Left Flank

Not only are Democrats fractious, but they like to wallow in the fact, that they can "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."

In the end, if Obama is the Democratic nominee, it is likely that most of the Democrats currently unhappy with him will come home and vote for their party rather than John McCain. However, it is always problematic for a candidate to begin a campaign without the solid support of voters from within his own party (Rasmussen).

I've made my peace, and, fortunately for the Democratic party in Florida, it's quite painless. I will vote against every incumbent who voted to move up Florida's presidential primary. Since I live in state congressional and senate districts blessed with Republican congressmen, It's easy to vote Democratic.

Ðámn!

As much as Heather Hurlburt talks about the "right incantations" for making security policy a domestic policy issue in the 2008 election primary season, TAP'ers Dana Goldstein and Ezra Klein just don't get the full catastrophe of the Iraq War. It's got little to do with the horserace, espcially the egregious caricatures Eli Lake uses to ridicule both ends of the partisan spectrum (the "hippies" vs. the "nationalists").

To give Klein credit, he sees within his myopia very clearly:

Foreign policy has receded has a definitional issue in the Democratic primary by virtue of the Democrats largely agreeing that Iraq is going poorly. Within that agreement there exist plenty of shaded prescriptions, from Richardson's "all troops out yesterday" to Clinton's "end the war but keep thousands of troops in Iraq to carry out combat missions," but wonks have proven unable to force those distinctions out into the open, and voters don't seem to exhibit much preference for one approach over the other. So the conversation has moved onto other issues where Edwards and Obama see more hope of drawing distinctions with Hillary.

The day the nominee is chosen, however, that ends. The space between the Democrats and the non-Ron Paul Republicans on foreign policy isn't a pothole -- it's a chasm. And the Democrat is going to do everything he or she can to push Mitt Huckabee into it. It will be defining in the general for the very reason that it's been quieted in the primary: Democrats disagree with Republicans, rather than with each other, on what to say about Iraq.

However, I think all miss how the expenditure on the Iraq War has made the conveniently, outdated division between foreign and domestic policy moot. The bank is busted, and there's not even enough largesse for one good reform.

Our analysis starts with the $500 billion that the Congressional Budget Office openly talks about, which is still ten times higher than what the administration said the war would cost. Its estimate falls so far short because the reported numbers do not even include the full budgetary costs to the government. And the budgetary costs are but a fraction of the costs to the economy as a whole.

For example, the Bush administration has been doing everything it can to hide the huge number of returning veterans who are severely wounded – 16,000 so far, including roughly 20% with serious brain and head injuries. So it is no surprise that its figure of $500 billion ignores the lifetime disability and healthcare costs that the government will have to pay for years to come.

Nor does the administration want to face up to the military's recruiting and retention problems. The result is large re-enlistment bonuses, improved benefits, and higher recruiting costs – up 20% just from 2003 to 2005. Moreover, the war is extremely wearing on equipment, some of which will have to be replaced.

These budgetary costs (exclusive of interest) amount to $652 billion in our conservative estimate and $799 billion in our moderate estimate. Arguably, since the government has not reined in other expenditures or increased taxes, the expenditures have been debt financed, and the interest costs on this debt add another $98 billion (conservative) to $385 billion (moderate) to the budgetary costs.

Of course, the brunt of the costs of injury and death is borne by soldiers and their families. But the military pays disability benefits that are markedly lower than the value of lost earnings. Similarly, payments for those who are killed amount to only $500,000, which is far less than standard estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death, sometimes referred to as the statistical value of a life ($6.1 to $6.5 million).

But the costs don't stop there. The Bush administration once claimed that the Iraq war would be good for the economy, with one spokesperson even suggesting that it was the best way to ensure low oil prices. As in so many other ways, things have turned out differently: the oil companies are the big winners, while the American and global economies are losers. Being extremely conservative, we estimate the overall effect on the economy if only $5 or $10 of the increase is attributed to the war.

At the same time, money spent on the war could have been spent elsewhere. We estimate that if a proportion of that money had been allocated to domestic investment in roads, schools, and research, the American economy would have been stimulated more in the short run, and its growth would have been enhanced in the long run.

There are a number of other costs, some potentially quite large, although quantifying them is problematic. For instance, Americans pay some $300 billion annually for the «option value» of military preparedness – being able to fight wherever needed. That Americans are willing to pay this suggests that the option value exceeds the costs. But there is little doubt that the option value has been greatly impaired and will likely remain so for several years.

In short, even our «moderate» estimate may significantly underestimate the cost of America's involvement in Iraq. And our estimate does not include any of the costs implied by the enormous loss of life and property in Iraq itself.

I would argue the topic of the cost of security will recur in the following years as many of these costs, like soldiers' healthcare, present themselves and play out domestically. But then also politicians and voters will wonder why budget cuts become the default option because of perennial budgetary deficits, and why the money for the optimal plan is just not there handy.

New Hampshire and Iowa are now entering into the stretch run of the nuisance race. Not only are both states jockeying for the pole position in the 2008 general elections, by holding their primaries in 2007, but in both states the Democratic and Republican organizations are quibbling about primacy. Aside from just quarreling for its own sake, there are constitutional issues here.

But if the entire calendar mess has revealed anything, it has revealed how weak the national parties are in controlling their state organizations and how impotent they are in restraining state legislatures. (A bill already has been introduced to have Congress take over the primary process, but even if it passes it is sure to be challenged on Constitutional grounds.)

And what really would happen if the parties imposed sanctions on New Hampshire? Would candidates really not campaign there? Would the media really ignore the New Hampshire primary? Both seem unlikely. (And whatever delegates the parties strip away, the nominees can easily restore at convention time.)

This pìššìng contest has its own version in Florida. In Seminole County where I cast my votes (by absentee ballot), there is something called a «Presidential Preference» Primary on January 29, 2008, but then a «Primary Election» on August 26, 2008. Aside from an abuse of language, what is happening here? I've asked the election commissioner for a clarification. Meanwhile, the «plight» of Florida's political parties has entered the legal arena:

Nelson and Hastings said they felt compelled to assert the voting rights of all Floridians. They are hoping for a swift court order to block the national party from imposing its sanctions.

«What we know about Florida - that Howard Dean may not know - is that Floridians have been in fights about this right to vote for a long time,» Hastings told reporters in Washington. «And fight we will.»

Nelson, D-Fla., called it «a case of fundamental rights versus party rules.»

He noted that the party sanctions led to a pledge by Democratic candidates to avoid campaigning in Florida except for fundraisers.

«Paying for political participation is unacceptable,» Nelson said, «just as a poll tax was unacceptable.»

Legal experts found little precedent for overturning a political party's sanctions, but they did not discount a possible court victory for the Florida Democrats.

«They have a shot, but it's a long shot,» said Bruce Rogow, constitutional lawyer and professor at Nova Southeastern University.

«Courts are reluctant to intervene in the private machinations of a political party. What gives them a shot is that, no question, it has an impact on the meaningfulness of Florida voters' decisions with regard to who the nominee should be,» Rogow said.

Ðámn the states and the parties (which, as far as I can recall, were pilloried during the Constitutional Convention debates in 1787 and are subordinate to the government, not the fourth branch of government!)! Bickering is a political tactic states don't need to perfect into a national hindrance.

Poliblogger, in a post drawing liberally quoting from a CSM article on the Florida lawsuits, argues plainly:

Party primaries are odd things?part public, part private and they have been shaped by Supreme court decisions in the past, so it is not out of the question that this case could eventually redefine the borders between what state parties can do and what the national party committees can control.

I think SCOTUS has to intervene with a national solution before votes lose their impact or legality. From that CSM article:

«A suit against the state is on stronger ground than a suit against the party,» says Guy-Uriel Charles, an election law specialist and co-dean of the University of Minnesota Law School. «Because one might say that the state moved the primary up specifically to deprive these voters of their rights.»

That is a claim Florida officials flatly deny. The legislature, with the governor's support, did vote this spring to move the primaries ? Democratic and Republican ? to Jan. 29. But after Democratic amendments to set a Feb. 5 primary failed, nearly every Democratic lawmaker joined the Republican majority in favor of the Jan. 29 date.

Several Democrats invoked the same reason as Republicans: to give the nation's fourth most populous state a bigger role in the nominating process.

To argue that SCOTUS (and, by extension, the district courts) can only react when rights are denied, deprives the third branch of its role in national debate. Does SCOTUS have to wait until the current primary system results in lawsuits claiming disenfranchisement, post-November 4, 2008, when it doesn't take a wonk to know that this jockeying is deleteriously affecting political expression now? What is so wrong about reform along the lines of the American Plan, which only mirrors an almost identical debate in the 1787 Constitutional Convention debates about the primacy of large and small states? Is federalism just another word for political cowardice these days? Are politicians so wimpish nowadays that they would wilt before a SCOTUS-mandated reform, and forego a constitutional challenge, via executive order or law? At least such leadership would put the primary reform issue front and center on the national stage where it belongs.

Is it coming to the point where I need to write in protest candidates, because the current generation of political leadership is composed of cowards and autocrats?

Another indication of how skewed out of shape elections are in the US:

One day after Florida Democratic officials said they would defy the national party and press ahead with plans for a Jan.29 presidential primary, the consequences became a bit clearer.

One early casualty: the state party's Oct.26-28 convention in Orlando, which had been expected to draw the entire Democratic presidential field to Walt Disney World. Instead, the candidates will likely be no-shows.

«We'd love to have them,» Florida Democratic spokesman Mark Burbriski said. «But we know it doesn't look like that's going to happen.»

And thanks to the pledge they signed under pressure from Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina -- the only states authorized to hold primaries or caucuses before Feb. 5 -- it appears that the Democratic presidential candidates will neither campaign nor run commercials in Florida, much to the chagrin of television stations.

«We figured this thing was going to be a shootout,» said Bill Bauman, general manager of WESH-Channel 2 in Orlando. «But when they're not campaigning in Florida, they're not spending money.»

Disney World and TV stations? Isn't this the Democratic party?