Molecast audio: David Schultz talks about the growing rancor between Obama and the Clintons
Most of today’s Molecast politics chat with political analyst David Schultz is devoted to the escalating war of words and deeds between the Obama and Clinton camps. Monday night’s Democratic debate on CNN “was ugly,” he says. “If the Democrats have another debate like that on national television, there’s not a prayer that either Clinton or Obama are going to get elected in November.”
Hillary and Bill Clinton have succeeded in putting Barack Obama “off his game,” Schultz notes, “but think of where this puts us down the line, though. Clinton may be able to win the nomination because she does well with women and relatively well with Hispanics.” It doesn’t augur well for the general election, in his reckoning: “She doesn’t do well with blacks, with white males, with Republicans, or with independents.”
Molecast: David Schultz talks about the increasingly vitriolic Clinton/Obama battle (12:59)
Below the jump: excerpts of Schultz’s remarks
Molecast audio: The Mitt is still half-empty; Hillary, Obama, and race
In this week’s Campaign ‘08 talk, political analyst and Hamline University prof David Schultz says that Mitt Romney’s Michigan win is less than it’s being made out to be: “At this point, it looks like the Republican party establishment is betting on McCain,” he says. “The fiscal conservatives in the party like him the most; the evangelicals, while they seem to be most comfortable with Huckabee, probably can live with McCain; the Wall Street crowd certainly prefers McCain to everybody else.”
But the Democratic race remains no clearer than before as the candidates the Nevada and South Carolina contests of the next few days–which, says Schultz, put a premium on race (South Carolina) and union support (Nevada). “Several months ago, when it looked like the culinary workers union [in Nevada] might back [Clinton], she supported a proposition that would allow some of the caucuses to take place in the casinos,” he notes. “Now that the culinary workers have endorsed Obama, you see her backpedaling on that.”
Molecast: David Schultz on the presidential races heading into Nevada and SC (11:35)
Below the jump: more excerpts of Schultz’s remarks
Audio Barack Obama Campaign 08 David Schultz Hillary Clinton John McCain Mitt Romney Molecast News Politics Molecast audio: David Schultz on the picture after New Hampshire
We caught up with David Schultz on the fly last night, as he was returning from one trip and preparing to leave on another, to talk about the shifting fortunes of Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and McCain VP-wannabe Tim Pawlenty. In the upcoming legislative session, says the Hamline University political analyst, “You probably will see [Pawlenty] take fairly hard positions on taxes, which affects the bonding bill and transportation issues, and you might see him try to propose some other measures on social issues, all with the idea of trying to shore up his image.” But Schultz also notes that if McCain’s the nominee, then current frontrunner Mike Huckabee’s ties to evangelicals might make him the VP nominee of greatest use to McCain.
Molecast: David Schultz talks Hillary, Pawlenty, and the view after New Hampshire (10:22)
Below the jump: excerpts of Schultz’s comments
Audio Campaign 08 David Schultz Hillary Clinton John McCain Molecast New Hampshire Politics Tim Pawlenty Molecast audio: Is it recession yet? Doug Henwood explains who decides, how, and where we stand
In this Molecast, author and business/economics journalist Doug Henwood (who publishes Left Business Observer and hosts a weekly radio show on NYC’s WBAI) returns to explain how “recession” is officially demarcated by the National Bureau of Economic Research, and why we are not officially in one at present; he also offers the clearest account of where the US economy seems to stand now–in his own view and that of Wall Street–that I’ve read or heard from anyone since the housing bubble began to deflate last year.
“We may well be in recession or very close to it right now,” Henwood says. “But there’s also another possibility, which is that we’re really talking about a much more structural problem rather than a business cycle issue.”
Be sure to check out excerpts of Henwood’s remarks, below the jump.
Molecast: Doug Henwood talks recession and the state of the US economy (15:20)
Molecast audio: David Schultz talks about the pollster’s eroding art
On the day of the Iowa caucuses, we devote our weekly Campaign ‘08 Molecast with David Schultz to political polls from Iowa. Our latest conversation with the Hamline University prof and political analyst doesn’t revolve around handicapping the Iowa horse race–we’ll know those answers soon enough–but rather why polling data seems to be growing more erratic and less reliable. (In the last two major surveys of Iowa voters, for instance, CNN and the Des Moines Register differ by 9 points in their assessment of who’s leading the Democratic field and by what margin.)
Polling is fraught not only for new reasons having to do with people’s telephone habits, says Schultz, but for perennial reasons as well. In polling, “how do you figure out who’s actually showing up?” he asks. “Do you ask, do you plan on going to the caucus? Almost everybody will say yes… Often what you see pollsters do is say, ‘we asked likely caucus-goers.’ [But that could mean] people who have gone to the last two caucuses, or people who just said they were going, or…”
Molecast: David Schultz talks about political polls and the key issues in the closing days of the Iowa race (9:40)
Below the jump: excerpts of Schultz’s remarks
Molecast audio: State Senator Steve Murphy discusses the Lege’s special counsel investigation of MnDOT
The special-counsel investigation into MnDOT launched on December 19 got short shrift in local media during the holiday scramble, so we decided to kick off our Molecasts for the new year by phoning up Minnesota Sen. Steve Murphy, who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee and played a leading role in shepherding the $500,000 independent investigation by the Gray Plant Mooty law firm through committee. (Previous Mole coverage here and here.)
Murphy discusses the origins and purposes of the special investigation, along with Republican claims that the Legislature hired a partisan firm (”hogwash,” says Murphy) and some of the points investigators will probe.
For example: “Obviously there’s a relationship there that’s just a little too cozy,” Murphy says of the state’s decision to hire a consultant to participate in NTSB’s crash post-mortem. “If you read the contract that the governor signed with Wiss Janney, it basically leaves the door wide open as to what their role is, and who they’re accountable to, and who gets to see the information. The public is not going to see this information. It’s going to be kept by Carol Molnau and the Department of Transportation. I think that’s a tragedy.”
Molecast: Senate transportation committee chair Steve Murphy talks about the Legislature’s special investigation of MnDOT (14:39)
Below the jump: excerpts of Sen. Steve Murphy’s remarks
Molecast audio: David Schultz on unlikely frontrunners Obama and Huckabee
As we count down to the Iowa caucuses, the Mole’s weekly politics audio cast with political analyst David Schultz turns to the major parties’ insurgent leaders in the 2008 presidential sweepstakes, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee. Schultz surveys the turmoil in both parties, noting that a lot of Democratic “super-delegates” haven’t committed to a candidate yet: “That’s interesting, because people expected Senator Clinton to line up the super-delegates’ suppport very quickly. She hasn’t. Obama’s success right now may be more due to Clinton’s failures than necessarily to his having run a brilliant campaign.”
He goes on to spell out the Republicans’ dissatisfaction with their own unexpected chart-topper, Mike Huckabee. “What we’re really looking at here between the Democrats and the Republicans is an interesting issue,” says Schultz. “Neither of these parties are populist parties. These are parties controlled by the elites, and they worry when people start to think it’s actually their party.”
Molecast: David Schultz on both parties’ unexpected–and unwanted?–presidential frontrunners (11:22)
Below the jump: excerpts of David Schultz’s remarks
Molecast audio: David Schultz talks about the run-up to the Iowa caucuses
In today’s weekly Campaign ‘08 Molecast talk with political analyst David Schultz, we discuss the fast-approaching Iowa caucuses. The subjects include the last round of Iowa presidential debates, the role of Minnesota money and people in the Iowa race, and the suddenly tenuous-looking Hillary Clinton campaign. “It’s very volatile at this point,” Schultz offers. “Clinton really stands a chance of losing Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina–the first three. And if she does, in this very compressed [primary-season] framework, despite all the money she has, she may not have enough time to recover.”
Molecast: David Schultz on the closing days before the Iowa caucuses
Below the jump: excerpts of David Schultz’s remarks
Molecast audio: Kip Sullivan talks about the games health insurance companies play
Following last week’s David Shaffer/Strib story on medical insurance giant United Health’s chronic billing errors, I was curious to know how United’s “computer troubles” could prove so intractable, and so entirely beneficial to United Health. In today’s Molecast, local medical-industry watchdog and author (The Health Care Mess: How We Got Into It and How We’ll Get Out of It) Kip Sullivan talks about numerous means employed by United Health and other insurers to minimize costs at the expense of patient care.
Sullivan goes into detail about some of United’s past shenanigans, but emphasizes that UHC’s practices are far from unique. “When you hear conservatives say that competition could really be the solution to the American health care crisis, you just have to laugh,” he says. “There’s numerous reasons why that won’t work, but the big one is that the insurance industry’s so consolidated–and nowhere more than here in Minnesota. In Minnesota, we’ve got three insurance companies that have controlled three-fourths of the market for about 20 years.”
Molecast: Kip Sullivan talks about tricks of the health insurance trade (15:54)
Below the jump: excerpts of Sullivan’s remarks
Molecast audio: BTM’s Alex Stenback says local real estate troubles are “still early on in the game”
To get a handle on the deluge of real estate horror stories choking the news wire every day, we phoned local mortgage banker and Behind the Mortgage blogger Alex Stenback with a couple of basic questions: How’s the local housing market faring compared to those in other US metro areas? And how much further does he think the slide will go?
On the first count, Stenback says it’s difficult to tell, though he adds that housing inflation here was never as dramatic as in the most at-risk markets. On the second count, don’t hold your breath: “I still think we’re fairly early on in the game here. It would not surprise me to see values and the other metrics we use to measure the health of our real estate market decline for another 18 months.”
Molecast audio: Alex Stenback talks about the Twin Cities real estate slump (9:56)
Below the jump: excerpts of Alex Stenback’s remarks
Molecast audio: David Schultz on “the Oprah factor” and new media in ‘08 campaign
In the latest Tuesday politics Molecast with David Schultz, we discuss the role of celebrity, pop culture, and new media in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Besides offering his thoughts on Oprah and Barack Obama’s recent joint appearances, Schultz says to expect to see more candidates embracing online and alternative media venues. “There’s a great statistic,” he says. “In 1968, the average face-time that the national evening news gave to a presidential candidate was about 60 seconds. The average face-time now is about nine seconds.
“So candidates are now going to places where voters are and where young people are.”
Molecast: David Schultz talks about Oprah and Obama and the ways candidates use the pop-culture machine (8:37)
Below the jump: excerpts of Schultz’s remarks
Molecast audio: “The guts have been ripped out of black officers” at MPD
Following Monday’s announcement of the federal civil rights lawsuit filed by five African-American cops against the MPD and Chief Tim Dolan, we phoned local commentator and Police/Community Relations Council co-chair Ron Edwards (with whom we first discussed the racial divide inside the MPD back on October 29) to ask him if he and other PCRC members had ever tried to broach these issues with city officials before the matter was taken to court.
Edwards, who appeared at the Monday press conference where the suit was announced, tells the Mole that the complaints of black officers were no secret around City Hall: “As early as June of 2003, two high-ranking officers, Lt. Lee Edwards and Lt. Don Banham, appeared in closed session with City Council members present and discussed a multiplicity of concerns, including at least three-fourths of those in the current lawsuit.” More recently, Edwards says he and PCRC co-chair Clyde Bellecourt discussed the issues with Mayor RT Rybak just over a month ago.
Molecast: Ron Edwards on the MPD civil rights lawsuit and the reaction at City Hall (12:20)
Below the jump: excerpts of Ron Edwards’s comments
Molecast audio: David Schultz on the non-starting Franken campaign
It’s the negatives, stupid: Today in our weekly Campaign ‘08 conversation with David Schultz, the Hamline University management prof and political analyst plumbs the troubling numbers that continue to plague Democratic US Senate frontrunner Al Franken. “When I’ve gone out and talked to community groups in the suburbs,” says Schultz, “it’s clear by talking to Democrats as well as swing or independent voters, especially women, that they’re very, very uneasy with him. They don’t trust him.”
Schultz also notes Norm Coleman’s improving job ratings, and suggests that Democratic Senate challenger Mike Ciresi consider taking a page from the Arne Carlson playbook: Refuse to honor the party’s nomination and run against Franken in next September’s primary.
More: November poll results on the race from Rasmussen Reports and SurveyUSA.
Molecast: David Schultz talks about Al Franken, Mike Ciresi, Norm Coleman, and the 2008 US Senate race (11:51)
Below the jump: excerpts from David Schultz’s remarks
Molecast audio: How will the shortened primary season affect the presidential race?
Veteran political consultant Steve Cobble remembers that in the first presidential campaign he ever worked on–McGovern, ‘72–”we won our first primary in Wisconsin in April that year. And this election may be over for all intents and purposes by January 8. So that ought to give you a sense of how front-loaded [the process] is this time.”
Cobble is talking about the new primary schedule instituted for the 2008 presidential race, in which the old system of staggered state-by-state primaries running through late spring has been replaced by a much more abbreviated slate of four main rounds of primaries that occur early in the new year. I phoned Cobble–who’s currently on leave from the Institute for Policy Studies while he serves as political director of Dennis Kucinich’s presidential campaign–to ask about the impact of the foreshortened primary season on the ‘08 race for the White House.
Molecast: Steve Perry interviews Steve Cobble about the coming primary season. (13:36)
Below the jump: excerpts of Cobble’s remarks
Molecast audio: Author/journalist Doug Henwood on the real estate crisis and the faltering economy
According to Doug Henwood, the author (After the New Economy) and business/economics journalist whose Left Business Observer newsletter has been a must-read for over 20 years, it will be some time before we begin to know the full extent of the subprime mortgage crisis or its cascading effects on the larger economy. But there are plenty of signs already, and none of them are good.
I spoke to Henwood this morning. The potential for a worsening economy flowing from the housing mess is “very great,” he said. “No one really knows how the consequences of all these exotic securities will play out in the coming few months. No one knows what the effect on consumer attitudes and spending is going to be. The policymakers so far have been fairly restrained in their alarm… But it’s a scary position we’re in.”
More: Doug Henwood has a weekly radio show on New York’s WBAI, Thursdays at 5 eastern. You can check it at WBAI or at LBO.
Molecast: Doug Henwood talks about the real estate crisis and how it’s affecting the larger economy (13:26)
Below the jump: excerpts of Henwood’s remarks.
Molecast audio: David Schultz on the kickoff of primary season
I’m happy to announce that today’s Molecast marks the start of a new recurring feature. Through the course of the long political season to come, we’ll be checking in every Tuesday with Hamline University professor and political analyst David Schultz to get his views on the top emerging political stories of the week and to talk about on-the-ground developments in Minnesota that affect races for Congress and the White House and St. Paul’s upcoming Republican National Convention.
In today’s 10-minute audiocast, Schultz discusses a pair of issues he expects to see presidential candidates wrestling with as primary season gets underway in earnest, and offers his assessment of the status of the various presidential campaigns in the state.
Molecast: David Schultz (9:40)
Below the jump: excerpts from Schultz’s remarks
Internet Archive: Listen to vintage Mischke broadcasts
We should all be reminded occasionally that one of the last great radio minds resides right here among us. Of course we speak of TD Mischke, KSTP-AM’s resident prankster philosopher. “It’s [his] affectionate if not quite on the up-and-up relationship with listeners—one that is not formal or degrading or belligerent—that makes Mischke’s show so fascinating,” Jennifer Vogel wrote in a Rake profile a couple of years back. “It’s also what makes him the area’s best known underground radio sensation, the favorite of pizza delivery drivers, DIY auto repairmen, factory workers, insomniacs, late-night lonely guys, and women who lie in the dark wishing their boyfriends were more original.”
Come January, Mischke will mark 14 years on AM-1500’s airwaves. He’s been profiled in The Atlantic, by James Fallows (PDF link), as well as in the Rake article by Jennifer Vogel quoted above.
And though it’s still odd to think of him on the day shift, where he’s toiled since last year–his is a point of view that just, uh, makes more sense at night–I now realize, thanks to Taylor, that there are a lot of streaming Mischke podcasts at the Internet Archive. Below, a couple of the older ones:
UPDATE: What, you don’t like listening at Chipmunk Speed? We’ve substituted a file that plays at normal speed for the two that didn’t–which seems like a good deal to us–but the easiest thing is probably just to troll the selections and listen for yourself via the Internet Archive Mischke directory.
Mischke Broadcast, January 4, 1999
More: Mischke’s weekly-updated blog at KSTP; Mischke according to Wikipedia.
Molecast audio: Dr. Michael Osterholm on the bird flu story that went away and the bird flu threat that didn’t
Remember the Great Bird Flu Scare of ‘06 that seemed to fade from headlines as fast as it arrived? I was curious to know what happened to it, so I phoned Michael Osterholm, the former Minnesota state epidemiologist, author, and current director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. In our latest Molecast, Osterholm says the disappearance of the story reflects a kind of crisis-fatigue in policymaking circles as well as media–and warns that the most feared influenza strain, H5N1, continues to march and to mutate.
Molecast audio: Steve Perry interviews Dr. Michael Osterholm about scientists’ continuing pandemic flu worries (12:03).
More: Twin Cities journalist Maryn McKenna has an excellent series entitled “The Pandemic Vaccine Puzzle” at the CIDRAP site. I did a longer interview with Osterholm at City Pages in March 2006.
Below the jump: Excerpts from Osterholm’s remarks.
Molecast audio: Political analyst David Schultz says troubles of “imploding” DFL started right after ‘06 elections
How does a political party win big in one election cycle and turn up missing in action the very next year? I talked yesterday afternoon with Hamline professor and Minnesota politics analyst David Schultz about the recently publicized troubles of Minnesota’s DFL party, which has seemingly grown paralyzed this year over questions of mission, message, leadership, and party finances. Schultz argues that the seeds of Minnesota Democrats’ political downfall were sown about a year ago–when party leaders badly misread their sizable victory in the 2006 election cycle.
Molecast audio: Steve Perry interviews David Schultz (16:04)
Excerpts:
On Tim Pawlenty, Carol Molnau, and MnDOT:
“[Molnau] may be the only elected official in the state who doesn’t realize that she’s basically being hung out to dry by Tim Pawlenty. The longer Pawlenty keeps her on as MnDOT commissioner, the better it is for him. He’s showing up at all the nice events, all the good political events…. He sends Carol Molnau to all the committee hearings to take all the heat from the Democrats. She becomes basically his best tool…. The Democrats… are the ones who will eventually get rid of her in the first week of the session in February. The governor gets it both ways. He gets to have the protection from the heat… and eventually gets rid of Carol Molnau when the heat gets too big. The Democrats have fallen absolutely perfectly into a strategy that works to the benefit of Governor Pawlenty.”
On the DFL’s big mistake:
“The Democrats misinterpreted their [2006] victory. They emerged from the elections with almost 2/3, veto-proof majorities in both the House and Senate, with about 66 percent of the [seats]. The reality is, their real margin of victory was much smaller. They got 54-55 percent of the popular vote… They overplayed their hand, thinking they had a bigger victory than they did. The second thing they did was to misunderstand who gave them their victory. The soccer moms, Republican women who live in the suburbs, by overwhelming numbers said, ‘I can’t vote Republican anymore. I’m going to give the Democrats a chance.’… These were women who voted for Democrats because they cared about health care, early-childhood education, the environment…. The Democrats were given a golden opportunity, if they stuck to [this] core set of issues… to hold these Republican women and change Minnesota politics for 20 years [to come]… And they blew it. They did not stick to a core set of issues. Margaret Kelliher in the House and [Larry] Pogemiller in the Senate seemed to ignore this critical swing vote…. Didn’t have a message for them, didn’t do anything to bring them into the fold. As a result, [the DFL] got outmaneuvered in the legislative session.
“The longer-term mistake they have made is not recruiting a new generation of DFLers to change their party. When I moved here 22 years ago, I thought, look at this–all the people running the DFL are the sons and daughters of dead Democrats. Twenty years later, it’s now the grandsons and granddaughters of dead Democrats who are running the party…. So long as they stay insular, they’re going to continue to implode. They’re… a generation that’s looking backward and not toward the future.”
Molecast: Bridge inspector who criticized MnDOT before Congress says many colleagues “feel the same way I do”
When then-MnDOT bridge inspector Bart Andersen testified last month before the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, he told the panel, “In Minnesota, our Department of Transportation is broken and our transportation system is broken. … As a result, driving is now dangerous.”
Andersen’s testimony was quickly attacked by MnDOT officials, and it played in local media as a one-day story–a curious thing, given Andersen’s status as the only MnDOT inspector who has broken silence publicly about the 35W bridge collapse and the current state of the department. Andersen is free to speak because he’s not subject to the gag order his colleagues face: He left MnDOT’s employment in late October and went to work fulltime for his union, AFSCME.
In a 10-minute audio interview with the Daily Mole, Andersen elaborates on the reasons he testified as he did, and talks about the state of Minnesota’s bridges and of the Department of Transportation, where he worked for nearly 10 years.
Molecast: Steve Perry interviews former MnDOT inspector Bart Andersen (9:53)
More: Barb Kucera of Workday Minnesota talked to Andersen after his Congressional testimony.
Below the jump: Excerpts of Andersen’s remarks.
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