In The New York Review of November 8, 2007, Michael Tomasky responds to reader questions relating to--I was going to say the upcoming presidential election campaign, but it is plainly well underway. Some observations on Tomasky's observations.
When challenged to name which states lost by Kerry will be in the Democratic column this time, Tomasky admits to some pessimism. The electoral map, it seems, favors Republicans. Tomasky thinks the Dems have a chance in Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio, especially if the second slot on the ticket is occupied by Senator Webb of Virginia, or Governor Strickland of Ohio. He names Iowa (won by Gore but lost by Kerry), New Mexico (also won by Gore but lost by Kerry), and Colorado (lost by both Gore and Kerry) as states moving the Dems' way. But he doesn't predict victory in any of them, and I thought it sobering that he barely mentions Florida and does not mention Missouri. Moreover, he acknowledges that four Kerry states, with a total of 45 electoral votes, cannot be counted on; these are Wisconsin, my own Minnesota (gasp), the indispensable Pennsylvania (bigger gasp), and New Hampshire (which Tomasky incorrectly says was won by both Gore and Kerry--only Kerry, from neighboring Massachusetts, got it).
I wonder whether my rooting interest makes me overestimate the electoral vulnerability of the side I prefer, the way a fan of a particular baseball team may not notice that the fourth and fifth best starting pitchers for nearly every other team are suspect, too. Sure, Pennsylvania is not in the bag, and the Dems cannot get to 270 without it. But perhaps Tomasky does not say much about Florida for the simple reason that, if it goes blue, a more likely event than Pennsylvania turning red, the electoral addition ceases to be very interesting.
Tomasky's relatively ungiddy take on the Dems' chances includes the interesting concern that a lot of white men, not just limited to the ones who vote Republican in any event, have a female supervisor at work and therefore may not be inclined to vote for Candidate Clinton (if it's her, and, for a related reason, not for Obama, if it's him). I'm a white guy with a female, African-American supervisor who has no intention of voting for any Republican, but of course that doesn't mean Tomasky is wrong to worry. Nevertheless I trust the psycho-sexual drag on the Democratic ticket will be less than that exerted, again, by the electoral college, which Tomasky discusses mainly in the context of the effort by California wingnuts to award that state's 55 electoral votes, not to the statewide winner, but according to the separate outcomes in 53 different congressional districts --a scheme that, under the guise of "reform," would deliver a Pennsylvania-sized gift to the Republican candidate. That effort now appears dead, but the electoral college, a supremely undemocratic instrument, is a considerable advantage to the Republicans, since it weighs more heavily ballots cast in sparsely populated states, which almost by definition are inhabited mainly by their rural and small-town white supporters.
The question posed to Tomasky by Jim Ledbetter, the Deputy Managing Editor of CNN Money, concerned the prosepects for abolishing the electoral college, and asked what he saw as the main obstacles to achieving this worthy end. Tomasky somehow fails to mention the obvious answer, which is that small (and mostly red) states have something close to veto power over a reform that would deprive them of exercising an influence on presidential elections that is out of all proportion to their population.
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