Dr. Jason Johnson discusses how gambling in sports could affect amateur players. Other panel members are Anita Kumar (The McClatchy Company White House Correspondent), George Will (Syndicated Columnist), and host, Chris Matthews.
Wyeth Ruthven
The Root: What Unity? Twitter Reveals a Great Divide Within Both Political Parties
Bernie Sanders dominates Snapchat, House Democrats just discovered Periscope and your grandma is starting to share her vacation on Facebook Live. Social media isn’t “mediating” life anymore; it is the primary mode of communication for Americans across class, race, gender and age. So when there is a Twitter analysis of the Republican and Democratic conventions, pundits, predictors and the press should all stand up and take notice.
The Qorvis MSLGroup, a public affairs firm in Washington, D.C., did some of the dusty old grunt work that used to be the meat and potatoes of old-school media outlets. It tracked down delegates from the Republican and Democratic conventions (more than 2,800), found the ones who actually had Twitter accounts and basically put its ears to the ground to listen to what delegates talked about over the last two weeks. What the firm found shows that the “unity” both parties try to put on display onstage and for television is not really happening across Twitter—the results of which could spell chaos or doom for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump this fall.
Below are two tables collecting some of the main data and tweets from delegates at both conventions. They break down volume amount and most popular hashtags, as well as which delegations were spending more time tweeting than actually listening to who was onstage.
How does that play out? The tweet tables show that two of the loudest and most active delegations during the RNC were from Kansas and Arizona. Ted Cruz won the Kansas caucus outright, snagging 13 delegates to Trump’s six. In Arizona, Trump crushed Cruz in a winner-take-all contest. However, thanks to some quick thinking on Cruz’s behalf, and the Trump campaign’s absolute inability to read the instructions, more pro-Cruz delegates were elected at the state party conference in Arizona than pro-Trump delegates.
The Twitter imprint of Ted Cruz was greater than his actual popularity in the party, but his supporters nevertheless drove coverage and content analysis of the convention. Think of it like an artist who has a huge Twitter following but hasn’t dropped a meaningful album in years.
“Vote your conscience,” Ted Cruz’s mic-drop moment during the GOP convention, was bound to be huge, but the fact that it was the biggest Twitter moment of the week among delegates guaranteed that it was covered as a turning point instead of a blip. It is also telling that although Trump spent seemingly every waking moment on Twitter, it was Cruz’s Twitter-following delegates who were pumping out the most tweets.
On the Democratic side, Twitter delegates were a bit more active and also more targeted in their comments and goals.
Roughly the same number of RNC and DNC delegates were on Twitter, but Democrats tweeted more: a lot more. If tweets were a measure of enthusiasm, the gap was quite huge, and it favors Democrats heading into the fall election.
Looking into this overall collection of tweets also spells out an interesting split, though, which the Democrats may still have to contend with this fall. Because the Democratic primary is more proportional than the GOP’s winner-take-all method, there were more Sanders delegates actively tweeting among delegates than there were, say, Cruz or Rubio supporters at the RNC. Which is why, on the first night of the convention, something like this could happen:
SPREAD THE WORD: Let’s support @NinaTurner for #VP, we can elect her from the floor of the convention! #DemsInPhillypic.twitter.com/4hEflJ8fQv
— RoseAnn DeMoro (@RoseAnnDeMoro) July 25, 2016
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Now, this was doomed to failure, but it shows a level of organization and tension in the party that is more evident through social media than just polling. While pro-Cruz and #NeverTrump people may actually stay home, that simply takes them off the table. #FeelTheBern types seem to want to stay engaged in the process; they just don’t want Hillary Clinton.
This has the potential to be a Ralph Nader situation whereby disaffected Sanders supporters stay engaged in the election this fall, but vote for Green Party nominee Jill Stein or throw out a slew of write-in candidates. When a prominent voice like Turner’s is still in the mix and refusing to endorse Clinton, this Twitter analysis at least suggests that online party unity for the Democrats may still be elusive.
To be fair, this is an analysis of a small segment of voters who are actually dedicated enough to take the time off work and pay their way to two conventions and suffer through unbearable heat in two cities. In other words, you have to be cautious about the generalizability and predictive power of these tweets. However, in a race where both errant and positive tweets become turning points in the campaign almost weekly, it would be equally naive to ignore these results.
While this research has only gone as far as the conventions, delegates are your hard-core party volunteers and influencers in campaigns back home. There is a good chance that if these delegate tweets are followed over the next 100 days, they will mirror or possibly predict what will finally happen on Election Day.
This article originally appeared online at The Root.
John Edwards Hide-A-Mistress SuperPAC
I’m having a hard time believing former North Carolina Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards was acquitted yesterday. This is a classic example of the violation of the very laws that make our nation great.
I cannot believe that a man who used his campaign funds to help Al Qaeda …. Wait … Oh – he didn’t use the money to fund terrorist cells? Well, I can’t believe that a former Senator can escape the hand of justice when he uses campaign funds to buy real-estate and … I’m sorry … He didn’t do that either?
So, all he actually did was use some of his rich friend’s money to cover up an affair? What in the name of Ken Starr was the Justice Department doing spending millions of dollars to investigate a grown man for cheating on his wife? That, more than anything else is what America should be thinking, if anything, about the John Edwards verdict that came out on Thursday.
Edwards had been under investigation for using big time donors to funnel money into his campaign to hide his mistress Rielle Hunter, and eventually their love child from the press. That’s it. That’s his crime. Using campaign funds to “hide” an employee who he had an affair and out of wedlock child with. He wasn’t funding a child slavery ring in Singapore, he wasn’t laundering money for drug cartels, sending checks to militia-men in Oklahoma or using campaign funds to build a new extension on his house. He, in full coordination with wealthy friends and donors, was spending money to cover up a mistake. A mistake, I might add, that was ultimately proved irrelevant because he was clearly a third wheel to Clinton and Obama in the 2008 primary.
This entire case is a classic example of how an overzealous Justice Department and the tabloid tastes of some segments of the American public can dictate policy when there is no serious harm done to the body of the Republic. Rielle Hunter was hired to film a documentary of the Edwards campaign, they got involved, she got pregnant he wanted to hide her. Since she was an employee of the campaign it’s not as if he created a fake job for her just to have his side-piece close to him at all times. Now that would be a former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevy level violation of public trust.
Instead, Edwards was just a run of the mill political cad, something that we see in American politics all the time. The kinds of people who actually cared about what Edwards was doing are the same kind of soap-opera watching, Camelot loving, Prince William and Kate fans that confuse American politicians with some type of modern day royalty with slightly less exotic titles. Unfortunately, there are enough people in the country who felt personally betrayed by Edward’s antics (cheating on a cancer – stricken wife; lying about a mistress) that the Obama Justice Department felt the need to do something. Which was only made more insane by the fact that after years of investigations first by Republican U.S. Attorney George Holding then by Obama Justice Department attorney Lanny Breuer they
lost the case. I think both of these guys are due an official Chris Darden breakdown.
The silliest part in all of this is that this case reflects the absolute ineptitude of most campaign finance law in American politics.
Using federal campaign funds to hide a mistress was only vaguely illegal back when Edwards was doing it in 2008. Now, after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling what Edwards did was par for the course. I spoke to a Democratic strategist that I know about the Edwards case and campaign finance in general and he put it pretty succinctly.
“John Edwards knew what he was doing was wrong. The problem is that our campaign finance laws don’t know what’s wrong anymore,” said Democratic strategist Wyeth Ruthven at Qorvis Communications. “The Edwards case dealt with $925,000 in suspect contributions. Presidential SuperPACs have already spent more than $90 million in this election cycle. If Edwards had pulled this stunt in 2012, his deep-pocketed friends could have created the Restore Our Mistresses SuperPAC and the FEC would be powerless to stop them.”
So the real problem in this case wasn’t simply that the Justice Department was overzealous, although that played a role. The issue is that the entire spirit of campaign finance laws have changed so much in the last 4 years that you’re going to have a hard time finding a jury full of people who think that your friends slipping you some cash to help cover up a wild weekend in Vegas constitutes a federal crime.
Let us all hope that this throwback provincialism to the 90’s panty raids conducted by the Republicans against Clinton never rears its head in modern times again. I’m willing to wager that plenty of other candidates are doing the same thing as John Edwards did four years ago, it’s just that today they can get a Super PAC to cover for them.
This article originally appeared online at Politic365.com.
Top 4 Takeaways from the Iowa Caucuses
One of the hardest things to get used to this year is the condensed schedules of otherwise regular activities in my life. I’ve done a lot of travelling this fall so my teaching schedule was condensed to twice a week. The NBA lockout gobbled up two months of the season and now there’s basketball every night as the league tries to squeeze 66 games into just a few months.
And now, just as I’m finally processing and adjusting to the results from the Iowa Caucuses we’re really just a few days away from next Tuesday’s New Hampshire Primary.
To give you context, in 1980 there were 36 days between the Iowa and New Hampshire nomination contests, this year: 7 days. Nevertheless there are a few lessons worth sharing from the Iowa Caucuses that are worth reviewing before the next debate and next Tuesday’s contests.
Lesson #1: Mitt Romney’s Got Issues
I had a pretty fascinating conversation with everyone’s favorite 90’s throwback black Republican J.C. Watts during the Caucuses a few hours before the votes came in. Watts, who was part of the Republican class of 1994 that took over the House after an absence of 40 years, made it very clear that if Romney didn’t get more than 25% of the vote in Iowa it was a victory for conservatives all throughout the party. This is not so much a values issue or Romney being stiff, but according to Watts, on a fundamental level Protestant and Christian Republicans are not comfortable with the idea of a man who believes that any other book besides the bible holds the word of God. This is no small issue to the GOP base, and the press in general has been too squeamish to really talk about it other than as a cultural issue.
Lesson #2: Republicans hate Voting Rights unless it’s Their Turn
One of the consistent stories since the Republican takeover in 2010 has been national GOP efforts to limit voting access. All across the country GOP led state legislatures are trying to force onerous requirements on voters, change voting laws and locations and basically do anything they can to harm President Obama’s base. Here’s the funny part though: The very voting initiatives that Republicans fight against on the state level are standard in their own primaries. The Republican presidential Caucus in Iowa features same day registration with easy access and few if any ID requirements. The South Carolina Primary takes place on a Saturday, increasing the ability of working class and hourly employees to get a chance to vote. I’m not sure if this counts as flip-flopping on voting rights but it certainly counts as hypocritical.
Lesson #3: The Freaks Come Out at Night
Being a part of the press during marathon elections is an experience until itself. Much of your time is spent running around one large building with other members of the press, doing television and radio appearances, writing stories and talking to experts who you didn’t meet 20 minutes ago. I spent a large chunk of the day with fellow Politic365 contributor Lenny McAllister who I will forever nickname “the Haaaardest workin’ man in Media” no slight to Tom Joyner.
Once the day drags past about 12 hours things start to get a bit loopy in the press room. Think about it: most reporters, commentators and anchors have been up since 7 a.m. By 8 p.m. if the votes aren’t counted people are getting antsy. By 9 p.m. you are fighting off sleep with as much 5 Hour Energy as you can gulp and by 11:00 p.m. or so?
Let’s just say there isn’t much difference between the press lounge and a church lock-in for a high-school youth group.
People bouncing balls off the wall, talking loud, throwing popcorn and darn near losing it on air. You have to see it to truly believe it. CNN’s anchors descended into something we are now affectionately referring to as CNN After Dark when Anderson Cooper and the rest of the anchors were so tired and punch drunk they’re singing 70’s porn tunes and making late night calls to local Republican officials just to chat them up on air. Imagine your dorm lounge at 3:00 a.m. during finals week when everyone is going nuts trying to stay awake then combine that with men and women making zillions of dollars a year to inform and entertain you on air. Yeah. It was nuts.
Lesson #4: It Always Feels Like Twitter’s Watching You
An interesting report was released a day after the Caucuses by Qorvis Communications a consulting and communications firm based in Washington D.C. about the value of Twitter during the Iowa Caucus.
“Twitter doesn’t measure votes, Twitter measures momentum,” said Wyeth Ruthven, a senior director at Qorvis Communications and author of the Twitter Valuation Analysis. “The tremendous overnight growth of Rick Santorum and Ron Paul give them a social media bounce heading into New Hampshire. It proves Twitter is a uniquely scalable medium for spreading a political message.”
| Followers at 8am | Followers at 8pm | Followers Gained | Percentage Growth | |
| @RickSantorum | 58,048 | 63,115 | 5,067 | 8.73% |
| @RonPaul | 152,634 | 158,255 | 5,621 | 3.68% |
| @MittRomney | 225,097 | 227,987 | 2,890 | 1.28% |
| @BarackObama | 11,731,458 | 11,735,320 | 3,862 | 0.02% |
The report goes on to show that many of the GOP candidates had been gaining Twitter followers all day, suggesting a real “surge” the likes of which we’ve never been able to assess before.
Does this mean that we can start predicting local elections and results from Twitter followers?
Not necessarily, but it does suggest, as Mr. Ruthven points out, that momentum is now measurable in ways we didn’t know before. It is rather telling that on a night that was all about him and his first major contest Mitt Romney actually gained fewer actual Twitter followers than President Obama. Where was that enthusiasm gap again?
There are of course other lessons from this first electoral contest. The Republicans might learn another lesson in electoral failure if they do not find a way to fix the fact that the top three candidates on their ticket, Romney, Paul and Santorum, all have horrible racial bugaboos. Another lesson might be that we have all learned that Rick Perry has solidified himself as the Ryan Leaf of presidential politics. But overall, there just aren’t enough days between Iowa and New Hampshire to draw too many lessons. It’s much better to just watch the weekend’s debates and see how this all plays out. Trust me: there will be bigger lessons to learn once the field is thinned even more after the next contest.
This article originally appeared online at Politic365.com.
The curse of the 60th vote
Everyone wants to be the difference maker in Washington D.C. John McCain made a career out of playing the moderate Republican whose swing vote was up for grabs so long as the other side made a persuasive policy argument. Positioning yourself as the critical vote on national policy issues is a great way to get on “Meet the Press,” increase your stature back home and maybe even launch yourself into the White House.
The healthcare reform debate has thrown that conventional wisdom out the window.
Being the swing vote on healthcare has been a one-way ticket to political oblivion. The “Curse of the 60th Vote” has been cast and it just might change Washington for years to come.
The Obama administration spent their first year in office begging, pleading and cajoling Democratic senators to push through healthcare reform. Unfortunately, President Obama just created spoiled brats out of senators looking to increase their political stature. That’s the way it goes with all coddling. Once Obama and Majority Leader Harry Reid tipped their hand and admitted that it would take 60 votes in the Senate to pass healthcare reform, everyone lined up to be that all powerful ‘60th vote’ that would deliver or kill healthcare.
Most senators who had concerns about the bill kept them to themselves or shared them with the White House behind closed doors. That may be the most sincere and professional way to make policy, but it’s not the recipe for increasing your clout in Washington. To be a real power player your vote has to become a public spectacle. You spend weeks as a media darling by teasing talk show hosts about which way you’ll stand on the legislation. “How will Senator X vote?” becomes the hot topic on every crawl screen for the cable networks. Your constituents, Red or Blue, are thrilled that it all comes down to you, and the White House is at your beck and call.
Washington has always worked this way, until “the Curse.”
Playing yourself into the all-powerful 60th vote on healthcare reform has backfired on just about everyone who has made a move into that position – from incumbent senators to those running for office. Wyeth Ruthven, a Washington-based Democratic campaign operative put it succinctly: “It’s the Curse of the 60th Senator. The electorate has turned on every senator that has been seen as the decisive 60th vote for health care reform. The approval ratings of Rep. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) melted in the spotlight. Margaret Coakley’s role as the 60th vote cost her the Massachusetts Senate seat election. It is the biggest political hot seat in Washington.
Lincoln tried to play the conflicted moderate for the cameras. She was dropped by her base, conservatives went after her and now she’s in the race of her life this fall. When Nelson held up the healthcare vote until he got a policy bribe for his state, he dropped 20 points in the polls and now he’s scrambling to restore his integrity.
Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-Conn.) gutless backtracking from his own policy proposals made him the crucial 60th vote and he threatened to trap the health reform bill in the Senate. Nobody bought his contrived hang wringing about a principled vote on the Sunday talk shows. Voters know a dirty power play when they see one. Lieberman’s numbers have fallen so far in his home state that he’s contemplating not running for re-election.
Having claimed three victims already, the “Curse of the 60th vote” slowly settled itself upon the special election in Massachusetts. Once Republicans made it clear to voters that a Coakley victory would make her the crucial 60th vote on healthcare reform, she became the target of everyone’s national frustrations and lost in an upset to Scott Brown.
The only way to lift the Curse of the 60th vote was to not play politics and either stand in favor or against the healthcare bill early. Conservative senators such as Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) quietly pledged support early and nothing happened to them. Voters on both sides of this issue are passionate, and the lesson to be learned here is pretty simple: If you have to make a tough political decision, make it early. No one gains political points by being at the center of the most contentious policy debate in 20 years. Even if healthcare fails, the curse of the 60th vote will still be hovering out there for any future policy battles, and maybe next time Senators will learn their lesson faster.
