From the folks at Red Mass Group comes the reason why keeping Wisconsin and Ohio union strong is so important for Democrats:
Author: Jim Eltringham
Political consultant specializing in grassroots mobilization, online media, and public relations.
Where education really happens
The other night, I got to witness first hand some of the hard work being done by the Oakton High School robotics team. Two teams of high school students build machines to accomplish certain tasks, controlled by both pre-programming and direct remote controls. It’s pretty amazing stuff to say the least.
What struck me about the room was the presence of community volunteers. There were parents and teachers, of course, but also folks with no children or job at the school. I spoke at length with one mentor, who had retired from his career, and gave some of his free time to the robotics team. Several encouraged me to become a mentor as well. When I joked that I doubted I could match the students’ knowledge of the subject matter, the reply was an only half-joking suggestion that the important thing was asking a lot of questions anyway. The students don’t need people to teach them knowledge, just someone who can help them think through problems.
This became apparent when watching the students – tinkering with sensors, motors, nuts, bolts, and computers with a mix of determination and invincibility. Whatever challenge they saw in their robots – a program not performing as expected, a misfiring sensor, or wheels failing to grip an incline – there were never questions about whether solutions existed, just an eagerness to find where they were hidden.
(There was a corporate sponsor too, which is good because the competition can cost a team up to $8,500 just to build a robot.)
It’s interesting that some form of the gizmos these high school students were building in a near-deserted school may one day exploring Mars. It’s also interesting that few of the participants were getting paid any money to turn an unused high school shop class room into the staging are for the next generation of technology. Even for just a few hours, it was nice to see a place where commitment to education was not measured in dollars and cents.
3 Reasons Why This Is Christie’s Time
Politico reports grumblings out of New Jersey that Governor Chris Christie is mulling the first tentative steps of a Presidential run. Up to now, Christie has been consistently adamant that he isn’t running, but his candidacy was extremely likely even before this revelation.
The bottom line is that if Chris Christie wants to be President, a 2012 run makes the most political sense for three big reasons:
1. Christie is well-positioned to deliver the right message for the times.
The protests in Wisconsin may have been a tipping point for Christie, as they look to be the first in a series of clashes between public sector employees unions and the unfortunate realities of states in the upper Midwest, Northeast, Rust Belt, and West Coast whose tax bases are dwindling and whose budget deficits are expanding. If the abstract concept of reducing government spending was the central theme of 2010, the issue of whom gets what from shrinking government doles will be a recurring discussion leading up to 2012.
How this discussion is framed will go a long way toward deciding how many seats Republicans gain in the Senate and how successful the 2012 GOP candidate is. Unlike many national elections of recent vintage, 2012 has the potential to pose to the voters a meaningful question about the role and size of government.
Christie has already waged this fight in New Jersey (the only GOP candidate who has done so recently). But what’s more important than that has been the direct, unapologetic tone he has used in doing so. With tough financial decisions on the horizon, Christie has become Mr. Tough Love – and unlike most successful politicians, he has not shied from confrontation.
If the momentum from the tea partiers continues into 2012, and there remains a swath of the Republican electorate that still feels government is not working for them, is there a better person to lead the charge against entitlements and special interest groups – and get rank-and-file Republicans excited about it – than Christie?
2. Christie’s larger-than-life personality can go head-to-head versus President Obama.
That isn’t a fat joke. It is a recognition that the sitting President enjoyed a huge charisma advantage over all his opponents in 2008, and the electorate still likes him. Why not? He’s a cool guy, he fills out an NCAA bracket every year, and he jokes around about salmon during his addresses to Congress. More important, he still has a remarkable campaign infrastructure in place and is well-positioned to take on any Republican who can’t provide some level of excitement.
But he also has trouble with confrontation. From the town halls of 2009 to the tea parties of 2010, President Obama has consistently shown that a full frontal assault on his initiatives is the best way to throw him and his administration off their talking points. Christie’s blunt style seems best suited for flustering the President – and making the election narrative follow the script Christie sets out.
3. Christie is popular among Republicans now, but political memories are short.
Hillary Clinton might have been President if she had run in 2004 – President George W. Bush squeaked out a reelection victory over a challenger who looked like a sad puppy, talked like the Mayor from T’was the Night Before Christmas, and provided precious few reasons to switch horses. By 2008, she had become Washington establishment – part of the problem that the Obama campaign sought to solve.
Her husband, of course, beat the first President Bush in 1992, less than two years after the incumbent enjoyed record-high 90% approval ratings.
In between 2012 and 2016, there are plenty of things that could go wrong for Christie. His hold on the blue New Jersey electorate could slip, he could enter into a legislative compromise that sours his standing among social conservatives, or he could simply become yesterday’s news with a lost reelection bid 2013.
Christie running in 2012 isn’t just a convenient answer for Republicans looking for a leader. Second chances in presidential campaigns are rare.
The biggest obstacle to Christie’s candidacy will of course be his promises that he won’t run. His denials have been just as adamant as Barack Obama’s in 2006, and getting around the statement “I swear I’m not running” is one of the easiest maneuvers in politics. If anyone could get away with, “eh, I changed my mind” as a response, Christie’s the one to do it.
Sunday Funnies: I Can’t Complain
Google’s phantom tollbooth
From digitizing books to organizing news, Google has made it very clear that their business involves organizing the world’s information into internet content. This week’s announcement that Google is setting up a subscription service can’t come as a surprise: after all, you don’t build your own road without eventually building a tollbooth, right?
It would be nice to spend lots of money, but is it smart?
Has anyone noticed that Washington, D.C. and St. Louis have some eerily similar discussions going on?
The last decade or more has demonstrated that bloated budgets are inefficient at best and simply untenable at worst. While it would be nice to allocate large amounts of resources on the things we want for the next few years, those decision will come back to haunt us in the future. We must establish a plan and maintain discipline.
That could be the mantra of the budget hawks freshly minted from the tea parties of 2009-2010, or it could be the rationale behind the Cardinals telling Albert Pujols to go find himself a better deal than the reported offer that was on the table.
Just as the Republicans wear the black eye of the Bush-era spending increases, the Cardinals must answer to Pujols – and their fans – how they signed Coors Field product Matt Holliday to a contract which paid him $16 million per year, but would be willing to let the far superior Pujols walk because he’s too expensive.
Republicans are likely fearful of the Democrats accusing them of ripping Social Security checks from the arthritic hands of World War II veterans. The Cardinals can’t be looking forward to the sports page headlines and the talk radio chatter in St. Louis the day Pujols signs with the Seattle Mariners.
But in each case, the powers that be must recognize two realities. First, bad decisions in the past do not justify bad decisions in the present. Second, voters and fans are smarter than most people give them credit for.
And since the baseball problem is easier, here’s something to consider: teams lose superstars all the time and go on to have success. Seattle lost three franchise cornerstones – Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Alex Rodriguez – in consecutive years, and actually got better each year. Johan Santana left the Twins, and they still find their way into the playoffs with regularity. The Marlins won the World Series in 1997, dumped almost their entire roster, and rebuilt another championship team within six years.
On the other hand, teams just as frequently make signings that seem like great ideas at the time, but turn into albatrosses as players age. The Mets surely wish they could trade Carlos Beltran, and might try to murder Luis Castillo to get him off the roster. Vladimir Guerrero was a great pickup for the Angels in 2003, by 2009 they couldn’t get him out the door fast enough. And don’t you think the Cubs wish they could take a mulligan on the eight-year pact they signed with Alfonso Soriano in 2006?
Just as voters want a responsive, healthy economy, baseball fans want a winner. The Cardinals have to know that they more likely to successfully recover within a few years after Pujols walks away than to sign him to a deal that truly works out for the team.
The budget battle in St. Louis, just as the budget battle in Washington, is best viewed through the lens of recent history.
Budget battles can drive you to drink
Leave it to Matthias Shapiro of Political Math to hit put the back-and-forth over spending cuts into terms even I can understand:
Deflecting an ambush
CPAC has always been fertile ground for hidden camera hijinks – like any gathering where like-minded people get together, the attendees tend to let their guard down and speak a little more openly among what they think are their fellow travelers on the right. So it’s now surprise that Think Progress sent someone in with a camera, looking to get right-of-center people to say some dumb things.
Jesse Watters of Fox News was ready, though. Check out this video:
In this confrontation, Watters isn’t just a clear winner. He puts on a clinic on how to handle an unexpected question from a grassroots videographer:
1. “A smile usually helps.”
Remember Bob Etheridge? College-aged Republican activists hijacked the North Carolina Congressman with a video ambush last summer, only to have the Congressman rough them up and bark at them a little. Etheridge couldn’t have looked more like a curmudgeon if he had used the term “dagnabbit” and told the neighborhood kids he was keeping their baseball.
Watters is the opposite, and clearly knows how to be on camera. When the ambusher, Ben Armbruster, first accosts him, he demands, “Who are you?” As soon as Watters understands the situation, he warms up, enthusiastically asking, “Is this an ambush?” and playing along to a point. He jokes with Armbruster but is not openly hostile, understanding how that would look to the audience on the other side of the camera.
2. Watters gives his answer – regardless of the question.
Even though CPAC is a political event, Watters is not a political figure. He is a journalist, and as such clearly does not want to get into a discussion about media bias. That’s why his redirected conversation about the technique of investigative journalism is smart. Criticizing Armbruster’s equipment, technique, and line of questioning, Watters maintains a conversation that would make as much sense in a journalism department classroom as it does at CPAC (and perhaps more).
3. “You’re hands are shaking…”
Watters puts down Armbruster frequently, but never the style of interview. He tells Armbruster he isn’t conducting the interview correctly (“The question is very important. I just don’t think you’re bringing it with that question”), insults his camera phone, points out that Armbruster looks nervous – but Watters smartly never once complains about having a camera shoved in his face. In doing so, Watters avoids the hypocrisy of being an ambush journalists decrying ambush journalism – but more important, he avoids a David vs. Goliath media moment pitting Fox News against bloggers.
Because Watters has been on the other side of these questions, he knows exactly what it looks like – and he didn’t succumb to the line of “gotcha” questioning. If Armbruster’s frustration wasn’t evident enough at the end of the video, his contrived and weak headline – “Jesse Waters Won’t Deny Fox ‘Makes Stuff Up’” – drives it home. Maybe he should have tried to ambush someone who doesn’t ambush people for a living.
The Tea Party’s first casualty of 2012
A moderate Democrat Senator, who had been backed into some tough votes, was made vulnerable by his public allegiance to President Obama. The only possible path to victory would be a tea party Republican candidate lacking in media savvy and unable to connect with voters. Unfortunately for Jim Webb, he isn’t Harry Reid. Despite a wide-open Republican field stuck between lesser-known candidates and former YouTube sensations, Webb is not running for re-election in 2012.
Many political observers thought a groundswell of conservative activism would upend incumbents in 2012 – speculation included Orrin Hatch, Dick Lugar, and even the normally safe Olympia Snowe falling in primaries. Webb’s surprise exit beats them all.
Even without an opponent at this point, Webb had to see the writing on the wall that his re-election would be tough. The redemption-seeking retread candidacy of George Allen is ripe for a tea party upset, and other candidates are lining up as well. But with excited conservative activists and the absence of national Democrat momentum, Webb was destined to join Creigh Deeds in the second place circle in November 2012, even against a fringe tea partier.
Put another way, Sharron Angle, who narrowly lost to Reid, probably would have beaten Webb in Virginia. John Buck in Colorado likely would have beaten Webb in Virginia. Webb doesn’t have the long record of public service that Reid boasts, nor the leadership, nor the ability to raise nearly $25 million to holdhis seat. Democratic campaign committees and independent groups were unlikely to chip in – races in Missouri, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and New Mexico, plus pickup opportunities in Nevada and Massachusetts, will all rank ahead of Virginia for national Democrats.
Aside from the realities of the electoral map, investing in a Virginia race with Jim Webb as your candidate has a strategic messaging issue. After all, Democrats were able to beat back some challengers in 2010 by convincing independents that specific Republicans – such as Angle – were a bit loony. Michael Bennet, Chris Coons, Reid, and others were able to paint themselves as sane alternatives to “crazy tea partiers.”
There is simply no conceivable way the tea party could out-crazy Jim Webb.
MySpace makes a “top five” list. From this year. That’s not a typo.
Brandkeys released their annual Customer Loyalty Engagement Index – a ranking of companies by brand identity in a number of categories. In the social networking group, the ubiquitous Facebook was unsurprisingly first. But media observers are scratching their heads over MySpace’s runner-up status and Twitter’s fifth-place finish – not to mention the fact that Groupon, Foursquare, and other fast-risers in the social networking space didn’t even place.
They shouldn’t be. Despite MySpace’s current state of limbo, it does have a very distinct niche – as do LinkedIn and Flickr, numbers three and four on the list. Despite a large user base, Twitter suffers from the curse of one-time users – people who try it once and leave because they really aren’t sure how the Twitter works, and/or don’t care to learn. Foursquare is going through a similar growth movement as Twitter did – folks are signing up, but aren’t sure for what. Groupon and other community shopping sites are utilities more than networks.
Being on the list doesn’t make MySpace’s future any brighter, nor any clearer. But it shows the erstwhile leader in connecting people online did something right.
Jim Eltringham 