Interesting endorsement of Obama October 13, 2008
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The new ABC News/Washington Post poll October 13, 2008
Posted by unbiasedhansen in Uncategorized.add a comment
ABC News and the Washington Post are out with a national poll this morning that shows Obama with a 10 point lead over John McCain. This result is more favorable to Obama than most polls out in the last week, which have showed Obama’s lead averaging around 5-7 points. But it made me wonder whether John Kerry ever led the 2004 race in ANY poll by 10 points, especially this close to the election. After all, Kerry lost by less than 3 points nationally, so certainly if Obama was headed for a narrow defeat, we would see some 2004 numbers indicating that Kerry was polling better than he inevitably did.
Not so. In fact, from October 1, 2004 until election day, Kerry had the lead in 5 polls out of the 50 logged on realclearpolitics.com. 10 showed a tie. The other 35 showed Bush in the lead, by as much as 8 points in a CNN poll released on October 17, 2004. The biggest lead Kerry had in any of these polls was 4 points.
Comparably, Obama has had the lead in all 14 polls logged on realclearpolitics.com since October 1. And while Kerry’s biggest October lead was 4 points in 2004, only 2 of the 14 October 2008 polls show Obama’s lead at LESS than 4 points. Moreover, ABC’s new poll showing Obama ahead by 10 has some company, as Newsweek released a poll last week which showed Obama ahead by 11.
In sum, not only is Obama doing better now than John Kerry was doing 4 years ago, but I think it’s fair to say that he is doing considerably better than George Bush was doing 4 years ago.
Savers footing the bill for spenders October 10, 2008
Posted by dfseward in Economy.add a comment
Here’s a great article on the conundrum facing responsible savers and the effects of overconsumption.
“Spending more money than you have — consumerism beyond capability to buy — it seems to me that’s a moral vice,” Wilcox asserts. “There are reasonable uses of debt, but lifestyle debt is not one of them. Who ends up paying the bills? Either you pay the bills down the road, or if you seriously mismanage, someone ends up paying the bills for you — you need someone to bail you out. I’m hard pressed to think that’s a virtuous way to live life.”
Gay News October 10, 2008
Posted by unbiasedhansen in Uncategorized.add a comment
Same-sex marriage is now legal in Connecticut, according to the state’s highest court, making it the third U.S. state to legalize gay marriage, along with California and Massachusetts.
“Barack Osama” on the ballot in the Capital Region October 10, 2008
Posted by unbiasedhansen in Uncategorized.3 comments
Debate diagnostic October 10, 2008
Posted by Harlan Weber in Debates, Politics.Tags: debate, infographics, ny times
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My friend Elina sent me this really amazing tool from the NY Times for analyzing the debate content. It’s essentally a serachable video of the debate, accompanied by a transcript. You can search for any word or phrase, and it will return the number of times each candidate said it, and mark it on the video timeline. It’s pretty sweet, check it out:
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/president/debates/second-presidential-debate.html
On the impact of race in the Presidential election: October 10, 2008
Posted by unbiasedhansen in Uncategorized.add a comment
Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, has an interesting analogy to explain why he doesn’t think Barack Obama’s race will have an impact on the outcome of this election:
when you’re drowning, you don’t care what color the person is who throws you a life preserver.
Depression October 10, 2008
Posted by dfseward in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
We’re clearly seeing a ridiculous burst of panic selling that has brought world markets down roughly 20% over the past week and up to 40% over the past year. There’s a gold mine here – if you can judge when we’ve hit the bottom and buy, some folks stand to make some good money.
Is it just me, or does it seem like every 8 years we have another “crisis” with big market swings, followed by unrealistic overvaluation of some other sector? For Reagan it was Savings and Loan. For Clinton it was the Tech Bubble. For BJ it’s now the Mortgage mess. The way things look now it could be the Green Bubble for Obama. I guess we’ll never get tired of this, or examine the cause of the problem, which seems to be government favoritism towards particular industries.
William Ayers October 10, 2008
Posted by unbiasedhansen in Barack Obama, John McCain, Politics.add a comment
It’s clear now that the McCain campaign has settled on the stretch-run kitchen sink strategy. This strategy focuses on Obama’s connection to 1960’s “domestic terrorist” William Ayers. The effort, obviously, is to cast doubt on the authenticity and/or Americanness of Barack Obama, and to play into people’s worst fears about whether Obama is actually some sinnister, shady figure who is duping us all into electing the next Adolf Hitler.
This is a gamble by the McCain campaign, because it obviously risks the possibility of a backlash by the voters. If voters view these attacks as an attempt to distract them from McCain’s clear disadvantage on critical policy issues, a 5 point deficit could turn into 10 or 15 points by election day. However, this is a smart gamble from a political standpoint, because the only way McCain has any chance of righting the ship in the last 3.5 weeks before the election is if he can somehow knock Obama off his pedastal. That is the point of bringing up William Ayers, Obama’s past drug use, Reverend Wright, using Obama’s middle name, etc. The Republicans are trying to drum up fear and second-guessing among persuadable voters while also making Obama go off-message while trying to defend these personal attacks. It is an effort to make Obama seem less Presidential and, indeed, unacceptable as President, in the hopes that the voters will elect McCain by default.
So from this point on, look to see how the polls react over the next week. If they begin to tighten – even modestly – it might reflect that McCain’s attacks are having an impact, and we might be in for a very close election. If the polls stay where they are or continue to inch in Obama’s favor, I think at that point you could pretty much conclude that voters have rejected these attacks, and that Obama will win on election day by a significant margin.
One thing is clear, though. John McCain has forever squandered his reputation as an honest and honorable politician and, win or lose on November 4, that is something that he will have to spend the rest of his life justifying to himself.
Teach me October 8, 2008
Posted by unbiasedhansen in Uncategorized.add a comment
Can McCain teach me how to have no pride? Just for a few days? It would come in handy.
