The travails of Twitter are a reminder that the model of the free internet - where users rarely expect to pay websites for services or content - is hard to make work. New services are cautious about introducing advertising for fear of annoying users. With more and more audio and video content on the web, sites have experimented with adding audio and video adverts, with mixed success. But when speech becomes the main method of interaction with computers - a switch which, thanks to vast improvements in speech recognition technology, is finally looking likely - it’ll become effectively impossible for advertising to provide the main income stream for content and service providers.

Which presents a problem - because paid services have an equally mixed history. Monthly-subscription models at news sites like the Wall Street Journal have seen low take-up, prompting Rupert Murdoch to consider dropping the pay wall last year. The New York Times’ pay model, TimesSelect, was dropped around the same time. Similarly, music subscription services like Napster - though I may like them - haven’t caught on in considerable numbers.

So what to do? The answer may lie in low charges and micro-payment systems. Expecting people to pay £2 an article or £20 a month for access is never going to become a mass-market proposition. But if every page-view, video-view, or listen to a piece of music on a website cost the user a couple of pennies, you could see solid revenue generation at a price that didn’t put users off.

The trick, of course, is the technology. The hassle of putting in credit card details is at least as much of a barrier to pay-per-article services as the cost. What’s needed is a single micro-payment system which sites could join. Once logged in, a user could surf a range of member sites - from newspapers to youtube to music providers - automatically being charged pennies for each page or piece of content consumed. A gauge in the corner of the screen would keep them abreast of charges. Once a month, the user would get a email bill for their total that month, and pay online or via automatic payment.

A system such as this is the only way smooth content delivery, without a point-and-click interface, can be funded. And in comparison to the advertising model, it could provide a far better revenue stream for content providers - necessary in areas like music and news where content creation is expensive. It’s also democratising - instead of a ghettoising division between free and paying customers, you get a natural spread of high- and low-demand users paying different amounts each month. In the long run, you could even adopt the same system for actual data charges.

The central obstacle is the lack of a simple system for in-the-background micro-charging with a monthly bill. What’s needed is someone to do it: ideally a globally-used payment service with a reputation for honesty and money for investment, which many websites already support and many users are already registered with. Now who could that be?

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It’s a natural instinct for Obama supporters to leap to his defence in the face of every attack by conservatives. And there is a lot of crap being thrown around. But as polling day looms, it’s worth remembering that there are some real problems with Obama and his candidacy. Whether any of them is a dealbreaker, I’ll leave up to you.

Three attacks on Obama that shouldn’t worry you…

1. He’s friends with some shady types. 

You already know about Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The McCain campaign is now focusing on William Ayers, the former violent 1960’s radical who has served on a charity board with Obama; there’s also been controversy over Obama’s links to Tony Rezko, the property dealer currently charged with corruption, and ACORN, a voter registration group that supported his early campaigns and has been accused of voter fraud. The four cases are very different: Ayers’ sins are most serious, but were longest ago, and there’s no real evidence the two were friends.h They do appear to have retained some charity connections after Obama found out about his past _ I’ll leave it up to you whether it would be more honourable to drop a charitable project because of its founder’s childhood crimes, or to condemn those crimes and persevere. Rev. Wright’s relationship with Obama was the longest, but his crimes were minor - if you consider a little light demagoguery a crime at all - and Obama has denounced them thoroughly and publicly (indeed, Sarah Palin seems to be about the only person left in the McCain campaign who doesn’t understand why he’s no longer an issue). ACORN supported Obama’s early campaigns, but Obama hasn’t been otherwise involved with them since the early 1990s, back in his community-organising days. 

Rezko is probably the most worrisome connection, as the crimes are recent and the two were genuinely close. But Obama is accused of no wrongdoing. In the end, these issues aren’t resonating with voters because there’s no evidence that Obama ever sympathised with or collaborated in any of their wrongdoings (with the possible exception of Wright). Supposed “revelations” by conservatives, usually providing evidence of slightly closer ties than previously thought, have failed to suggest Obama was complicit in anything illegal or reprehensible. Obama’s initial riposte - that he should be judged by his own past, not that of his friends - seems to satisfy most voters. After all, realistically, it seems unlikely anyone can rise in Chicago’s notorious political scene without picking up some questionable associations.

2. He voted “present” 130 times in the Illinois senate. 

File this one under “true but misleading”. In fact, he voted “present” 129 times, but this accounts for only 3% of the over 4,000 votes he participated in. Nor are these the fence-sitting abstentions they seem. Illinois allows senators to vote “present”, and it’s traditionally used as a way of opposing measures with a little less risk than voting “no”. You might think that a little cowardly, but Obama’s use of it is nothing special by Illinois standards.

3. He’s been a do-nothing in the U.S. Senate.

Obama has been accused of missing most Senate votes to focus on his campaigning. As one snarky article put it, “For twenty years, Obama has walked the floors of the most prestigious institutions in the nation, but has left no footprints other than those from his runs for whatever office came next.” And it’s true that, in the last year, Obama’s Senate record has been decimated by his campaigning. He’s missed 47% of votes this year, placing him third in Washington Post’s ranking of vote-missers. But who’s at number one, missing a whopping 64.1% of this years votes? You guessed it: one Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

And one that should

1. Accessibility. The press is right to be angry at its lack of any opportunity to question Sarah Palin, barring one, heavily stage-managed press conference a few weeks ago. But Obama has not gone out of his way to make himself accessible. His early press conferences were marked by his tendency not to directly address difficult questions. His campaign stops have generally eschewed the traditional Q&A with audiences. And his campaign has come down hard on reporters they feel have misrepresented it or the polls. Even his much-vaunted web presence, while utilising thousands of volunteers around America, has been highly centralised when it comes to the media message. None of this is a problem, per se. But it suggests a man who isn’t really comfortable with criticism. And we’ve had someone like that for the last eight years. If Obama wins, his supporters should join in the outrage if he doesn’t improve on  Bush’s terrible record of inaccessibility to the press.

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"Hey, can I call ya Joe?"

Who won Thursday’s vice-presidential debate? It depends on who you ask. The initial poll, from CNN’s panel of undecided Ohio voters, saw the Democrat Sen. Joe Biden rated as the winner 51-36. But conservatives have been crowing all weekend about the performance of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. “She was polished, direct, folksy and on message,” said one Republican strategist. Right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin put it more succinctly with a post titled simply, “Sarah Rocks!”

“I would like to see all the Sarah doubters and detractors in the Beltway/Manhattan corridor eat their words,” Malkin wrote. “Sarah Palin is the real deal. Five weeks on the campaign trail, thrust onto the national stage, she rocked tonight’s debate.”

Certainly, Palin’s confidence took the audience by surprise. The internet messaging service Twitter offers a live stream of users’ election-related updates. Before the debate, it was, well, a-twitter with messages gleefully anticipating the meltdown of Palin in the face of Joe Biden’s experience and grasp of the issues. As the debate wore on, they grew increasingly quiet, to be replaced by crowing republicans exulting at Palin’s performance.

So who won? Perhaps the real question is: what does it mean to ‘win’ an electoral debate? After all, these events are hardly like a traditional debate on a single topic, where the aim is simply to win a majority of the audience over to your side of the argument. An electoral debate such as this is an opportunity for both candidates to show their grace under pressure, their ability as a debater, and their grasp of the facts and issues. It is, presumably, intended to provide a glimpse of how they would deal with things in office.

By this standard, the imaginary trophy clearly goes to Joe Biden. On most issues - from the war on terror to the economy - his answers, though hardly stunningly detailed, demonstrated far greater hold on the facts than Sarah Palin’s. Indeed, Palin had one fairly serious factual gaffe - referring to the US general in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, as “General McLellan”. Biden responded directly both to moderator Gwen Ifill’s questions and to Palin’s challenges, while Palin avoided certain questions entirely, telling Ifill at one point, “I may not answer the question the way you want to hear, but I’ll talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record.”

So why are so many convinced that Palin, to use a common American metaphor, “hit it out of the park”? Partly, it’s because of the expectations game. After her disastrous interview with Katie Couric, anything better than blithering incoherence from Palin was bound to be seen as a stunning comeback. Or, as Queen Latifah told the audience in her impersonation of Ifill on this weekend’s Saturday Night Live, “due to the historically low expectations of Governor Palin, if she were to do a merely adequate job tonight - at no point cry, faint, run out of the building or vomit - you should consider the debate a tie.”

But it’s also because the aforementioned standard - the debate winner is the candidate who seems most prepared and on top of the issues - isn’t the standard by which debate winners are judged.

Elections, after all, are not fundamentally meritocratic. They’re not supposed to be won necessarily by the most competent, most experienced, most accomplished or most wise candidate. They’re not even always won by the candidate proposing the best answers to a society’s problems. The only guaranteed standard is that the winner will be the one the greatest number of people wants in the job - notwithstanding, of course, quirks of the electoral system that occasionally award victory to the candidate with fewer votes. For debates, too, the “winning” candidate is really the one who makes the most favourable impression on the public.

In my day job, I work as a legal journalist. I speak frequently to businessmen who tell me what they look for in their lawyers - what qualities convince them to spend hundreds of pounds per hour on one over another. Interestingly, they never tell me they chose a particular lawyer for their technical skill or grasp of the law. Not that it isn’t important. It’s just that, at the top level, that kind of knowledge is seen as a given: to be expected and, for a client, hard to assess. To choose between highly competent egg-heads, clients look for more intangible qualities. 24-hour availability. Keen commercial instincts. And, often decisively, a friendly, open demeanour. Given the choice between the world expert in a particular area of law, and a business-savvy, approachable advisor who merely knows it very well indeed, most will go for the latter.

Modern presidential politics is similar. Amidst all the claims and counter-claims, policy spats and questionable facts, the public doesn’t feel it can judge which candidate is most intelligent or most on top of their brief. There is a certain minimum standard for intelligence and aptitude that candidates have to meet - albeit a very low one - but once that standard is met, personalities become as important to many voters as their grasp on the issues or their brainpower. This has been true for a long time. In 1960, Richard Nixon famously bested John F. Kennedy in their debate in the minds of radio listeners, but Kennedy’s looks saw him score higher amongst TV viewers. In recent years, however, the importance of personal characteristics to political success has become more and more overt. Al Gore thought he was pummelling George W. Bush in the first 2000 debate as he offered slick answers and scoffed at Bush’s stumbling. But voters thought him arrogant and rude, and Bush saw the benefits.

Initial reviews of last week’s presidential debate handed it to McCain. But the polls quickly showed that it was Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrat, who benefited most from the occasion, which gave the still quite unknown - if extremely famous - young senator the opportunity to appear presidential under pressure before a mass audience. Republican John McCain was deemed to have turned voters off with his body language and demeanour towards Obama, particularly his lack of eye contact with his opponent, which many considered condescending. On Thursday, Biden held off from strongly attacking Palin to avoid the condescension trap. But he still seemed somewhat distant and offhand, while Palin, like Obama the week before, addressed both her opponent and the camera head-on.

More than any other candidate for national office in memory - with the possible exception of 1968 Nixon running mate Spiro Agnew - Palin has put personality front-and-centre of her campaign. Her much-vaunted convention speech was almost entirely autobiographical, and carefully calculated to appeal reinforce Palin’s credentials, not so much as a potential president, but as the representative in Washington of the American people. For all Obama’s talk of “the audacity of hope,” it’s Palin’s campaign that is truly audacious. She seeks to take the very thing which many feel makes her inappropriate for the vice-presidency - her everyday ordinariness - and make it her biggest strength.

The two candidates in Thursday’s debate, therefore, were aiming to do entirely different things. For Palin, it was essential to pass a certain minimum standard for competence and grasp of the issues; but once that was achieved, she could focus on reinforcing her populist appeal as a person. She met the first task, just about, by breathlessly reciting the talking points she had been cramming all week. She performed extremely well at the second, with a perky confidence that was remarkable, and a succession of folksy gimmicks - the wink, her remark “say it ain’t so, Joe” - that, while incensing traditionalists and some feminists, left her conservative base giddy with excitement. One conservative blogger said that Palin’s performance “sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America.”

For Biden, the goal was the reverse: to win a traditional debate victory, demonstrating his superior experience, knowledge and thoughtfulness, while passing a minimum standard of likeability by not appearing to bully or mock Palin. It’s a goal he clearly met. Biden wasn’t as loveable as Palin, but he didn’t need to be; Palin wasn’t as competent as Biden, but she didn’t have to be. Biden won the debate on the traditional measures of calm under pressure and grasp of the issues; Palin, supposedly at least, won on the modern measure of “connecting with the voters”.

I say “supposedly” because at this stage, it’s not clear how Palin’s folksy schtick really affected voters. And Biden had his own personality-led moment, towards the end of the debate, when he got choked up discussing the death of his wife and son. The results of CNN’s instant polling suggest this may have resonated with voters more than Palin’s winking.

In the end, there’s only one standard that really measures the winner of a debate - and that’s its effect on the polls. The initial signs are that, in the wake of the debate, Obama’s lead over John McCain continues to widen. That may have little to do with Thursday’s debate. But it’s worth remembering that, for vice-presidential candidates, the most important thing they can actually do for their campaign is to sell their running mate and score points on the other side’s presidential candidate. Biden’s refusal to directly attack Palin, while helping him avoid making her a figure of sympathy, also gave him plenty of time to pummel John McCain - singing his praises as a person, but slamming his positions and delivering a detailed critique of his claims to maverick status. He treated Palin like what, in the end, she is - a distraction from the question of who should be the next President. Though we’ll never know for sure the effect the debate has had on the polls, that strikes me as a victory Biden can be satisfied with.

Newsweek offers an editorial this week that addresses the issue of Palin’s qualifications in more detail and, frankly, with more coherence. Liberal hate-figure Karl Rove also offers a rebuttal.

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Think of any sci-fi film you’ve ever seen with a scene where a character uses the TVs of the future. There’s always about seven mini-screens, isn’t there? Ever since the introduction of computers with multiple applications in moveable window, split-screen has been used as lazy shorthand for an information-overloaded future. It’s a lesson CNN have learned well. Its daily politics show, the absurdly-named Situation Room - hosted by the equally surreally-named Wolf Blitzer - is like a transmission from the starship Enterprise, with a vast screen showing footage from the day’s press conferences and campaign stops, along with a bizarre array of polling data and micro-analysis.

Of course, amidst the noise, all actual thought is in danger of being drowned out. Viewers of Thursday’s vice-presidential debate who watched in high-definition gained the added bonus of a bank of mini-screens at the side showing the running totals of the network’s political analysts as they recorded each candidates’ good and bad “moments” throughout the debate. Seen in aggregate at the end of the debate, the figures were almost breathtakingly meaningless. When one commentator thinks Palin had over 50 good moments, and Biden around 30, and another gives the score at 15-20, nothing is proven except that to break down complicated arguments in such way is entirely subjective.

But one of CNN’s high-tech tools of “real-time analysis” really does add something. Running under the footage were live feedback from its panel of undecided voters. Rather than voting Palin-Biden, they specified (I’m not sure how, but presumably using some sort of electronic slider or dial) they said how positively or negatively they felt about whatever was happening on screen at the time. For the first presidential debate, CNN divided the sample into three lines, for Democrats, Republicans and Independents. The results gave an interesting insight into what Independents do respond to (getting out of Iraq) and don’t (appeals to patriotism). But the real fun came with Thursday’s vice-presidential debate, where CNN divided the sample into men and women. The results are seriously fascinating. When Palin was first picked, it was seen by many as a transparent bid for female votes; but Palin’s winking on Thursday has been likened by some to a “cocktail waitress act”, calculated to turn on male voters (with, it seems, some success). So what’s the real story?

Annoyingly, CNN’s web video doesn’t show the lines, dashing my hopes for post-match analysis. But this post points up some interesting moments:

Anytime either candidate mentioned the word “nuclear” (or, in Palin’s case, “nukular”), the line for men shot upwards — literally at the very moment the word was uttered, like some kind of magic button was pressed in their brains…

Whenever Sarah Palin spoke about her track record and accomplishments in Alaska, both of the plot lines were flat. Apparently nobody gives a shit about her accomplishments in Alaska…

When Palin spoke of representing “regular Joe Six Pack” Americans, the meters did go up…

When the critical question was asked (one of Ifil’s only really good questions, I think) about how the candidates would handle ascending to the Oval Office if the President were to die, Palin’s chart was nearly flatline…

When Biden went on the offensive against Palin, the numbers did not respond. Fortunately for him he rarely attacked Palin in the debate. Pundits on both sides criticized him for being too gentle, but the numbers, both on the graph and in the post-debate polls, speak for themselves.

Palin’s winking and cute you betchas and goshdarnits didn’t work, either. When she said she wasn’t going to answer the moderator’s questions, and when she joked that she was new to this campaign and hadn’t made many promises, both meter lines dropped. People may like her and may even strongly agree with some of her positions, but they don’t like Palin not taking things deadly seriously.

Graphing the Debates - graphpaper.com

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A small boy asleep on his right side, the right arm stuck out, the right hand hanging limp over the edge of the bed. Through a round grating in the side of a box a voice speaks softly.

“The Nile is the longest river in Africa and the second in length of all the rivers of the globe. Although falling short of the length of the Mississippi-Missouri, the Nile is at the head of all rivers as regards the length of its basin, which extends through 35 degrees of latitude …”

At breakfast the next morning, “Tommy,” some one says, “do you know which is the longest river in Africa?” A shaking of the head. “But don’t you remember something that begins: The Nile is the …”

“The - Nile - is - the - longest - river - in - Africa - and - the - second - in - length - of - all - the - rivers - of - the - globe …” The words come rushing out. “Although - falling - short - of …”

“Well now, which is the longest river in Africa?”

The eyes are blank. “I don’t know.”

“But the Nile, Tommy.”

“The - Nile - is - the - longest - river - in - Africa - and - second …”

“Then which river is the longest, Tommy?”

Tommy burst into tears. “I don’t know,” he howls.

-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

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I’ve never really decided quite where the irony-balance lies in this song. After all, David Byrne is as self-consciously urban (in the pre-MTV, racially neutral sense) as anyone. Certainly, as someone who regularly chafes at British culture’s knee-jerk for a nostalgic vision of country life, I can’t help but thrill at such unabashed horror at a back-to-nature future that many people at least claim to long for.

But that line in the last verse - “as it fell apart, nobody payed much attention” - hints at a darker interpretation. After all, one of the central ironies of the modern environmental movement is that the very close-to-nature lifestyle which some of its proponents call for is probably exactly what we’ll wind up with if the kind of “civilisation” Byrne eulogises here continues to run out of control.

Anyway, it’s funky. Enjoy.

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CNN: On the topic of never letting this [9/11] happen again, do you agree with the way the Bush administration has handled the war on terrorism, is there anything you would do differently?

A: I agree with the Bush administration that we take the fight to them. We never again let them come onto our soil and try to destroy not only our democracy, but communities like the community of New York. Never again. So yes, I do agree with taking the fight to the terrorists and stopping them over there.

POLITICO: Do you think our presence in Iraq and afghan and our continued presence there is inflaming islamic extremists?

A: I think our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan will lead to further security of our nation, again, because the mission is to take the fight over there. do not let them come over here and attempt again what they accomplished here, and that was some destruction. terrible destruction on that day. but since September 11, Americans uniting and rebuilding and committing to never letting that happen again.

- CNN.com - Sarah Palin’s first press meet

Now, look, who Americans elect is none of my business, and I understand that it’s possible to be intelligent without being articulate. But… really.

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This is the first time I’ve realised just how dangerous going negative could be for Obama. Thanks to - conspiracy alert - McCain-Feingold, this and all other Obama ads have to have his specific approval message on. There’s no way to run a Biden-fronted anti-McCain TV campaign that Obama can distance himself from. So every attack has to be balanced against the risk of losing the sheen of bipartisanship that has made Obama attractive so far - especially risky given that McCain has now set out so hard for that same ground.

Obama has to stick to the same strategy he pursued with his convention speech - stay broadly positive and put some meat on the bones. We need details, and more details. That promise of tax cuts for 95% of Americans needs to be repeated, and trumpeted, and sung from the hills till everyone is sick of it. Those details - those specific promises - are the only thing that can keep this campaign from sliding right into a 2004-style gutter of character assasination. And if it comes down to character, Obama will lose. Sorry, he will. If Americans go into that booth and choose the person who, deep down, they just feel they trust more, like more, or would rather have a beer with - it will be McCain who comes out on top. War hero trumps inspiring black guy. It just does.

It’s ironic, given the characterisation of Obama’s victory over Clinton as being one of style over substance, that policy - and particularly economic policy - is actually Obama’s big advantage. He’s not playing it enough.

UPDATE: Andrea Tantaros agrees with me, sort of

UPDATE 2: Sullivan puts it more succinctly:

Obama must maintain the high road. He must keep insisting that the McCain-Palin camp has no new policies to offer on the most critical issues we face, especially in foreign policy. And he must carefully and relentlessly explain what he intends to do. If he does that and refuses to take the bait, he will win. If he descends into the foul sewer where McCain now resides, he will lose.

Karl McCain knows one thing: how to smear, lie, disorient, distract, and intimidate. You can’t beat these thugs and liars at their own game. Beat them at the task of government. They are unfit for it. Obama is not.

UPDATE 3: Joe Biden kind of gets it (he also follow’s Sullivan’s earlier advice to ignore Palin). But will Obama follow this line?

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One Labour Prime Minister, two Labour Prime Minister… three….?

It is shortly after sun-rise on Wednesday morning in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Andalucia. I am in despair at the behaviour of ministers and MPs who were briefing against Gordon Brown once the Glasgow by-election result came in. Then the phone rings. It is the Today programme. Would I like to comment on David Miliband’s article in the Guardian? What article? They send it over on my Blackberry.

It is like a breath of fresh air after the stale self-indulgent solipsism from Warwick. It attacks the Tories. Hooray! It sets out Labour’s mistakes – not under Brown’s brief premiership but strategic wrong turns or failures to get out of first gear since 1997. At last! It suggests that Labour needs to do. On the record. Signed by a senior cabinet minister. About time!

So I tell Today I would like to comment and invite other ministers and MPs top attack the Tories and to discuss ideas and ideology and not personality. Big mistake. The phone goes silent as all the BBC wants from me as a Labour MP is to join in the get-Gordon dance.

pfpfpfpffff. Denis MacShane clearly has his own agenda. But I can’t help but feel there is something completely absurd about the firestorm that’s blown up about Milliband’s article in the Guardian. Is it a glowing endorsement of Gordon Brown? No, clearly not. But it’s hardly the scathing attack it’s been portrayed as. The declaration “The starting point is not debating personalities but winning the argument about our record, our vision for the future and how we achieve it” would be a bloody odd way to start a leadership campaign. He clearly feels significant changes need to be made if the Government is to be re-elected, and he clearly isn’t prepared to declare loudly that Brown is the man. Why should he, when all the signs are Gordon has lost all his nerve to put forward a strong platform? Milliband knows that an assasination might ultimately become necessary and he doesn’t want to lie through his teeth to the public. Good for him. At least when he stands, he’ll be able to say he was honest.

The kind of ultra-parsing we’ve seen of the article is reminiscent of some absurd theological dispute turning on the interpretation of a line of the Bible. Except the Bible is supposed to be the word of God, while this was an article in the Guardian clearly aimed at Labour supporters - no doubt written with great care by Milliband’s aides, but hardly in expectation of this sort of over-analysis.

“At his press conference yesterday, Miliband repeatedly dodged the question when he was asked if he would rule out standing for the leadership. He also made a point of saying that Gordon Brown could lead Labour to victory, not that he would or that he should. “

So acknowledging the possibility that Brown might resign - or that he may like to try for the job - makes him disloyal? Come on. The Standard even managed to hyper-ventilate about Milliband’s admission that “We needed better planning for how to win the peace in Iraq, not just win the war”. Even Bush has admitted this, for god’s sake!

What’s so exhausting is that the press has managed to remove Milliband’s actual meaning from the picture completely. “He’s a seasoned political operator,” declared David Grossman on Newsnight. “He knows we’re going to see it like this”. In this insane, cannibalised world, you can’t complain if the press puts the most sensational possible interpretation on a remark. If you’re familiar enough with their ways to know they might, then that might as well be what you meant.

What Milliband actually meant is obvious. Labour has run out of ideas and of spirit. It needs a radical agenda, passionately argued, to re-enthuse the voters. Endlessly claiming that Brown is the man to solve the economic slowdown, while appearing to do little about it, won’t do. If Brown endorses this approach, he can win and should stay. If he doesn’t, he - and Labour - are in trouble.

Is there any aspect of this anyone sensible can disagree with? At the risk of sounding naive, my genuine suspicion is that Milliband was amazed and dismayed to see the article interpreted in this way. And rightly so. With the party so far behind in the polls, to have simply leapt to Brown’s defence would have seemed disingenuous - indeed, Harriet Harman’s reputation is being damaged daily by her willingness to do so.

It’s just another sign of how our newspapers have come to lack all sense of proportion. A minor economic slowdown, likely to become a shallow two-year recession, is an economic crisis. Families forced to stop eating at restaurants so often are deemed to be “hurting” and “suffering”. And with the governing party starting electoral meltdown in the face, a reasoned piece by a cabinet member - that contains not one explicit criticism of Brown - is a declaration of civil war. Grow the fuck up.

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To people who get seduced by Tory talk of how liberal they are, I find something very curious in the man who was, and still is I believe, an exponent of capital punishment having late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls with Shami Chakrabarti.

- Andy Burnham, culture secretary.

Well, let them go if they don’t like it here.

- James McGrath, former adviser to the Mayor of London, in response to claims that older Afro-Caribbean Londoners might return to the West Indies as a result of Boris Johnson’s election.

Two brouhahas - one featuring a Labour minister, the other a minor Tory crony. But both show the same dangerous trend - for politically-motivated offence.

I’m completely flabbergasted that the majority of significant female commentators - men seem to have shied away - are convinced Burnham deliberately implied the head of Liberty, Chakrabarti, was boning David Davis. It’s just clearly not the case. Look at the language he used. “Hand-wringing” is a standard slur on bleeding-heart liberals. “Heart-melting” surely suggests friendship, affection even, but hardly romance. He could have gagged about them “in bed together” mixing the metaphorical sense with the literal. But for God’s sake, he talked about phone calls.

Shadow Justice Minister Eleanor Laing reportedly asked whether Burnham would have made such a remark had Chakrabati been a man. The answer, I suspect, is actually “yes”. As naff as it is, more explicit suggestions of sexual relations between male politicians are quite common. For example, the Mirror had a cover before the Iraq war of Tony Blair and George Bush pecking each other on the cheek, with the slogan “make love, not war”. As a rule, cautious politicians should avoid such tricks: they carry the risk of being seen as homophobic, if the idea of two powerful men in love is seen in itself to be funny. Where male and female public figures are implied to be an item, it’s likely the personalities themselves - rather than the whole idea of - gasp - men and women in love that’s funny. But this is irrelevant, because surely this isn’twhat Burnham meant. The sense of genuine bewilderment at Chakrabati’s furious misinterpretation is palpable in Burnham’s letter of apology.

On the surface, McGrath’s remarks are more worrying - not because racism is more worrying than sexism, but because the apparent endorsement of send-the-buggers-back repatriationism by the Australian amounts to a much more serious manifestation of racism than implying a male minster and a female campaigner might fancy each other does of sexism. Except, of course, it doesn’t, because that is not - as is immediately obvious, surely, to anyone with a brain - what McGrath was saying.

Darcus Howe - who, despite writing columns consisting essentially of unconnected, wildly unevidenced assertions about racism in a fairly random order, still evidently knows how to start a row - wrote a column before the election suggesting that older Afro-Caribbean voters might return to the West Indies in the event of a Johnson victory. The internet journalist interviewing McGrath put this point to him, gaining this response.

As with Burnham’s remark, there are two possible readings of this. Well, alright, three. One is simply that McGrath is a racist, who would prefer to see Britain free of immigrants (not counting himself) and endorses with enthusiasm the idea that Johnson’s policies may speed that day. This, it seems, is the interpretation some observers - not least the journalist who posed the question - have put on it.

The second, and most benign possibility, is that McGrath simply meant: anyone who doesn’t like it here can leave. London is not exactly suffering from underpopulation. Love it or leave it. I can imagine some of you scoffing at such a race-free interpretation. But let’s face it - there is nothing in McGrath’s actual remark to suggest this isn’t what he meant. The question asked about a specific group, but that doesn’t mean McGrath’s response doesn’t reflect his wider attitude.

The final interpretation is, I suspect, the most likely. This is that McGrath meant no racism, but that the remark revealed an underlying attitude that could be considered racist (but equally, would be considered not to be by many). This would be that first-generation immigrants, while welcome to stay as long as they want to, can’t expect society to change to meet their needs. As long as Britain suits them, they can stay. But if it doesn’t, they’re welcome to go home.

The problem with this view, this interpretation notes, is that it gives immigrants - and the elderly immigrants Howe was describing are, of course, now citizens - less of a value as members of society than “born and bred” Britons. No-one would ever say to anyone born and bred in Camden to leave London if they don’t like what’s happening to the city.

I don’t agree with that. There’s a tendency on both sides of the political spectrum towards the tyranny of the majority. It can be seen in Tebbit’s call for the unemployed to move to find work. If the political system, the reflection of the will of the majority, doesn’t meet the needs of a minority - doesn’t deliberately discriminate against them, but doesn’t satisfy them - that’s tough on them. This is hardly a stunning thing for a politician to say. Cities have never been cosy. Rising prices, gentrification, crime - all have driven plenty of long-settled residents out. Even if not stated, “if they don’t like it let them leave” is a steady part of any city’s ethos - at least, any city with the never-ending flow of aspiring residents gifted to London.

Which of these interpretations is the right one? I don’t know. But in the absence of any firm evidence, it seems wrong to assume the worst. Yet that is what many observers have done. Much like in the Burnham case.

How politically motivated is this rush to take offence? I honestly don’t know. Of course opposition MPs jumped on Burnham as proof that Labour is becoming the Nasty Party, and Ken Livingstone has been quick to call McGrath’s comments proof of the “real culture of City Hall”. But less predictable than the politicking has been the fury on the part of media commentators. This is what’s so worrying - people in the press taking offence simply because it’s the most suitable interpretation for a column. A rush to condemn, by people who are supposed to be outisde observers, because everyone enjoys reading that the Government are bastards and the Tories are racist.

Neither Burnham or McGrath has admitted meaning what they have taken to mean. The Burnham spat has died down with Chakrabarti’s acceptance of his apology. But Burnham - a well-meaning and competent, if profoundly boring, politican - has probably had his career chances singed. McGrath, incredibly, has been fired - not for being racist, Johnson made clear, but merely for seeming it.

The implications of this are worrying. All a politician has to do these days, it seems, to be embroiled in scandal, is to say something that could be misconstrued to have a meaning that would be sexist or racist. This in a time when politicians are being asked to speak for the media constantly. The internet, of course, exacerbates the problem. Burnham’s remarks were made in Progress, a regular pamphlet of the Labour right - ten years ago its contents would never have bubbled through to the mainstream press in time for the story to catch on. McGrath’s comments were made to an activist, Marc Wandsworth, written up on a “citizen’s journalism” website. Commentson the site focus on the stupid headline, which twists McGrath’s remarks into “Blacks should ‘go back home if they don’t like Mayor’”; and Wandsworth’s own sweeping generalisations about Australia.

The inevitable result, surely, will be that politicians will become scared to say anything of any consequence at all. And then we’ll start having a go at them for being bland…

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While the critical acclaim for PT Anderson’s There Will Be Blood may focus on Daniel Day-Lewis’ studiedly epic performance as oiligarch Daniel Plainview, or Johnny Greenwood’s remarkable, discomfiting soundtrack, much of the film’s cultural resonance may lie in its timely reminder for modern audiences, particularly outside the US, of the harsh nature of frontier life in the early American South and West - and its echoes in modern American politics. At the beginning of the film - loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil! - Plainview is a desperate, determined loner, literally scratching for silver at the bottom of a hand-dug mine in the Californian desert. With his discovery of oil, Plainview quickly develops a thriving business and a reputation as a giant of his field.

Not a word is spoken in the film until oil is discovered; immediately afterwards, we jump forward several years to hear Plainview, now a successful oil merchant, addressing a meeting of villagers as he makes his case why they should grant him the license to drill their recently-discovered bounty. Contrasting his own background as a genuine “oil man” to speculators seeking to work as middle-men, he extols the values of the small, closely-run business:

I do my own drilling and the men that work for me, work for me and they are men I know. I make it my business to be there and see to their work. I don’t lose my tools in the hole and spend months fishing for them; I don’t botch the cementing off and let water in the hole and ruin the whole lease. I’m a family man- I run a family business. This is my son and my partner, H.W. Plainview.

As I heard this speech I found it naggingly familiar, but couldn’t place it. Then I remembered: this style - this combination of simple language with small-town values - is the language of the modern American conservative movement, and the language of President George W. Bush. The emphasis on hard work over big ideas; the use of “family” as a catch-all codeword for wholesomeness and authenticity; the contrasting of narrow competence against untrustworthy intelligence, are all hallmarks of Bush’s often mangled, but highly effective speaking style. And, like modern conservatism, Plainview’s vision of honest business needs a bogey man to appear really attractive. It’s not enough for Plainview to claim to be honest; he must be more honest, more simple, more genuine, than the ill-defined other.

Out of all men that beg for a chance to drill your lots, maybe one in twenty will be oilmen; the rest will be speculators-men trying to get between you and the oilmen-to get some of the money that ought by rights come to you. Even if you find one that has money, and means to drill, he’ll maybe known nothing about drilling and he’ll have to hire out the job on contract, and then you’re depending on a contractor that’s trying to rush the job through so he can get another contract just as quick as he can. That is the way this works.

This almost-victim mentality is vital to the conservative movement of the last 30 years. Those opposed to it are always out-of-touch moneymen, suspicious characters from immoral cities, brains with no heart. It’s a world-view with a constant undercurrent of mistrust and fear. Most people who will say they want to help you good, ordinary people, Plainview is saying, are dishonest. Corrupt. Only a few good, simple men will listen to you. Only a few share your values. And I am one of them. It’s an echo of Ronald Reagan’s quip that “government is not the answer to the problem, it is the problem”; to Karl Rove’s carefully-constructed coalition of “values voters”. Bush’s down-home simplicity -his astonishing promise on 9/11 to “catch them folks that did this” - stands in marked contrast to the slick ways and fancy words of the untrustworthy Washington elite.

The point, of course, is that Plainview’s vision is a lie. The speech, the first words we hear him utter, is a carefully prepared set-piece speech masquerading as stumbling, homespun wisdom. Far from knowing and valuing his workmen, he works them in 12-hour shifts with minimal supervision, leading to tragic, avoidable accidents. Even his status as a family man, vital to his appeal, is a lie: H.W. is really the son of one of Plainview’s workmen, killed in an accident at work. Plainview keeps him around at least in part to shore up his public face as a committed family man, rather than a driven loner, and by the end of the film their relationship has totally broken down.

As the film progresses, the lies accrue. Tipped off to the presence of oil in the town of Little Boston, Plainview goes to great lengths to hide it from the locals in the hope of buying their arid land at knock-down prices. When word gets out, he promises the earth to the villagers - irrigation, roads, funding for their church - with no intention of paying them their fair share. And his simple frontiersman persona disappears as he builds himself a gothic mansion with his new fortune.

If you’ve been paying any attention for the last eight years, you’ll be getting the similarities. Bush’s family-man values are designed to mask a youth of drug-taking, alcoholism and womanising. For all his trumpeting of simple frontier values, he’s a child of incredible privilege. The child of a president, he campaigned in 2000, astonishingly, as a Washington outsider. A man who grew up in immense wealth, who was helped to power by the nation’s richest people and has executed that power frequently for their benefit, built his electoral appeal by endlessly evoking the image of the dirt-poor, simple frontiersman.

It’s often pointed out that it’s hard for us, in the static, ancient states of Europe, to identify with the American cult of the frontier: its rugged individualism, its disdain for intellectuals, its hostility towards government. But There Will Be Blood serves as a valuable reminder that those standing up and eulogising the simple frontier life have usually been selling something in a bid to escape it. Bush’s simple-family-guy persona has its real roots not in the genuine rhythms and manners of life in the American South and West, but in the carefully constructed performance of the oil salesman. Like Plainview, Bush is an oil man through and through; and, like Plainview, he doesn’t let the truth get in the way of a sale.

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While the high-tech schemes for reducing climate change might grab many of the media headlines, ideas like this show the environmental movement at its most radical. As I’ve noted before, there are various ways in which we can hope to intervene to reduce the climate dangers inherent in our current level of economic activity. One way is to reduce the carbon emissions required for energy production, through renewable energy; another is to mitigate the effects of carbon emissions, through carbon sinks, harvesters, or, yes, giant space mirrors. These areas are where the science-fiction stuff generally comes in.

But there’s a whole other area of intervention - reducing the actual amount of economic activity involved in modern life. This is the school of thought from which ideas like the one above - from TV pundit Penney Poyzer - stem. Modern life, the argument goes, is just too modern. We have too much stuff, travel too much, do too much. We need to return to simpler times - growing our own food, sourcing goods locally, re-using instead of replacing.

Why is this apparently backward-gazing viewpoint so radical? Because it disputes the central idea of economic and political thought in the last 200 years - the beneficence of material progress and economic growth. Having ever-more, the argument goes - more choice, more gadgets, more convenience - is costing the earth.

Ideas such as these reject principles that form the very foundations of modern economic growth. First, there’s specialisation. This is the idea that, if everyone produces the products they are best suited to provide, and exchanges with others, the result will be more efficient and allow a greater quantity and variety of goods than if everyone caters to their own needs. It began the first time farmers whose land was suited to crops first traded with farmers whose land was suited to tending cattle. Now, it’s the logic that sees goods, from electronics to fruit, shipped from across the world and sold more cheaply than those made locally.

The problem, of course, is that specialisation only increases economic efficiency. A company will build its factories in China, even for goods to be sold in the West, because it’s cheaper to do so. The savings gradually get passed onto consumers, and the standard of living increases. But such arrangements aren’t generally energy efficient, or carbon efficient. Indeed, because of the high CO2 emissions associated with shipping and aviation, they’re often environmentally disastrous. Instead, the argument goes, we must rediscover the merits of doing things ourselves, and doing things locally. “Eating apples from New Zealand, wrapped in clingfilm on a polystyrene tray, when it is apples season in England is crazy,” notes an activist in the report.

The same, the argument applies, goes for the other core principle of modern economics - ever-expanding consumption. For the more than 200 years since the industrial revolution began, if not before, economic growth has been driven primarily by the pursuit, by individuals and families, of ever more complex, useful, attractive or effective devices, tools and accoutrements. Our rising living standards have been driven by this process, but the ecological cost has been vast. As a result, it has become a credo amongst many environmentalists that the paradigm of non-stop material progress is inherently flawed. Writer Annie Leonard’s short film The Story of Stuff neatly makes the point, arguing the constant pursuit of newer, cooler stuff is leading us up an ecological dead-end. Endless material progress, argues this view, is an impossible fantasy - and its pursuit has become slow-motion suicide. We must relearn to repair broken goods, consume less food, get through fewer clothes, share cars, make do with fewer shiny gadgets.

Together, these views add up to a wholesale rejection of the foundations of modern economic thinking as a response to climate change. This viewpoint is clear - implicitly or, often, explicitly - in much modern writing on the environment and climate change. “The old economics is dead,” declared the Guardian’s economics editor Larry Elliott - a liberal, but hardly radical economist - in 2006, identifying “the impending clash between economic orthodoxy and environmental sustainability.”

Stores now sell jeans at below $10 a pair… According to the present model of economics, this is progress, just as it is to be welcomed that flights costing as little as $4 make possible stag and hen weekends in Tallinn or Prague.

But are these developments really positive? Orthodox economics says they are, because they raise the real incomes of consumers. But, according to [environmental] analysis, they are potentially very bad indeed.

It’s presented as a given that our current level of consumption is simply incompatible with the long-term health of the environment. It’s taken as read that the predicament we’re in makes a nonsense of the idea of ever-greater consumption, enabled by specialisation and trade, as the driver of progress. It’s a compelling argument. But it may be completely wrong.

Think back to a hundred and fifty years ago. City-dwellers were enjoying an unprecedented level of communication and mobility, thanks to the widespread availability of a hugely effective means of personal urban transport - the horse. There was just one problem - shit. Horse shit was piling up everywhere, making already overcrowded and unsanitary cities even more dangerous. Illness spread. Wise men stroked their chins, dwelling on how to solve the problem. Some sort of restrictions were surely necessary. The convenience of easy travel had a terrible cost to the environment. Surely, this was a convenience we couldn’t afford. No doubt, in a Victorian precursor to modern-day SUV-bashing, drivers of two-horse carts were singled out for blame.

But ultimately, of course, horses weren’t banned - they were superseded. By the tram, the tube, the bus and, ultimately, the car. Far from having to sacrifice convenience because of its nasty side-effects, city-dwellers simply found even more convenient systems that didn’t have the same problems. Technology won out.¹

The same may be possible now. As my previous article notes, in order to avoid dangerous climate change, our task is to lower our global carbon emissions to half their current rate. This may sound quite achievable; but bear in mind that, thanks to rapid improvements in standards of living in developing countries, the average level of economic activity per person is likely to quadruple over the next fifty years. Add to that a likely swelling of the planet’s population, from the current six billion to nine billion, and you’re looking at a six-fold increase in economic activity.

The anti-growth position states that this is simply too much. As the world’s poor countries improve their living standards, it argues, we must meet them halfway, lowering ours to a level more commensurate with the planet’s fragile state.

But remember the horse shit. Few would have imagined, as it piled up in the gutters, a mode of transport that could move people around in comfort without depositing faeces onto the street. Are we really so sure that technology doesn’t have the potential, now, to let us keep our current lifestyle while slashing our carbon emissions?

It may sound cavalier. But think about the maths. A six-fold increase in economic activity, and a halving of overall emissions, means we need to slash the carbon cost of a unit of economic activity by one-twelve. Doesn’t that sound plausible?

There are so many different stages at which technology can intervene. Energy efficiency - insulating buildings, energy-saving bulbs; clean energy; carbon capture. Some estimates suggest renewable energy could ultimately provide 100% of our energy needs, and that’s before you even consider nuclear. The transition to low-carbon energy production, and to greater energy efficiency, will be painful and expensive. But it’s by no means certain that the essentials of our current standard of living can’t be maintained, and improved, and extended to more of the world, without busting the carbon budget. To assume otherwise - to declare, without having properly invested in technological solutions, that we must crawl back down the developmental ladder - smacks of hair-shirt wearing martyrdom.

Take for example aviation. It’s become a standard villain of the environmental movement,as demonstrated by the ongoing protests over the expansion of Heathrow. And, in the short term, reducing the number of flights we take would be a quick way to make some impressive carbon emission reductions. But it’s going too far to conclude, as some have, that flying is simply a luxury we will have to learn to live without. Aeronautic technology advanced, in less than 70 years, from putting the Wright brothers in the air to putting Neil Armstrong on the moon. Do we really believe, with a similar level of commitment, that low-carbon flight is beyond our power?

Indeed, in general, the end-of-growth environmental school is based on a fallacy - that because technological innovation got us into this mess, further innovation can only make things worse. In fact, the exact opposite is the case. Every year, technology brings us new ways to generate clean energy and reduce our need for energy, all without significantly impairing our lifestyles; from energy saving light bulbs to the IT revolution, from hybrid cars to videoconferencing, which is slashing the need for business travel.

Of course, there are excesses in our modern lifestyle - in packaging, for example, and lazy waste disposal - that we should curb, and help developing countries avoid from the start. But the view that climate change requires the end of material progress, and a return to some imagined “natural” past, is one based less on a detailed understanding of the science and more on a general disdain for all things modern. Indeed, its proponents tend to resort to other arguments as well as the environmental - that modern life is making us miserable, stressed, sick and lonely. Fair enough: its proponents may have a point, although I doubt it. But climate change is too important to be used as an argument for the latest lifestyle fad.

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Ever since Barack Obama emerged as a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination commentators have been falling over themselves to evoke the memory of John F. Kennedy. Obama’s youth, short time in the senate, and relentless message of change all stir memories of the handsome young upstart who squeaked the presidency in 1960. With the endorsement of Obama’s candidacy by several senior Kennedys in late January, the comparisons became more frequent. “A president like my father”, Caroline Kennedy called Obama. The New York Times evoked Kennedy’s most successful book when it referred to Obama’s race speech as a “Profile in Courage”.

With JFK still generally revered by most Americans, particularly the white working-class voters Obama desperately needs to win over, it’s a comparison Obama’s people are happy to see made (despite the odd snipe by commentators). The truth is, though, that John F. Kennedy and Obama came from very different places politically - and had very different concepts of “change”.

Obama’s campaign has been built on a solid platform of opposition to the Iraq war. Indeed, if Obama hadn’t been able to contrast his own opposition to Hillary’s mixed record, it’s highly unlikely his campaign would have gathered the momentum - and the money - it needed to seriously compete. With his willingness to negotiate with so-called “rogue states”, and to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, Obama has nailed his colours pretty clearly to the dove mast.

The contrast with the Kennedy campaign of 1960 couldn’t be clearer. Kennedy’s brand of change, and its attendant criticism of the preceding eight years of Republican rule, was unequivocally hawkish.

In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln said the question was whether this nation could exist half-slave or half-free. In the election of 1960, and with the world around us, the question is whether the world will exist half-slave or half-free, whether it will move in the direction of freedom, in the direction of the road that we are taking, or whether it will move in the direction of slavery… We discuss tonight domestic issues, but I would not want that to be any implication to be given that this does not involve directly our struggle with Mr. Khrushchev for survival.

So Kennedy began the opening speech of his famous debate with opponent Richard Nixon. Granted, Kennedy discussed poverty at length in his campaign, and also lent his support to the nascent civil rights movement. But his most progressive ideas were always couched in the rhetoric of the Cold War. “The kind of country we have here, the kind of society we have, the kind of strength we build in the United States will be the defense of freedom,” he went on in his opening speech. If we do well here, if we meet our obligations, if we’re moving ahead, then I think freedom will be secure around the world. If we fail, then freedom fails.”¹

Indeed, as George Packer points out, Kennedy’s message of hope was coded to speak to insecurities bubbling under the surface of a nation allegedly at east with itself. In an atmosphere of steady-as-she-goes conservatism - the 1950s, with their fetishising of conformity, had just ended - Kennedy brought to the surface fears about the economy and America’s place in the world that had previously been unspoken. Obama, by contrast, faces a nation in turmoil, where divisions over the best response to myriad challenges have almost made civilised discussion impossible. This means his message of hope, his focus on the positive, can be much more effective.

So is the strange, and ultimately sad, Kennedy story of no real relevance to the Obama campaign? Not so fast. Because there is a Kennedy campaign that Obama has much more in common with - the 1968 campaign of John’s little brother, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Like Obama, “Bobby” built his campaign on a central platform of opposition to an unpopular war. Like Obama, he faced a fight for the nomination with Democratic party royalty whose impeccable liberal credentials had been tarnished by support for that war: vice-president Hubert H. Humphrey (Kennedy had already seen off the previous presumptive nominee, the Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson). Like Obama, he campaigned on a leftist platform - focusing on poverty, public services, and civil rights - but proved effective at transcending traditional party affiliations.

While John’s radicalism was mostly rhetoric - once he entered power, his administration became known for a gradualist approach to issues like civil rights that exasperated activists - Robert’s was genuine: in place of John’s tax cut, Robert called for substantial tax rises to fund social programs; to John’s enthusiastic Cold War saber-rattling, Robert proposed a retreat from the US’ global commitments and from the military-industrial complex that had spiraled since the start of World War II.

While Obama’s program can’t match Robert’s for radicalism, the thrust and theme of his campaign is identical. Where John sought to identify the nagging concerns of a nation grown cosy after years of peace, Robert spoke up to the desire of a nation wracked by war and division for change. Obama’s stance as the “change candidate” has a clear precedent. While the standard approach is to attempt to achieve unity through compromise, Kennedy sought to build a new consensus on ground that had previously been identified with the hard left - essentially the same trick Obama hopes to pull off, a generation later, in 2008. Kennedy’s slogan, a quote from George Bernard Shaw - “Some men see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?’” - stands out as a more lyrical version of Obama’s “yes we can”.

So what can the campaign of Robert Kennedy - whose closest relatives, ironically, have broken ranks with the rest of the clan to back Hillary - tell us about Obama’s chances? Of course, Robert Kennedy was never put to the general electoral test. His campaign ended, not with a concession speech, but with a victory party - after the Californian primary on June 5. It was ended, not by polls or delegate counts, but by Sirhan Sirhan, the young Palestinian who shot the Senator in the back and head at celebrations in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Psephologists disagree about the chances Kennedy’s radical campaign would have had against the republican nominee, Richard Nixon. When I met Senator Ted Kennedy, the youngest of the Kennedy brothers in 2004, he confessed he was unsure whether Robert would have even beaten Humphrey, who had the support of most of congress, to the Democratic nomination. “I don’t know,” he said frankly. “We had a long way to go.”

What’s clear, though, is that Kennedy had several factors in his favour which Obama can’t rely on. Both men score highly in both party and national polls among young people. But that demographic is far smaller now than it was in Kennedy’s time. The 1960s were the coming of age of the so-called “baby boom” generation, children born in 1945-7 in the postwar boom. As a result, the proportion of people in the US aged 18-25 was higher than ever. It was these “boomers” who protested in the universities, became the first hippies - and fought in the Vietnam war. These young people were the bedrock of Kennedy’s campaign.

The same is true of Obama’s campaign, but almost everything else has changed. Those same baby boomers are entering retirement, leaving America with a chronically aging population. The younger generation, by contrast, is smaller than ever, thanks to several decades of working women with easy access to birth control. And they’re less likely than ever to vote.

It is possible that aging boomers will be inspired enough by Obama’s rhetoric of change - and his resemblance to the Kennedy campaign - to carry him to victory. And blacks, who supported Kennedy in droves, are flocking to Obama. But another core Kennedy constituency, Hispanics, aren’t Obama’s to count on. Kennedy’s support for firebrand activist César Chávez made him a hero to many “Chicanos” (as Hispanics were generally called then). This constituency, unlike the youth vote, has only grown in the intervening years. But Obama’s support among Hispanics now, except the young, is poor.

With the youth vote less powerful, and the minority vote fractured, Obama may face an uphill struggle to clinch the nomination - and then, of course, the presidency. But then, few expected Kennedy’s campaign to obtain such momentum - or for the formerly overshadowed brother to prove such a compelling orator and eloquent advocate for the poor. In these more centrist days, it would be too much to expect that Obama might finish what Robert Kennedy started. But with America once more crying out for a change of direction, for a politics of compassion and co-operation, it seems possible a measure of Kennedy’s vision might be achieved.

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what is striking in the exit polls is the polarization on three lines: gender, race and age. It was dead even with men; but a massive advantage for Clinton among women. The racial difference is obvious as well. But what really leaps out is age. Obama lost every cohort over 40; Clinton lost every cohort under 40. Race also affects the generations in turn: 67 percent of whites over 60 voted for Clinton - a massive 24 point advantage. Among the younger generation, there is much less racial polarization: under 30, whites split evenly. This is a fascinating result. It appears to me as the future struggling to overcome the past… But here’s what she does have: total shamelessness, and an absolute belief that she is the rightful nominee… What sustains her is this deep, deep sense of entitlement and an absolute refusal to let the next generation take over. She will take this to the last day of the convention if necessary. If Obama thinks he has a right to actually be nominated by the Clinton Democrats because he has won more votes, more states and more delegates, he is sadly mistaken. They will never let such a person win without a death struggle. And that is where the Democrats are now headed.

Andrew Sullivan may be exaggerating Hillary’s malevolent mania a smidge, but perhaps not by much. But the generational point is the really interesting one. Of course, inspirational-left candidates always appeal heavily to the young - look at Robert Kennedy. But I sense this is different. After all, the cutoff is supposed to be 30, not 40. While the baby boomers got conservative as they got older and settled down, it’s just possible that generation X and the millennials*, with our never-ending adolescence and our upbringing free from the trauma of Vietnam and stagflation, might not. Or at least, not till much later in life. What does this mean? Well, it means that whatever happens in November, the long-term future looks good for the democrats. While the swollen ranks of aged boomers begin to die off, the most liberal generation in American history will be becoming hugely influential. But this is a long-term play. For now, I’d love to see polling with this level of age detail for Obama v McCain. If Obama v Hillary feels like “the future struggling to overcome the past,” what will that feel like?

* Yes, I know. But “millennials” is - just - better than “generation Y”, which makes us sound like some sort of more masculine version of our Star Wars-obsessed older brothers. I say “us” because the dividing line is, apparently, 1980, putting me just on the right side of history. UPDATE 14/05/08: This is an altogether depressing explanation of our defining characteristics as a generation. Apparently we’re not all being schooled all over the world and redefining work-life balance. We’re fat, poor, and tired.

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Andrew Sullivan (who [a] I’ve never forgiven for not remaining the attractive, slim role model he was when his book, Virtually Normal, was serialised in the Guardian in the 1990s and briefly lit up my gay teenage life; and [b] doesn’t allow comments any more on his blog The Daily Dish, only pingbacks, hence this post) is slightly unfair with his criticism of the inveterate conservative’s gleeful hay-making over Bittergate. Is Kristol, like many conservatives (and Mrs. Clinton*) being entirely disingenuous in pretending that any time a politician, in a private fundraising meeting, makes sweeping generalisations about a section of the electorate and the socioeconomic drivers of their political positions, they’re importuning its collective intelligence? Of course. He goes on to do it himself, a few lines later, by implying that all wealthy San Franciscan democrats are metropolitan snobs (not a generalisation many would disagree with, but then of course that’s the point - many don’t disagree with Obama either). But he doesn’t actually - as Sullivan suggests - cast doubt over Obama’s religious beliefs. Rather, he argues that Obama believes his own religious beliefs to be complex and genuine, but appears not to think that about others.

Not that this is true, or fair, of course. Obama’s choice of verb - he said that people “cling” to religion - was not, as Dan Schnur argued on Left, Right & Center on Friday, the heart of an offensive slur on small-town, working-class whites’ ability to think. Rather, it was entirely the correct word to identify the phenomenon Obama was describing - the phenomenon, unique to America, of religion becoming one of the primary wedges between political parties, despite every significant politician belonging to the same religion. White working-class voters, who believe in God, have been convinced again and again to vote (against their economic interest) for Republican candidates, who believe in God, and to vote against Democratic candidates, who believe in God, because they’ve been persuaded that the Republicans believe in God more strongly than the Democrats do. You don’t have to be a snob, an athiest, or even an arch-liberal to believe this to be at least partly an emotional reaction borne of anxiety and fear - clinging, in other words.

If the presidential candidates were actually from significantly different religions, as in 1960, then you might expect belief to become the primary guide to people’s votes - although the result of 1960 suggests, even then, people might put policy and personality before pulpit. But for this to have happened in a politics entirely dominated by protestantism is bizarre, and somewhat irrational. You could say the same about down-the-line gun-rights voting, when no Democrat has seriously threatened the second amendment for a decade (abortion, where another four years of Republican rule could feasibly lead eventually to the repeal of Roe vs. Wade, is a little different).

A century after Freud, to recognise that people’s voting decisions aren’t entirely rationally based isn’t snobbish, it’s adult. And to deny in public (while, I suspect, acknowledging freely in private) that the phenomenon of the working-class “values voter” owes more than a little to the manipulation of people’s emotions - their anger, their anxiety, and, yes, their bitterness - is duplicitous in the extreme.

So Kristol is innocent of denying the depth of Obama’s faith. But he’s guilty, as usual, of a host of other sins: insincerity, hypocrisy and faux-naivete, for a start.

*I’m having trouble knowing what to call her. To keep using “Hillary”, when I never say “Barack”, seems clearly sexist; but “Senator Clinton” is too pompous and “Clinton” obviously unclear. “Mrs. Clinton” seems the simplest identifier, similar to “George Bush, Jr.”, my preferred name for the current President.

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