Something strange and important has happened to the system of picking presidential candidates. Influence that was supposed to move from political insiders to the broad public has been captured by activists, pollsters, pundits and fundraisers -- not exactly the people the reformers had in mind. The new system removes the useful peer-group screening that once operated but fails in its promise to give power to the people...It comes close to being the worst way possible to pick a president.
But the more I read about the Internet and Howard Dean, the more convinced I am is that his campaign is a rerun of the Internet bubble in the stock market that popped almost four years ago. The proponents (of the dotcoms and Howard Dean) proclaim a new populist revolution that David Broder types don't get.
During the Internet Bubble, I was one of the old fogeys who argued persistently that the numbers did not make sense and that not all of the laws of economics had been repealed. In the same way, I think that sometime in 2004 Howard Dean is going to be marked down to a level closer to his fundamental value. And, just as in the case of the Internet Bubble, that is going to leave a lot of people who drank the Koolaid in a state of disbelief and denial for quite some time.
“Who cares about Howard Dean? Serious candidates like Kerry, Gephardt, and Lieberman will trounce him when the people start voting.”
The nomination is Howard Dean’s to lose. He has the money and the unhesitating support of the left of center Democrat fruitcakes. Since when have Kerry and Gephardt been serious candidates? The latter gentleman, in particular, unwittingly desires to damage our economy. As for Joseph Lieberman---I have a better chance of beating up Mike Tyson in a street fight. The Bill Clinton of 1992 is far too conservative this time around. Democrat power brokers will be totally committed to protectionist measures. *A free trader candidate has about as much chance in today’s national, Democrat Party as does an antiabortionist! This is rapidly becoming a nonnegotiable position. Is there anyway that Dean can blow the Democrat nomination? Yes, if he keeps putting his foot into his mouth. But I suspect that he’s learned his lesson and now will clear his public utterances with his campaign staff.
* I only recently came to this conclusion. Does anybody disagree?
Posted by David Thomson on January 2, 2004 01:38 PM | Permalink to CommentThe BCS is a joke, but it's the joke that people asked for. They wanted to completely take out Margin of Victory from the computer polls. People begged for that. Voila! This made it impossible for USC to finish in the top 3 once they lost to Cal. It didn't matter how badly Oklahoma lost, they lost to a better team and played a tougher schedule.
The BCS is a joke because the formula has been repeatedly tweaked, with the "quality win" addons, the extra SOS calcuation, the demand that all the computer rankings drop margin of victory, etc. It's a joke because each of those tweaks happened when people looked at the result and decided that they didn't like it, that the formula should be changed to something that would have retroactively given the "right" result. This "third time in five years" was caused by the "fixes" to the other two times you're complaining about.
There's little sense in pretending to have an objective formula if people are just going to complain when the formula doesn't give the poll-driven "right" result. Why not just use the polls, or even a fan vote, and abandon any pretense of objectivity?
Of course, any year where there's at least three plausible top schools, it's going to be impossible for it to be satisfactory, regardless of system, so long as there's no playoff. If any of the three top schools had been excluded, there would have been a very legitimate basis for complaint.
Posted by John Thacker on January 3, 2004 09:41 PM | Permalink to Comment
The difference between David Broder and your typical USC fan is that USC fans realized last year that a playoff was the only way to pick a true national champion. It was a difficult realization last year, as you're talking about fans who grew up with the Rose Bowl as the only goal and never liked this dumb BCS thing from the start.
Anyway, the BCS proves for the third time in five years that it is a joke. The people who get the worst of the BCS are the fans. If you had four season tix to SC games this year, and you manged to win the ticket lottery, you got two tix in the end zone of the Rose Bowl.
Who cares about Howard Dean? Serious candidates like Kerry, Gephardt, and Lieberman will trounce him when the people start voting.
-Brad
Posted by Brad Hutchings on January 2, 2004 01:01 AM | Permalink to Comment