2008 USP(G)ET pt. II: counting the days to 2012 primary thread 1

yeah dude I read it; this time we got game but what I was saying earlier is that this is what's most exciting to me about this election. Even if we lose we'll have built something critical for the future.

So I found out tonight over dinner that my mom, who was briefly involved in local Democratic politics 15 years ago, is undecided in this election, which caught me by surprise. So here's another case study, I guess. Demographically, she's a 59-year-old white suburban health-care executive with a graduate degree.

She feels like she hasn't heard enough about The Issues from either candidate, and what she has heard hasn't impressed her. Especially on the subject of the economy. I asked what about Obama's economic plan she didn't like. She said that cutting taxes for the middle class and raising the minimum wage didn't get to the root of the country's problems, they just pandered to voting blocs. I asked what would get to the root of the country's problems. She said she didn't know, but she's waiting for one of them to offer something more substantial. She is also extremely put off by Obama's support for unions. According to her, Obama wants everyone to unionize, no matter what. It should be noted that unions have made things difficult at her job; she reiterated that she finds them "evil" ("They lie, they cheat, they manipulate"...).

She can't stand Palin but isn't bothered by McCain as much. She respects his experience. I brought up his sleazy campaign tactics (the lying, the flip-flopping), and she didn't seem to know too much about that. She repeatedly emphasized, however, that she is staying open-minded. She's very interested in the debates as a way to make up her mind; she said, "If some of the stuff you say about McCain is true, then Obama should use it on him at the debates." She trusts certain TV analysts, too, and will be listening to them over the next few weeks: David Brooks, Mark Shields, David Gergen, and Bob Schieffer.

There's nothing that puts me in quite such a lather about the quality of education in this country as hearing that there are grown-ups who trust the opinions of David Brooks. No offense intended but that man writes his columns with finger paint.

from the Brooks-Collins conversation thing - http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-conversation/

At about 4 p.m. yesterday, I was working on an entirely different column when it struck me somehow that it was a total embarrassment. So I switched gears and wrote the one I published. I have no idea why I thought the first one was so bad — I was too close to it to have an objective view. But I reread it today and I was right. It was garbage. I’m not sure I would have had that instinctive sense yesterday if I hadn’t been struggling at this line of work for a while.

I kind of want to see that. How bad does Brooks have to get to recognize that his work is garbage?

Also sounds like a fun time to be a reporter:

I’m writing this on yet another McCain flight. Today was an exciting one for the press corps — two big formal rallies sandwiched around various events from which reporters were barred. A couple of reporters on the plane tried to work up a chant begging him to come back and talk for a couple of minutes. Their voices were swallowed in a great well of lonely journalistic despair and boredom.

there was a collection of Brooks' aborted B-sides published just this year:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/412zOZhMy8L._SS500_.jpg

sarah palin vlog for humor, especially #1 / 3 / 11

just realizing Palin is the first Alaskan I've ever heard who has a Minnesota accent

(haha, not basing that on Milton's post either)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/17/uselections2008.democrats

More women against Sarah Palin... a lot of them:

http://womenagainstsarahpalin.blogspot.com/

Oh yeah - that news Ed linked to, I heard about last week...incredible. Lose your house, lose your vote!

guys, the palin will be at the anti-iran rally in nyc next week.

anti-iran rally?

jesus you're not kidding

it's on Monday. she's also getting quickie meetings with foreign leaders at the UN so that she can answer that question in slightly less embarrassing fashion.

you gotta be careful how you play it, but i think our local public needs to let people know how unready and unwelcome she is here in the big time.

did we talk about this part of that NYT story?

Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.

“I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’ ”

is Sarah Palin "uppity"?

http://www.slate.com/id/2200209/

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/09/16/taxplans.jpg

that graphic is sort of confusing

they shouldnt put the two things next to each other on the horizontal

is mickey kaus an asshat? he seems so...

He is, though I agree with this:

Mark Halperin's three pieces of advice for Obama seem sound. (They are 1. Ignore Palin; 2. Get in McCain's head the way McCain's getting in Obama's; and 3. Refocus on the economy in an accessible way.)

http://www.slate.com/id/2200209#loserstrategy

Obama's new 2-minute commercial on the economy sounds like a step in the right direction:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080917/obama_ad.html?.v=1

This advice to Obama sounds eminently sensible:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/obama_needs_clear_message_on_e.html

yall are some chicken little motherfuckers

not me man!

word up homie

For someone who clearly wants people to know he has read Tufte, that is a really shitty graph. Maybe I'm retarded, but if you weren't already familiar with the point it's trying to make, I'm not sure you would figure out the point it's trying to make.

ya--they need to make it a lot more clear that while the horizontal axis has meaning for the two separate sets of data, it doesnt have meaning as a whole

really? I get what you're saying, but I 'got' it right away. What would the respective tax plans 'do' to each income bracket?

In particular, I think these points by Galston are right on:

Second: you are not offering a focused, parsimonious list of remedies for the economic ills you cite. As a result, few if any voters can actually cite a single signature economic proposal you have made. It's not that you don't have ideas. If anything, you have too many. At some point, more becomes less, and you are well beyond that point. You need to decide which three or four economic proposals are most important and repeat them relentlessly for the next seven weeks.

...

Third: you are not drawing crisp, punchy contrasts between your plans and McCain's. An example: the centerpiece of his health care plan is the taxation of employer-provided health care benefits. Pound away at that, and let him explain why throwing workers into the individual health insurance market unprotected is such a wonderful idea. And by the way, while your plan would increase coverage, his would do the opposite. Is that the change Americans want?

i dont see why you wouldnt just place the two plans on top of one another, so you had a red and blue bar in each income bracket--that way youd actually get much better visual comparison of the difference

without the confusion over what the horizontal axis 'means'

You could easily spend a minute figuring out what -4.4% means. -4.4% of what? What's the significance of the minus sign? What's the significance of the areas in the plot? Are they quantitatively related to something?

ok ok fair enough

: ) thanks for posting it though, it's interesting!

okay are you guys serious with this criticism of that gif

"Why is one red and the other one blue?"
"What do those numbers with the dollar signs next to them mean?"
"Why are some of the horizontal bars lighter in color?"

You do bring up a good point with that last question.

http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/chinese/elections-in-brief/images/photo15.jpg

I'm sorry, but shouldn't something like this get you thrown out of the DNC?

this thread needs way more pictures of Ross Perot w/charts and glasses

Looks like you can get a whole website full of 'em:

http://perotcharts.com/

“This is a hard decision for me personally because frankly I don't like him,” she said of Obama in an interview with CNN’s Joe Johns. “I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.”

Forester is the CEO of EL Rothschild, a holding company with businesses around the world. She is married to international banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. Forester is a member of the DNC’s Democrats Abroad chapter and splits her time living in London and New York.

http://www.depauw.edu/photos/PhotoDB_Repository/2007/12/perot%20small029.jpg

xp damn, sonned by perotcharts.com

i love America

those Rothschilds are real salt of the earth eh

would've been better if she'd called him uppity, since that's probably what she really meant.

x-post

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/09/17/art.clintonbacker.gi.jpg

"I feel like he's an elitist."

"pearl necklace"