-
Do Republicans Want to Win a House Majority in 2010?
Tweet Share on Facebook June 14, 2010 Comment (5)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Rumor has it that there is some question in GOP circles, as the Daily Caller reported Monday, as to whether or not the Republicans really want to become the majority party in Congress as a result of the 2010 election.
To some, especially those who are already growing accustomed to how easily the words “Speaker Boehner” roll off the tongue, the very idea is heresy. Others apparently are not so sure.
-
Barbara Bush Endorses Obama Healthcare Plan
Tweet Share on Facebook June 14, 2010 Comment (16)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
When does a New York City-dwelling, healthcare non-profit running, 28-year-old's endorsement of the Obama healthcare plan make news? When the twentysomething activist in question is Barbara Bush, the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of Republican politicians, including the two most recent GOP presidents.
The younger Barbara was featured on Fox News Sunday this weekend as the show's "power player of the week," and she weighed in with some views on healthcare that would be unwelcome in many quarters of the GOP. "Healthcare should be a right for everyone," Bush said on the show. Asked whether she supports Obama's healthcare overhaul law, she gave an I'm-about-to-get-in-trouble smile and temporized briefly ("that is a good question") before plunging ahead with her family political apostasy, saying that she was "glad" that the bill passed.
-
Why Pelosi and Hillary Clinton Get Worse Press Than Male Politicians
Tweet Share on Facebook June 14, 2010 Comment (10)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
This should come as no surprise to anyone. There’s a paucity of women politicians on the Sunday morning news shows, according to Politico.
I launched my PBS weekly women’s news talk program, To the Contrary, because this used to be just as true for female panelists on network TV almost two decades ago (when To the Contrary first aired, 19 seasons ago). Now there are more female panelists and guests, but for some reason female politicians are hard to book. -
Carly Fiorina's Contempt for Fellow Women
Tweet Share on Facebook June 14, 2010 Comment (19)By Jamie Stiehm, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
When the Californian Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate made a snide remark about Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer's hair--"So yesterday," she sneered--the punditocracy was off and running. MSNBCs cool, jaded take on the gaffe was that the former CEO of Hewlett Packard should know better and watch her words with an open mic. It's understood that kind of talk is dished out all the time in private--just make sure it doesn't go public.
Personally, I happen to like Sen. Boxer's hair (and fighting spirit) but now I have a new tidbit on Carly Fiorina's character that I don't particularly like.
Fiorina's life as a corporate darling--until she got fired at HP--and as a campaign adviser to Republican Sen. John McCain in his losing quest for president proved she is very good at pleasing powerful men. Maybe she likes being the only woman in the boardroom in all-alpha-male company and doesn't wish to share her success in the pyramid with other women. That is the loner syndrome.
-
Why Ranking Polls and Pollsters Is Useless
Tweet Share on Facebook June 11, 2010 Comment (5)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Far too many people fail to understand the role that polling plays in elections.
They are a measure of public opinion among a certain segment of the population--adults, registered voters, likely voters, men, women--at a given moment in time. They are a snapshot, not a movie, and they have limited predictive value.
Blogger Nate Silver’s analysis of the performance of a cluster of polling firms in the last election, which my bloleague John Aloysius Farrell wrote about earlier today, while interesting, is of little value overall.
Ranking pollsters based on the accuracy--meaning how well their numbers in late polls matched up against the actual election returns--may satisfy our urge to see precision where none exists, but really it does not help us understand elections or the thinking that goes into how voters make their choices any better than we already do.
-
Carly Fiorina Should Apologize to Barbara Boxer For Hairdo Comment
Tweet Share on Facebook June 11, 2010 Comment (43)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Today all the talk’s about California GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina’s unscripted comments about incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer’s hairdo, while she was waiting to go on the air for a TV appearance. (I was on NPR’s Tell Me More today talking about the future of women in politics, and along with the many victories for GOP women in recent primaries, this subject came up.)
-
Mitch Daniels in 2012--Much Better Than Palin, Paul, and Angle
Tweet Share on Facebook June 11, 2010 Comment (13)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Several months before Paul Tsongas announced that he was going to run for president in 1992, I grabbed a meal with him and with several other political reporters. This was nine years after Tsongas had announced he had lymphoma, and three years after Michael Dukakis had been whipped by George H.W. Bush.
Let's get this straight, we said. What the Democratic Party needs now is another Greek liberal from Massachusetts--with cancer?
-
Ranking the Political Polls for the 2010 Elections
Tweet Share on Facebook June 11, 2010 Comment (9)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The liberal and conservative bloggers here at Thomas Jefferson St. throw a lot of poll numbers at you in the course of the year. Predictably, we cherry pick the numbers we like, and flaunt them. I don't really know why--I guess to rally the troops with the thought that victory is at hand. Polls measure nothing but momentary popularity, not wisdom or courage or brilliance or innovation. They certainly won't answer the pressing questions of the day, like whether Sarah Palin has gotten breast implants. You go girls, says I.
(Since we are talking about polling, you can weigh the visual evidence and cast your vote--Did she? Or didn't she?--at Huffington Post.)
Anyhow, over at the FiveThirtyEight website, ace political analyst Nate Silver has published an analytical survey of the better-known polling firms in America, and ranked them on accuracy in the final weeks of an election. Here are some results that jump out. You may want to remember them the next time one of us acts like a know-it-all, using a poll as evidence.
-
Economists: Stimulus Not Working, Obama Must Rein in Spending
Tweet Share on Facebook June 10, 2010 Comment (63)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Nearly 100 prominent U.S. economists including former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Ohio University’s Richard Vedder, and James C. Miller, III, who headed up the White House Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan, are telling President Barack Obama that his economic stimulus has failed and that “immediate action is needed to rein in federal spending.”
-
Carly Fiorina's Big Mouth Could Cost Her a Senate Seat
Tweet Share on Facebook June 10, 2010 Comment (27)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It’s so sad when the first post-primary story about one high-profile woman running against another for a U.S. Senate seat has to devolve into this. Carly Fiorina, no stranger to open microphones, has done it again, this time disparaging, of all things, longtime Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer’s hair.
