Month: September 2008
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Inoculate yourself against debate hype
Deep breaths everyone — as I pointed out last month, debates rarely matter as much as people think. Jim Stimson, who I quote in that post, argues the following in Tides of Consent: What we have seen is perhaps some influence. The evidence is inconclusive to say either that debates matter or that they do
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Rush Limbaugh says Obama is “Arab”
The President of the United States, August 1, 2008: THE PRESIDENT: President George W. Bush calling to congratulate you on 20 years of important and excellent broadcasting. RUSH: Well, thank you, sir. You’ve stunned me! (laughing) I’m shocked. But thank you so much. THE PRESIDENT: That’s hard to do. RUSH: (laughing) I know, it is.
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Political scientists take on the pundits
Yesterday I complained about how few people would learn about the repeated debunking of Thomas Frank’s empirical claims. I want to make a more constructive point and recommend the two most important political science books of the year for general readers, both of which debunk claims promoted by pundits like Frank. 1. Red State, Blue
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WSJ editorial page distorts CBO report
Here’s yet another reminder of why you can’t trust the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Earlier this month, the Journal wrote the following in an editorial blaming deficits on spending increases: The real runaway train is what CBO calls a “substantial increase in spending” that is “on an unsustainable path.” That’s for sure. In fact,
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I keep strange company
I was amused that the “Swing State Project” blog included me in a strange diatribe against campaign expert Stuart Rothenberg: Rothenberg goes even further: But if the DCCC is going to go out of its way to promote certain races, it ought to be responsible for those selections. Responsible how, exactly? Should the DCCC be
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NYT attributes “privatization” to Dems
Here’s another example of the bizarre relativism of “objective” news reporting — the New York Times describes John McCain’s support for private accounts in Social Security as “an approach that Democrats call privatization”: Mr. McCain also stuck by his support for allowing workers to invest a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes in stocks
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Telling stories about McCain/Palin numbers
There’s been an outbreak of storytelling about the predictable decline of John McCain’s bounce and Sarah Palin’s favorable/unfavorable numbers. For instance, Matthew Yglesias attributes Obama’s increasing numbers to the national focus on economic issues. Sam Wang calls it the “Palin Bounce.” Similarly, Ross Douthat blames the decline “primarily” on “negative press reports on her Alaska
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Latest racial smears from the campaign
More racial codewords are being directed at Barack Obama, who was called “uppity” by an anonymous Bush adviser: A PRESCRIPTION FOR McCAIN, from one of the smartest Bushies: “I personally would make a lot of ‘accidental’ straight talk on the plane with reporters. Oh no. McCain was chatting with the press, slipped up and called
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Debunking What’s the Matter with Kansas
Princeton’s Larry Bartels, who previously eviscerated Thomas Frank’s influential What the Matter with Kansas?, reports that a new conference paper by Steve Nicholson and Gary Segura provides yet more evidence that Frank’s thesis is overstated or wrong: In What’s the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank argues that the Republican Party has redrawn the landscape of
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The Treasury bailout and equity ownership
Matthew Yglesias and Paul Krugman both suggest that taxpayers should get “a stake in the upside” (Krugman’s words) in return for bailing out the financial industry. But that’s unlikely to happen due to conservatives’ deep-seated hostility to government ownership of private industry. During the debate over Social Security privatization, many people pointed out that we