Bloodless Coup

you might be the only one who cares. he pretty much said it yesterday on MtP: SC has proportional representation in the delegation(s), and he wants enough votes that one delegate stands and says "yadda yadda yadda SC supports the candidact of Stephen Colbert." since his real audience is dem, it stands to reason that he wants to leave open the possibility that he'll get enough votes on that side even if he doesn't on the GOP side.

I read somewhere that this could be an FEC violation, particularly if he keeps using his show to "campaign."

Moon - well doesn't the Green piece say that the biggest block of viewers are independents (though sure, more D viewers than R ones).

As to Binky's point - oh no! not a fine! anything but a harsh, bad, rap across the knuckles fine! ;)

i think he, or rather comedy central, might have bigger problems than a fine. i thought i read that A&E stopped playing episodes of L&E once Thompson declared his candidacy because, had they not, they were obligated to provide equal time to the other candidates. perhaps i misunderstood, or there's some material distinction, but nothing jumps out at me as obvious.

also (i'm assuming another responsive comment i submitted last night will turn up eventually), the biggest block of comedy central viewers are what's identified as independent, as to colbert specifically the green piece merely echoes my conjecture, equally unsupported by green as by me, that he draws a heavily democratic audience.

in other news, green reports: "A consultant to one of the major presidential candidates (all of the consultants I interviewed watch “Colbert,” all of them speculated about his prospects, and none of them would go on the record) pointed out that Democratic primary voters are seriously old—older, on average, than Republican primary voters and especially old in South Carolina."

what amused me about this is the unwillingness of any consultant to go on the record. is it just me, or does this suggest that people are finally learning that it's never a good idea to poke one's head high enough to fall prey to colbert's whack-a-mole tendencies. best to stay anonymous, lest one become the brunt of a week worth of pithy jokes and a challenge to a duel or some such silliness.

a propos: a bit of legal analysis on the question of comedy central's legal obligations.

This is pretty crappy from the party that claims to want everyone to participate in the process.

One does wonder what that means the other party wants. ;)

Eh, parties make these kinds of decisions regularly. Personally I'd put him on the ballot, but getting on the ballot can be really complicated (varies by state of course) - and it doesn't seem unreasonable that a party would take this action.

"Eh, parties make these kinds of decisions regularly."

Absolutely, which is the way if you're not in the two parties, they've rigged it so outsiders won't have a chance. A vote for Colbert, while functionally a problem, says something to the parties about what they're doing, that a vote for a joke makes more sense than a vote for them. So the Democrats in this case let him in the door, they have the appearance of being open to all comers, but then they gave him the bum's rush. There's no access, no way to build momentum for that message before the general presidential election.

You go on ad nauseum about how conservatives are hypocritical because they're actions don't always measure up to their words. The Dems are the ones always talking about how they want every vote counted, but it's obviously now only as long as it's a vote for someone of whom they approve. So I'm a little surprised you're willing to let the Dems off so easily here.

of course, the only reason the GOP wasn't forced into doing something almost certainly similar in effect, is that they're filing fee, at something like fifteen times higher than the democratic filing fee, is high enough to exclude more or less automatically, rather than in an ad hoc process in response to an unlikely contingency. if the dems won't let colbert have his moment, you can bet the GOP, whom no one roasts more effectively than colbert, had no interest in dealing with him. of course, at $35K, it's quite clear that he's not the only one they have no interest in dealing with.

please don't stand cloaked in red and have the temerity to pillory the dems for being exclusive. the GOP invented the game -- with respect to candidates, voters, and even it's own dyed-in-the-wool public servants who didn't get the memo, lo 15 years ago, that small unobtrusive government paled as a priority before the critical work of telling people how to live their lives in every detail.

Moon,
The Dems hit the GOP all the time about not being inclusive, just as your post says; you can't do that and then exclude people you don't like without being a bunch of hypocrites. Put the talking points down. This post isn't even about which party tells people how to live their lives, but if you want to bring up the point, the tax and spend Dems led by Hillary Clinton don't even trust people in how to spend their own money. I think you're being blind to the way in which this is the parties against the people. You're letting them distract you into feeding on your contempt for Republicans, and not focusing on the ways in which Republicans and Democrats are BOTH exclusive, and both have little interest in the putting the people's interests above their own.

Morris I think you are failing to separate state party organizations (which are always self-interested) and the messages espoused by the partisans of each party. Is there some hypocrisy going on? Sure, I guess. But in general most serious candidates who can actually win public support can get on a ballot.

I don't know where your Democrats don't trust people to spend their own money rhetoric is from. Especially since we've never seen as free-spending a government as we've seen with Bush/the Republicans' spending spree of the last 5 years.

"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

Yes, that's called levying taxes - something I believe every party in DC advocates (barring the Gotzmine party).

What I objected to was your wording that Democrats "don't trust people to spend their own money".

Bro,
Since taxes have been cut, revenue to the treasury has increased. This means the equilibrium point on Laffer's curve is more closely approximated by current taxes than by higher taxes. So if Dems raise taxes, it's likely that revenue to the treasury will actually go down. And if the point of raising taxes is not to raise revenue, then what is the point, if not to keep people from being able to spend their own money. Ergo, Dems don't trust people to spend their own money.

Morris, I've got no dog in this fight, but I'm going to call "foul" on the idea that revenue has gone up since Bush lowered taxes. I'm tired, and don't have time to completely research this, but this page indicates that tax revenues under Bush have declined from Clinton (the table only goes to 2003; the 2001 budget is likely Clinton's that Bush inhereted, but 2002 and 2003 would be all Bush - revenues those years declined).

My general assessment (for sources I can't cite this late) is that no respectable economist believes that the point the Laffer curve starts to work is anywhere near the tax rate the US operates at. While it is true that at very extreme tax rates (above 60%, if I remember correctly) reducing tax rates will generate more tax revenue, the US rate is significantly below that level.

If you want to argue, have better facts.

"If you want to argue, have better facts."

Net collections for 2000 were according to the IRS website $1.9003 trillion. Multiplying this to account for inflation rates from 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 (inflationdata.com) would be equivalent to $2.2251 trillion. Net collections for 2006 were $2.2383 trillion, $13.2 billion dollars more than would be predicted by inflation alone. Ergo, the tax cuts have had an effect on the economy such that our government's collecting $13.2 billion more than it would collect holding all things but inflation constant (without the tax cuts). Ergo, if Democrats want higher taxes, it's not about collecting more money, it's about not trusting people to spend it themselves.