Heroic Horndog Edition.

Our military veterans, for putting themselves in the service of their country. They’ve often been misled, they’ve often been put in harm’s way for no good reason, and yes, they’ve sometimes crossed the line in difficult circumstances. But the vast majority served for honorable reasons and deserve our thanks.

I never served; I was just old enough to escape the Vietnam-era draft lottery. But my dad was a soldier in World War II. And a few years ago I recorded an oral-history interview with him (which I strongly recommend to anyone with aging parents) and heard the story. It’s nothing terribly dramatic; he entered service late in the war, was shipped across the Pacific in a slow, uncomfortable transport, and saw some action (and a lot more post-battle devastation) in the Philippines. After the war, he was part of the American occupation force in Japan.

Again, nothing much compared to many vets’ experiences. But it was a dramatic and traumatic passage in the life of a young man who grew up on a western Michigan farm. I’m grateful for his service, and for the service of (almost) everyone who’s worn a uniform.

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the usually reliable VTDigger, for some gratuitous post-election bashing of Auditor-elect Doug Hoffer. I’ve already recounted the musings of Digger’s designated pundit Jon Margolis, who insisted that he was right about Hoffer being a dour, charisma-free, and fatally flawed candidate, even after Hoffer did him the discourtesy of winning the election. But I shouldn’t overlook Digger’s post-election wrap story, posted under Anne Galloway’s byline but co-written by multiple Digger staffers. So I can’t say for sure who emitted this little kidneystone:  

When he took the podium, Hoffer mumbled into the microphone and blamed the pundits for inaccurately calling the race. He didn’t prepare a speech.

Jeebus. WTF is that supposed to mean? Are you saying he was drunk? Or just unprepared and ill-tempered? Hey, I was there on Tuesday night, and I found that description to be absolutely misleading. I saw a guy unaccustomed to the spotlight unguardedly displaying his simple humanity, not a bilious abacus-flipper reluctantly coming face to face with the accountant’s worst nightmare: other people.

This isn’t the only instance of passive-aggressive post-election coverage of Doug Hoffer. It’s as if reporters and pundits almost blame Doug for daring to win an election they believed he’d lose. And for daring to point out how wrong they were.

After the jump: A walk to major-party status, a cheap university, young turks, humorless Vermonters and clueless Republicans.

the Diamondstone Family Singers, d/b/a the Liberty Union Party, for regaining major-party status on the Vermont ballot. Its candidate for Secretary of State, Mary Alice Herbert, took 13% of the vote as the only person listed on the ballot besides incumbent Democrat Jim Condos.  (And a little Thumbs Down to the Vermont GOP for failing to field a candidate and allowing this to happen.)

Hebert didn’t bother campaigning; she even declined an invitation to debate Condos, and described her effort as “standing rather than running.” But, because she was the only recourse for people who just didn’t want to vote for Condos (or leave the ballot blank), she ensures that the Liberty Union Party will have its own primary in 2014 (Diamondstone v. Diamondstone?), and may well be invited to more debates.

The University of Vermont, for maintaining the unfortunate practice of balancing its budget on the backs of part-time instructors. Contract talks for part-timers are at an impasse, and the administration is offering a pay hike of 1%. That’s one stinkin’ percent.

Colleges and universities across the country have become more and more dependent on part-time adjunct faculty to teach classes at relatively low cost. There’s a big pool of underemployed people with advanced degrees who will settle for a small paycheck as better than nothing. (And hope they’re getting a foot in the door toward future employment if they try really hard and don’t make waves.) And by teaching, they help the institutions create the next generation of desperate graduates willing to settle for a small paycheck…

I once taught a course as an adjunct at a small private college. And I tell you, for the amount of time I put into it, I could have gotten a better hourly rate flipping burgers. It seems fundamentally at odds with the mission and values of an institution that is never shy about trumpeting its important role in bettering our society.

All the young and energetic number-crunchers, organizers, and tacticians who form the foundation of the Democratic Party’s victories in Vermont and across the country. It’s becoming clear that the Democrats have reinvented politics, taking Karl Rove’s work in a new and more positive direction, and making dramatic advances while Rove is still stuck in the year 2002 and VTGOP Chair “Angry Jack” Lindley told the Freeploid: “They’re using technology. We’re still using a horse and buggy.”

The Vermont Dems’ technological, tactical and strategic advantages have been chronicled by Seven Days, the Vermont Press Bureau, VTDigger, and (finally, belatedy) by the Freeploid. If you’d like to see a national perspective on all this, I suggest “A Vast Left-Wing Competency,” an article by Sasha Issenberg at Slate.com.  

The story in brief: Karl Rove had pioneered new techniques in the early 2000s. But by 2006, the Democrats had caught up. And then they kept going:

Major donors like George Soros decided not to focus their funding on campaigns to win single elections, as they had in the hopes of beating Bush in 2004, but instead to seed institutions committed to learning how to run better campaigns.

… the left has birthed an unexpected subculture. It now contains a full-fledged electioneering intelligentsia, focused on integrating large-scale survey research with randomized experimental methods to isolate particular populations that can be moved by political contact.

Basically, it’s Moneyball in politics: the use of intelligence to find unexploited advantages that help defeat an opponent with much deeper pockets.

a tiny handful of sourpusses, for inducing the cancellation of a fundraising calendar produced by the Highfields Center for Composting. The “Hot Compost” calendar featured women in suggestive poses in agricultural settings, along the lines of numerous such tongue-in-cheek calendars of recent years, including at least two in Vermont. It was planned as part of its Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a compost research center.

Highfields quickly scrapped the calendar and issued an apology after receiving a tiny number of very vociferous complaints that the images “objectified” women, etc., etc. And the complainers still aren’t satisfied; one of them rejected Highfields’ apology and said the calendar “appealed to the worst male instincts which are attracted to and relish the degradations of women.”

All I can say is, the “worst male instincts” can find a lot more, shall we say, inspiring material in 30 seconds on the Internet. They aren’t looking for fundraising calendars. And God knows, there are still more than enough real battles to fight in the war on sexism; this one doesn’t rate in the top million.

Tayt Brooks (International Man of Mystery), Lenore “Miss Daisy” Broughton, Darcie “Hack” Johnston, the Robster, El Jefe General John McClaughry, and Angry Jack Lindley, et al., for old times’ sakes. Guys, you made it a whole lot of fun to write about politics here at Green Mountain Daily. Your unintentionally humorous antics provided an infinitely renewable resource of comedic material for us, and also made it much easier for the Democrats to pull off an historic victory in 2012. I will be forever grateful for your cluelessness, your arrogance, the pure unfiltered rage that erupted on a regular basis, and the wasting of large quantities of conservative dollars.

And, if VTDigger is correct, we can look forward to more such antics in the future:

Darcie Johnston, who lately ran GOP gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock’s campaign, says Broughton will be back in the next election cycle. And Johnston herself is thinking about starting a Super PAC for Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, an anti-single payer 501c4, as soon as possible.

Oh please please please, make it so! I’ve said before that if rich people like Broughton had any brains — or any real sense of how free markets operate — they would punish the abject failures of political operatives like Hack Johnston and the Tayter. Fortunately for us, they don’t, so they will continue to pour money down the ratholes of Super PACs led by high-paid consultants with huge egos and unbroken records of failure.

Go ahead, Miss Daisy. Rehire the International Man. Give a bunch of money to the Hack. Help El Jefe and the Robster pollute our airwaves with conservative dogma that convinces no one. As a liberal, the last thing I want is for you to act like a smart businessperson and hire people who can actually do the job. That might present a challenge for Dems and Progs. Another round of 2012 will not.