Archive for August 18th, 2008
August 18th, 2008
I gave John McCain CREDIT yesterday for having been smoother than Barack Obama at the forum Saturday night at Pastor Rick Warren’s Saddleback megachurch in California.
Perhaps I was a bit hasty.
It turns out that McCain was not in the vaunted “cone of silence” during all of Warren’s interview with Obama and thus might have had the opportunity to be apprised of Warren’s questions and Obama’s answers, which would have afforded him great advantage.
There’s more on this matter HERE and HERE and HERE.
POSTSCRIPT: To me, the weirdest part of this controversy is this statement from McCain spokeswoman Nicolle Wallace: “The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous.”
What does the fact that McCain was a prisoner of war have to do with this matter? Does it make the senator’s integrity unassailable in all cases? Would McCain’s first wife agree with that?
POSTSCRIPT II (COMPLETLY OFF-SUBJECT): I expect that we’ll soon see McCain ads deriding Michael Phelps for being such a big celebrity. Celebrities are to be scorned, you know.
August 18th, 2008
I used to think Newt Gingrich was a pretty bright guy who had just somehow gone a little off kilter with all that right-wing blather of his.
But now I think he’s suddenly crossed the line into dementia.
Newt was on Fox News (where else?) last night, claiming that the much-discussed tire-gauge strategy to save energy resources actually is a scheme hatched by Barack Obama to “enrich Big Oil.”
No kidding. Check it out HERE.
August 18th, 2008
More than a few political pundits have an unfortunate tendency to lump certain demographic groups into monoliths for purposes of crafting neat and tidy explanations of election results or forecasts.
They’ll say “women voted for…” or “evangelicals favored…” or “rural voters were not convinced that…”
Most of this stuff is nonsense, since many demographic groups are sharply divided on political choices among their ranks. If 55 percent of women voters mark their ballots for Candidate A, it’s inaccurate to say women rejected Candidate B.
And so it is with Catholic voters, an important demographic group comprising roughly 20 percent of the American electorate. It’s silly to think of Catholic voters as a political monolith. They’re not even of one mind on some of the teachings of their church — on birth control, for example, or on the ban against women in the priesthood, or priestly celibacy.
Still, I frequently run across punditry that seeks to place Catholic voters in an air-tight basket. To wit, CNN correspondent Ed Henry recently declared that Catholic voters “can tip the balance in a close contest.” That’s rubbish. In a close contest, who’s to say which voters tipped the balance? If Catholic voters are often sharply divided politically, who’s to say they made the difference in a given election? It could have been gays or NASCAR fans or dope-smokers.
The tendency to regard Catholic voters as a monolith is most common with respect to the issue of abortion. After all, some of the most militant activists in the so-called pro-life movement are Catholics. But that’s misleading.
In a PEW SURVEY conducted last year, 51 percent of American Catholics favored keeping abortion legal in all or most cases. (A Pew Survey conducted three years earlier SHOWED an even larger majority among young Catholics.) This despite the fact that the Vatican vehemently opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest.
Clearly, abortion is not necessarily the deciding issue in how the majority of Catholics mark their ballots. Nor can either party claim ownership of the Catholic majority. Eight years ago, Catholics went for Democrat Al Gore over Republican George W. Bush by about 3 percentage points. In 2004, they went for Bush by about 7 percentage points over John Kerry (who, by the way, is himself a Catholic).
So, pay no mind to analysts who tell you that the Catholic vote will make the difference in the November election – especially with regard to the abortion issue.
The Catholic vote doesn’t exist.
August 18th, 2008
One week ago today, I offered HERE an analysis of poll numbers to show that Barack Obama had a big advantage over John McCain in electoral votes.
Using state-by-state figures from the independent Web site Pollster.com, I gave McCain huge benefits of the doubt:
I gave him all 122 electoral votes in the states where he was running strongly and all 35 electoral votes in the states that were leaning his way and all 97 electoral votes in the states that were considered toss-ups and, for good measure, I even gave him 20 percent of the electoral votes in the states that were leaning toward Barack Obama.
But despite those advantages for McCain, Obama still won by a score of 272-266.
Well, the race has tightened a bit in the past week, so this time I’m not giving McCain so many benefits of the doubt. But I’ll still give him a few breaks.
This time, to keep the final score the same at 272-266 in Obama’s favor, let’s give McCain all 122 electoral votes from the states where he’s running strongly and all 47 electoral votes from the states that are leaning his way. Let’s also give him 100 of the 105 electoral votes from the states that are considered toss-ups.
That means we’re giving Obama only five electoral votes from the toss-up states to go with the 224 votes from the states where he is running strongly and the 40 votes from the states that are leaning his way.
As you can see, though the national polls show the race to be pretty tight, the latest state-by-state FIGURES from Pollster.com show Obama with a big lead in the Electoral College.
[Note: The numbers from Pollster.com may have changed a little by the time you click on the link, but probably not so much as to refute my hypothesis.]
For your entertainment and for wagering purposes, we’ll perform this exercise every Monday between now and the eve of election day in November.
