Month: February 2008
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Republican attacks on dissent since 9/11
December 2001: In response to Democratic plans to question parts of the USA Patriot Act during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, John Ashcroft suggests that people who disagree with the administration’s anti-terrorism policies are on the side of the terrorists. “To those who pit Americans against immigrants, and citizens against non-citizens; to those who scare
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Hillary’s nonprofit experience: Overhyped
A friend in law school point out that Chelsea Clinton appears to have fooled the Wall Street Journal into misrepresenting her mother’s career: Ms. [Chelsea] Clinton said that, as president, her mother will “get the government back into the student-loan business” and do away with the federal financial-aid forms that families must fill out, drawing
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More naïve primary->general extrapolation
The annoying pattern of silly extrapolation from the primaries to the general election continues. Rush Limbaugh is saying that John McCain needs Mike Huckabee as his VP to win the South: Some people think that McCain is going to have to choose Huckabee, because if you look at what McCain won last night… What Huckabee
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ABC News mocks misinformed voters
ABC News is now mocking misinformed voters — many of whom are obviously not highly educated — for going to polling places on the wrong day. The story is headlined “Dumbocracy” and comes with this “photo illustration”: Dumbocracy: Hundreds Try to Vote on the Wrong Day Voters in Non-Super Tuesday States Complain That Polling Places
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AFP doesn’t like conventions
The foreign news service AFP has a story on Howard Dean trying to avert a convention fight that includes some purple prose: A brokered convention has not been seen in decades, and harkens back to an era of shady political deal-making when powerbrokers and cash kings — instead of regular voters — chose one candidate
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Greg Mankiw: Supply-side claims wrong
President Bush’s former Council of Economic Advisers chair Greg Mankiw restates what so many Bush economists have said — contrary to the claims of the President and most of the GOP presidential contenders, tax cuts don’t raise revenue: Republican candidates are fond of saying we should cut tax rates because doing so would incentivize more
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Hillary drops “BHO” reference
This blog gets results! On Tuesday, I pointed out that a rapid response blog post by Hillary Clinton’s campaign referred in a transcript to Barack Obama as “BHO,” an unusual reference that implicitly highlights Obama’s middle name of Hussein. Someone must have noticed because, as commenter Jinchi noted last night, the post has been changed
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The Zogby primary
After a long history of questionable practices (PDF), including distorting his own poll and hyping bogus Internet polling, pollster John Zogby missed California by about 15 points. Can we stop taking him seriously as a legitimate pollster now? Update 2/7 9:29 AM: Via Sullivan, Zogby downplays the error: About California: Some of you may have
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The coming superdelegate backlash?
With Hillary currently leading the delegate tally on the strength of her margin among superdelegates, a backlash seems inevitable. Discuss… Update 2/6 3:38 PM: The prospects of superdelegates deciding the nomination makes the backlash even more likely, particularly if Democratic incumbents bail out Hillary. See Ezra Klein for early criticism.
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The primary->general extrapolation problem
Memo to pundits and campaigns: can we please stop extrapolating from primary election results to the general election? Here are three inferential problems that are already plaguing discussion of the Super Tuesday results: 1. Winning primaries in states dominated by the other party doesn’t mean you will be competitive there in November. Ezra Klein flags