Yes, popular vote is fine for North Carolina and electoral for the general. Money transfered. Good luck.

is the "gas tax plan is a bad idea" getting any play on TV or do you have to search for the expert's insights?

Ha! This is hilarious. Did you actually just link me to this article thinking it would refute me? The article explicitly states in page one: ""It would last for three months and it would save you on average half a tank of gas, $25 to $30."

90$!!! Gee, natedogg is right again. Amazing.

As I said, Obama's argument essentially boils down to "hey it's not that much, let's keep taking it".

The rest of the article rests on political arguments, not fiscal ones. for example:


and again:


That's great and all but doesn't actually prove anything about it costing us more. What *will* cost us more is Hillary's insane proposal in addition to the cut:

Let me guess, you're actually infavor of that one aren't you?

Of then there's the kicker, where the NYT opens the kimono for us:


So even though the economists agree it will save consumers around $90, it could end up that oil companies increase revenues due to higher demand so let's keep screwing the consumers. Only a deluded Obamaphile could subscribe to that logic and call it "facts" and believe it means the tax cut is bad for the consumer.

I think this is an overstatement.

First of all, the polls have yet to gauge whether the events of the past two days have mattered (though they probably won't).

More importantly, you can't completely discount psychology and the power of the narrative.

Even though the delegate race may not have changed one bit, there is no question that the media spin has changed. Most in the media simply do not consider Obama has strong a candidate as they did two months ago. Increasingly, reports come out indicating that the GOP feels the same. And I think the polls do show at least a slight uptick in Obama's unfavorable numbers.

It's true that Obama and Hillary have continued to win and lose the states they were supposed to, according to demographics. But don't forget that there was a point when many were quite hopeful that Obama would be able to transcend his demographic limitations. At this point, such hope seems abandoned. And as a result, superdelegates are probably much more worried about how will Obama do in the fall.

I don't expect any of this will stop Obama from being nominated; but I do believe that one can fairly say that Obama's image has changed over the past few months, in the eyes of many.

(I'd add that the narrative will probably change again, but I'm not yet ready to abandon my Doom and Gloom role.)

4 High, thanks for those numbers and your other work in this (these) threads.

Dvaut, you deserve some kind of award for your writing and analysis throughout the last few months (I didn't read these boards until relevantly recently, so maybe your skills have been on display for months).

natedogg, you forgot to sign your last post.

Also, we seem to be missing some of the Obama-haters. I expected more of a furor after yesterday. Are they just tucked in waiting for the talking points to get established before they bring them in here?

OK, back to my wine (its 9pm where I am, and a holiday tomorrow).

ndogg,

the initiative WILL COST THE GOVT (your) MONEY and the loss will hurt YOUR bottom line. The windfall tax Clinton is talking about is trying to pass the buck on that loss, see the Freidman NYT piece too see why that giving you 30$ for your vote that we borrow from China/SA is a stupid, unproductive idea.


Simply put, the initiative will cost you money, I can't understand how you still don't see that: (from the previously quoted Wired piece)
But hey! ndogg ends up with 30$ he didn't have before, so you make money right?

By this logic, it's a gain for you if you sell me your 30k car for 30$, right? Cause hey you got 30$ you didn't have before! YAY!

Anyone want a preview of Clinton being interviewed by O'Reilly. With his usual modesty, O'Reilly is claiming, "This is, without a doubt, the toughest interview she's ever done."

This excerpt from a blog at Politico, however, suggests the interview may not be particularly enlightening

O'REILLY: Can you believe this Reverend Wright guy? Can you believe this guy? What do you think?

CLINTON: Well, you know. Well, I'm going to leave it up to voters to decide.

O'REILLY: No, but what do you think as an American? You're an American.

CLINTON: Well, what I said when I was asked directly is that I would not have stayed in that church.

O'Reilly: No, no, no. You're an American citizen. I'm an American citizen. He's an American citizen, Reverend Wright. What do you think when you hear a fellow American citizen say that stuff about America? What do you think?

CLINTON: Well, I take offense at it. I think it's offensive and outrageous.

O"REILLY: I feel sorry for Barack Obama. Honestly. I feel sorry for him. His whole campaign has been derailed by some loony guy. Isn't that amazing?

CLINTON: Well, he spoke out forcefully yesterday, and--

O'Reilly: "Do you feel sorry for Obama?"

CLINTON: Well, I think that he made his views clear, finally, that he disagreed. And I think that's what he had to do.

Bill O' will play a Karl Rove question for HRC. Something along the lines of 'Why didn't you market yourself as a uniter early on, given your bi partisan experience on the Foreign Services Committee?'

ndogg,

By that logic, all reductions in govt revenue hurt my bottom line, and conversely, the more the govt takes in the better? I'm confused.



Why yes it is and I already stated that THIS is the part of the proposal that will really cost you.


I agree, but this is not part of the gas tax proposals. And even so, it is separate from the question of whether or not to collect gas taxes and if it will cost you more to stop paying them. (Hint: in and of itself, no, it won't).




No it won't. The initiative itself will not cost me money. The "windfall profits" tax and printing more money, yes THAT will cost us money.


Umm. so?



All revenues are fungible and they all go into the general fund as indistinguishible funds, even social security taxes. There is no such thing as reducing a certain tax and causing harm to a certain line item in the budget. Claiming as much is purely smoke and mirrors.

The bottom line is that the regressive gas tax hurts the poor and Obama is the only candidate who opposes the idea of reducing that burden. Odd don't you think?

natedogg

It tookObama 20 years to move away from Wright.
Obama has lost the middle.

I know what kind of rag it is, but a very good read imo.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-ce...f_b_99244.html

Yeah, part of my point was that *maybe* the events of the past two days REALLY ARE the zomg game changing event. I won't discount that. But according to the same talking heads who are touting this as the ZOMG game changing event that will change everything and create momentum and change have been claiming the last 150 things that happened were really zomg game changing and would change everything and create so much momentum. And change everything.

I didn't discount it. In fact, I said:

I'm keenly aware as to just how powerful certain narratives can be; the point is that the narrative here (zomg momentum!!!...this time!!! Wright is bringing down the Obama campaign) has absolutely no bearing on the empirical reality.

As fascinating as following the various machinations of media talking heads is, the point of my post is that the "most of the media" you're citing is completely infatuated with creating drama and spinning narratives about all kinds of meaningless nonsense; finding patterns where none exist, describing sweeping changes in the hearts and minds of the electorate that don't correlate to anything measured on any public opinion poll, endlessly discussing how bowling scores and pastors are causing all kinds of electability problems.

But the chorus says: "the narrative is having a powerful effect! Obama's electability is in question now! He's not as strong of a candidate as he was 2 months ago!!!"

How could we judge something like that? I thought of a good metric:



The people who this electability argument is supposed to weigh heaviest on -- the people who are supposed to be most effected by the endless media chattering about Obama's "declining strength" as a general election candidate are behaving exactly the *opposite* of what we would expect. The superdelegates should be seeing all of the Obama weakening and flocking to Clinton en masse. It's been happening for months, apparently.

But of course, they are. Just the opposite is happening. What else are we to believe, in light of this, other than the media has 24 hours of cable news to fill, thousands of blogs to write, lots of articles to be written, and a need endless compelling storylines about drastic changes and zomg huge horse-race trends that are going to have zomg huge effects come November, and that this need to consistently drum up mindless chatter about the importance of everything completely negates any credibility or effect said narrative has?

A disinterested, objective observer if there ever was one. Surprising that the same party raising millions of dollars and planning a bunch of Obama attack ads are also claiming what a weak candidate he is. Shocking.

I need that picture of Patrick Stewart holding his face in his hand right about now.

I'm sure some poll somewhere is showing a slight uptick on anything. That's the nature of polling; it's inherent to them. Slight upticks happen just due to random chance; that's why separating random noise from statistically significant changes is important. And yet when you attempt to do that, you quickly discover that public opinion is more or less in the same place regarding Obama, Clinton, and the race between the two for the nomination as it was two months ago.

ldo



From the previous post:

Yesterday? 52% favorable, 45% unfavorable.

Look, I don't mean to be harsh. You're free to believe Obama's image has changed over the past few months, in the eyes of many. But at some point you should feel some onus to provide some kind of significant empirical evidence of this change manifesting itself in public opinion.

Again, I'm not discounting the power of a narrative -- in fact I think you're proving my point. You're completely wedded to the carefully disseminated right-wing talking points about how damaged Obama is, regardless of how far detached from reality those talking points are. And hell, you *like* Obama. That's how powerful the narrative is: there's absolutely no evidence the public feels any differently about Obama than it did months ago, but hey, the media is repeating it an awful lot, so you've internalized the notion that it's of course happening.

I'm critical of the ikestoys types who endlessly spew about how popular the Iraq War is becoming and how much pain the Democrats are going to feel for opposing it in November, when poll after poll demonstrates how disdained the war is, and how a clear majority of voters favor plans that are much closer to what the Democrats are advocating -- so despite the fact you and I agree on alot, I'm not sure it's fair to treat you much differently.

If you want to claim Obama is much weaker and the superdelegates are oh-so-worried, good luck explaining this:



If you want to claim how much Obama is damaged in the eyes of everybody because of Wright and bittergate and bowling scores and his elitism and Wright re-emerging and momentum and being off message and stumbling on the campaign trail and blah blah blah, then you have some onus to explain this:




I mean, yeah, maybe THIS time (unlike all the other times before), that unfavorable rating is doing to dip a couple of points and stay there. But if you were to take a candidate with a "true" fav/unfav of, let's say, just by eyeballing, 51%-48%, and ran it everyday with a 4% margin of error, you're going to get results that have as much variability as what's above.

Again: how we get from February 25th, the height of Obama kool-aid drinking, Obama's favorability ratings were 52% favorable, 46% unfavorable, to yesterday, Obama has a 52% favorable, 45% unfavorable rating ----> therefore, Obama has had a terrible two months and is seen as fundamentally worse now than he was two months ago, and he's doomed because of Wright and bittergate and buying arugula at Whole Foods ... that's beyond me. I agree, the power of the narrative is strong enough to apparently get you to sincerely buy the narrative, despite the fact you like the guy who's ostensibly harmed by it. And while it's apparently not *actually* changing anyone's mind about how they view Obama, it's getting everyone to sqwuak about what they think everyone else thinks, regardless of how far detached from it is from the reality of what actual public opinion polling tells us.

Hehe, I finally provoked DVaut.

Even though I'm still purposely skewing things to show them in their worst light, I do think you're downplaying a genuine change in the campaign, notwithstanding the absence of empirical evidence.

I'll respond to a few points.

I don't agree you can judge the mood of the superdelegates by the fact that many are still trickling towards Obama. In fact, I assume the vast majority of the remaining uncommitted have already made their minds up to support him. But I think they do so because they realize that overturning the pledged delegates would be Armageddon and tear the party apart; I don't believe it means they are not getting increasingly worried about the fall.


I can't find the link now, but I'm pretty sure I saw an article reporting that some GOP Congressmen are now using Obama's name in their own local advertising. This would suggest that they truly view Obama as a good way of rousing the faithful, and that it is not merely a talking point when they tell the media they feel better about their chances against Obama now than they did before.


edit: [my first response failed to note the polls you posted about favorable/unfavorable ratings] You apparently are right that his favorable/unfavorable numbers have yet to change notably. But that doesn't mean that aspects of his image have not suffered (especially when paired against McCain, rather than Hillary). For example, I suspect that more people view him as an extreme liberal now, than did earlier.


I'm really only talking about the general election at this point.


I think we do have a genuine difference here; for I do not believe that every dynamic change is necessarily reflected in a poll or other empirical evidence. I also think that sometimes changes take a while before they are reflected in polls.

My basic position here is that Obama's current image is worse than it used to be. (And I say that despite the fact that I personally disagree that he has changed at all.) That does not necessarily result in different poll numbers, but it does matter in the grander scheme of things.

By the way, I don't think the type of change I'm talking about is permanent by any means. If Obama crushes N. Carolina like you predict - notwithstanding at least 1-2 polls showing a shrinking lead - and he manages to win Indiana, I expect the media will do a 180 and the glowing accounts of Obama will return stronger than ever.

Finally, let me just point out that I think you have contradicted yourself. You admit that the media narrative is a powerful force, and claim that even I have fallen under it. But at the same time, you maintain that the changing narrative has not had any negative effect, purely because of the absence of evidence in the polls. Well, either the narrative matters or it doesn't. And in the end, all I'm really saying is that it matters significantly.

That's fine. There are different ways for the a media narrative to "matter". It's not a contradiction to say that the media narrative is causing a veritable echo chamber -- causing talking heads with hours to fill on radio and TV, with blog posts to make, with columns to write -- to just parrot what everyone else is saying. Similarly, it "matters" because observers who engage themselves in this kind of media content are engaging in endless speculation about how all this noise and bluster is going to cause wide-ranging effects on all of the upcoming primary contests and the general election.

But where I am claiming this narrative is having no effect is in how people actually feel about the candidates, or their level of devotion or support; just because the endless media chatter have caused you, and Vercineck, and 4 high, and suzy89222 to envelop yourselves in clouds of doom and gloom about how badly Obama is viewed by everyone now hasn't actually dampened your support for the guy. The media narrative mattered because it's gotten you guys to endlessly tune into and read the chattering classes as they pontificate and prognosticate and make estimations about how *everyone else* (but not you) is effected, but I think the voting results and polling are clear that it hasn't actually mattered in changing anyone's mind about who they're voting for -- you know, the metric that *actually* matters. And I don't think there's anything contradictory in pointing that out: the media narrative has 'mattered' because it's ****ed with your emotions and prompted all kinds of wide-ranging prognostications about movement and momentum and changes in the hearts and minds of voters, but it hasn't "mattered" in changing your mind or frankly anyone else's, and I think the results from the contests that have transpired in the last few months and pubic opinion polling is pretty clear on this.

Look, I'm probably as guilty as following ultimately meaningless horse-race numbers as anyone; I've probably got 50 posts in this thread citing new polls, etc. etc. But once you take a step back and look at the big picture, and look at the fundamentals, it's pretty obvious nothing much concerning how either the primaries or the general election will play out has changed for months. Suzy claiming how worried she was (I assume suzy is a she) about all the media spin that makes it sound like the world is crashing and burning for Obama, and how happy she is to read places that aren't quite so alarmist and overwrought with crazy commentary just demonstrates how *powerful* the media narrative is in framing perceptions about movement and momentum and sea-changing events, even when none of that is happening. Look around at the fundamental numbers and absolutely nothing has changed, despite the thousands of hours of cable news bluster, blog posts, editorials, etc. She candidly admitted the media is perpetuating a faux drama where none exists -- and yet in the same post just parroted the meaningless "uh oh it's been a bad month for Obama" talking point. Once we've conceded the italicized above, we should at least try stop parroting the talking points manufactured to perpetuate the invented drama.

yeah, lol, he had to assess his highly valuable opinions after Obama's speech yesterday.


DVaut is the official President of the 2+2 political forum's Obama fanbois club. It doesn't get much better than that.



every one of your posts is ridiculous. I've never put anyone on ignore on this whole website. Congrats, you're the first.

Serious question: are the superdelegates actually committed? Or are they merely publicly stating how they intend to vote, but the vote will occur at the convention?

natedogg

Several have already flipped from Clinton to Obama....they are free to switch any time up until they have to vote at the convention.

All of the delegates are free to vote however they like at the convention. This includes pledged delegates. Thats what I have read, admit I have not read the actual rules.

This implies also that they should be able to abstain, can anyone confirm. One strategy Clinton could use is to get a small number of delegates to abstain to deny the nomination to Obama on the first ballot. Another strategy would be to encourge delaying, i.e., getting delegates to "pass", which might be tempting to some elected superdelegates whose primary concern is to get on the winning bandwagon only when it is a sure thing.

Is there a web source for the roll call procedures? Or, are these details subject to a fight in the procedural committee that meets at the convention but prior to the nomination vote?

The more I think about everything the more I am ambivalent to how poorly BHO looks right now because he's still getting the Dem nomination. He's obviously going to look bad with two people attacking him but once he's one on one with McCain things will turn for the better right away. McCain's camp is already pushing for a ton of debates with BHO which is perfectly fine as, if anything it will just further illustrate the fact that this is "Old Washington" vs. "New Washington" Back on the optimism train after a few days in Wynton-ville.

This strikes me as very bad news for Obama and it makes a lot more sense to me now why Clinton is still in it.

natedogg

The superdelegates ability to switch their votes up until the convention is why Clinton will stay in the race until Denver. She'll also try to get the pledged delegates to change their votes.

The only thing which can prevent that is a powerful media narrative saying Obama has clinched the nomination.

Dvaut,

Let me emphasize one more point that should give some context to our different views as to whether or not anything significant has changed in this race: it seems that I was more optimistic than you, a few months ago.

Although Obama and Clinton seem stuck now in appealing to their different demographic groups, there was a point at which I thought Obama could break out of that. Now, I am reconciled to the fact that he will not be able to do so, at least during the Democratic race. So, what has changed for me is Obama's political potential. And I don't think I'm alone in that respect.

On the other hand, I don't think you ever held out much hope that Obama would seriously expand his demographic appeal. So, it's natural for you to conclude that nothing much has changed.

Wynton I think you need to give Hillary some credit here. Starting in Texas and Ohio she has run a campaign intended specifically to deny him the opportunity to make headway with her demographic at the expense of doing the same with his. Her strategy has basically been a holding action, hoping for an act of God that would allow her to claim the nomination.

The latest poll in North Carolina has Clinton in the lead.

Insider Advantage (4/29, 571 likely voters): Clinton 44, Obama 42


Other recent polls include:

Rasmussen (4/28, 774 LV): Obama 51, Clinton 37
Survey USA (4/26 to 4/28, 727 LV): Obama 49, Clinton 44

LOL @ 64-20 amongst African Americans.

Nothing to see here....