If you’re into politics you can go hang out with the  political junkies of your choice and listen to the first (and possibly the only) debate between Terry Goddard and Jan Brewer.

Goddard would like more than one debate. Brewer is forced to have at least one by the rules governing publicly financed campaigns. My guess is that this will be the only chance you’ll have to see the two head-to-head.

If you’re burned out on politics why not throw a leg over your scoot and hustle down to the Barrio Brewery. The Tucson Vintage Motorcycle riders meet there every other Wednesday to admire old bikes, kick tires, and convince themselves that older is better.

You don’t have to ride a vintage bike. I attended the last meeting on my 1990 K75 BMW hack. You don’t have to ride a bike at all…you’re perfectly welcome by car or bicycle. The VMR have a web site: http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/tucsonvintagemc/ The interesting stuff, like photos, is available only to members but if you have an interest in vintage iron you’ll be welcomed.

Folks gather beginning at 6:00 PM

The Barrio Brewery is located at: 800 East 16th Street, Tucson

Big Announcement

A new Tucson Citizen Blog, The Motorcycle Scene, will be rolling out over the next few days. ‘The Scene’ will be devoted to any and all topics about the sport: motorcycles, motorcycle events, club activities, local dealers and mechanics, favorite rides, racing, women riders, motor scooters and luxo-tourers and pretty much any topic that you, as riders, are interested in. And in case you were worried: No politics ( except as relating to motorcycling….land closures, helmet laws, that sort of thing.)

Please visit The Motorcycle Scene and let me know what you’re interested in.

To find out what political interests are supporting (or opposing) the ballot measures we’ll be voting on in November all you have to do is to is to check out the big bucks contributors.

This is not hard to do because the Arizona Secretary of State has a nifty web site listing the major ballot measure committees and who their contributors are. The web site is here. Bookmark it for future reference.

Don’t know the ballot measures? Read about them here.

You can bet your bottom dollar that those big contributors are not simply disinterested philanthropists. You can learn a great deal about the consequences of any ballot measure by seeing who’s paying big money to support (or defeat) it.

A classic illustration is a committee called “Arizonans For Health Care Freedom” which is supporting ballot measure 106. The committee has received over $607,000 in donations, which it can spend promoting ballot measure 106… that the Republican legislature hopes will kill a key measure of the health care reform package.

The supporters are those who would profit from wholly privatizing health care. “Freedom” is your freedom to buy  more expensive private health insurance.

I’ve taken some time off to consider what lessons, if any, we can draw from the primaries.

One lesson surely is that negative advertising works. For the next nine weeks we may expect more of the same. Much of it will be paid for by corporation-financed organizations parading themselves as non-partisan public interest groups. Grass roots of Astroturf.

Mailers and persistent TV ads were certainly effective. The Democratic Party spent a lot of money to get Kelly elected in CD8. Their anti-Paton thrusts took the form of expensive mailers. The same was true of McCain’s incredibly expensive attack campaign against Hayworth.

(I’m not in a position to comment about TV ads, since here at The Data Port we watch about three hours of TV a week. Pretty clearly the decline of reasoned political discussion was matched by a swelling of the purses of radio and television operations…the  folks who profited nicely from the decline of rational political debate.)

The big question in my mind is about the role of political blogs in affecting an election. What exactly do they do? They are not a source of information for the general public. The general public simply doesn’t read them; the general public gets most of its political info in sound-bite servings on TV.

Blogs are certainly not going to change the minds of folks in “the other party” because those folks don’t read “my party” blogs.

My judgement is that the blogs are read by the already convinced and committed, who are the choirs to whom the bloggers preach. At their most effective they provide talking points that members of the choir could take out into the real (as opposed to the virtual) world.

So what do you think?

Do Political Blogs Affect Elections?