The political chattering class recently was agog about two incidents. One concerned Mitt Romney expressing concern that airplane windows could not be opened in the event that smoke filled the cabin, something that happened recently on a plane on which his wife Ann was traveling. People took this as yet another sign of a clueless candidate out of touch with reality. [Read more…]
You can be sure that when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the United Nations General Assembly today, he will ramp up the rhetoric against Iran. With all this saber rattling, the plight of the Palestinians in the occupied territories has taken a back seat. [Read more…]
Mitt Romney’s campaign has continued to be harshly attacked by other Republicans, with long time Republican operative Peggy Noonan is calling it a ‘rolling disaster’. In fact, his campaign is perceived as being so bad that within the space of less than six months, sentiment has shifted from the belief that the Republican nominee would win the presidency in a cake-walk, to wonderment that Romney is not winning, to how it is that Obama is not completely running away with the election. [Read more…]
It is rather depressing, though perhaps unavoidable, that modern election campaigns spend almost all their money and energy trying to persuade that tiny group known as the ‘undecided voter’ in the so-called swing states. [Read more…]
I have mentioned before that many political scientists eschew opinion polls and look more closely at election predictions made on the basis of what are called the ‘fundamentals’, that depend upon objective measures (GDP, disposable income, etc.). Of course, which model you choose can affect the results that you get. [Read more…]
Reader Norm sent me a link to this news article that reported on a new study that said that life expectancy had dropped dramatically for white people who did not have much formal education. [Read more…]
Stephen. M. Walt, reflecting on the secret video showing Mitt Romney saying that would ‘kick the can down the road’ when it comes to dealing with the Israel-Palestine issue, says something that has been puzzling me too. [Read more…]
One of Barack Obama’s personality strengths is that he does not seem to get flustered and put off stride by events and attacks. He seems to respond calmly and in measured ways to events and people have wondered how he manages it. [Read more…]
So Mitt Romney has released his 2011 tax returns and a ‘summary statement’ about his taxes from 20 previous years. It was interesting that he released them on Friday afternoon, the ‘Friday news dump’ time, which is the traditional period for releasing news that you don’t want people to pay much attention to. I think this practice arose from the times when people got much of their news from the broadcast TV networks and few people watched them on weekends when they were often pre-empted by sports events. [Read more…]