Why the Richest States Are Voting for Biden and the Poorest States Are Voting for Trump: A Study in Economic Policy Cause and Effect

Ranked by personal per capita income, 8 of the 10 highest income states will probably go for Biden and 7 or 8 of the 10 lowest income states will probably go for Trump. 

Why are the richest states so very Democratic? It is partly cause and partly effect.

First the cause. Intellectual capital has surpassed industrial capital as the source of wealth and income in this information economy. The communities around the various University of California campuses, for instance, have become host to a lot of exciting companies that have spun off from the staff, students and studies on those campuses. Democratic states invest more in the science and education that create jobs and wealth.

The only two states in the top ten by personal per capita income that Trump will win are Wyoming and Alaska. These are land-based economies, rich with oil, mines, livestock, grains, and forests. And of course, these economies are not the kind that create jobs; Wyoming's total population is 580,000 and Alaska's only slightly more at 730,000.

The economies in states like Connecticut and Massachusetts depend on a heavy public investment in schools and research, classic Democratic policy prescriptions. 42% of Massachusetts has a BA; only 26% of Wyoming does. By contrast, Wyoming and Alaska's economies depend on continued subsidies to oil and gas and lax regulation on greenhouse gases, classic Republican policy prescriptions.

Every year, more people can profit from technology advances in computing and genetics or new materials, the sorts of research and industries that spin off from universities. An oil well is zero-sum, though. If I own it, you don't. Meanwhile, knowledge builds on knowledge. You're going to hear more about AI and genetics in the next decade, the confluence of two research areas that promise products that might analyze patterns in your genetic code that make you more susceptible to Alzheimer's, for instance. This does not come at the expense of genetics or computing research but instead makes both more valuable. Oil wells and mines are zero sum but research and development literally stimulate more research and development; knowledge creates more knowledge.

Folks in places like Wyoming see the world as zero-sum because their economy actually is. The state can't even sustain a population the size of the cities in LA county that you've never heard of. Folks in places like Cambridge, Massachusetts tend to be more win-win because their economies actually lend themselves to that. If you give me an acre and I give you an acre, we leave the transaction unchanged. If you give me an idea and I give you an idea, we may both leave better off. You better understanding my AI technology and me better understanding your genetic analysis might enable us to collaborate to create a new industry with trillions in wealth and millions of jobs.

Zero-sum communities are also more susceptible to conspiracy theories that point them towards threats, that turn complex phenomenon into simple us vs. them narratives, a stark contrast to the pragmatic relationship knowledge workers in the information economy have to reality and theories about it.

So that's the cause. Wealth, income and jobs in the modern economy are increasingly the product of intellectual capital and the communities like New York and California that do the most to invest in it are the ones that will create the most jobs and highest incomes.

What is the effect? Well, richer people are less tolerant of low-quality of life. A poor person in West Virginia who lives near a mine doesn't have the resources to take on a business that endangers their child's health. Meanwhile, some mother in Santa Clara, CA - where per capita income is $106,000 a year - is not about to put up with risks to her child's health ... and she and her neighbors have the resources to fight a business that would put their children's health at risk. It is true that blue states have more regulations. Why? They are democracies and the residents of those states demand more regulations. There is little sense in making twice the national average income and then having to listen to the loud noises of a jack hammer at 4 AM or breathe noxious fumes from a factory.

Weirdly, though, the US rewards states unable to create jobs with more political power. The 21 least populous states have 42 senators and less population than California with its 2 senators. What does that mean in practical terms? If your policies can't create jobs to grow your population, your political policies have more influence. This may be the biggest design flaw in our current political system.

This design flaw is slowing the creation of jobs and wealth and improvements to quality of life. It is a weird thing to give more influence to less advanced communities, as if we were bringing in economic advisers from Afghanistan to decide what to do with Manhattan.

It is a weird election. The 30 states in between the top and bottom 10 are debating whether to follow the lead of the country's richest states - states that include Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the nation's top universities - or rural Mississippi, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Alabama. You might think that such a debate would have an obvious outcome. It does not. And that may be the weirdest thing about this very weird year.

Joe Biden Speaks About Violence and Fear in Trump's America

Some excerpts from Joe's speech today.

I’m going to be very clear about all of this, rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted. Violence ... divides instead of unites, destroys businesses, only hurts the working families that serve the community. It makes things worse across the board, not better.

One of Trump's closest political advisers in the White House doesn’t even bother to speak in code, just comes out and she says it. “The more chaos, violence, the better it is for Trump’s reelection.” Just think about that. This is a sitting president of the United States of America. He’s supposed to be protecting this country, but instead he’s rooting for chaos and violence. The simple truth is Donald Trump failed to protect America. So now he’s trying to scare America.

And I find [what Trump and Pence say] fascinating. “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.” And what’s their proof? The violence we’re seeing in Donald Trump’s America. These are not images of some imagined Joe Biden America in the future. These are images of Donald Trump’s America today. He keeps telling you if only he was president, it wouldn’t happen. ... He keeps telling us that he was president you’d feel safe. Well he is president. Whether he knows it or not, and it is happening, it’s getting worse. And you know why? Because Donald Trump adds fuel to every fire.

Look, if Donald Trump wants to ask the question, “Who will keep you safer as president?” Let’s answer that question. First, some simple facts. When I was vice president, violent crime fell 15% in this country. We did it without chaos and disorder. And yes, we did it with democratic mayors in most of the major cities in this country. The murder rate now is up 26% across the nation this year under Donald Trump. Do you really feel safer under Donald Trump?

Donald Trump’s role as a bystander in his own presidency extends to the economic plan and pain. The plan he doesn’t have and the pain being felt by millions of Americans. He said this week, and I quote, “You better vote for me, or you’re going to have the greatest depression you’ve ever seen.” Does he not understand and see the tens of millions of people who’ve had to file for unemployment this year so far?

Our current president wants you to live in fear.

Trump has sought to remake this nation in his image. Selfish, angry, dark, and divisive. This is not who we are. At her best, America’s always been, and if I have anything to do it, it will be again, generous, confident, an optimistic nation full of hope and resolve. Donald Trump is determined to instill fear in America. That’s what his entire campaign for the president has come down to: fear. But I believe Americans are stronger than that. ... Fear never builds the future, but hope does. And building the future is what America does, what we’ve always done. In fact, it’s what we have done best and continue to do best.

Biden's August 31, 2020 speech from Pittsburgh here.

The Disaster Trump Will Blame on Biden: Jobs, COVID, and Protests

The Biden - Trump election is very simple.

Trump's task is to convince voters that the bad numbers that so define America today - COVID deaths, lost jobs, and protests - are Joe Biden's fault and not Trump's.

Let's start with facts. This table shows the number of deaths from protests and from pandemics, and the number of jobs created or lost in the economy inherited or passed on.

The 1 death during the protests at Ferguson was Michael Brown's, the young man whose death triggered the protests. If more teenage white supremacists with AK-47s show up at protests, the death toll from these 2020 protests could continue to rise, making the contrast even more stark.

And of course 1,000 Americans are still dying of COVID every day. A safe prediction is that between 200,000 to 300,000 Americans will have died from COVID by election day.

The job market each president inherited is an interesting metric. There were ways to calculate this that made the difference even more dramatic but I chose a simple measure: how many jobs were created in the twelve months before Obama or Trump took office?

The economy Obama and Biden inherited was in free fall. They were sworn in on 20 January 2009 and in that month the economy destroyed 784,000 jobs. Trump inherited an economy in the midst of the longest run of uninterrupted job creation in history. In the month that Trump was sworn in - January 2017 - the economy created 969,000 (yep, nearly a million) more jobs than the month in which Obama was sworn in. How much is a million? In a great decade the American economy creates about two million jobs per year. The two presidents inherited vastly different economies. So are the economies each passed on. (Or in Trump's case, will pass on.)

In the twelve months before Obama and Biden took office, the economy lost 4.3 million jobs. They handed off an economy to Trump and Pence that had created 2.5 million jobs in the previous year. Obama and Biden inherited a train wreck and passed along an economy that was on track for the longest uninterrupted streak of job creation on record. 

What has Trump done with this inheritance? In the last 12 months the American economy has destroyed 11.3 million jobs. The economy Obama and Biden inherited - one that had destroyed 4.3 million jobs in the previous year - was the worst in a lifetime. The one Trump is about to pass on is more than twice as bad.  

(It is worth noting that the man's main measure of productivity has gone up, though. Trump is tweeeting 6X as often as he did in his first six months in office - 33 times a day - so you can't really say that he's done nothing.)

The numbers under Trump are awful. Americans are traumatized by his leadership and incredibly dissatisfied with the way things are going.  Trump is going to tell his loyal followers what he tells them about all facts: these are fake. He's going to tell the swing voters, these numbers are Biden's fault.

The number of people who believe him is the most important number of all: that will determine in which direction these numbers go during the next four years.

Kamala Harris: Created by Clark Kerr's Vision of a Knowledge Economy

In the early 1900s, the Democrats began to shift from the party of farmer to the party of labor. In 1800, only 20 percent of the workforce was employed by someone else; by 2000, over 90 percent were. [1] The modern corporation was defined in the mid-1800s. As its employees grew in number, so did their political influence.

When the Democratic Party was first defined by Jefferson, it was the farmer’s party. As farmers fell as a percentage of the workforce, the Republican Party emerged – and dominated – as the capitalists’ party. But those successful capitalists who were creating new factories were hiring labor that often found itself at odds with the owners. As the Democratic Party shifted its identity from the farmers’ party to the labor party, it dominated American politics from 1933 to 1969.

In 1972, labor and politics changed. At the 1972 Democratic National Convention, the party had quotas for women, young people, and minorities but none for union labor. At that point, labor began its split into two camps: the blue-collar labor on factory lines that was both at odds with and dependent on the capitalists who built the factories and made the investments in industrial capital that made them productive; and the white-collar labor in cubicles wearing pocket protectors and increasingly reliant on the novel technology of computers. By appealing to the blue-collar workers reliant on industrial capital, Republicans like Nixon and Reagan won over a group the Democrats had long had. By appealing to the white-collar workers, Democrats were helping to create a new economy but were floundering as a national party.

Without understanding how Kamala Harris represents knowledge workers and this new economy, it is hard to understand how she is different from Joe Biden, how she is a different kind of Democrat.

California has led before. Blue jeans, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley began here. So did the Republican resurgence that ended Democrats’ long dominance in DC. Between 1933 and 1969, Democrats had control of the White House and Congress 72% of the time. In 1968, 1972, 1980 and 1984, two Californians – Nixon and Reagan - won the presidency in landslide victories, marking an end to Democratic dominance. What Nixon and Reagan represented was the Republican Party gaining the blue-collar workers who had for so long identified as Democrats.

As blue-collar workers rose in prominence a century ago, they changed politics. White-collar workers are now rising prominence and they, too, are changing politics. Today one of the simplest predictors of whether someone will vote Democratic is the question of whether they have a college degree. A recent – and typical – poll showed that only 39% of whites without a college degree would vote for Biden but 64% of those with a degree would, a stunning shift of 25 points.[2]

Harris represents a very different kind of labor than did her fellow Californians Nixon and Reagan from an earlier generation.

Trump won Joe Biden’s home state of Pennsylvania with 48% of the vote. In the California counties where Harris spent her childhood, he won only 17%. In California, Trump’s campaign promises sounded like threats. Trade wars with China? A wall to keep immigrants out? It is connection to and not protection from the rest of the world that has helped California to thrive. A regional Hollywood is a playhouse. A regional Google search engine is the yellow pages. Silicon Valley is capital of the worldwide – not the nationwide - web.

Harris’s parents met as grad students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. While the Midwest was enjoying its time of manufacturing dominance, the Bay Area was placing its bets on a new economy, one Harris’s parents were part of. It is not a stretch to say that Harris is a product of Clark Kerr's vision of a knowledge economy that helped to define the UC Berkeley that brought her parents together from such distant places.

In 1960, California governor Pat Brown signed legislation that made California the only state in the nation to offer free education from kindergarten through grad school. Clark Kerr – who headed the committee that drafted the plan Brown turned into law – was head of the University of California and had a theory about economic progress. In the same way that the railroad in the late 1800s and the automobile in the early 1900s had reshaped the economy, he thought that the late 1900s would be transformed by a knowledge economy.

In the decades after it began investing in Kerr’s vision, California became home to Silicon Valley. Intel was founded in 1968, Apple in 1976, and Google in 1998. California’s early investment in education paid off with millions of high-paying jobs and trillions of dollars in new wealth.

Harris’s father was an economics professor at Stanford, her mother a researcher at UC Berkeley. Median household income in the two Bay Area counties where Harris spent her childhood is now about $119,000 a year. Joe Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania where median household income is now about $39,000. Biden comes from a generation of labor that needed protection from capitalists. Harris comes from a generation of labor who are the capitalists. The Bay Area is defined by returns to intellectual – not industrial - capital. On two campuses six miles apart – Google and Facebook – median employee pay is $200, 000 and $240,000. Billionaires get a lot of attention but stock options have made multi-millionaires out of thousands of west coast employees. To not understand how labor changed from the early to late 1900s is to not understand the Democratic Party that now champions the information economy dependent on global markets, immigrants, and big investments in education and research.

In 1969, per capita personal income in Santa Clara County was 24% higher than the national average. By 2018, it was double. Clark Kerr was right about the importance of the knowledge economy and while the Bay Area and Scranton are in the same country, they are in different worlds. In Harris’s two childhood counties[3], 77% of people over 25 have a Bachelors degree. In the county that is home to Scranton, only 22% do. In Harris’s counties, minorities and immigrants make up 45% and 28% of the population; in Biden’s home county they are only 27% and 10%.[4] The Bay Area’s highly-educated, diverse and cosmopolitan population thrives in the global economy while Scranton struggles.

When the US was founded, it was a nation of farmers. 80 to 90% of the workforce was in agriculture. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the workforce moved from farms to factories and investments in industrial capital made regions prosper. By the late 1900s, it was investments in creating intellectual capital that made regions prosper.

In 2010, Harris won her first state-wide election in California. In 2020, she could share a victory with Biden in the nation’s most defining election. If knowledge workers represent the future of the American economy, Kamala Harris could represent the future of Democratic Party: educated and cosmopolitan.

California was one of the early investors in Kerr’s vision of an economy dependent on knowledge workers but it is not the only one. States that enjoy a return to investments in education lead the nation in income. Biden and Harris will win the eight states with the highest per capita income. Trump will probably win all but one of the eight states with the lowest per capita income. This has nothing to do with the people in these states and everything to do with past decisions about whether to heavily invest in industrial or intellectual capital. It is the states that made relatively heavier investments in the intellectual capital that now lead in incomes.

Biden will likely bring compassion to communities like Scranton that are struggling to transition out of an old economy dependent on industrial capital. Harris will likely bring a vision of what is possible if communities place their bets on the information economy.

Biden’s compassion promises to alleviate poverty; Harris’s Bay Area experience promises to enhance prosperity. It is the latter that could define the Democratic Party for the next generation.

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[1] Charles Perrow, Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of Corporate Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 1.

[2] https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3666

[3] Alameda and Santa Clara

[4] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/paloaltocitycalifornia,berkeleycitycalifornia,alamedacountycalifornia,santaclaracountycalifornia,scrantoncitypennsylvania/PST120219

Everyone Gets to Be Offended (even if we're only offended that people take offense at the things that strike us as innocuous)

"I'm [angry, outraged, offended] so you have to take my idea seriously."
"No. Your idea needs to be serious to be taken seriously."

Right now, there are folks getting upset because Joe Biden is too physical. I find this Biden (and before it the Al Franken) thing so frustrating. if you can't tell the difference between rape, molestation, sexual harassment, misogyny, a fumbling sexual advance, a dumb joke, and someone who is demonstrative ... or worse, if you can tell the difference but think they should all be treated the same, you should just leave society. Seriously. Because this world is not pure enough for you and never will be. 

That said, I suspect this is one of those instances in which we're the victim of algorithms. The algorithms that maximize attention and response drive these sort of stupid issues up to the top of the list because they do offend everyone: from the purists who think that Joe being demonstrative is offensive to the rest of us who think that taking offense at that is offensive. Everyone is offended and the "how do I maximize hits?" algorithm wins. Even blog authors write a post about it.

Biden: Why is America Able to Reinvent Itself? An Inherent Skepticism for Orthodoxy

I love Joe Biden. Today Biden addressed a group of entrepreneurs in Morocco. He spoke about the importance of entrepreneurship and the path towards it. 

So what is required to prosper in the 21st century?  What does it take? 

It takes an education system, but one that is universal, open to all, including girls and women, that trains people to be skeptical.  I was meeting with a man many of you know, a wise man from Singapore named Lee Kuan Yew.  He was asking me why did I think America was able to reinvent itself so often.  I said, because stamped into the DNA of every naturalized American, as well as native born, is an inherent skepticism for orthodoxy.  You cannot fundamentally change the world without breaking the old.  It takes a value system that gives people the freedom to try and to fail, or as they say in the fabled Silicon Valley, fail forward, without being criticized.

The Use of Bad Language & Nation-Building

"Wisdom begins with a definition of terms."
- Socrates

Joe Biden got a lot of flack awhile ago for using some coarse language that was picked up by the mic. In one way, however, he avoids the bad language that seems to pervade our media and politics.

Our single biggest policy mistake in the last decade has seemed to stem from a confusion of nation-building (which we always say we're doing) and state-building (which is what we're attempting in Iraq and Afghanistan).

We had some success helping to re-build states within nations after WWII (in Germany and Japan) and let that give us confidence that we could build nations within states after 9-11. Biden seems to me the person most clear that those two are distinctly different missions with timelines that differ by orders of magnitude.

Article here.

Biden vs. Cheney - Due Process Loses

I love Joe Biden. Dick Cheney? Well, not so much. And yet Cheney has won the last little tussle with Joe, and this, like so much related to Cheney, infuriates me. He has won because he got Joe to agree with an implied premise in his argument.

Cheney is upset that the Nigerian crotch-bomber was read his Miranda rights. Joe counters that the same thing happened to the ped-bomber from England under Bush's administration. Cheney doesn't think that would-be terrorists deserve rights. Joe seems to (sort of) agree with this inane suggestion, which is why the two VPs upset me.

The executive branch has a duty to execute the laws. VPs, for instance, are sworn into office promising to uphold the constitution. This seems to me a vote of confidence in our laws. And note that our laws are such that having rights does NOT mean that one can't or won't be punished.

So, when Cheney expresses his anger that someone may have hinted that the crotch-bomber (which, by the way, could make for an attention-getting chat name (as opposed to CB handle)) had rights, I have to ask this: if Cheney doesn't trust our laws or due process, why on earth did he waste 8 years of his life as the second-highest ranking member of the branch of government sworn to uphold those laws?

Biden was right to call out Cheney yesterday. He could have gone further and simply said that his faith in our legal system is so great that if an accused terrorist is found innocent he'd accept that verdict as more trust-worthy than trial by media.

I know that it is fashionable not to trust in government. It would be nice, though, if the people heading it up showed a little faith in it.

Weekly News Opera

What if the backstreet boys got back together to lampoon the news in a mock-opera style? Okay, so other than every Sunday morning talk show, what would you have? That's right - you'd have this.

The Entrepreneur's GI Bill

Obama's new plan will create a deficit of $1.5 trillion. This is the difference between taxes collected and money spent in just a single year. Outside of the US there are only 6 (six!) countries with GDPs that are bigger than this. This would be a mind boggling sum were it not so mind numbing.

I am going to repeat myself here. We're spending all this money in the hopes of a multiplier effect - in the hopes that the money spent by the government will trigger money spent by businesses and households - that will jump start the economy. But if that is the goal, why not go after it more directly?

I am having trouble letting go of the idea of a movement to fund new businesses that would be to our time what the GI bill was to the explosion of knowledge workers after World War 2.

If we are going to spend such a massive sum, why not be more direct in going after what we want? If we give households money, they are as likely to buy cars from Japan as wheat from the US. Even businesses are likely to subcontract work overseas. One of the problems rarely mentioned in this age of globalization is how much of a stimulus package might leak abroad.

We want jobs. Why not use the stimulus money to create companies that would provide these jobs?

The GI Bill really was instrumental in helping to create a new economy where professionals with advanced degrees did more to stimulate GDP growth than did captitalists and factory workers. People who would not have otherwise gone to college - who could not have afforded it - got degrees and careers that their parents could not have imagined. By creating so many knoweldge workers, the GI BIll helped to create the innformation age.

Why not look back in 30 years at the amazing companies that were started by the infusion of start up capital that triggered the creation of companies that found new industries and created new wealth? People who would not have otherwise started companies could become the new generation of entrepreneurs. This would not just stimulate consumption but two other things vital to a sustained economic solution to our current plight: new jobs and wealth. By creating so many entrepreneurs, this new stimulus package cold help to create an entrepreneurial age.

Ultimately, our twin deficits (trade deficits and government deficits) will not go down until we begin to produce more and begin to create wealth faster than we deplete it. Why not replace deficit spending with investment in our one remaining economic strength: innovation and entrepreneurship?

I love Biden and Barack. But until they can tell me why their plan of tax cuts and government spending is a better use of money we don't have, I'm going to wince every time I hear about their stimulus plan. As it now stands, it just makes me nervous.

Stuart Smiley in the Senate?

It looks as though Al Franken might win the final recount in Minnesota.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden, in his typically candid style, tells George Stephanopoulos that the U.S. economy is danger of absolutely tanking in 2009.

If Biden is right, I don't suppose it would hurt to have regular reassurances that we Americans are smart enough, good enough and doggone it, people like us. I feel comforted just thinking about it.

What Biden Could Have Said

I have to confess that my favorite moment in the debate was when Sarah Palin pronounced nuc-u-lear energy the same way as our president. Suddenly, I had a vision of George Bush in lipstick.

I love Joe Biden. Like the rest of the country, I think that he won tonight's debate. Still, I think that he left a low hanging curve ball out over the plate, not even taking a swing at a pitch he could have hit out. Palin said a couple of times that she was going to cut taxes to create jobs and the Obama - Biden administration would destroy jobs. Might I put words in Biden's mouth?

Biden:
If all it took to create jobs was tax cuts, private sector job growth would not have been 6X as high under Clinton as it has been under Bush. The American people have seen the disastrous results of simplistic policies. It takes more than tax cuts and our plan reflects that.

We're going to fund alternative energy, helping to create the industries of the future. We're going to make college more affordable, creating not just any jobs but better jobs. And we're going to encourage business formation by giving breaks to start ups and small businesses rather than offering tax cuts to big oil.

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But tonight I kept track - with my buddies Beth, Jason and Clay - of the number of gaffes (scored even), funny quips (even), and clear and specific points (massive advantage to Biden), credible claims (again, about a dozen points to Biden and about half a dozen negatives for Palin, huge edge to Biden) and good ideas (significant edge to Biden, although an admittedly more subjective evaluation).

Palin did not look foolish but it was at least in part because she completely refused to answer certain questions. It is hard to look unprepared if you simply don't respond to the questions for which you have no answer.

Time will tell if the attempt to lower expectations led Americans to decide that she did well enough. The immediate response seems to be, no - she did better than expected but not well enough to convince us she is ready for the job.

And the fact that Palin is not qualified matters because the president does so few of the really important jobs. This financial crisis reminds us how important it is to have competent Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve Chairman. Appointments matter, and McCain has seemed more eager to show his maverick recklessness than demonstrate more traditional, yet boring judgment.

Biden - Palin Pre-Debate Analysis

This is a messy and complex world. One might be inclined to think that in a debate about such a world the advantage would go to a person able to deal with and talk about such complexity (and by that I mean Joe Biden). This might not be true.

If your audience is easily confused by complexity, the simpler answers are more likely to gain their approval. People don't judge words by their accuracy - they judge them by how comprehensible they are.

The conventional wisdom is that the vague generalities, ignorance, and simple worldview of Sarah Palin is going to give her a distinct disadvantage tonight. I'm not so sure. Such simplifications and vague reassurances might be just what many voters are looking for.

My prediction? Palin will come across as vague and simplistic as the pundits are predicting, but it won't hurt her in the polls.

Just some random thoughts at end of week

We now live in a world where the fastest man is named Bolt. It’s as if the folks at Marvel or DC Comics have taken over from Newton and Einstein, tired of simply defining blockbuster movies they are now defining our reality.

In Cancun, one of the guides asked us what the difference was between Miami and Cancun. The answer? In Cancun they speak English.

I’m delighted that Obama chose Biden as his running mate, but I have to take a shot. The good news is that Obama actually has someone old enough to offer adult supervision to his campaign and administration, to enforce things like a curfew, for instance. The bad news is that Biden is too old to stay up late enough to find out whether Obama actually observes the curfew. I shouldn't joke, though. This could not have been easy for Obama who, in order to balance the ticket, had to find an older white guy active in politics.

My notion that women in their forties and fifties are in the prime of life has gotten two more confirmations. 50 year old Madonna has launched her new tour dancing like someone half her age and 41 year-old Dara Torres is swimming away from Beijing with three silver medals. Minds as interesting as any 60 year old’s and bodies as able as any 20 year old’s. If that isn’t the prime of life I’m unclear on the concept.

My favorite quote regarding McCain’s need this week to check with his staff on the number of homes he owns.
"The number of Americans who do not know how many houses they own is so small they could probably fit in a golf cart."
- John Dickerson, at Slate

What is worse, McCain’s resident blogger has twice ridiculed the “pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd.” One commentator writes, “the McCain campaign has inadvertently woken an angry nerd army.” I hardly know whether to chuckle or wince at the thought of a swarm of dice-throwing pale and angry men shaking their fists at the former POW who would be president.

And yet, McCain has recently gained on Obama in the polls.



Finally, for those of you wondering about all the effect of mingling all those amazingly fit bodies together in one place at the Olympics, you may want to read Matthew Seyd’s article, Sex and the Olympic City, in The Times. The Greeks loved the physical and their Olympics were a celebration of the body. Apparently, modern athletes continue this tradition and sex between athletes is rampant within the Olympic Village.

Biden?!

He had already dropped out of the race by the time that we Californians held our primary, but I voted for Joe Biden anyway. He won my vote because he talks like a real person and was the first Senator who bothered to point out that Iraq was not working out so well and then the first Senator to suggest a plausible alternative to shooting all the bad guys until no Iraqis were left standing.

Biden is no saint and his willingness to talk openly has gotten him into trouble. But his judgment seems sound and the man has a good sense of foreign affairs.

About five months ago, I took one of those on-line tests to determine which of the candidates best matched my own views and positions. I've done this in past elections and then, the highest ranking candidate would match my own views by about 60 or 70%. Obama matched mine 100%, which I actually found frightening.

The prospect of an Obama-Biden ticket pleases me nearly as much as the prospect of an Obama-Lama ticket. This is me with my fingers crossed.

Biden on Bush Administration

"This the Nixon administration without the competence."
- Joe Biden, talking about the Bush Administration (And really, how can you not love a guy who can make quips like that?)

Last week, the National Intelligence Estimate basically said, that guy [Iran] doesn't have a gun [nuclear weapons], isn't about to buy a gun [has no development program in place] and gave up on buying a gun about 4 years ago.

The Bush Administration's response? (And for that matter, the response of every Republican candidate for president save Ron Paul, bless his head.) Iran is still a really big threat and we cannot rule out a military option. Or, to go back to the metaphor, even though he knows that Iran has no gun, he's not about to lower the gun aimed at Iran's head.

Last week, Barry Bond was engulfed in media attention, in court because of alleged use of steroids. This for a guy who dresses like a Little Leaguer and plays a game for a living. Meanwhile, Bush continues to act like a guy who has relapsed on his cocaine use (wild swings between paranoia and unfounded optimism), and absolutely no talk about drug testing for him. Is it true that we simply take games more seriously than war?

Chapter 29 - in which democrats jump into a time machine and the president is revealed to be a dada artist

Joe Biden and Carl Levin have proposed a bill to rescind Bush’s 2002 right to invade Iraq. One can only hope that they next plan to rescind the 2001 NASDAQ market crash.

This may be what separates politicians from mere mortals. We have to decide what we're going to do before hand. They can wait until later, deciding in 2007 to apologize for slavery, attending Holocaust museums while ignoring on-going genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, and deciding in 2007 that they ought not to have invaded Iraq.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney (who is, rather explicably, never called “Richard") is making noise about military action against Iran. One might think that locking Dick into an undisclosed location would be a higher priority than passing a bill that depends upon the invention of a time machine in order to be relevant.

The point of challenging the Bush administration on the Iraq invasion should be to provoke the articulation of a new worldview in DC – one that actually seems connected to the realities of the Middle East. It might be worth noting that everything that Bush predicted has proven wrong - and not just slightly wrong. It is as if he was asked to name a tune and blurted out the name of a china pattern.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream; I have a fantasy. It is that one day we all learn that the Bush administration has actually been a staged production put on by a collaboration between a media eager for ratings and dada artists who needed money. We'll learn that this entire episode made absolutely no sense for the simple reason that it was intended not to make any sense. At this point, it is the only thing that makes any sense.

In Defense of Joe Biden

Joe Biden recently said this about Barak Obama:
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

It would appear that his candidacy for president is once again over. I hope not. I'd like to step in to defend this man.

We live in a gotcha culture that makes politicians timid and teaches them to focus on avoiding mistakes rather than focusing on doing what is right. If we make such stupid statements the reason to cut off the candidacy of the one guy who has consistently been bold enough to criticize Bush's Iraq policy and informed and thoughtful enough to offer an alternative (usually staying at least one step ahead of his peers and the press) then we're in trouble. If a candidate has to avoid saying stupid things for two years, you can be sure that he’ll say meaningless things instead. Only people who avoid actually saying anything are guaranteed to say nothing offensive or stupid.

Compare what he has said with the list of things said by the man who has most recently been elected president. Then, more importantly, compare what he has thought and the way in which he has candidly shared his thoughts, with what has been thought by our chief explainer.
Put away your notions of getting a pure candidate. It's not going to happen. Focus instead on what a candidate will do in spite of the personal flaws.

Changing the Presidency Into a Two-Person Job

My daughter told me an amusing story. A group of medieval monks were arguing about the number of teeth in a horse's mouth, trying to remember what number Aristotle had claimed they had. A young monk said, "Well, we all rode here on horses. Why don't we just go out to the stable, open the mouth of a horse, and count the teeth?" His idea was dismissed as nonsensical.

In today's political world, we rarely go out to the stable to actually take inventory of what is needed. Instead, it is fashionable to debate about what the writers' of the constitution actually meant by this or that point. Readers of this blog will know that I frequently refer to the need for social invention as a partner to technological invention. I'd like to ask the reader to step away from the constitution and walk out to the stable with me as I make the case for a change to our current politics.

Intel is increasingly relying on "two-in-a-box" executive positions. Instead of putting a single person in charge of their communications division, they'll put two. The markets, the technology, and the direction of the business are so complex that it makes sense to share authority over it. Why not consider this model for the US Presidency. The complexity facing the holder of that position is certainly no less than that facing the two-person teams running an Intel division.

Imagine that we have, say, Joe Biden and John Edwards, sharing the presidency. Biden could couple his foreign policy smarts and experience with Edwards domestic agenda and youth. Or, depending on your brand of coffee, you might prefer to see McCain and Chuck Hagel, or for the really bold, Clinton and Huckabee (who may come from different parties but who both come from Arkansas). I, for one, quite like the idea of two people sharing duties, one able to largely focus on foreign policy affairs and the other focused on domestic issues.

I know, I know. Supposedly presidents have cabinets to help complement their expertise. But it is a very different thing to give advice and be responsible for implementing that advice. Partnership has a great tradition in this country. Think of Hewlett & Packard or Laurel & Hardy. Isn't it time that we stepped out into the stable and took stock of what we really expect of a president before concluding that it is a one-person job?