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Could Affluent Suburbs Give Barack Obama a Win Over John McCain?
Tweet Share on Facebook October 31, 2008 Comment (15)My post earlier this week on the Pennsylvania polls and the implications thereof has gotten some attention, and so I thought I would check out one point I made: that Obama's lead in the state is largely due to an increase over previous Democratic presidential candidates in his percentages in affluent suburbs. Looking at other state polls that break down results by region, I find some confirmation, but also some qualifications.
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Guess Who Has a New Blog? Princeton University Press
Tweet Share on Facebook October 31, 2008 Comment (8)Guess who has a new blog? Princeton University Press. PUP (they use the acronym) is run by my longtime friend Peter Dougherty, who, working under the late Erwin Glikes of Macmillan Free Press, edited my first non-Almanac book, Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan. The PUP webpage features a Bloggingheads interview of economist and PUP author Robert Shiller by Robert Wright.
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Election Prediction: Democrats Won't Get a Filibuster-Proof Senate
Tweet Share on Facebook October 30, 2008 Comment (23)If, as seems likely but not quite certain, Barack Obama is elected next Tuesday, a key question for public policymaking will be how many Democrats are elected to the Senate. Currently, there are 51 Democrats there, including Joe Lieberman, but Democrats are seriously contesting 11 Republican-held seats, and there is a by-no-means-trivial chance that they could win each one. Meanwhile, Republicans are seriously contesting either zero Democratic-held seats, or only one, that of Mary Landrieu in Louisiana. The only public polls there since July are from Rasmussen, and the latest shows Landrieu ahead of Democrat-turned-Republican John Kennedy by 53 percent to 43 percent. So, Landrieu, a narrow winner in 1996 and 2002, seems headed to a third term.
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Two Books to Understand the Economy
Tweet Share on Facebook October 29, 2008 Comment (4)If you want to understand the economic events of the last half century, you should read two new books. One is Robert Samuelson's The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence, which explains how the abstract economic theories of Keynesian economists produced not the promised eternal economic growth but the longest sustained peacetime inflation in American history, rising to 14 percent in the times of Jimmy Carter. The other is David Smick's The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy, which explains how the abstract mathematical models of financial wizards produced not the promised eternal self-sustaining economic growth but rather a nontransparent financial system, which led to the coagulation of credit and our current financial crisis. Both show how abstract theories proved faulty in practice; both recommend similar common-sense responses: intelligently regulated transparent markets.
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Questioning the New Deal
Tweet Share on Facebook October 29, 2008 Comment (16)That's the subject of my Creators Syndicate column. The New Deal, I argue, was not as popular politically or as sustainable as public policy as is generally believed. For more, you can check out my 1990 book, Our Country: The Shaping of America From Roosevelt to Reagan, now available through Amazon.com from $5.75.
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Are Tightening Polls a Sign of a John McCain Surge?
Tweet Share on Facebook October 29, 2008 Comment (46)The tracking polls seem to show the presidential race tightening. Rasmussen numbers released this morning show Barack Obama ahead of John McCain by only 50 percent to 47 percent—the narrowest margin in Rasmussen polls for more than a month and the first time McCain has been over 46 percent since September 24 (nine days after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and two days before the first debate). Gallup's tracking released yesterday showed McCain behind by only 49 percent to 47 percent on its traditional-turnout model but behind by a much larger 51 percent to 44 percent on its expanded model.
John Zogby's numbers yesterday showed a 49 percent-to-44 percent margin for Obama, considerably smaller than the one he had a few days earlier.
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Disgusting Democratic Partisanship in Ohio
Tweet Share on Facebook October 28, 2008 Comment (14)Here's insight into the thinking of some Democrats. In Ohio, they're attacking state Rep. Josh Mandel for having fulfilled his military obligation to serve in Iraq. As Joel Mowbray tells the story, Democrats are saying that Mandel neglected his constituents in favor of "serving George Bush." In these Democrats' view, the war in Iraq is evidently a purely partisan cause, not one sanctioned by the U.S. Congress and ordered by the U.S. president. These people want the United States to prevail only if there is a Democratic president and take delight in American defeat if the president is a Republican. I've seldom seen such a disgusting display of partisanship over country.
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Why John McCain Continues to Trail Barack Obama in Pennsylvania
Tweet Share on Facebook October 27, 2008 Comment (225)One of the mysteries of this campaign year has been why John McCain keeps campaigning in Pennsylvania when the polls show him far behind Barack Obama there—51 percent to 41 percent in the RealClearPolitics.com average of recent polls as I write. A clue comes from the most recent poll there by SurveyUSA, which helpfully provides a regional breakdown of results. SurveyUSA, as it has consistently done, shows McCain running within the margin of error in the southwest (metro Pittsburgh and surroundings) and in the Northeast (Scranton and the anthracite country), which historically are very Democratic areas. Joe Biden's Scranton roots and the support of Scranton-based Bob Casey don't seem to be doing Obama much good there. McCain carries the west-central and south-central areas, as most Republicans do. But he is incredibly weak—behind Obama 64 percent to 32 percent in the southeast, which includes about 40 percent of the state's voters. Most of this area is metropolitan Philadelphia, which George W. Bush lost in 2004 by a 62 percent to 37 percent margin; the remainder is presumably Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, and Lancaster counties, where Bush ran better. The regional breakdown in the most recent Quinnipiac poll tells exactly the same story.
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On Election Night, Be Wary of Early Exit Polls Showing Obama Up
Tweet Share on Facebook October 22, 2008 Comment (70)I have a column in the Wall Street Journal today on how to read the polls. I have been influenced, as careful readers might guess, by looking ahead to my work with the Decision Desk at Fox News Channel on election night. Exit polls in recent presidential contests have tended to show Democrats doing better than they actually did, and exit polls in most of the Democratic primaries this year showed Barack Obama doing better than he actually did. So, we can be pretty sure that when the first Edison/Mitofsky exit poll numbers are released to media clients, including Fox News, around 5 p.m., they will show Obama ahead. But will that forecast the result? My view is that we should be very cautious in our use of those numbers.
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Governors in a Tough Position With Shrinking Revenue
Tweet Share on Facebook October 21, 2008 Comment (7)The Cato Institute's annual fiscal report card on the nations' governors is out, and it presents a discouraging picture. Here are the conclusions of Cato's Chris Edwards:
[T]here has been a disappointing lack of major spending reforms among governors of both parties in recent years. State tax policies have also been uninspiring. Most tax cuts pursued by the governors have been small and targeted breaks, not broad-based rate cuts that can foster economic growth.
Fiscal policies need to be improved if the states are to meet the huge challenges ahead. Medicaid costs continue to rise, state debt is soaring, and the pension and health care plans of state workers have huge funding gaps. At the same time, rising international tax competition makes it imperative that states cut tax rates to attract jobs and investment. Governors don't have an easy job, but they do need to pursue more aggressive fiscal reforms to meet the challenges of an increasingly competitive economy.
