Big Sky Cairn

There’s no doubt that the lefties in Hollywood tried their hardest to pave the way for a woman or minority President. Out of 43, exactly zero have been black or female, but if you were an alien learning what you can about our society from our movies you’d probably think that being black or female was prerequisite for being the President (or, I supposed flying FA-18 Superhornets against invading forces of, well, Aliens).

While I have absolutely no problem with this, it was fun to watch them struggle so hard to lay the groundwork for Her Inevitableness, HRC. Remember, this lady - the one that Democrats tossed down the toilet for the glowing but empty rhetoric of The One - had been campaigning for the Presidency for eight years. She’d been building networks, raising money, fine-tuning her image, carefully balancing her voting record - all to make herself electable. At a time when HRC was the odds-on favorite for President, Hollywood was making crappy shows like Commander in Chief to play off the coat tails of The West Wing (a liberal’s wet Dream Administration) and inoculate the zombie-masses to the inevitability of a woman in the White House.

Sadly, most Hollywood Presidents are too weak for my taste. Especially with the women, I just don’t like how Hollywod portrays fictitious female Presidents as Executive versions of our own Montana embarrassment Janette “I Cannot Vote For War” Rankin: too run by emotion to make tough decisions. I think portraying a female CiC that way dramatically misrepresents the dynamic strength real women show under pressure (think Thatcher), making them instead one-dimensional portrayals of what some Women’s Studies Class at UC Berkeley has identified and the essence of womyn. Blah.

There is, however, one significant exception to this rule. A fictional President with balls. That woman, of course, is Laura Roslin, the “I knew there is evil in the world and I will do whatever it takes to persevere against it” kickass lady President in Battlestar Galactica. Now that’s a lady I could get behind.

Which sort of brings me to the trivial point for which I originally intended to make the subject this post in a light-hearted way before it spun into a diatribe of movie criticdome.

Check.

This.

Out.

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Republicans nominate Kelleher to challenge Baucus. Democrats nominate Driscoll to challenge Rehberg. Montana lives up to its reputation as a political black box, and many - myself included - wake up this morning wondering what just happened. So what happened?

Our friend Montana Headlines theorizes that it’s name recognition in a crowded field that pushed these candidates over the top. Jay Stevens sees protest votes. Both, I think, have a point and can explain Kelleher’s win pretty well. I want to take their thoughts and integrate them into a larger scenario. Here’s what I think happened yesterday.

I think we saw the consequence of split ticket voting on strict party line ballots.

First, Montana voters are notoriously independent, and split-ticket voting (voting simultaneously for candidates from multiple parties) is quite prevalent. It’s why, for example, Republican Conrad Burns lost on the same ticket that Republican Denny Rehberg won on in 2006. As a state, we famously buck national trends and party distinctions.

Second, the highest billed ticket in this primary was the Presidential contest between Obama and Clinton. Given the unpopularity of President Bush and the skepticism many Montana Republicans feel toward McCain, there is a sense of discouraged inevitability among many Republicans that the winner of the Democratic Primary will be the next President. Since the Republican ticket was already set, I think many Montanans who lean Republican may have voted on the Democrat ticket in order to voice their opinion on this important question. Some probably voted for Hillary to continue the in-fighting on the left (Operation Chaos). Some probably voted for Obama because they really like him and will vote for him in the General Election. Most, I’m guessing, voted for Obama because he’s a much better option in their minds than Clinton and they don’t want to be stuck with another Clinton Administration. It was the importance of this race, and the fact that there weren’t any other hotly contested primaries among Republicans that made voting on the Democrat Ticket attractive.

Third, the Republicans who voted for the Democrat Presidential Candidate were locked into voting Democrat for the remainder of the ballot. Congressman Rehberg is still popular in Montana, especially among Republicans who may have selected what they considered to be the weaker of the two significant candidates in order to help ensure his seat was unthreatened.

Fourth, the Republican exodus to the Democrat ballot (again, not for insidious Operation Chaos reasons) left the Republican ticket vulnerable to greater influence from a smaller number of people with an axe to grind (see Jay Stevens’ analysis). Coupled with a crowded field in which no candidate was able to get in front of the pack (see Montana Headlines’ take above) an overall minority of voters (36%) was able to nominate the winning candidate as the majority of voters (64%) split their votes among the remaining candidates.

And pre-emptively, no, I don’t have any hard proof. Like most Montanans I know, I’m still scratching my head. This is my guess.

Democrats have been eager to convince Republicans that their vote doesn’t matter in today’s primary elections. Missoulapolis and Montana Headlines have already done an excellent job of disproving this misrepresentation, so I’m going to take a different tack and suggest that contrary to what you are probably reading in the Montana media, voting in the Democrat Party’s primary probably isn’t going to matter that much either.

Here are five reasons the Montana Democrat’s Presidential Primary is irrelevant on the national stage.

1) Super Delegates - Surprise, you’re voting in an elitist Democrat Party system that is designed to reign in the unpredictable vote of the people - your vote if you dare to buck who The Party thinks you should vote for. In Montana, unless you’re one of eight super-delegates whose single votes can cancel over 100,000 opposing plebiscite ballots, the Democrat Party doesn’t really care who you think should be the Democrat Nominee for the Presidency. Hope you vote correctly!

2) The Democrat Party already knows what you want - In Michigan, no votes were cast for Obama because - well - he wasn’t on the ballot. Hillary Clinton was on the ballot - against the will of her party - and earned 55 percent of the vote. The Democrat Party decided to award Obama the majority of Michigan’s delegates anyway because, well, they already know how the people of Michigan were going to vote so why actually go to the trouble of counting their votes? If Montana gets it wrong, well, thank God super delegates can save Montana Democrats from their own ignorance.

3) Puerto Rico - So even if Montana minds it’s p’s and q’s, and does what it’s supposed to do, it doesn’t matter. The Democrat Party doesn’t really care that much about what Montana thinks anyway. See, there are 50 states (unless you’re Obama) and the Democrat Party has determined that what the people of Puerto Rico think is more important than more than half of them (27, to be exact). Puerto Rico has 55 Democrat delegates. Montana has 25 or less than half of Puerto Rico. Really want to the Democrats to listen to you? Avoid U.S. citizenship - and all hail the international community!

4) It’s already over - It’s really gotta be hard on the Montana Democrats who have been so excited about their votes making a difference today. There’s got to be some frustration that Hillary couldn’t keep a lid on her plans to concede for 24 itsy-bitsy more hours so they could have their fun (and for that matter, she spoiled the fun for Andrew Hammond too). Not that her exit is really that important since pundits have been calling her challenge mathematically impossible for months now.

5) McCain wins Montana anyway - Doesn’t matter who gets the Democrat nomination. McCain beats ‘em both in Montana - land of the bitter gun-clinging racists.

Last night, I was watching Keith Olbermann’s Countdown on MSNBC when I got the shock of my life. Before me was Hillary Clinton telling the story of how her father taught her to shoot a rifle when she was little girl and following the telling with a passionate defense of my right to possess a firearm. Given Hillary Clinton’s record on this issue, a zero from Gun Owners of America, an F from the National Rifle Association and a 100% from the Brady Campaign, I was stunned by her comments.

She considers possession of a firearm a right? She understands my passion about the issue? She respects that many Americans pass the lessons and responsibilities of proper gun ownership onto their children as part of their heritage?

Is this not the same Hillary Clinton who in 2000 wanted every handgun in America registered and the records kept in a national database? Who in 1999 wanted to require that guns and ammo be stored separately (vastly limiting their effectiveness for self-defense)? Who voted against legislation that would have prevented victims of crime from suing gun manufacturers?

The hypocrisy is overwhelming.

Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty I am free at last.

So nice to purge the Apple software from my machine.

And here are 10 more.

On April 5, 2008, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will descend upon my fair city for a sold out rubber chicken dinner and some political rhetoric. While I highly doubt that either candidate will spend much quality time in my hometown, I thought I would put together a primer on how to survive a trip to the SBC (Silver-Bow County). After all, I wouldn’t want some terrible tragedy to befall either candidate or any member of their campaign.

10) In case you haven’t heard, let me be the first to tell you: Butte is a tough town. Brass knuckled, ball busting, fist fighting, look at me the wrong way and I’ll put your ass in ICU kind of tough. Even other Montanans are afraid of us, and Montanans don’t scare so easy.

So, if you’re standing in a bar/restaurant/church pew and the guy next to you bumps into you: Apologize. Yes, I know that technically it was his fault. But for your own safety you should, nay you must, say you’re sorry.

Odds are that he’s a perfectly reasonable fellow who will say, “No, that was my fault,” and walk away. But their is a slim, yet notable, chance that he is a brawler (as many of us are) and will decide to bloody your face for your disrespect.

I’m sure you’re thinking that this is all a bit extreme, and it is. But Butte is a town of extremes and you are an interloping foreigner so, for your own safety, say you’re sorry.

*Read the other nine tips after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »