Showing posts with label 2004. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2004. Show all posts

Thursday, October 17, 2013

WHY CAN'T I COMPROMISE? A BLOGGER RESPONDS TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

President Barack Obama attacked "bloggers" like me today, blaming us for the recent crisis and imploring the rest of the nation to find a way to responsible compromise. Instead of rejecting outright what he was saying, I paused to consider whether he might be right. 

Were people like me really at fault? Are we so busy stoking opposition that we are missing opportunities to find common ground? Do we dislike Obama that much? 
I remembered how I was once a Democrat who filled my office fridge with sparkling wine to celebrate George W. Bush's anticipated defeat in 2004, but that I vigorously, and publicly, defended Bush policies with which I agreed. No, I am not against compromise. 
I thought about how eagerly conservatives had embraced Obama after his speech at the memorial service in Tucson--only to have his pledge of "civility" thrown in our faces. 
Obama is open to compromise--as long as you accept his view of big government as a starting point. Similarly, he is in favor of reducing the deficit and the debt--as long as you accept spending at or near current levels. He is a champion of tolerance--as long as you are willing to give up the tenets of your religion in favor of his new policies. He welcomes debate--but only when there is nothing left to debate and he has nothing left at stake.
His attack on bloggers is revealing: 
...now that the government has reopened and this threat to our economy is removed, all of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists, and the bloggers, and the talking heads on radio and the professional activists who profit from conflict, and focus on what the majority of Americans sent us here to do...
He pretends to be above politics, and casts everyone else as motivated by profit, not idealism. 

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

John Kerry Battles 2004 Version of Himself Over Why Obama is Ignoring Ineffectual U.N.

“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” as it was put so eloquently in The Dark Knight. For Democrats who opposed the Iraq War after it became clear that the war was going to exceed its original timetable and was growing increasingly unpopular with the public, “long enough” has been just over a decade. On Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry became the bad guy. 
During Tuesday’s marathon Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings, Kerry became involved in a heated exchange with a fellow Democrat over the decision of President Barack Obama’s administration to ignore the United Nations in its run-up to war with Syria over that government’s use of chemical weapons on civilians.
“Doesn’t this make the United States the policeman of the world?” Kerry asked Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) rhetorically, anticipating the road-warn perennial gripe shared by all anti-interventionist Democrats that the United Nations has been sidelined in the run-up to this or the other war. “No. It makes the United States a multilateral partner in an effort that the world has accepted the responsibility for.”
Udall interrupted him: “We should be standing up and making sure that they are condemned — those countries that are not allowing us to move forward to move — to find a solution where the solution should reside,” he insisted.
Showing off his diplomatic skills, Kerry appeared to regard this incoherent expression of emotion as an inquiry meriting an honest response. He artfully shut down Udall’s aspirational sentiment by explaining in perfectly rational terms the reality of dealing with the United Nations.
Just a few weeks ago at the U.N., we saw a condemnation of a chemical attack — without blame, , without citing [Bashar al-Assad, without saying who was responsible — simply a condemnation of a chemical attack and the Russians blocked it.
He continued:
I would urge you, you said how do we know it won’t result in X or Y or Z happening if we don’t do it? let me ask you: it is not a question of what will happen if we don’t do it. It is a certainty. Are you going to be comfortable if Assad, as a result of the United States not doing anything, then gases his people yet again and the world says, ‘why didn’t the United States act?’
“History is full of opportunity of moments where someone didn’t stand up and act when it made a difference,” Kerry concluded.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

The Truth About 2012 Polls


The truth about 2012 polls
By Douglas E. Schoen
In the 2012 race for the White House President Obama is ahead, but the polls are misleading.
It seems that each new poll brings good news for Obama. He’s up six points nationally according to the latest Bloomberg numbers. Gallup’s weekly tracker has the president up six as well. And it looks like crucial swing states are going for Obama in a big way: the latest Quinnipiac poll gives Obama a nine point edge in Florida, a 10 point advantage in Ohio and a 12 point lead in Pennsylvania.
To be sure, Obama is ahead in this race. But by how much has become a serious point of contention and one that deserves further examination.
Republicans and Democrats alike have honed in on the fact that recent media polls are oversampling Democrats. Indeed, we have seen many polls that are heavily skewed. There was the Washington Post/ABC poll that had a +9 Democrat skew in late August. There was the Marquette poll for Wisconsin from two weeks ago with a D+8 sample. And the newest swing state poll from Quinnipiac gave Obama a spread between Democrats and Republicans that was even greater than the historic Democrat advantage in 2008, a seven point spread between voters identifying themselves as Democrats or Republicans at 39 percent to 32 percent, in each state they polled.
In a recent interview, Romney pollster Neil Newhouse made the argument that these mainstream polls are skewed in favor of Obama. “I don’t think [the polls] reflect the composition of what 2012 is going to look like,” he said.
In order to address this, some conservative outlets have taken matters into their own hands. One website, www.unskewedpolls.com, has begun reweighting mainstream polls to more closely track the demographic assumptions that the conservative leaning Rasmussem Reports uses. The results have been staggering: the re-weighted polls all put Romney ahead of Obama with margins of between 3 and 11 points. If one looks at the Real Clear Politics average Obama is currently up four percent over Romney. But according to UnSkewedPolls.com, Romney has a 7.8 percent edge on Obama.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

CBS: OBAMA LEADS IN OUR D+13 POLL


Anyone following the presidential campaign through the prism of media polls is doing themselves a serious disservice. Virtually every one uses a polling sample that is so heavily-skewed towards Democrats that it distorts the actual state of the campaign. Of course, that is a feature, not a bug of the polls. The polls are specifically designed to drive a narrative that Obama is surging and Romney is struggling. Increasingly, though, the polls are having to go to ridiculous efforts to support this meme. Friday's CBS/New York Times poll, for example, uses a D+13 sample of registered voters. This is absurd. 

In 2008, an historic election wave for Democrats, the electorate was D+7. In 2004, when George W. Bush won reelection, the electorate was evenly split. In other words, D+0. Repeat after me; the Democrat share of the electorate is not going to double this year. Given the well-noted enthusiasm edge for Republicans this year, the electorate is going to be far closer to the 2004 model than 2008. Any poll trying to replicate the 2008 is going to artificially inflate Obama's support. 
CBS does apply a Likely Voter screen to the head-to-head match up. The LV sample is D+6, similar to the make up of the 08 election. In that, Obama leads Romney by just 3 points, 49-46. In the RV sample, which more than doubles the proportion of Democrats to D+13, Obama leads by 8 points, 51-43. See the simple relationship there? 
Let's try a simple thought experiment. Imagine if, for a week, all media polls decided to use a sample that replicated the 2004 electorate--a D+0 model. Given the GOP's enthusiasm edge--even the CBS poll found Republicans voters with a double-digit lead on enthusiasm for the election--the electorate is going to look a lot more like 2004 than 2008. Imagine how the narrative of the campaign would change. The CBS poll found Romney beating Obama among Independents by 11 points. With a balanced partisan sample, Romney would likely post consistent leads against Obama. 
A week of this and Politico would run out of fuel for its daily "Romney is struggling" theme. Which is why the media will never adjust its samples. This election, it isn't so much about polling as propaganda. The polls are simply a tool being used by the media to try to depress GOP turnout and give a powerful lift to Obama's obviously lackluster campaign. 
The polls confirm that the media aren't really biased. Rather, they are active players for the other team. 

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