Lies, Damned Lies and Nutroot "Truths"

Filed under: US Elections

On January 7th Markos Moulitsas, the publisher of the Daily Kos nutroot bible, stated that the country was in the midst of an "Obama surge." He stated: "This thing is becoming a tsunami, and that's before Obama even wins New Hampshire and South Carolina. I don't see how Clinton recovers." Oh and, by the way, he plans to vote for Obama in the California primary.

And indeed, as always, Weather Boy Markos was correct. It was a tsunami. The very same one that blew John Kerry into the Oval Office, just as WB predicted it would. Impressively, Obama won the New Hampshire primary by exactly the decisive margin WB Markos predicted, 45-26 over Clinton.

Not.

It really does seem like Mighty Markos is coming unglued, pulling a Britney Spears-like meltdown. He recently urged his cohorts in Michigan to vote for . . . Mitt Romney. Even his own turned on him.

On January 3rd, the DK stated in regard to the Iowa Caucus: "Tonight was also a victory for the Democratic Party. Participation in the caucus almost doubled. 212,000 Democratic voters turned out compared to 125,000 in 2004. About 46,000 of those caucus-goers were young voters." DK is obsessed, you see, with "young voters" ever since the downfall of their beloved Lord God King Nutroot Howard Dean, whose humiliating flameout put the nutroots in their place more emphatically than any right-wing action ever could have.

So, it seems the DK believes that since turnout increased in Iowa, this means the Democrats will retake the White House. They were full of these types of "insights" back in 2004 too, when they were sure John Kerry would defeat George Bush -- who then went on to win reelection to a second elected term by a majority, something no Democrat has done since Frankenstein Roosevelt half a century ago.

Given their track record, one can hardly quarrel with them. Uh, yeah.

What the DK "analyst" cannot seem to grasp is nonetheless a startlingly obvious fact: The two major candidates of the Democratic Party are extreme polarizing figures. People hate them, Obama because he's an unqualified lightweight (with some racism undoubtedly thrown in for good measure) and Clinton because she's Clinton (with some sexism undoubtedly thrown in for good measure). Under such circumstances, it's not at all surprising that people would come out of the woodwork to vote . . . against them. The same thing would happen in a general election, a dream come true for a Republican Party that has to overcome the problems of the Bush administration and a dubious economy.

The DK is also not, it would appear, too overly familiar with the basic voter turnout data either. In 2000, 155,000 Democrats voted in New Hampshire's primary. In 2004, 220,000 did so -- an increase of a whopping 40%. But in 2004, as is well known, John Kerry went on to a decisive loss in the general election. The increase from 2004 to 2008 won by Obama and Clinton was only 50,000 (compared to the 65,000 increase that Kerry generated). With his puny turnout of 155,000 in 2000, Al Gore nonethless went on to win the popular vote, losing narrowly in the electoral college. You won't read about any of this, however, in the Daily Kos (or, as noted below, in the nation's Paper of Wretched).

There's a word for attempting to take people's eyes off a big problem by trying to make them think about something else that seems to be a good thing. That word is "propaganda."

Frenzied and desperate as they watch their two candidates rip each other apart, weakening the winner both politically and financially, one can expect this sort of "analysis" from the DK. But given its avowed contempt for the blogosphere, it was perhaps surprising to see the New York Times pick up this nutroot ball and run with it in one of its own blogs (without mentioning DK of course). It wrote in regard to the New Hampshire primary:

The four Democratic candidates last night drew about 270,000 votes between them, while the larger G.O.P. field drew about 210,000, or about 60,000 more votes for the Democrats than the Republicans. Maybe this sounds like a small difference to some, but given that fewer than 700,000 New Hampshirites voted in the last general election for president, a 60,000-vote differential in that small state is quite significant. In the three decades since 1980, there have been four primary years when both the G.O.P. and the Democratic nominations were contested -- 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2008. In all three of the previous elections, there were more votes cast in the Republican primaries than in the Democratic primaries. The G.O.P. margin was almost 40,000 votes in 1988 and almost 80,000 votes in 2000. So to see more votes cast in New Hampshire's Democratic primary last night than in the state's Republican one -- not to mention 60,000 more votes -- is almost as historic as seeing a one-two finish by a woman and an African-American. Though historically New Hampshire had been a very Republican state (George Bush beat Mike Dukakis there in 1988 by almost 30 percent), in recent years, it has become something of a battleground. It’s one of only four states in the country (New Mexico, Wisconsin and Iowa are the others) where an outcome was determined by less than 2 percent of the vote in both 2000 and 2004. John Kerry won the state by just 9,000 votes in 2004; and President Bush won it by only 7,000 votes in 2000. Given these sorts of numbers, having 60,000 more voters participate in the Democratic primaries than in the G.O.P. primaries is a very strong sign for the Democrats.

That's a lot of words, but none of them tell you that the New Hampshire turnout increase from 2000 to 2004, when the Democrats lost, was far larger than from 2004 to this year, totally negating the basis for the NYT's claims. It seems the NYT has stepped out of the shadows of objectivity to assume the role of unabashed partisan cheerleader (this story was hyped on the front page of the Times' website), intending to give the DK a run for its money.Then again, maybe not. Because the Times piece continues:

Of course, the 60,000-vote spread last night is no guarantee that the Democrats will carry New Hampshire in the fall. Primary vote totals are a shaky indicator of fall vote totals. And, as I pointed out in a previous post, the two primaries -- even held in the same state, on the same day -- are largely separate elections, and reading them in parallel is a dangerous endeavor. Perhaps most important, we can't know what will happen in November if one or both parties does not nominate a candidate that swing voters prefer.

So they don't acknowledge the polarization factor, but they do admit that even on its own terms their analysis has no foundation in actual fact. Given that, one must wonder why they printed it . . . that is, unless its simply propaganda with a disclaimer. And that seem quite possible since their piece concludes:

Still, as signs go, it is an encouraging one for Democrats. And if there was a surprise in last night's totals, it wasn't that the Republican and Democratic participation levels were similar, but that -- for the first time ever in a simultaneously contested New Hampshire primary -- the Democrats had so many more voters.

Another "interesting" feature of the Times piece, which appeared on one of its blogs, is that it attacks a Times print columnist, David Brooks, for writing (on his blog) that "Republicans voted in nearly the same numbers as Democrats. In Iowa, Democratic interest swamped Republican interest. In New Hampshire, the Democrats had an edge, but it was not huge." One has to wonder whether a survey would indicate similar attacks on the Times left-wing columnists.

Republicans have won a string of impressive victories in actual elections recently, leading with the election of a Republican governor in Louisiana. Democrats seem, one again, blinded by their furor and unable to capitalize on electoral opportunities.

If the country were really surging with love for the Democrats, would NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg be considering a third-party bid for the presidency? It seems unlikely. There reason he's doing so is that he's unsatisfied with the Democrats and thinks he can do better, and more importantly thinks there are lots of American liberals who might feel the same. His entry into the race would steal gobs of votes from the Democrats, and that must be another horrifying prospect.

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NOTE: The author of the NYT piece, Ron Klain, is identified as "a member of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign policy and debate preparation staff, chief of staff for Vice President Al Gore during the 1996 election, ran Mr. Gore's 'war room' in 2000 and led debate preparation for Senator John Kerry's 2004 presidential bid." The blog is entitled "Campaign Stops" and has five authors; only one of them is a former partisan campaign insider. Guess which side got that honor?

I posted the following as a comment to the NYT piece:

You've made a pretty serious error in analysis here, and have not given your readers all the basic facts.
The increase in voter turnout in New Hampshire from 2000 to 2004 was FAR larger than it was from 2004 to 2008 (Dems added 65K in 2004, only 50K in 2008), yet in 2004 John Kerry went down to DEFEAT.

The turnout in 2000 (just 155K) was close to half what it was this year, but in 2000 Al Gore WON the popular vote, only losing (narrowly) in the electoral college.

The reasons for the increased turnout this year is that the Dem candidates are polarizing figures; many hate them. They are ripping each other apart, costing the winner both politically and financially, that that is killing you. And all you can do in response is to parrot the propaganda of folks like the Daily Kos. If the country was so much love with the Democrats, why would Mayor Bloomberg be considering a third-party bid? How could a Republican have been elected governor in Louisiana?

More details about these errors can be found here:
http://publiuspundit.com/2008/01/lies_damned_lies_and_nutroot_t.php

The NYT censored it.

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