Uncategorized
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The overvote footnote on Bush v. Gore
The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund makes a claim about the 2000 election that is only partially true: Democratic partisans still argue that the 2000 presidential contest was decided by a single vote in the U.S. Supreme Court, even though media recounts of Florida ballots showed that the outcome would not have been changed if
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Clinton touts her electability?
Hillary Clinton, who has apparently unprecedented negative ratings for a first time presidential candidate, is now claiming that only she can win in November: Central to the new Clinton push will be the argument that only she can beat the eventual Republican nominee, a claim Obama is also seeking to make to voters here. Advisers
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Thanksgiving break
The family and I are headed to the mountains of western North Carolina for Thanksgiving so blogging will probably be nonexistent until next week…
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Obama needs issues
Writing on TPM, Reed Hundt notes how Barack Obama’s campaign lacks actual issues: Obama’s campaign has a good offensive position on the all-important “change” issue. But the campaign has apparently been reluctant to articulate in detail how Clinton does not stand for “change” in policy terms… Obama’s campaign this fall has plainly been willing to
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Rove: Everything Hillary does is calculated
In a Newsweek column, Karl Rove tries to advance the Al Gore-esque narrative that everything Hillary does is calculated: And against a Democrat who calculates almost everything, including her accent and laugh, being seen as someone who says what he believes in a direct way will help. Of course, Rove has no idea why Hillary
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The GOP is not scared of Hillary
In an interview with Newsweek.com, Sean Wilentz makes the case for Hillary Clinton. I’m sympathetic to his criticism of Barack Obama’s anti-political tendencies, but his response to a question about Hillary’s electability is weak: You know who makes that argument more than anybody else? Republicans. This is a favorite Republican argument. They say, “We want
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The motive dodge
Writing on National Review, Mark Hemingway attempts to dismiss criticism of Ronald Reagan’s speech in Philadelphia, MS by saying “Reagan isn’t a racist”: Krugman’s mentioned the Reagan/Nashoba incident four previous times over the last two years; Bob Herbert has mentioned it eight previous times going back to 1997. Enough already. Nobody believes Reagan is a
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Obama: Still not about issues
Despite his obvious discomfort with going negative, Barack Obama has been slowly edging toward the “Hillary is too polarizing” pitch that Andrew Sullivan and I have advocated. The problem, however, is that his core message is still about process rather than issues — and process candidates do not usually win primaries. During last night’s debate,
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David Brooks loves adjectives
Obscure historical justifications notwithstanding, the the table of adjectives about the candidates that David Brooks put together is utterly pointless. Couldn’t they just run a slug that says “David Brooks didn’t have a good column idea” and publish an actual article instead?
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Don’t trust Media Research Center
One thing I learned while working on Spinsanity is never to trust the Media Research Center, which continually puts out work based on quote-doctoring, taking things out of context, etc. (see here and here). As a result, I wasn’t surprised when Greg Sargent of TPM caught the supposed watchdogs of liberal media bias in the