*official* 2008 us election thread

[bflaff]

Why Obama will kick McCain's ass, part 24:

McCain's front page message on his website (warning: takes you to McCain's website) says "John McCain: Ready to Lead on Day One"

smh.

[gunnerfan]

Originally posted by Jason the Yank:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by gunnerfan:

Yes, I noted that as well. However, it must be said that she is a truly unattractive woman.

Lies. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Clearly, you haven't seen her.

[bflaff]

Originally posted by gunnerfan:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Jason the Yank:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by gunnerfan:

Yes, I noted that as well. However, it must be said that she is a truly unattractive woman.

Lies. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Clearly, you haven't seen her. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Shallow Hal.

It's what's on the inside that counts. :sensitive ponytail man:

[Splendid]

Originally posted by bflaff:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by gunnerfan:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Jason the Yank:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by gunnerfan:

Yes, I noted that as well. However, it must be said that she is a truly unattractive woman.

Lies. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Clearly, you haven't seen her. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Shallow Hal.

It's what's on the inside that counts. :sensitive ponytail man: </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

DJ?

[gunnerfan]

Originally posted by bflaff:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by gunnerfan:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Jason the Yank:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by gunnerfan:

Yes, I noted that as well. However, it must be said that she is a truly unattractive woman.

Lies. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Clearly, you haven't seen her. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Shallow Hal.

It's what's on the inside that counts. :sensitive ponytail man: </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hey, I wasn't the one who called her a "superhottie".

[Gordon Comstock]

Obama leads in Texas by 4 according to Rasmussen.

[gunnerfan]

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, Hillary...

[Daaaaave]

senfronia thompson (d-tx) switches from hillary to obama.

hillary's sd lead down to +56

obama's overall lead now +99

according to dcw.

very shaky rumor starting to make the rounds saying hillary will drop out tomorrow. I don't see how that happens.

richardson also rumored to endorse in the next couple days. no official word who, but he's been saying nice things about obama lately.

[Kizzak]

If she drops now, it would certainly be a move to allow her to run again in the future.

[gunnerfan]

Dan Henninger's column from today's WSJ:

Hillary's Close-Up

February 28, 2008; Page A16

Has anyone else out there begun to find that it is easier to make sense of the struggle between Hillary and Barack if one thinks in terms of film tragedies? Several have been unspooling in my mind these days: "All About Eve," "Sunset Boulevard," "A Star Is Born," even "Bonnie and Clyde," if one assumes the Clintons are going to either pull off this heist or go down in a blaze of bullets.

Hillary's star is being eclipsed. Why?

A year ago, Hillary Clinton assumed the effort would bring her the prize. Instead, it has brought her to the precipice. What happened? What was supposed to be triumph has turned to tragedy. Who rewrote the plot?

The first revision came at the hand of Howard Dean. The Vermont governor's quixotic 2004 presidential run did one big thing: It let the netroots out. It empowered the Democratic Left. Web-based "progressives" proved they could raise lots of political money and bring pressure, especially when allied with labor unions.

They didn't defeat centrist Joe Lieberman in 2006, but they drove him out of the party. They pushed the party's Iraq policy under Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi into total, rejectionist opposition. In this world, the Petraeus surge is a failure, period. Thus, Obama calmly gives the surge little or no credit. Also in this world, trade and Nafta are anathema, as seen in the House refusal to pass the trade agreement with Colombia, the U.S.'s strongest ally in South America.

What the netroots has done is bunch up the party ideologically. While the Republican Party slices conservative ideology as thinly as aged prosciutto, the Democrats, in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail, are all swinging a populist anvil -- with the left hand.

This pushed Hillary out of the Clinton comfort zone. She established her Senate career as a reasonable person, winning public compliments from GOP colleagues. Came the campaign and she finds herself onstage with wall-to-wall men of the ascendant populist left.

On trade, the Democratic Party is as far left as at any time in its history. Both Al Gore and John Kerry ran as economic populists, but there was nothing on trade like what we have heard in this campaign. In Al Gore's 2000 nomination acceptance speech, trade was the last issue mentioned: "We must welcome and promote truly free trade." His running mate was Joe Lieberman, also a Nafta supporter. Labor "held its nose" and voted for Gore.

The party next nominated another Nafta supporter, John Kerry, whose acceptance speech also reduced trade to a line, with a quick bow to "a fair playing field." There was talk that Kerry would cover himself by putting the ardently antitrade, prounion Dick Gephardt on the ticket. Labor lost that one, too, but with the selection of John Edwards, the party became more invested in left-leaning populism.

Both Al Gore and John Kerry ran out of the trade tradition established by the Clintons and Democrats who straddled the center -- free trade as a proven economic benefit but with pressure applied at the margins on labor and environmental standards.

Barack Obama slipped smoothly into the antifree-trade current in his party. Hillary Clinton, one guesses, operates inside a structure of intellectual integrity of her own devising, and her antitrade riffs (the "time out") sound strained.

It's often said that she lacks Bill's political skills, whatever that means. Her retail skills are pretty darned good, though, good enough to defeat John Edwards or virtually any other Democrat one can imagine. So why is she losing to a three-year senator?

Partly because she's running in the wrong century.

Hillary's politics is the world of Eleanor Roosevelt, when it was all being born anew. The Washington of LBJ's Great Society in the mid-1960s was alive with policy debates -- among Democrats. By now, the Democratic Party's ideas are largely generic. Everyone noticed that the Democratic presidential candidates were largely singing from the same script. Health care, public schools, green energy, the eternal shafting of the middle class, the unions, protecting Social Security and Medicare. This common script means that the Democratic primaries are largely an audition. The candidates are reading for a role. The lines are known.

The part, however, is challenging. The Democratic platform may be familiar, but it is also infused with the quality of a dream. Actually, the word "dream" gets used a lot in Democratic rhetoric. What are essentially bureaucratic arrangements, such as health insurance or after-school programs, are promised as "universal." Meanwhile, "the middle class" is being offered a version of never-never land -- total public protection from the traps and betrayals of the private sector, which has been reduced to a kind of Grimm's Fairy Tale abstraction, the wolves.

If you are selling a dream you need the best possible salesman to make it seem somehow possible. They found him in Barack Obama.

Hillary attacked Obama this week on exactly this basis -- for selling dreams: "And you know the celestial choirs will be singing . . . and the world will be perfect." In her world "none of the problems we face will be easily solved." In her world, the real one, mediocre pols must be worked and massive bureaucracies pushed to do the right thing. And you know what? She just might be good at it.

The bitter irony is that what the Democrats want is someone like the original Clinton, another figure who can make the old-time religion sound not like a government program, but personally uplifting. She can't. In the Cleveland debate Tuesday, even Brian Williams couldn't resist noting "a 16-minute discussion on health care."

We're about six days away from the last close-up. What Hillary Clinton has invested, given and endured for her party to get to this moment is hard to imagine. Then the Democratic audience says: What difference does that make? A star has been born. Now comes the mad scene.

[bflaff]

Hillary as Gollum works for me.

[bflaff]

From Politico:

Obama spokesman Bill Burton, anticipating the Clinton campaign's announcement that she has raised roughly $35 million this month, tells me that the Illinois senator has raised "considerably more than that" in the same period.

Obama has claimed more than 1 million donors this year alone, and raised $36 million last month, with much of it coming through his website.

People whispering that Obama will clear $50 million for the month.

As for Hillary quitting tomorrow, there are some reasonable reasons that could justify it. 1) It prevents her from suffering the coup de grace that Tuesday looks like it could bring. Thus, she could still try to make a claim later that she and Obama were running close to neck and neck when she dropped out. Then she could go on to blame her razor thin loss on the media or some other such macguffin. 2) She looks like she is going to make the implausible claim that she raised $35 million this month, which can be spun as a huge outpouring of support. If she drops out now she never really has to prove that claim, since she won't be spending all of it. But it does make her look strong, with a deep reserve of support that will pony up the cash. In four years, if need be, she can claim that her support never dropped off, and was even coming on strong at the end (again, without receiving a March 4 coup de grace, she can still try to claim that she had a chance). 3) Quitting now, graciously, may make people forget in four years that she was ruthless and classless in this campaign.

[bflaff]

From the comments section to the Politico story on Hillary's claim to have raised $35 million this month:

Let's see now: $35,000,000 in contributions divided by 0 victories = (Ben, my calculator won't give me an answer here - help!!)

[gunnerfan]

Originally posted by bflaff:

Hillary as Gollum works for me.

Hillary as a conservative's tragic heroine is quite a sight.

[gunnerfan]

She looks like she is going to make the implausible claim that she raised $35 million this month, which can be spun as a huge outpouring of support. If she drops out now she never really has to prove that claim, since she won't be spending all of it. But it does make her look strong, with a deep reserve of support that will pony up the cash.

Yes, but then it leads to the painfully obvious question that if it was still so close and she had such an outpouring of support, why drop out?

[Daaaaave]

chuck todd

According to a source who tracks TV ad buying, Obama campaign has bought two-minute blocks in every market in both Ohio and Texas on Monday. It's unclear what the content will be, but sounds like it will be some sort of closing message. As we find out more, we'll report more.

that **** ain't cheap.

[McMaster#28]

Bush attacks Obama foreign policy plan

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8754.html

[Gordon Comstock]

Originally posted by Francis Cole:

Bush attacks Obama foreign policy plan

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8754.html

that's good for Obama. Bush's foreign policy touch is anything but golden.

[gunnerfan]

I'm coming to the conclusion that the conservatives are going to hand the election to Obama. I just saw Cunningham ranting on about McCain "abandoning conservative principles" because he had the temerity to apologize for Cunningham's rant against Obama.

You'd think that after seeing the Republican rank and file reject the idea of taking the most conservative candidate, that these guys would get a clue, but they don't.

As for Bush, I'm sure that McCain would be very happy to do without his "help".

[Jason the Yank]

Republicans starting to be like Democrats in the '70s and '80s, when winning took a back seat to ideological purity.

[Recife]

Wasn't the lack of "ideological purity" in the 70s something that is more commonly called segregationism?

Or was Phil Gramm a big loss for the Dems?

[gunnerfan]

No, Recife, the segregationist wing of the Democratic Party pretty much died with George Wallace's candidacy in 1968, if not earlier (perhaps with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965). McGovern's 1972 candidacy brought a lot of young people into the party, and the 1974 midterm election brought a lot of new Democrats to Washington, many of them more liberal than the veterans, and most of the newcomers suffused with a post-Watergate reformist agenda.

With Jimmy Carter's loss to Reagan in 1980 and the ascendancy of Reagan's conservative agenda, many of the new Dems reverted to the model of their anti-war activism of the late 1960s, which required them to demonize everything their opponent did, and to a great extent to define themselves as the antithesis of their opponent - in this case, Ronald Reagan. This help energize their ideological base on the left, which in turn helped with fundraising.

The result was the hopeless candidacies of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, both of whom could not succeed in tracking back to the political center in the general election after having placated the ideological base during the primaries. Reagan did not have the same limitation, since his candidacy was built on a coalition of ideologies who tolerated one another for the sake of electing the man they felt would serve them better than anyone from the other party (this included the Reagan Democrats - blue collar workers who had traditionally voted Democratic but who were alienated by the new left-leaning ideological base). Bush won in 1988 by holding the Reagan coalition together.

But in the run-up to the 1992 election, two things happened to doom Bush. One was the 1990 tax increase that Bush signed, violating his famous "Read My Lips" pledge of 1988. This alienated the small government, pro-growth wing of the Reagan coalition. With the first Gulf War in 1991, the tax cut seemed to take a back seat in the public debate, and many of the expected candidates for the Democratic nomination decided not to enter - there was actually talk that the Democrats couldn't possibly win the 1992 election.

That leads to the other thing that happened - Bill Clinton ran, casting himself as a moderate with talk of a "third way". When the economic expansion that had begun in the wake of the Reagan tax cuts stalled for a quarter in 1992, Clinton called it a recession and focused the debate on the economy. The pro-growth crowd either sat out the election or supported Clinton as a way of punishing Bush, and liberal Democrats embraced Clinton as their best chance.

Jason is 100% right. The far right of the Republican party tried to drive the party further to the right this year, shaping the debate in terms of who could be the most conservative, and the rank and file of the party rejected the notion. Their efforts to demonize Obama (or even Hillary, were she to make a last minute comeback) will repel more moderate members of the electorate.

Since Carter defeated Gerald Ford in 1976, Democrats have won just 2 out of 8 presidential elections. One has to wonder if it will take the conservatives in the Republican party that long to realize the damage they are doing.

[gunnerfan]

And the lack of ideological purity in the Democratic Party had far more to do with foreign policy and trade than anything else.

[Kizzak]

the segregationists wing didn't exactly die, it just migrated to the Republican party

As for the current state of the country, it's tough to get an accurate snapshot of the way the country is headed because the individual groups in both parties regularly move about and the overall mood of the country shifts relatively often. In addition, the parties themselves will respond to the voters, albeit very slowly at times. Generally you can only talk about the make-up of the country politically as a post-mortem.

It was only four years ago that Delay and others were talking of a 'Permanent Majority'. That obviously failed for a combination of reasons including overestimating just how conservative the country was.

[gunnerfan]

Kizzak, they might have migrated to the Republican Party, but as segregationists, they pretty much went underground. The segregationist agenda disappeared from any meaningful policy debate.

As for where the country is headed, I agree that the mood shifts often. But that's just it - they are moods, usually brought about by public perception of the problem of the moment and who is responsible. The country as a whole has always been moderate in its ideology - Reagan didn't make it more conservative, and neither Obama nor Clinton would make it more liberal.

[gunnerfan]

Oohh! And with that last post, my "karma" has now changed to "youth team".

[bflaff]

Interesting take on the Obama econ team, from the NYTimes ( link) :

February 28, 2008

Obama and His Wonks

By Chris Suellentrop

The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber analyzes Barack Obama’s policy shop. “Sociologically, the Obamanauts have a lot in common with the last gang of Democratic outsiders to make a credible run at the White House,†Scheiber writes. “Like Bill Clinton in 1992, Obama’s campaign boasts a cadre of credentialed achievers.†He continues:

Intellectually, however, the Obamanauts couldn’t be more different. Clinton delighted in surrounding himself with big-think public intellectuals — like economics commentator Robert Reich and political philosopher Bill Galston. You’d be hard-pressed to find a political philosopher in Obama’s inner wonk-dom. His is dominated by a group of first-rate economists, beginning with [the University of Chicago’s Austan] Goolsbee, one of the profession’s most respected tax experts.

The difference between Bill Clinton’s 1992 team and Obama’s is “the difference between science-fiction writers and engineers,†Scheiber says. “Reich and Galston are the kinds of people who’d sketch out the idea for time travel in a moment of inspiration. Goolsbee et al. could rig up the DeLorean that would actually get you back to 1955.â€

(New Obama slogans: 1.21 gigawatts of change? The flux capacitor of hope?)

Obama may end up rejecting at least one of the central tenets of “Rubinomics,†Scheiber notes. He writes:

[A] central tenet of the economic thinking favored by Bill Clinton and his Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, was that cutting the deficit lowers long-term interest rates, which in turn stimulates the economy. The Obamanauts are perfectly willing to accept the relationship between long-term rates and economic growth. But recent evidence suggests that low rates weren’t quite as central to the success of the Clinton years as they appeared, and that investments in infrastructure and R&D might be as important as deficit reduction. Not surprisingly, Obama plans to focus less on the deficit than Clinton did.

Greg Mankiw, the Harvard economist who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bush, likes Obama’s team of wonks a lot more than he likes the candidate. “Absolutely true,†Mankiw writes on his blog, responding to the idea that Obama’s policy shop is “surprisingly non-ideological.†But Mankiw adds, “But I doubt any of those excellent economists in the policy shop would be willing to defend the anti-NAFTA, anti-Walmart rhetoric of their candidate.â€

The New Republic story quoted above is located in full at here in a story that has been given a post date of March 12, 2008. So I guess he's writing from the "Lost" island. But it's quite a good read.

[Cobbler]

Originally posted by Daaaaave:

richardson also rumored to endorse in the next couple days. no official word who, but he's been saying nice things about obama lately.

Richardson pretty much tacitly endorsed Obama when he didn't endorse Clinton when he dropped out.

And his campaign leaked the news of Bill Clintons calls to him about that ("isn't two cabinet posts enough?")

Can't see how on Earth he endorses Clinton at this stage and can't see why any serious politician with any future aspirations would endorse her now when she's teetering on the brink of done.

[RedefiningForm]

This primary season will attest to the political paradigm having been shifted, more than anything the traditional method of garnering as many high-Party endorsements as possible's now only has a negligible effect, and this holds true for both sides.

[Recife]

Originally posted by gunnerfan:

No, Recife, .... (long, interesting post)

I was a little kid in the 80s, so I don't really have any memories of this. I read glib analysis that looks like what Jason wrote, and that offers no supporting information, and wonder. What little I do remember of Mondale and Dukakis is a spectacular lack of charisma. At least by 1992 the Democrats had learned that they had to nominate tv-friendly candidates.

Anyway, what you wrote about the Reagan coalition is just as true for Bush the Younger. The big business types have nothing in common with the neocons, who have nothing in common with the mouth-breathing snake handlers, but they all see W as the candidate who "they felt would serve them better than anyone from the other party".

Like Kizzak said, the segregationists moved to the GOP and stopped talking about segregation, but the racism remained -- now expressed in code words. The Reagan Democrats felt alienated from the Democrats, sure, but why? Not because the Democrats had become the party of the environment, or non-imperialist foreign policy, but because the Democrats had become the party of integration. The Reagan Democrats left the Democratic party to vote against their own self-interest -- how many people feel that strongly about trade policy?

What happened in the 70s and 80s looks to me like the settling after Nixon's Southern Strategy won over racist voters in the South and Midwest. Reagan ran a campaign full of dog whistle notes to racist voters, and it worked like a charm.

[Kizzak]

Originally posted by bflaff:

Interesting take on the Obama econ team, from the NYTimes ( link) :

The New Republic story quoted above is located in full at here in a story that has been given a post date of March 12, 2008. So I guess he's writing from the "Lost" island. But it's quite a good read.

Already posted the TNR article

[gunnerfan]

Not because the Democrats had become the party of the environment, or non-imperialist foreign policy, but because the Democrats had become the party of integration. The Reagan Democrats left the Democratic party to vote against their own self-interest -- how many people feel that strongly about trade policy?

Sorry, but I can't agree. First of all, I left out one other very important consideration of the Reagan Democrats - the economy and taxes. A dominant sentiment among middle class voters in the 70s and early 80s was that the Democrats had abandoned the middle class. Inflation was eroding their purchasing power; even though wages were rising faster than ever before, prices were rising even faster, and the wage increases were being badly squeezed by taxes. At the same time, most middle class voters saw huge expenditures going for a dysfunctional welfare system. And they saw that only the wealthiest had the capacity to leverage the tax system to their benefit.

Was racism an element in all of that? In some cases, certainly. There were many among white middle America who saw only black faces among welfare recipients. But there was also a rejection of the anti-war left. One of the things that Reagan did was wrap himseld in unabashed patriotism, and people were drawn to this. As I mentioned in my earlier post, part of the mantra of the left in the late 60s was to demonize the Administration because of the war in Vietnam. That morphed over time into a kind of anti-patriotism that permeated pop culture as well as political rhetoric. Most Americans want to feel proud of their country, and resent it when it is demeaned.

If you doubt this, look at the reaction Michelle Obama got to her statement about being proud of her country for the first time in her adult life. Yes, some of that was typical sound-bite warfare, but if you look at what people write in letters to the editor, you get a sense of how they're really reacting.

Anyway, Reagan promised a renewed patriotism, lower taxes, a pro-growth, anti-inflation agenda. A racist might have been drawn to that, making his own interpretations as to how that would affect the races, but it was far too universal an appeal to have been conceived as an overtly racist agenda.

[gunnerfan]

BTW, just to give you an idea of how bad it was in the late 70s, I can remember getting a 10% salary increase (about 2.5 times the best increase I just gave my staff) and being bitterly disappointed because inflation was running at something like 12% - I was still losing money.

[Recife]

Originally posted by gunnerfan:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Not because the Democrats had become the party of the environment, or non-imperialist foreign policy, but because the Democrats had become the party of integration. The Reagan Democrats left the Democratic party to vote against their own self-interest -- how many people feel that strongly about trade policy?

Sorry, but I can't agree. First of all, I left out one other very important consideration of the Reagan Democrats - the economy and taxes. A dominant sentiment among middle class voters in the 70s and early 80s was that the Democrats had abandoned the middle class. Inflation was eroding their purchasing power; even though wages were rising faster than ever before, prices were rising even faster, and the wage increases were being badly squeezed by taxes. At the same time, most middle class voters saw huge expenditures going for a dysfunctional welfare system. And they saw that only the wealthiest had the capacity to leverage the tax system to their benefit. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yeah, I've heard about the frustrations with Carter's inability to get anything at all done. I'm sure that played a big part, too, but not so much in driving voters to the Republicans in any long-term sense as much as it did for one or two elections. That's a pragmatic, not ideological, reason for voting Republican rather than Democratic. In the longer term -- inflation aside -- how many blue collar workers saw their economic situation improve during the course of the Reagan presidency?

[Kizzak]

It's worth pointing out that inflation has very little to do with fiscal policy, but one of the few things that you can do on that side is cause more inflation by significant deficit spending - which is what Reagan did.

[gunnerfan]

Quite a few. The Reagan tax cuts, even the ones that were taken back a year later, like the All-Savers accounts, gave immediate relief. His lower regulation approach combined with the tax cuts got the economy moving again, the most sustained period of growth since the end of WW2. The tougher foreign policy approach fulfilled the desire for greater pride in the country.

You are absolutely right when you say that voters' reasons for voting were pragmatic and not ideological. Moreover, they still are. Only a relatively small minority of voters vote based on ideology. Democrats (and this gets back to Jason's original point, with which I agreed), played right into this by adopting the same kind of "everything my opponent does or believes is wrong" approach that had energized the anti-war left back in the 60s. And that further alienated voters.

You mentioned charisma as a possible factor in Dukakis' failure in 1988. Against George H. W. Bush? A more charismatic candidate might have made a better showing against Bush, but even Obama would not have beaten him in 1988 - things were going too well. In 1992, there was a concern that the Reagan expansion was finally running out of steam, and so Bush was vulnerable to a candidate who was both charismatic and non-ideological (the unofficial slogan of the Clinton campaign was "It's the economy, stupid!"). As it happened, Clinton could have had his cake and eaten it, too. The so-called recession of 1992 turned out to be no more than a temporary pause in an expansion that continued until the dot-com bust in 2000.

[gunnerfan]

Originally posted by Kizzak:

It's worth pointing out that inflation has very little to do with fiscal policy, but one of the few things that you can do on that side is cause more inflation by significant deficit spending - which is what Reagan did.

Actually, what Reagan realized was that the deficit was not a problem if the economy was strong enough to grow its way out of it - which is exactly what happened.

[Kizzak]

No, not really.

What he realized is that the credit line for the US will continually be extended so long as we are so integral to global markets.

The person who got us out of the inflation problems was Paul Volcker, who was appointed by Carter.

[Daaaaave]

[gunnerfan]

Originally posted by Kizzak:

No, not really.

What he realized is that the credit line for the US will continually be extended so long as we are so integral to global markets.

The person who got us out of the inflation problems was Paul Volcker, who was appointed by Carter.

Keep in mind that the problem in the late 70s was not only inflation, it was inflation combined with little or no economic growth, what came to be known as "stagflation". Volcker addressed one part of the problem by bringing the money supply under control. Other policies - reduced taxes, reduced regulatory burden - spurred the growth. Volckers policies were refined by Greenspan, appointed by Reagan. Both were greatly superior, in my view, to what we have seen so far from Bernancke.

[Daaaaave]

To: Interested Parties

From: The Clinton Campaign

Date: Friday, February 29, 2008

RE: Obama Must-Wins

The media has anointed Barack Obama the presumptive nominee and he's playing the part.

With an eleven state winning streak coming out of February, Senator Obama is riding a surge of momentum that has enabled him to pour unprecedented resources into Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont.

The Obama campaign and its allies are outspending us two to one in paid media and have sent more staff into the March 4 states. In fact, when all is totaled, Senator Obama and his allies have outspent Senator Clinton by a margin of $18.4 million to $9.2 million on advertising in the four states that are voting next Tuesday.

Senator Obama has campaigned hard in these states. He has spent time meeting editorial boards, courting endorsers, holding rallies, and - of course - making speeches.

If he cannot win all of these states with all this effort, there's a problem.

Should Senator Obama fail to score decisive victories with all of the resources and effort he is bringing to bear, the message will be clear:

Democrats, the majority of whom have favored Hillary in the primary contests held to date, have their doubts about Senator Obama and are having second thoughts about him as a prospective standard-bearer.

[Daaaaave]

Plouffe also notes they are looking ahead, have started advertising on Mississippi TV, radio and organizing in Wyoming.

[Zaitsev]

That's a pretty awesome display of bare-faced cheek in that email.

[Daaaaave]

the problem is that even if the media picks it up and accepts it as fact, the superdelegates won't.

new rasmussen poll for ohio

clinton 47

obama 45

if hillary can't do any better than tie obama on tuesday, I'm guessing you'll see at least 6-8 more defections from her side to obama's and another dozen or so undecideds go for obama.

[gunnerfan]

The train appears to be picking up speed.

[Daaaaave]

Vice President Bill Richardson

By Nicholas D. Kristof

If you readers and posters are right, the next president and vice president will be…Barack Obama and Bill Richardson.

I’ve closed my recent contest on this blog to choose the candidates and running mates for each party as well as the November popular vote percentages. We’ll have to wait until November to see who wins the contest, but here are some of the most common entries.

Overwhelmingly people believe that Obama will win the Democratic nomination and McCain the Republican nomination, and most believe that Obama will win in November. As for running mates, by far the most common prediction is Bill Richardson, with 146 people naming him (out of nearly 700 entries). That seems plausible to me, particularly given Obama’s problems with the Hispanic vote. Richardson also may help on the national security front, given his experience dealing with everywhere from North Korea to Sudan.

The second most common suggestion for an Obama running mate was Jim Webb of Virginia, with 80 entries. John Edwards came in next with 57 and Joe Biden fourth with 42. Hillary Clinton was fifth with 32 and Wes Clark next with 24. Each of these suggestions seems less plausible to me, mostly because the person lacks long experience to balance the ticket or doesn’t come from a crucial state.

Rounding out the Obama running mate predictions are Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, Mark Warner of Virginia, Mike Bloomberg, Janet Napolitano, Tim Kaine, Al Gore, Evan Bayh, and General Zinni. Sebelius would normally be a sound choice, but my hunch is that with national security in the background and McCain likely to focus on that issue, Obama needs to choose someone steeped in security issues.

On the Republican side, the most common entry for McCain’s running mate is Mike Huckabee, with 104 people choosing him. The No. 2 choice is Charlie Crist of Florida, which is a good guess (I might bet on Crist). The third choice is Mitt Romney and then Condi Rice (won’t happen) and Joe Lieberman, with 45 votes.

Then we see Governor Pawlenty, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Mark Sanford, Lindsay Graham, Haley Barbour, Colin Powell and Jeb Bush. A handful of people suggested Mike Bloomberg.

[Daaaaave]

I think obama-biden is the best ticket for america, but obama-richardson is for politically savvy. and richardson doesn't have an iraq vote around his neck giving obama consistency.

I'm still thinking mccain-sanford or mccain-barbour on the gop side.

[Daaaaave]

off topic for this thread, but a seriously cool idea. major props for the guys at google for thinking this up and trying to roll it out.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23377190

[bflaff]

I think I'm officially sick and tired of being sick and tired of Hillary's nightmare campaign. WTF is this?

Democrats, the majority of whom have favored Hillary in the primary contests held to date ...

WTF is this dick talking about? Only registered Democrats count now? Obama's won the delegate count on every single voting day except one, where he tied Clinton (NH). He also has a more than million vote lead among people who have voted in the primaries so far. By any measure, he has been beating Clinton, and is now running up the score.

These Baghdad Bob 'night is day, up is down' pronouncements have got to go.

Glad to hear that Obama's people are now in **** mode:

Some expectations trash talk on a conference call from reporters from Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, who cited past statements from the Clinton campaign arguing that she would narrow the delegate gap substantially on March 4.

"They said that they would have huge gains on March 4," Plouffe said. "They’re going to fail and fail miserably. "

(h/t Politico)

[bflaff]

If Obama picks Richardson, he'll waste valuable campaign capital trying to retract and explain the gaffes that Richardson is sure to make. I wouldn't touch him with a ten foot pole, epecially if the only reason to pick him is to bolster support with Hispanics. That kind of thinking is ripe with failure.

Boycott the Beijing Olympics? Homosexuality is a choice? Just two of the bon mots Richardson espoused during the campaign. He's much better off camera.