RTP-area local music and culture

[grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>]

Radio (probably Day to Day) specifically mentioned last week county- and 
precinct-level GOTV efforts in already-presumed-"safe" areas in order to 
"run up the score," essentially. Specifically referenced Ohio, but I'd 
assume the same elsewhere. As in "we're likely to win this county by 
3,000 votes; let's make it 9,000."

Which doesn't speak so much to science or refutation of CW as it does to 
discipline and a willingness to take nothing for granted.

I agree there is bound to be more.

Was thinking in the car on the way back from lunch, though, after 
reading more "how to grapple with this mindblowing defeat" crap in the 
Indy: anybody who's at all interested in American Politics had better 
read the Pew Survey on Religion & Politics, and know it inside-and-out: 
 http://pewforum.org/docs/index.php?DocID=26

Specifically, to address something Kevin said earlier in this thread: 
"what bothers me is the rush to make sense of it all, which seems to be 
leading in the direction of easy platitudes like "wow. all those 'church 
people' voted for bush. we've really got to figure out a way to reach 
out to them." how far does one go "reaching out"? where do you give 
ground? choice? gay rights? prayer in schools? what?"

To which I have no other answer than to say, for better or for worse, 
"they are us." We are a Religious Nation, taken as a whole. I don't 
think that at-all means we need to compromise our principles. I DO think 
that it means that if, as the Pew study claims, 58% of white Americans 
think the GOP is religion-friendly, while only 41% think the Democratic 
Party is religion-friendly, something *does* have to change, at least if 
we expect to win some elections.

I don't buy the claptrap being pitched by the Right about this nation 
being founded on Judeo-Christian principles, because I don't think the 
ancient Greeks were particularly Judeo-Christian and some of our most 
important principles are inherited from them. Many of the others were 
written by Unitarian-Universalist types, and who the fuck knows exactly 
*what* they believe?

More to the point, the Founders could put pretty much whatever the fuck 
they wanted into the Constitution, and they chose specifically and 
wholly intentionally to not only avoid a lot of discussion of God and 
Jesus & stuff, but in fact went so far as to forbid state establishment 
of religion.

HOWEVER, there is simply no denying that we are a Religious Nation. 
David Price has been hauled onto NPR 2 or 3 times in the past few months 
to talk about this, having an academic background in Divinity, and if 
nothing else I think he makes an excellent spokesman for the DemParty on 
this issue.

Would like, personally, to not have to listen to politicians talk about 
religion, ever--and would still like to see us move in that 
direction--but at the very least I must acknowledge that in my atheism 
I'm in a distinct minority, so that even if the pols aren't talking 
about it explicitly, it's being read into what they say by a lot of 
people. The majority of them, in fact.

Ross

Duncan Murrell wrote:
> While we're putting in our wishlists, I'd like to see someone look into 
> the statistical analysis Rove and Co. used to focus their efforts in the 
> last couple of months. I have a feeling that we -- the mainstream media, 
> the consumer of mainstream media -- are missing some crucial element of 
> how the Republicans ran their campaign on the ground. I think I've heard 
> that Karl Rove is a rotisserie baseball geek -- is it not possible that 
> he applied something like sabrmetrics to examine some of the hory 
> assumptions about what it takes to win, and found some mistaken 
> assumptions that he could use to his advantage? To begin with, he seems 
> to have shown no fear of a large turnout, when the conventional wisdom 
> said a big increase in voter turnout would swing toward the challenger. 
> Did he know something that the Dems and the rest of us didn't know? I'm 
> wondering if he hasn't developed some sort of technical body of 
> knowledge about the electorate that the mainstream media hasn't begun to 
> fathom. In that light, I wouldn't be surprised if he were laughing at 
> our discussion of values and what not, while secure in the knowledge 
> that he won that race on the ground with, perhaps, a more scientific 
> approach to the problem of where to find votes, and the most efficient 
> way of finding them.
>
> Or maybe it's just that I'm sick of our political journalists, and their 
> uncreative reporting of common wisdom, traditional beliefs,  and 
> whatever else the campaigns feed them, and I'm just hoping there's more 
> to it -- and our defeat -- then whatever Frank Rich and Joe Klein and 
> David Broder think.
>
> d
>
> OK, I'll admit -- I just read Moneyball for the first time, and now 
> everything in my life seems reduceable to a series of decisions based on 
> the right data, and the exploitation of inefficiencies found. I believe 
> I've found an inefficiency in the received wisdom about yard work which 
> may free up my weekends from here on out. I'll keep you informed.
>
>
>
> On Nov 11, 2004, at 9:40 AM, grady wrote:
>
> > Good Frank Rich in the Times that touches on some of these issues 
> > (talks about % of Bush voters who were right-wing nutjobs, and Thomas 
> > Frank's assertion that it's all about values until the day after the 
> > election, when it goes back to being all about $$): 
> > http://nytimes.com/2004/11/14/arts/14rich.html
> >
> > I'd like to see somebody, maybe the Democrats but maybe better Soros 
> > or Moveon separate from the D.P. itself, do some serious intensive 
> > research into what keeps the remaining 40% of eligible voters from 
> > voting. We already know that massive registration drives do a little 
> > bit to get some of them involved, but pollsters also know that just 
> > being registered is useless by itself as an indicator of voting 
> > likelihood.
> >
> > Is it access? Regardless of what else happens, pushing for more 
> > widespread early-voting, with more open polling places in more states, 
> > should be a Dem Party Platform issue.
> >
> > Is it satisfaction with the status quo? Do we write that % off 
> > entirely then as unreachable?
> >
> > Is it like the guy in Cary who called into the State of Things to 
> > complain that their attitude towards non-voters was really 
> > patronizing, and when MPK asked why he didn't vote, he said "my 
> > politics are to the far left of the spectrum." And unfortunately 
> > nobody on the panel that day had the sense to say "do you realize that 
> > your non-vote is actually a vote for the incumbent?"
> >
> > I mean, there is a massive third party in America, one that would have 
> > won this election had it voted as a bloc. Tapping it by massive 
> > voter-registration drives seems to be close to a zero-sum game for 
> > both parties. What about finding out what would motivate it? Or is it 
> > all about legalizing pot?
> >
> > Re: moral values issues, I think you're discounting the number of 
> > single-issue abortion voters somewhat. I've known plenty of folks who 
> > were that way, and I heard a few on the radio leading up to the 
> > election as well. I'm curious to know whether at this point it would 
> > be possible to reframe that dialog. I know that for a comparatively 
> > tiny die-hard minority, even birth control and particularly the 
> > morning-after pill are just as bad, but I wonder whether some ground 
> > could be gained by pushing harder to reduce the number of abortions 
> > performed by increasing education and access to birth control.
> >
> > That is to say, by explicitly saying "look, you want fewer abortions, 
> > we want fewer abortions, but logic and common sense say you've got to 
> > teach people how not to get pregnant, and abstinence alone isn't 
> > cutting it," is it possible to reach the large % of people who are 
> > unhappy with abortion but who aren't so right-wing as to be against 
> > sex-ed and birth control as well?
> >
> > I know there are already people trying to work this angle, but I don't 
> > know that it is being explicitly pushed as the most logical "solution" 
> > to the abortion "problem."
> >
> > Changing the subject, I heard the tail-end of a piece on the radio 
> > about a ranked-choice voting experiment in San Francisco. How did that 
> > work out for them? It would seem to almost necessitate moving to 
> > touchscreen systems (although one could redesign the op-scan to handle 
> > it by switching to little round SAT bubbles instead of the arrows, and 
> > having 3 bubbles by each name--but I think the spoilage rate would go 
> > way up) but I think the gist of recent hacking discussion has been 
> > that the most likely point-of-hack is the central server and not the 
> > UI anyway.
> >
> > Lastly, if y'all aren't aware, the new FM talk-radio station in 
> > Greensboro (101.1) has that total freaking psycho nutcase Michael 
> > Savage on nightly from like 6-10 p.m. Hoo-boy he's a loon. If radio 
> > elsewhere is sucking I'll turn him on to remind myself just how 
> > completely off-the-scale the right-wing propaganda machine is. In 
> > terms of sheer egregiousness, I don't think it would be close to 
> > possible for The Left to match him, no matter how hard it tried, 
> > unless Air America gave Seymour Butts a talk show that consisted of 
> > nothing but on-air reenactments of dirty sexual innuendoes about 
> > republicans.
> >
> > Ross
> >
> >
> > > > I don't see what's wrong about talking values when it comes to 
> > > > figuring out how people vote for president. There's forty years of 
> > > > hard, statistical evidence that suggests that values of one sort or 
> > > > another trump just about everything when people vote for president. 
> > > > Check out Thad Beyle's stats at the Center for the Study of the 
> > > > American South. Furthermore, my affinity for the Democratic party's 
> > > > position on most of the issues are fully in keeping with, if not 
> > > > directly the result of, the values I hold, some of which derive from 
> > > > my (gasp) church background, some from the hours sitting zazen at 
> > > > the zendo, and some just because I'm a fan of the Enlightenment. I'm 
> > > > not afraid of a discussion of values, but I'm sorry they make you 
> > > > berserk.
> > >
> > > values don't bother me a bit; that's how *i* voted.
> > > what bothers me is the rush to make sense of it all, which seems to be
> > > leading in the direction of easy platitudes like "wow. all those 'church
> > > people' voted for bush. we've really got to figure out a way to reach
> > > out to them." how far does one go "reaching out"? where do you give
> > > ground? choice? gay rights? prayer in schools? what?
> > > i thought i heard the dems talking about "moral values" quite a bit 
> > > during this campaign. i seem to even recall a speech containing that 
> > > refrain over and over again--"it's a moral value to want decent 
> > > healthcare. it's a moral value to want people to earn a decent wage, 
> > > etc..." unless i was just hearing things, where was the disconnect? 
> > > fear?
> > >
> > > > On the other hand, the statistics also seem to indicate that in 
> > > > races down the ticket, people _do_ vote the issues more often, 
> > > > probably because they're more immediate and less abstract.
> > >
> > > assuming those statistics are true---my own experience makes me doubt 
> > > that they are--how do we make the issues less abstract at the 
> > > national level?
> > >
> > > > Democrats still live on down the ticket, and as a result the 
> > > > Democrats (this time) increased their share in the State House. 
> > > > Julia Boseman was a county commissioner, and therefore was 1) a 
> > > > proven, well-known leader who had 2) obviously long ago resolved any 
> > > > issues her electorate had (if they had any at all) about her 
> > > > sexuality.  Boseman's experience isn't one from which you can 
> > > > extrapolate a lesson for the national Democratic party.
> > >
> > > i think it's one from which you can extrapolate *a* lesson, not
> > > *the* lesson. there are many lessons to be learned from this election.
> > > -k
> >
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