Plus--China vs. the Blogs

For motorists in West L.A. who get sick of the chloroformed, breathy pop promoted by local NPR outlet KCRW's life-sapping Nic Harcourt, a better bet is KXLU, the Loyola Marymount college station.  On Friday nights, a KXLU show (Demolisten) broadcasts unreleased demo tapes and bizarrely (or maybe not so bizarrely, given that this is the cream of a very large crop) they're often great. Two of the best demos I've heard over the years have been witty tunes from a group called Inflight Movie. I've been able to find out nothing about these people. (They're tough to google.) If you know anything about Inflight Movie, or if you are Inflight Movie, please email me. ... Update: OK,  here they are.   Now if I could get the music to play. ... P.S.: The other big Demolisten find is The Temporary Thing. ... 8:50 P.M.

Have I mentioned that the great, yawningly obvious political opportunity for an ambitious Democrat is to get to Bush's right on immigration the way Bill Clinton got to Bush's father's right on welfare? It wouldn't be hard. [Won't that cost the Democratic Party its future by losing the burgeoning Hispanic vote for a generation?--ed  By that time (if it happens) our Dem immigration opportunist will have served two terms.] 7:57 P.M.

kf is Stupid III: I don't understand the debate about whether the 2004 election constituted a "realignment"--in which case, we're told, Democrats need "radical changes in ... electoral strategies, and even issue positions ... to become competitive again." Democrats lost the presidency by three percentage points. That means they need to make enough changes to convince half of 3.1 percent of the electorate to vote for them next time. If they'd lost by 6 points they'd need to win back half of 6.1 percent. Duh! It's a matter of degree and the degree has been fairly precisely measured.

Talk of "realignment" might still seemingly make sense under any one of three conditions: 1) The existence of a large, committed voting block that simply can't be won over by the opposing party--e.g. the Democratic South for decades after the Civil War; 2) The existence of interest groups or inflexible ideological principles that prevent a losing party from modifying its appeal in order to win over more voters--e.g. powerful unions that will never endorse free trade even if it's in the national interest; or 3) the arrival of a candidate or office-holder so fantastically popular (or so fantastically unpopular) that he or she boosts or sinks his party for decades.

None of these conditions prevails today.1) The great emerging voting block is Hispanics, who are uncommitted swing voters;  2) The Democrats' rigidifying interest groups--unions, African-Americans--are declining in influence (rapidly, in the case of the unions). And do we really think gay marriage has, overnight, somehow become an inviolable bedrock Democratic principle?

I doubt condition 3) has ever obtained. FDR would be the most obvious case of an overwhelmingly popular pol--but within two terms the opposing party held his office. Nor has Bush been governing like someone who wants 60% popularity. (He's been governing like someone who wants to leverage his tiny margin into some big, controversial changes.)

This was a close election! The prospect is for more close elections, as the Democrats adjust in their attempt to regain a majority. I can't see a reason why, at the presidential level, it's not still 50-50 forever. ... P.S.: I'm in reluctant agreement here with Ruy Teixeira, who should really retire quietly after the load of shameless, cocooning B.S. he shoveled out on his website during the campaign. For embarrassing examples, scan these October, 2004 Donkey Rising entries. ... P.P.S.: I'd like the Democrats to make "radical changes" in their "issues positions" (on affirmative action and school choice, for starters). But that doesn't mean those changes are somehow required for victory after 2004. It's a fallacy (specifically what Michael Kinsley calls the Howell Raines Fallacy) to assume that whatever policy changes you want are of course demanded by the great and good American people. ...

Update:Newsweek's Howard Fineman describes  Karl Rove's plans "to design a legislative and philosophical agenda that will lead to further GOP gains, and beyond that to a political dominance that could last for decades, as FDR's New Deal did." It's not an especially plausible scenario. Does Fineman think Democrats won't be "willing to use big government in the service of markets and morality"? Democrats will stand with trial lawyers to fight "a national cap on damage awards" even if it means going over the cliff with them?  Rove might move the country to the right. But it's not clear that the sort of realignment he talks about happens anymore. ...  5:09 P.M.

Sunday, November 28, 2004

kf is Stupid II: I still don't understand why it's a good idea to centralize intelligence under a single czar. If the problem with pre-Iraq intelligence was the tendency to tell the Administration what it wanted to hear, won't narrowing the information funnel maximize the chances of that happening again? Won't it be easier to "politicize" a single "National Intelligence Director"? What we want is a multiplicity of perspectives and an error-revealing debate, no? Rich Lowry's op-ed in Friday's N.Y. Post predicts: