May 7, 2008

A new Bloggingheads!

It's me and Jeralyn Merritt again. Topics:
Did the mayor of Gary, IN try to sabotage Hillary’s victory? (08:34)
Jeralyn makes the case for Clinton to stay in (09:39)
Ann fears Obama is too liberal, Jeralyn that he’s not liberal enough (05:59)
Will voters think Obama is angry because he’s black? (08:35)
What’s the real difference between Obama and Hillary? (04:46)
Looking ahead to a McCain Supreme Court (05:19)

ADDED: I just watched the episode and see that I neglected to connect up one thought: Hammond, Indiana got me thinking about Jean Shepherd because Jean Shepherd was from Hammond, Indiana. You know, it's not easy to use the stream-of-consciousness methodology.

20 comments:

M. Simon said...

This bit of Pew Research might be of interest:

Where the voters are vs where the candidates are.

Jeralyn is correct. To insure a McCain victory the Dems need much more liberal candidates. Although they do seem liberal enough.

BTW next time you contact Jeralyn ask her when I can have my posting privileges back. Tell her that her regulars were way more intemperate than I was. I think she discriminates against right people.

vbspurs said...

Wow, I'm impressed. Althouse "let" Jeralyn speak for almost 3 minutes without an interruption, at the beginning.

Mind you, this is my first Bloggingheads podcast viewing, so I'm not sure this is the norm.

Nevertheless, it's refreshing not to be encumbered by news cable / radio talk show discourse limits.

Heh, Ann seems sceptical at the "black eye" phrase. OH! It's a 'racialist' dig. Tsk, Ann, LOL.

Cheers,
Victoria

Simon said...

Ann, who do you have in mind as the sort of moderate that McCain might appoint, assuming your reading of his inclinations is correct?

Victoria, sometimes language can be a pain in the neck - I wanted to refer to a candidate as acting like a white knight the other day, which is a perfectly well-understood phrase, but I guess that when you apply it to candidates who aren't white in the racial sense, it causes difficulty for some folks.

Unknown said...

I've been looking around at Jeralyn's blog lately, never bothered before to read it, but from memeorandum I'd noticed she was linking from a lot of hyperventilating anti-Obama articles, so I thought I'd go see what's up.

And guess what? Hyperventilating abounds from her herself! I won't bother with blogs like myDD, Kos, and TalkLeft whose 'preach to the choir' threads are nothing but that, mostly because Jeralyn and her ilk remove posts they don't like.

Gross. The anger at that site is unreal, unfathomable, and I won't be listening to this bloggingheads post.

Unknown said...

and PS:
Her latest theorem about the 'weakening' white vote (comparing NC to VA, for no reason) is so racially tinged it's absurd. Much less picking a state to compare to that does nothing other than help her make an already weak argument.

Hey Jeralyn, you could learn some lessons from this blog.

vbspurs said...

Rossi, I just went to TalkLeft and clicked around to read the comments. My first time.

I didn't REALLY see anything too godawful. OTOH, I have been to DU, MyDD, Atrios and Kos.

Jeralyn's blog is a tea party compared to those cesspools of anti-Americanism and hate, so I might be too blinkered to see what you mean.

Cheers,
Victoria

M. Simon said...

Ann,

Gave you some link love at Where the Voters Are along with some economic analysis.

john marzan said...

nooooo! not jeralyn again!

Gavin Sullivan said...

Adored your assault on that bug-eyed creeps' psychic wedges, Ann. Toward the end you let her fillibuster and grandstand in a manner generally viewed as prostitutional among Bloggingheads fans. But your willingness to make plain our discomfort with her 'black eye' remark took real spine, and I loved how brutally you rubbed it in when you noted your insight would have been insta-expunged had you published it on Jeralyn's blog.

Eli Blake said...

The mayor of Gary did nothing to affect the outcome anywhere near what Rush Limbaugh did.

Yesterday's CNN exit poll made that clear.

One question is asked how voters would vote in an election between Clinton and McCain. 16% of voters in yesterday's Democratic primary in Indiana indicated that in such a matchup they would vote for McCain. One would expect the cut off your nose to spite your face crowd would mostly be supporters of the other candidate. That is true, but not overwhelmingly so-- of those sixteen percent, Hillary Clinton got 41% of their vote. Forty-one percent of sixteen percent represents about 6% of the total vote (three times Clinton's total margin of victory.) So that is six percent of the total number of voters in Indiana who DID vote for Hillary Clinton today but who say they would vote for John McCain in the fall even if Hillary Clinton is his opponent.

So rather than harp on what the mayor of a small city tried or failed to accomplish, why not ask what the meaning is of the fact that Hillary Clinton won Indiana at all only because a right wing radio talk show host handed it to her-- without his support the difference between two and six is minus four-- she'd have lost twice yesterday. Even if we assume that a few of those voters are Democrats for McCain who were voting the 'lesser of evils' as they saw it on the Democratic side, clearly the margin is such that Rush Limbaugh changed the result in a Democratic primary.

blake said...

Eli,

I don't know. I a know a number of people who voted in the Dem primary because they're Dems, who still plan to vote for McCain. They tend to be older and seem to have selected their preferences according to seniority.

Exhorting people to vote to cause trouble isn't illegal; Dems did the same. It shows a flaw in the primary process.

It is interesting, though, that on the other side, Obama's similar numbers work out to about 2% of the total (on page 3) instead of 6%.

rhhardin said...

If a Republican votes in a Dem primary for the Dem candidate he likes best, he's just making his second-choice vote, as some countries do already.

If he votes for who's behind because of who's behind, he's meddling for Republican advantage ; but the effect is to make the contest more even, which still leaves the choice up to the Dems. He just wants the Dem fight, which amounts to more speech, which sounds okay.

If he votes for the candidate he likes least as the weakest candidate, he's voting against his second choice to support his first. If both parties do it, you get bad candidates for everybody.

Bob said...

Ann Althouse: Ann fears Obama is too liberal, Jeralyn that he’s not liberal enough (05:59)

Jeralyn must be a real socialist to think that Obama isn't liberal enough.

Meade said...

"I remember landing in Shepherdstown, W.Va. under sniper fire the day after the Indiana primary. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down, ducking the boos, the catcalls, and the heckling to get into the vehicles trying to get to our base."

Ruth Anne Adams said...

Simon: No 'white knight'?! That's niggardly.

Simon said...

Ruth Anne, I was once told point-blank to take that word out of a memo I wrote for a customer. I resisted, but was overruled by management; they knew what it meant, but were afraid that the customer might not. I've come to look on the bright side, though: it was buried in the middle of eight pages of writing, so I take it as evidence that my boss does, in fact, read stuff that I send him. ;)

Swifty Quick said...

Jeralyn Merritt is a True Believer. There can be no debate because there is no other side. It's scary enough to make me want to go rent Reds.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Meade:

It was just hunting season right?

Trooper York said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Trooper York said...

You know this Jeralyn broad keeps closing her eyes when she talks like David Archuleta. Creepy.