…Well, kinda…

This will be a short post as I just finished watching the Oscars telecast on DVR and it is a quarter past 1 am. I gotta say I’m patting myself on the back for coming up 5 for 6 on my Oscars predictions. You could almost say I predicted Tilda Swinton would win too, so maybe that puts me at 6 for 7.

Whatever.

But what we’re really happy about is the fact that on some level the fantastic musical “Once” was rewarded with earning an Oscar for the beautiful song “Falling Slowly.” Not only did “Once” win, but the Oscars finally showed a bit of class when it came to shortening winners’ speeches. During the commercial after the orchestra tastelessly chimed into award co-winner Marketa Irglova’s acceptance speech I commented to my wife that some big Hollywood personality should have stepped in and allowed her to finish her speech. I mean, would they have cut off Jack Nicholson if he happened to speak over his what, one-minute time limit? Perhaps they should cut out a couple of those ridiculous “Hollywood loves itself” montages set to sweeping orchestral music if they’re looking to make the telecast shorter. Anyway, I was heartened to see Jon Stewart come back out after the commercial and give Ms. Irglova the opportunity to finish up her acceptance speech, which happened to be rather touching, inspirational, and tasteful.

This is a particularly exciting award for a film whose music was so intertwined with the acting, writing, and the overall feel of the film. When you consider the official name for the category: “Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original song), and understand that in many ways the songs in the movie constitute the script itself (my wife and watched it with subtitles so we could better appreciate the lyrics - and understand the thick Irish and eastern European accents), the Monkey and I are going to go ahead and consider this award to be one of the greatest honors one could bestow on a musical like this. I guess this was evidence of the Universe righting itself after ignoring this film in the best picture category.

And a word about my predictions. I’m disappointed in myself in going with my heart in making the predicting for the Best Original Screenplay category. I picked Tony Gilroy for Michael Clayton, but should have remembered that often the best Original Screenplay award goes to that cute little independent film that was also up for Best Picture (or had won awards from other film organizations for the Best Picture equivalent), but that none of the Hollywood mainstream voters could seriously consider for the main prize of the night. Here’s a look at past best Original Screenplay winners:

• “Talk to Her” - by Pedro Almodóvar.
• “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” - by Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry and Pierre Bismuth.

• “Little Miss Sunshine” by Michael Arndt.

• “Lost in Translation” by Sofia Coppola.

There was no chance in heck that Juno was going to take home the prize for Best Picture, so as a consolation, the Academy gave Diablo Cody the nod for her script. I didn’t love this film, but I am happy that someone new had their dream come true in winning this award. I thought Michael Clayton had the better script, but who knows, in my last post, I talked about how difficult it was to even evaluate a script if you’re only watching the finished product on the screen, so how can I truly judge whether or not she was worthy of the prize? So maybe Juno was the best script. As much as my Monkey wants to me to rail against this win (and say a thing or two about her choice of dresses), we’re just going to keep our mouths shut and congratulate her on the award.

So it was poetic justice for me and the Monkey that at least “Once” received some form of recognition for its artistic brilliance, considering the film was totally snubbed in the category that counted. Really says something about where we are as a society, that a film about men killing each other over money won Best Picture over an inspirational film about love, loss, and music. Maybe next year they’ll get it right.

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Ahh. Oscar night coming up. To me, like a Sunday night football game except my wife will watch it with me.

It’s been a busy year for me, working on this blog, starting a new business with my wife, raising an 18-month old, changing jobs. And then the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences goes ahead and decides to put out these things called Oscar nominations and have a whole glitzy show about it, and I find myself, a total filmfreak, without having seen any of the films on the list! So once again, I have to put my whole life on hold in order to play catch up to see as many of these flicks as I can before this Sunday night, so I can feel properly disappointed when my faves don’t get the nod.

A Year’s Worth of Movies In One Week

Well, not really. I didn’t fare too well in my effort to cram a year’s worth of movie watching into about a week. It was my goal to catch all the films in all of the major categories. Although I didn’t see them all, I saw enough to render predictions on what will happen Sunday night, as well as provide my thoughts on who should win, what got overlooked, and other assorted thoughts about this year’s race for the golden guy.

My Categories

I’m only looking at nominees in the following categories:

Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Supporting Actor
Best Director
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Original Screenplay
Best Picture

Sorry, no “Best Supporting Actress.” I have to admit, the only film on the list that I saw was “Michael Clayton,” and I don’t feel like fudging my way around making you believe that I saw them all and think that Tilda Swinton should get the gold. Her performance was riveting, but without anything to compare against I have to abstain. Sorry girls.

So without further ado…

Who Will Win, Who Should Win, and Who Got Robbed?

BEST ACTOR: You’d have to be in a coma to not hear all the buzz surrounding Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance in “There Will Be Blood.” The guy’s a pro and certainly gave it his all in this role, but I couldn’t help walking away from the theater with this feeling that Lewis was “ACTING!” in a role that was designed for Oscar glory. In other words, he employed his full-on “ACTOR ACCENT,” steamrolling through every scene with one hand reaching for the statuette and the other hand checking off the blocks on the list of “Oscar Performance Prerequisites,” including the weird maniacal dip into insanity towards the end of the film. I saw that performance already, except it was Leo DiCaprio playing Howard Hughes a couple years back in “The Aviator.” Day-Lewis’ performance was more of a showcase, featuring caricature standing in for character. Nonetheless it was still mesmerizing, undoubtedly distracting audiences and Oscar voters from the fact that oilman Daniel Plainview really isn’t that interesting of a person. Driven. Greedy. Mean. That’s about it. He reminded me of the prototypical vaudvillian bad guy, dressed in black, twirling his mustache as he ties a blonde beauty to the railroad tracks. Please. What about Tommy Lee Jones? I have “In the Valley of Elah” coming in the mail from Netflix today, so I’ll update this post in case I see anything groundbreaking or have the sense that Mr. Jones will somehow be able to overcome the conventional wisdom that points to a certain someone else getting the nod….(see below).

WHO WILL WIN: Mr. Daniel Day-Lewis.

WHO SHOULD WIN: If you want to talk about taking on the persona of a character, dressing up in the skin of someone else, and presenting a true depiction of an actual living, breathing, conflicted, charismatic, devlish, compassionate person, then Viggo Mortenson in “Eastern Promises” is your man. His accent wasn’t an artifice, it was an expression of who he was. And any man who can film an entire vicious fight scene in the buff deserves the nod for that alone. He will never win for this role because not enough people saw the movie and the movie itself is just too violent and against the mainstream to win. I could just see a nice couple, like my wife’s grandparents, watching the telecast on Sunday night of Mortenson taking home the prize, and then going out to see the film and having to leave the theater within about the first ten minutes, stumbling onto the street, reeling in shock and awe at the explicit carnage director David Cronenberg finds to be so enthralling. Sorry, too visceral for most of us.

BEST ACTRESS: A lot people would like to see Ellen Page take home the prize Sunday night for her role in “Juno,” but I don’t think the straight-faced spouting off of lines of unrealistic dialogue constitutes inhabiting a role. Cate Blanchett’s performance was serviceable in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” but the ridiculously over-the-top production values in that film likely will distract Academy voters from going her way. Besides, she’s not really a contender this year. Didn’t you hear that all Oscar nomination ballots come pre-printed with her name on it every year?

WHO WILL WIN: Not Ellen Page.

WHO SHOULD WIN: I’m sorry, what were you saying? Okay. I confess. I didn’t see the other movies. So sue me.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Sorry, Casey. Only one Affleck per century is allowed to win an Oscar. Try again in the year 2097. And you, Tom Wilkinson. Not your year. Again. Just because you play a guy on the outer edge of sanity spouting off lines a mile-a-minute doesn’t constitute the best performance of the year. And Javier Bardem. Hypnotic performance. Charismatic. Devlish. Kind of funny. Couldn’t take my eyes off him. But best job of acting the entire year? How many of us have even met a sadistic hitman to get an idea of whether or not he nailed the role? I don’t know. But I know one thing, I’m getting sick of actors getting all lauded for playing assassins, hitmen, contract killers, and other assorted miscreants. Like the simple fact that we’re seeing this bad guy walking around offing people should be enough for us to consider his performance some kind of transcendent characterization that informs us about who we are as people? I need just a hair of complexity if I’m to consider an acting job the best of the year. Bardem’s character in this film, while mesmerizing (there goes that word again), was simply an engine to move the story forward, rather than a character for us to linger upon and contemplate. He was nothing more than a really interesting Freddy Krueger, Jason Vorhees, or Michael Meyers. Sorry. Not enough for me.

WHO WILL WIN: Bardem. Sometimes momentum is everything. And you can’t swing a dead cat around the internet these days without catching wind of the Oscar buzz around this guy that probably has Mr. Bardem clearing a space for the little gold guy up on his mantle.

WHO SHOULD WIN: Phillip Seymor Hoffman, hands down. His performance in “Charlie Wilson’s War” was so nuanced, hilarious, powerful, and enlightening, that I’m shocked he’s not the heavy favorite. Every time Mr. Hoffman wasn’t on screen I was begging for him to come back. He turned the conventional idea of what a CIA agent looks like on its head, and he did it in a chameleonic fashion that was…you guess it, MESMERIZING. It must be one of those things in which a guy wins the award a couple years back and you kind of feel bad about giving the same dude the award again. Frankly, I didn’t love his performance in “Capote,” but he had that accent thing going that Oscar-voters love, so there you go.

BEST DIRECTOR: I’m not going to talk about the “The Diving Bell and Butterfly” because it doesn’t have a chance (and um, I didn’t exactly see it). Neither am I going to talk about “Juno” because, well, I think that the fact that movie is even nominated is some kind of Cultural Experiment the nice people over at the Academy are engaged in, in the effort to scare up some young viewers and ratings for Sunday’s telecast of the event in that prime 18-35 viewing demographic that TV advertisers are so ga-ga about. See, once again, this year’s Oscars are mostly arty fare that the American viewing public doesn’t normally reward with box office cash. But you’ve got Juno here, grossing $126,277,446 in the box office with a whole ton of teeny boppers reciting lines from it like is was the second coming of “Napoleon Dynamite.” (Now there’s a distinction to pine for. Actually, “Dynamite” was a cute movie, cutting edge and vibrant. I didn’t see anyone nominating that film for an Oscar, though… And Juno’s just a pandering facsimile so will somebody give me a break here?). I guess that constitutes talking about “Juno.” Sorry. Couldn’t help myself. But in case you haven’t guessed, I’m not lobbying for Jason Reitman to get the prize. “Michael Clayton” was a solid thriller. Something you don’t see too often these days. Tony Gilroy elicited uniform incredible performances from the entire cast (three Oscar nods), which says a lot about who is at the helm. I think that unfortunately this film wasn’t enough of an “event picture” for the Academy to give Mr. Gilroy the prize. I just don’t think the Academy awards simply a solid job behind the camera. The film in question needs to be “sexier” than that. They’d rather give the prize as a consolation for not winning Best Picture, or as an extra award for the film that does, so the director doesn’t have to go home empty-handed.

WHO WILL WIN: The Coen Brothers, for “No Country For Old Men.” Although I was disappointed in the ending (but later came to at least appreciate it), the movie itself was riveting, tense, layered, and did an incredible job of conveying time and place through its setting and visual story telling technique. Plus they got some pretty nice performances from the entire cast, Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, and the aforementiond Bardem, in particular.

WHO SHOULD WIN: See above.

***BONUS***WHO GOT ROBBED: Not only is it travesty that “Once” wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, but I think one could make a convincing argument that director John Carney should have been nominated for his expert job in pulling together one of the finest and most original musicals ever made (yes I said that), including fabulously touching performances by both leads. Run, do not walk, to the video store or Netflix and rent this film. You won’t be disappointed.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: It is arguable that it is more difficult to adapt a screenplay from a previous work than it is to write a film from scratch, as adapting a film isn’t simply about taking all of the dialogue from the book or short story and throwing into a 120-page format. Often it requires reimagining the work or rearranging the work, as many books simply are not readily “adaptable,” which requires the screenwriter to assume a level of responsibility over the work (which is difficult to do, especially when the original work is particularly well-regarded) in order to truly make it their own, thereby making the best possible film, which often becomes as original as many “Original” screenplays. That being said, when it comes to evaluating a script in order to determine one to be the “best” of the year, it is really impossible to do so without actually having the script in hand. The finished product on the screen isn’t the screenplay, nor is simply the dialogue the writing. The script is the blue print, the primary foundation for the building that is the finished film. And yet I doubt Academy voters receive scripts in the mail. They’re supposed to simply watch the film and guess 1) what the process of writing the script is, and 2) what the actual script really looked like before the director and actors got their hands on it. This is virtually impossible which basically renders these screenwriting categories guessing games or popularity contests.

WHO WILL WIN: “No Country For Old Men.” I say this without having read the original book or the script itself (just like the vast majority of audiences and Academy voters alike). But as a screenwriter and former screenwriting instructor, I can only take the evidence on the screen and assume, since the writers and directors were the same people - namely, Joel and Ethan Coen - that essentially what was written in the script most likely made it to the screen (the same is obviously true for “There Will Be Blood”). And the evidence on the screen is composed of wonderful structure (with good structure being the essence of good screenwriting) that ties this unique film all together, and provides the actors with ample opportunities to flex their creative muscles within their performances and truly own their characters.

WHO SHOULD WIN: Not that this film should win, but I’ve heard that the writing process for “Atonement” was complicating and challenging, and that the original work is rather complex and dense, making the adaptation diffcult. I’m just saying.

***BONUS***WHO GOT ROBBED: Beowulf. Yes, Beowulf. Talk about taking an inaccessible old text and creating a vibrant, wonderfully rich adaptation. As a former English major, I also really appreciate how Roger Avary, Neil Gaiman, and Robert Zemeckis updated the story line in order to tie together three separate episodes that comprised the original poem. This movie is a phantasmagorical, audacious, exciting, rapturous experience that simply must be seen by anyone who appreciates the lineage of the source material and is looking for some great entertainment. And if it’s still playing in 3D, drop everything and rush out to go see it right now. I mean now. And will someone please tell me why this was not nominated for Best Animated Feature?

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: The fact that “Juno” is up for this one makes my stomach rot, especially considering this film is all about unrealistic characters choking up unrealistic dialogue. I don’t want to talk about this film, so as to not give it any additional energy, positive or negative, in the hopes that it will simply go away. Ratatouille I do want to say a word about. I was simply horrified by the level of violence within the first 15 minutes of this movie (I shut it off after that). Let it be said that this criticism is coming from a guy who LOVED the new Rambo gore porn movie. See the thing here is that Rambo is supposed to be violent. It’s rated R. All you heard about when it came to this flick was that it was violent, violent, violent. Okay. We know what to expect. But with Ratatouille, I don’t care what you say, the vast majority of people comprising the audience for this movie were under the age of probably 12 or so and I can tell you that I watched this (the first 15 minutes) with my tiny daughter and was horrified by the abundance of gun violence in that short span of time. The rat crawls through an apartment building and witnesses two young lovers arguing and shooting a gun at each other. Does anyone in Paris even own a gun? Why did there have to be a gun there? And then the scene in which the rats go into the old farm lady’s house and she pulls out a shotgun and fires about two dozen rounds into all of the interior walls of her home, most of the time dressed in an eerily scary gas mask, like some kind of SS Trooper. What the hell was that about? Couldn’t she just have shooed the rats out of her house with a folded up umbrella? I hate desensitizing stuff like this because in the case of this movie, you got a lot of little kids watching people use guns to solve their problems. And let me tell you the animation is incredible, so these guns are very realistic, very loud, and very scary. Rambo I don’t have so much of a problem with because it’s mostly (supposedly) sensible adults watching that film. But I digress.

WHO WILL WIN: Tony Gilroy, “Michael Clayton.” Astonishing structure, magnetic characters, rich layering, riveting plot. Enough said.

WHO SHOULD WIN: See above.

WHO GOT ROBBED: Continuing an earlier conversation…ONCE. Again, I implore all who read this to see this movie. It escapes me as to why this movie hasn’t received much mainstream recognition.

BEST PICTURE: I gotta be honest with you. The only nominee here I didn’t see was Atonement. This one falls under the “Movies To See With My Wife” category but we just couldn’t get our act together to get a babysitter and go out and see this film. I was tempted to see it by myself, but my wife would kill me if she ever found out I did this. I’m usually only “allowed” to see guy movies and/or violent movies by myself. Anywho. Since I’ve already talked about all of the other films on this list, I’ll just get to the goods.

WHO WILL WIN: “No Country For Old Men.”

WHO SHOULD WIN: Of the choices available, “No Country,” but as I mentioned, I have a lot of affection for “Michael Clayton,” but I guess it just didn’t move me. “No Country” is so unique, so sparse, so engaging, and very often - so terrifying - that not getting an emotional response from watching it is almost impossible.

***FINAL BONUS***WHO GOT ROBBED: You guessed it. Not only is “Once” the best musical in several decades, but it is perhaps one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Besides the fact that no one saw this movie, one theory as to why this film was ignored by the Academy is because it was too low budget. I believe the Academy likes to reward movies that cost many millions to produce, employ many people, and basically promulgate the whole business of moviemaking. “Once” is so intimate, so gentle, so loving, that it defies every definition of what a romantic musical should be, leaving mainstream movie people confused over what to make of it, if they even saw it at all. To me, “Once” is the promise of creation contained in a little film. It is inspiring because it feels so accessible, no doubt causing viewers to say to themselves, “I could make a film like that,” considering its modest production values. And yet this film is beguiling, for although it seems so simple, so DIY, that it betrays the brilliance behind it. For writer/director John Carney has tapped into the underlying truths of love, music, creativity, loss, and pain. He has created a work brimming with truth rather than fantasy. Rather than being the escape that many of these Oscar nominated films are, it is instead an entry, into ourselves, our histories, and our loves, our dreams, our failures, and our futures. That is what movies should be all about.

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With the results of Hawaii, Washington, and Wisconsin Primaries in, we are getting a better sense of who the nominee will be in each Party. On the GOP side, it is a forgone conclusion that Senator John McCain will win the nomination. As far as the Democrats are concerned, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are running neck and neck in terms of Delegates and the overall popular vote, but Obama is certainly pulling away with the momentum of pulling off ten straight victories over the last few weeks.

Although it is impossible right now to predict who will win the nomination for the Democratic Party without the seeing the results of the contests in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, I believe it is nonetheless possible to predict the outcome of the General Election in November, using the results of the primaries so far.

But First, A Different Take

Before I do that, I wanted to take a moment to point out another method, perhaps the “established” method for predicting the winner in the 2008 Election. In the established method, we would take the results of the last Presidential Election and assume as a benchmark that the Republicans would win the same states they won last time (the so-called “Red States”) and the Democrats would again win the states won by Kerry (the so-called “Blue States”). This method of looking at the electoral map is outlined (albeit from what appears to be a GOP perspective) in an intersting blog post on Patriot City. The writer describes that in order to determine who wins, the game becomes a matter of “flipping” states from one side to the next. In other words, the onus is on the Democrats to improve upon last time, rather than on the Republicans to make any new gains. The Democrats could “flip” Florida or Ohio, for example.

This method depends on the assumption that voters’ opinions are basically unchanged since the last election. I believe this traditional look at the Electoral Map is flawed, as it does not take into account the extreme dissatisfaction a majority of Americans have for GWB, the growing infatuation many Americans hold for Barack Obama, the uncertainty about the economy, the downward spiral in Iraq since 2004, the hatred many Right Wing Republicans have for John McCain, and perhaps most importantly, the overwhelming demand for change that is driving record-numbers of voters to the polls during these Primaries.

Voter Turnout: Democrats to the Polls in Record Numbers

I got the idea for this post while watching the results of the popular vote in each primary over the past couple of months. I was struck by what appeared to be an overwhelming turnout on the Democratic side, regardless of how the Republicans fared in each contest. So I decided to go back through all of the results of the primaries so far and discovered some pretty striking numbers.

I went through each state and added up how many votes each of the five major candidates (Obama, Clinton, McCain, Romney, Huckabee) on both sides received in each contest. The numbers below equal the total number of votes cast for each candidate. Here are current tallies (not including Washington and Hawaii) in terms of the popular vote for each major candidate:

Barack Obama: 10,625,401 total votes

Hilary Clinton: 10,352,875 total votes

John McCain: 5,815,561 total votes

Mitt Romney: 4,273,809 total votes

Mike Huckabee: 2,958,786 total votes

By simply looking at these numbers, it is evident that both of the Democratic candidates have mobilized more actual voters than any of the Republican candidates. By nearly a 2-1 basis, either Obama or Clinton has earned more votes than John McCain and Mitt Romney, and both of the Democrats have “out-turned-out” voters by a 3-1 basis in comparison to Mike Huckabee.

It is widely acknowledged that voter turnout has been unprecedented during this primary election cycle. And while not every General Election voter participates in the primaries for a variety of reasons, it is safe to assume that the voters who do turn out for these Primary elections will most likely vote in the General Election.

While unscientific, I believe the results here are a good indicator of a proportionate turnout during the General Election, in which (obviously) the field in that contest will be narrowed to one candidate for each party. Again, compiling the total votes of Clinton and Obama and comparing that figure against the total votes of all three Republican candidates combined, we see that Democrats have still mobilized more overall voters than the Republicans, 19,879,615-12,664,729, or 61% to 39%, indicating an overwhelming majority of support which should carry through the General Election, right?

Primaries vs. Polls

A “realist” might argue that this doesn’t match up to recent polling data, which suggests that the General Election race is much tighter than my unscientific analysis is suggesting. However, recent evidence suggest that our traditional methods for polling Registered voters, normally involving a telephone call to home phone landlines, can no longer accurately gauge the will of the electorate, especially with more and more voters under the age of 40 abandoning home landlines and using cell phones as their primary phone numbers. This vast segment of the population can no longer be accurately reached, rendering traditional polling less and less relevant.

Additionally, I would submit that what could be more accurate than an actual election to determine the will of the electorate? It is one thing for a pollster to get a potential voter to answer a few questions on the phone, but a whole new challenge for a candidate to get a voter to actually leave their home, take time off work, and cast a vote. In this way, I think the aggregate raw numbers of these recent Primary elections is a far more accurate means of predicting the will of the electorate.

The Electoral College and the “Magic Number”

What I’ve done so far is use the Primary Elections results to essentially predict the result of the popular vote in the General Election. While perhaps interesting, this analysis alone does not constitute an accurate prediction of which candidate will actually win the Presidency, because as we all know (painfully so in 2000), the popular vote does not determine the Presidency. Instead, our election system uses the Electoral College to determine a President. I’d like to talk more about this system in future posts, but the most important thing to understand about the Electoral College is the “magic number” of votes needed to secure the Presidency, which is 270.

See, the General Election for the Presidency isn’t really a national election. It is the combined result of 50 simultaneous state elections. If a candidate wins a state, he or she earns the electoral votes awarded to that state, which are based upon the size of their congressional delegation (US Senators and US Representatives combined). Big states like California and Texas have 55 and 34 electoral votes respectively, while small states like Delaware and Alaska each have three electoral votes. Thus, some states (the more populous states) are more important than others.

Predicting Electoral Votes

Again, using the results of the primaries, I went back and determined an overall winner for each state, regardless of Party. In other words, whichever candidate earned the most raw votes, “won” the state. I also employ a general assumption to use these results as a predictor the General Election: if a candidate earns the most overall votes, that candidate’s Party would win the state in the general election , regardless of which candidate is actually on the ballot at that time. For example, Mitt Romney won Michigan on the Republican side, with 337,847 votes to John McCain’s 257,521 votes. In my system, Mitt Romney wins the entire state as he earned more votes than the leading candidate on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton, who earned 328,151 votes overall. Even though Romney will not be on the ticket in the General election, I am still awarding this state to the Republican side, as the Republican candidate earned more overall votes than the leading Democratic candidate. So, in my system the GOP candidate, which would most likely be John McCain, would earn 17 electoral votes for winning Michigan. (I recognize an inherent flaw in this system, considering that Romney was a “native son” in Michigan, which probably explains why he won more votes than any other candidate. As I have no way to adjust for this or to predict whether or not Romney might be on the ticket as the VP, thereby possibly ensuring that this result carries through to the General Election, I have no choice but to keep the State of Michigan on GOP win column, assuming that this flaw may be counterbalanced by other inherent flaws in my system. One of these flaws might be the fact that none of John Edwards’ popular votes were accounted for in my method, which may tip the balance even further towards the side of the Democrats).

State By State Electoral Vote Breakdown, by Candidate

Below is a list of each state, followed by which candidate on either side won the most overall popular votes. The number next to each of these candidates designates the Electoral votes at stake, which are “won” by the winner in each state.

Washington, DC : Obama - 3
Maryland: Obama - 10
Virginia: Obama - 13
Kansas: Obama - 6
Louisiana: Obama - 9
Washington: Obama - 11
Alabama: Obama - 9
Colorado: Obama - 9
Connecticut: Obama - 7
Delaware: Obama - 3
Georgia: Obama - 15
Illinois: Obama - 21
Minnesota: Obama - 10
Missouri: Obama - 11
North Dakota: Obama - 3
South Carolina: Obama - 8
Hawaii: Obama - 3
Wisconsin: Obama - 10
Iowa: Obama - 7

OBAMA TOTAL: 168 Electoral Votes

Arkansas: Clinton - 6
California: Clinton - 55
Massachusetts: Clinton - 12
New Jersey: Clinton - 15
New York: Clinton - 31
Oklahoma: Clinton - 7
Tennessee: Clinton - 11
Florida: Clinton - 27
New Hampshire: Clinton - 4
CLINTON TOTAL: 168 Electoral Votes

Maine: Romney - 4
Alaska: Romney - 3
Utah: Romney - 5
Nevada: Romney - 5
Michigan: Romney - 17
ROMNEY TOTAL: 34 Electoral Votes

Arizona: McCain - 10
MCCAIN TOTAL: 10 Electoral Votes

As you can see, no single candidate would have enough Electoral Votes to win the Presidency at this point. As these numbers do not include the results for Washington, New Mexico, Idaho, and Nebraska on the Republican side, nor Montana, West Virginia, and Wyoming on the Democratic side, nor Ohio, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, Kentucky, Oregon, and South Dakota for both sides, it is not yet a complete picture. But that doesn’t stop me from using the data in hand to predict a winner in the General, nonetheless.

Re-Writing the Electoral Map: Landslide Winner Predicted

With just these partial numbers in hand it is already possible to predict a winner using my system, in this case by landslide, if you add up the “current” electoral votes by Party.

TOTAL GOP: 44 Electoral Votes

TOTAL DEM: 336 Electoral Votes

As you can see, Democratic candidates are winning more popular votes and more states than any of the Republican candidates. I predict it will be a landslide victory for the Democratic candidate, whether it’s Hillary or Obama, a la Reagan’s victories in 1980 (489-49) and 1984 (525-13) and George H.W. Bush’s victory in 1988 (426-111).

The Democratic victory in 2008 will in effect re-write the “Red State/Blue State” Electoral map we’ve grown accustomed to over the last few election cycles. The dynamism of Obama or the warm memories that many working class Americans hold for the Clintons will sway voters in Southern states and Western states that voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.

It is clear that Americans want change. In 2008, they will get it.


RELATED POSTS: Clinton’s Fuzzy Math: The Fiction of “Winning” the Popular Vote, Who Should I Vote For?, Part III: Not Mitt Romney!, Who Should I Vote For?, Part II: John McCain, Who Should I Vote For?, Part I.

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Mitt Romney’s Valentine’s Day endorsement of former rival John McCain is so emblematic of his farcical, contrarian Presidential campaign, that although it comes as a bit of a surprise in terms of timing, it really shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who is familiar with who this opportunistic chameleon has proven himself to be.

Just weeks after nearly coming to fisticuffs with the former POW during the California debates over who was more of a “true conservative” (ANSWER: Neither of them), how long we are to stay in Iraq, who’s better suited to manage the economy, and who’s got a better plan for illegal immigration, Romney has now deemed that McCain is the man who should be leading this country. All this after spending months on the campaign trail running attack ads and condemning establishment Washington and its rogue’s gallery of usual suspects, “who’ve never held a job in the private sector” (a not-so veiled jab at one Senator McCain).

When you look at Mitt Romney’s candidacy from his policy positions alone, it was as ridiculous as Senator Fred Thompson’s. Take away the chiseled good looks, the endless coffers of cash, and his made-for-TV personality, and what emerges is a illusory man who has lived his political life endlessly telling voters what he thinks they want to hear. When it was a political necessity to be pro-choice in order to win the Governorship of Massachusetts, he was pro-choice. Likewise, when it was a political necessity to work with Democrats in the Commonwealth in order to reform health care, he did so, in a way that was strikingly similar to the mandated health care plan that liberal wacko Hilary Clinton is currently touting in her Presidential campaign.

So then, why did so many people support Romney, if his whole campaign was nothing more than a charade? My Monkey and I think it was because he simply “looked” like a President, straight from central casting, which was enough to enamor that cross-section of Republican voters who invariably cast their vote according to my Immutable Axiom of Presidential Voting Patterns, which states that at the end of the day, people vote for candidates they know and like.

Wait a second, did I just imply that Romney was likeable? Well, yes and no. To a certain type of Republican voter, Romney was appealing. He has the looks, which I believe is enough to capture the attention of the casual voter who flips through the cable news channels from time to time and doesn’t really study up on the issues. “Now there’s a guy who looks like he should be President,” they might say, as they catch a sound-bite or two, or happen to watch one or more of the thousands of television ads that $17 million or more of his personal fortune could buy. But just as hot girls with lame personalities are never marriage material, good-looking candidates who fit the part purely from an image standpoint always prove themselves to be also-rans when it comes winning the Presidency.

So why am I even talking about this guy, considering he is no longer in the race and this series is supposed to be a helpful primer from a Progressive, Constitutionalist, Independent standpoint on who the heck to vote for in the General Election?

The answer is simply this: perhaps there is a God-fearing, flag-waving, US of A-loving Republican out there who was a Romney supporter but now doesn’t know what to do. Do I cast my vote for “liberal in sheep’s clothing” John McCain, despite the instructions of my favorite radio talkshow host? Do I sit this one out in protest, to punish Senator McCain and his supporters for daring not to strictly tread the right-wing Party line? Or do I, God forbid, cast my vote for a, gasp, Democrat, to REALLY punish Senator McCain, swallowing a nasty pill in order to rise from the ashes in four years cast and out the heathens from the Oval Office?

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I would respectfully ask any true Republican to ask themselves the following questions in order to divine the path ahead:

1) Am I a pro-business or am I a Corporatist? We all know that the Republican party is the pro-business party, which usually translates as anti-regulation, anti-corporate tax, and anti-union, to name a few. What has happened over the last several decades, however, is that these concepts have trumped any regard for the interests of the individual over the interests of the Corporation. Regulations, while annoying and often expensive to abide by, generally serve the purpose of protecting our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which are the “unalienable rights” as described in the Declaration of Independence, pre-dating the rights spelled out for us in the Bill of Rights (which later codified that neither life, liberty, nor property could be “deprived” without due process of law). In other words, they trump everything and were the reason we went to war with the British for our freedom in the first place. Non-negotiable here. The very fabric of our collective American being. Are you in favor of unalienable rights, Republican voter, or are you against them?

Corporate taxes, while annoying and costly, especially to companies like Exxon, which might have to pay billions of dollars worth, are actually some of the only types of taxes that are specifically outlined in our Constitution and actually define what we call “income taxes,” which technically don’t relate to wages and tips, or what we commonly and erroneously associate as “income.” Without getting into the whole debate over the legality of income taxes, I will say this, there is no debate over the legality of corporate income taxes, and as individuals, even Republicans, this is something we should prefer over the taxing of our wages. But has happened over time is that just about everytime you hear Republicans talking about reducing taxes, they’re usually actually talking about reducing corporate taxes, because that’s where most wealthy people get their money from, not from a paycheck like the vast majority of us. So where are you going to stand, Republican voter, on the side of the big corporations, or on the side of people who work for a living?

And as far as unions go, they are annoying, for sure, and costly too. But some form of workers’ organization is what has brought this country forward from the grips of the virtual slavery of the industrial revolution to the reasonably humane American workplace of the 21st Century. Are they still needed today? I’m not entirely sure, but the legacy of these unions is that they in part served as the engine that helped ensure that individuals’ interests, especially their health and well being, were at least brought to the board room when companies sought to increase their profit margins.

What I’m saying here is being against these traditionally “lefty” concepts isn’t “being Republican.” Being against these concepts out of hand is being against the rights of the individual, which frankly, is un-American. Being pro-business is fine. Business is the engine of our economy. A free, capitalistic society, represents the opportunity of anyone, regardless of economic status or personal background, to achieve success, provided the rules are fair. A good Republican should be pro-business but should remember that at heart we are a nation of individuals, not corporations, and that we should never value a balance sheet over our own humanity.

2) Do I believe in supporting and defending our Constitution or am I simply a militarist? As the President and commissioned military officers take a solemn oath to “support and defend” the Constitution, this should be the purpose of military operations, not nation-building, imperialism, or pure militarism to the end of fattening the pockets of the military-industrial complex. Does our foreign and military policy, especially in Iraq, serve to support and defend our Constitution or the Constitution of another sovereign nation? The answer should be clear. Any true Republican should remember that historically theirs is not a Party of warmaking. The current Administration outright militarism and imperialism is anti-thetical to a truly Conservative ideaology. The actual definition of conservatism is: “the disposition to preserve or restore what is established and traditional and to limit change.” In this way, by definition, we see that our current military policy of the current supposedly “Conservative” administration is nothing at all close to being conservative, as our nation’s tradition since our inception has been to refrain from nation-building and generally maintain an isolationist foreign policy unless necessary to preserve the fundamentals of our society or our Constitution.

What I’m getting at here, Republican voter, is that none of your candidates embody the truly American values that you hold dear…perhaps only one “issue” might prevent you from voting Democrat or third party…

3) As a Republican, you might say, “But Romney said he would preserve the institution of marriage, and even though he changed his mind when it was politically convenient, he claims to value the sancity of unborn life! I can’t vote for a Democrat, they might allow gays to marry, which would threaten my own marriage, and they will continue to provide women with THE CHOICE to decide what is best for their bodies when it comes to pregnancy!”

Well, I might not be able to change your mind on these points, nor would I want to…that woudn’t be very Progressive, Independent, and Constitutionalist of me, would it? See, as a Progressive, we empower people to make their own choices about their own lives. These issues, we argue, are not to be governed, like taxes, foreign policy, health care, nor the environment. If someone wants to marry a llama, how does that affect my life? If someone has to make a horrible and difficult decision regarding an unwanted pregnancy, is that really my business? On issues on which there is no definitive one right answer, like gay marriage (I’m sorry, the Bible isn’t the Constitution, so keep your chapters and verses to yourselves if you’re going to use them to justify discriminating against gays) and/or abortion (scientists and doctors really have no way of knowing when precisely what we call life begins or when, precisely a “soul” enters the body), can’t we just let individuals decide for themselves and keep government out?

Republicans want to keep government out of health care, keep government out of regulating business with respect to the environment, keep government out of managing pensions like Social Security, keep the government out of negotiating for better drug prices for our seniors, but they want THE GOVERNMENT IN YOUR BEDROOM! What is that all about? Is it so wrong to empower individuals to make their own choices without some wingnut telling them what their old book, written by some guy who didn’t even know the world was round, has to say on the subject?

So Republican voter, I hope this clears things up for you as you make your decision on who to vote for now that Mr. Romney is out of the race and is now backing McCain.

RELATED POSTS: Who Should I Vote For?, Part II: John McCain and Who Should I Vote For?, Part I

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Today I continue with Part II of my series, Who Should I Vote For?, in which I provide an analysis of the field of presidential hopefuls from a progressive, constitutionalist, Independent standpoint.

Thursday’s news of Governor Mitt Romney’s departure from the race throws a bit of a monkey wrench into my planned breakdown of the following candidates:

*Romney
*McCain
*Clinton
*Obama
*Paul
*Bloomberg (I know, I know, he’s not really a candidate [yet], but I have him here to talk about third parties and their viability).

…but considering my Monkey likes wrenches named after him, I will still talk about Mr. Romney a bit because he’s likely not to ride into the sunset of American Presidential politics just yet (although he’s the anti-Washington, self-avowed political outsider. If he has so much disdain for Washington, why’s he trying to run the joint?).

Before I get to Mitt, I thought I’d begin with the candidate who’s position is most clear right now, and that is Senator John McCain, who for all intents and purposes has wrapped up the Republican nomination, despite the derision the “wingnut” faction of the GOP holds for him.

When I was making my film about Ohio I was amazed at the power the Evangelicals held in the GOP and had the sense that a schism was imminent among Republicans, and would play itself out in the event that a “moderate” Republican emerge as a front-runner in the 2008 election. Back in 2004 and 2005 the only name that came to my mind as a successor to George Bush was Rudy Giuliani, a guy that had boatloads of streetcred among registered-Republicans for his anti-terror rhetoric and his 9-11 “heroics.” However, I sensed that the “powers that be” within the party would find his views on abortion, gay-rights, gun control, and illegal immigration untenable, making him an nonviable candidate when push came to shove. This I thought, would set off a third party movement among the right wing of the GOP, forcing them to create a “Social Conservative” party or “Family Values” party that would only put up candidates who could check the right wing block on all of those hot topics mentioned above and many more, like school vouchers, privatizing Social Security, maintaining a “first-strike” policy towards the infidels in the Middle East, and so on. The Republicans would be in a quandary, I thought, with Giuliani as the best candidate, but also incapable of receiving his party’s nomination.

Little did I know that Rudy would fall off the face of the map and John McCain would step into that role of virtually un-nominate-able frontrunner. The way I see it, rank and file right-wing Party Members hate him for the following reasons:

1) His immigration policy. McCain has a realist’s view on the situation, and unlike Mitt “Round ‘em Up and Ship ‘em Off” Romney,” realizes that it’s impossible to deport an estimated 12 million people. Think of the legal and law-enforcement costs of such a policy!
2) They hate him for his support of restrictions on Gun Shows, which they believe infringes upon the Second Amendment.
3) They hate him for his opposition to some of the recent tax cuts proposed by the Bush Administration.
4) They hate him for his sponsorship of McCain-Feingold, which proposed new restrictions on campaign finance reform. Interestingly, both the conservative NRA and the left-wing ACLU both oppose McCain-Feingold for different reasons. But did you know that this year industry experts project that a combined $3 billion will spent on this years Presidential campaign? $3 billion for what essentailly amounts to a Super-sized job interview? Imagine if that $3 billion instead was a charitable donation that went to fixing New Orleans or making college affordable for all?
5) They hate him for his acceptance of Global Warming and his support for regulations that try alter or reverse its course. I heard former Congressman Tom Delay on Hardball the other night asserts that the notion that man is causing the atmospheric pollution that threatens the delicate balance of Earth’s ecosystem is arrogant and not backed up by science. Then who’s causing it, if not man, the Whooping Crane?

But their hatred for him runs deeper than his vote either way on legislation over the last 20+ years. I believe the undercurrent for their hatred for him comes from the Party itself, not from everyday registered Republican voters. Many Americans, even Republicans, like to think of themselves as Independent, and many of us admire that quality in politicians, a trait that is hard to come by in that profession. This explains his string of victories despite the disdain the rank and file of the Party hold for him. Americans think of McCain as a maverick. We hear maverick and we think John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. What is more American than being a maverick?

But the hardliners in the party hear maverick and think, “uncontrollable.” Maybe this guy might serve his convictions and judgement before the interests of a political party, and we can’t have that, can we? So they will stop at nothing to tear him apart during this nominating process until he acquiesces to their demands and pledges loyalty to the right-wing establishment within the Party. They are basically threatening to sit this one out and allow a Democrat to take the office rather than support the will of the Republican voters. In my opinion, this strategy is self-destructive and futile. A possible option might be to throw their support towards a more right-wing candidate like Mike Huckabee, or possibly to a third party candidate. I don’t think there’s time to at this point to schism and go third party, and if John McCain might lose a close one to Hillary or Obama, Mike Huckabee would get steamrolled.

As an Independent Progressive, the biggest problem I see for a McCain candidacy is not the squabbling over whether or not he’s Conservative enough for the wackjobs in the GOP, but instead his delusial Iraq policy. By now we’ve all heard him say that he foresees our job in Iraq lasting another 100 years, which is completely unacceptable to at least two-thirds of the American electorate. He says that his support of The Surge in Iraq indicates he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to managing the war. Proponents of the Surge argue that the situation in Iraq is getting better and we should stick it out to see it through.

My view, as a West Point-trained former infantry officer, is if we send more troops over there of course the situation will appear to be more stable! If we had sent the right amount of troops from the very beginning, we wouldn’t have quite the disaster that we currently face. Bottom line, if we increased the troop numbers in Iraq from 130,000 to half a million, I think there would undoubtedly be more “peace” in the country. The problem for me (and it should be a problem for any right-winger who considers themself to be a fiscal conservative) is: at what cost? How much is stability in Iraq actually worth to us in terms of dollars and common sense?

Right now we’re running an Iraq military budget of an estimated $8 billion per month. If we believe John McCain, then our foray into Iraq might cost as much as 9.6 QUADRILLION DOLLARS!!!! (That’s $9,600,000,000,000,000! Or, a pile of $100 bills stacked 6,515 miles high). And if it seems unrealistic to just keep business as usual for the next 100 years, but we still want to “win” the war, then we should increase the funding of our operations over the short term. Right now we’re at about half a TRILLION DOLLARS in total spending on Iraq. If we double our efforts over the next five years to really stick it the evil-doers, then that strategy might cost us another TRILLION DOLLARS. So any realistic dollar value of “victory” might fall somewhere between $1.5 trillion and $9.6 quadrillion.

But wait, have we even talked about American lives lost? Add another 2000-4000 soldiers killed to the 4000 that have already died and another 30,000-60,000 to the 60,000 who are already wounded, if we stay another five years at current mortality rates. I don’t even have an estimate on hand for what it would cost the VA to administer health care to all of those wounded and suffering from PTSD but my guess is that dollar figure would also be astronomical.

The point I’m trying to make here with all of this mind-numbing math is that a TRUE CONSERVATIVE should hate John McCain for his Iraq war policy alone. We’re just not getting a good return on our investment in Iraq, and the question every American should ask themselves is how much are we willing to spend to keep that country “stable” and our country safe? For $1.5 trillion, we could probably build a retractable roof over the entire country! And what about the economic and social cost of all of these children who no longer have fathers or mothers?

Besides his views on Iraq, John McCain is reasonably palatable for any moderate, Independent, and even some liberals or progressives. He has demonstrated an ability to reach across the aisle in order to get things done. He has demonstrated his love for country by enduring over five years of captivity and torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese. He is not a “Bushie,” so it’s reasonable to expect that he won’t populate his staff and cabinet with a slew of Neo-Cons.

But I still think he’s unelectable, even with the reluctant support of the GOP hardliners. And here’s where I’ll introduce my Immutable Axiom of Presidential Voting Patterns: at the end of the day, people vote for candidates they know and like. Jimmy Carter was likeable. Reagan more so. Mondale was not. Dukakis was not. Bush Sr., not likeable, but we knew from Reagan. Clinton was likeable. Plus, he put money into the pockets of the middle class, and they won’t ever forget that. Bush, people knew from his daddy. Plus he had that regular-guy charm. Gore was unlikeable. Kerry was unlikeable. McCain is not…

He’s winning primaries right now because people know him and trust his experience over the other guys. As for the General, I think if it’s McCain-Obama, Obama wins hands down due to the likeability factor, which I think trumps familiarity. If that is the matchup, it will be very familiar in tone to the Clinton-Bush or Clinton-Dole matchups, in which Bill’s charisma won over voters feeling uninspired by Bush Sr or bored to tears by Beltway-insider Dole’s dry rhetoric. If it’s McCain-Clinton, it will be closer, due to the hatred people have for Hillary, but ultimately McCain’s unlikeability will outweigh his familiarity factor. And in the privacy of the voting booth, moderates and Independents will wistfully remember the fiscal abundance and worldwide respect that America enjoyed during the Clinton years and throw the election her way, despite the much balley-hooed “unification” of the Republican party that will occur if her name is on the ballot.

…They might even remember her hubby’s election theme song, perhaps retitled to fit the retrospective they hope will occur when voters consider her candidacy: “Don’t Stop Thinking About Yesterday.”

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Grammatically speaking, it’s “whom,” of course, but I won’t get into that right now. What I wanted to do here was take a look at all of the major candidates (and potential candidates) of all political stripes and break them down as I see them. My intent is to provide a brief description of the candidate in general, where they end up on the political spectrum (left, center, right, etc.), what their potential presidency might mean for our country, and how viable they are as candidates in the general election.

This breakdown will happen during Part II of the series, to be published soon, because first, in Part I of this series, I thought I’d provide a little background on my political perspective, because nothing is more important when it comes to digesting a political discussion (or any other thing for that matter, particurlarly food) than knowing “source.” In my article about vegetarianism, for example, I explain that my main reasons for choosing not to eat meat are based on my knowledge of where the vast majority of meat comes from in our country, its “source,” which in my opinion isn’t particularly healthy, neither nutritionally nor ethically. So before you digest my opinions about each of these candidates, it’s important to know where I’m coming from.

To provide context for my political experience, I’ll explain it in terms of my first political memories as a child, followed by my voting record for each Presidential contest I have been eligible to participate in, dating back to 1992.

In second grade, back in 1980, my class conducted a “vote” for the presidency between Reagan and Carter. I “voted” for Ronald Reagan because he seemed more handsome than Jimmy Carter. Reagan “won” my second grade class’s election and later, the country’s.

My next political memory came in 1989 as a tenth-grader at Episcopal High School in Northern Virginia, which by the way, is Senator John McCain’s alma mater. In January of that year I attended George H.W. Bush’s Inauguration. During his speech was the first time I heard the phrase, New World Order, although I didn’t know what it meant at the time. Instead, I remember thinking Bush was cool and was excited to be a part of the whole thing. Earlier in that school year, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the future first woman Speaker of the House (who’s son is also an alum of my prep school) came to speak one morning during chapel. Being the son of an Army general, I didn’t like her criticisms of the Republican administration, particularly the defense budget and our spending on the then high-fangled, experimental Stealth Bomber. It seemed that most of my classmates leaned Republican at the time.

The next time I was in the same room as a politician was four years later, in January 1993, when President Bush gave his last official speech while in office, this time at West Point’s Eisenhower Hall. Earlier in the day, he ate lunch with all 4000 of us in the Cadet Mess. All I remember from that meal was the fact that each of us had to pass through a metal-detector on our way into the Mess Hall, and that they dismissed all of the cafeteria staff and servers (who were mostly immigrants) for the day for security purposes. Consequently, we were forced to eat sandwiches stuffed with cold cuts instead of our usual hearty, hot meals. I remember thinking it was rather ludicrous to check all of us cadets for weapons or to be worried about us from a security perspective. There was no doubt in my mind that being among 4000 West Point cadets was probably safest place on earth for the President of the United States to be.

By this time Bush had already (obviously) lost the 1992 election to Bill Clinton. He looked weary and old. And his face was all sweaty. That’s all I remember. I think he was no match for Clinton’s youthful energy and was riding on the Gulf War I victory to propel him to a second term in office, and was shocked to see his “plan” backfire.

In November, a few months earlier, I was 19 years old and had my first opportunity to vote. Although I had leaned Republican as an adolescent, probably influenced by my father, I decided to cast my vote instead for H. Ross Perot. Clinton I didn’t trust, and Bush, well, Bush just seemed so washed up and angry that he even had to go through a whole election again in order to stay in office.

Four years later, I was dissatisfied with Dole and Clinton and decided to sit that one out. Dole was so boring and out of touch with the youth vote that had helped Clinton’s candidacy so masterfully back in ‘92. I think Mitt Romney was right recently when he compared John McCain’s candidacy’s to that of Bob Dole’s in ‘96. Both of them are/were over the hill and a couple of the most boring speakers you can find anywhere. I will get into more on this when I break down each candidate in my next post.

In 2000, after much deliberation, I voted for George W. Bush. With hindsight, I feel at least somewhat assured knowing that my personal vote didn’t really do much to swing the thing in either direction, as I was voting in the State of Georgia, which went overwhelmingly in the Bush column. I considered Gore, but actually became really turned off with what I perceived as arrogance during the debates. After 8 years of relative peace with Mr. Clinton in office, never in my wildest dreams did I think we’d be at war with two different countries simultaneously within three short years, so honestly I had no idea how important this election was at the time. I think the Clinton Presidency had lulled me into thinking that prosperity and peace “just happened,” and that who was in office really didn’t matter that much. I mean, GWB’s dad may have invaded Panama and fought back Iraq in Kuwait, and RR invaded vacation-spot Grenada, but never did I think that any President would engage us in all a full-scale, all-out war, a la Vietnam. I knew Bush was no genius, but I didn’t think he was THAT DUMB!

In 2004, I regretfully voted for a loser named John Kerry. In the Democratic primary, I voted for Dennis Kucinich, whom I had the pleasure to spend some time with during the filming of my documentary, Swing State Ohio, about the fight for Ohio during the 2004 Presidential Election. I knew he wasn’t going to win, but I viewed the primary as an opportunity to vote with my heart, and I felt it important to cast a vote in the name of peace, as my views on American militarism had changed sharply with the illegal, unconstitutional, undeclared war in Iraq and the misguided foray into Afghanistan, which incidentally is probably illegal too, as it came without a Congressional Declaration of War, which is the sole providence of the Legislative Branch of Government.

But back to John Kerry. I call Kerry a “loser” not in a perjorative way, but in a factually accurate way. He is a loser because he, well, lost. He is a loser because after several months on the campaign trail in Ohio, I rarely heard anybody say, “I’m voting for Kerry because he’s an excellent leader and will carry this country in a positive direction.” When I asked people who they were voting for, all I ever heard was, “Not Bush,” “Anybody but Bush,” and so on. All the energy during that election was about Bush, Bush, Bush. Of course much of it was anti-Bush, but from an energetic perspective, the prevailing idea that millions of people were putting out to the Universe was Bush, Bush, Bush. And what did the Universe respond with? MORE BUSH!

This is a classic, albeit heartbreaking, example of the Law of Attraction at work, in which we manifest that which we focus on. This works in either direction, regardless of whether the outcome is aligned with the original intention. What I mean by that is, if we focus our attention on reducing our debt, if we constantly ask ourselves, “How am I going to get out of debt?” all we attract is more debt, even though that obviously wasn’t our intention. The Law of Attraction knows neither “good” nor “bad,” and works purely from an energetic standpoint. So in the 2004 election, millions of people were focusing on the ills of Mr. Bush instead of focusing their energy in a more positive manner, towards an outcome or candidate they actually felt passionate about. See, so many people, record numbers of people, had tremendous passion for Bush Jr. The Universe doesn’t distinguish between positive or negative passion. It just hears “Bush” with a ton of passion, and poof: “Four More Years!”

Now, I’m not so naive to presume that this energetic law was the only thing at work during the ‘04 election. Kerry was an undynamic candidate whose personal charisma was unable to overcome the shenanigans that occurred in the state of Ohio, much like they occurred in the State of Florida four years earlier. I was in Ohio, I made a film about Ohio, I’ve done a ton of research on the subject and the evidence overwhelmingly points to yet another stolen election. And although Bush and his cronies are responsible for this, not all of the blame lies on their shoulders.

Kerry himself should share the blame, along with someone else you might know. I’m talking about you. Me too. All of us. The American people, who take their marching orders from the bought-media. And the Congress. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH), a dynamic Congresswoman I had the pleasure to meet and spend some time with on the campaign trail, along with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), had the courage to challenge the 2004 election results, an action well within the bounds of their Constitutional powers. Their challenge was met with derision from the Republicans, and general apathy among the Democrats, save the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who courageously raised up their voices in protest as well. The challenge was snubbed and forgotten about, and virtually ignored in the mainstream press. Ask the average American if they knew that there was a Congressional challenge of the 2004 Presidential Election, and the answer almost assuredly would be “no.” Ask the average American if they were aware that a recount was conducted in Ohio, and I’m sure you’d get another “no” (of course the recount itself was an absolute joke, but I won’t get into that right now).

I say that I regret voting for John Kerry because I wish I had wasted my vote and instead cast a ballot in favor of the Green Party, whose platform closer aligns with my own values, rather than the pandering interests of Sen. John Kerry.
This was a calculated thought as well, knowing my vote for the Green Party wouldn’t swing the election towards Bush, as I was casting my vote in the State of New York, which was firmly within the grasp of John Kerry. We interviewed Green Party candidate David Cobb for our film and he had more balls than John Kerry in the aftermath of the 2004 fiasco, displayed in his efforts to demand a recount in the State of Ohio.

With the painful memories of 2004 behind us, we now find ourselves in the midst of another primary season. I currently live in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which held its primary this week on “Super Tuesday.” Although I don’t consider myself a Democrat, I registered as a Democrat as the only way to ensure my enfrachisement during our country’s election process. This year, I casted my vote for Barack Obama, although Dennis Kucinich was still on the ballot. I heavily considered changing my party affiliation to Republican so I could vote for Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), the ONLY candidate in the fray who strictly practices Constitutionalism, which is a concept many of us might think we understand or believe in, but is in actuality a commodity severely lacking in in our current “democracy.”

In my next post, I will analyze the following candidates from an Independent, progressive, and constitutionalist perspective:

*Senator Barack Obama
*Senator John McCain
*Senator Hillary Clinton
*Former Governor Mitt Romney
*Former Governor Mike Hucakbee
*Congressman Ron Paul
*Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Until then…Keep Asking QUESTIONS!

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