Pact on Debates Will Let McCain and Obama Spar

The story about the negotiation for setting the rules for the debates is pretty interesting. I also like the idea that the candidates are watching film of their rivals previous debates.

Bush Urges Congress to Enact Rescue Package

Almost by definition a crisis will shock the system it is occurring in. It's fascinating to watch the political system, and in particular the party system, absorb and react to the ongoing economic crisis.

It's easy to mumble vague sentiments about coming together or issue attacks at your rival partisans. But it will be more interesting to see who gets to (re-)build the new regulatory regimes and institutional structure of capitalism that is currently being handled by Treasury Secretary Paulson and the Federal Reserve. Congress will likely not sit on the sidelines for too long.

See also this WSJ article:

"Why does one person have the right to grant $85 billion in a bailout without the scrutiny and transparency the American people deserve?" asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), a reference to the loan the Fed gave AIG with the Treasury Department's blessing.

More in the NY Times which features supportive Democratic Senators.

2008 Iowa Caucus

Pictures from your humble instructor. We were told the Republicans just sorta show up and vote as if it were a primary, so most of the action captures the Democrats.

The Electoral College favors voters in small states

An excellent (and highly readable) post by a political scientist and statistician.

The Power of Political Misinformation

Interesting article on attempts to correct misinformation during campaigns. Note some of the research mentioned was conducted by graduate school friends (and a co-author of mine, Brendan Nyhan, who also provided the pointer).

All Palin all the time

They don't seem to be gathered all together well, but if you click around the ABC News site you can find quite a few video clips of the Palin/ABC interview.

UPDATE: This clip is pretty long.

will.i.vote: Can Young People Actually Make A Difference This Year?

Signs of an increasing youth vote.

Palin Profiteers

Fox News has an article up on different merchandise being sold to cash in on Sarah Palin's sudden popularity. More evidence that parties (and even candidates) have declining ability to control their own media images. Also a gallery of products.

Electoral College Calculator

From the Wall Street Journal, a nifty electoral college calculator.

Obama on Letterman

I tend to find candidates' appearances on The Daily Show to be pretty awesome. McCain is certainly at his best on the couch as compared to the stump. Last night's clip shows that Letterman can still compete with Stewart. Obama is pretty funny too.

Polls, Polls, Polls

In my mind, the best source for kind of horse race polling data we all crave this season is at Pollster.com. One of the nice things they do is to aggregate different polls from many polling firms. This helps to cancel out bad samples that any one pollster might draw in a given week. For the state-level polls this is probably particularly useful.

The 2008 political conventions of the United States

The Big Picture is a blog where each post is a photo set involving some current event. This week, the national political conventions.

Good Blogs

People often ask what are good blogs about politics.

I often point them toward my friend and co-author Brendan Nyhan who maintains a blog that is often focused on spin, the media's coverage of politics, and fact checking more generally.

UWM's Tom Holbrook is maintaining a blog about Election '08. Over at Madison, Charles Franklin has a blog about polling, Political Arithmetik.

The New York Times is now maintaining a fairly large stable of blogs as well. And not all of them are about politics. I'm quite fond of Mark Bittman's food blog Bitten.

If you start to follow multiple blogs you might want to check out using a feed reader so that the posts come to you. Check out Google Reader or maybe NewsGator (I use their NetNewsWire).

The Party Conventions

Among many other places you can find the speeches from the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention at the iTunes Music Store.

Welcome to Fall

Welcome to the Fall 2008 Party Politics in America online course blog.

No Joke: Colbert's Campaign May Run Afoul of Law

Nice article detailing the swamp that Colbert is wading into.

Follow up with "Clean Election"

My last post was rather jaded toward campaign finance reform. But as many students have expressed in blogs, money has a lot to do with parties, candidates, and the party system... which may make things less democratic.

I criticized this issue due to lack of a concrete way for money in politics to get in control. I followed up with what campaign finance people on campus to see what they thought about my concerns. I found out they are doing some interesting things with petitioning for local legislation, make college government "clean" (meaning many different things and will have to be well defined) as well as gaining support from candidates who are willing to run a "clean election." What I was surprised to find out was that they have had some success in a few states/elections (2 to be exact). Here's some evidence of the success of this reform effort from Democracy Matters:
"Maine:• In 2006, 78% of the Maine legislature had run as "clean candidates," owing their allegiance to no one but their constituents.• The number of competitive races doubled between 1998 and 2004, and the number of incumbents re-elected declined.• In 2004, 8 of 11 third party candidates (Green Party) qualified for the same level of public financing as other candidates."

Like we talked about in class today (10-18-07), money affects access, which affects how the entire party system looks and works. There are obviously other structural and psychological factors that may.

Maybe Wisconsin could be the next or maybe it will have to start with UWM's Student government. It seems that if enough people care about money in campaigns (like expressed in 421 blogs) there could be an increase in "clean elections."

The Difference Between a Party and a Faction

In today's New York Times, James Dobson nicely sums up the difference between partisans and issue activists:

The other approach [to voting], which I find problematic, is to choose a candidate according to the likelihood of electoral success or failure. Polls don’t measure right and wrong; voting according to the possibility of winning or losing can lead directly to the compromise of one’s principles. In the present political climate, it could result in the abandonment of cherished beliefs that conservative Christians have promoted and defended for decades. Winning the presidential election is vitally important, but not at the expense of what we hold most dear.

The text of the op-ed reads like a not-to-subtle threat to the GOP presidential candidates.

Does Democracy Matter?

From reading many of your posts last week, I mulled over previous notions about campaign finance reform, clean elections, and other notions that seemingly advocate for a political system with less focus on money and more focus on the masses.

Reform is a political beast. Honestly, reform of financing in our system seems so overwhelming in terms of what can actually change. The McCain-Feingold reform was a rollercoaster with lots of hype, but in the end it was just a bunch of loopholes. This is frustrating to those who value the ideals of democracy.

There are advocacy groups, one here on campus in fact, that work toward cleaner elections. Group's website. Their ideas are working toward a more ideal democracy; potentially a more democratic democracy, but how do I know it will matter? Activity toward reform still seems so overbearing it's hard to latch onto on more than a conceptual basis.

Reform is a political beast, but just not a sexy beast.

A Guide to the Political Herds (nytimes.com)

The link to the New York Times piece on political herds as mentioned in class on Monday. It's a fancy flashy web interactive experience.