Now that the majority in the Senate has safely tilted towards the Democrats, Majority Leader Harry Reid (possibly) wants Joe Lieberman’s head on a plate to punish him for his unyielding endorsement of John McCain.

While Lieberman certainly has been unfaithful to his party, now is no time to strip the Senator of his helm at the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.  Understandably, Reid wants to punish Lieberman and reward a party loyalist with the coveted position, but Reid would do well to remember that one party domination never lasts long.  If the Democrats wish to lead and govern with an eye towards the future, now is no time to shrink the size of the Democratic tent.

Barack Obama ran and won on a message of inclusion and unity.  Punishing Lieberman now would run contrary to this laudable goal and only do more harm than good for the Democratic Party.

Tonight we ordered a pizza pie at Dominos.com … where you can also vote for the president on the pizza tracker (click to enlarge):

As you can see, out of about 9,000 pizza eaters, 57% went to Obama, 37% McCain, and 7% Other.  The most popular oven baked sandwich was the Philly Cheese Steak with 35% of the vote.

I think that settles it:  May history never forget that Barack Obama won the 2008 Presidential Election, and a lot of people were eating cheese steaks at the time.

]]> http://www.politivi.com/2008/11/04/obama-wins-pizza-eaters-vote/feed/ 0 http://www.politivi.com/2008/10/29/a-few-thoughts-on-the-medias-coverage-of-this-election/ http://www.politivi.com/2008/10/29/a-few-thoughts-on-the-medias-coverage-of-this-election/#comments Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:36:22 +0000 Christopher Calvi http://www.politivi.com/?p=120

[ Note: This is my response to this op-ed. ]

This is yet another right-wing slam piece by the conservative Michael Malone – of course he’s going to say the media is biased, that’s his own bias. He’s a man looking for a boogey man. It’s human nature to do this, and I myself have been guilty of this too many times to count.

But the truth is that the McCain campaign has literally run one of the worst campaigns in modern memory (worse even than Kerry’s dismal ’04 performance). As it happens, Obama’s campaign is going well. Imposing a fake balance on this reality would be inaccurate reporting. (For more on this, you should check out a recent article at Politico).

Barack Obama has been thoroughly vetted for the past 20 months, and any omission certainly is not related to the ideological leanings of the press. The good reporters out there always want to dig up a bombshell, regardless of who gets hit. That’s just self-interest, because they get the acclaim and book deal that comes with it (think: Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, and “All The King’s Men”). Other journalists may be lazier than that, but their ideological leanings haven’t played a major role in the press’s coverage of this election.

Malone wants Obama’s drug dealer. Is that all he can come up with? Seriously? I don’t remember ever hearing about W’s cocaine dealer. As for Bill Ayers – he has in fact recently spoken with the press, albeit hasn’t said much. And I don’t know why Rezko isn’t speaking, but I doubt it is because the “media is liberal.” I’m sure it has more to do with his legal problems and self-interest.

Joe the plumber? He has become something akin to what Cindy Sheehan is on the left. A private citizen turned public political activist, who will probably take advantage of all this and make a run for office himself. The press will shine the spotlight on you when this happens. Did the media overreach? Of course they did, but then again… it is the McCain campaign who opted to use Joe the Plumber for political gain.

The irony in all this is that the far left also likes to make the “corporate” media out to be the boogey man. I’d like to think that when both the left and the right are angry with the media, they must be doing something right.

The truth is, of course there will be subtle biases one way or another, and the press may fail at times to be the guardians they are tasked with being – they are just humans after all. But for the McCain campaign to blame their downward spiral on the press… is to search desperately for a scapegoat, when all they really need to do is look in the mirror.

A friend and I were talking this morning and he mentioned that if you use the RealClearPolitics electoral map calculator, things don’t look so great for John McCain.  In fact, it looks nearly impossible for John McCain to win the 2008 Presidential election, barring a serious Obama misstep in the next few days.  This reminds me of Jonathan Alter’s prophetic Newsweek article way back on March 4th (Hillary’s Math Problem) discussing how Hillary Clinton could win the next 16 states and still lose the primary.

Well things look just as dire for John McCain.  Today is one week out, and here is where the electoral map stands in terms of average polling numbers:

Source: RealClearPolitics.com (10/28/2008)

Changing every single toss up state to McCain AND giving him Ohio and Virginia (both leaning Obama) would still yield a 273-265 Obama victory:

Source: RealClearPolitics.com (10/28/2008)

John McCain has been known to pull rabbits out of his hat before, but this would have to be his fattest rabbit yet.  Of course, we’ll have to wait and see how this all pans out on Election Day, but in light of the above math (and the gamblers over at the Iowa Electronics Markets currently betting an over 86% chance of an Obama win), I’d say that come January, America will be getting a fair dose of Hope and Change.

Democratic NJ State Sen. Jeff Van Drew has ruled out a challenge to Republican Rep. Frank LoBiondo in November [link].

With Van Drew out, and LoBiondo’s popularity as high as ever, NJ-02 is guaranteed a Republican win again.  CNN can project that right now.

Stanford Law professor, Lawrence Lessig, has been up to his usual awesomeness.

A few months ago he rolled out two excellent slide shows on why he supports Barack Obama (here and here).  I definitely recommend checking these out… they are both reasoned and persuasive.

My own introduction to Lessig’s work was through a different slide show on free culture back when I was in college.  Since then, I’ve read several of his books (available for free on his site), and created/used many Creative Commons-licensed works.

Beyond the two Obama slide shows, Lessig has also started a new non-partisan organization called Change Congress with the following noble goals:

• No money from lobbyists or PACs
• No more earmarks
• Increased Congressional transparency
• Publicly-financed campaigns

Check out the site and join today.

John McCain is the experienced presidential candidate.  Though Sen. Clinton’s shot at taking the nomination is very dim at this point, the ‘experienced candidate’ message she has worked so hard to put out there is quite simply wrong… and continuing to use ‘experience’ as the primary basis to measure her candidacy will only end in ruin, especially against opposition like Sen. John McCain.

And so for all the Democrats that believe experience is the #1 criteria for a candidate, you should have been pulling for Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, et al, not Hillary Clinton.

Experience is not nearly as important as wisdom and judgment – two things that Sen. Barack Obama definitely has.

For more information on this topic, please check out my friend Will Clarke’s site that covers this topic extensively and puts it much more eloquently than I can.

Full Disclosure:  I am a Barack Obama supporter and have given money to his campaign.