“In a mass knife fight to the death between every American President, who would win and why?”
Got to agree on Teddy Roosevelt. The man was just indomitable.
(Hat tip: Ace)
Asking the Important Questions: Presidential Knife Fight Edition
September 10th, 2012Polling in Perspective (or: Chill)
September 10th, 2012This is the time of year when the political world is awash in polls. Some otherwise sensible Republicans take a look at those polls and go “Oh my God! Obama is up by 2! Or 5! He got a big convention bounce!”
I could wade into the murky swamps of different polling companies, different methodologies, different biases, the problem with cell phone vs. landline samples, partisan weighting screens, the comparison between citizens, registered voters and likely voters, or a dozen other variables. But I’m not going to.
Instead, one piece of advice, and one explanation.
The advice: Chill.
The explanation: Barack Obama was elected in 2008 with 52.9% of the popular vote to 45.7% for John McCain, the best popular vote margin of any Democratic Presidential contender since Lyndon Baines Johnson captured 61.1% of the vote in 1964. (People forget that Bill Clinton, for all his retrospective popularity, never broke 50% of the popular vote; Al Gore got 48.4% of the vote while losing in the electoral college in 2000.) Ignoring (for now) the electoral college and minor changes in the composition of voters, that means only 4% of the people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 need to switch their vote for Mitt Romney to win.
Do you think Obama might be 4% less popular than he was four years ago? Perhaps among those who have lost their jobs? There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that Obama is less popular than he was four years ago, his inability to fill campaign events the way he used to being one, and numerous elected Democrats in tough reelection fights avoiding the DNC being another. So who are you going to believe: MSM polls or your lying eyes?
The media is desperately trying to pretend that 2010 never happened, or that it was an aberration.
The polls are part of the media trying desperately to maintain what Instapundit Glenn Reynolds calls “preference falsification,” a willingness on the part of the political and media establishment to manufacture a false consensus that (in this case) liberal policies and politicians are popular. When it comes to the current election, the question might be most crassly boiled down to “Do you support Obama, or are you a racist?” In 2010 and now we’re finally seeing a “preference cascade” of people unwilling to buy that liberal narrative. The walls are finally coming down.
Which is not to say the election is in the bag for Romney. There’s still a lot of hard work to be done, and a lot of work to make sure Republicans and anti-Obama independents get to the polls, especially in swing states. But there’s no reason to get worked up over each and every little poll. Time is not on Obama’s side.
LinkSwarm for September 7, 2012
September 7th, 2012Still trying to get back in the swing of things, so here’s a LinkSwarm for a lazy Friday:
Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.
As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.
Today’s Award for Most Delusion Democratic Optimism…
September 6th, 2012…goes to Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee for predicting that Texas will turn into a Democratic blue state “as early as 2014.”
Yeah, right.
Maybe you should, oh, I don’t know, elect a single statewide office-holder before asserting that Texas is turning blue…
Californians Can’t Even Stop Spending When They’re Actually in Bankruptcy
September 5th, 2012The City Council of San Bernardino, California failed to pass budget cuts at their meeting Tuesday, despite the city already being in bankruptcy.
After a meeting that lasted more than nine hours and stretched past midnight, the San Bernardino City Council failed to pass a plan for drastic budget reductions, an initial step in the city’s bankruptcy proceedings.
The proposed “pre-pendency plan” included $22.4 million in cuts, achieved by measures including slashing more than 100 jobs and closing three of the four city libraries. It would not cover the entire $45.8-million budget shortfall, but city staff called the plan a necessary first step.
Proposed cuts to the Fire Department became an irreconcilable sticking point. Twenty positions in the department were slated to be eliminated without layoffs, and the plan included an option of rotating closures at fire stations.
Instead of voting on the budget plan as a whole, Councilman Chas Kelley made a proposal to vote on an alternate plan for the Fire Department that was backed by the firefighters union, and to direct staff to seek bids on a proposal to contract out some of the city’s trash services.
The vote, taken after midnight, passed 4 to 3 but was promptly vetoed by Mayor Pat Morris, who had called that plan “irresponsible” and an “almost slavish adoption of a union proposal without any analysis.”
Maybe they can delay things long enough that repo men are actually carting furniture out of the council chambers before they vote…
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Bad Business Decisions
September 1st, 2012Pro-Business Tip: Try not to name your store after genocidal dictators.
Unlike the people who opened a clothing store called Hitler.
(Hat tip: Mike Godwin’s Facebook page.)
Dewhurst Running for Re-Election Again in 2014
August 30th, 2012David Dewhurst says he’s running for reelection as Lt. Governor in 2014. This puts him on collision course with Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who also announced he’s running for the office some ten minutes after Dewhurst conceded the Senate race.
Can Patterson take Dewhurst? Hard to say. The Senate race defeat proved he’s vulnerable when faced with the right candidate, but Dewhurst will start off with a considerable fundraising advantage, and big donors may be more fearful of backing Patterson knowing that Dewhurst will control the state legislative agenda for the next two years. But if Dewhurst makes the same mistakes he did in the Senate race, and the Tea Party backs Patterson as strongly as they did Cruz, then yes, Dewhurst could lose. But neither of those is a given.
What made Dewhurst decide to run again? Well, maybe Rick Perry saying he’s he’s likely to run for Governor again had something to do with it…
Ted Cruz’s RNC Speech
August 29th, 2012If you couldn’t catch Ted Cruz’s RNC Speech, here it is:
Democrats Take 2: Oh, THAT Catholic Cardinal!
August 29th, 2012Via Moe Lane comes word that Democrats have reconsidered their decision to reject Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s offer to lead a prayer at the Democratic National Convention.
Two days ago: Die in a fire, you dress-wearing, anti-choice freak!
Yesterday: Oh, that Cardinal! We love that guy! Can’t enough of him! Yeah, he can offer the closing prayer.
So Democratic delegates will have to spend at least a few minutes that day pretending they don’t hate Catholics.
Celebrating Neil Armstrong, the Obama Way
August 28th, 2012Which is to say, the Iowahawk way: “In our shared moment of grief, let us also celebrate his historic accomplishment in becoming the first astronaut eulogized by me, Barack Obama, our nation’s historic first African-American president.”