demagogue: Jerry Falwell apologizes (again), this time for having his words quoted, for being ill-timed, not actually for what he said.
Leslie Harpold
: Afghan Kebab House II [via Megnut]
Unplugged portal
Thanks to two people
, Peter Merholz and Meg Hourihan, for pointing out this map of the US election results by county. The additional level of granularity yields some really interesting information – particularly concerning the urban/rural split in US politics.
The same thing exists in Canadian politics as well, with the ruling Liberals electing MPs in most major cities while the upstart Reform/Alliance has otherwise swept the West and is threatening a breakthrough in outlying parts of Ontario. Likewise, in Quebec the Bloc is predominant except in Montreal, and didn’t sweep Quebec City either. An important difference between Canada and the US is that Canada is slightly more urban than the US – though it’s only marginally so.
Of course I can’t
vote, but as a long-time student of politics I have great interest in the US election. This year the thing that has struck me the most is that the main TV networks are cowardly and are doing a great disservice to their viewers. It seems they’re so afraid of alienating viewers that they’ve given up on saying anything of substance at all.
I don’t mean to suggest that they should endorse candidates (as newspapers often do), but their post-debate analysis should be honest and not constrained by the business side of things. It was clear in the debates that Bush did much better than many anticipated, but especially in the case of the third debate it’s impossible to see how it could have been a draw, as they all maintained.
Gore was clearly more in touch with the issues, answered the questions more clearly and was more composed and polished. He seemed to know Bush’s platform better than Bush did/does. Further, Gore didn’t insult voters like Bush did by suggesting that a President could ignore the Congress, the legislative history, and all of the other constraints on a President. In essence, Bush is acting like a kid trying to run for student body president by promising beer in the water fountains. A nice thought, but completely beside the point.
All of that was completely ignored by the analysts following the debates, which is a terrible thing to do to the voters (esp when it’s presumably done in the name of greater viewership).
Judge for yourself: the transcripts are all online.
