Month: February 2012

Erick Erikson thinks that Bobby Jindal is the man to step in and save the Republicans from the horror of Mitt Romney. Forgive me, but I don’t see how Jindal is much different from Tim Pawlenty. He’s a fairly popular governor, but he isn’t ready for primetime. He doesn’t excite anyone. The GOP is going to win Louisiana anyway, at least if they have any chance of winning the general election. I don’t think Jindal would shift the demographics of the vote much. It’s just a stupid idea to put your hopes in Bobby Jindal. He reminds me of the Kenneth character on 30 Rock more than he strikes me as a plausible president.

However, I can’t disagree too much with this:

When you have a candidate few people really like, whose support is a mile wide and an inch deep, whose raison d’etre (a 4am fancy word) is fixing an economy that is fixing itself without him, and who only wins his actual, factual home state by three percentage points against a guy no one took seriously only two months ago, there really is little reason for independent voters in the general election to choose him if the economy keeps improving.

Seriously, putting it bluntly, conservatives may not like Barack Obama, but most other people do. And when faced with a guy you like and a guy you don’t like who says he can fix an economy that no longer needs fixing, you’re going to go with the guy you like.

My only questions are, what would Bobby Jindal say differently and why would people like him? Is Jindal going to say that the economy is great and doesn’t need fixing? Is he going to become charismatic overnight?

Erikson identifies the problem. He doesn’t’ realize that it’s a problem without a solution. See you in Tampa!!

PA state representative Kathy Rape -er, RAPP- is your garden variety Republican. She claim to love children while supporting anti-child policies.  She stands for family values, like poverty and hunger. And like all republicans, she wants the government small enough to fit in your uterus.  Enjoy our latest Piggie of the Week:

I don’t want to get into a lengthy response to the Bloomberg article about Wall Streeters whose reduced bonuses mean they have to limit the three-bedroom vacation rental to one month rather than four, or who can’t ski Aspen this winter. Nor do I want to go point by point through Megan McArdle’s reply (“Are the Rich Completely Undeserving of Sympathy?”). I just want to talk about this comment from an attorney that’s appended to McArdle’s post:

Another factor I’ve noticed with my bankruptcy clients is that a very rich person whose income takes a sudden precipitous drop to a still-pretty-good income can actually wind up in more financial trouble, faster, than a very poor person whose income drops to zero. If you were making $300k a year and spending $200k of it on fixed expenses, and your household income drops to $125k a year, unless you have substantial liquid savings or are able to sell your house and your car and your boat yank your kids out of private school REALLY fast, you’re going to wind up in bankruptcy in a fairly short space of time….

I guess what I want to ask is: why don’t these people have “substantial liquid savings”? Why don’t they have a plan for a possible calamitous economic downturn? Isn’t understanding the volatile nature of financial markets their freaking job?

Aren’t they supposed to comprehend this kind of risk much, much better than the rest of us? And, by the way, isn’t risk the reason they and their Masters of the Universe superiors supposedly deserve the big bucks in the first place? Isn’t that the heroic myth of big-time capitalism — that, unlike us paper-pushing, ditch-digging, wage-slave drones, they accept the potential for tremendous harm to their own economic well-being in order to be the Randian heroes who keep our economic engine chugging along?

I’m not even getting into the fact that they and their bosses and colleagues actually caused the damn downturn in the first place. That’s reason enough to withhold sympathy. But even those not directly involved should know they’re in a risky business. Instead, just the same way they want profits privatized and losses socialized, they want to corner the market on praise and then demand a socialist redistribution of sympathy.

(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)

Anybody see this piece of crap? Okay, here’s a sample:

I have a solution: Dharma-style food stamp reform. Fans of “Lost” will recognize the reference, but for those who did not watch the show, the Dharma Initiative packaged its own food to supply members of the project on the island. Each item came in a package with a simple black-and-white label and a basic description. Beer cans were marked with the word “Beer.” It probably tasted as bad as it looked. In any case, here is a picture:

Dharma-style food stamp reform would have four basic components. First, the federal government would create a government “brand” of essential food items such as milk, cheese, meat, cereal, vegetables, bread, peanut butter, beans, juice, soup, baby formula, diapers, etc., and would package the items with simple black-and-white labels and basic descriptions. The word “Government” would be stamped across the top in bold letters so everyone would know it was a welfare item. These items could be manufactured by major companies through government contracts, thus not creating a net loss to private industry. Because competition is not an issue, taste and quality, with the exception of the baby formula and baby food, would not be a top priority. Snacks, soda, cigarettes and beer would not be available through the program.

You can imagine where it goes from there. Once you decide to give poor people low-quality food, you’ve pretty much put yourself permanently in the world’s biggest a-hole and Jesus-hates-you category. The interesting thing is what inspired this thought experiment. A woman in front of him in line at Wal-Mart was using food stamps to buy staple items like bread and cereal and milk. So, what was the problem? Well, she was also talking on an expensive cell phone and had a nice purse. Oh, and she was buying beer, cigarettes, and snacks with her own money.

We see these arguments a lot. You shouldn’t be able to get government assistance to feed your children until you’ve canceled your phone, cable, internet, car, gym, etc. Or, you can’t buy some diapers for your kid unless you quit smoking and drinking. Hey!! Why don’t we drug test these people? Can we get a vaginal probe?

I have trouble even responding to this line of thinking because it’s so miserly and judgmental. But, you know, you aren’t going to help mommy find a job by taking away her cell phone and internet connection. Banning television might work though.

Take a look at the Republican primary schedule and the polls in upcoming contests. Right now, Nate Silver predicts the following winners on Super Tuesday (with degree of confidence):

Georgia (76 delegates): Gingrich (86% chance of win)
Ohio (66 delegates): Santorum (78% chance of win)
Oklahoma (43 delegates): Santorum (96% chance of win)
Tennessee (58 delegates): Santorum (93% chance of win)
Virginia (49 delegates): Romney (94% chance of win)

Also voting on Super Tuesday are: Alaska (27 delegates), Idaho (32 delegates), Massachusetts (41 delegates), North Dakota (28 delegates), Vermont (17 delegates), Wyoming (29 delegates).

I think we can safely put Massachusetts and Vermont in Romney’s column. Romney should do well in Idaho and Wyoming (big Mormon populations). I’m not sure how he will fare in North Dakota or Alaska. As for Silver’s degree of confidence, that will change when he gets new data in post-Michigan/Arizona polling. If Mitt gets a little bump in the polls, those 90-plus percent chances of losing will come down.

Looking at the present situation, though, it doesn’t look very good for Romney. Of the five biggest prizes on Super Tuesday, Romney stands to win just one of them, in a state (Virginia) where his two main rivals are not even on the ballot. He will enjoy the delegates he gains in New England, but he’ll get no credit for them. And he’ll probably come in third place in Georgia, which is the biggest prize of all. I can’t predict how the delegates were be distributed without investigating each state’s rules and doing more analysis, but if the states were based on winner take all, and Romney were to win all the small states, he’d win the night by about 223-167-76. That might seem good, but he has no guarantee of winning all the small states and he won’t benefit from winner-take-all in all of them. It’s more likely to be closer to a tie when the allocations are made. And then there is that calendar.

On March 10, Kansas votes, along with Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands. If results so far in Colorado and Missouri are any indication, Santorum will win Kansas. I don’t know that anyone really cares who wins the rest of these contests.

On March 13, Alabama, Mississippi, Hawai’i, and American Samoa vote. If results in South Carolina and the Florida panhandle, and polls in Georgia are any indication, Gingrich will win Alabama and Mississippi. Romney will probably win the pacific islands because nothing is less Polynesian than Rick Santorum’s attitude. But, still, the big prizes will go to Gingrich.

On March 17, Missouri has a vote that counts, unlike the primary they held a few weeks ago. But, remember, Santorum trounced Romney in that primary. Expect him to trounce Romney again.

On March 18, Puerto Rico votes. I have no idea how that will go. Seriously.

Then we get to the next really important contest. On March 20, Illinois votes. They have 69 delegates. Can Romney do what he failed to do in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and (most likely) Ohio? Can he win a big midwestern state where the trees aren’t just the right height?

I think this will be his last chance to win a majority of the delegates. Because failure in Illinois will likely be followed by failure in Louisiana, followed by failure in Texas, followed by failure in Wisconsin, and so on.

If Romney can stagger on long enough, if he can get all the way to April 24th, he will have the privilege of losing to Santorum in Pennsylvania. But he can expect to win New York, Delaware, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Then he can go right back to losing in West Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana.

The best way for Romney to avoid this future is to vastly exceed current expectations on Super Tuesday. His number one goal should be to defeat Santorum in Ohio and Tennessee. If he can do that, the bleak picture I’ve produced here may not come to pass.

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Today’s Portland Press Herald has a good summary of the state of play in the race to succeed Olympia Snowe one day after her surprise announcement that she would not run for what would have been her fourth term representing Maine in the US Senate.

The race may have national implications for control of the Senate, and it represents one of the few solid opportunities for Democrats to flip a seat currently held by the GOP.  In fact, given that:

   
1. Mainers typically elect Senators for life (it’s been over 30 years since an incumbent Senator lost a reelection bid);

   

2. George H. W. Bush was the last Republican presidential candidate to carry Maine (in 1988); and,

   

3. Tea Party Governor Paul LePage still has approval ratings under 50%;

Maine may now represent the Democrats’ best chance to pick up a Senate seat in this election cycle.

People “from away” (that’s everyone south and west of the Piscataqua River) should be aware that Maine’s politics are not binary—and haven’t been for quite some time.  Since at least the late 1960s the electorate has consisted of several factions—none of which constitutes a majority by itself.  Roughly speaking, these include:

   
• “Rockefeller Republicans” – fiscally conservative, socially moderate, temperamentally inclined towards centrism and compromise (think Snowe and Susan Collins, Maine’s junior senator).

   

• Libertarians – there’s a strong strain of “just-leave-me-alone” self-reliance throughout northern New England.  Small-town and rural, culturally (at least) Protestant, these folks provided the energy and much of the leadership behind the Republican takeover of state government in 2010.

   

• Blue-collar Democrats – Maine is dotted with mill towns (mostly paper and textile).  Culturally (at least) Roman Catholic, heavily Franco-American, socially conservative, these voters are usually supportive of labor unions and the social welfare state—and somewhat suspicious of “do-gooders”.  (Think 2nd District Congressman Mike Michaud—a Blue Dog and part of Bart Stupak’s faction on health care reform.)

   

• “Back To The Landers” – Urban East Coast hippies and liberals who wanted to get away from the Big City in the 1960s and 70s…and stayed.  Now they run businesses, teach at Maine’s colleges and universities and work in its social service agencies.  (Think 1st District Congresswoman Chellie Pingree.)

   

• Northern Greater Boston – Symbolized by Amtrak’s revival of daily train service between Portland and Boston, over the past generation southern Maine has become increasingly connected to the sprawling, multi-state metropolis centered on Boston, MA.  As a result, southern Maine has become increasingly more socially liberal and more economically prosperous than the rest of the state.

In addition, it’s a small state.  That means, for example, a senator can promise to visit every high school in the state and keep that promise in a term.  It also means that voters expect a senator who makes that kind of promise to keep it. It means that a political liberal usually has to be temperamentally moderate (think former Sen. Majority Leader George Mitchell) to win a statewide election.

Final note:  Mainers are ticket-splitters.  Twice in the last 40 years they’ve elected an Independent Governor (once with a Republican Senate and a Democratic House).  In 2008, Susan Collins got re-elected with 61% of the vote while Barack Obama defeated John McCain 58-41.  Results in one race are not predictive of results in another.

If you’ve got thoughts about Sen. Snowe’s decision or the race to succeed her, please add them in the comments section.  Thanks.

Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/

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With about half the vote counted in Michigan it is still technically too close to call, but I’m going to predict that Romney pulls it out. I see Nate Silver is hedging a bit, but I think he knows already that Romney did well enough in his strongholds in the Detroit suburbs and held up well enough in Grand Rapids to carry himself over the finish line with a five or six percentage points margin. I think the delegates will be split quite evenly, with Santorum potentially winning more congressional districts. Romney appears to have saved himself from an immediate crisis, but I predict his campaign will reach a critical state one week from today when it becomes clear that he cannot win the nomination anytime soon, nor can he win in the South or anywhere (other than Michigan) in the Midwest.

Anyone want to discuss this excerpt from James Taranto?

There is more to a black person’s life than the way he is treated by the government or by whites. When one considers the social problems that have beset the black community since the civil rights era–the decline of marriage and rise of illegitimacy, drug abuse, the shockingly high incarceration rate for young black men–it’s not hard to imagine that many blacks might be nostalgic for the relative social stability of 50 to 60 years ago, as distinct from the undeniably oppressive political regime.

As for women, their “liberation” has been considerably more ambiguous. The sexual revolution and feminism are undeniably liberating for women who are sexually adventurous and professionally ambitious. But what about women who don’t fit that description? The life of a chaste homemaker/mother may not be for every woman, but it is for some, and a combination of social and economic pressures makes it much more difficult to realize than it was half a century ago.

As a white male, I thought maybe someone else should take the first shot at this.