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Why Senator Heitkamp Voted Against Manchin-Toomey

by Elias Isquith on April 25, 2013

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Loathe as I am to link to POLITICO, this is an interesting report on North Dakota freshman Senator Heidi Heitkamp and why she voted against Manchin-Toomey. If we take Heitkamp at her word (and I know of no reason why not to) it sounds like a textbook example of how the enthusiasm gap plays out in-practice:

Heitkamp said that she may have “disappointed” many, but she heard an outpouring of opposition back home that she couldn’t ignore, forcing her to cast a critical vote against the plan.

Asked about polls showing more than 90 percent of voters supporting expanded background checks, including back home, Heitkamp doubted that was truly indicative of public opinion. She compared the polls to her improbable Senate win showing her down double digits to Republican Rick Berg just weeks before Election Day.

“That wasn’t true either,” she quipped. 

I was skeptical of that poll, too; but mainly because I’m skeptical of any poll result that’s at once so surprising and so obviously prime grist for propaganda. (I’m most assuredly not Nate Silver.)

But even if the poll is flawless and a true representation of North Dakotans’ views of expanded background checks, that number — 90-plus percent — is still a big red flag; when support is that widespread, it’s also usually paper-thin. And, again assuming the poll is correct, it sounds like the 10 percent of North Dakotans’ who opposed Manchin-Toomey were a hell of a lot louder.

That’s the thing about American democracy; it’s not a show of hands, but rather a system through which organized people can enact change. You know that overused saying, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”? Well, never-ever-ever doubt that a small group of committed Americans can dictate policy. Indeed, it’s the only thing that can.

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Pete Hoekstra’s Contemptible New Ad

by Elias Isquith on February 5, 2012

Via Ben Smith comes the above ad, which apparently will run in Michigan today during the Super Bowl.

Gotta say: wow. In case anyone was wondering: yes, indeed, a bad economy brings the ugliest, nastiest, and most bigoted elements of our society to the political fore. I can’t imagine an ad like this being made 7 years ago — especially not by a major (albeit always a bit loopy) candidate for the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. You’ve got the music, the broken English, the coquettish winking; this thing is a real tour de force of lizard-brained stereotypes, about as subtle as Randy Newman’s “Yellow Man” (but, sadly, with as much sincerity as that song had satire).

On the ad, Hoekstra had this to say:

“If you’re going to produce an ad, you’re going to do it right,” said Hoekstra, “but the message is not about show. It is about content and Debbie’s record, nothing more, nothing less.”

I’ve gotta disagree with the former Congressman on this one. His ad is both so much more and so, so much less.

UPDATE

And here’s the campaign’s first response to what they had to have known was going to be inevitable (and probably desired on their part) criticism:

The Hoekstra campaign called the advertisement “satirical” and explained the broken English in the video as a reflection of China’s increasingly competitive education system.“You have a Chinese girl speaking English – I want to hit on the education system, essentially. The fact that a Chinese girl is speaking English is a testament to how they can compete with us, when an American boy of the same age speaking Mandarin is absolutely insane, or unthinkable right now,” Hoekstra spokesperson Paul Ciaramitaro told POLITICO. “It exhibits another way in which China is competing with us globally.”

Let’s put aside the chootspah, as Michele Bachmann would say, of this lie and note that, like most obvious lies told by moderately intelligent people, its falsehood is evidenced in its over-the-top specificity and esotericism. They should’ve just stuck to the modern racist equivalent of “the dog ate my homework” and repeated the word “satire” ad nauseam (though, of course, the word and the ad have nothing to do with one another). This smacks of trying way, way too hard.

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