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Thingish Things

Raising Cain

 ] Now these guys are having fun…

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Reality Check with Intrade

I like to check in from time to time with Dublin’s Intrade prediction market to see what bettors are thinking about U.S. elections.  Intrade (presumably) is a for-profit version of the Iowa Futures Market created some years ago by the University of Iowa to test the accuracy of political predictions when money is at stake. Those predictions have proved to be […]

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The San Francisco Sound

I woke up thinking about that old Ronald Reagan quip explaining why he became a Republican.  “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party,” Reagan said. “The Democratic Party left me.” That line rang true for millions of Americans in the 1970’s and 80’s who famously became known as Reagan Democrats. Today’s Democratic Party strikes me as […]

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When the Fire Goes Out

  On Election Day 1989, while working ballot security in Harlem for the mayoral campaign of Republican Rudy Giuliani, I saw the most extraordinary thing.   I was in the passenger seat of a car stopped at 125th Street and Lexington Avenue as an African-American volunteer for the Democratic candidate, David Dinkins, carried an elderly black woman in […]

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Obama’s Narrative Crisis

President Obama’s re-election narrative got a lot worse today, with Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune urging him to forgo running entirely in 2012. That’s tough stuff for someone struggling to get up from off the mat. Chapman enumerates the President’s re-election challenges — the economy, the economy, and the economy — and then writes: “But there is good […]

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The Disappearing Debt Issue

I don’t care what anyone says, debt is the number-one issue in America. Polls say otherwise. They consistently report that the issue is jobs, but it’s debt as far as I can see. It should stay front-and-center on the national radar.  I can hear it when talking to people on the campaign trail. I hear it from […]

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Bachmann’s God-Awful Comment

Michele Bachmann didn’t help her cause today.  The Minnesota congresswoman and Tea Party Caucus leader provocatively suggested  that the recent earthquake and Hurricane came about because of God’s wrath over the federal deficit.  The Bachmann campaign quickly walked the comment back as “jest.”  “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of […]

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One Jobs Plan Coming Up…

Just before President Obama left for his Martha’s Vineyard vacation  — immediately following his media-maligned mid-west bus tour — President Obama announced that he would be delivering a “jobs plan” upon his return to work in September.  The timing of the announcement clearly was orchestrated to ease the sting on the vacation news narrative, i.e.,:  Millions of […]

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Huntsman Floats Self for VP

 ] “If you love this country, you serve this country.”  With that sentence spoken on CNN today, former Utah governor John Huntsman effectively takes himself out the 2012 Presidential Primary and puts himself on the market as a Vice Presidential running mate.  First he blanches at the thought of running alongside Mitt Romney, presumably because they are  both Mormon, […]

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VP Sweepstakes, Marco Rubio

It’s probably not too early to start the vice presidential speculation, and since Florida Senator Marco Rubio was in the news today – he caught Nancy Reagan in mid-fall at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California — why not start with him. Rubio is at the top of every Republican’s list.  He brings to […]

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