Beyond Opinion

Well now the campaign has begun. It's Barack Obama vs John McCain. Already the solicitations are coming in. So far the worst violator has been the Obama campaign, calling me every week it seems asking for money for the campaign. I do want Obama to win this election, for I feel he can lead us through the upcoming crisis better than McCain. This makes it difficult for me, as I keep getting these calls from his campaign, and so far I have not gotten one from McCain. But do I want to contribute to his campaign?

No way. Barack Obama has nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in his war chest, while McCain has only a third as much. He has plenty of money. He can advertise all over the place and smother the airwaves with ads. I hope he does that. Campaign ads, even evangelical Republican ones, are better than blaring ads from auto dealerships hawking, or I might say pigging, their SUVs or ads for the same medicines over and over again. So far Obama's ads have been winners. But he already has the money for that, and for the rest of his campaign. If I want to help Obama, I will do so with action, not money.

Although McCain has not called me since Obama won the Democratic nomination, he still threw five computer calls at me in 2008 February during primary season. Further, the Republicans keep sending me surveys and other items making the incorrect assumption that I am a Republican. I answer the surveys and complain to them about their computer call tactics. So which camp is worse with the campaign? McCain's, that's who. That is because Obama prefers to have real people talk to me, whereas McCain sends out computers. Do you want someone in the White House who can relate to people, or someone who can relate to computers? The answer is clear. I support Obama.

In this morning's Richmond Times-Dispatch, there was an article saying that Richmond, Virginia, could get an A baseball team, saying that geography would dictate this, as the AA Eastern and Southern leagues are too far away. The article said that the Braves own the rights until they let go probably next month, if the stadium in Gwinnett County will be ready. Earlier this year, the Atlanta Braves announced that they would be moving the Richmond Braves to Gwinnett County, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. In particular, they said that Richmond could be part of the Carolina League, which is a High-A league.

I checked Wikipedia for anything that may be going on among High-A teams. Nothing is going on, except for a comment on the Salem Avalanche, which is really a Roanoke, Virginia area ball team. The Fenway Sports Group, affiliated with the Boston Red Sox, bought the Salem Avalanche recently, and is likely to become a Boston affiliate in 2009. So what might happen is when deal time comes at the end of the season, both the Red Sox and the Avalanche will declare free agency, and will make a deal with each other to have the Avalanche become a Red Sox farm. This will force the Houston Astros to make an agreement with the Lancaster JetHawks in California, the present Boston High-A affiliate. After the Avalanche becomes a Red Sox team, I am guessing that the Red Sox will move the team to Richmond. The Richmond Avalanche. It doesn't seem appropriate for this mostly flat city, unless by avalanche is meant the series of misevents that have been occurring while Doug Wilder has been the mayor, one of which is the Braves leaving town.

I don't think this would be good for Richmond. (Roanoke would not like it either.) There are many people around here who would not go out to see a High-A team play, but would rather see the Spiders, Rams, or even a high school team play. It would make the city or its people the owner of the team, something that isn't true today. But I think the city deserves better. I think Richmond should hold out for an AAA team, even if it means no ball here for a year or two. As I said earlier, I imagine the New York Mets don't like having an AAA affiliate so far away in New Orleans, and maybe the Zephyrs could be moved to Richmond, which would require another International League or Pacific Coast League team to change leagues; Nashville or Indianapolis, perhaps. Or maybe something else could happen. But please, Richmond. Don't settle for High-A. And for gosh sakes, build a new stadium so an AAA team will want to come here.

PS. Corrected on 2008 July 3. The Portland Sea dogs are AA. I meant the High-A affiliate of the Red Sox, which is the Lancaster JetHawks.

Barack Obama has won the Democratic Party nomination for candidate for President, although he did so by losing the South Dakota primary. So now it is Obama vs McCain. So who's going to win? Allan Lichtman's system of 13 keys, or statements about conditions about the candidates or our country, tells us that Obama will win. Specifically the keys run like this:

1. After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections. FALSE
2. There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination. TRUE
3. The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president. FALSE
4. There is no significant third party or independent campaign. TRUE
5. The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. FALSE
6. Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. FALSE
7. The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. FALSE
8. There is no sustained social unrest during the term. TRUE
9. The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. TRUE
10. The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. FALSE
11. The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. FALSE
12. The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. FALSE
13. The challenging-party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. FALSE

There are 9 false keys (we say the keys have "fallen") and 4 true ones (they have "stood"). If there are 5 false keys or fewer, the incumbent party wins. If there are 6 or more, the challenger party wins. In the case of 2008, the 9 fallen keys means that the challenger, Barack Obama, will win.

However, the current polls don't show this. They show a close race with the same pattern pretty much as 2000 or 2004. Perhaps it is race. Like it or not, there is still racism in this country, and that may make the election much closer than 9 keys suggest. This happened in 1960. Kennedy just barely edged out Nixon, even though 9 keys were down. In that year, it was religion: Kennedy was Catholic.

Further, there is one other thing about 1960. The year 2008's pattern of keys, when written as a string of symbols X for a fallen key and O for a standing one, is XOXOXXXOOXXXX. This is exactly the same pattern as for 1960. For that reason, the integrity of the entire keys system is at stake. In most years, if the prediction of the keys turns out to be wrong, the keys could be modified perhaps by omitting a few keys, and perhaps a key system that would predict all the elections could be created in that way. Not this time. If McCain should win the election, there would be two years with exactly the same pattern of keys, namely 1960 and 2008, but with different results. It follows from that that no set of keys among the 13 keys can ever possibly get every single election right; every system would have to get either 2008 wrong or 1960 wrong. This coincidence of key patterns has occurred once before: the 1928 and 1988 elections had the same pattern of keys. Fortunately, they had the same conclusion: a Republican victory. If McCain wins this time, there is no way of fixing the keys by omitting some of the keys, and so another key from somewhere, such as "Prejudice is not a major factor in the campaign" would have to be included. And deciding which key may very well mean rerunning the factor analysis model that selected the 13 keys to see which combinations do the best at predicting the President. Lichtman would have to start all over again.

That is what I mean by the key system's integrity being at stake. Hopefully, Obama will win in November.

It finally happened. On 2008 June 3 9:00 pm EDT, the South Dakota polls closed, allowing Barack Obama to acquire enough delegates to go over the 2118 delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination. It went almost down to the wire, through 50 of the 51 states (except Montana, which closes in an hour), the District of Columbia, and several overseas territories. The hypermedia has been hyping up the knock-down drag-out donnybrook between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but I expect the Democrats now to unite behind Obama. Further, I expect Obama to be our next President, because 9 out of 13 Lichtman Keys are down (false), meaning the challenging party (the Democrats) will win; only 6 need to be down to defeat the incumbent party.

I expect Obama to be our nation's fourth Crisis President, in the tradition of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. He will have to deal with several major problems, with the worst one being the world's running out of cheap oil, something that he has not talked about as yet. I wish him the best of luck in dealing with these problems. He is also the first African-American to win a party's nomination (and I predict the Presidency), but I note that he is also the 44th white person to win it - he is both, and by rearing is Hawaiian and Indonesian as well - truly a cosmopolitan candidate. This is also the furthest in the nominating process that a woman (Hillary Clinton) has gotten before losing.

As a side note, I have performed an exit poll analysis on the South Dakota race and determined that Hillary Clinton will win it 53-44%. This could be wrong - these exit polls have made major errors before. But if this is correct, it is a surprise. It will put a Clinton state in an area surrounded by Obama states. Obama got enough delegates to win the nomination with it, but he must be the first Presidential candidate in history to win the nomination by losing a primary.

NOTE: 10:53 pm EDT. I have now heard that Barack Obama has won Montana. The exit polls show the eventual margin to be 55-38%. South Dakota gave him only one more vote than needed to clinch the nomination. Montana put him about 14 votes over. The Democratic Primary map is now complete, and it looks weird. The Clinton states are a gerrymander, or maybe a hillarimander. The Obama states are a doughnut, with South Dakota its hole. What's with South Dakota, anyway? Obama also won a slithery snake of states in the Southeast, from Louisiana to Delaware. What this map seems to show was that Clinton was strong in what I call the "hillbilly states" - Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. They were billy states because Bill won them in the 1990s. They are hilly states because Hillary won them in this year's primaries. These states could be weak for Obama, and he needs to supply some energy getting out the vote in these states. But in the end the result will be the same, because of the Keys: President Obama.