David Damore's Blog

It is not everyday that the Nevada judiciary makes the ESPN crawl. But all day Friday the activities in the courtroom of Judge Jackie Glass, including quotes from the judge herself, were being perpetually cycled at the bottom of ESPN, ESPN News and ESPN2. Who would have thought back in 2002 during her nasty campaign against Jeffrey Sobel that Glass would merit as much crawl time as the latest BCS standings?

As the consequences of the 2008 elections continue to reverberate, one Nevada politician who is grabbing headlines is John Ensign. Recent news stories have put Ensign front and center in the reclamation project that is the Republican Party. Indeed, despite the losses that the Republicans took under Ensign’s leadership of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Nevada’s favorite veterinarian was rewarded with the chair of the Republican Policy Committee in the Senate; the number four spot in the leadership of a GOP caucus that has withered from 55 seats to at most 42 in just three short years.

So both in Nevada and nationally, Ensign finds himself in a pivotal position as he and his co-partisans search to redefine their party’s brand in the aftermath of an epoch that was notable for the Republicans’ inability to fulfill the most basic expectations of government, willingness to eviscerate the party’s most cherished principles to secure short term political victories, and culpability in enabling the dullard from Crawford to soil the country’s reputation abroad and bring the nation’s economy to the precipice of a total meltdown. 

With less than a week to go there is much about the 2008 election that remains up in the air. While all indicators point to a good night for the Democrats both in Nevada and nationally, exactly how this will play out is the source of much speculation in spaces such as this one.  In that spirit, here are my thoughts.

Nationally, I expect Barack Obama to hold all states won by Kerry and easily pick-up the two states Bush took from the Democrats in 2004 (Iowa and New Mexico with twelve Electoral College Votes combined).  It is unlikely that John McCain will take either New Hampshire (which Bush won in 2000) or Pennsylvania from the Democrats, but I do expect him to hold the Dakotas and Montana even though he is struggling to close-out those states.  

Under this scenario, Obama would be six shy of the presidency; meaning McCain would have to virtually run the table to win. This also means that an Obama win in Nevada, without another pick-up, would not be sufficient to deliver the White House to the Democrats. 

Recently, Clark County School District (CCSD) caught a bit of rare good press in touting their near spot-on enrollment estimates. The district, of course, reported the data in the aggregate (that is, the district-wide numbers). The natural temptation is to assume that because the aggregate projection was correct that the school by school projections were as well. This is something that is known as the ecological fallacy and it is an analytical no-no.  This is the reason why.

Say that there were two high schools in the southeast region and one school, which we'll call school C, has an enrollment of a little less than 3,200 and the other, which we'll call school L (and that has a staff member married to the writer of this space) is at 1,850.  It might strike you as odd that two high school less than a few miles apart would have such vastly different enrollments.

One of the perplexities of the ongoing campaign season is why a state that is likely to play such a significant role in 2008 has such a poverty of reliable polling data. Putting aside the obvious fact that Nevada has a poverty of a lot of things, a constant refrain of many trying to get up to speed about the state's politics is why the dearth of polls in the Silver State?

Except for the occasional willingness of campaigns to release their polls (which coincidentally enough tend to favor their side; see Titus, Dina for recent examples), statewide polling for public consumption comes from two sources: Intermittent releases by the Las Vegas Review Journal and the Reno Gazette Journal and national operations (some of them internet based) that occasionally dabble in the state. As consumers of these polls know, they tend not to be all that good.

What is apparent from the national party conventions is that the two parties are pursuing very different strategies in their quest for 270 Electoral College votes. The Republicans are essentially using the Karl Rove model of 2000 and 2004, while the Democrats are putting forth a new take on a very old model used throughout American history to upend the status quo and usher in new governing majorities.

Which side comes out on top will largely be a function of how the 2008 presidential election plays out. If 2008 is "a big election, about small things," then the GOP should be able to continue using the Executive Branch to run the country into the ground. However, if 2008 is a transformational moment in American political history, then do not be surprised to see Barack Obama in the White House come January.

This past week saw Nevada return to the national spotlight on a number of fronts. Most notably, with the Democratic and Republican Party national conventions on deck in the coming weeks, the general election campaign is (finally) about to begin.

On cue, the national media has begun to focus attention on the lay of the land in the swing states.  Recent polls indicate that Nevada is one of a handful of states that are within the margin of error (the others, according to pollster.com, are Ohio, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, Florida, Virginia, Alaska, North Carolina, and New Hampshire; all but the last being states won by Bush in 2004).

As a consequence, last week I received inquiries from the Economist, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Washington Post, and Agence France Presse seeking information about the presidential campaign in Nevada. Although the state has been marginally in play the last two presidential elections and hosted early caucuses last winter, the Silver State remains very much a mystery in the national political landscape. 

Democratic congressional candidate Dina Titus with U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen at a gas station campaign stop in May.: Politicker PhotoAs election season heats up, candidates are moving into full pander mode. Thus far gas prices top the list of issues that are causing politicians of all stripes to abandon prior positions, disregard basic economic theory, and promise voters the impossible. This is not surprising given poll data indicating that voters' worries about the costs of filling up their tanks is a top concern as we move towards November.

Nonetheless, for rational-minded observers who might prefer that candidates not insult the intelligence of voters and instead present policy proposals that might actually do something to change the nation's energy policy (as opposed to offering cheap rhetoric with a shelf life lasting until, oh I don't know, right around Nov. 4), I find the whole situation nauseating. So in the spirit of the Olympics (which incidentally are occurring in China; the county whose increased demand for oil is a big factor for rising gas prices in the U.S.), I thought it would be appropriate to award medals to Nevada's best gas price panderers.

The state Supreme Court's term limits decision on Friday was hardly a surprise. The court ruled that the term limit amendment was properly approved and in so doing, side-stepped its own role in changing the amendment's language between passages to exempt the judicial branch from the measure's reach. Similarly, the court's decision to exclude local elected officials from seeking office again, while upholding the right of state legislators to run in 2008 was not unexpected. Nonetheless, the episode was revealing on a couple of fronts.

First and as been discussed prior in this space, the whole mess demonstrates the frailty of the ballot initiative process as a means to craft public policy. Pushed by interest groups, often times from out of state, ballot measures tend to be poorly written and full of unintended consequences.

Nevada's junior U.S. senator John Ensign (R-Las Vegas) has been making headlines lately for gumming up passage of the foreclosure aid bill by exercising the U.S. Senate's most cherished prerogative: individual autonomy.  Unlike the U.S. House where the legislative process strongly tilts in favor of the majority party via its control of the Rules Committee, debate in the Senate is designed to empower the individual Senator.  This philosophical difference between the two houses of Congress has been institutionalized in the Senate via the filibuster, the hold, and the ability of Senators to add non-germane amendments to legislation under debate.  The end result, as Senator J. Bennett Johnson of Louisiana once quipped, is "the Senate is run for the convenience of one Senator to the inconvenience of 99."