Al Franken's Truth With Jokes (on CD)--A Running Review Commentary
First of all, some stylistic points. Franken has a voice made for print media. His style highlights one of the reasons that Limbaugh has been so successful while "leftwing Limbaughs" have come and gone. Limbaugh started out as a radio pro, with a quality bombastic base voice. The Simpsons voice Limbaugh most resembles is fellow blowhard Kent Brockman. The Simpsons voice Franken most resembles is Dr. Frink.
But I have been asked to focus on matters of substance, factual quibbles and sometimes serious issues of ideology.
One petty thing—only those deep in the Democratic bubble went to bed on election night 2004 thinking that the election was still in doubt. Kerry was 130,000 votes short, with 250,000 provisional votes still unopened. If every provisional vote was validated and counted, Kerry still needed to take 75% of those votes to edge out Bush. Taking 75% of the vote is pretty darned rare in a contested election, and the necessary percentage goes up with every provisional ballot that turns out not to be valid.
On Bush's Mandate. A mandate is, broadly speaking, a license from the people to do whatever it is that you promised to do. The concept's ancestry goes back, I suppose, to Andrew Jackson's presidency, and his or his supporters' theory that the national popular election of the President makes him the unique embodiment of the people's will. Which all sounds a little bit creepy and fascistic to twenty-first century ears, but there you are.
There is a very good argument to be made that most reelection landslides do not carry a mandate, for the reason that the incumbent didn't take any bold or risky stands in the election. This would be the case for Clinton '96, Reagan '84, Nixon '72, Eisenhower '56. These elections remind us of patriarch Joe Kennedy's legendary "Don't buy a single vote more than we need, Jack—I'll be damned if I'll pay extra for a landslide." They didn't have much mandate because, in their reelection campaigns, they didn't promise to do much.
Reelection landslides with mandates would include LBJ '64 and FDR '36. They had promised to do stuff, and the country approved overwhelmingly.
W '04 won a mandate to stay the course in Iraq and to stand firm against terrorism, and maybe to blow up more countries that might have terrorists in them. That was his campaign theme, that was what he put all his chips on and won. He didn't win by much, but he won, and he won a majority, which hadn't actually been done in a while. The unnamed source of his mandate, however, was the Republican success under the W banner in the 2002 and 2004 congressional elections. For GOP candidates, W stood for Winning. That's evaporated, along with Bush's mixed bag of a domestic agenda.
I don't quite know why the mainstream media agreed with the Bush mandate pravda. My (and Franken's) best guess is that they used the word "mandate" to stand in for "he's not handicapped by Florida 2000 anymore, to the extent that he ever let that handicap him."
That was long, but this is blogging, so editing be damned.
First of all, some stylistic points. Franken has a voice made for print media. His style highlights one of the reasons that Limbaugh has been so successful while "leftwing Limbaughs" have come and gone. Limbaugh started out as a radio pro, with a quality bombastic base voice. The Simpsons voice Limbaugh most resembles is fellow blowhard Kent Brockman. The Simpsons voice Franken most resembles is Dr. Frink.
But I have been asked to focus on matters of substance, factual quibbles and sometimes serious issues of ideology.
One petty thing—only those deep in the Democratic bubble went to bed on election night 2004 thinking that the election was still in doubt. Kerry was 130,000 votes short, with 250,000 provisional votes still unopened. If every provisional vote was validated and counted, Kerry still needed to take 75% of those votes to edge out Bush. Taking 75% of the vote is pretty darned rare in a contested election, and the necessary percentage goes up with every provisional ballot that turns out not to be valid.
On Bush's Mandate. A mandate is, broadly speaking, a license from the people to do whatever it is that you promised to do. The concept's ancestry goes back, I suppose, to Andrew Jackson's presidency, and his or his supporters' theory that the national popular election of the President makes him the unique embodiment of the people's will. Which all sounds a little bit creepy and fascistic to twenty-first century ears, but there you are.
There is a very good argument to be made that most reelection landslides do not carry a mandate, for the reason that the incumbent didn't take any bold or risky stands in the election. This would be the case for Clinton '96, Reagan '84, Nixon '72, Eisenhower '56. These elections remind us of patriarch Joe Kennedy's legendary "Don't buy a single vote more than we need, Jack—I'll be damned if I'll pay extra for a landslide." They didn't have much mandate because, in their reelection campaigns, they didn't promise to do much.
Reelection landslides with mandates would include LBJ '64 and FDR '36. They had promised to do stuff, and the country approved overwhelmingly.
W '04 won a mandate to stay the course in Iraq and to stand firm against terrorism, and maybe to blow up more countries that might have terrorists in them. That was his campaign theme, that was what he put all his chips on and won. He didn't win by much, but he won, and he won a majority, which hadn't actually been done in a while. The unnamed source of his mandate, however, was the Republican success under the W banner in the 2002 and 2004 congressional elections. For GOP candidates, W stood for Winning. That's evaporated, along with Bush's mixed bag of a domestic agenda.
I don't quite know why the mainstream media agreed with the Bush mandate pravda. My (and Franken's) best guess is that they used the word "mandate" to stand in for "he's not handicapped by Florida 2000 anymore, to the extent that he ever let that handicap him."
That was long, but this is blogging, so editing be damned.
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