Sadly, it seems Angela Keaton has finally resigned from the Libertarian National Committee. If you haven’t been following this little bit of salacious Libertarian Party drama, here’s the “Resolution of Discipline” against her from December 1st, which details many of her alleged injuries to the “public image” of the party. My personal favorite demand:
An apology [from Angela Keaton] to the Libertarian National Committee for offering sex to the LNC officers conditional on the performance of our Presidential candidate by stating in an Internet interview on June 26, 2008, “If Bob Barr breaks 1%, the officers of the national party can pass me around like a pu-pu platter.”
(IPR)
For the record, Bob Barr received 0.4% of the national popular vote in 2008, and thus Angela was spared the indignity of becoming a Chinese appetizer in a vorarephilic Libertarian orgy. That in itself is probably a source for some of the hostility by members of the LNC. It’s one thing to brutally mock your party, it’s something altogether more offensive to be proven accurate in your mockery.
Yet with the passing of the colorful and combative Ms. Keaton, there is once again officially no immediate reason to pay attention to the doings of the LNC that I can think of. Not that anyone outside the LP was paying attention to this either…which does call into question the integrity of the charges made by Angela’s critics. After all, a “public image” which is subject to injury, does tend to require a public audience.
Ben Armbruster at ThinkProgress is upset Fred Barnes and Dick Morris are blaming Obama for the post-election declines in the stock market. Armbruster’s case is a little defensive and misjudged (he cites the New York Times’ opinion, as if that would mollify critics), but then the transition from implacable critic of a government to determined apologist for a proto-government has been swift for all at TP.
However, in a general way he does have a point to object on I think. People are out to make cash gains where and when they can in this market, and opportunities have been rather few lately. To the extent that there was a specific macro cause, it seems to me the abrupt election day rally was the more likely culprit for the subsequent sell-off. That is what we’ve seen in other isolated spikes on events this year. The Saturnian habit for feeding yourself by eating your children, rather than letting them grow up to sow the fields, if you will.
Although it should be said that Dick Morris’ point that provoked Armbruster’s ire is not entirely unreasonable either. There’s certainly some incentive for selling on a small gain now, if you expect capital gains taxes to be substantially higher later. Comprehensively rejecting that as a buried motive is not reasonable.
Barack Obama has been president-elect for exactly one day and James Carville is already arguing for an inevitable Democratic majority for the next 40 years. Imagine predicting Jim’s claim to fame, the 1992 election, from the vantage of 1952, and you get a sense of the stupendous absurdity of this assessment in the light of history. But he’s not alone of course, Karl Rove and company were quite fond of these sorts of preposterous predictions just four years ago.
One grows weary of the taste such men have for these imperturbable majorities, lasting for decades which will predictably prove impervious to all future events and leaders. It’s not so much the unreality of it which is tiresome, but the very desire for it. Democracy has its own will, events their own timetable, voters change their minds on a dime, and wanting to grind the gears of history to a halt so that your party can rule forever, is a grotesque and contemptible ambition to begin with.
So we had an election. For those in the new opposition the outcome was variously enviable, troubling, or contemptible. For the victors it was…what else, an occasion for gathering an enormous outdoor rally at an urban theatrical stage to chant.
For my own part, I’m always somewhat reluctant to criticize the phenomenon of Barack Obama, because I cannot do so without confessing I miss the point itself. That’s because I possess a certain immunity to his allegedly irresistible charm. I miss the intimate personal connection supposedly conveyed through elaborately choreographed and cinematically lit mass spectacles, I find his celebrated speeches largely barren of purpose, and perhaps above all, I remain permanently unmoved by the emotional ecstasy his presence provokes in so many.
It should be acknowledged as true that if these impressions precondition your criticism, you do miss the point of Obama as political leader and cultural phenomenon on a profound level (and I surely do). For the critic, this can pose a difficulty that one must become an opponent of the phenomenon itself, rather than just its policy projects. And for the moment, that is to be the adversary of a powerful political tide. (more…)
Could a liberal lesbian rights activist actually win South Carolina’s 1st congressional district? Sure looks possible, as Linda Ketner has closed to within 5 in her aggressive challenge to incumbent Rep. Henry Brown. Of interest, Ketner is also a member of “the Cabinet” which Time just published an interesting piece on. It’s an informal group of gay tech and hereditary millionaires, who have been investing large sums toward a systematic defeat of social conservative Republicans nationwide.
The success of Ketner and other socially liberal Democrats running on explicitly pro-gay rights platforms in traditionally social conservative friendly districts, would certainly tend to complete the trinity of broader Republican political decline. Not only are economic and national security focused conservatives losing on their traditional strong suit thanks to economic woes and Iraq, but the cultural debate may be shifting substantially leftward as well.
Under McCain and Obama's tax plans 43% and 44% would pay no income tax respectively
Fewer and fewer people are paying income tax and even less will be with either candidates tax plan. I don’t think this would be such a problem if we didn’t have such high spending, growing entitlements, and if so many of these zero income tax filers weren’t getting additional handouts from the government (especially under Obama’s tax “cuts” ie. handouts).
It has been said by an unknown author “[Democracy] can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury…” and this is where we’ve been heading for awhile. I think just as a tax plan can be too regressive, it can be too progressive in that it places too high a burden on “the rich” resulting in them leaving (atlas shrugs) or seeking tax shelters, and at the same time having too much of the population with no civic tax obligation leaving them no incentive to constrain public spending (hey, it’s not their money right?)
Stéphane Dion, leader of the defeated Canadian Liberal Party, has rather ignominiously resigned his position today. Thereby he becomes the first Liberal Party leader since the 19th century to have never become Prime Minister of Canada. Given his dismal political skills, it might seem somewhat mystifying how he ever even became a national party leader. According to Dion himself, that’s not a minority opinion:
“In my consultations it became very clear, that in the door-to-door canvassing, my colleagues, my friends were told, ‘We don’t like your leader.’”
(National Post)
Unflattering as it is, the print does the statement a certain justice. Dion’s grasp of the English language often seemed rather more tenuous than it reveals.
For the international observer with no stake in the outcome of the election, it was often amusing to watch Dion’s struggles with common conversations. Something that doubtlessly would have been a little more troubling for Canadian voters with a very real stake in the results. For example, here’s an entertaining flashback from just prior to the election:
I’ve been seeing this amusing banner ad for Obama popping up all over the web. Given the behavior of some of ACORN’s representatives, it might not be an illegitimate question.
Video of Laura Ingraham interrogating Christopher Hitchens over his rather weakly supported endorsement of Barack Obama for president.
Hitch’s primary position in this chat is that Obama should be supported because he is “evolving” toward support of a more aggressive policy against international terrorism. Hardly the most persuasive pitch to say the least. Perhaps all those years of arguing for evolution through natural selection may have given him too much of a preference for the word itself.
His auxillery case is that McCain has become senile and temperamentally unfit for leadership. That’s something which is supposedly entirely and exclusively demonstrated by his “irresponsible” selection of Sarah Palin for vice president. Hardly more persuasive.
But in reading Hitchens’ recent writing on this matter, one tends to think that last point is what is actually driving the others (something Laura instantly zeroes in on). There is a certain reflexive personal hostility to Mrs. Palin in Hitchens’ writing, which is far closer to a definition of political irresponsiblity than McCain’s selection of her allegedly is.
I’m experiencing a little déjà vu over the invective that’s starting to pour out of the left against “Joe the Plumber.” It has a decidedly reminiscent over-reactive, hysterical feel to it of the anti-Palin crusade. Here’s a typical example of what I mean from a Kos diarist:
“I have watched the Joe Plumber video several times and this right wing nut is nothing but a liar.”
Uh-huh. Regular Nazi threat to the republic that plumber.
Probably not the wisest attack. As my friend Jason puts it: “Joe the Plumber is Pennsylvania and Ohio personified.” By consequence, team Obama might want to restrain the volume on this sort of immoderate ideological raving to the fullest extent that they can.
Tim Reid travels to Mount Clemens, Macomb County Michigan, to talk to white working class female voters. Macomb County should be core Democratic blue country, but it was here that Stanley Greenberg first identified the “Reagan Democrats” of the 1980s, and Reid thinks we just might be seeing the ground shift once again:
The Times spoke to dozens of women here – perhaps the key demographic in this election – in an area that is 88 per cent white, has one of the highest unemployment and home repossession rates in the country, and will play a big role in determining who wins Michigan in November. It is a crucial swing state that no Republican has won since 1988 but where Mr Obama is particularly vulnerable. Nearly all said that they were still undecided. Yet the disturbing fact for Mr Obama was how many said that they had been leaning towards him – until Mrs Palin entered the race.
(The Times)
Boy, this was an awfully interesting exchange. Democratic strategist Mark Penn, absurdly invited by Brian Goldsmith to argue the press has been soft on Sarah Palin, instead slams the media for counterproductively biased and vindictive coverage:
According to a new Associated Press poll 46% of the public thinks Barack Obama is too inexperienced for the presidency, and only 36% say the same of Governor Palin. So much for that line of attack.
In contrast with both, a staggering 80% feel Senator McCain has the right experience for the job. An almost unbelievable contrast of opinion in a presidential election.
Obama’s “new” tactic to regain the initiative in the election is to portray McCain as out of touch with ordinary Americans. Hmm. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t this the old tactic? Patrician wife, seven houses, price of milk, Salvatore Ferragamo footwear and so forth. I seem to remember that being the heart of their complaint for months. And didn’t it, you know, fail?
Panic grips the Hill, with Democrats planning to distance themselves from Obama and/or abandon criticism of McCain. Geez. Snap out of it guys. You have the most compelling presidential candidate you’ve had since perhaps John F. Kennedy. Almost every conditional variable in the election is heavily slanted in your favor. If you can’t win this one, you can’t win a presidential election.
According to the Associated Press, a sequence of interviews with Democratic leaders has revealed this to be the political plan being recommended to the Obama campaign:
1. Tie the Republican to an unpopular President Bush.
2. Let no charge go unanswered.
3. Stress plans to fix the economy.
Well, I’m not sure any of these items is good advice, with a possible qualitative exception on #3. (more…)
Jason at postpolitical and I often get into testy email arguments about Barack Obama’s alleged “arrogance.” He is quite Greek in the sense that he thinks hubris is the fatal flaw at the heart of all political downfalls. I don’t entirely agree with that, nor with his contention that Obama represents an emblematic example of arrogant leadership. At least no more so than any other politician.
On this matter Jason is of course much more in line with majority opinion on the right than myself. Many conservative bloggers have argued for Obama’s arrogance for so long, it once was merely a kind of premonition.
Joe Biden says Hillary Clinton would have been a better pick than himself. A little amusing naturally, but I’m impressed by the candor and humility of it. Fine characteristics for a serving vice president who is expected to exert substantial influence on foreign policy.
Christopher Hitchens notices a pattern with anti-Palin rumors: their troubling tendency to turn out highly exaggerated or entirely fabricated, in a very short turn.
[A]s often as I have forwarded some alarming e-mail about her from a beavering comrade, I have afterward found myself having the sensation of putting my foot where the last stair ought to have been and wasn’t.
(Slate)
Hitch gets close to what’s happening there by recalling Walter Dean Burnham’s prescient 1960s prediction that Ronald Reagan would one day be president, based on Ron’s inability to exude hostility and thus not attract it. This is slightly misdirected. Reagan attracted as much hostility as any politician in the modern era from the political left, save perhaps Nixon. The trouble consisted in that the product of that hostility, criticism, didn’t seem to stick. Or even worse, seemed to possess a counterproductive property.
Caroline Glick via Ace of Spades
Caroline Glick is an astute observer of our political situation. She is based in Jerusalem.
“McCain’s strategic grasp of the requirements for a successful
presidential race provide an important lesson for policy-makers and
political leaders.”
John McCain, in an interview with Brian Williams on Sarah Palin:
“The facts are funny things. She’s been in elected office longer than Sen. Obama. She’s been the chief executive of the state that provides 20 percent of America’s energy; she has balanced budgets; she has had executive experience as governor, as mayor, as a city council member and PTA.
So she was in elected office when Sen. Obama was still a local community organizer. He’s never had one day of executive experience.
I think it’s almost ludicrous to compare her experience in elected office and as a leader of one of the most important states in America — certainly one of the largest — to compare her experience with his. It’s no contest.”
(CNS)
Looking at today’s stats, so far the number one search engine keyword bringing people to ASHC is “obama vs palin.” It’s amusing that people seem to think the Republican vice presidential nominee bears easier comparison and contest with the Democratic presidential nominee. I can only agree with them.
Rasmussen’s first Palin poll suggests that while many Americans still need more information to make a judgment, she’s already made a superior impression to Biden on the day of his selection by Obama.
Of enormous significance is the finding that she receives a 63% favorable rating from independents, and a 61% favorable rating from independent women.
Paul Begala laments the fact that McCain didn’t select a vice presidential candidate who is more traditional, old, boring, uninspiring…in essence, an ossified agent of the establishment, like Joe Biden for instance.
Well, he doesn’t quite phrase it that way, but it’s the political implication of his complaint. Reviewing his catalog of allegedly superior selections, I feel slightly like shouting out as a teenager: boo-ring. Just as a great many Democratic partisans of Mr. Obama did, when surveying a field of establishmentarian dinosaurs in a year of change.
Obama moves to distance himself from his own campaign’s harshly antagonistic rhetoric against Palin. Commendable, but probably unwise. Palin represents a direct threat to one of Obama’s core constituencies and thus it would be to his advantage to define her negatively and fast. Even if the ‘inexperience’ attack is hopelessly misguided for obvious reasons.
It’s rather amusing to see the ticket lacking in any executive experience, with a presidential nominee of extremely limited elected experience, attempting to attack McCain’s vice presidential nominee on grounds of inexperience. Reeling a bit perhaps. A more mature Democratic attack would go after the trooper scandal, the charge of reform hypocrisy and Sarah’s connection to energy company interests. Not that this would prove more successful mind you, but it’s a defter charge that takes account of the Obama campaign’s own manifest weakness in the more important area of the presidential nominee’s inexperience.
It’s also a more traditional process to select a presidential nominee with considerable experience, while taking on a younger apprentice for the vice presidential nominee. Obama, by selecting Biden, is only replicating the George W. Bush and John F. Kennedy departures from this predominant historical pattern. A departure that I think we’ve been arguably ill-served by in both cases.
CNN and Foxnews are reporting. Pretty surprising to me, but a pleasant surprise.
Discussion topic: I am hearing from Obama supporters that she’s a bad pick because she’s inexperienced. Is this an actual argument Obama wants to make? Does this preclude McCain from attacking Obama’s inexpience? Does the fact that Palin has over 100 times more executive expience than Obama help? (100×0=0)
Thankfully Pawlenty is out, Romney is out, and Matt Drudge is dropping a big tease that it might be Sarah Palin for Vice President after all. I personally would forgive McCain three decades of criticism if he selected her. It would constitute a genuinely visionary decision, for this election and the future of the Republican party. And, it should be said, one very much outside McCain’s normal comfort zone.
CNN is reporting that a plane has left Anchorage for Dayton, Ohio carrying the governor of Alaska. Hmm.
Alaska news is unable to confirm the flight carried the governor however.
Few of us approve of marital indiscretions. Personally, however, I hesitate to toss too many stones. Knowing what occurs in the confines of a marriage is difficult, if not impossible, to know. Some marriages are marriages of convenience, be it due to sexual orientation, power, money, parenting – or an array of other issues. Sometimes the other spouse is well aware of what is happening – and actually condones it. Many of us also know of marriages where, should we be in shoes of a long suffering partner, we, too, might well be tempted to stray. In any case – it is never easy to judge from the outside looking in.
Of course, all that being said, when high profile celebrities or politicians have affairs, all bets are off. And when the “wronged” spouse is a woman battling cancer as she treks around the nation supporting her running-for-President husband, sympathy for the philanderer is in shorter supply than center court tickets for Wimbledon finals.
You might wonder: what could be worse? Well, I shall tell you. Read this article about the woman with whom John Edwards risked all as he attempted to earn the candidacy for the most powerful position in the world.
I struck up a conversation with the woman at the next event, as we waited outside. She told me her name and asked me what my astrological sign was, which I thought was a little unusual. I told her. She smiled, and began telling me her life story: how she was working as a documentary-film maker, living with a friend in South Orange, N.J., but how she’d previously had “many lives.” She’d worked, she said, as an actress and as a spiritual adviser. She was fiercely devoted to astrology and New Age spirituality. She’d been a New York party girl, she’d been married and divorced, she’d been a seeker and a teacher and was a firm believer in the power of truth.
She told me that she had met Edwards at a bar, at the Regency Hotel in New York. She thought he was giving off a special “energy.”
Ugh. It’s enough to make me lose my cookies. Can you imagine that a man who would be attracted to an airhead like this almost was the Democrat candidate for President? While I realize that we choose different people with whom to fall in love than we do to be our Secretary of State or our bridge partner – still.
Our nation dodged a bullet. No matter who gets elected come November, we will have a President infinitely superior to the man who gave off “a special ‘energy’”.
Is there an issue equivalent to McCain’s strength in certain foreign policy areas, where Obama can be said to dominate the debate? A worried group of Democratic leaders have concluded that there isn’t, and Obama’s appeal is a kind of a general-studies phenomenon in need of greater authority on specific issues. That’s trouble, as money can buy the commercial breaks during a policy debate, but it can’t buy the authority to command the debate itself.
John Bolton argues that the future of Russian imperialism in Eurasia rides on the outcome of the US presidential election. Unsurprisingly, he pitches McCain: “First reactions, before the campaigns’ pollsters and consultants get involved are always the best indicators…McCain at once grasped the larger, geostrategic significance of Russia’s attack.”
That’s evidently a sentiment shared by the American electorate.
John Schewnkler conducts some interesting analysis of recurring words on McCain and Obama’s websites. As if there were any doubt who is driving this election, “Obama” proves to be the most frequently used word by far.
Lest that depress McCain supporters, such measures can of course be highly misleading in predicting general election outcomes for their successors. Nixon’s 1968 victory was a damned near run thing, and despite the lingering unpopularity of Nixon in 1976, and a generally toxic atmosphere for the GOP in general, it should be remembered that Ford nearly beat Carter (popular vote: 50.1 to 48%, electoral college 297 to 240). Of all these presidents’ personal histories, political philosophies, personalities and general images, McCain and Ford’s are probably most similar. Right down to being Naval war heroes.
Speaking of which, if you’ve never read the story of how a young Lt. j.g. Gerald Ford saved the ship one night in the Pacific, it’s worth a moment to do so.
While I’d generally agree that Maureen Dowd’s style is a kind of cut-rate Dorothy Parker, there’s something to her characterization of McCain as socialite dah-ling scorned. It was inevitable that the press would consider any effort by McCain to actually win the election to be bad form (hasn’t Obama already won?). But McCain isn’t free from the charge that he resents his long-time media suitor’s new object of affection.
Andrew Galasetti at Lyved is an extremely devoted admirer of Obama. While fanatical devotion can blind — Galasetti thinks for instance that the McCain celebrity charge backfired, when the polls suggest a different picture (last week Ras had +6 Obama, now it’s +1 McCain) — it can also be a benefit when you’re looking for someone to find hidden advantages in faults. Often there are adantages, particularly foreign policy advantages, wrapped up inside domestic political vulnerabilities.
The bewilderment the press is expressing at the supposed impossibility of McCain’s progress in the polls is starting to get embarrassing. Beneath it there is the frustrated lament: “But we told you to vote Obama. Why aren’t you complying?”
Sober, secular and educated new residents to New Mexico can often be found painting the frames of their doors and windows a vivid bright blue. Having seen the habit practiced on the homes of locals, the newcomers invariably assume it’s a quaint regional decorative touch. They’re unaware of course that the locals have painted their frames the color of the Virgin, and the purpose isn’t decoration, but defense.
In superstitious, Catholic New Mexico, the Virgin’s color is believed to prevent the nomadic witches that prowl the streets at night from entering the house and murdering its inhabitants. Such is the manner in which old and very sinister traditions can be unknowingly perpetuated by people who have no interest in original intents.
Looks like the Libertarian Party of Kentucky has dumped Sonny Landham, previously their clinically insane pick for US Senate. Good for them. Even if given the psychopathic nature of Landham’s views, I feel a little like I’m congratulating them for breathing.
While the Obama campaign might like to think that the LP could pose a serious threat to John McCain in Georgia, the Landham misadventure only reminds me yet again of the extraordinary amateurishness that seems to characterize almost all Libertarian Party political campaigns. There’s simply no excuse for failing to properly vet a candidate you intend to challenge for the seat held by the Senate Minority Leader.
As a former Hollywood actor and convicted criminal, it wouldn’t have been particularly difficult to uncover Landham’s violent imagination or deplorable associations with rightwing hate groups. A simple YouTube and Google search might have sufficed in fact.
Speaking of which, if you’ve never seen the deranged Bircher-style videos that Landham did while a member of the white supremacist/neo-Confederate organization the ‘Council of Conservative Citizens‘, it’s well worth a watch. The strangely tense and badly rehearsed panel discussion scene seems like something lifted out of a lost David Lynch film: video.
Supplemental: I must say I do appreciate the fact that Landham hasn’t disowned himself and begged for mercy from the mob, in that axiomatic ritual of insincere contrition we’ve all grown accustomed to. His quote to the Associated Press: “My views are still the same, I make no apologies for them.”
If you think about it, that’s quite a rare response. Crazy, but commendable for its candor.
The Obama campaign has categorically rejected John McCain’s proposal for a joint trip to Iraq, calling it a “publicity stunt.” Publicity stunt it most certainly is, but why is it automatically assumed that the publicity would only benefit McCain? Because he proposed it? Or because the facts on the ground are thought to validate his views? Nettlesome matters that McCain would be wise to emphasize in the wake of the rejection.
While Obama’s supporters are snarling at what they consider to be a pattern politics of either immaturity or sage condescension (they’re apparently a bit vexed by the event), the campaign may have missed a tremendous opportunity here.
Christopher Hitchens once said that the trouble with biographers of Thomas Jefferson, is that there appears to be the collective assumption on their part that the great man was without a penis. I’m reminded of this truth in reading about the very hot water Mr. Al Franken –the all-but-certain Democratic nominee for US Senate in Minnesota– has gotten himself into, over a satirical and sexually explicit essay he wrote for Playboy magazine in 2000. Hot water originating not only from GOP women, but also from within the Democratic Party.
The piece is without doubt salacious, even enormously kinky (naughty NSFW excerpts available here). But one could be forgiven the crime of commonsense in expecting that a writer tasked with composing anything for such a magazine on contract, would tend to produce something somewhat sexually suggestive if he wished to be paid. One might even go so far as to posit that writing something entitled “Porn-o-Rama,” for an unabashedly pornographic publication, isn’t all that shocking. I mention the title because in defiance of reason we are told by Liza Porteus Viana that the title itself (and neither the publisher nor the substance of the essay), is what is most politically objectionable here.
Video flashback from 2004. Bill Clinton:”If one candidate is appealing to your fears and the other one is appealing to your hopes…” You know where that’s going. Ahem. Clearly these were not carved in stone.
I’m posting the news rather late because…well, because I’m writing from New Mexico. It should come as no surprise to the election observer, that the Land of Enchantment is once again rather late in declaring a winner in an election. This time it was the Democratic caucuses, and the winner was Hillary Clinton. New Mexico is always late because almost every election seems to break even in this politically divided swing state (and partly because alacrity just isn’t the state’s highest virtue).
In 2004 it took the state canvassing board three weeks to finally declare a winner in the presidential election. That year, California managed to get ten million ballots counted in a couple of hours, while New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, was busy complaining to the press about being overwhelmed with merely 7% as many. Incidentally, if you pronouce her name vee-hill-her-own, you could be a native.
But we should hope the occasion of the recount is just ordinary local narrowness, and not an unwelcome portent that the country hasn’t yet overcome her predilection for narrow national election results. On a raw and bitter level, I’d have trouble enduring another post-election experience full of recounts, recriminations, farcical conspiracy theories and obstinate resistance to obvious concessions. Remember this sort of thing?
Kerry won. Here’s the facts. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted….
(TomPaine)
The 2004 presidential contest between Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry and the Republican incumbent, President Bush Jr., amounted to another stolen election.
(CommonDreams)
Ominously enough, some people are already starting to say similarly strange and obdurate things:
To imply that the New Mexico gives Clinton a win amid a string of losses, is to imply a falsehood.
(Dakota Voice)
This time around I could be pleased with whomever won, if they could give me a Reagan ‘84, Nixon ‘72, or Johnson ‘64 style annihilation of their opponent. A year without another hand recount in New Mexico would be a good thing for this country.
