[ Posted Thursday, October 6th, 2016 – 17:02 UTC ]
After August's spectacular improvement in job approval polling, Barack Obama saw his numbers fall in September -- what the stock market might call a "correction." Obama had the best August he's ever had in terms of improving his poll numbers, but it seems now that the whole month was the high end of a slow, two-month cycle which might indicate he's hitting a plateau. That's all a very polite way of saying Obama's numbers went down in September, although not as much as they had risen in August. Let's take a look at his new chart.
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[ Posted Wednesday, October 5th, 2016 – 16:55 UTC ]
There is a major political debate currently happening in many parts of this country, but the astonishing thing is that most politicians -- especially those on the national stage -- seem to want to pretend the debate doesn't even exist. We saw this previously on the issue of gay marriage, when even the Democratic candidates for president in 2008 wouldn't support the idea for fear of losing votes -- even though it was obviously the right thing to do. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would only support half-measures whose time had already passed, saying they were in favor of "civil unions," but that "marriage" was too sacred a word to use for these unions. That was only eight years ago, and the political shift since then has been monumental. These days, it would be hard for any Democrat to get elected who didn't wholeheartedly support marriage equality for all. The people led, and the leaders eventually followed.
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[ Posted Tuesday, October 4th, 2016 – 15:58 UTC ]
Tonight, the candidates for vice president will debate. Now, the vice-presidential debate is truly the Rodney Dangerfield of political events. Don't believe me? Here an the actual headline I read in my morning newspaper today: "Oh, There's A Vice Presidential Debate, Too." It don't get no respect, I tells ya... no respect.
I find that even I am not sufficiently excited about this event (which is another way of saying to my readers: "I won't be after-blogging tonight"). The two campaigns have made it pretty impossible to get excited about the vice-presidential debate, by dint of their choices for vice-presidential candidates. Mike Pence? Tim Kaine? Really? That's who you picked? Excuse me while I yawn enormously....
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[ Posted Monday, October 3rd, 2016 – 19:00 UTC ]
The overall chart of the race for Electoral Votes (EV) looks better for Clinton than last time around, but I would caution that this chart doesn't show the underlying strengths (which we'll get to in a moment). As always, Clinton (blue) starts from the bottom, Trump (red) starts from the top, and whichever line crosses the middle (the 270 EV needed to win) would win the election if it were held today and all the polling was accurate.
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[ Posted Friday, September 30th, 2016 – 15:57 UTC ]
Our subtitle today is not original, so we've got to start by giving credit where credit is due. David French, a writer for the ultraconservative National Review (and a man once so horrified by Donald Trump's candidacy that he considered running himself), had the funniest metaphor for Trump's performance in Monday's first presidential debate:
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[ Posted Tuesday, September 27th, 2016 – 15:51 UTC ]
As startling as it is to those of us who obsess over politics, last night's presidential debate was actually the first time millions of Americans paid any attention whatsoever to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. For millions, the first debate is the first time they tune in at all, both literally and figuratively. Even more astonishing, most of them haven't made up their minds on which candidate to support, even this late in the race.
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[ Posted Monday, September 19th, 2016 – 18:06 UTC ]
Hillary Clinton's lead in the race for Electoral College votes is shrinking. In fact, it has been shrinking for a solid month now. Two weeks ago (the last time I wrote one of these columns), this hadn't really benefited Donald Trump much. Now, however, Trump seems to be surging in the polls [...]
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[ Posted Friday, September 16th, 2016 – 15:42 UTC ]
The media got played by Donald Trump this morning, once again. Picture Charlie Brown lying flat on his back, wondering why he keeps falling for the old kick-the-football bit. That was cable television, after they had carried -- live -- a full hour of an empty podium (Trump didn't start on time), then a full-on advertisement for Trump's new D.C. hotel, then some surrogates saying how wonderful Trump was. At the very end, Trump uttered the 30 seconds of soundbite the cable channels had been waiting for, and then even though it was billed as a press conference, Trump walked off and refused to answer any questions.
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[ Posted Wednesday, September 14th, 2016 – 16:18 UTC ]
There was some rather important economic news yesterday, which could be summed up as "things are getting better." Incomes are rising, unemployment has stayed low, the number of uninsured Americans has now dropped by half (thanks to Obamacare), and all of these things are happening at historic rates. The Great Recession is finally over, in other words.
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[ Posted Monday, September 12th, 2016 – 17:31 UTC ]
Hillary Clinton made a deplorable basket case this weekend. That is, she made the case that "half" of the supporters of Donald Trump belong in a "basket of deplorables." It just sounds funnier to say it the first way, that's all.
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