Apparently, George Will Didn't Learn Math at Princeton

In an effort to be continually informed, I spend many-a-morning (well, early afternoon) reading the paper as I eat my Old Man Cereal. I like to start things off by reading the Op-Ed page, and do so for a variety of reasons: as a Government junkie, I'm obsessed with learning how people respond to the news, and I always want to see what arguments are currently being used by the various pundits. This is especially true of those who are to the right on the political spectrum, with the logic being that it is always a good idea to see what it is your opponents are up to. So, at the risk of killing my blood pressure, I always take time to read the likes of, among others, Charles Krauthammer, Debra Saunders, and George Will.

Now George Will is a columnist I generally respect, even if it is very rare that I agree with him (at all). He has a very consistent philosophy to which he adheres, and his arguments are what I like to term, "not-retarded". However, in his latest editorial, Will failed to live up to that standard.



Overall, the editorial is rather scattershot in its aims--trying at different times to show that despite Obama's attempts to the contrary, that it's still politics at usual, that the Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot by selecting Hillary, and that early-voting is an abomination. It's this last part that had my eyes rolling. Check out this description of the problem as Will sees it:

In many states, voting extends over weeks, beginning before campaigns reach their informative crescendos. This plague has been encouraged by people, often Democrats, who insist, without much supporting evidence, that it increases voter turnout, especially among minorities and workers for whom the challenge of getting to polling places on a particular day is supposedly too burdensome. (emphasis added)

I like the fact that George Will, after 8 years of hearing about the great fuckup that is voting in a great portion of the country, has decided that no such problems exist. He has never heard of ridiculously large lines at the polling stations, or ballots running out, and so on. He also cannot possibly imagine that it may be inconvenient for someone, with say, A JOB, might not be able to make it to the voting booth that day. Not everyone can take that "one-hour lunch break" to make that trip to cast a vote, but that's an America with which George Will apparently has not had contact.

But the most galling aspect of the editorial is the conclusion that Will makes that because of "early voting", the Dems have doomed themselves to choosing Hillary over Obama. He notes how in California, there were thousands of votes that went to the also-ran John Edwards. If we follow his argument, we assume that if Obama received every one of those Edwards votes (highly unlikely, but still, keep following), that he would have won.



Um, George? Check the math. Hillary won 52% of the vote. That's called a majority. If we added the total Edwards votes to Obama's total, he still would have lost. In fact, if this addition were somehow able to combine to a GREATER number than 52%, I'd get the hell out of Dodge, because the laws of the Universe were clearly being messed with, and we could expect its imminent collapse any minute now.


This argument also assumes of course that the people who cast their votes early in the process were NOT the ones that had already made a firm decision months ago, and would probably change their mind as Election Day neared. While it is easy to make this assumption, I still like my theory that George Will needs to go back to school and get a textbook that covers basic arithmetic.