do), you'll have greater turnout, but a large number of folks would show up and press random buttons and go home. And that really wouldn't be so great for the democracy.

Which sort of brings us around full circle, with a low-but-hopefully-motivated voter pool. But I do think there is one thing that we could do that could improve voter turnout. What if every registered voter received in the mail a "voter information" packet, that listed your polling place, the day of voting, and a summary of the issues and candidates on the ballot? The great thing is that this information already exists, it's just not disseminated in a concerted way. The League of Women Voters always creates an awesome voter guide - we really just need someone to mail it to people.

CNN's magic screen

CNN is explaining to me why it's not over in Texas, and that the large population centers are going for Obama. They have a magic screen for this, which is basically a really big iPhone screen.

Just thought I'd share.

Nailbiter in Texas

I just got home from caucusing - I was worried about being late as the time got close to 7; I needn't have worried. I didn't get home until 10PM.

Highlights and lowlights of the evening:
There's really only one lowlight, and that would be taking out a car's rear-view mirror as I crept through the tiny one-way street near my polling place, which was of course packed with cars and pedestrians. I stopped and left a note with my name and number (and an apology), but haven't heard anything yet.

I had to put up with some drunk students, I suppose that was something of a lowlight

Highlights

• The large crowd
• The bulk of the crowd being Obama supporters
• Getting to do my civic duty by looking up voter ids (VUIDS)on my iPhone
• The lines I used to let folks know I'd look up their VUIDS, including, "Get out of line free, get your voter ID here!" and "I've got an iPhone and I'm not afraid to use it!"
• Lending my sweatshirt to a drunk student, thereby causing her to STFU about being cold
• The conversations with fellow line-standers, including what was probably the only other non-student there (it's what I get for living where I do).
• Seeing my friend Jana, who does not live near me, but was there with the press.
  

Currently, CNN has called OH and RI for Clinton, with Obama taking VT, and Texas is "too close to call" at 50% to 48%, with Clinton having a slight lead. I'd hoped for a blowout, but I guess it wasn't to be. But I was right about the pulse of Austin - the CNN website informs me that Travis County is Obama 63%, Clinton 36%. I love this city, even if it does give me a skewed view of the world.

Totally Unscientific Observations on the Texas Primary, and Random Observations

Today's the big day - election day in Texas. This is very rarely a big day, but this year it is, and that in itself is exciting.

...

I've talked to a lot of people in the last week about who they're voting for. This is perhaps gauche - it's one of those things you're not supposed to ask. But I am nothing if not socially inappropriate.

I've talked to 2 undecideds, and lots of people voting for Obama, but only 4 people who were planning on voting for, or had voted for, Clinton. Even more striking, 2 of the 4 were Republicans, and they voted for Clinton with the express purpose of voting AGAINST Obama, since they felt he was a bigger threat. The guy I talked to today actually made me feel really good, because he was against Obama for much the same reason I'm for him - he said (and this is a paraphrase, but a close one), "You know, politicians say whatever on the campaign trial - but Obama scares me because I believe him when he speaks." I know Clinton still has sincere support in Austin - she was on The Daily Show last night, live! via Satellite! from Austin, Texas! (which, again, is cool in its own right) - and she wasn't by herself - so I'm still feeling pretty anxious about tonight, but cautiously optimistic.

...

I early voted last Friday, and I had to stand in line for about an hour to cast my vote. It was the last day of early voting, and it was also over the lunch hour, but still! An hour's line! To early vote! It feels...it feels like a democracy again. And that's such a heady feeling, I can't even tell you.


ps to Kevin - how's my punctuation?