Now some people have never stopped believing that Hillary Clinton would finally be nominated as Democratic candidate for the US Presidential election in 2004. But until recently it seemed that there was really no reason to be Democratic nominee in 2004 if you would actually like to be President some day.

However, now that more and more Americans are waking up from their post-9/11-thought-paralysis and are beginning to ask questions about their current government’s actions and policies from Kyoto to Iraq to the estate tax abolition, the electoral maths has changed a little.

Should a Democrat indeed win the White House next year, it is hardly imaginable that he would not be nominated for a second term in 2008. In that case, the earliest possible election in which Mrs Clinton could be nominated would be 2012, and as the American electorate is almost evenly divided between the two parties, swing voters would make the difference (now that may change until 2012, but where’s Yoda when you need him…).

My guess is that the odds of having three consecutive Democratic presidencies are too small for Mrs Clinton to bet her Presidential ambitions on them.

The problem is that her strategy will now depend on two variables – the Democratic primaries and Bush’s approval rates. Howard Dean may just be an inch too far on the left to be the clear winner of the primaries. But more centrist candidates would have more trouble to position themselves against Mr Bush, and if things remain bleak in Iraq, a lot of Americans might vote Republican as a Patriotic reflex, so even the latest entrant in the Democratic race, former NATO commander Wesley Clark, who clearly had some people do this kind of math might not make the difference.

Mrs Clinton, on the other hand, would easily turn the Presidential election into “The Return Of The Jedi” – I guess her public statements in the coming months will be a good indicator of President Bush’s reelection prospects.

Call me crazy, but now I think there’s actually a certain possibility for a Clinton/Dean Democratic ticket next year…

Alternet has the transcript of an interview of Princeton economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman that was conducted by Terence McNally for his programme “Free Forum” on KPFK, a Los Angeles radio station. Of course, Krugman has a new book out (and I’m not talking about the economics textbook he has been writing with his wife Robin Wells) that needs to be marketed. Although The Great Unravelling doesn’t need to be marketed too badly, as it is already on the NY Times bestseller list.

And there’s a reason the book is a bestseller. Not only is Mr Krugman one of the rare breed of economists who did not loose the ability to use words after having been exposed to intermediate economics, he also able to apply the knowledge acquired in said lecture to gain a much clearer understanding of certain things than many others – and write about them. Mr Krugman is a convincing man, because he, as opposed to many of his newly acquired followers on the left, as well as those from the tirghtwho fiercly oppose him, can do his own arithmetic. And this is how he became one of the most influential critics of President Bush’s policies, economic and otherwise, as hailed by a left in dire need of credible backing as hated by the right.

Particularly in recent months, he has been villified by the right-wing US establishment for his alligation that the current administration had not only been lying about pretty much every policy enacted but also that this presidency’s main political objective were to destroy any possible future role for redistributional federal policies by depriving the government of a viable tax base (and thereby, in the long run, effectively lock in the kind of plutocratic autoritarian bourgeouis society favoured by the people in power in the US these days).

It is hard to argue with such assertions without a proper grasp of, well, the numbers he used to come to that conclusion. But his book’s main point is actually not what I found most remarkable in the radio interview mentioned above. What I found most remarkable was his claim that the American media was not reporting as truthful as possible because of a climate of fear – maybe that’s another reason why the US did not fare too well in the latest press freedom report by the NGO Reporters Sans Frontières (#31).

Here’s what Paul Krugman said –

Krugman: … One is that the media are desperately afraid of being accused of bias. And that’s partly because there’s a whole machine out there, an organized attempt to accuse them of bias whenever they say anything that the right doesn’t like. So rather than really try to report things objectively, they settle for being even-handed, which is not the same thing. One of my lines in a column – in which a number of people thought I was insulting them personally – was that if Bush said the earth was flat, the mainstream media would have stories with the headline: “Shape of the Earth – Views Differ.” Then they’d quote some Democrats saying that it was round. Journalistic organizations are afraid of being accused of bias. There’s also a fair bit of low rate intimidation of journalists themselves. I have received a couple of elliptical death threats but they weren’t serious. The real stuff is the hate mail that comes in enormous quantities. Organizations try their best to find some scandal in your personal life and disseminate it. I don’t think a lot of journalists are sitting around saying: “I better not cross these guys, they’ll ruin me.” But they do know that every time they say anything the right doesn’t like to hear, they get the equivalent of a nasty electric shock. They sort of get conditioned not to go there.

Oh yeah, I remember: Land Of The Free, And Home Of The Brave.

The day of this year’s funniest election has finally arrived.

Today registered voters in California are going to decide whether to dethrone their incumbent governor Gray Davis and if so, with whom to replace him. In spite of a campaign that was content void even by American standards and despite recent allegations of sexual harassment in times gone by, Arnold Schwarzenegger is still leading the pack of more than 130 candidates. Whatever the truth to these “timely” allegations, they are not negligible and will probably have some effect on voters.

Speaking of effect on voters: Dear Californian readers, I know it is not my business to judge the way this recall came about (a story about wealthy people financing a signature campaign, show business, budgetary difficulties and number-plate fees) and how this campaign was carried out. But even so, I would like to once again endorse Georgy “Beauty, Brains, Leadership” Russell whose campaign pledges you can read at www.georgyforgov.com. Should you want to know why exactly I endorse her, scroll down a bit in the main blog and you will see.

For all others, why not check out the NY Times Recall Full Coverage including a nice  interactive electoral map (update 06/02/2014 : link not working anymore) further explaining this strange democratic exercise that could possibly give rise to another banana republic stand-off resembling the presidential mud-fight in Florida three years ago. Court decisions have ensured that the election can be held even though a significant number of polling stations are equipped with the same punch card system that caused confusion in Florida. And just as in Florida, there are a quite a few absentee ballots, more than a million, who will only be counted after the polling stations close.

All this leaves me with two main questions: Why not use paper & pen? And why did Californians, living in one of the world’s main high-tech incubators, feel compelled to take the risk of a worldwide demonstration of the fallibility of (their) technology?