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How We Pick Vice Presidents
Tweet Share on Facebook June 29, 2007 CommentGerard Baker in the Times of London makes a point that I have made myself on occasion: The way we pick vice presidents is crazy. We spend lots of time and money and psychic energy on picking our presidents, with millions of people in one way or the other involved. But we let one man (or, quite possibly this time, one woman) select the vice presidential nominee. And this is considered by just about everyone as the way it should be. Yet, as Baker points out, vice presidents have a tremendous advantage when it comes to running for president. So the decision of Ronald Reagan at something like 3 in the morning in a Detroit hotel room to pick George H.W. Bush as his running mate leads directly to Bush's election as president in 1988 and his son's election as president in 2000 and 2004. Had Reagan picked someone else, it is extremely unlikely that either Bush would have been president.
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Postscript on the Immigration Vote
Tweet Share on Facebook June 29, 2007 CommentAllah pundit on Hot Air has watched the video of the Senate roll call and reconstructed the order in which the votes were cast. He notes that in the first round of alphabetical-order voting, six senators who had voted for cloture on Tuesday voted against it: Bond, Domenici, Ensign, Murkowski, Stevens, and Webb. That was a pretty clear signal cloture was going to lose, since cloture requires 60 votes and had gotten 64 on Tuesday; the only possibility of its going the other way was if some who had voted against it Tuesday switched, and at that point none had. On the contrary, two seen as possible no-to-yes switchers had voted no again: Bayh and Stabenow.
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The Immigration Bill Goes Down
Tweet Share on Facebook June 28, 2007 CommentThe immigration bill died today in the Senate as only 46 senators voted for cloture, 18 fewer than two days ago. That’s a big turnaround and can be only partially explained by switches on the part of senators (Bond and Webb) whose amendments were defeated in the interim. I’ll list the switchers in the categories I used to analyze the “no” voters on Tuesday.
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The Senate Votes to Take Up Immigration
Tweet Share on Facebook June 27, 2007 CommentHere’s the Senate roll call on cloture on the immigration bill, 64 to 35 in favor of considering the bill. Of National Review's list of seven senators who could block "amnesty," six—Bond, Brownback, Burr, Coleman, Ensign, and Webb—voted for cloture, while Cochran voted against.
I separate the “no” voters into four categories.
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Talking Immigration With Secretary Chertoff
Tweet Share on Facebook June 22, 2007 CommentYesterday afternoon I sat down for an hourlong interview with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. The subject was the immigration bill pending in the Senate, which Chertoff has been lobbying for. In this blog I’m just going to set out what he said, without directly quoting him, as fairly and accurately as I can.
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Who Does Mayor Mike Hurt?
Tweet Share on Facebook June 21, 2007 CommentNew York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has changed his party registration from Republican to Independent, which everyone is taking as a step toward running as a third-party candidate for president. Bloomberg, whose income is said to be about $500 million a year, is capable of self-financing a campaign, and he has very good job ratings as mayor of New York. A mayor or former mayor of New York has not been a serious candidate for president since DeWitt Clinton in 1812. Now we may have two of them in the 2008 race.
How serious is a Bloomberg candidacy? And who does he take votes away from? Speculation about these questions is interesting, but I think the answers depend on who the Republican and Democratic parties nominate.
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The Teach for America Revolution
Tweet Share on Facebook June 20, 2007 CommentI have a tendency to ignore the Monday papers, which are often filled with evergreen stories that can't get into print when there are more pressing news stories. But sometimes a truly important story appears on Monday. A prime example is Jay Mathew's story on the upper left side of Monday's Washington Post, headlined "Maverick Teachers' Key D.C. Moment." The news peg was the appointment last week by D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty of 37-year-old Michelle Rhee as school superintendent.
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Thompson Grabs No. 1 Spot From Giuliani
Tweet Share on Facebook June 20, 2007 Comment"Fred's Number One."
That's the headline from Scott Rasmussen's poll numbers released today. The numbers: Thompson 28 percent, Giuliani 27, McCain 10, Romney 10. Thompson is up 4 percent from last week, Giuliani up 3, McCain and Romney down a statistically insignificant 1. Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback each have 2 percent; the rest of the candidates combined have 3. This is the first time this year that Giuliani has not led in Rasmussen's weekly surveys. Of course, Thompson's lead is not statistically significant, but it's impressive nonetheless.
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I’m Back—Ready to Exercise My Body and Mind
Tweet Share on Facebook June 19, 2007 CommentFaithful readers may have noticed that I have not been doing much blogging for the past couple of weeks. This was mostly because I was finishing my work on The Almanac of American Politics 2008, ending as has often been the case with the write-ups of Guam and American Samoa, the two American territories with representation in Congress, which I have never visited. Now my workload is considerably lighter, though I haven't cleared all the detritus of my Almanac-writing off my desk. National Journal has published an edited version of my Introduction to the 2008 Almanac.
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Polls That Move and Polls That Don’t
Tweet Share on Facebook June 12, 2007 CommentWe've been seeing a lot more movement in the polls in the Republican race for president than in the Democratic. Stark evidence for that proposition comes from the Rasmussen Report's weekly updates. On Monday came Rasmussen's numbers in the Democratic race: Clinton 37 percent, Obama 25, Edwards 11. That's Edwards's lowest number since the poll reported February 19, but all three candidates have been running within a narrow range starting February 26: Clinton between 32 and 38, Obama between 25 and 33, Edwards between 11 and 18. Rasmussen showed Obama tied with Clinton on April 23 and 2 points ahead on April 30. The latest numbers show Clinton near the top of her February-June range and Obama and Edwards at the bottom of theirs.
