Author: Bryant

Between this post and this post, Howard Dean raised over a million dollars from Internet contributions. That’s 45 hours. His total fundraising income for the quarter is over seven million.

It’s significant because Dean almost certainly outdid every other Democratic candidate this quarter, and he’s solidly in the top tier because of that. This is a major difference from insurgency candidacies such as McCain’s, Tsongas’, and Bradley’s.

It’s interesting because the average contribution was $66.85. By my count that’s around 15,000 contributors. That’s both a lot of eyeballs looking at a political website and not very many eyeballs at all when compared to the number of votes Dean needs. Sort of the first trickle of a dam breaking, I suspect. I don’t see the Internet having an immense effect on this election cycle, but 2008 should be interesting.

I have seen an interesting political meme a few times of late. It says that third party candidates are always spoilers, and cites the Republican dominance of the Presidency between 1896 and 1932 as partial evidence. The argument is that Eugene Debs pulled votes away from the Democrats, causing them to lose. It also cites other examples, but it’s the turn of the century example I’m going to address here. (Because it’s the one which is wrong. The others are pretty much accurate.)

I’m making this post because I spent a while putting together the data and I don’t want to lose it; also because I believe in spreading accurate information, where such is available. My data source is David Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.

Content moved into the extended entry because it was messing up the front page.

Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader, is all about criminalizing gay marriage. It’s a pretty odd argument, too. Let’s step closer, shall we?

His fear is that “this zone of privacy that we all want protected in our own homes is gradually — or I’m concerned about the potential for it gradually being encroached upon, where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned.” That’s a little stumblemouthed on the face of it, actually. If criminal activity within the home was being condoned, that’d be expanding the zone of privacy. Not encroaching upon it. Still, I think you can see what he meant.

Still, it’s odd, isn’t it? The recent Supreme Court decision legalizing sodomy doesn’t condone criminal behavior. It clarifies what may be considered criminal. Those are two very different things. If the Supreme Court had said “It’s OK to make sodomy illegal, but you can do it in your bedroom if you like,” I can see where Frist might be coming from. Alas, that’s not what they said.

One more thing: “Generally, I think matters such as sodomy should be addressed by the state legislatures. That’s where those decisions — with the local norms, the local mores — are being able to have their input reflected.”

I’m curious as to how big a locale is. For example, if Provincetown decided to outlaw het sex, would that be OK? If it reflects local norms and local mores?

Perhaps not. “Asked whether he supported an amendment that would ban any marriage in the United States except a union of a man and a woman, Frist said: ‘I absolutely do, of course I do.’”

That’s not very much like allowing the state legislatures to make decisions based on the local norms, is it? I sense some inconsistency here.