Cooking a big pot of corned beef and cabbage with potatoes and carrots, and doing the rails to trails thing until the Georgia game at 3:30.
Talk amongst yourself.
by John Cole| 42 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Cooking a big pot of corned beef and cabbage with potatoes and carrots, and doing the rails to trails thing until the Georgia game at 3:30.
Talk amongst yourself.
by DougJ| 148 Comments
This post is in: Politics
I think this Ron Brownstein column is exactly right:
In midterm elections, the electorate tends to be whiter and older than in presidential elections. ABC polling director Gary Langer has calculated that since 1992 seniors have cast 19 percent of the vote in midterm elections, compared with just 15 percent in presidential years. That difference contributed to the 1994 landslide that swept the GOP into control of both the House and Senate. Seniors had cast just 13 percent of the vote in Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory, but that figure spiked to nearly 19 percent two years later, with voting by the young people who had bolstered Clinton falling off sharply.
[….]These trends may be especially troublesome for Democrats next year. In 2008, Obama assembled what I’ve called a “coalition of the ascendant” that revolved around minorities and rapidly growing groups, such as the Millennial Generation of young people. Those voting blocs still provide him his strongest approval ratings. But if historical patterns persist, they will turn out at lower rates next year — possibly declining even more than usual because Obama inspired such an elevated turnout among them last year.
[…..]But that dynamic also means that Republicans could do very well in 2010 without solving their fundamental demographic challenges. In the 2012 presidential election, the young and minority voters central to Obama’s coalition are likely to return in large numbers. The risk to the GOP is that a strong 2010 showing based on a conservative appeal to apprehensive older whites will discourage it from reconsidering whether its message is too narrow to attract those rapidly growing groups. “It can’t be the same formula in 2012,” Ayres warns.
I think that 2010 is going to be a rough, rough year for Democrats. Unemployment will still be high and, as Brownstein asserts, a reasonable proportion of the voters will be people who have spent the last four years doing AOL key word searches on “kerning.”
Politico/Drudge will hype the Republican party’s moderate success possibly with the headline “Mac is back!”, for an article about how the great victory was due to John McCain’s talent for picking candidates. Drudge will be in his heaven and all will be well in the kingdom of Beck.
The net effect will be another two years or more of Republicans pissing off young voters, pissing off non-white voters, and taking another step towards Whigdom.
This post is in: Clown Shoes
John McCormack, 11:38 am, announcing the Weekly Standard offices erupted in cheers when the US lost the Olympic bid:
John McCormack, seven hours later:
Actually, yeah, you moran. Cheering because your COUNTRY lost an Olympic bid because it might give you a fleeting moment of partisan gain is the dictionary definition of being unpatriotic. You really have to check the link, though- he actually uses the phrase “Obama’s cowboy diplomacy.”
BTW- it is pretty clear to anyone with an IQ above room temperature what is going on here. One of the uber patriots at the Weekly Standard realized how petty it made them look to be cheering America’s defeat, so they edited out the part about the WS offices erupting in cheers, and then made him puke up some nonsense about loving Rio, the 1976 Olympics, and what not.
Did they hire this guy to make Goldfarb and Kristol look smart by comparison?
by DougJ| 152 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
This Drudgico blog title says a lot, albeit inadvertently:
Bad day for USA. Good day for GOP?
Even saw the lights of the Goodyear blimp and it read Glenn Beck’s a pimp.
DougJ +3
by John Cole| 88 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Sports
Stanley Cup Champion Pens are on.
by John Cole| 53 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
I’m sure the Weekly Standard will love this news:
Gallup Daily tracking for the month of September found 64% of U.S. Jews approving of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, significantly higher than the 52% average among national adults in September, and also higher than was seen among Catholics, Protestants, and Mormons. Only nonreligious Americans equal Jews in their support for the president.
Of course, I’m sure those are only the self-hating Jews.
They Need This Like They Need a Loch In KopPost + Comments (53)
by John Cole| 21 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Assholes
In fairness, the Republicans never say WHICH family they value:
Early last year, Senator John Ensign contacted a small circle of political and corporate supporters back home in Nevada — a casino designer, an airline executive, the head of a utility and several political consultants — seeking work for a close friend and top Washington aide, Douglas Hampton.
“He’s a competent guy, and he’s looking to come back to Nevada. Do you know of anything?” one patron recalled Mr. Ensign asking.
The job pitch left out one salient fact: the senator was having an affair with Mr. Hampton’s wife, Cynthia, a campaign aide. The tumult that the liaison was causing both families prompted Mr. Ensign, a two-term Republican, to try to contain the damage and find a landing spot for Mr. Hampton.
In the coming months, the senator arranged for Mr. Hampton to join a political consulting firm and lined up several donors as his lobbying clients, according to interviews, e-mail messages and other records. Mr. Ensign and his staff then repeatedly intervened on the companies’ behalf with federal agencies, often after urging from Mr. Hampton.
On the up side for Ensign, there were no wetsuits involved, and she was a woman. So it isn’t all bad news.