The most important election in years — and I’ll have no impact on it

Part of me wants to get some long lingering thoughts on Iraq out of my head today, but after yesterday’s speech and all the attendant and generally expected reactions I feel ever more frustrated and annoyed. As it is, the admittedly all-too-obvious headline I was going to use in part has already been done via Tim F. at Balloon Juice today so probably that’s a good thing.

Instead I found myself thinking about something that’s neither surprising nor satisfying considering I live in a democratic republic and not a direct democracy. Next year’s elections are in all likelihood going to be seen as the most heavily contested and considered to be vitally important in some time, even allowing for all the intense rhetoric that elections inevitably bring. (In comparison to something like 1996, for instance, there’s no contest, and even 2004 seems a bit tame now.) There are plenty of reasons why this is the case but that can and should be argued elsewhere. For myself, though, I’ve realized that unless I move somewhere within the next year and a half — a very unlikely possibility, though you never know — that my vote simply will not matter.

This may seem like stating the blatantly obvious — again, it’s a republic, not a democracy. Yet due to a combination of factors along with general historical accident, here’s what the likely situation is going to be come November 2008, barring something radically unusual (hopefully not tragically so):

• The presidency — the big one, of course. However, a GOP candidate has not won in California since the elder Bush in 1988. Even in 2004, with antipathy towards the younger Bush running high but not as high as it would later and Kerry proving to be a terribly uncharismatic figure, the latter still carried California 55 to 45 percent. This is absolutely no guarantee that whoever wins in the GOP primaries will not end up carrying the state — the writers on this polling geek site suggest that the issue of illegal immigration could complicate things, though I have my strong doubts about that. At this point I’ve no reason to doubt a Democratic candidate will win the state by a comfortable margin, while my local precinct in OC will go for the GOP candidate equally comfortably if not more so.
• The senatorial seats — out of contention, barring personal misfortune on the part of the current officeholders. Senator Feinstein was reelected in 2006, Senator Boxer runs again in 2010.
• My local representative in the House — again, assuming no personal misfortune, that would be Dana Rohrabacher in the 46th district, who won in 2006 59 to 36 percent, and who I will vote against as I have always done since moving to the district. The likelihood of an upset is incredibly slim.

Meantime there’s no gubernatorial race, as Arnie won reelection last year. So the presidency and the House aside, this leaves me having to decide on state and local issues for the most part, even while the political campaigning for next year has already long been in overdrive, while still being months away from whatever the first contests that elect delegates for the conventions will be.

This leaves me in a strange looking-glass scenario — I am still determining how best my energies will be spent next year, and it’s certainly in the interest of the country that the candidates of either major party in the presidential election be the best possible in the field to serve the country as a whole, however beholden to maintaining a general status quo they will be regardless. If one of them is an obvious disaster then the election will merely confirm it, if both are then the country is stuck with deciding the lesser of two evils, a situation I suspect will be the one that we all face in the end. This potentially makes the California primary the most important election I could participate in next year, but as the current primary system is closed rather than open and I am registered with no party, I must observe and encourage rather than help directly decide.

None of which is to sound like I am discouraged from voting — far from it. Neither does it mean that I am halted from contributing time and money for any particular candidate should I so decide. But it also means that much of the next fifteen months’ activity will likely be somewhat academic to me. I’m honestly not too sure how I feel about that right now, but it’s a position likely shared by many others, who will speak and act as they do but otherwise must mostly watch and wait.

Another archival piece from a different source, on a-ha

A couple of quick posts on ILM by Ethan P. reminded me of this effort of mine from the ILMiXor project two years back. a-ha was and is a stellar band; if their output is now long removed from a commercial heyday in the States, their influence remains in sometimes unusual ways (as was noted many times previously on ILX and elsewhere, the fact that U2’s “Beautiful Day” bears a suspicious resemblance to “The Sun Always Shines On TV” can’t be coincidental).

That said, my piece was about a non-single from the Scoundrel Days album, “The Swing of Things.” I stand by everything in my review, it’s just THAT good a song. I’ve also just realized the mp3 link still works, at least for the moment, so if you haven’t heard it, get over there. Trust me.

Another summer sunrise in SoCal

And there it is. This was from last week before my trip home as I waited for the bus.

Even more MBV news, it turns out — thanks to Japancakes

Here’s their Myspace page, but the real news comes courtesy of the Darla website:

JAPANCAKES – Loveless CD (Darla: DRL188: 708527018828) $12.00

EXCLUSIVE. Athens, GA’s experimental, instrumental, Americana group, Japancakes cover My Bloody Valentine’s classic Loveless record from start to finish with pedal steel and cello in place of vocal and lead melodies — and without any distortion. MBV’s Loveless (Creation: 1991) remains the defining record of the genre and completely unparalleled by any artist since. This is super fun! Japancakes don’t record together like other bands. They do play together but when they record in studio they do so one at a time. Each player writes their own part and adds it to the part(s) recorded previously by fellow band members. The result of this practice is that the personality of each individual player is often better captured. Each player’s individual performance is strengthened by the technique. Japancakes is Eric Berg, rhythm guitar, Nick Belli, bass, Brant Rackey, drums, John Neff, pedal steel, Heather McIntosh, cello, Andy Barker, production.

They’ve got a brief clip up of the start of “Only Shallow” so give it an ear. I blinked a bit when I first read about this but I like Japancakes well enough and the clip sounds good, so why not? Oddly (?) enough the thing it most reminds me of right now, at least conceptually, is the Ordinaires‘ version of “Kashmir” (which is apparently kicking around iTunes if you want to dig it up).