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Hack narratives on Obama’s decline
As predicted, the press continues to invent an array of silly narratives blaming the tactics of Obama and his staff for the President’s current political standing. The latest example is George Packer’s New Yorker article, which heads downhill from the hack subtitle “The President’s failure to connect with ordinary Americans.” As I wrote, presidents “connect”
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Will health care myths dissipate by November?
Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com (where I frequently cross-post) has a new NationalJournal.com column discussing my claim that myths about health care reform are unlikely to be dispelled by November. Here’s how it begins: Last week, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh said Democrats are betting that perceptions of the health care reform bill will improve once it
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Mann and Ornstein’s reconciliation infographic
Via Matthew Yglesias, Thomas Mann, Norm Ornstein, and Raffaela Wakeman have a new op-ed and infographic on reconciliation that nicely complements their TNR piece on the procedure and the Sunlight Foundation’s infographic: Bill Frist, a former Senate majority leader, called reconciliation an “arcane” procedure that Congress has “never used … to adopt major, substantive policy
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed: -Today’s New York Times story on David Axelrod features the standard tropes of the blame-the-staff genre of political news –Bush nostalgia begins even as downturn that started during his presidency continues -Steve Smith, a Congressional expert at Washington University in St. Louis, has a new paper on procedural conflict in the
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Simplistic WSJ minimum wage editorial
The quantitative masterminds at the Wall Street Journal editorial board are at it again. Back in 2007, I showed how they cooked up a bogus graphic purporting to demonstrate that “Lower corporate tax rates with fewer loopholes can lead to more, not less, tax revenue from business”: Today, the Journal denounces the 2007 law that
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Senate reconciliation infographic
Updating my previous posts on the history of reconciliation, here is a Sunlight Foundation infographic that is by far the most usable to date (via Matthew Yglesias) — click the image for a larger version: If you want to get wonky, Ezra Klein has posted the most recent Congressional Research Service report on the use
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Classy RNC fundraising tactics
Politico’s Ben Smith obtained an internal fundraising presentation explaining the current fundraising tactics of the RNC: The presentation was delivered by RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart to top donors and fundraisers at a party retreat in Boca Grande, Florida on February 18, a source at the gathering said. The presentation explains the Republican fundraising in
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Obama versus FDR and LBJ
Nate Silver has written a post arguing that comparisons between Obama, FDR, and LBJ are unfair because FDR and LBJ had larger Congressional majorities when they passed their major legislative accomplishments: When F.D.R. took over the Presidency in 1933, the Democrats controlled 64 percent of the Senate seats and 73 percent (!) of the House
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Charles M. Blow’s “Precious” correction
I’m almost always disappointed in Charles M. Blow’s “visual op-ed” column in the New York Times, which typically marries a simplistic premise to a lousy bar chart. But Saturday’s column was even worse than usual. Blow wrote a whole column based on the premise that Mo’Nique is likely to win an Oscar for her role
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed: –Previous votes on reconciliation by Senate Republicans -Media Matters catches the Washington Post repeating the “death panel” myth without debunking it -Ignore the latest edition of the useless Natl. Journal rankings — see my previous posts here, here, and here –Via Michael Crowley, US training of Afghan legal officials includes showing