The election results are in... two and a half days ahead of schedule. Call your bookies; fearless predictions ahead:

• Riding a wave across the (south, southwest, west, midwest...), Democrats take back the House in stunning fashion. Final tally: 243 D, 192 R. (Fearless, I say!)
• With wins in Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia, the DSCC picks up the six seats they need to retake the Senate. Unfortunately for everyone, they fail to win in Tennessee, making Joe Lieberman the most valuable man in the Capitol: if the Republicans can convince Lieberman to caucus on their side of the aisle, they'll control the Senate; if they can't, the Democrats own Congress.

You heard it here first, folks. (Thanks to the Washington Post's Midterm Madness game [which I plan to win], my pick for every single Congressional race is viewable here.)

On Tuesday, voters in Michigan will confront Proposition 2, which seeks to disallow public organizations from the consideration of race or sex when making hiring or admissions decisions.

I've made several attempts now to write about Proposition 2, but each time I sit down, the post gets longer and more preachy. And that's not what I want to do. I support affirmative action; I think Proposition 2 is a mistake, and I think Jennifer Gratz is a big whiny whiner. But an in-depth defense of an actual policy is a bit heavy for these parts (and plus, who has the time to read write such a thing?). So instead, I'll link to a few good articles, and I'll make a couple of quick comments. As is my way.

Comment 1: From the New York Times piece:

"I don’t know a lot about Proposition 2, but I do know a neighbor kid, a good kid, a local kid with a 3.7-3.8 average, who didn’t get into the university and he should have," said Vicki Smith, who is white, shopping one afternoon at Kohls department store. "I do think there’s something wrong with their admissions."

Now listen, Vicki Smith. Maybe you're a very nice person. And if so, I'm sorry to have to say this. But if you're going to vote in favor of Proposition 2 because some white kid you know didn't get into Michigan (perhaps because his "3.7-3.8 average" wouldn't even have put him in the top half of the entering class), you're misguided.

Comment 2: One of the proposition's most vocal proponents is Jennifer Gratz, the 29-year-old leader of a group cunningly called "the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative" (Gratz, who must be one of the whiniest people on the planet, is somewhat famous for her starring role in Gratz v. Bollinger). She notes:

"We have a horrible history when it comes to race in this country. But that doesn’t make it right to give preference to the son of a black doctor at the expense of a poor student whose parents didn’t go to college."

In theory, I don't disagree. But that's not usually the way things work.

Affirmative action was designed to remedy the disconnect between a lofty goal (a race-neutral society) and real life (an anything-but-race-neutral society). It was not, and is not, intended to be a permanent fixture. Rather, it's a Band-Aid: it treats the symptom until we can figure out how to treat the disease. I can't think of anyone who believes affirmative action to be a perfect system, and I can't think of anyone who doesn't look forward to the day when merit-based judgments are sufficiently fair to eliminate the necessity for the consideration of race and gender.* But the allocation of rights and privileges according to merit is only a fair system if everyone has equal access to the mechanisms by which merit is measured. And right now, that is simply not the case.

Flip through any daily newspaper and you'll likely be confronted with a few particularly egregious examples of racial discrimination in action. But these examples tend to be isolated, and thus easily separable: not in my town; not in my country; not in my church. More subtle forms of racial discrimination, on the other hand (not to mention discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation), often pervade every aspect of our everyday lives. Employment, housing, education... these are the bedrocks of our civilization (bedrocks of incalculable importance if our civilization is to be one based on merit), and they are all vulnerable to the pernicious effects of racial bias. If discrimination is allowed to persist in these key areas, then we'll simply never get to a point where affirmative action is no longer required. And yes, racially-motivated affirmative action dictates that occasionally the son of a black doctor will beat out the better-qualified daughter of a white coal miner, and this is regrettable. But to prevent that injustice by prohibiting institutions from considering race at all would be very much cutting off the nose to spite the face. And that would be a shame.

Thanks to an unfortunate quirk in our system of government, one state's residents are generally prohibited from voting in another state's elections. For this reason, my interaction with this issue pretty much ends here. But if I did live in Michigan, I can say with absolute certainty that I'd be looking forward to voting against Proposition 2.

* - Note that I very much don't mean to slight the value of diversity. Instead, I choose to imagine that, in the perfect world of the future, merit will be judged in such a way as to have diversity built right in. How convenient!

Sunday's New York Times Book Review features an excellent 4,000-word essay on democracy by Washington Post columnist Michael Kinsley. Highly recommended.

Bill Frist, no longer certain of his chances at the actual White House, has decided to hedge his bets by building his own.

Oooh. Ahh! Fancy new fonts and colors!

I finally got around to a redesign (I even have an RSS feed now). The structural changes (including that snazzy hierarchical archive listing) are courtesy of a new Blogger template, but the rest was all me, baby! (In addition to the cleaner look, the careful reader will notice that I have also taken the time to update the links on the sidebar.)

Earlier this week, the administration turned heads with a few stronger-than-usual pronouncements of doom. Bush:

In Georgia, Bush drew sharp partisan distinctions as he belittled the opposition to the war, which is proving a powerful pro-Democrat issue: "The Democrat approach on Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win, and America loses," he said.

And Cheney:

"Whether it's al Qaeda or the other elements that are active in Iraq, they are betting on the proposition they can break the will of the American people," Cheney told Fox News. "...They're very sensitive to the fact that we've got an election scheduled."

Now, come on. All's fair in love and politics, but this is starting to piss me off. Not because it's wrong (which it is), or because it's such blatant fear-mongering* (which it so is). But because it's old fucking news. They used the exact same line, and used it effectively, in both 2002 and 2004. Let's go, electorate: demand originality!

* - "The only thing we have to fear... is fear itself! Oh, and the Democrats."

(In related news, Charlie Rangel called Dick Cheney a "son of a bitch." And then apologized by saying, "He is a son of a bitch, but I shouldn't have said it." Hard to argue with that.)

(Playing catch-up, as usual.) From Tuesday's New York Times comes a report on perhaps the most honorable man in politics.

[Kevin] Wiskus is a 42-year-old Iowa farmer and lifelong Republican from the town of Centerville, about 100 miles south of the capital, who is making his first run for public office for a [state] House seat.

He became so outraged by his own party’s efforts to elect him that he resigned last month in protest.

A mailing sent by the state committee told voters that Mr. Wiskus’s* Democratic opponent, a lawyer named Kurt Swaim, had defended a man charged with child molesting.

Mr. Wiskus knew that Mr. Swaim had been assigned the case by the court as a public defender, and decided the attack was unconscionable. He is now an independent, and said he would serve as an independent if elected.

The fact that such a modest display of professional decency passes for show-stopping political integrity doesn't exactly swell one's heart with pride. But in an age of utterly misleading attack ads ("My opponent voted ninety-four times to raise your taxes and steal body armor from The Troops!"), if Mr. Wiskus sticks to his word, I'll be impressed.

* - Do you suppose the Wiskus family has a cat? And if so, do you suppose he is legally obligated to be called Mr. Whiskers Wiskus?

Anxious for the chance to disabuse someone of their Republicanism (or, if you must, Democratism), but don't know any good Republicans to practice on? RedBlue has the answer!

RedBlue will create a private, one-on-one online dialogue process by matching participants with contrasting views. "Counterparts" will learn about the ground rules of productive dialogue, then engage on a difficult issue by viewing or reading a fictional narrative scenario that frames a front-page issue in personal, rather than theoretical, terms. Their email-style discussion will be monitored by a "virtual facilitator" that will make suggestions, provide feedback, and offer to step in when the heat of the moment threatens to derail the civility of the dialogue.

The site's not fully active yet, but if you sign up, they'll send you an email when it's all ready to go. I'm quite looking forward to it.

From the Onion: "Bush: Thousands Of Registered Democrats Needed For 'Extremely Important' Mission."

John Kerry: asking for trouble.

Kerry then told the [Pasadena City College] students that if they were able to navigate the education system, they could get comfortable jobs - "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq," he said to a mixture of laughter and gasps.

(Link courtesy of Wake-Up Call.)

Update: Well what do you know...

Second update: According to this morning's Wake-Up Call, "Today," "The Early Show" and "Good Morning America" all led with Kerry, who Hates the Troops.

Reportorial bons mots from the White House press corps, courtesy of the New York Times:

The exchanges grew testy at times, especially when Mr. Snow said Mr. Cheney is not someone who slips up. One reporter noted that the vice president had once used a profanity on the Senate floor, and also shot a friend in the face during a hunting accident last February.

Hard to read something like that and not laugh, isn't it?

David Brooks, whose opinion I respect, writes in defense of "the real Rick Santorum," a man who exists outside the realm of "political theater."

Like many people who admire his output, I disagree with Santorum on key matters like immigration, abortion, gay marriage. I’m often put off by his unnecessarily slashing style and his culture war rhetoric.

But government is ultimately not about the theater or the light shows of public controversy, it’s about legislation and results. And the substance of Santorum’s work is impressive. Bono, who has worked closely with him over the years, got it right: "I would suggest that Rick Santorum has a kind of Tourette’s disease; he will always say the most unpopular thing. But on our issues, he has been a defender of the most vulnerable."

Needless to say, I remain unconvinced. Santorum does more harm than good, and it'll be nice to see the back of him. But Brooks makes a fair point: lefties who lambaste Santorum every time he does something stupid (ahem) are often conspicuously silent when he does something smart. Accordingly, though I'm not sympathetic enough to actually praise the man, I suppose I can overcome my Rick-loathing long enough to link to a pro-Santorum David Brooks column (a column that I happen to disagree with). So that's a step.

Update: The NYT's Robin Toner has a new Santorum article up this morning, complete with an excellent attack-ad screen grab that seems to have been specifically designed for inclusion in this blog post. "Outside the realm of 'political theater'? I wouldn't hear of it!"