Uncategorized
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The political version of Green Lanternism
Jon Chait debunks a second species of presidential Green Lanternism at his TNR blog. Rather than asserting that the president’s failure to achieve a policy goal is a result of insufficient will, American Prospect co-editor Robert Kuttner suggests on the Huffington Post that Obama’s political problems are due to a lack of resolve to pursue
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed: –Congressional oversimplification alert: “We could cut unemployment in half… by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers” -New version of Fox News junk chart — Edward Tufte sheds another tear (part one in the series) -Newsmax ruled out of Newsweek bidding — good news for journalism -Bob Herbert goes Green Lantern
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When qualitative punditry adds value
Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics objects to my post on Peggy Noonan’s mystical interpretations of presidential popularity and mounts a defense of non-quantitative punditry: Non-quantitative punditry has a huge place in our discourse for many reasons, including one that is directly applicable here… [T]he most applicable problem here is that there is always a
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Research 2000 update
Given the findings about possible non-random discrepancies in Research 2000 polls that were published yesterday on Daily Kos and similar results from Nate Silver, I’ve added the following disclosure to previous posts that cite Research 2000 polls: [Update (6/30/10): Serious questions have been raised about the validity of Research 2000’s polls. The results discussed below
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The mysticism of Peggy Noonan
Jonathan Chait had a great post a couple of weeks ago that’s worth revisiting because of what it tells us about how pundits reason about politics. As Chait noted, political scientists have established that presidential election outcomes are largely a function of the state of the economy, particularly in an election year (the same principle
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed: -A new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll finds 24% 13% of Americans still believe Obama wasn’t born in US (update: and 11% aren’t sure) –Insanely bad job loss chart on Fox News — somewhere Edward Tufte is crying… –A smart post on the economic incentives for “objectivity” that the Weigel debate has
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Charles M. Blow puts Obama on the couch
Charles M. Blow, the “visual Op-Ed columnist” for the New York Times, has discovered a magical ability to plumb the inner workings of President Obama’s psyche: On the other side stands Obama — solid and sober, rooted in the belief that his way is the right way and in no need of alteration. He’s the
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The conservative anti-McCaughey underground
At the end of last week, the disclosure of off-the-record emails sent by Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel created a controversy that led to his resignation from the newspaper. One such email quoted by the Daily Caller stated the following: “Tangentially related: Betsy McCaughey showed up at Grover Norquist’s conservative meeting today, massive spiral-bound health
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed: –Chris Mooney on why scientists struggle to correct public misperceptions, and how they can do better –A politician I can get behind: “Gnarr … ruled out any party whose members had not seen all five seasons of ‘The Wire.’” –The best initial post on Weigelgate — read Conor Friedsdorf on the