Politicana

I love stuff like this. So I had to make sure you saw it.

I guess my real fear (and pride) is that Obama cannot compete on these terms. That he will have less trouble refuting McCain than bobbing-and-weaving around a press that sees itself as the arbiter of this disgusting, democratic competence.  Can Obama prove to the “white working class” that he is not “an elitist”? Can he be “commander-chief”?  Can he prove he is not “just a celebrity” who “speaks well”?  Can he get people to stop seeing him as black or male or young or brilliant?

Listen for these stupid questions, or variations on them, especially on NPR, the best of the best, and ask yourself if any decent person will ever get elected again.

If Obama did, as Bernard Avishai at TPM suggests, buy TV time in bulk to air town-hall style meetings, or to talk about all the crap that passes for both journalism and entertainment, I, for one, would watch it. And that’s saying something.

From the “we knew that already but it’s good to be reminded” department:

The reason so much political coverage on cable is crap is that there is an effort to portray the campaign as this floating spectacle; it’s devoid of public interest. Not to be too conspiratorial, but there is an economic interest at stake because you want people to come back and watch the same drivel the next day, in the same way that I obsessively check the sports section to see how the Cubs did. That’s why the VP speculation is so perfect for cable; you can fill up all that airtime without any reporting. There are studies of the content of cable news that show that something shy of 10 percent of the coverage is original reporting. They’re constantly re-running the one time they got some hapless anchor to stand in front of a hurricane, or it’s just incessant talking head speculation.

Six questions for Chris Lehman on “Moronic” campaign coverage and the “Press Bubble” at Harper’s Magazine online.

I know y’all read Poblano every day, but if you don’t, don’t miss this.

It’s extraordinarily important. It describes what it is exactly that the Obama campaign is doing right now, and why that matters.

For someone who is as nervous as the rest of you (?) about the ultimate outcome in November, my posts so far would seem to say: “Don’t strain yourself.”

Remember these? Allan J. Lichtman proposed this model in 1981, which he claims has retrospectively “predicted” the popular vote winner in every U.S. presidential election since 1860 (including Tilden’s popular vote triumph in 1876), and prospectively predicted the correct result (including Gore’s popular vote victory in 2000) ever since. This was his model four years ago:

Table 1: The 13 Keys to the White House in 2004: Current Standings – April 23, 2004

They are framed as propositions in favor of the incumbent party. If six or more are false (that is, they favor the challenging party) the White House changes hands. If five or fewer are false, the incumbent party retains the presidency.

I’m betting that a quick scan of the thirteen keys makes something clear …
Continue reading The keys to the White House…