Category Archives: Public opinion

‘The Hillary Moment?’ Really? Y’all think THAT is a smart move for Democrats at this juncture?

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There was a startling op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal today by Pat Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen. I had to look at the bottom to see who Schoen was, but Pat Caddell was Jimmy Carter’s pollster, a member of the team that brought him from obscurity to the White House in 1976. (Schoen was Bill Clinton’s pollster.)

They were urging President Obama to step aside and let Hillary Clinton replace him on the Democratic ticket next year.

It was bizarre. And perhaps no passage in the piece was more bizarre than when they compared the current situation with LBJ’s in 1968, to which I can only say, “Say what?”

I was in the ninth grade at the time, so my political perception was nowhere near what it would be later, but these guys write as though they didn’t live through that time at all.

The convulsions the Democratic Party was going through in ’68, the highs and lows both, were titanic by comparison to what’s happening intraparty now. Everything was bigger. LBJ had had much, much greater success early in his tenure — historic success – but then his re-election ran into the greatest internal conflict that party has suffered in the past century: Vietnam.

Yeah, today Barack Obama presides over an economic situation that is upside-down from the 60s, the worst economy since what FDR faced. But how many Democrats — as opposed to Republicans — actually blame him for that the way the McCarthy faction blamed Lyndon “How Many Kids Did You Kill Today” Johnson? LBJ was blamed specifically for what he had done (escalate the war), not for what he had failed to do (rescue us from the crash that started during the previous administration).

LBJ pulled out after suffering actual primary setbacks (a strong showing by McCarthy in New Hampshire, the decision by Bobby Kennedy to jump in) at the hands of insurgents in his own party. If Obama stepped aside, he’d be doing it because Caddell and Schoen and whoever else they speak for were dissatisfied with him. Which is pretty thin stuff, by comparison.

Finally, let’s look at how that turned out for the Democrats — with the election of Richard “He’s Back!” Nixon.

Caddell should think harder about another example from history: The challenge mounted by Teddy Kennedy to his man Carter in 1980. That insurrection was put down, but it weakened Carter further, and we know how that turned out.

Finally, it gets weirdest of all when the authors twice offer the argument  that Barack Obama is… too partisan… and that the cure to that ailment is… and here the mind reels… Hillary Clinton. See this excerpt:

One year ago in these pages, we warned that if President Obama continued down his overly partisan road, the nation would be “guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it.” The result has been exactly as we predicted: stalemate in Washington, fights over the debt ceiling, an inability to tackle the debt and deficit, and paralysis exacerbating market turmoil and economic decline….

What? A year ago was way before Obama turned partisan. Less than a year ago was when he, at least temporarily, gave Republicans what they wanted on continuing tax cuts. I’m really missing something here.

And then there’s this part:

By going down the re-election road and into partisan mode, the president has effectively guaranteed that the remainder of his term will be marred by the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity, common purpose, and most of all, our economic strength. If he continues on this course it is certain that the 2012 campaign will exacerbate the divisions in our country and weaken our national identity to such a degree that the scorched-earth campaign that President George W. Bush ran in the 2002 midterms and the 2004 presidential election will pale in comparison…

Just to review how we got to where we are today… In 2008, Barack Obama was the cure to the hyper, bitter, partisanship of the Clintonistas. The most partisan Democrats didn’t like his conciliatory tone, which is one reason the Clinton campaign was as long-lived as it was: The partisans didn’t want to settle for the nice, reasonable guy.

Those same people have griped about, and undermined, the Obama presidency since Day One. Finally (and I can remember Jimmy Carter doing something similar to please the red-meat crowd in his party), he’s gone on the attack, after extremists in the Republican Party have led us to a downgrade in the U.S. credit rating. So the partisans in his own party are cheering, and these guys pick this moment to turn against their president, and moan about him being too partisan?

These guys can fret over their numbers all day, but the one individual who is actually running for president who has the best chance of being elected right now is Barack Obama. As much dissension as there has been among Democrats, it’s nothing compared to the lurching fragmentation going on in the GOP, which looks good in a poll against the president except when you substitute any of the actual people running for a hypothetical Republican.

Does that mean America is itching to jump on his bandwagon? No. America isn’t itching to jump on anybody’s bandwagon these days. America is bummed out. And the answer to that is to substitute him with one of the most polarizing Democrats of the last 20 years? Really?

Yes, she polls well. People approve of the job she’s doing as secretary of state. And they’re right to. I’ll go further: Hillary Clinton, in my opinion, has never deserved either the hatred of the right, nor the adulation of the most partisan elements of the left. I’ve always seen her as more of a pragmatist, someone who will work hard to get the job done. And people like those qualities in her current job, just as her constituents liked them when she was their senator.

But let her run for president, and you’ll give the hapless opposition something to rally against, something that awakens some of their more atavistic passions. Of course, Obama does that, too. But if you made me bet, I’d bet on the incumbent being better able to push past all that. This is the guy who got Osama bin Laden, and in a subtle piece of maneuvering brought down Qaddafi in Libya. Today, as we speak, he is taking the smart road on the failure of the “supercommittee” to do its job, taking the hard line, refusing to allow any backsliding on the sequester process. All things that only the incumbent can point to.

Obama’s failures are not failures of partisanship, but failures arising from passivity — the partisan Democrats are right about that, and so are the Republicans who accuse him of failing to lead. He let the stimulus package happen without doing enough to shape it, and then he did the same with his chance to make history on healthcare. Both of those grand schemes required a guiding intelligence to render them coherent, and he left the job to… Congress, of all unlikely suspects.

But no one running against him can point to any greater achievements (and poor Mitt Romney has to run from his). The GOP is lost and wandering right now; you can feel the lack of energy and enthusiasm about their field. And they have no one that independents like me can get excited about — well, they do, but they refuse to pay attention to him.

The one great advantage that Democrats have is they don’t have to go through this upheaval; they’ve got their candidate. It’s bizarre that veterans such as these would want to throw away that advantage.

For me, the survey says Obama, then Huntsman

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I refuse to attach much importance to this, but it’s an interesting exercise nonetheless.

Project VoteSmart has long been a wonkish thing, an organization that gets answers to issue-related questions from candidates for all sorts of political offices, and posts them for voters to see. Of all my friends and acquaintances who care deeply about politics, my one friend who is really, really into Project VoteSmart is Cindi Scoppe. This proves my point. About the wonkishness.

But now they have a little toy that might bring in a broader group. Just in time, too, because it seems that all the candidates for president are blowing off Project VoteSmart and refusing to answer its questions. Which is a shame, because it actually was a good source, if you’re the issue-oriented type.

I am not, relatively speaking. As I’ve gotten older, character and judgment have come to mean more. You might think that “judgment” is the same as positions on issues, but not really. The “issues” that tend to end up on surveys often have little to do either with what I’m looking for in a candidate, or what that person might actually face in office. And even when it’s an issue I care about, in order to get simple “yes/no” answers (which are rare in real life, in terms of the decisions leaders have to make), the issue is dumbed-down to where a completely honest and accurate answer is impossible.

Take, for instance, one of the questions on VoteSmart’s new “VoteEasy” mechanism: “Do you support restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns?” That’s a tough one for me. Do I advocate further restrictions on the sale of rifles, shotguns and handguns? Not really, but mainly because I see it as a political impossibility. And I believe that even if you restricted the sales, there would still be way too many millions of guns already in circulation to lessen much the ill effects of their presence among us. (Also, I’m more ambivalent about guns than unequivocal gun controllers. I don’t hunt, but I enjoy shooting at targets from time to time.) I believe that any operable gun that exists is quite likely to someday fall into the hands of someone who will not handle it responsibly. That seems almost inevitable to me. And I know we’ll never go out and round them up, however much the more extreme 2nd Amendment defenders may fear that. So I’m not inclined to spend political capital on the issue — there are so many other things to be done in our society. But… I think the question is asking me philosophically, do I believe restricting the sale of guns is a permissible thing to do under our Consitution? And I believe it is; the Framers wouldn’t have put in that language about “militia” otherwise. So, keeping it simple, I said “yes.”

I can quibble that way over every other question on the survey. And many I can answer any way. Say, take “Do you support federal spending as a means of promoting economic growth?” I don’t know. When do you mean? Now, or two years ago? What kind of spending — tax rebates, filling gaps in agency budgets, shovel-ready infrastructure projects, what? But because I assumed it meant “ever, under any circumstances, I said “yes.” But you see how misleading that is, right?

And you can see how my willingness to leave things on the table for consideration would tend to push me toward the pragmatic Barack Obama, seeing as so many of his opponents are of the “never, ever” persuasion (or so they say, now, while not in office).

But it didn’t start out that way, as I took the survey. The first question was about abortion, and that pushed Obama way to the background, while every Republican was with me 100 percent. At one point it appeared that Gingrich was moving to the front of the pack. Obama stayed to the background until about halfway through, after which he pulled steadily to the fore and stayed there. And sometimes for reasons that are counterintuitive to people who follow government and politics only casually. For instance, Obama and I both say a big, emphatic “yes” to “Do you support targeting suspected terrorists outside of official theaters of conflict?” Some still, against all reason, see Obama as a dove. Yet he is far more aggressive in this regard than George W. Bush.

Anyway, here’s how it ended up:

  1. Obama — 69
  2. Huntsman — 58
  3. Bachmann — 47
  4. Perry — 47
  5. Roemer — 47
  6. Romney — 47
  7. Santorum — 47
  8. Gingrich — 42
  9. Cain — 39
  10. Johnson — 33
  11. Paul — 31

Notice how the differences aren’t all that stark. I’m not a 100 percent this guy, 0 percent that guy kind of voter. That the candidate I agree with the most only gets 69 percent, and the one I disagree with least gets a 31 (and five of them tie for just under 50 percent) says a lot about why I can’t subscribe to either political party. Parties perpetuate the notion that everything is one way or the other, and act accordingly. That worldview is not me.

I’ll be curious to see where y’all end up. You can to try it at this address. Click on the “VoteEasy” box at the right.

Since I look at candidates more holistically, I don’t expect something like this to predict how I will vote. I’m not a check-off box kind of voter. And yet, my own mushy methods have reached similar conclusions up to now — Obama’s looking better to me than he did when I voted for McCain in 2008, and out of a weak Republican field only Huntsman has stood out positively to me, while no one is less likely to get my vote than Ron Paul.

So I found it interesting. Perhaps you will, too.

Who’s out there polling about metro issues?

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A friend sent me  this last night:

Interesting note: I just got polled about the following issues: view of city-county council, opinions of USC economic development, Harris Pastides, Innovista and funding the bus system.
Also asked about funding a new baseball stadium, riverfront and Zoo improvements.
Even (da-dum) strong mayor!
You might throw that out there (without my name, please) and see who might be paying for such a poll.

So… any of y’all know who’s doing that polling? I mean, I could call around to the usual suspects, but it’s easier to see if y’all know anything first…

Moderation, seen as a vice

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Shaking my head as I read this:

Huntsman tries to shed ‘moderate’ label

By GINA SMITH – [email protected]
Jon Huntsman’s S.C. advisors are pushing back on the “moderate” label that has dogged the former Utah governor in his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president.

“We have a story to tell about Huntsman that hasn’t been told yet,” Richard Quinn, a S.C. advisor to Huntsman, said Thursday as Huntsman shook hands and ate barbeque at a Columbia restaurant.

S.C. politicos increasingly agree the S.C. race will come down to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who consistently has finished in the top two in S.C. polls, and a “non-Romney” candidate, likely to be someone further to the political right of Romney.

That means a new narrative is needed for Huntsman who, rightly or wrongly, has been labeled as a moderate by many S.C. voters because of his stint as U.S. ambassador to China under President Barack Obama, his support for same-sex civil unions and his belief in global warming….

What has become of our nation when it is a virtue — a prerequisite, even — to be an extremist? This is not a good place to be, people. It’s like… civilization itself having a bad name.

‘What do we want?’ ‘WE CAN’T TELL YOU!’

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I could have sworn I saw something similar to this on a promo for the Letterman show (“Top Ten Things Overheard at the Occupy Wall Street Demonstrations,” or some such), but couldn’t find it on the Web. In any case, partly inspired by that, but more by what I’ve seen and read in recent days, I Tweeted this this morning…

“What do we want? WE DON’T KNOW! When do we want it? DOESN’T MATTER! WE’LL STAY HERE FOREVER!”

And of course, it’s not just me. The NYT had this story on its site this morning:

Protesters Debate What Demands, if Any, to Make

In a quiet corner across the street from Zuccotti Park, a cluster of 25 solemn-faced protesters struggled one night to give Occupy Wall Street what critics have found to be most lacking.

“We absolutely need demands,” said Shawn Redden, 35, an earnest history teacher in the group. “Like Frederick Douglass said, ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand.’ ”

The influence and staying power of Occupy Wall Street are undeniable: similar movements have sprouted around the world, as the original group enters its fifth week in the financial district. Yet a frequent criticism of the protesters has been the absence of specific policy demands…

In other words, they don’t know why they’ve spent the last five weeks of their lives doing this. At least, not in any way that could actually translate into results.

While the demonstrators’ goals are no clearer to me after having read that, my own opposition to the movement itself is a bit sharper.

One thing they seem to believe in, and which I strongly oppose, is direct democracy. One of the things that has prevented them from articulating aims is their insistence on everyone participating meaningfully in the decision.Which is impossible.  (They’ve tried it with Facebook, then decided not everyone is on Facebook, so that lacks legitimacy. Which shows how extreme they are in their democratic impulse.) Beyond the kind of painfully simplistic, bumper-sticker demands you hear in the kinds of chants I mock in my headline and Tweet above, a crowd can’t take a position on anything. And even on that mob level someone, or some few someones, have to come up with the idea to chant to begin with.

Where these folks are on the right track is in their sense that our representative democracy isn’t functioning as it should. But the answer is to fix the republic, not to abandon it for mob rule.

A mob cannot discuss, or refine, or incorporate minority ideas to achieve consensus. A crowd can’t deliberate or discern. Come up with an algorithm to assemble opinions from masses of people and synthesize a position, and you still won’t be arriving at anything like an intelligent decision. (Aside from placing a great deal of undemocratic power into the hands of the writers of the software.)

Good ideas for governing a multitude seldom spring, like Minerva, directly from the brow of an individual. They are even less likely to do so from a crowd. In either case, the idea should be tested, challenged and refined in debate. The problem in our republic today is that we don’t have real debate between people with differing ideas — we have shouting matches between irreconcilable factions who are not listening to each other. And a crowd on the street is just another set of shouters.

The thing is, you NEED a “1 percent” to arrive at properly nuanced decisions for a multitude. In fact, the decision-makers need to be fewer than that for anything larger than a village, or a neighborhood. It’s not possible for the 99 percent to all interact with each other meaningfully in arriving at an intelligent decision on a complex issue.

Speaking of which — something else I Tweeted about this morning: “I saw ‘the 99 percent’ demonstrating at the Statehouse. Apparently, there are fewer people in Columbia than I had thought.”

Actually, what you had there on the State House grounds the last couple of days was about the right number for making effective decisions for the entire state — if they had been selected in a manner infinitely better than self-selection, and also better than the way we’re choosing lawmakers now. Because that’s not working so well, either.

Someone responded to my latter Tweet this morning. It took him two posts to say it all:

I actually sympathize with the movement. They just can’t articulate. But damn, Columbia protesters are cringe-inducing.
to me, there are actually similarities between OWS and Tea Party. They know something’s wrong, but are too dumb to articulate.

Indeed. But it’s not that they’re too “dumb.” They could all be the smartest people in America, and it wouldn’t matter. A crowd can’t articulate anything — or if it can, the thing it articulates going to be too simple. That’s the problem with street protests.

More common sense from Bob Inglis

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My colleague Jay Barry (celebrated drummer for Lunch Money) brings my attention to this item from Andrew Sullivan:

“Several recent studies have found that 95 percent of climate scientists are convinced that the planet is rapidly warming as a result of human activity. But a George Mason University-Yale University poll in May found that only 13 percent of the public realizes that scientists have come to that conclusion. You would expect conservatives to stand with 95 percent of the scientific community and to grow the 13 percent into a working majority. Normally, we deal in facts, we accept science and we counter sentiment,” – Former Congressman (2010 Tea Party casualty) Bob Inglis (R-SC).

Jay told me about that in response to my having reTweeted this from Rasmussen:

Just 36% Believe Global Warming Primarily Caused by Human Activity…http://tinyurl.com/RR3332

B-minus?!?!?!? Well, that’s just so SC; we’re too polite to be honest

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Did you see this in The State today?

Legislators give Haley ‘B-‘ grade for first session

You’re kidding me, right? You want me to believe that the honest assessment of “legislators” is that Nikki Haley’s performance as governor is worthy of a B-minus? There’s just no way.

Yeah, I realize people who don’t know the State House, and who get their notions of such things from watching national TV news, will say, “That’s understandable — most of them are Republicans, right?” The majority of Republicans would seem to be the last people who would think Nikki Haley — or her predecessor — was worthy of a passing grade. Much less a B-minus. I mean — these people just sued her (successfully) for trying to boss them around. Or McConnell did, which amounts to the same thing. And that was not the low point of the relationship.

Yeah, I know how they are. It’s just the first session. At this point, they were trying to give Mark Sanford every chance, too.

But a grade — a grade isn’t supposed to be a tool of diplomacy, or an expression of future hopes (“Maybe she’ll get better…”)

A grade should be an honest assessment of actual performance. It should confront uncomfortable truths. An honest teacher says, “I know you’re trying hard, and nothing personal, but you flunked the course.”

But we don’t do that in South Carolina, do we? And it’s why we don’t move forward as a state; it’s why we lag behind. We’re so busy being polite and worrying about offending anyone that we never state the case, analyse the problem, and move to fix it.

We can be so pathetic.

I don’t even want to know how The State chose the lawmakers it interviewed. In any case, it was only 20 percent of the General Assembly. I wonder what an actual poll of the whole legislative branch, with secret ballots, would have produced. Probably something much closer to what The State‘s readership came up with. Yeah, the readers who responded were heavily Richland County. But that Democratic bias would have been balanced, in a real survey of the General Assembly, by the fact that those officeholders know her, which should make them just as likely to be negative as Democrats…

There are more of US than there are of Democrats or Republicans

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First, take a look at the awesome image that combine Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan into one face, and the one that does the same with Kennedy and Nixon. Cool. There was another that did the same with Obama and Bush, but I can’t seem to locate it as a still image online — oh, there it is.

I got excited when I saw those, and thought the piece, headlined “Death of the Duopoly,” would be a sort of UnParty manifesto. But no. When  I want an Unparty Manifesto, I have to write it myself.

Unfortunately, this was one of those pieces that saw the WSJ’s sort of libertarianism as the natural successor to the two parties, going on about how the American people, in their supposed wisdom, are turned against the drug war, and toward paying people to abandon public schools. Ho-hum, the usual. Nothing paradigm-breaking at all.

But the pictures were cool. And while the author of this piece may be confused as to the implications, these data were at least confusing:

Perhaps the most important long-term trend in U.S. politics is the four-decade leak in market share by the country’s two dominant parties. In 1970, the Harris Poll asked Americans, “Regardless of how you may vote, what do you usually consider yourself—a Republican, a Democrat, an independent or some other party?”

Fully 49% of respondents chose Democrat, and 31% called themselves Republicans. Those figures are now 35% for Democrats and 28% for Republicans. While the numbers have fluctuated over the years, the only real growth market in politics is voters who decline affiliation, with independents increasing from 20% of respondents to 28%.

These findings are consistent with other surveys. In January, Gallup reported that the Democrats were near their lowest point in 22 years (31%), while the GOP remained stuck below the one-third mark at 29%. The affiliation with the highest marks? Independent, at 38% and growing. In a survey released in May, the Pew Research Center found that the percentage of independents rose from 29% in 2000 to 37% in 2011…

Yes, there are now more of us than there are of either Democrats or Republicans (at least, according to Gallup and apparently Pew). Maybe when we grow to exceed all the partisans combined, we’ll get somewhere. But at least we’re on our way.

And then afterwards, a beer. Or two…

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Cleaning out the old IN box, I ran across this Tweet I had sent myself meaning to blog about it last week:

Taegan Goddard @pwire

Taegan Goddard

New poll: Which presidential candidate would you want to have lunch with?http://pwire.at/mJNvAf

Turns out that far more Americans polled — 53 percent — would rather have lunch with Barack Obama than any of the GOP candidates. Sarah Palin came in at a “distant second” with 16 percent.

Last election cycle, all the talk was about who you wanted to have a beer with. Asking the question this way is going to foul up our stats, for comparison purposes.

But it may be a better, more rigorous question. Most of us are probably less picky who we have a beer with. Although it depends on who’s buying.

What Americans think about killing bin Laden

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This graphic about a USA Today poll just came in over the transom, so I share it.

I mean, it doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t know, but I realize some people like to see things quantified.

One thing I wondered about, as someone who has been involved over the years in the production of a lot of graphics: Why did they feel it necessary to use the full name, “Osama bin Laden,” over and over? Is it because the poll questions were worded that way? I guess so. It’s just that it comes across as odd, all lumped into the same graphic.

The most absurd thing I’ve ever heard a president of the United States waste time talking about

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After a breakfast meeting this morning, as I was about to get out of my car to go into ADCO, I heard, live on the radio, the most insane presidential press conference I’ve ever heard in my life.

Barack Obama was actually taking time out of his day to address the insane birther “issue.”

Above is the image he posted on Twitpic. Here’s a story on it:

Obama’s ‘Long-Form’ Birth Certificate Is Released

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

President Obama on Wednesday posted online a copy of his “long-form” birth certificate from the state of Hawaii, hoping to finally end a long-simmering conspiracy theory among some conservatives who asserted that he was not born in the United States and was not a legitimate president.

The birth certificate, which is posted at the White House Web site, shows that Mr. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and is signed by state officials and his mother.

“The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn’t good for the country,” Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, wrote on the Web site Wednesday morning. Mr. Pfeiffer said on the site that Mr. Obama had authorized officials in Hawaii to release the document broadly.

In a statement to the news media Wednesday morning, Mr. Obama said he decided to release the document in an effort to end the “silliness” about his birth that threatened to distract from the serious issues facing the country.

“Over the last two and a half years, I have watched with bemusement,” he said in brief remarks. “I’ve been puzzled by the degree to which this thing just kept on going.”…

Yeah, ditto, Mr. President.

And today in the paper, I see that 41.2 percent of GOP voters in SC belief that Obama was definitely or probably born in another country. Which tells me that 41.2 percent of GOP voters should be barred from ever entering a voting booth again. Yeah, I know that there are certain constitutional problems that raises, but come on. When we talk about the drawbacks of democracy, the fact that people who would believe something like this about a guy, just because they don’t like him (for reasons that don’t bear a lot of close scrutiny, if you’re at all squeamish), get to vote just like everybody else is one of the biggies.

Oh, and for those of you who want to spend more of the precious moments you have remaining in your lives on this “issue,” here’s the president’s correspondence with the state of Hawaii Department of Health, seeking the document he posted today.

How ridiculous can we get?

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Just noticed this headline over at the WashPost:

Fuel prices cut into Obama popularity

How ridiculous, how fickle, how petty can the voting public be? Yeah, I know, we’re always like this, but whenever I see statistical proof of the capriciousness of the public affections, I am disillusioned yet again.

This, of course, is why we have never come up with a rational, comprehensive  energy plan. We have a conniption over gas prices going up a little bit — something that would certainly happen, along with a lot of other things, if we were to get serious about energy policy.

So we don’t. Ever. Because our politicians only work with one hand at a time, because they have one finger of the other constantly held up into the wind.

I mean, Obama didn’t even DO anything to make prices rise, and this happens, just the way it always does:

Obama, like previous presidents in times of high oil prices, is taking a hit. Only 39 percent of those who call gas prices a “serious financial hardship” approve of the way he is doing his job, and 33 percent of them say he’s doing a good job on the economy.

No wonder politicos are terrified to take action.

“Crazy” seems a bit harsh, but gee…

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As much as I like hearing Patsy Cline, I’m a little put off by labeling Tea Party types as “Crazy.” Seems a bit far to go. At the same time, this sort of thing is disturbing.

Of course, ALL man-on-the-street clips are disturbing, and will undermine your confidence in the principle of universal suffrage. But this is a tad worse than  most. And while I didn’t go to the rally this week, this is not terribly inconsistent with what I’ve seen and heard at previous Tea Party gatherings.

This came to me from Tyler Jones, as did a previous video posted here.

One more caveat: This IS a Tea Party gathering, not a Republican Party convention, despite Tyler’s effort to equate the two.

The “polls” (such as they are) run against Nikki’s “idiotic” move to replace Darla

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First and foremost, a thing where you go online and click “yes” or “no” to a current-events question is not a POLL, in any meaningful sense. It has no statistical significance. If you don’t have a properly constructed sample, with the right elements of randomness and screening questions (“are you the head of household, etc.”), you cannot extrapolate that the result you obtain indicates what you would get if the entire population, or electorate, answered the question.

A self-selected sample doesn’t cut it, not by a long shot. It’s a great way to invite readers/viewers to sound off — they like that — but it doesn’t generally give you much, if anything, to base conclusions on.

Still… my eyebrows raised when I saw this “poll” result over at the WLTX Facebook page:

Yeah, I know — 244 respondents, which makes a self-selected survey even MORE meaningless. But it still surprised me. Because for the last few days, any time someone says “This is going to cost her,” I say they are totally wrong, that Nikki made the calculation that her base wouldn’t care (or would even applaud, being so anti-elitist), and therefore she’s fine — from her perspective (certainly not from South Carolina’s).

It’s one thing for all the folks I run into at the Capital City Club to be shocked and appalled. One expects that, and Nikki Haley couldn’t care less. But this kind of populist thing should draw out the Haley fan club. For that matter, particularly with such low participation, it would be so easy to stack (which is the biggest reason you don’t regard self-selected “polls” as serious).

This result has NO statistical significance, but it’s SO lopsided. At the very least, it indicates a lack of eagerness on the part of her peeps to jump out and defend her. (I mean, did even ardent fan Eleanor Kitzman vote?) The way they rushed to back her on the WACH-Fox thing. What happened to that default mode of “If the elites and the media say it about our gal, it’s WRONG! And we’re gonna run out and shout it!”?

By the way, for what it’s worth… the latest WLTX nonpoll asked, “Should the U.S. have used force in Libya?” So far, this is how it’s going:

Yep, a dead heat. So far. And I figured that would be a blowout on the “yes” side. Because, you know, that’s something it looked like we had some consensus on before we went in. Of course, that consensus was among elites — including leading liberals who might otherwise oppose military action — and this is far from that. But that’s the factor that I thought would help Nikki on such a “poll” — at least to even things out for her. And it didn’t.

Once again, you can throw all of this out and you will have lost nothing of value — no methodology, tiny numbers. But it DID strike me as interesting, because it was such a blowout. And that’s all it is — interesting.

So I greeted this item from Columbia Regional Business Report in much the same spirit:

Staff Report
Published March 21, 2011

Gov. Nikki Haley made a grave misstep by removing philanthropist Darla Moore from the University of South Carolina’s board of trustees, said a vast majority of the people who responded to a two-day poll on the Daily Report.

Haley had few supporters of her move with only 7.1% saying they approve of her decision to replace Moore with Lexington attorney Tommy Cofield, who financially supported Haley’s campaign.

However, 78.8% want Moore back on the board; 44.2% of the respondents said Haley needs to admit her mistake and reinstate Moore, while 34.6% said the General Assembly should rectify the situation and by electing Moore to the board.

The remaining 14.1% asked who Tommy Cofield is.

Comments were fairly consistent, with the majority saying the move was “idiotic.”…

There was no methodology mentioned, so I figured this was an informal survey. I double-checked with CRBR Publisher Bob Bouyea, and he confirmed, “Informal poll.” Of course. No one in SC media has money to run real polls on the spur of the moment these days.

But I did find some of the comments interesting. Of course, they were fairly typical of what I’ve been hearing among the business movers and shakers, which is the same circle CRBR moves in.

As I say, interesting. Thought you might find it all interesting, too.

Good news for Obama in 2012 poll

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Politico brought this to my attention this morning:

Washington (CNN) – Two new polls, but as of now the same old story: Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Sarah Palin remain the leaders of the pack in hypothetical 2012 GOP presidential nomination matchups.

According to an ABC News-Washington Post survey, 21 percent of Republican or independent leading Republicans say that as of now, Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate, is their choice for their party’s presidential nomination, with 19 percent supporting Palin, the former Alaska governor and Sen. John McCain’s runningmate in the last presidential election, and 17 percent backing Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who also ran for the White House in 2008.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was a distant fourth, at nine percent, followed at eight percent by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has repeatedly said he is not going to make a bid for the White House in 2012. Everyone else was in the low single digits.

That’s very good news for Barack Obama. I like Huckabee, but his viability remains to be seen. Romney SHOULD be viable, but the GOP has embraced, as though it were gospel, the idiotic doctrine that insurance mandates are bad, so bye-bye, Mitt. Sarah Palin is severely hampered by the fact that she is Sarah Palin.

Of course, these early polls mean little, they just show how little people have thought about whom they will actually vote for. The contest is not yet engaged. As Spencer Whetstone wrote on Facebook this morning when I mentioned this poll, “Of course at this point in the last cycle the punditry were telling us that a Giuliani – Clinton match-up was inevitable.”

Yep.

Actually, Obama just thinks the U.S. is “special”

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When Twitter brought this question to my attention — “Poll: Does Obama think U.S. is exceptional?” — I thought it odd: Here’s more:

Washington (CNN) – The vast majority of Americans see the United States as exceptional, according to a new national poll. But a Gallup poll released Wednesday also indicates that nearly four in ten say they believe President Barack Obama doesn’t hold this same view.

Eight out of ten people questioned in the survey say that based on the country’s history and constitution, the U.S. has a unique character that makes it the greatest country in the world. The poll suggests there’s no partisan divide on the question, with 73 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of independents and 91 percent of Republicans in agreement.

According to the poll, 58 percent say Obama believes that the U.S. is exceptional, with 37 percent saying they disagree. But the survey indicates Americans are less likely to believe Obama holds this view than they are to think the same about Ronald Reagan (86 percent), Bill Clinton (77 percent), and George W. Bush (74 percent).

The poll does suggest Democrats and Republicans don’t see eye to eye, with 83 percent of Democrats and 34 percent of Republicans questioned saying Obama believes the country is exceptional….

First of all, why do a poll? If you want to know what Barack Obama thinks about America, ask Obama. He’ll tell you.

But of course, that’s not what this is about. This is about how the American people feel about how Obama feels about America. And you know how I feel about how Gallup feels about how voters feel about how, etc.? Well, I’ll tell ya — I’m getting pretty sick and tired of all politics in America, from the Beltway to the SC election for governor down to county council, being about how people feel about Obama.

This is beyond ridiculous.

Of course, it may be true: Maybe the president doesn’t think we’re exceptional. Maybe he just thinks we’re “special.” And who could blame him?

The SC New Democrats’ survey

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Phil Noble’s SC New Democrats are trying to figure out the future of their party (if it has one in SC), so they’ve sent out a survey to the faithful.

Somehow, I got a copy, too:

1,500 SC Democrats have had their say. Have you?

Friends,

Since we emailed you on Friday, over 1,500 people have completed our “What’s Next” survey. That’s 1,500 SC voters ready and eager to change the game and get Democrats back on the road to victory.

We’re certainly thrilled with the response, but we still really want to hear from you.

It only takes about 5 minutes. Will you take the survey right now?

In less than a month, Nikki Haley will take the oath of office and become this state’s next governor, and for the first time in a long while, no Democrats will hold statewide office, which makes it all the more important that Democrats step up and project a clear vision for our state.

Help us build that vision. Join 1,500+ across the state and the survey now.

We’ll be taking a look at the results this weekend and will report back with the findings.

We can’t wait to hear from you,
South Carolina New Democrats

I went ahead and filled it out, knowing I’d probably skew the results. For instance, when it asked, “What do you think that Democrats in South Carolina do POORLY?” I answered, “Everything. Which is fine by me, because I don’t like parties. Actually, the Dems’ fecklessness sort of endears them to me. Nothing worse than a well-organized political party.”

And some questions, I just didn’t know how to answer. For instance, when the survey asks:

Which best describes your opinion of the Democratic Party in South Carolina?

… what am I supposed to say? I mean, I don’t WANT the party to do better. I want it, and the Republican Party, to go away. But I chose the second option as the closest to my opinion. I mean, if it really DID get “fundamental change,” it wouldn’t be what it is anymore, would it?

Anyway, y’all should help them out and take the survey. After all, some of you are actually Democrats…

And probably fewer than that even CARE (I hope)

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Catching up on stuff that grabbed my attention the last few days. For instance, there was this item about a Pew poll:

Poll: Less than half know GOP won the House

(CNN) – The Republican Party won decisive control of the House in this year’s midterm elections, but it appears less than half the country is aware of it.

According to a new Pew poll, only 46 percent of those surveyed correctly identified that the Republican Party won the House as a result of the November 2 elections. But it’s not all bad – 75 percent did know the Republicans performed better than the Democrats, it’s just that many aren’t aware exactly what the party won.

Fourteen percent thought the GOP won control of both the chambers, 8 percent thought Republicans won just the Senate, and 27 percent didn’t know one way or the other. Five percent meanwhile thought Democrats maintained control of both the House and Senate….

I raise this NOT to make the average guy sound like an idiot. I raise it to say that the average guy probably doesn’t care. And he’s right.

No matter how much the oversimplified media — which do their best to reduce everything in politics to a binary choice, like sports (if one team is up, the other team is down), and to naitonalize EVERYTHING — voters still, to some extent, vote for individuals, not parties.

At least I do, and it’s all about what I think, right?

But seriously — if you’re trying to choose between Candidate A and Candidate B, then that’s the choice you’re making. How many people outside the Beltway do you think actually think, “Golly, will Jim Clyburn still be able to be called Majority Whip if I chose this guy?” And if they do, well, they should lose their franchise…

Wearing your allegiance on your sleeve — or on your Facebook page, anyway

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Right after the election, I noticed a Nikki Haley bumper sticker, and it struck me that I hadn’t seen a whole lot of those during the election, which caused me to Tweet:

Ever notice how you see more bumper stickers for a candidate AFTER he/she wins than you did before Election Day? I do…

It may be purely a perception flaw on my part, but after a number of elections I have strongly suspected a belated “bandwagon” effect accounting for the number of fresh, unfrayed, clean bumper stickers that I see for the new officeholder even a year or more after the election.

It’s probably a little of both. But that means the bandwagon effect is to some extent at play. And that, to me, is one of the oddest things about human nature. I just don’t understand the bandwagon effect in politics. Either you like a candidate or you don’t. Either you believe in a cause or you don’t. What sort of weak-willed person adjusts his judgments according to what’s more popular? But we all know it happens. It’s one reason why campaigns stress polls that show their side winning; it tends to contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I can sort of see it working with sports. After all, I ignored the Braves for years until their worst-to-first performance in 1991, after which I couldn’t get enough of them for several years. But that’s about the fact that it’s more enjoyable to watch someone play baseball WELL than to watch them play badly. And I’m very much a September/October kind of baseball fan, because that’s when you see the best, most exciting play.

But choosing whom you’ll support on the basis of who you think will win, or even worse, someone who has already won? That’s either contemptible, or just plain weird.

But anyway, I didn’t think any more about the bumper stickers until I saw this Tweet today from Nettie Britts:

If you still have a Sheheen avatar you really need to change that.

Really, I thought… how come? And why Sheheen specifically? I asked that, and Logan Stewart jumped in with:

lbstewart Logan Stewart

@BradWarthen @nettie_b the day after he lost election, I made my FB profile pic one of @vincentsheheen & me b/c I’m proud of his work in SC

I guess she was talking about this.

Nettie responded:

@BradWarthen @lbstewart I think it looks silly to still have campaign stuff up. You don’t need to communicate message anymore.

This seemed sensible enough. It’s sort of what I think when I see those bumper stickers. Nevertheless, I was inspired to go put up a picture with Sheheen in it on the blog — I put it on the page you get when you use the search function.

Because Lord knows, we’re going to see a lot of pictures of Nikki Haley — the choice of just 51 percent of SC voters — over the next few years. Bumper stickers, too. Just watch.

So what’s the harm in having something up for the rest of us?

By the way, sisters: “Women” didn’t go for Haley

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Y’all know how fed up I was during the campaign with all the breathless Identity Politics hoopla, especially in the national media, over Nikki Haley being an Indian-American (gasp!) woman (oh, joy! oh, rapture!). I don’t like all that IP stuff in the best of times, but to watch the way it boosted Nikki over the first Lebanese-American Catholic (to use language they would understand) ever to receive a major-party nomination for governor in this state was pretty maddening.

But if I thought that was bad, that was nothing compared to what we’ve been subjected to since last Tuesday. The next “journalist” who says “historic” in reference to what happened last week is going to get slapped upside the head, if I’m within arm’s reach.

I got my fill of it in the WIS studio on election night, as everyone but me went on and on about it. Of course, on live TV, one reaches for whatever one has at hand to have something to say, I suppose. But ever since then, Tom Wolfe’s Victorian Gent has been in full rant, loudly expressing the Appropriate Sentiment — or as Wolfe termed it, “the proper emotion, the seemly sentiment, the fitting moral tone” –over the allegedly monumental event.

OK, so basically, this was a big victory for women, huh? Well, before the sisters get too overjoyed about this, it would be good to note that “women” didn’t elect Nikki Haley. So much for the solidarity of sisterhood.

Mind you, I put “women” in quotation marks for ironic purpose. I’m using it the way Republicans say “America voted Republican,” or “South Carolina preferred Nikki Haley.” The thing is, a SLIGHT majority of women preferred Vincent Sheheen, according to exit polls. And when I say slight, I mean slight: 50 percent to 49 percent. But hey, it would have been enough for him to win if all the men had stayed home. (But I will say that, even though the exit poll didn’t measure this, I’m thinking Nikki won the SC Indian-American vote. I’m just going by the number that was there dancing at her victory party, so my assumption is unscientific.)

To analyze the exit polls further… If I were the sort who cared about Identity Politics — if I thought being of a certain gender or race or whatever mattered — I would start to wonder about myself. Vincent lost in pretty much every demographic group to which I belong. Except two: Ideology (Vincent won among “moderates,” with 63 percent of us) and non-evangelicals.

Which, I suppose, is why I hate talk of Identity Politics. It doesn’t affect the way I vote, and I don’t think it should affect anybody’s.