Gators - Noles - Voter Turnout?

Today is the day the Florida legislature wrought - the annual UF - FSU football game. Back in the day when FSU was recovering from its start in life as the Florida State College for Women, The University of Florida had no interest in engaging the FSU upstarts on the gridiron. It actually took the threat of a legislative mandate for the Gators to agree to play the girls school. But what a rivalry it has become!

Ok having got that out of the way, what in the heck does that have to do with voter turnout? Well, people are going to turn out in droves for the game today. Florida Field will be jammed to the rafters with well over 90,000 in the stands. The bars will be packed with Noles and Gator fans cheering for their teams. And the number of game day parties are literally too numerous to count. And all for a football game? Well, yeah.

The game will be played, one team will win and secure the bragging rights for the year. But other than that, will the game really affect your life all that much? Answer - no, not really.

But how about the impact of the next person to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Or the next Member of Congress from the _ _ District of Florida? Or the next state legislator or Governor? How do we get people as fired up for these things that truly make a difference in our lives as they do for the big game?

That may actually be the answer - convincing potential voters that they can make a difference. You would think that it wouldn't be that hard to do in Florida, of all places. After all, just seven years ago, 537 votes made all the difference in the world. Yet we still get elections like the recent special election for the state House where only 3.5% of the registered voters in Broward County bothered to vote. Or the recent City Council elections in St. Petersburg where we got a whopping 11% voter turnout. And those are just the registered voters. Who knows what a miserable number it would be if we were measuring all potentially eligible voters?

Well, I'll tell you it doesn't help when we get quotes like this:

"She's relentless and she knows Iowa," Davis said. "She's terrific at organizing volunteers and building grass roots. In a state like Iowa, that's important. Florida is more of a TV state where field operations don't matter as much."

That was Jim Davis talking about his campaign manager, Jennifer O'Malley, who is now John Edwards State Director in Iowa. Well, you know I love ya Jim, but those kind of quotes don't help us much. Field operations always matter. And to my way of thinking, they actually matter more in Florida than they do in Iowa. That's because everybody gets it in Iowa and they go all out on their ground game. Here, the team with the better ground game stands a much better chance of winning.

Even Joe Biden, who's campaign manager used to be the Executive Director of the FDP doesn't get it:

"You can't campaign like this in Florida," said Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. "What do you have, 17-million people? In the last two years, I will have probably met with 60,000 Iowans who plan to caucus. Only in a small state can you do that."

Well, sure you can, Joe. You just need to turn as many of those 60,000 folks as you can into volunteers for you. You don't do it because you don't try. And if you don't try, you don't win.

I assure you, those young men on the field in Gainesville today will be trying.

YouTube Debate Impressions

The big winner tonight was the format. Questions coming from real people. Yeah, the media (CNN) ultimately picked the ones shown, the universe they picked from was questions submitted by real people.

I went down to a local sports bar to watch the debate. I was told that a bunch of people were going to be there. The bunch turned out to be about 15 folks, and it was a pretty progressive 15 folks at that. Lots of Kucinich fans.

To my mind, John Edwards was the clear winner among the serious candidates tonight. I actually thought Joe Biden did pretty well, but it is hard to take his candidacy seriously. But Edwards was superb most of the night. He talked about taking power away from the special interests as the only way to get big change. He noted that we wouldn't get big change by trading our insiders for theirs. And his answers on Universal Health Care blew the top off the response meters.

Hillary Clinton abandoned the tag liberal, choosing progressive instead. John Edwards rejected reparations for slavery, but noted that there was a lot we could do to make up for the unequal treatment still occurring in our country today. He specifically mentioned predatory lending to blacks. Barack Obama also demurred on reparations, but suggested too that there were investments that could be made, particularly in education, to ease the disparities among the races.

Obama and Clinton got asked the race / gender question. They both tried to shrug it off with humor. Obama suggested that he proves his African American credentials trying to catch a cab in Manhattan. Clinton said she "had no choice" but to run as a woman. But John Edwards still came up with the best answer here. He told folks who were thinking about not voting for Obama because he is black, or for Hillary because she is a woman that "I don't want your vote".

Edwards again led in his answer to a question about who would be a better advocate for women. Edwards pointed out that the issues he stresses in his campaign, poverty and health care have a disproportionate impact on women. He stated that his issues were women's issues. Clinton pointed to her trip to China where she stated that women's rights are human rights.

Edwards got the gay marriage question and promptly fumbled it. He did say that it would be wrong for anyone to use their faith to deny rights to others. However, this was his weal est moment in the debate. Obama hit it on the head by stating that everyone should be equal under the law. As for marriage, that should be left up to the churches. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Edwards shone again on the health care issue. He has the only plan that mandates universal health care coverage. Hillary has the scars from trying in the early 90s. Obama tried to say his plan provides for universal coverage, but it does not mandate it. Round to Edwards.

I still think there are too many people on the stage. Biden, Dodd, Gravel and Kucinich have no chance to win the nomination. What are they doing up there? All they are doing is taking time away from letting us hear from the candidates who have a chance to actually win some delegates.

Floridians are going to have a real voice in the nomination process this time around. Our late January primary is early enough in the process for our votes to count in selecting the nominee. A new Quinnipiac poll has Hillary Clinton with a 22 point lead at 36% over Barack Obama and Al Gore who were tied at 14%. John Edwards registered only 9%.

Here are two things I don't know. I don't know if enough people are paying attention to these debates for them to make much of a difference in anybodies minds. And I don't know enough people who support Hillary Clinton to get her to 36% in a poll of people I know.

Candidate Review Wednesday: The Final Four

I have previously laid out my plan to review our candidates . The stated goal of this exercise is to help me settle on a candidate to support for the nomination. My reviews of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson can be found here.

Today, we are off to see, no, not the wizard. We are off to the (apologies to the NCAA) Final Four. So take a moment and review the other diaries in this series. Then follow me...


The Final Four are Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich. We'll spend a little time looking at each one of them. First though, let's take a quick look at the criteria I have established for this review:

There are two top level criteria I am going to use to evaluate the candidates. The first is their ability to win the nomination. The second is their ability to win the general election.

In my attempts to evaluate candidates chances to win the nomination, I am going to look at these factors:

• Values projected in the Message
• Stance on issues
• Fundraising ability
• Staff competence
• Primary strategy
• Does this candidate make me feel it?

Having said all that , let's look at reality here. None of these four guys has a snowball's chance in hell of actually winning the nomination. None of them is above single digits in any polls. None of them have come anywhere near the top three in fund raising. That should be the end of this diary right here. But I did do some research, so what the heck.

Let's start with Joe Biden. Joe is the Senior Senator from Delaware. He has been in the Senate since damn near as long as I can remember. He has the distinction of actually being elected to the Senate before he had attained the legal age to serve, 35.

Joe is not usually known for his reticence. In fact, he brought the house down with his one word answer of "yes" in the South Carolina debate. Trying to find values expressed in Joe Biden's verbosity was no easy task, but I did find this gem in a speech Biden gave on National Security and Civil Rights:

We need not change our national character in order to defeat terrorism. As a matter of fact, we are already defeated by the terrorists if we change our character.

Other than that though, Biden suffers from what has been called the "Issue Trap". As a long time Senator, Biden is adept at debating policy, particularly Foreign Policy. But to find values embedded in those policy choices is no easy task.

Chris Dodd, the Senior and only Democratic Senator from Connecticut also suffers from the Issue Trap. Dodd has been in Congress since he was but two years out of law school. I was able to find something that gives us a hint about Dodd's values though. Dodd has this prominently displayed on his web site: Restore Habeus Corpus and is the author of Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007.

The bill will restore Habeas Corpus protections to detainees, bar information acquired through torture from being introduced as evidence in trials, and limit presidential authority to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions.

Mike Gravel represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate from 1969-81. I had to look it up. Other than making a name for himself as the crusty old bomb thrower in the debates, there is not a lot to say about Gravel. And it was very difficult to find values statements on his web site.

Dennis Kucinich is another kettle of fish altogether. When he was the boy wonder Mayor of Cleveland, he was dubbed "Dennis the Menace." He hasn't changed much since. But in his description of his plan for a Department of Peace I did uncover this:

The United States was founded on hope, optimism, and a commitment to freedom. We can once again become a beacon of hope for the world. To do that, we must reject the current administration's policies of fear, suspicion, and preemptive war. It is time to jettison our illusions and fears and to transform age-old challenges with new thinking. This is the idea behind my proposal to establish a Department of Peace. This is the idea to make nonviolence an organizing principle at home and abroad and dedicate ourselves to peaceful coexistence, consensus building, disarmament, and respect for international treaties. Violence and war are not inevitable. Nonviolence and peace are inevitable.

Not bad for Dennis the Menace, huh?

As for issues, as always I start with Iraq. Joe Biden has been one of the first Democrats to come up with a plan for Iraq. His "federalization plan" has some merit. However, to make it work, a successful settlement of the Iraq oil distribution issue would have to be reached. Biden did not do himself any favors in this area when he voted for the Iraq supplemental without a time table for withdrawal.

Chris Dodd was alone among the senatorial presidential candidates to cast his no vote on the Iraq supplemental while the issue was still in doubt. Clinton and Obama both slunk onto the Senate floor and voted no after the votes for passage were assured.

Mike Gravel is for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. You can probably figure out where "Department of Peace" Kucinich stands. BTW, Kucinich voted against the original AUMF.

None of these guys make me feel it enough to sign on to a Don Quixote campaign. Enough said.