Mitch Daniels' Hypocrisy?

Wow.

So the Indiana Republican Party issues a strong statement against Jill Long-Thompson last week because the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) has already given JLT $900,000, and it says it will "do whatever it takes" for her to win. That, my friends, is a HUGE chunk of cash from one interest group. Objectively, I can say that this attack works on about everybody who isn't from a labor union household.

But what does the Governor do the week thereafter? He accepts $750,000 from the Republican Governor's Association. Wow. Am I missing something, or is this is staggering hypocrisy?

At least with JLT, we KNOW where the money came from. If you are against collective bargaining for state employees, we can be pretty sure JLT is NOT your candidate. You KNOW what she's going to do, and you can vote accordingly.

Daniels always talks about how he reports his contributions on his website. He doesn't wait until the financing deadline! No. He wants you to know who's supporting him now. But here's my question. Where did the Republican Governor's Association get ITS money? From the RNC and AFLAC? From the RNC and Altria? WE DON'T KNOW! And, more importantly, HOW did the Republican Governor's Association get its money? What did it say to its donors to get national PACs to want to put money into little old Indiana?

Stay tuned...

The White Guy Shares The Test Results And Some Thoughts on Identity Politics

The comments and phone calls I've received about Harvard's Implicit (IAT) test can be summarized as follows:

The test is rigged! It is designed to make me prefer white people (or European-Americans, as they are defined on the test).

Before I defend the test, let me offer a quick thought on the phrase "European-Americans." If a black person prefers to be called "African-American," I use the term. Sometimes I think it's silly because the particular person making the request has NO idea about ANY African culture, either past or present (which, by the way, varies widely from nation to African nation), nor any desire to learn about it. But that's not my call. Every person, out of respect, is entitled to "self-definition."

To that end, don't call me European-American.

My ancestors are German and Dutch, and what I know about those cultures can be boiled down to beer, the Bundestag, sauerkraut, Hitler, and wooden shoes. I have no desire to research this because, quite frankly, there are more interesting countries about which to learn. People tell me American culture was heavily influenced by the Germans and Dutch. If so, I can't tell you what part, except for the beer and sauerkraut, and knowing which part doesn't affect my day or self-worth. You see, I was born in America, and I am just that. An American. Not a European-American. Hyphenate if you choose, but don't force me into being a blend, too.

Also, here's a great way to avoid prejudice. Don't refer to my racial group as "whites" or "the whites," or "the white man," as I never refer to other racial, ethnic, or religious groups as "the blacks," "the Asians," or "the Arabs." No matter how people try to create racial monoliths, they don't exist. Any statement that begins with "the whites," "the white man," "blacks," "Arabs," or "the Jews" will be wrong, wrong, wrong. It is going to include a generalization that doesn't encapsulate every person in that group, and you will end up looking like a jackass.

But back to the test. If you didn't take it, it begins with the words "European-Americans" on one side and "African-Americans" on the other. You then see photos of both black and white people. You click "E" to put somebody in the left column or "I" to put them on the right. Then the test switches the sides, and you do it again. Then the test places the words "Bad" and "Good" at the top of the screen, and you get a series of adjectives, such as "awful," "glorious" or "friendly," and you again click the computer keys to put the adjective on the correct side. Again, the words at the top switch sides. Finally, you multi-task. You process photos and adjectives with both "European American" and "good" and "European-American" and "bad" on both sides.

The test measures your response time in microseconds, and after doing this battery, you are given a rating of whether you are neutral or prefer (slightly, moderately, or strongly) one group over the other. Over a run of hundreds of thousands of tests, the experiment revealed that 80% of test takers (and 50% of African-Americans, by the way) take longer to associate African-Americans with positive attributes than they do for white people.

Many of my readers have said it's a matter of "getting better as the test goes on." This is an intriguing thought because we see African-Americans paired with Good first, THEN with bad. But I'm left to ask, "How many trial runs do you have to do to 'get good' at pressing two buttons?" But more importantly, the study shows that repeat testers DIDN'T generally improve. Also, when experimenters "primed the pump" by showing photos of Dr. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Colin Powell, Michael Jordan, and some black track-and-field athletes holding the American flag during an Olympic ceremony beforehand, the test takers almost all did better on the test. If it were simple mechanics, how can you account for this result?

Everything relating to race makes people crazy, so if your results show a preference for European-Americans, calm down. It doesn't mean you secretly want to join the klan. It does, however, speak to the level of media fuel given to negative or positive perceptions of surrounding various racials groups, and further, it might also speak in troubling ways about the power of the subconscious in situations such as police action shootings where a deeply-ingrained bias means someone might not get the benefit of the doubt in a split-second decision.

But the testing is also hopeful because we know from the study that we can change those subconscious perceptions by simply feeding ourselves positive messages. In some cases, simply having human resource directors look at positive images of black people before they interview one ensures that any negative thoughts will be about the applicant and interview specifically, not about some subconscious, inarticulable group-based concern.

Mental note to self: send HR department director framed MLK photo for birthday.

The White Guy

Do You Care About Black People As Much As George Bush Does?

Every person, whether white or black, likes to think of her or himself as open-minded and free of prejudice. At least that’s what we tell ourselves and our family and friends. But how well does your subconscious mind mirror your stated beliefs when it comes to African-Americans? If you are African-American, how do you feel about your own race?

I invite you all to find out by participating in an intriguing experiment.

Go to www.implicit.harvard.edu

Click on “Demonstration”

Click on “Go to Demonstration Tests”

Click on “I Wish to Proceed” after ignoring Harvard’s boring legal disclaimer.

Scroll down the page mid-way to “Race IAT” and begin.

Before you get to the test, you have to complete an information questionnaire, which is not terribly taxing, so don’t use it as an excuse for not doing this. If you cop out, I'll yell at you: "You can't handle the truth!!!"

When a few days have passed so that I know enough of my readers have taken this test, I’ll offer some thoughts on your results. I’ll be like the Dr. Phil of the blogosphere, except I won’t annoy you all by telling you, “You gotta ohhhhnn it, m'kay?!?”

Light-Hearted Moment at Sullivan Event

Peacocks use garish plumes to catch a mate. If you watch it on film, you laugh because it's so ridiculous and obvious. But humans aren't far off, though men generally use sports cars. The short of it is that making oneself attractive pays major dividends.

Research confirms that in job interviews, the more attractive a candidate is, the better off (s)he fares. Both male and female interviewers assume that good looking people have higher intelligence, among other positive social traits. Researchers call this “the halo effect,” and we know it applies to politics.

While somebody can certainly be odd-looking and get elected (have you SEEN some of the Indiana General Assembly?!?), it helps to be a handsome man or beautiful woman as a candidate. This is good news for Mary Ann Sullivan, the Democrat running against Jon Elrod in House District 97. Unless I am having auditory hallucinations, Ms. Sullivan got some "affirmation" during her press conference calling for increased funding for Amtrak.

Go see my amigo at www.blueindiana.net, and scroll to "Barnes, Sullivan call for increased Amtrak funding." Turn up your volume, advance to 1:01 on the Youtube clip and listen closely to the background noise. I seriously doubt that adulation is for John Barnes.

I just hope somebody from the Sullivan campaign found that guy and hit him up for a contribution.

O'Connor's Mayoral Mishaps

Say you are managing an incumbent mayor's campaign. You have a staggering financial advantage, and you're running against a guy who can't get a return phone call from his own party leaders. What does conventional wisdom tell you to do?

Ignore the man. Don't appear anywhere with him. Don't debate him. Don't say his name because it will give him free press he can't get on his own. Don't respond to anything he does. Don't even acknowledge his existence, if at all possible.

The problem with conventional wisdom is that it's worthless for incumbents in "tsunami years." Every so often, a wave of outrage revs its head, and voters descend upon their elected officials with vengeance. On the national scene, it happened after Watergate, with Reagan in 1980, and with Gingrich in 1994 (though it flipped back with Clinton in 1996).

In Indianapolis, 2007 was definitely a tsunami year. O'Connor should have thrown the text-book for re-election out the window early on. Anybody that drove the city could see it. Almost as a lark, I started trolling property tax protests, and I immediately saw that this was no fringe group, like the Freemen affiliates who are always trying to invalidate our elected officials based on their failure to sign oaths.

These protests had young and old, black and white, liberal and conservative, blue collar and white collar, gay and straight, and most importantly angry and more angry. After one rally, I remember driving back telling myself, "The Governor is toast!"

I said this because the Mayor of Indianapolis has no real control over property taxes. That's a Governor's fix to make. I know this because the Governor can't stop telling me how he "fixed" property taxes. As an aside, Quicken tells me I'm paying more in sales tax than I'm saving in property taxes, so I sure hope Governor Daniels doesn't fix anything else. If I asked him to fix the creaky knob on my bedroom door, I might come away with no door or bedroom furniture.

But I digress. Given the intensity of the property tax protests, a great commercial would have shown Mayor Peterson opening up his property tax bill, yelling an expletive, and telling everybody to grab their pitchforks because, "I'm a taxpayer just like you, and I'm not going to stand for this! TO THE STATEHOUSE!"

Instead, soooomebody signed off on an ad that had the Mayor saying how we would "work together" to solve the city's problems. In other words, he took ownership of a catastrophe...ON FILM. THEN THEY SHOWED IT TO PEOPLE! There was no frothing at the mouth Mayor. There was just nice guy Bart, the coalition builder. And in the back room, a decision was made to NOT say anything about the Governor for fear that he would get interested in the Indianapolis mayoral race and put money into it. This thinking, quite frankly, was perplexing, which is my polite way of saying "batshizzle insane."

Mitch Daniels hardly acknowledged Greg Ballard as a candidate until after his victory. Daniels had NO interest in putting money in the race because he did not believe, under any circumstances, it could be won (which is another way of saying Daniels read the tea leaves as poorly as did O'Connor).

Ballard then goes out and gets the most succinct and deadly yard sign in political history: "Had Enough?" Of what? It didn't matter. Whatever evil irked you at the moment is what you used to fill in the blank with your mind. Were you a police officer angry about consolidation? Ballard was talking to you. Were you angry at the way the Mayor was silent on Monroe Gray's behavior? Ballard was talking to you. Were you upset that you were shut out of a city-county council meeting packed with the Mayor's supporters? How about the trash that got left on the curb the week before? All of it was Ballard talking to you while not really saying anything concretely.

The entire Ballard campaign was "fresh-roasted coffee." Doesn't that sound delicious? Mmm hmmmm. But nobody knows how "fresh-roasted coffee" is made. We just envision in our minds what we THINK it means, and our imaginations are always more appetizing than reality.

I called a higher up in the Peterson camp (not O'Connor), and I told them two-and-a-half months out that they would lose. Boy, did that make me unpopular, and I got a hearty laugh when I said they needed to attack Ballard immediately.

You see, when you have a tsunami election, you can only survive by diverting the wave because it will crash down somewhere. And if you're running against a nobody, voters go into that booth looking at two options: you or not you. By not engaging Ballard and forcing him to expose himself as a guy who had no real plan early on, Peterson turned his campaign into a referendum election that he could not win. Peterson needed to legitimize Ballard by going at him and building up the strawman that he could then set fire to by exposing Ballard as being unready, a condition that doesn't seem to have improved six months into the job.

Instead, the Peterson camp did nothing but continued to run ads that they knew from their focus groups wouldn't work. Why any manager would sign off on spending money to continue to produce a broken product is beyond me. Only after all hope was lost, did Peterson go negative, and the late hour made him come across as supremely desperate.

Here's the interesting part. I had several friends who are Democrats who voted for Ballard. Then they heard him talk after his election, and they called me and said, "Ooops!" That was maddening. Had Peterson advanced the engagement between voter and Ballard, Peterson might have survived.

But why would O'Connor do something like that? The Mayor wasn't in trouble.

COMING SOON....

...Peterson and O'Connor's Monroe Gray Doctrine...

...the long-awaited race test.....

...how Pam Carter got it right in 1992

STAY TUNED!

Melina Kennedy's Great News

Remember when I said Hayden Christensen was a disaster in the Star Wars prequels because he was miscast as Anakin Skywalker? This same guy in the right vehicle, a movie called Shattered Glass, was a complete genius.


(If you haven’t seen Shattered Glass, do it immediately. This is the story of Stephen Glass, a journalist who essentially made up his stories while working with the New Republic. Peter Saarsgard also gives the best performance of his career).

Anyway, being completely wrong in Role A doesn’t mean you can’t tear it up in Role B. And that’s the great news for Melina Kennedy.

If Kennedy wants to stay in politics, she can make big moves in both the legislative and executive branches (and probably the appellate judiciary as well). She’s intelligent, well-known, very respected in the party, capable of raising money, and “resume right.” She has the right mix of private legal and public service experience to do a great many things. They key is just to make sure that, on the next one, it’s the right fit. Unlike the last time.

Clash of the Titans Averted!

For those Republicans looking forward to a divisive "clash of the titans" between former Marion County Democratic Party chair Ed Treacy and UAW legend, Terry Thurman, your hopes have been dashed.

Though Thurman's feet have been touted to fill outgoing Democratic Party Chair Mike O'Connor's shoes (and though Thurman himself has expresseed interest in Democratic circles), Thurman has agreed for party unity (and for some as-of-yet undisclosed concessions) to step aside and support Treacy.

There is collective relief for many Democrats, who were skittish about a protracted in-party fight and who almost uniformly view Treacy as a superb tactician.

In fact, but for Treacy's involvement on behalf of his wife, Rebecca Pierson-Treacy (and the supposedly suspicious but not confirmably improper manner of her slating for Judge), you would be hard-pressed to find much criticism of Treacy.

Does Treacy have enemies? Sure, but you cannot tell people "no" as much as a county chair has to without alienating somebody. And both parties have their "colorful personalities" (a/k/a "the crazy people") who a chair has to continually foil in their electoral efforts without looking anti-democratic.

Whatever public faults Republicans voice about Treacy, their private gripes will surround him winning too many elections.