Democrats Spoil Presidential Politics. Again

We don’t usually do David Broder here at the Road to the Middle Class, for obvious reasons. But today he writes about the Democrats latest attempt to game the presidential primary calendar.

Call me conservative, but when I came to the United States I quickly grew to love the primary season and its calendar.

It started slow with the New Hampshire primary and slowly gathered steam until the Oregon primary and then the granddaddy of them all, the California primary when the nominees would usually be decided.

It was long enough almost to qualify as a professional sport. And about a month after the California primary would come the playoffs: the National Conventions.

But then came George McGovern, who rewrote the Democratic Party rules after 1968 and ran for president in 1972. Ever since then the Democrats have been fiddling with the rules to try and game the system. Or as Broder puts it:

When they started tinkering with their rules after the 1968 election disaster, they unleashed a fierce competition among the states to be at the head of the line, where the contests have the greatest impact on weeding the field and crowning the eventual winner.



What was lost in all this was any sense of public deliberation about the choice of the next president. In the general election, people have two months or more to evaluate two or maybe three candidates. In the early primaries, eight or 10 people may be vying. What is most needed is time -- and a place -- for them to be carefully examined.

Maybe that is just what the Democrats intend. They don’t want a process of “public deliberation.” They want a quick decision in favor of a candidate preferred by the Washington elite. And then back to business as usual.

The beauty of the old presidential selection process was its deliberation. (OK, I know, it really only lasted from 1952 to 1968.) Different states came up every week or so, and each state required a different strategy. And usually the best man won.

What I want to know is: Why shouldn’t Republicans work with the states to go back to the old schedule, celebrating the slow advance from bud to bloom throughout the spring? Democrats be damned for their hot-house forcings. Let’s watch political nature in all its loveliness, natural and organic, the Whole Foods way.

Costco vs. Wal-Mart

Some of you may have noticed that the two big box retailing champs, Wal-Mart and Costco, have differing political profiles. The Wal-Mart and the Walton family are associated with the Republican Party and union busting, while Costco and CEO Jim Sinegal are associated with the Democrats and are much more employee-friendly. Here is an ABC News puff-piece on Costco and Sinegal.

In fact there is a big difference in worker pay. Costco pays about $17 per hour and Wal-Mart pays about $10 per hour, according to Tim Worstall.

Well, that does it. Clearly Costco is higher and nobler, more sensitive and more compassionate. But how does Costco do it?

Costco has sales of $51 billion, 110,000 employees (45% part time, similar to WalMart isn't it?) and WalMart has sales (in North America) of $191 billion and 1.3 million associates. So Costco has sales of some $465,000 per employee and WalMart $147,000 per employee.

And that is the point. Costco is a warehouse store, where you buy huge sacks of stuff rather than onesies and twosies. It has a business model that requires a lot fewer employees. And when Costco delivers about 3 times the sales per employee as Wal-Mart they can afford to pay more to each employee.

But that raises the question. Is it better for Costco to hire a few people at high wages or for Wal-Mart to hire a bunch of people at lower wages? You make the call.

Unfortunately, whatever call you make, ultimately the market will decide. Because it answers the big question, the only question that really matters: what do the customers want? Do they want to buy at a warehouse store or at a Wal-Mart big box?

By the way, even though Costco is said to be a friend of labor, only 18 percent of Costco employees are unionized.

Suppose Omar Was Bombing Abortion Clinics...

The MSM reaction to the San Francisco hit-and-run motorist yesterday was Ho Hum. No need to put Afghan driver Omeed Aziz Popal on the front page with his car in front of the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco.

It’s like the Seattle gunman a few weeks ago. Nothing to report there really. Anyway, the South Asian suspect Naveed Afzal Haq supposedly converted to Christianity lately.

Then there was the North Carolina chappie, discussed by Shannon Blosser. Mohammad Reza Taheri-azar rented an SUV and drove it close to the student union at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in the hope of hitting people.

Now imagine if these oppressed Muslims were instead middle-aged white guys driving SUVs into abortion clinics.

Yes. There wouldn’t be any problem about getting their exploits on Page One. There wouldn’t be any problem about declaring their acts as hate crimes. There wouldn’t be any problem getting MSM news anchors to put on their deepest frown as they anathematized the dastardly white bigots. The horror. The outrage. The end of civilization as we know it. The right-wing hate.

But who cares about a few Jews being killed in Seattle and San Francisco?

Things You Are Not Allowed To Say: Part XXXIX

Nearly sixty years ago, feminist Simone de Beauvoir bemoaned that the female was the victim of the species. What she wanted was to become a real human being, with a life of the mind, creating, reading, and writing.

Don’t, advises Michael Noer in Forbes, marry a woman like that.

Guys: a word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career.

Of course, the usual suspects are mortally offended at that. How dare Noer say that, they say, echoing the manipulative power of women down the ages. So Forbes got up Elizabeth Corcoran to pen a riposte.

Girlfriends: a word of advice. Ask your man the following question: When was the last time you learned something useful, either at home or work?

Er, what does that have to do with the big question that is nagging in the back of every young man’s mind? And what might that be?

It’s pretty simple. In today’s world, as a result of the feminist revolution and the cultural power of liberals, women can and do dump men for any reason (and two thirds of divorces are initiated by women). That usually means that they waltz off with the house and the kids and the husband/father gets stuck with the child-support payments.

So the question that any sensible guy would ask himself is: how do I work the odds on this unfavorable situation.

The obvious thing is: don’t marry a woman like Simone de Beauvoir or her followers. Don’t come within a country mile of Elizabeth Corcoran. Don’t marry a woman who has things on her mind other than home and children. If you are the marrying kind.

This shouldn’t be so shocking, after all. Men and women are completely different and in normal intercourse don’t have too much to say to each other. So unless they are embarked upon a shared life project—making a family, for example—then the chances are that after the sexual attraction has worn off a bit then the desire to stay together will wear off a bit. And your average feminized career women will soon be saying: shape up or ship out.

That is easy to say, but as every wise woman knows, it is a life time project to get a man to shape up and make a contribution that comes close to hers.

But this is America, land of the free and the brave, quivering under the knout of the social liberals. There are just certain things you are not allowed to say.

You are not allowed to say that career women are a problem. Didn’t you know? It’s right there in the First Amendment.

Katrina: Who's To Blame?

A year ago New Orleans and Louisiana politicians failed to mobilize for Hurricane Katrina. That was President Bush’s fault. A year later Mississippi’s recovery from Katrina is way ahead of New Orleans. And that is President Bush’s fault too.

How easy it is to be a liberal. Whatever happens, Big Business, or Republicans, or white racists are to blame. Meanwhile a river of tax monies drops into the lap of liberal politicians every day of the year and they can buy the support of the poor, again and again. With no accountability for results.

There are three reasons for the debacle of Katrina. We all know what they are:

1. If you want to know what is happening, don’t listen to the mainstream media.
   
2. If you want prompt, flexible response in emergency, don’t give the job to government.
   
3. If you want healthy, vibrant cities, spend tax dollars on infrastructure not on social programs.
   

All those rules were violated in New Orleans.

When I first came to the United States in the mid 1960s I was impressed by the heroic level of infrastructure. But then came the Great Society and the diversion of tax revenues into social programs. But it wan’t till the energy price shocks of the 1970s that government really started to skimp on infrastructure. Initially, it was a temporary thing, to get over the budget crises of the era. But the level of spending was never restored.

Today, as Nicole Gelinas observes in City Journal:

Public officials have unfortunately lost interest in such rational infrastructure investment, doubtless because entitlement spending has consumed budgets as well as politicians’ attention. As the American Society of Civil Engineers warned last year, “congested highways, overflowing sewers and corroding bridges are constant reminders of the looming crisis that jeopardizes our nation’s prosperity and our quality of life.” As entitlement spending has gobbled up the federal budget, spending on infrastructure has fallen to about half where it was as a percentage of GDP 40 years ago; state and local infrastructure spending lags as well.

Today, of course, Democrats are baying for investment in infrastructure, as if it wasn’t their complaints about “paving over the nation” wasn’t the cause of the problem in the first place.

But don’t look for them to propose backing out entitlement spending to make basic investment in infrastructure.

Suprise! Non-political Voters Aren't Political

When you are a conservative you want your conservative party to be conservative. You want it to stand for conservative ideas and policies.

There’s only one problem with that. Women. They tend not to vote on ideas, on parties, and on our side vs. their side. They vote for condidates because they like them. It’s enough to send a ideological party supporter crazy.

Just look at the polls on David Cameron, the young, new, non-ideological leader of the British Conservative Party. William Rees-Mogg takes a look at the numbers. Right now, a

YouGov poll published in The Daily Telegraph on Friday gave the Conservatives 38 per cent, Labour 31 and the Lib Dems 18.

But the party identification right now is 17 percent Conservative, 24 percent Labour. That means that the Conservatives right now are attracting the support of a ton of independents, but Labour is only attracting the support of a few beyond its base.

[Take this] opinion poll, taken by ICM and published in The Sunday Times [Sunday.] This shows that men would prefer Gordon Brown to David Cameron as prime minister by 42 to 36 per cent, but women would prefer Mr Cameron to Mr Brown by 40 to 34. This is in line with YouGov which shows a 2 per cent swing to the Conservatives since the last election among men, but a 6 per cent swing among women.

The numbers show that the Conservatives are leading among women and independents, both groups that do not vote the issues so much as their feelings about the candidates.

Now you can see why David Cameron has been concentrating on presenting himself to the voters as an appealing personality. The voters who are up for grabs are precisely the voters who are swayed by personality.

Mr Cameron is the non-party leader of his party: he identifies best with non-party voters, who are, paradoxically, the largest party.

Now it all makes sense. But if you believe in the power of ideas it is enough to make you crazy.

The Mood of the Voter in November

Somehow I think that the November elections this year are going to tell us something. And for a curious reason.

After a decade in which Democrats have kept their hearts hidden from the voters their base has decided that they just can’t take it any more. take a look at the portents

• There is the crazed partisan ruling on terrorist surveillance from federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor that reads like its author lives in a hard left-wing bubble.
  
• There is the Stop the War candidacy of Democrat Ned Lamont.
  
• There is the union-fueled War on Wal-Mart.
  
• There is the rage of the “netroots.”
  
• There is the clenched-teeth reporting from the mainstream media.
  

After 12 years of Republican Congress and six years of President Bush they just can’t take it any more.

The question is: Does the American people agree with them? What do the folks in their monster houses think? What do the people in their mega SUVs think? Do workers think that their employers are ripping them off? Are people enraged about health insurance? Or do they think that they are rubbing along OK?

We really don’t know. Not yet.

But the election in November is going to give us a pretty good idea.