From North Carolina: More than 210,000 blacks who are registered as Democrats have cast early ballots in the Tar Heel State – compared with roughly 174,000 registered Republicans overall. Four years ago, the number of GOP early and absentee voters was more than double that of black Democrats. More on early voting and what it
What do you do when your candidate has a funny name folk don’t know how to pronounce? Why, you release an ad like this one for Adlai Stevenson in 1952:
Not for the first time this year, one has to wonder what question Fred Thompson could possibly be the answer to. K-Lo remains charmingly indefatigable: Unleashing Fred Thompson works his magic to get out the vote. No further comment required.
There are loonies everywhere, of course. Still, Jon Swift’s summary of some of the anti-Obama conspiracy theories that have swilled around the wingnut blogosphere this year is a treat. He introduces his post, thus: Hampered by quaint, old-fashioned rules of journalism that require citing evidence and reputable sources, the mainstream media has failed to report
For what little it is worth, I think Barack Obama will carry Ohio with something to spare. I also find it quite hard to believe that he could lose Pennsylvania. Still, the argument has always been that in both these states he “struggles” to “connect” with white men. Well he has a chance to do
Reagan vs Mondale, 1984. Reaganomics vs Mondalenomics. It has to be said that not all the claims in this ad were proven correct by subsequent events.
Campaigning is underway in the Glenrothes by-election. Yesterday Sarah Brown, the Prime Minister’s wife, made her election debut, knocking on doors in, of all places, bonny Cardenden. How did that go? Not so well, it seems. My friend Stephen McGinty has a fine, entertaining account in today’s Scotsman: SHE was supposed to be Labour’s secret
Clive Crook pops back to Blighty and finds himself pining for the sanity and phlegmatic common-sense of life in the United States. Can’t say I blame him. Consider this story, for instance: plans for a Christmas ice-rink in Bath have been abandoned after complaints that the temporary rink would be a magnet for paedophiles who
Callie Shell has been following and photographing Barack Obama for Time since the beginning of the campaign. You can see some of her work here and, especially, here. I particularly love the photo of Obama doing a pull-up moments before delivering a speech. There’s a matter-of-fact coolness about it. Glamour too, as Virginia Postrel could
Here’s the usually-savvy Helen Rittelmeyer: Let’s take it as a given that Martin and Maltz are correct that Red Staters like to follow traditions and bicoastal elites like to question them; it certainly sounds true enough, at least as far as wild generalizations can be. Even given that assumption, most South Carolinians are more morally
Poppyman wants to know: have you got yours yet?
Yup, it’s time for the Fall Classic. I’m taking part in a symposium at Culture11. My first contribution, in which I out myself as a temporary Tampa Bay Rays fan, is here. Why Tampa? Largely, as I say in the wee piece, because I enjoy Philadelphia’s beery opera buffa and do not much fancy that
Jobs being sent overseas to cosset foreigners? Not a new phenomenon.Not a new campaign themse either. Here’s a Clinton-Gore ad from 1992 that could easily have been made by Obama this year.
It’s over. How so? Because campaigns that have a chance of winning don’t perform stunts like this: Please join our campaign for a conference call at 11:30 a.m. EDT, with former CIA Director Jim Woolsey and McCain-Palin Senior Foreign Policy Adviser Randy Scheunemann to discuss recent news stories about which candidate terrorists would like to see
From 1980, here’s Nancy Reagan striding in to bat for her husband.
The extent to which one considers the general public an uncannily perceptive bunch or a gathering of witless, no-good know-nothings naturally correlates with the degree to which the public endorses any given opinion one holds oneself. That being so, it’s obvious that British voters are smarter than many of the pundits paid to interpret and
And then they were eight. Tracking polls that is. Which one should you follow? Or, rather, which should you discount? Happily, Nate Silver is here to explain it all. What I find odd about American polls, mind you, is their tiny sample size. National Journal’s tracking poll only follows a few hundred people for instance
Ooops. I meant to mention Mike Crowley’s entertaining New Republic piece on the polling wars. It’s a fun, breezy read that’s well worth your time: Shock Poll – blared a Drudge Report headline on December 26, 2007, just one week before the Iowa caucus. At a time when most pollsters were showing a dead heat
Mark Steyn says his old friend and former boss Boris Johnson is a “total squish” on ideological matters (ie, he’s a Tory) and adds this chummy postscript: If Boris can be Mayor of London, Sarah Palin is certainly qualified to be President of the United States, if not Supreme Galactic Commander of the Cosmos. There’s
It seems like Sir Nigel Sheinwald’s assessment of Barack Obama was leaked to the Telegraph months ago. But it was in fact published earlier this month. I’d meant to write about it at the time, but the moment passed and that seemed to be that. Still, Slate has republished the memo, permitting one to observe