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Who would be blamed for a debt default?
Who would get blamed for an economic downturn resulting from the debt ceiling standoff? John Sides, a political scientist at George Washington University, has argued that incumbents tend to get blamed by voters for bad economic conditions even under divided government. New York Times blogger Nate Silver responds that a debt-induced crisis “would not be
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Bush White House said tax cuts increase revenue
In his column today, Paul Krugman says the White House didn’t make unsupported claims about tax cuts increasing revenue: [E]ven the administration of former President George W. Bush refrained from making extravagant claims about tax-cut magic, at least in part for fear that making such claims would raise questions about the administration’s seriousness. In reality,
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed (7/5-7/12) Brendan Nyhan Jul 12, 2011 at 1:22 PM Powered by Keepstream BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan .@jonathanchait says Obama is about as strong as Clinton was at this point, but pers. income growth=3% Clinton, 1% Obama http://j.mp/npOEFf Checking In On Old Friends | The New Republic I’ve been taking a bit of a
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Of Twitter, Nate Silver, and straw men
One of the problems with Twitter is that people can easily take what you write out of context. Last Friday, for instance, Nate Silver criticized me for “poor political punditry” because of a tweet in which I said “A few more jobs reports like this and Romney et al. are going to be measuring the
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The debt ceiling fight in historical perspective
In recent years, growth in elite polarization has broken down a series of bipartisan norms in Washington, but the GOP’s brinksmanship over the debt ceiling (which will continue today in a meeting at the White House) is historically unprecedented. It’s worth underscoring what the stakes are. Unlike other commentators, political scientists are often relatively sanguine
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Twitter roundup
Twitter roundup (6/27-7/5) Brendan Nyhan Jul 5, 2011 at 1:46 PM Powered by Keepstream BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Interesting – @JonahNRO endorses my post on the myth of Reagan as Great Communicator in USAT: http://j.mp/kwRaym My post: http://j.mp/aEgaFe Column: Obama’s Reagan parallels are falling away – USATODAY.com 5.1, 9.3, 8.1, 8.5, 8, 7.1 and 3.9. While that
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Historical context on presidential “flakes”
On “Fox News Sunday,” Chris Wallace asked Michele Bachmann “Are you a flake?,” prompting a backlash that forced Wallace to apologize: Some commentators have suggested that Wallace’s question was sexist. I agree that “flake” is a pejorative term that seems to be disproportionately applied to women, but it’s worth noting that in presidential politics the
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed (6/20-6/27) Brendan Nyhan Jun 27, 2011 at 2:38 PM Powered by Keepstream BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Highly recommended RT @monkeycageblog: Political Science and Gay Marriage in New York http://t.co/2RDQZ2s Political Science and Gay Marriage in New York — The Monkey Cage A Monkey Cage reader, Jeff, emailed me and wrote: I’ll speak to
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Will Americans blame Bush for the economy in 2012?
Matthew Yglesias takes heart in polling showing many Americans still blame President Bush for the state of the economy: One gripe I hear fairly often around DC is the idea that President Obama has failed to do an adequate job of reminding the public about the disastrous legacy of the George W Bush administration. The
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed (6/14-6/20) Brendan Nyhan Jun 20, 2011 at 11:45 AM Powered by Keepstream BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Cool new dynamic forecasting model for state-level presidential election outcomes from Emory’s Drew Linzer http://t.co/FmieQ1Q (PDF) http://userwww.service.emory.e du/~dlinzer/Linzer-prestracker .pdf Jun 20, 2011 at 4:18 PM BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Remember ’08 was uniform swing, not much state variation MT