Romney’s welfare ad: What happened?
12:19 AM 12/06/2012
Slate's Dave Weigel reports from the victorious "progressive" RootsCamp on why Romney's seemingly powerful welfare ad didn't appear to make a big impact:
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Why Social Security is not like Medicare
Mickey Kaus
Contributor
Solidarity at the ATM: Jacob Sullum on progressives' counterintuitive opposition to cutting entitlements for the affluent, which is otherwise an obvious bipartisan way out of the current "fiscal cliff" dilemma. Sullum notes that resistance to this "means-testing" isn't just a crude matter of maintaining political support for giant transfer programs by making sure richer voters get a share of the loot. There's also an idealistic underlay:
GM Watch: Who Blew the ‘Bu?
1:15 AM 12/04/2012
GM's 'Bu Blues: The verdict is in--New GM's crucial new mid-size sedan, the new Chevrolet Malibu, is a dud. Sales are "soft," reports Automotive News--perhaps because of reviews like this one, from a Motor Trend test of six mid-size products, in which the new Malibu finished dead last:
White turkey chili?
3:44 PM 11/29/2012
"White turkey chili": That's what President Obama served Mitt Romney for lunch. Every chef's a pundit these days. ... P.S.: Was this really an intentional (ungracious, gloating, etc.) slap? I'm a paranoid--but it is the sort of thing the hard core politicos I've known would find funny. ...
Kristof’s Breakthrough
6:31 PM 11/27/2012
Mo' Blitter**--Kristof on the Cutting Edge: The NYTs Nicholas Kristof has come up with a breakthrough in pundit efficiency--a short, ass-covering phrase that works with virtually any argument, yet can be inserted without taking up valuable space. It was unveiled at the end of a recent column on the decline of public spending, when Kristof goes off on a jag in which he blames increasing money inequality on low taxes on the rich:
Krugman’s Twinkie Defense
6:57 AM 11/21/2012
A few notes about Paul Krugman's column, "The Twinkie Manifesto," which discusses the 1950s:
Monday Morning “Bleeter”
6:58 AM 11/19/2012
Bl[ogging + Tw]eeting: The ecology of blogging has shifted--for me, anyway. I don't get many hits for little items--I get hits when other blogs link to me, which is usually for bigger items. Meanwhile, I've been tweeting a lot, because it's faster and easier (you don't have to write a headline, for one thing). Unfortunately, the @kausmickey twitter feed doesn't seem to appear on this page anymore. Possible solution: I'll occasionally try to do for those tweets what blogs originally did for web pages--link to the more useful ones, with comments or amplifications as necessary. Just don't call it "curating." How about bleeting? [Warning: Do not google that word.]
The Grover Plan: More Cowbell!
5:58 AM 11/13/2012
We'll dilute our way out of it! Republicans did poorly among Hispanics last week. How to address that problem? The answer, they're told by Washington savants, is to back an immigration reform that ... increases the number of Hispanics! It's a plan so crazy it just might be crazy.
About that exit poll question …
7:45 AM 11/12/2012
Never ask a question unless you already know the answer! The otherwise estimable Tom Edsall is among those taking a semi-rigged immigration question on the presidential exit poll as proof that voters favor amnesty:
Alert: Immigration sellout underway?
12:01 AM 11/09/2012
Alert! The entire GOP elite seems to be trying to sell out en masse on immigration. Not only Boehner, but Cantor. And Hannity (who works for pro-amnesty world citizen Rupert Murdoch). Even Krauthammer. ...
A Job for Mitt
5:56 PM 11/08/2012
So Crazy it Just Might Work! From Nicholas Lemann's election post-mortem:
Vote for Obama–and gridlock
9:38 AM 11/05/2012
Late last year, Ann Coulter wrote a seemingly reductionist column, supporting Romney because of his stands on two issues: 1) Obamacare and 2) illegal immigration. Her argument was that Obamacare is irreversible, if alllowed to stand--as is illegal immigration, if it's legalized through an amnesty.
How Sandy Hurts Obama
4:14 AM 11/04/2012
Dick Morris argues Sandy is turning into a negative for Obama as he starts being held responsible for the delays, shortages and suffering. Could be!** But isn't the most obvious way Sandy hurts Obama this: by simply lowering turnout on Tuesday. I don't mean turnout in the affected areas. I mean turnout nationwide. We count on a crescendo of hype to drive voter participation on Election Day. But it's the weekend before the vote and the presidential race isn't even the lead story on the news (or main topic on SNL). Americans have lots of distractions. Sandy's a big new one. Not everyone is civic-minded. Inevitably, some marginally attached voters will simply not go to the polls because they've been caught up in the Sandy drama and (partly as a result) haven't been caught up in the presidential drama, no? Since a higher turnout generally benefits Obama, won't that help Romney (at least a bit--but it's a close race)? ...
__________
Hey! Did we forget the Bradley Effect?
1:52 AM 11/04/2012
Barack Obama clings to a narrow poll lead in the swing states. What might happen in the final days to change that result? Well, there's the Incumbent Rule, which says that late-undecideds break overwhelmingly for challengers. Mark Blumenthal discusses and dismisses it here--though I'm sure Republicans would be happy to take Erikson and Wlezien's alternative "frontrunner" rule, which says undecides break against whoever is in the lead. But OK, we'll leave the Incumbent Rule to Dick Morris.
A new theory of BLS skew
6:48 AM 11/02/2012
Conn Carroll suggests a fresh theory of how the jobs number in last month's BLS household survey exploded upwards: it's not that federal Census workers spontaneously and perhaps subconsciously classified more people as working (my pet theory). It's that the people they were interviewing spontaneously and perhaps subconsciously classified themselves as working--a "historic [in Carroll's words] 873,000 jump in the number of Americans telling BLS they were employed" (especially that they were employed part-time). [E.A.]
Plenty of time left
5:35 AM 11/02/2012
These are the most crucial four days in the entire rest of the campaign! Some insider type I was reading revealed that now the strategists for each camp start to relax, knowing they've done all they can do. It's up to the GOTV crews now! If that's true, the strategists are idiots. Maybe they've made all their ad buys. But there's still plenty of time left for result-altering events and actions and reactions. It was about this point 12 years ago that George W. Bush's old DUI arrest came to light, producing what was in essence a tied election. The current race seems about as close--and the voters'** ability to process last-minute news has probably increased. In 2004, Jay Cost notes, Kerry was slightly ahead in key states.
Is welfare Romney’s clincher?
6:16 AM 10/31/2012
One last chance for Mark Greenberg to cost Obama the election! I was worried the welfare issue hadn't tested well for Mitt Romney--it disappeared from his ads for a while and he didn't bring it up in the debates. But it now looks like he was just saving it for the endgame in Ohio, Colorado and Iowa--where Obama's controversial welfare "waiver" policy has again been raised in a Romney TV ad. HuffPo's Sam Stein has the spot. He complains
The Birth Certificate 4-Step
5:13 PM 10/30/2012
It's a trap! The most paranoid scenario: I'm assuming the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the October employment statistics on schedule. The paranoia that would accompany a delay (this close to the election) would be too destructive, even if the delay was justifiable. But if the Obama administration were really playing politics with the numbers in the way the paranoids fear, do you think it would merely delay the release of the numbers? Not cunning enough!
Protecting Nate Silver
5:40 AM 10/29/2012
Alerted by Brad ("The Scoutmaster") DeLong--protector of vulnerable young journalists!--the NYT's Paul Krugman defends Nate Silver's election projections against a fairly calm critique in National Review. I leave it to you, the reader, to decide if arguing that Silver includes too many old polls is the sort of thing that, allowed to proliferate, "means ... science — or any kind of scholarship — will become impossible." But what surprised me was this Krugman graf:
