Entries for October 2009

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

What will it take for baseball to expand its instant replay system? A series of umpiring blunders in the post-season? Been there: There was Joe Mauer's "foul" ball down the left field line in the ALDS ... the botched double-play benefiting the Yankees in the ALCS ... in the same series, there was Yankees outfielder Nick Swisher incorrectly called safe on a pick-off attempt and then incorrectly being called out after tagging up and scoring on a fly ball—all in the same inning. There are other examples from preliminary playoff rounds.

Blown calls potentially affecting the outcome of the World Series itself? Done that. In a tight second game on Thursday night, umpires managed a blunder double-play, killing two late-inning rallies in a tight game. In the championship series.

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Much has been written—a lot of it by me—about how the special election in New York's 23d district has become a proxy for a GOP civil war between base conservatives and more pragmatic establishment Republicans. Perhaps the starkest illustration of how this race—the only House contest in the country this year—has become about something more than the Republican candidate, the Democratic candidate and the Conservative candidate, take a look at some of the dollar figures for amounts raised and spent in the race, specifically the more than $3 million outside groups have funneled into the district.

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

The special election race taking place in upstate New York has been described variably as a GOP civil war and a battle for the soul of the Republican Party. To the extent that those assertions are true (and they are, as I argue in my column), it may also be an early chance to see the contours of the 2012 presidential race. In one corner you've got Sarah "Going Rogue" Palin who has, of course, bucked the Republican establishment and endorsed Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate who seems poised to finish ahead of official GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava. No surprise there: Palin is aiming to inherit John McCain's "maverick" mantle—but as a conservative maverick (No compromises!), rather than as a centrist maverick like McCain (Let's make deals on climate change, campaign finance reform, etc).

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

CNN has slipped into last place among the 24 hour cable "news" networks, the New York Times reports. And that raises this question: Will CNN follow MSNBC down the Fox road to partisan glory? Since its debut, Fox has staked a place as the conservatives' home away from perceived bias of the so-called mainstream media. (Quick aside: Doesn't the fact that it has the most viewers ipso facto put Fox in the mainstream media?) MSNBC has gained traction in the last year or two by becoming the Fox of the left. So partisans on both sides now know where they can go to find out why they're right and the other side is evil.

Take the 8 o'clock hour. Conservatives can tune in to Fox to watch Bill O'Reilly skewer the left. Liberals can flip on Keith Olbermann and watch him lambaste O'Reilly. And CNN offers up the estimable Campbell Brown who it touts as "the only non-partisan cable news anchor at 8 pm, [offering] a common sense approach to reporting the day's news." The show used to be called No Bias, No Bull—but viewers seem to prefer both bias and bull, as CNN comes in fourth place at 8pm.

So the question is: When CNN decides to get partisan will they try to out-fox Fox or bigfoot MSNBC on the left? Stay tuned.

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Earth to the conservative movement: Don't use a defeated conservative to argue the winning value of conservatism at the ballot box.

I have been watching with great interest and some glee the Republican civil war being fought in and around the Adirondack Mountains in next week's special election to succeed Rep. John McHugh, who is now the secretary of the Army. It's the only U.S. House election that will be held next week, but rather than being a referendum on President Obama, it's become an illustration of the battle for the soul of the GOP. Conservatives—including very high profile pols like Sarah Palin—don't like the Republican nominee (who is, as GOPers go, rather liberal) and have lined up behind an independent candidate. I argued in my column in our digital edition last week that the GOP can't achieve majority status if they can't get on the same page in what should be a winnable district. Today's New York Times has a passage that perfectly sums up the GOP's problem:

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Kudos to Vice President Biden for putting Dick Cheney in his place. According to today's New York Times, Biden was asked about Cheney's criticism that President Obama is "dithering" over whether to send more troops to Afghanistan and had made a "strategic blunder" in ditching the Bush administration's missile defense plan. "Who cares what—" Biden apparently said, before catching himself. He went on to give a political answer about circumstances changing in Afghanistan and blah blah, so on and so forth. (OK, he did say Cheney was "irrelevant" too.)

But his first instinct was correct: Who cares what Cheney says? If the last eight years have taught us anything it's that Cheney is reliably wrong, especially on foreign policy. He is, to use the expression that Dwight Eisenhower coined, a gloom-doggler. Sure the news media has to take him seriously because he is a former vice president of the United States; and sure, Democrats stand to gain by taking him seriously because it keeps him in the public eye as a face of the GOP.

But Biden was right about his views: Who cares?

Update: Mea culpa—it seems that Biden's specific quotes referred to a report left behind by the Bush-Cheney administration, but he was broadly dismissive of Cheney's comments. He was correct to dismiss Cheney, whose views are irrelevant.

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

I wrote yesterday about a new Pew poll showing that Americans are evenly divided (47 percent to 47 percent) about whether they would get the H1N1 vaccine. But there was one other data tidbit from the poll that was so striking that I thought it merits its own blog post. According to Pew, there is a partisan split on the vaccine. To wit, 60 percent of Democratic respondents said that they would get the vaccine and 34 percent said they would not. Conversely, only 41 percent of Republicans said they would take the vaccine while 54 percent said that they would not. (Warning for Democrats: Independents have the same 41-54 split.)