Punting in Iowa

(Punting as in the Australian word meaning betting on the outcome, not boating with a long pole, which I'm sure would be pretty difficult in Iowa in winter. Speaking of seasons, it's been 108 degrees F here the last two days. Yes, really. Which makes snowy footage from Iowa look even further away than usual.)

Its Jan 2nd here and the Des Moines Register poll and the CNN poll are in . The Register poll has caused quite a stir by putting Obama well in front on the basis of a large (40%) chunk of Democratic caucus goers not being registered Democrats. Naturally enough, the Clinton campaign and their many shills in the media have pooh-poohed this poll on both sample and methodology.

I'm inclined to think the Register sample is right and correctly weighted. That is, there really are a larger number of independents this year talking about showing up to caucuses and Obama is well supported in that group. I suspect however, that this group will be overly soft. That is, they say they'll show up to caucus but many of them won't. So the prediction won't stand up.

I'm betting (punting) that the end result will be somewhere in between the Register poll and the average of the others. That said, this is an environment destined to make pollsters look dumb (not that it's that hard anyway) and the range of reasonably probable results include anything from a big Obama victory to a clear win for either Hillary or Edwards, and any arrangement of second and third.

If the Register is right, and many new independents show up and caucus for Obama, then we have ourselves a whole new ball game. Which would be a feast of entertainment for us politics tragics. Not least because of panic it would set off in other campaigns.

The more brutal of the Clintonista's will want to get really nasty in that event. Which, as we saw with the flap about Obama's drug use a couple of weeks ago, would be a huge mistake. The candidate and her husband know this. The question is how short a leash they have on their attack dogs. Edwards and Co will probably go negative as well but they can get away with and it probably won't hurt them. But it won't help either.

As for GOP side of Iowa. I don't know what to say and I don't think any predictions are worth spit. If it wasn't for the writer's strike I'd accuse the Daily Show of inventing the whole thing in order generate material. Unbelievable.

Back via Bali

I've been away. Or rather, my attention has been elsewhere. Namely the Australian election. For those tuning in late, we had a change of government with a swing of 5.something% removing John Howard from government and a Bush friend from the world stage. Howard also lost his own seat in parliment, which in our system is, like, ouchy.

Any lessons for the US election? Probably not a lot. The key issues were workplace relations and climate change. New PM Kevin Rudd has moved swiftly on the latter and ratified Kyoto before rushing off to the Bali conference, with a bunch of cabinet members in tow, to join the rest of the world in locking horns with the American delegation. All of which tells you that the centre/left in the western world generally is opposed to the Bush administration on climate change. But you knew that already.

Illustrative perhaps of the new government's contrasts with Howard is the rapid promiotion of Senator Penny Wong to cabinet as Minister for Climate Change. As well as being, in one pundit's memorable phrase, tough as nails and smart as paint, the senator also happens to be female, asian, mulitlingual and gay. I'm sure the culture warriors Bush sent to Bali to obstruct for their country didn't know where to start with Senator Wong. Their loss.

Speaking of the Bali conference. The lack of coverage in the US media was pretty depressing (although not as depressing as the US delegation's appalling positions on the issues). It was about the future of the planet for heavens sake. It was front page news here every day for a week but hardly rated a mention in your media. I normally avoid gratuitous America bashing, but I'm afraid in this case I'm falling back on the old, what planet are you people on?

The Electability Curve Revisited

A few months ago I made some obervations about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's primary race polling as compared to their general election electability.

(As ever I'm working from the Real Clear Politics averages of national polls)

At that time Obama seemed to be slowly gaining on Hillary in the primary race. That leveled out not long after I wrote that piece and has stayed that way for most of the intervening months. But, in recent weeks Hillarys numbers have improved into the low 40s whilst Obama's have continued to hover in the mid twenties. On the face of it Hillary seems to have picked up some undecideds and some of the people who are jumping off the Edwards wagon.

Meanwhile, the general election polls (which Joe Klein and others repeatedly call meaningless, but anyway...) show Obama's electability continuing to be better in some ways than Hillary's. Interestingly Obama does much better over Fred Thompson than Hillary, 13 % vs 4%. The question is : who are these people. They're able to think of voting for Obama but rather than vote for Hillary they'll go with Fred Thompson. Strange but true.

I think the position remains the same, Obama remains more electable but Hillary appears to be locking up more primary votes.

Others on the The Australian vs the Blogs Hoo Haa

As a follow up to my previous posts on this topic you can see more of the Oz blogospheres response to The Australian's dummy spit on blogs and opinion polls at these links. The list was created by Lavatus Prodeo.

Once again here is the Australian's editorial .

larvatusprodeo.net ( and again )
Simon Jackman
Aussie Bob
Oz Politics
Rank and Vile
Howard Out
Tug Boat Potemkin
Public Opinion
John Quiggin
The Orstrahyn
please insert caffeine
Poll Bludger

Polls, Blogs, Editorials and the Devil

We've just had an extraordinary reaction, including some quite troubling behaviour, from The Australian newspaper to blog comments about commentary on polling results.

(This post is the core of my response. My previous post "The Australian Spits the Dummy" lays out the full (electronic) paper trial and provides all the background for those interested in the gory details)

This week on Tuesday (10/7) The Australian published a Newspoll which showed no change from previous polls in the two party preferred voting intention, putting Kevin Rudd's Labour Party 10-12% ahead, but a gain for John Howard in the preferred prime minister numbers, narrowing the gap in that measure to 1 or 2 points. The accompanying headline was

Newspoll: Howard Checks Rudd’s March

The headline was accompanied by various articles talking up the significance of the preferred prime minister number and downplaying the unchanged voting intention numbers. This included a blog posting by Dennis Shanahan, Political Editor, entitled "Kevin's sizzle not snag-free" taking the same line and supporting the headline.

I was one of the 250 people that commented on Dennis Shanahan's blog post. Most of us took the line that we were seeing evidence of bias in favour of the government party, as did several independent bloggers including Crikey.Com and Mumble.

For myself I had set out to nibble Dennis’, and the editorial staff’s, ankles a little. I was surprised that the next day (11/7) we got two responses, in the form of a rebuttal from the CEO of Newspoll, and a post from Dennis Shanahan oin his blog (on which comments were closed after about an hour and 16 comments), in the next day's paper. I was flat out astonished to see that there was a response on this topic in the editorial on Thursday (12/7). Not just a response, but the whole editorial! Instead of a bit of ankle we got the whole leg. Amazing.

I discovered later that day that Peter Brent, one of the bloggers that criticised Dennis Shanahan's posts and related articles, had reported that he received a phone call from Chris Mitchell, Editor in Chief of the Australian, the previous day, prior the editorial beiong written, which he describes as follows

"A courtesy call from Editor-in-Chief Chris Mitchell this morning informed me that the paper is going to "go" Charles Richardson (from Crikey) and me tomorrow. Chris said by all means criticise the paper, but my "personal" attacks on Dennis had gone too far, and the paper will now go me "personally"."

The morning the editorial was published, Tim Dunlop, a resident blogger at News Limited's Australian umbrella web site, www.news.com.au, published a post to his blog "Blogocracy" which criticised the editorial in The Australian at some length. Later that same morning Tim Dunlop's post was removed from the news.com.au site. Tim Dunlop then stopped blogging for 24 hours and had this to say on his return.

"CODA: Apologies for the recent absence and lack of response, not to mention lack of posts. Yep, the editor here pulled a post yesterday, which I ain’t happy about, though of course, in the greater scheme of things editors pulling copy is hardly unusual. Nonetheless, it is something we are discussing.."

Thanks to other boggers we can read what Tim Dunlop's post said before it was pulled. I have preserved a copy here. Here's the money quote

“I think the editorial is ill-conceived and way off the mark in singling out Peter Brent in the way that it does. His site largely confines itself to interpretation and in doing so, provides a great service. The idea that he can’t comment without the editor of The Australian ringing him up to say they are going to “go” him is disturbing...”

Extraordinarily, in the following few days The Australian published no letters or blogs related to the Thurs 12/7 editorial. I sent in a response myself. I'm sure many of the original 250, plus many others have done likewise. None of which has seen the light of day in any of The Australians letters or blog pages in the subsequent few days (as at this writing).

So, there you have it. A major newspaper responding to run of the mill blog criticism by making scary phone calls, dedicating a entire editorial to the issue, apparently pulling an already publised item by a staff member of it's own organisation criticising this approach and then shutting out all mention of the issue in it's letters and blog pages on subsequent days. All out of sensitivity at being accused of bias.

They did protest far too much. We must have been closer to the nerve than we imagined.

Nothing could possibly have lent more credibility to the accusation of bias in the eyes of the general audience. And nothing could make all us blog folks more determined in our criticism the next time polling day rolls around.

I don't object to a major publication loudly and summarily rejecting amateur accusations of bias. We amateurs should expect that and take it on the chin. I do object to intimidation, public suppression of in-house dissent and dissent being shut out of supposedly open forums.

All of which is a textbook example of how to give your opponent oxygen and end up losing an argument when you started out in a position of strength. If I was paying the salaries of The Australian's editorial staff I'd be very unhappy right now. To paraphrase Zaphod Beeblebrox, 8/10 for self belief but minus several million for communications effectiveness.

And on a final note. The whole thing shows a deep discomfort with the 21st century reality of blogs and the Net. Especially the attempt to hide what Tim Dunlop wrote by pulling his post. These guy's clearly don't get how this confounded Internet thingy works.

The Australian Spits the Dummy

I'm going to put this here even though it's all about Australian politics. I want to get the full, story down while it's fresh as I think it could have lasting interest. This post will contain the full ramble for those interested in the gory details. See my next post for a to-the-point wrap up.

(Preamble for US readers. Oz readers my wish to skip to the weird bit)

The Australian is a national broadsheet newspaper headquartered in Sydney. It's one of our main papers of record and the preferred home of business, legal and media industry reporting. It's owned by News Corp. Think of a more modern, better presented broadsheet with an editorial stance to the left of the Wall Street Journal but still right of centre.

The Australian publishes Newspoll. One of the two big, credible, regular, national opinion polls that come out monthly (or so). Since Kevin Rudd was elected opposition leader last December Newspoll and all it's competitors have been remarkably consistent in giving Labour a 55/45 ish lead over John Howard's conservative coalition in voting intention and Kevin Rudd a small but significant lead over John Howard as preferred prime minister. So far, so ordinary.

Now for the weird bit.

This week on Tuesday (10/7) the Australian published a Newspoll which showed no change in the two party preferred voting intention (despite a small bump in Labour's primary vote) but a gain for Howard in the preferred prime minister numbers, narrowing the gap in that measure to 1 or 2 points. The accompanying headline was

Newspoll: Howard Checks Rudd’s March

The headline was accompanied by various articles talking up the significance of the preferred prime minister number and downplaying the unchanged voting intention numbers. This included a blog posting by Dennis Shanahan, Political Editor, entitled "Kevin's sizzle not snag-free" taking the same line and supporting the headline.

Some 250 people, including myself, then proceeded to post comments saying, in essence, that numbers in the poll didn't support the headline and that we regarded this as evidence of bias driven by proprietorial direction. It's possible we used some colourful Australian language along the way and put our cases fairly strongly. Many of us having had this argument with Dennis once a month for sveral months. Here's my contribution

robertbe of Elwood (10 July at 09:14 AM)

Oh good grief Dennis. Could you lot be more transparent? A few points movement in approval ratings hardly warrants the headline today. Head office must be impressed by your diligence if not your effectiveness. As you note, in spite of your best efforts there has been no measurable change in voting intention since Christmas. Scary huh? You could end up looking like you have no leverage (gasp). In order to make a living you might have to fall back on, you know, actual journalism.

Again so far, so ordinary. A centre right paper talks up polling results to make them seem favourable to a centre right government. A bunch of blog commenters and other bloggers call them out for it. Happens all the time, right? But wait. This month turned out to be different.

The next day (Weds 11/7) The Australian published an article by the CEO of Newspoll defending the headline and Dennis Shanahan's position and dissing the bloggers as ill informed. Also, Dennis Shanahan posted another blog entitled "Howard's trend lifts him out of the trough" which basically defends his previous blog and marvels at the response it got. It also includes a jibe at "academic PhD aspirants" which seems to have been aimed Peter Brent, a PhD student and blogger (mumble.com.au) who had been part of the chorus of disapproval the previous day. Here's where things started to go off the rails. Comments on Dennis Shanahan's blog were closed off after only an hour so and only 16 comments. That same morning Peter Brent reports that he received a phone call from Chris Mitchell, Editor in Chief of the Australian, which he describes as follows

"A courtesy call from Editor-in-Chief Chris Mitchell this morning informed me that the paper is going to "go" Charles Richardson (from Crikey) and me tomorrow.

Chris said by all means criticise the paper, but my "personal" attacks on Dennis had gone too far, and the paper will now go me "personally"."

The next morning (Thurs 12/7) The Australian published an extraordinary editorial, taking up it's entire leader space, defending their editorial line and headlines related to the Newspoll and attacking blogs and bloggers in general and Peter Brent's blog in particular. I'm not going to summarise the editorial at length here. Safe to say it was long, rambling, full of pique and bile and deeply self involved. Here's the direct link. I've preserved a copy here. Just in case. You'll see why in a moment. Have a read. It's quite something.

The same morning Tim Dunlop, a resident blogger at News Limited's Australian umbrella web site, www.news.com.au, published a post to his blog "Blogocracy" which criticised the editorial in The Australian at some length. Later that same morning Tim Dunlop's post was removed from the news.com.au site. Tim Dunlop then stopped blogging for 24 hours and had this to say on his return.

"CODA: Apologies for the recent absence and lack of response, not to mention lack of posts. Yep, the editor here pulled a post yesterday, which I ain’t happy about, though of course, in the greater scheme of things editors pulling copy is hardly unusual. Nonetheless, it is something we are discussing. In the meantime, let’s just go John Howard and his new aircraft wallpaper, shall we?"

Thanks to other boggers we can read what Tim Dunlop's post said before it was pulled. I preserved a copy here, taken from Guido's Place.

Here's the money quote

“I think the editorial is ill-conceived and way off the mark in singling out

Peter Brent in the way that it does. His site largely confines itself to

interpretation and in doing so, provides a great service. The idea that he can’t

comment without the editor of The Australian ringing him up to say they are

going to “go” him is disturbing...”

Extraordinarily, the next day (Fri 13/7 ) The Australian published no letters or blogs related to the previous day's editorial. They must have received many.

I have since posted comments protesting all this to Tim Dunlop's blog at news.com.au, Phillip Adam's blog (he's their resident lefty, I was after a sympathetic ear) at The Australian and to the editorial staff via their email stream forum@theaustralian.com.au. All, unsurprisingly, all went unpublished and without response. I'm sure many of the original 250, plus many others have done likewise. None of which has seen the light of day in any of The Australians letters or blog pages in the subsequent two days. Here's what I attempted to get posted, which I'll rework as a my more-to-the-point post after this one (it was written before I had confirmed what had happened to Tim Dunlop).

I was one of the 250 people that commented on Dennis Shanahan's blog post "Kevin’s sizzle not snag-free" on Tuesday (10/7). Dennis' post and all those responses were about the Newspoll results and the accompanying headlines in the paper on that day. In particular, the significance of the change in the preferred Prime Minister numbers as compared to the primary vote. For myself I had set out to nibble Dennis’, and the editorial staff’s, ankles a little. I was surprised that we got two responses, in the form of a rebuttal from the CEO of Newspoll, and a post from Dennis in his blog, in the next day's paper. But, I was flat out astonished (as I'm sure the rest of the 250 were) to see that there was a response on this topic in the editorial on Thursday (12/7). Not just a response, but the whole editorial! Instead of a bit of ankle we got the whole leg. Amazing.

Of course, some of that fit of editorial pique was directed at those professional troublemakers over at Crikey.Com and Mumble. Still, it was pretty good fun for us amateurs to find we had helped to wake the beast.

I stand by my comments (you’ll find me in the stream as Robertbe of Elwood).

The hyperbole and bile in the editorial and the paper’s other responses misses the original point Which was simply this : the headline went to far given the substance of the numbers. The decision made by the headline writer looked an awful lot like it was driven by awareness of proprietorial direction. The overblown response, complete with the arrogant assumption that anyone commenting on a blog or otherwise active online is a left-wing imbecile, only serves to sharply increase that perception. You did protest far too much. We must have been closer to the nerve than we imagined.

One a final note. The comments on Dennis’ follow up response “Howard’s trend lifts him out of the trough” appear to have been shut off after only an hour or so allowing only 16 comments. I’m betting that dummy spit was part of a larger tantrum that then produced the editorial the next day. All of which is a textbook example of how to give your opponent oxygen and end up losing an argument when you started out in a position of strength. I’m sure your publicists have their heads in hands right about now. To paraphrase Zaphod Beeblebrox, 8/10 for self belief but minus several million for communications effectiveness. Have great weekend.

So, there you have it. A major newspaper responding to run of the mill blog criticism by making scary phone calls, dedicating a entire editorial to the issue, apparently pulling an already publised item by a staff member of it's own organisation criticising this approach and then shutting out all mention of the issue in it's letters and blog pages on subsequent days. All out of sensitivity at being accused of bias.

Nothing could possibly have lent more credibility to the accusation of bias in the eyes of the general audience. And nothing could make all us blog folks more determined in our criticism the next time polling day rolls around. If I was paying the salaries of The Australian's editorial staff I'd be very unhappy right now.

I don't object to a major publication loudly and summarily rejecting amateur accusations of bias. We amateurs should expect that and take it on the chin. I do object to intimidation, suppression of in-house dissent and censorship of supposedly open forums.

Keep it Zipped

Anthony Villaraigosa's affair(s) and divorce made the papers here ( very briefly).

I know it's not considered cool in Democrat circles to buy into sanctimony about such things but I'm mad at him.

The party needs credible leaders who can put guys like him on notice. If you aspire to high office and you're married, keep it in your pants. You're being disloyal to your party as well as your wife.

If I'm the California money people, the party chairman, the DNC or whoever I'd be getting in Mayor Villaraigosa's face, using brutal language, and making him fear for his future right about now. In process making sure others learn from the example.

More 2nd Quarter : McCain's Pain Again

A while ago I wrote here that there were bad indicators for McCain's campaign. It's not getting any better. In fact his cash on hand picture is so dire he's dropped many many staff. To borrow a famous Australian political line, a comeback from here would be Lazarous with a triple bypass.

The polls aren't great either. Viz.



That ain't a great trend line for Guiliani either. That quiet hum you hear in the background is Hillary and Barack feeling smug.

Of Cabbages and Kings

Tel over at Swampland reminded us of this

"He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States....
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments..."

Can you guess who it's talking about?

....

King George, the III, not the W,

The more it changes....

Happy independence day

2nd Quarter Scoreboard : Obama

So, here we are 2 quarters in and the results are still coming in but, the shape of the money race is interesting to say the least.

Late in the previous quarter I gave this heavily qualified endorsement of Barack Obama : "... With some very big ifs. If he can continue to fund his campaign through large numbers of small donations from non-corporate sources. If he retains his commitment to thinking things through rather the forming policies for policy's sake. If he can avoid trade offs and debts to interest groups. If (and this is the big one) he can establish a constituency for change that reaches previous non-voters. He just might pull it off and arrive at the White House door, intact, as the sort of leader we need."

So, how is he doing on my ifs since then? The funding results that have just come in are exactly what I wanted. In fact they're ridiculously good. More than 250,000 donors for a clearly bigger total than Hillary has raised. Great. 10/10.

Policy wise his performance so far has been patchy. I, like many, was disappointed in the his health policy announcement. It came off as tepid, almost Hillary 1992 lite. And it's employer based. As many commentators who have looked in some depth at this, including the Kleins, Ezra (the good) and Joe (the not so good), have pointed out, the best shot at universal health cover may well be to move away from the employer mandate. It feels like Obama wimped on that even though he must know it's the real long term goal. His debate performances have been patchy. I feel like he either doesn't get or doesn't trust the format. Which in a way is commendable, but he needs to find a way to give short, punch-through answers without comprising his laudable willingness to look beyond surfaces. Not great. 6/10.

As to bringing in new constituencies. The picture looks good there. Head to head general election polling is a feeble reed indeed at this distance from Nov 08 but, such as it is, it is showing his general appeal holding up well. There also seems to be credible reporting that he is getting active involvement from the prveioulsy unengaged. The funding result with it's many small donors indicates a lot of new voter buy in as well. Just fine. 8/10.

So, we are seeing the right support infrastructure for Obama to get him to the White House door in the way that I wanted. But, we aren't yet seeing the policies. Now that his funding wagon has it's own, very considerable momentum I suggest Barack spends the summer getting the wheels bolted on to the policy engine. Significantly an honest working through of his health position could result in a change of tack. Which could be awkward. It will be worth it in the long run. Onwards and upwards.