Election 2012: Super Tuesday Probably Will Not Settle the Normination

After the American Century

Once upon a time there were real party conventions, where the nomination was not a coronation that had been scripted in detail for television. There was, for example, the magnificent competition between seven Democrats for the 1960 nomination, which was not settled on the first ballot, as usually happens today. John F. Kennedy emerged as the candidate then. Almost as exciting have been the wide open primary battles, like that in 1992, when the at first unlikely Bill Clinton emerged as the candidate.

The question to be answered tomorrow is whether we might be in for a wide open convention, or whether the nomination is more likely to be wrapped up sooner. Super Tuesday, with its many simultaneous elections, is at the least intended to narrow down the field. In short, will Gingrich or Paul decide later in the week that they should step aside? Or will all four candidates continue to battle for delegates?

Right now, Santorum and Romney are in a dead heat in the all-important Ohio Primary. Each has almost exactly one third of the votes, with the other third divided between Gingrich and Paul. Romney and Santorum are also running neck and neck in Tennessee.  Santorum is further ahead in North Carolina, but I have not seen enough polls for that state yet.

In contrast, some states are walkovers. Santorum seems certain to win by a wide margin in Oklahoma. Gingrich seems certain to win his home state of Georgia, with none of the other candidates coming within 20 points of his c. 44%.  Romney seems equally certain to run away with a victory in Massachusetts, his home state. Romney will also win Virginia in a walk because neither Gingrich nor Santorum  got on the ballot.

There are other states involved too, but the pattern seems clear. Right now it looks as though both Romney and Santorum will win some states, while Gingrich will only take Georgia. Ron Paul will not win any states at all, but he will pick up some delegates nevertheless. When the dust settles on Wednesday morning, it seems unlikely that Romney will suddenly be in a commanding position, though he will probably remain in the lead in terms of convention delegates.

If something like this is the result, then Super Tuesday will not decide anything. Romney will remain determined to grind down his opponents through superior organization and negative advertising. It has defeated all the challengers so far.  Santorum can say, "Well, of course Romney won his home state, and he won Virginia, where I was not on the ballot, but take that away and we ran about even." And Gingrich can say to himself, "Let Romney and Santorum keep hammering each other, and I will emerge as the least bloodied, most experienced candidate." And Paul? He does not seem to be in this contest to win it, but to have influence at the Convention. The less decisive Tuesday is, the better for him.

It looks like Romney will have to slug it out with Santorum for quite a while yet, and the longer it takes, the less excited the Republicans are likely to be about either of them, or about their chances in the fall. (Unless, of course, they become more civil and centrist, an unlikely development.) 

George Will, the usually level-headed and reasonable conservative columnist has already given up on the possibility of retaking the White House. He has just put out a column saying that the Republicans should focus on winning seats in Congress, instead.

What can be done about Syrian Atrocities?

After the American Century

Paul Conroy, a British photographer covered recent events in Syria. He says, "I'm an ex-artillery gunner so I can kind of follow the patterns - they are systematically moving through neighborhoods with munitions that are used for battlefields. It's not a war, it's a massacre, an indiscriminate massacre of men, woman and children."

For weeks the Syrian government has been slaughtering, imprisoning, and torturing its own citizens. At least 5000 people have been killed. For weeks China and Russia have blocked the UN from taking any action. For weeks we have seen the Syrian people suffer, as their dictatorship refuses to allow the Red Cross to evacuate women, children, the aged and the wounded. This is one of the most scandalous abuses of state power in recent memory.

In today's paper (Politiken, Denmark) I see that people are going to raise money for the victims. This is close to being pathetic nonsense. We watch while the Syrian government slaughters its own citizens. It has used artillery and it has posted snipers on rooftops to kill anyone moving around in Homs and some of its other cities. We watch their barbaric acts on YouTube, and hear the voices of the victims calling for help. And now we are asked to give money, to help people whose government for weeks would not allow the Red Cross access to them. 

The fund-raisers are well intentioned, but they are confused. They have made a category mistake. This is not a natural disaster, like the earthquake in Haiti. It is not like a drought in Africa. The catastrophe is the Syrian dictatorship itself. There is no point in raising and sending money when the government blocks the aid. Sending aid presupposes a government that is glad to get it and cooperative in getting the air distributed.

Instead, all efforts should be focused on removing the Syrian Asad government, and on pressuring the Chinese and the Russians to stop supporting that government. Raising aid money for victims in this situation is not going to help. Why send money to a place where the government will try to steal it, subvert its use, or prevent the aid from reaching those who need it? No fund raising is gong to help in this situation, unless it is for refugees from Syrian who have fled to other nations.

What would help? 

(1) Petitions to the Russian and Chinese governments would help. 

(2) Boycotts of Chinese and Russian goods would help. 

(3) Refusals to take vacations or attend conferences in China and Russia would help. So long as these two members of the UN Security Council keep supporting the ruthless Syrian regime, no amount of aid is going to make any difference.

(4) Taking the Syrian government's leaders and its generals to court for crimes against humanity will help. These shameless leaders must be held accountable, and the case against them must be prepared in detail.

(5) Protests outside Syrian embassies would help.

(6) Freezing of all Syrian assets in European and American banks, pending resolution of the crisis, would help.

This is not a complete list, but it suggests the kinds of actions that need to be taken. Raising money for the victims is not going to help very much, because there will continue to be more victims as long as the Syrians are ruled by a vicious regime.

Politiken is right about one thing. We are not helpless. But it is wrong to tell people that giving money to the victims is the solution, As if we had any access to the victims. The considerable danger is that the Syrian state itself will get that aid or prevent it from ever reaching those who need it.

Election 2012: Santorum and Romney battle before crucial primaries

After the American Century

Santorum's recent surge has subsided somewhat. The latest polls suggest that Romney will probably win Arizona next week. But in Michigan Santorum trails only by a 2 points in the average of all  polls (i.e. inside the margin of error), and in one of them he leads. The overall trend line is against him, however, as Romney has been gaining back ground in Michigan while Santorum has been falling, from an average of 37.8 down to 34.8. Romney, on the back of many radio and TV advertisements, has clawed his way from 28.5 to 36.8. The strategy in these advertisements has been to depict Santorum as a Washington insider who has not voted consistently for Conservative issues. Meanwhile, however, Romney revealed in off the cuff remarks that he and his wife own two Cadillacs and several other cars, parked at his homes in different parts of the country. Way to connect with the average American!

Curiously, Romney might be doing Santorum a favor, not just in his gaffe about his fleet of cars, but in terms of how his opponent is perceived by voters. For Romney is trying to look more right-wing while presenting Santorum as too moderate, too willing to compromise. Moderate and independent voters might thereby find him more attractive, however, and this would help Santorum if he became the nominee. This could happen if he manages to win either Arizona or Michigan and follows it up with what appears right now to be a certain win in the very important Ohio Primary a week later. Moreover, polls showing him running just as well as (or as badly as) Romney against Obama - which is to say that they both lose by more than 7 points.

By comparison with the two front-runners, Gingrich and Paul are far off the pace, picking up between them about 20% of the votes in Michigan and 25% in Arizona. Both are surely looking forward to Super Tuesday, a week later, when Gingrich seems certain to win his home state of Georgia and to do well in several other states. Paul can also hope for a stronger showing on Super Tuesday in the most conservative states such as Alaska, North Dakota, and Idaho.

Overall, the situation remains volatile. Romney keeps grinding away with his money and organization, but Santorum continues to make a strong challenge, arguably stronger than that of the others who briefly rose in the polls during the fall and early winter. The next ten days will tell us whether Romney can at least break out of the pack or whether Santorum is keep matters uncertain. Moreover, the longer Gingrich and Paul remain in the competition, the less certain anyone can wrap up the nomination before the Convention.

Denmark: Kickstarting the Economy?

After the American Century

A few words on the depressing state of Danish politics. For weeks there seem to be two stories. The first is that the ruling coalition is unable to define and put through its pet project, one of no interest to the majority of the country outside Copenhagen, namely to charge drivers tolls when they drive in and out of the city. This should not be a national issue. It should not be a headline every day, as it has been. It should not clog the radio waves. But the government did not have a clear plan when it began,  the coalition is not united, and the government is so myopic, it takes an enormous interest in all things to do with Copenhagen. Even worse, it now appears that after months of wrangling, nothing will be done except to find a new tax somewhere, no doubt paid by all Danes not just those in Copenhagen, so the city's bus fares can be reduced instead. Pathetic politics. Disturbing lack of perspective.

The second political topic is more general, namely that so many Danes are unemployed or otherwise living on some form of state subsidy. Before the election, the now governing coalition proclaimed that they would "kickstart" the economy by spending more money on all sorts of wonderful projects. Most of them would be projects that needed to be done anyway in the next decade, but they would be moved forward. Kickstart! We heard that word every day during the campaign. Once they got elected, however, the new government discovered that they could not spend more money without creating a larger deficit than was acceptable to the EU. This was awkward with Greece tottering on the edge of bankruptcy, especially as Denmark took over as temporary leader of the EU from January to June of 2012. So instead, the government has been busy kicking various groups in the face. They have not kicked them literally, of course, but one group after another is being blamed for draining the public coffers. The government has attacked the old for retiring too soon, the young who are not getting an education, the unemployed (even though more than 150,000 jobs have disappeared), the hospitals for being inefficient, and so on. 

The real meaning of "kickstart"

The new target is the universities. It is suddenly their fault that the young are not working. They are accused, rather vaguely, of not training people in the right fields. The rather absurd argument is that new graduates - who began their university education in 2006 during a world-wide boom and cannot find jobs today during a European bust - would have gotten jobs if the universities had done something (what exactly is not clear) differently. In 2006 the former government pressed universities to take in as many people as possible. The headlines then insisted that there would soon be an acute shortage of labor as the baby boomers began to retire. One "expert" after another proclaimed that there would be a dire need for highly trained people. Denmark would not have enough school teachers, gymnasium teachers, university lecturers, and researchers. It would need to import thousands of people from abroad to staff its hospitals and to keep its industries competitive, And so on.

The students who began in 2006 are emerging with their MA degrees into a much different economic situation than the one predicted. The government is forcing older people to work longer before they retire. It is firing hundreds of school teachers. It is firing lawyers and economists from the ministries. It is generally cutting budgets, like most other European countries. And in this situation the new graduates are not finding work. But it is more than absurd, it is hypocritical and beneath contempt for the government to blame the universities for unemployment. They have trained people as they were asked to do. It takes 5 or 6 years to do the job. During those years the world was convulsed by an economic contraction. Jobs disappeared, but the Danish universities were not responsible for that.

More generally, the government got itself elected by sounding as though they would adopt a Keynesian economic policy. It claimed it would kickstart the economy through deficit spending, as Roosevelt did in the United States during the New Deal or Kennedy did in the early 1960s. But once in power the new government proved to have quite a different economic policy. They are in fact going to run the Danish economy more according to the Chicago School, or the Milton Friedman brand of economics. I wish they would listen to Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist whose articles in the New York Times continually have criticized the EU for adopting cutbacks as a "cure" for weak economies. This policy resembles the ancient practice of bleeding patients who are ill.

Deficit spending therefore is not on the Danish agenda. Instead of a kickstart, apparently it is time to cut the budget and kick the victims. So, blame the unemployed, blame the young, blame the pensioners, blame the universities, and believe it or not, to some extent even blame the handicapped and the mentally ill. 

This is a socialist government in name only.