Author: Dan Kennedy

Democrats tied

Chris Matthews and company were very excited earlier tonight, claiming that Barack Obama was going to win, followed possibly by John Edwards, with Hillary Clinton coming in third. Not that anyone had actually voted.

Now, with nearly a quarter of the vote counted, Obama, Edwards and Clinton are virtually tied, with Edwards holding a slight edge — 32.62 percent to 32.2 percent apiece for Clinton and Obama. (The numbers are being continually updated, so they’ll have changed by the time you click.)

Mike Huckabee is beating Mitt Romney 36 percent to 23 percent at the moment. But John McCain may have a hard time claiming he’s the real winner if he comes in behind sleepy Fred Thompson.

Counting chips he hasn’t cashed

The Boston Globe’s Matt Viser today repeats the not-entirely-new news that Gov. Deval Patrick may build $800 million into his budget proposal that will materialize only if the Legislature approves his socially irresponsible plan to license three gambling casinos. Viser writes:

With a big budget gap, including casino licensing money would put pressure on lawmakers to pass the governor’s proposal or find other ways to balance the budget as required by state law. When the governor introduces his budget, within three weeks, legislators will spend months reshaping it.

I continue to find it amazing that Patrick has decided to stake his reputation on this. Why? He has only guaranteed that his reputation will suffer if he loses, and suffer even more if he wins, since he’ll forever be associated with casinos and the sleaze and corruption that they bring.

I also think the governor’s proposal is a lot deader than his realizes — that, when the time is right, House Speaker Sal DiMasi is simply going to crush it and that will be the end of it. But we’ll see.

Celebrating Bhutto’s death (II)

Alert Media Nation reader T.A. has called my attention to Imaduddin Ahmed’s blog, in which he discusses his offensive op-ed about Benazir Bhutto. He writes: “A couple of readers have stated their unease about my pointing out Bhutto’s flaws so soon after her death.”

No, no, no. That’s not it at all. It’s obviously fine that he pointed out her flaws. What’s offensive is that he wrote about how glad he is that she was assassinated — as in, “Benazir’s death may offer new hope for democratic values.” It really doesn’t get any clearer than that.

Ahmed also lunges for the moral high ground and misses, writing, “I’m also offended that the deaths of artist Gulgee, 50 train passengers and over 200 flood victims didn’t mean as much to the media.”

Well, if you’re going to go all John Donne on us, Mr. Ahmed, let me just say that I’m offended that you can celebrate Bhutto’s death without bothering to note that 23 other people (in addition to the gunman) were killed as well.

And I continue to be offended that the Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune would provide a forum for his piece.

The trouble with Bill Kristol

In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at the New York Times’ decision to give an op-ed-page column to William Kristol. The problem, I argue, isn’t that he’s a neocon who was wrong about Iraq and who’s being irresponsible about Iran. Rather, it’s that the Times has bent its ethical rules to give a platform to someone who sees journalism as just another form of political partisanship.

Cape businesses oppose casinos

The Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce has come out against casino gambling. Sarah Shemkus reports in the Cape Cod Times that chamber officials are worried that a casino in Middleborough would leave Cape businesses scrambling for employees. Here’s a juicy tidbit:

“The 20,000 new jobs, as advocated by the governor is, in fact, not 20,000 new jobs but the replacement of 20,000 jobs that are currently located in other areas that would lose jobs,” said William Zammer, vice-chairman of the chamber’s board and the owner of Coonamessett Inn in Falmouth and two other restaurants on the Cape.

Does Gov. Deval Patrick really want to sacrifice the Cape’s vacation economy in favor of gambling?

Celebrating Bhutto’s death (really)

Well, this is rather interesting. The Boston Globe runs an op-ed piece today arguing that Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is a good thing. “Despite the prevailing opinion, Benazir’s death may offer new hope for democratic values: rights, the rule of law, and law enforcement,” writes Imaduddin Ahmed.

The same piece also appears in the International Herald Tribune, which, like the Globe, is owned by the New York Times Co.

Ahmed appears to be progressive (see this, for example), and the points he makes about Bhutto’s dark side are not novel. But it’s hard to see how Bhutto’s assassination stands for anything other than the denial of rights, the rule of terrorists and a failure of law enforcement.

Maybe it would be a good thing if Bhutto had departed from the Pakistani political scene (or maybe not — I claim zero expertise). But not like this.

Seeking Web design advice

Later this year I’m going to take on a significant Web-design project for a nonprofit organization. I’m not promising anything spectacular — just something that will be reasonably well-organized and up-to-date.

For my own modest sites (like this), I use SeaMonkey, a free, open-source descendant of the soon-to-be-late Netscape. I like the price, obviously, and the results are fine for my limited purposes. There are two things about it that I don’t like, though:

  1. When I make revisions, the underlying HTML code doesn’t clean itself up. To the contrary, it gets gloppier, to the point where sometimes I have to look at the source code and fix things by hand. I don’t want to do this, and I’m not good at it. It would be a major pain with a larger site.
  2. SeaMonkey is bare-bones, and provides no help in the way of templates or automated features to improve the appearance or performance of the site.

I briefly considered Apple’s iWeb before concluding that it was too limited even for me. I gave the open-source KompoZer a whirl and decided it was buggier than SeaMonkey (and less well supported).

Next up: RapidWeaver, Freeway Express and, of course, the big one, Adobe’s Dreamweaver, which strikes me as way more than I need, but which would certainly amount to a comprehensive solution.

So if there are any residents of Media Nation with good advice for an OS X Web-design program, I’d love to hear from you.

Missing in action (II)

My friend Larz raises a good point, noting that there are at least 54 people running for president, yet only a handful ever get invited to debates or covered by the media.

I’m not naive. Based on poll numbers, fundraising, experience and the conventionality of their views, I’d say there are only six plausible candidates for president: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards among the Democrats, and Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain among the Republicans. (Sorry, Governor, but the Republicans are not going to commit Huckacide.)

But why should we be screening anyone out before a single vote has been cast? What should the standard be? It seems to me that if a candidate is competing in enough states to win the nomination of either major party, then he or she deserves at least some coverage. How much? I don’t know.

Then there’s the perennial conundrum over what to do in the general election, when independent and minor-party candidates come into play. Again, it seems to me that if a candidate is on the ballot in enough states so that she or he could theoretically win the presidency, then coverage is warranted.

Should such candidates be included in the televised debates? I’d say yes. Maybe for the final debate you could restrict it to candidates who are pulling at least 15 percent in the polls. But I don’t see how you can exclude people until they’ve had a chance to make their case.

Missing in action

I’m not one of those purists who believes all candidates, no matter how marginal, must be included in all media coverage. But it strikes me as pretty lame if you can’t find a way to wedge everyone into a chart explaining where they all stand on the issues.

So I was struck by a chart on pages 14 and 15 of today’s New York Times that excludes Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel and Republican Duncan Hunter. I can think of no reason why the Times’ editors would have left them out other than poll numbers so minuscule that they can’t be taken seriously. So let’s take a look.

First, the most recent national poll — a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics survey taken in mid-December — shows, on the Democratic side, Kucinich and Gravel with 1 percent each. That’s very low indeed, but not quite as low as the virtual zero scored by Chris Dodd. And, given that the margin of error is plus or minus 5 percent, those numbers are really no different from Bill Richardson’s 2 percent or Joe Biden’s 3 percent.

On the Republican side, Hunter scores a lowly 2 percent, just below Ron Paul’s 3 percent. Again, no real difference — a point that becomes even clearer if you look at Hunter’s and Paul’s numbers over time, which essentially show each bouncing around 1 percent to 3 percent.

What prompts the Times chart today, of course, are the Iowa caucuses, which will be held on Thursday. So do the Iowa polls show Kucinich, Gravel and Hunter lagging so badly behind everyone else that they uniquely deserve to be left out? Well, sort of, but not really.

According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll of likely Republican caucus-goers, also conducted in mid-December, Hunter scored just 1 percent, while the next-lowest candidate, John McCain, had 6 percent. (I’m excluding Tom Tancredo, who’s left the building.) So there’s at least an argument to be made for Hunter’s not making the cut. Among likely Democratic caucus-goers, though, no such rationale emerges. Kucinich and Dodd are tied at 1 percent each and, in previous polls, Kucinich did slightly better than Dodd. (Gravel was left off the most recent survey, although his Web site shows that he’s still doing campaign events.)

By leaving off Kucinich, Gravel and Hunter, the Times demonstrates a clear bias toward conventional thought. Among the Democrats, Dodd has performed as poorly as anyone, yet he’s included — and he has been included in every debate, unlike Kucinich and Gravel. The difference is that Dodd is a mainstream liberal and a senator, well-liked by the media and a proven provider of good quotes.

Kucinich, on the other hand, is a radical congressman with a prickly personality. He’s got some interesting ideas, but when does that ever have anything to do with it? Gravel, admittedly, is a loose cannon. But if you’re going to start excluding candidates from issues charts, debates and the like, then Dodd, and even Richardson and Biden, are no more serious about winning the nomination than Kucinich or Gravel are at this point.

It’s at least somewhat clearer among the Republicans. Paul has raised a ton of money and is the darling of Internet libertarians. Although he’s not going to win the nomination or the presidency, he may run as an independent, which would be one of the big political stories of the year. Given that, Hunter really is the least plausible Republican, the longest of longshots. But he’s a congressman and he’s just one guy. Why leave him out?

The Des Moines Register has an issues chart online as well, and everyone is included. Not that that proves anything — the Times’ online issues chart also includes everyone, even candidates who’ve dropped out. (Locally, the Boston Globe has a similar feature online.)

This was the Times’ last chance before the voting begins to tell readers of the print edition — and there may be more than a few Sunday subscribers in Iowa — where all the candidates who are still running stand on a variety of issues. Yes, it’s graphically pleasing to make it appear that there are six Republicans and six Democrats running; the column widths are easy on the eye. But it’s not true.