Star One Smart Blog's

The Drama Principle:

Q: What do you get when you combine the Feiler Faster Thesis (voters are comfortable processing info quickly) with the Theory of the Two Electorates (the mass of voters who don't follow politics are less informed than they used to be and only tune in at the last minute) with the 50-50 Forever theory (elections will be close from here on out as competing parties and candidates continually adjust to please 51% of the voters--and the ideological and institutional barriers to this adjustment dissolve)?

A: You get elections that are a) close but b) might not look close three, two, or even one day before the vote. Typically, one candidate A will be ahead, but Candidate B will start surging, or A will start collapsing. with startling rapidity as the late-tuning electorate rushes to rapidly learn about the race just in time to vote. Candidate B will look like he or she is, yes, racing against the clock! But that could be deceptive. It could not be so much that voters are changing their minds from A to B--if B only had two more days B would win!--so much as that they are all making up their minds once and for all, in quite orderly fashion, but only doing this at the very end (if B had two more days it wouldn't make a difference).

I guess that's is a nicer way of saying "we really shouldn't even listen to that lying crapweasel", eh?

On the historical repressiveness of Democrats...

Would Barack Obama attempt the repressive measures of Woodrow Wilson? The moralistic tone of his pronouncements indicate that he is man who is unwilling to accede to any views except his own when confronted with a crisis. And his temperament might tempt him to try. By his own admission he spent his college years hanging out with Marxists, structural feminists, and radicals. His association with Bill Ayers is too well known to require repeating. These groups are not known for the tolerance of dissent.

And in all frankness the stress of being the first black man to be president may act upon Obama's mind in such a way that he might be tempted to coerce opponents into sub- mission.

Would a policy of repression succeed? Unlikely, for the political and legal system have matured to the point that the American polity would resist -- perhaps violently -- such an assault on its civil liberties. Yet Obama's campaign has demonstrated a willingness to use the legal system to intimidate the opposition into withdrawing or moderating criticism of Obama the candidate. Should he become president, he will have the vast power of the American presidency at his disposal. And given the adoration of him expressed by the mainstream media (and it willingness to overlook the troubling aspects of his campaign) it is unlikely that he would face the harsh criticism that Richard Nixon faced when he attempted to intimidate opponents.

A policy of political repression would destroy or seriously undermine the claim by the Democratic Party to be the champions of dissent. How would the Party answer such a charge? By denial and obfuscation, as can be seen by anyone studying the response by Democrats to the financial meltdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Yet truth can be suppressed only so long. And if Andrew Jackson was the Alpha of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama may be its Omega. The intense desire for power, the determination to overcome all opposition, and the passion drove Jackson, that animated Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson may lead Obama to commit acts that might signal the end of the Democratic Party.