Gay Marriage Update and Election Aftermath Part 2: General Impressions

In Part 1, I discussed the gay marriage results of the 2012 election.  Now I’m going to go back to the full picture.  The three things I expected to see and didn’t were some historical mean reversion in voting demographics, and, based on that, a much closer electoral college.  Ultimately, I also thought Gary Johnson would end up being a spoiler.

Though I don’t view exit polls as a reliable tool to forecast results, I do view them as a reliable tool to assess demographics.  What we saw is that 2008 is no longer a singular outlier, as 2012 showed similar patterns of highly elevated youth and minority voting relative to pre-2008 historical norms.  Whether this is Obama-centric or indicative of changing demographics within the US remains to be seen.  I suspect it’s both, but more the latter than the former.

Because of misreading demographics, I misread the electoral college.  In particular, I thought Florida and Virginia would definitely go to Romney.  Those two surprised me the most.  I was also surprised that Romney didn’t fare better in Colorado, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin, as I expected him to pick up at least one of those states rather than lose so decisively in all three.  Ohio was tight, unsurprisingly.  Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Iowa going clearly to Obama, along with North Carolina going clearly for Romney, plus all the other state outcomes, didn’t shock me at all. 

I also was thinking Gary Johnson, as the Libertarian candidate, had a chance to be the spoiler in a few swing states, though we may eventually discover that Johnson cost Romney Florida.  I overestimated how much support he would receive, but considering how severely underfunded and disadvantaged the Libertarian party is (or any party outside the GOP and Democrats), 1% nationwide is a solid showing for a party only formed in 1971.

With Obama’s victory, the GOP holding the House of Representatives, and the Democrats holding the Senate with a couple more seats, we have a whole bunch of no change.  Effectively, this means two more years of the last two years.  The American people voted for a split government.  They had a taste of life with the Democrats in full control from 2008-2010 and wisely rejected it once again.  We prefer a split over one-party control because both parties have recently demonstrated questionable judgment and party-line thinking when presented with full control.  I think the Democrats did worse damage in two years 2008-2010 than the GOP did in six years 2000-2006, but that’s another story for another day. 

Also, I need to note that, between 2010 and 2012, the GOP has now blown at least five very winnable Senate seats, namely Delaware and Nevada in 2010 by picking Christine O’Donnell and Sharon Angle and Missouri and Indiana in 2012 by going with Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock.  I’m also inclined to add Linda McMahon from Connecticut to this list.  No Republican was going to beat Dick Blumenthal in 2010 because he was a popular attorney general for several terms and ran a good campaign, but a stronger one could have beaten Chris Murphy in 2012, who really was a much weaker candidate than his margin of victory would indicate.

In any event, with two more years of the last two years, seven questions linger.  I’ll lay all of those out in Part 3. 

Links:

Part 1: http://timsopinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/gay-marriage-update-and-election.html 

Gay Marriage Update and Election Aftermath Part 1: Gay Marriage Results

You surely know by now that Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney for the presidency.  You also probably know that the House of Representatives remains under GOP control while the Democrats retained control of the Senate.  These will get all the headlines even though it simply represents no change and two more years of the past two years.  I’ll come back to those in future posts.

For now, I want to focus on where change did happen, namely the gay marriage votes.  I don’t really have much to say about the marijuana legalizations except that the stage is being set for a Constitutional or states’ rights showdown between the federal government and various states that I’m looking forward to and will explore at some point. 

You’ll recall that three states were voting on approvals (Maryland, Maine, and Washington state) and Minnesota was voting on a ban.  I predicted a split for gay marriage supporters (Maryland and Washington) and opponents (Maine and Minnesota) to erase the goose-egg.  I was wrong.

As of right now, it appears the gay marriage movement went 4 for 4, winning approvals 52-48 in Maryland and Washington and 53-47 in Maine.  The Minnesota ban appears destined for defeat at 51-47.  These were all close races, as I expected, though I didn’t expect a clean sweep for the gay marriage movement.

One quick clarification.  Prior to this election, gay marriage did have one popular vote victory where Arizona’s proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, Proposition 107, was defeated in 2006.  There was still no approval victory until this time around.  So, technically, there was a goose-egg coming into this week on offense, but not on defense. 

Clarifications aside, the gay marriage movement continues to gain momentum.  These victories bolster confidence and reduce doubt in the effort.  The federal level is still the key and that battle is being waged mainly in the Supreme Court, but probably will also come up in the legislative process.’  California is the key state-level battleground.  More to come on this topic later.

I was originally going to roll some other election 2012 thoughts into this post, but I found something more on gay rights worth discussing here.  I recently saw two articles on the matter worth sharing.

Here’s the key excerpt from one of them:

According to Obama, "it would be up to future generations of Americans to implement meaningful reform," ABC added.

Also, take a look at this quote from the second article.

"The courts are going to be examining these issues. I've stood up and said I'm opposed to the so-called Defense of Marriage Act ... I've said that's wrong, [and] there are a couple of cases that are working their way through the courts, and my expectation is that Defense of Marriage Act will be overturned. But, ultimately, I believe that if we have that conversation at the state level, the evolution that's taking place in this country will get us to a place where we are going to be recognizing everybody fairly."

I have one key point here.  He shows his belief that this is ultimately a states’ rights discussion.  That means he doesn’t believe it’s the federal government’s job to decide here.  DOMA is on the books at the federal level.  By not pushing to repeal DOMA and simply hoping it gets overturned, he’s saying that he doesn’t want to use active federal intervention to undo active federal intervention.  If marriage is a state-level matter, then Obama just said that federal tinkering in marriage has to go and he thus should be working to repeal DOMA.  Am I the only one who sees the logical problem here?

Between the first quote and the second quote, I think it’s safe to conclude that Obama has turned his back on the gay rights movement.  This won’t reverse the momentum, but it does clearly hurt.  It shows us the movement is on its own and should not expect meaningful help from the Democrat establishment at the federal level.  Remember, the sitting president is generally viewed, fairly or not, as also the party leader. 

The expected counter is that I’m reading too much into what he said and didn’t say, thereby inserting my own interpretation.  That counter is coming, and, as usual, it’s wrong.  By saying it would be up to future generations to implement meaningful reform, you’ll notice he didn’t say that the present generation will implement meaningful reform.  The present generation would be during his second term in office.  He also clearly shied away from using federal intervention to undo the federal intervention of DOMA.

Last, note the date on the article.  This was published BEFORE the election.  Talk about an insult to the movement.  Politicians typically wait until after the election to say something like that to deflate a voting bloc.  The fact that he did this before the election speaks volumes about how much of an ally Obama truly is to the gay rights movement.  Did anybody hear anything about this before the vote?  I sure didn’t and I pay pretty good attention to this kind of stuff.  I think a lot of gay rights advocates should be questioning why they voted for Obama in the wake of this story. 

The bottom line for now is we had four victories for the gay marriage movement via three successful approvals and a defeated ban while we also had general elections that effectively gave us two more years of the last two years and Obama abandoned the gay rights movement even before the election ended.

Links:

http://www.examiner.com/article/obama-to-mtv-i-won-t-be-pushing-gay-marriage-second-term?fb_action_ids=10100953713956471&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1696360/president-obama-same-sex-marriage-equality.jhtml

The Debates End

Note: Car accidents and hurricanes have a way of disrupting life.  Better late than never on the post.

We had the third and final presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney recently.  I’ve previously dedicated partial posts to the first and second debates, as well as the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan.  This last debate, however, will receive a whole post.  There were multiple important things to take away from this debate. 

Bob Schieffer did a good job moderating.  He was much better than Candy Crowley.  Schieffer has known biases in his beliefs, but you wouldn’t know it based on his job as moderator.  My main issue wasn’t so much with the questions he was asking and the answers the candidates were giving, but what wasn’t addressed.  Often, what is not present is more instructive than what is present.  This falls on Schieffer since these were his questions.

First, there was no mention of the US’s immediate neighbors, Canada to the north and Mexico to the south.  The Keystone pipeline should have been discussed with regards to Canada.  Mexico needed to be discussed in both the context of Operation Fast and Furious as well as the bigger picture because Mexico is the failing state next door. 

Second, there was no mention of the European economic crisis.  That truly blew my mind.  Despite what the Nobel Committee would have you believe, Europe is imploding away from the news spotlight.  This is a huge global problem and had to be addressed.  We need to know Obama and Romney’s thoughts on the matter, especially since this is an economic as well as foreign policy matter.

Third, the moderator didn’t even get to China until over an hour into the debate.  The relationship between the US and China is the most important two-country relationship on Earth today and will be for decades to come.  It is thoroughly absurd to wait that long to get into China.

Fourth, there were all kinds of other matters that weren’t mentioned, such as the NDAA and Guantanomo Bay, or did not get the attention I felt they deserved, like drones (only overseas use, no mention of domestic use, of course).  The intersection between foreign policy and civil liberties was virtually ignored. 

Last is my grab-bag.  I would have liked to have seen more discussion on trade agreements and nuclear arms.  Libya wasn’t discussed enough for my liking, but they did at least spend some time on it.

So, what did we actually hear from what was asked and answered?  Romney is not really all that different from Obama on foreign policy.  We saw variations in details and such, but the general course was more or less identical.  For example, both favored the crippling sanctions imposed on Iran and both favored a change in leadership in Syria, though they differed slightly in the details.  The sparks flew a bit on Libya early, but that’s about it.  Because there was little contrast between the candidates, this was actually a rather boring debate.  I had long suspected that Romney would not have meaningful difference in foreign policy from Obama and I was proven correct.  Effectively, this means that, outside of the Libya attack (which is starting to look like a major blunder by Team Obama that I may have to do more about on my blog here), foreign policy should not be a material factor in voting. 

Ask yourself this.  Why would they ignore Canada, Mexico, and Europe while placing less emphasis on China than they should and focusing almost entirely on the Middle East?  I have my theories, but just keep it in the back of your head. 

Because of the lack of contrast, it is once again difficult to score the debate.  I would call it a draw in the bigger picture sense in that both candidates had success doing what they needed to do, but if I had to pick a winner of this debate itself, I would definitely give it to Obama because he was clearly the stronger debater. 

Romney had very low expectations, so all he really had to do was not blow it and present himself as a viable diplomat and commander-in-chief.  He succeeded at not blowing it by offering limited contrast and generally carrying himself in stable manner.  Romney did well at portraying himself as tough when necessary, but diplomatic otherwise and certainly did not portray himself as a warmonger (in a sense relative to neoconservatives, not libertarians).  Romney had a few really great moments, such as his statement about the Middle East that, “We can’t kill our way out of this mess.”  Romney also did well at trying to pivot back to the domestic economy and the belief that peace and prosperity need each other.  That said, I do feel like Romney really missed an opportunity to really pound Obama on the Libya attack.

Obama didn’t deliver the knockout punch, but he clearly outperformed Romney here.  One of the biggest benefits for Obama was being largely able to dodge questions about Libya…again.  Obama continued the aggression from the last debate, which may not have been the most prudent thing to do in a foreign policy debate.  It helped him win the debate and kept Romney on the defensive most of the show, but it made Obama actually look more hawkish than Romney, believe it or not.  The lack of contrast between Romney and Obama helps Obama because it’s an implicit admission by Romney that he agrees with much of Obama’s foreign policy.  Obama also put a strong focus on snark, sarcasm, and zingers, which was probably intended to make him look more likeable and show a funny side.  I don’t think it worked at the former, but it did work for the latter. 

Here’s the bottom line.  What we didn’t hear was arguably more revealing than what we did hear and, even though Obama clearly outperformed Romney to actually win the debate itself, the bigger picture view is that it was a draw because both candidates did what they had to do.

Links:

1^st Debate Review http://timsopinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-libertarian-argument-for-voting-for.html

2^nd Debate Review http://timsopinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/gay-marriage-update-before-2012.html

VP Debate Review http://timsopinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-vice-presidential-and-senate-debate.html

Eurozone Nobel Prize http://timsopinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-nobel-peace-prize-goes-tothe.html

3^rd Debate Transcript http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/22/transcript-presidential-debate-on-foreign-policy-at-lynn-university/

Gay Marriage Update Before the 2012 Election and the Second Presidential Debate

This is going to be another one of those posts where I do multiple things.  First, we will look at key gay marriage votes this season.  Second, we will have a look at the second debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

We have four key votes on gay marriage this season.  There are votes to legalize gay marriage in Maryland, Maine, and Washington states and there will be a vote to ban gay marriage in Minnesota.  As I’ve previously detailed, the gay marriage movement is 0 for 32 in votes about the issue in the past 15 years.  I think that zero is going to go away this time around, which would be a monumental victory because, to this point, it has only been through the courts and legislative process that gay marriage supporters have managed to achieve victories. 

Given the 0-32 record, it’s easy to argue that this time will be no different and history will repeat itself, but I disagree.  All the supporters need is one victory to erase the zero.  Anything beyond that would be a bonus.  A clean sweep for either supporters or opponents is possible, but highly unlikely, in my view.  My prediction is 2-2, with Washington and Maryland going decisively to the supporters, but Minnesota and Maine going narrowly to the opponents.  Let’s see how right or wrong those predictions turn out to be. 

And we are onto the second Obama-Romney debate.  I found this to be a very difficult debate to watch and score for several reasons.  The main reason involves the moderator, Candy Crowley.  Simply put, I’ve never seen such a poor job moderating a debate.  Why was her performance so terrible? 

First, the role of a moderator in a town hall debate is little more than that of a timekeeper and announcer of the name of the person asking the next question.  It is not the moderator’s role in a town hall debate to ask questions of the candidates.  That is the role of the person the moderator announces and only that person at that moment.  Crowley violated this repeatedly. 

Even more inappropriate than that was Crowley’s actions during the Libya question in which she failed to act as an impartial moderator.  She involved herself in the debate by explicitly stating that Obama was correct and Romney was wrong on the Rose Garden speech.  It was literally a real-time fact check and this is absolutely unacceptable conduct by a moderator during a debate.  The intervention was bad enough, but number two is that she was factually incorrect.  Additionally, though I’ll admit I did not keep track of time on each question, I will say that the Libya question felt very rushed and was clearly something that Obama wanted to avoid like the plague.  With Crowley’s intervention, he was largely able to do so as she managed to create a distraction and take up time.  This was truly deplorable conduct on her part and I truly hope she is never allowed to moderate a debate ever again due to this miscarriage of justice.

I think Crowley’s antics, both on the Libya question and her repeated follow-up questions, clearly stacked the deck against Romney to such a degree that objective scoring of this debate is extremely difficult to do.  I’m still going to try, though. 

Regardless of the moderator, Obama had a much stronger and aggressive performance this time around than last time.  He was also clearly the beneficiary of lowered expectations given the previous debate.  Romney’s performance was not as strong as the first outing, but was not terrible by any means.  He got visibly flustered toward the end, but his final answer was very solid and he managed to use that to regain composure.  I must say I was impressed by the ability of both candidates to pivot the assault rifle question into discussions of culture.  This was masterfully done by both candidates and makes perfect sense, seeing as how Romney’s gun record isn’t strong enough for the GOP base and Obama’s anti-gun record isn’t strong enough for the Democrat base.

Given Obama’s lowered expectations, Romney’s elevated expectations and momentum surge, plus the deck being stacked so heavily against Romney by the moderator, I can absolutely see why the initial reaction and consensus were that Obama won.  It is noteworthy that such a significant portion of the viewer base still believes Romney won in spite of it all.  I can’t fault people for thinking that because, given the tailwinds Obama had going for him, Obama should have decisively won that debate.  Realistically, I can’t fault anyone for saying Obama won this debate, either.

However, I reject that conclusion that Obama won.  My view is this debate is a pyrrhic victory for Obama, which I suppose means I ultimately see it as a victory for Romney.  What this debate did is it provided powerful and high-profile evidence to bolster the (compelling) case that the liberal media is pulling out all the stops to help Obama win.  This is important because the criticism that the liberal media (correctly) levies against the conservative media for bias is effectively nullified.

This controversial second debate definitely sets the stage for an interesting third debate on Monday.  I'll actually watch that one live, but refrain from live commentary.  I find it too hard to focus. 

A Vice Presidential and Senate Debate

I want to look at two things in this post.  One is the debate between Vice Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Paul Ryan (no Libertarian candidate…imagine my surprise).  The other is the debate for the Connecticut senate seat between Linda McMahon and Chris Murphy.

I didn’t watch either debate live and thus wasn’t on Twitter.  Instead, I watched football, as the Steelers lost on a last-second field goal to the Titans.  To be perfectly honest, the football game was better even though my team lost. 

Biden-Ryan was still an interesting debate.  In the first debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the general consensus was that Romney clearly won (maybe or maybe not decisively depending on who you ask, but Romney was generally the clear consensus winner).  Romney was clearly the more energized and aggressive in that debate.  Obama was too passive, plain and simple.

When we fast forward to this debate, you see Biden was the one who came out energized and aggressive while Ryan was more passive.  The moderator had even less control in this debate than last time.  The Democrats were clearly demanding energy from their guy and Biden did deliver that.  Biden spent a bit too much time laughing, snickering, and grinning like a Cheshire cat for my taste.  The GOP was simply looking to maintain the momentum. 

So, who won?  Really, I think it was a draw in that both candidates did what they had to do.  However, if I had to pick a winner, I would say Ryan won overall because my vibe was that he was handling Biden’s energy better than Obama handled Romney’s.  Obama seemed to wilt during the first debate, but Ryan didn’t really wilt for the most part.  I also don’t think expectations were set very high for Ryan (nor were they very high for Romney), so he exceeded expectations in my opinion.  The GOP appears to have maintained their momentum, as well. 

That said, Biden put in a much stronger performance than Obama did in his first debate and I think he succeeded in igniting a spark within the Democrats’ base.  He didn’t lose clearly (and/or decisively depending on who you ask) like Obama did.  I think Biden may even have exceeded expectations.  My call of a draw looks reasonable given the divide about who actually won.  I don’t see people from the left saying their guy lost like I did after the first debate, and I don’t see people from the right saying their guy lost, either. 

I’m seeing more states shifting toward Romney in polls than toward Obama.  Some states that were leaning for Obama are becoming toss-ups and some that were toss-ups are now leaning toward Romney.  I don’t see much movement in the other direction in the swing states.  I still see Obama having the inside track for the win, but Romney is closing the gap considerably and quickly.  This is shaping up to be another close one like 2000 or 2004 rather than the decisive win Obama had in 2008. 

And we’ll move onto the McMahon-Murphy debate.  This was their second debate.  I missed the first one, probably also because of football.  I’m an American guy and I have my priorities. :-p To me, this was a nasty debate to watch.  Both candidates went negative early and stayed negative throughout most of the debate.  Neither candidate really went into much substantive policy discussion, so if you were looking to learn about their actual positions, you were probably very disappointed.  They were also very repetitive in their attacks on each other.  If the first was anything like the second, I didn’t miss anything of value.  If the third is anything like the second, I’ll probably skip it.  There was just no value in watching it.  I’ve never seen a worse debate, to be honest.  I’m glad it was only an hour.

Next up is the second Obama-Romney debate, which is Tuesday.  I’ll watch it live, but will refrain from tweeting and such during the debate.  I find it too difficult to focus on the debate when I do.

The Nobel Peace Prize Goes To…The European Union?!

The European Union (EU) was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  I thought this was a joke at first, but I was wrong and they actually got one.  I also didn’t think that the Nobel Committee could make a worse mistake than when they awarded Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize in late 2009.  I was wrong again. 

I don’t want to make this post too much about Obama’s prize, but it is important to briefly look at it before we discuss the EU’s prize.  Realistically speaking, I thought Obama’s prize was a huge mistake to begin with, as it was for little more than big promises and dazzling rhetoric rather than actual results given that it was awarded less than a year into his first (and hopefully only) term.  In other words, it was little different than Obama’s actual election and the committee, like the American people, got caught up in Obamania.  Even three years later, I think the case for giving him the prize is virtually nonexistent, but this is out of scope here. 

Basically, Obama was awarded the prize for promises and rhetoric, but little real action, either positive or negative.  Even diehard Obama supporters agree on this.  As I said above, the question of whether or not he deserves it now three years later is irrelevant here.  I contend that the EU’s award is a greater lapse in judgment because, though it was also awarded given a colossal amount of promises and rhetoric (even more than Obama), it was awarded even knowing how drastically the negative action outweighs the positive action.  Thus, the EU deserves it even less than Obama did.  Let’s explore why this is such a huge mistake by the committee.

One need only look at the sorry state of Europe to see why this prize is not deserved.  Europe has soaring unemployment, soaring debts and deficits, stagnant or negative growth, riots and poverty all through the continent (“advancement of peace and reconciliation,” indeed), and so on.  It’s hard to decide which is in worse shape between Ireland and Greece, both of which are well on their ways to becoming failed states.  Spain is not far behind.  Portugal and Italy aren’t as far along as Spain, but are facing similar issues.  Additionally, I think France is the big fiscal powder keg waiting for a spark that nobody is watching.  There are movements toward secession involving various sections of Spain, Italy, and Belgium.  Efforts to address these problems have all fallen short.  Yes, Europe has had several consistently uncompetitive economies and dysfunctional governments like Greece, but that alone doesn’t explain why Europe is such a mess right now.

Fundamentally speaking, none of these economic and fiscal symptoms can be solved until Europe addresses the real underlying root cause of the problem, namely their flawed currency structure.  The Euro, in its present form, is a failed currency.  Do not let anybody tell you otherwise.  In a nutshell, the problem is they sought economic and fiscal unity via a common currency without political unity, the logic being that fiscal unity would lead to political unity.  That logic has proven disastrously flawed.

The only way the crisis in Europe will be solved is to fix their currency structure, which can be done in exactly one of two ways.  Either Europe can become more integrated to become a United States of Europe with a stronger, centralized European-level government or they can revert to the pre-Euro state of affairs with a European Union, but each country returns to its own currency and no common currency exists.  I previously compared the US and EU here. 

How can you justify giving a prize to this dysfunctional collective known as the EU?  Why should the EU be rewarded for making one of the greatest policy blunders of the modern era by creating the Euro? 

On a side note, leave it to the Europeans to blame the US for their dysfunctional currency union.  Thorbørn Jagland, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, had this to say in a supreme display of pure ignorance, arrogance, and intellectual dishonesty.  Per the WSJ:

“We don't have a position on how to solve the economic crisis, but we believe it will be important to solve it and that European unity can be kept so that Europe can move forward. There are many things to say about the economic crisis—where it originated, for instance. Actually, it started in the U.S. and all of us had to deal with it."

 

It’s not the fault of the US that the European banks had even greater leverage than ours had.  The US was not responsible for various European governments running their economies into the ground.  Most importantly, the US had no role in Europe deciding to form a completely dysfunctional currency and political structure.  Also, this was a nice display of blaming somebody else for your problems and offering no solutions.  What a joke.

Here’s the bottom line.  The committee, having done tremendous damage to its credibility by awarding Obama a prize, has done even more harm to its already-damaged credibility by awarding a prize to the EU.  It should be rewarding positive results, not promising rhetoric, not performance without results, and certainly not negative results.  The committee also needs to recognize that, though other parties do bear some responsibility, Europe’s present crisis is mostly a self-inflicted problem that they continue to perpetuate and exacerbate with half-hearted “solutions”. 

Links:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444799904578051960191363312.html

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/10/09/09greenwire-obama-wins-nobel-prize-in-part-for-confronting-55250.html?pagewanted=all

http://timsopinionblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/comparing-eu-and-us.html

A Libertarian Argument for Voting for Romney and the First Presidential Debate

I’d like to do two things with this post.  First, I’ll present one of the better arguments I’ve seen for why Libertarians should vote for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama.  Second, I’ll look briefly at the debate earlier this week.

The argument for why Libertarians should vote for Romney can be found here.  It’s a very short, but very insightful read.  The basic premise of Ted Frank’s argument is that, if Obama is reelected, he will be able to appoint a successor to Kennedy and/or Scalia on the Supreme Court, who are both in their late 70’s and likeliest to leave the court.  The author argues that if that happens, then it is game over the for the Libertarian movement because of the present composition of the court.  Per Frank:

·         “There are four justices on the Supreme Court ready to hold that the First Amendment does not bar Congress from regulating political speech against incumbents.

·         There are four justices on the Supreme Court ready to hold that the Second Amendment does not create any individual rights against the government.

·         There are four justices on the Supreme Court ready to hold that the Commerce Clause creates no constraint on Congress's regulatory powers.

·         There are likely at least four justices on the Supreme Court ready to hold that the government can choose to discriminate on the basis of race if "diversity" is at issue.”

I view these as very legitimate concerns, as we’ve already seen these come to fruition with opinions held by Obama’s two appointees, who are among the justices mentioned above.  The 5-4 rulings that are upholding personal rights would consistently morph into 5-4 (or worse) rulings cutting those rights down.  Remember, these are lifetime appointments.

One natural counter to this argument is that Romney has already held up Bork and Roberts as examples of the kinds of justices he would nominate.  Frank is not concerned about this, but I see it as an important counterpoint.  The problem here is that Bork, and Roberts to a degree at times, are advocates of Supreme Court deference to the will of the elected majority.  Here’s the thing, though.  The Supreme Court was designed to uphold the Constitution and as a check against the tyranny of the majority over the minority.  In other words, it has to be able to make unpopular rulings to honor the principles of the Constitution that defend the rights of the people against the power of the government. 

While another Roberts could not be counted on as a reliable vote as Scalia or Thomas at checking government power, one of them would be more reliable at doing so than another Obama appointee based on everyone’s rulings to this point.  Kennedy is a wild-card on a lot of rulings and Scalia consistently limits government power.  Roberts still generally limits government power, but is much more of a wild-card in the wake of his Obamacare ruling.  The Obama appointees consistently uphold government power over the people.  There is no reason for us to expect Obama to change his philosophy in future appointees. 

So, here’s the bottom line on Frank’s argument.  I think it’s a very compelling case that Libertarian-minded voters should seriously consider in swing states (I’ll explore why I single out swing state voters in a future post).  The importance of the Supreme Court is highly underappreciated.  I understand that a vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil, but I also think Obama appointees replacing Kennedy and/or Scalia on the Supreme Court would present an existential threat to the Libertarian movement.  Conceding the battle against the two-party monopoly in 2012 in the swing states to allow the war continues into the future may indeed be the best course of action here.  I don’t like the idea, but life is full of choices, some without appeal. 

I don’t want to spend too much time talking about the debate because you’ve no doubt heard a lot about it already and I’ve already gone on for a while, but here are my impressions.  Expectations for Romney were set very low by just about everyone, myself included.  Romney was overall the clear winner and surprised a lot of people.  He stormed out the gate and caught Obama off-guard, putting Obama into a hole that he was never quite able to get out of.  Obama managed to prevent the debate from turning into a total landslide, but he clearly lost.  On an absolute basis, Romney performed very well, but his performance looks even better when viewed in a relative context to both expectations and Obama’s performance. 

All that said, the impact of Romney’s debate victory has been dampened considerably with the news of a drop in U3 unemployment under 8%.  Note that U6 did not change, but that’s not what’s getting headlines.  I will be very interested to see how the future revisions come in, as I expect large and negative revisions…after the election.  We also saw an increase in food stamp recipients after the market close on Friday (when nobody was paying attention), which was decidedly less friendly to the Obama case.  The Obama camp did a masterful job of using the press as a tool and highlighting the good while downplaying the bad.  This should be no surprise.

There’s still a month to go to the election with two more presidential debates, a vice-presidential debate, numerous economic data releases, and a lot of global tension.  The race is tight and it should be a wild one. 

Links:

http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/2012/10/the-libertarian-case-for-romney.php