Can’t Buy A Thrill

Or a Senate seat, apparently. The New York Times is all but declaring Ned Lamont the loser in the Connecticut Senate race against Joe Lieberman. They report Lamont has just had to contribute another $2 million and that anonymous Senate leaders are firmly telling Lieberman he will keep his seniority in the Democratic caucus.

Democrats here are convinced that Mr. Lieberman stands a good chance of returning to the Senate as an independent, and many have reassured him that he will not be stripped of his seniority if he wins, according to people in several Senate offices, who were granted anonymity to speak of the sensitive situation amid an intense political climate.

Meanwhile, Mr. Lamont, the Democratic nominee, failed to pick up significant momentum early on and has not maintained the level of national excitement that his long-shot candidacy first drew when he roared to victory in the August primary. He pumped another $2 million into his campaign on Tuesday, bringing his total personal contribution to $6 million since the primary, and $10 million over all. And a new poll released on Wednesday showed Mr. Lamont behind by eight points.

Viewed by both parties as basically a battle between two Democrats, with a little-known Republican trailing badly in the polls, the race has become little more than a footnote overshadowed by the national struggle over control of Congress in a midterm season punctuated by scandal. Mr. Lamont is by no means out of the running, but he is not dominating the agenda of the campaign season nationally as he seemed poised to do this summer.

Read the whole thing. There are a lot of straddles so it appears even-handed, but the main theme is that Lamont is is trouble and is unlikely to pull this out. There are also plenty of people minimizing expectations. On both sides.

“I think the conventional wisdom is wrong and that this is still a tight race,” said Lanny J. Davis, a close friend of Mr. Lieberman’s who is advising the campaign. “But I do believe that Lamont has proven that a narrowly based ideological campaign in a primary has to transition into a broader electorate, and he has so far failed to do that. That’s the reason there’s a perception that Joe is safely ahead.”

Me, I have always been of the position that this was a battle that should never have been fought and a mammoth waste of resources.

Why ID Should Be Required To Vote - Again

Election officials from both the Republican and Democratic parties agree that at least 1,500 fraudulent voter registrations were turned in. These include underage voters and dead people. The culprit was the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. And the officials are forwarding the information to the US attorney this time in hopes of getting the perpetrators prosecuted.

At least 1,500 potentially fraudulent registration cards were turned in by the St. Louis branch of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, leading up to Wednesday's registration deadline for the Nov. 7 election, said Kim Mathis, chairwoman of the St. Louis City Board of Election Commissioners.

Invalid registrations solicited by ACORN workers included duplicate or incomplete ones, a 16-year-old voter, dead people registering, and forged signatures, Mathis said.

"Fifteen hundred may not sound like a lot, but it is a big deal and it disenfranchises the election process," she said. "It's time someone be prosecuted. There's a lot of taxpayer dollars being wasted on this."

Scott Liendecker, director of Republican elections for St. Louis, said his office will turn the matter over to the U.S. attorney's office for possible prosecution once a final count of potentially fraudulent submissions is finished next week.

Mary Wheeler-Jones, the Democratic elections director, said she does not dispute the accusations against ACORN.

ACORN spokesman Brian Mellor told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which first reported the potential fraud, that prosecution could be warranted.

"We try very hard to monitor the employees, but there are chances of things slipping through," Mellor said. He did not return calls from The Associated Press.

I think we should press for a epidemiological study of fraudulent voter registrations and adjust the US elections accordingly. Let's see how enthusiastically that proposal is greeted by the left.

A Defense Of The Constitution

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has quietly, with no fanfare and almost no media attention, vetoed the attempted end around on the US constitution. The bill which had been passed by both chambers of the California legislature would have attempted to form a compact to overturn the US electoral system. George Will skewers the people trying to pass this illegitimate assault on the constitution and praise Schwarzenegger for his stand.

WASHINGTON — California's governor has demonstrated virtue, understood as the good we do when no one is watching. With his state and the nation paying no attention to an anti-constitutional campaign to alter how presidents are chosen, Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed a bill that, had it become law, would have imparted dangerous momentum to a recurring simple-mindedness.

The bill would have committed California to cast its electoral votes — today, 55 — for whichever candidate receives the most popular votes nationally. The commitment would have been contingent on a compact with other similarly committed states, all having a combined total of at least 270 electoral votes.

Will goes on to explain the two rationales the proponents of this scheme offer for trying to do illegally what they cannot accomplish at the ballot box. He saves the real scorn for the second rationale:

The second argument for the multistate compact is: The possibility of the winner of the popular vote losing the electoral vote contest violates the value that trumps all others — majoritarianism. Well.

Never mind that in 42 of the 46 elections since 1824 (all but 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000) for which we have popular vote totals, that did not happen. Which suggests that the assault on the electoral vote system is driven by simplistic majoritarianism, which would shatter the two-party system that is conducive to temperate politics.

That electoral vote system (combined with the winner-take-all allocation of votes in all states but Maine and Nebraska) makes it very difficult for third party presidential candidates to be competitive. In 1992, Ross Perot won 18.9 percent of the popular vote but no state and therefore no electoral votes. Direct popular election of presidents would be an incentive for fragmentation of the electorate by the proliferation of factional candidacies.

The end result of a compact such as this would be that the small states would not even be looked at by presidential candidates. They would concentrate all their efforts in the big states that would ensure their election. But the real kicker is, as Will points out, that the main example cited to justify these efforts doesn't show the failure of the system at all. It shows the exact opposite:

 It is perverse that the 2000 election, which culminated with the lawyers' riot in Florida, is cited to undermine an electoral vote system that prevented 2000 from being a calamity. If in presidential elections all popular votes were poured into one national bucket, a close election such as the one in 1960, which was decided by fewer votes (118,574) than there were precincts (166,064), would unleash a coast-to-coast frenzy of litigation — about ballot design, voting hours, alleged voting-machine malfunctions, etc. The electoral vote system quarantines electoral disputes to a few closely contested states.

Think about that for a moment. If it were that close an election, we would end up in a coast-to-coast battle royale. This proposal is not a victory for democracy as its proponents say it is. It is a full employment program for lawyers. Kudos to Arnold Schwarzenegger for seeing this for what it is.

Gossip As History

Victor Davis Hanson unloads on three "histories" of the war in Iraq. He rightfully points out that the books use a patina of historical scholarship in order to confuse the reader into thinking their gossip is fact. What these books are is not what they are purported to be.

Three recent books about the "fiasco" in Iraq - "Cobra II" by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, "State of Denial" by Bob Woodward and just plain "Fiasco" by Tom Ricks - have attracted a lot of attention, and sales. All three well-written exposes repeat the now well-known argument that our government's incompetence and arrogance have nearly ensured America's failure in birthing democracy in Iraq.

It's worth noting, though, that many of the authors' critical portraits rely on private conversations and anonymous sources. The most damning informants in these books are never identified and so can't be questioned.

The authors, as journalists, are well aware that after The New York Times' problems with Jayson Blair and other high-profile media scandals, the public no longer necessarily accepts what reporters write as gospel. That perhaps explains their and others' apparent adaptation of scholarly methods. Often these days journalists mimic the footnoting of historians - giving the impression that their reporting is history documented by verifiable primary and secondary sources also available to the reader.

Indeed, the verifiability of source material is what distinguishes history from hearsay -and what distinguishes the genre from journalism or first-person recollections. Since the time of the historian Thucydides - who not only recorded what speakers said, but, more controversially, made them voice what he thought they might or ought to have said - historians have developed protocols to ensure credibility. Whether or not historians use footnotes or citations, they at least now agree to draw on information that can be checked by others, who will determine how skillfully, honestly or completely such sources were employed.

Hanson points out that a number of people criticized in these books have come forward in public and have stated that the books get it wrong. None of the unnamed sources have come forward to defend their characterizations of the facts. Contrary views are not included in the books. One can read the comment sections of any blog and understand there is no consensus on world events. Why are the books uniformly negative? This is gossip dressed up as history. But it feeds into a group think that already has made up its collective mind. Go read the whole thing, it's worth it.

North Korea Threatens Japan

North Korea has promised unspecified "strong countermeasures" against Japan if sanctions are put in place as expected. Japan's cabinet is expected to approve the sanctions in a vote tomorrow. By banning all trade with North Korea, Japan is crippling what little trade North Korea had left in the world. They export clams and mushrooms, apparently.

The Japanese government decided on a package of additional economic sanctions against North Korea on Wednesday in response to the regime's claim of a nuclear test, including a ban on all imports from the country and the docking of North Korean ships in Japanese ports.

The sanctions are expected to go into effect after they are approved by Japan's Cabinet Friday.

"We will take strong countermeasures," Kyodo quoted Song Il Ho, North Korea's ambassador in charge of diplomatic normalization talks with Japan, as saying in an interview on Wednesday when asked about fresh sanctions by Japan.

"The specific contents will become clear if you keep watching. We never speak empty words," he added.

Kyodo did not explain why the interview, conducted on Wednesday before the sanctions were decided, was not reported until Thursday.

Song said that Pyongyang considered Japan's measures as "more serious in nature" than other nations' because Tokyo has yet to adequately atone for its 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

"We will be taking countermeasures by calculating that in," Song said.

Song said Pyongyang was closely watching moves by new Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office last month and is known for his hawkish views on North Korea.

The Kyodo report quoted Song as suggesting that Pyongyang would not hold normalization talks with Tokyo as long as sanctions are in place. Those talks are currently stalled over issues including the abductions of Japanese citizens by agents from the North in the 1970s and 80s.

"I wonder if we can hold talks under these kinds of circumstances," Song said.

Japan prohibited North Korea's ships from entering Japanese ports and imposed a total ban on imports from the impoverished nation.

North Korean nationals also were prohibited from entering Japan, with limited exceptions, the Japanese Cabinet Office said in a statement released after an emergency security meeting late Wednesday.

Kim appears to have painted himself into a corner this time. All eyes are on China now. If China approves the interdiction and inspection of all vessels going in or out of North Korea, Kim's regime is in serious trouble. The real danger here is that North Korea is making threats left and right against pretty much everyone. At some point the world will simply ignore Kim - that is when we're all going to have to watch him very closely.