"How quickly Democrats absorb Tuesday’s results and begin to respond will determine how well they can hold down expected losses in the coming midterms."

".... Democrats would be foolhardy to underestimate what happened Tuesday. To lose a state like Virginia, which has been trending Democratic for a decade, and to struggle so much in New Jersey suggests that, unless things change, only the bluest of states or districts are likely to be safe in 2022.... It wasn’t just Virginia or New Jersey that suggested Democrats will need to regroup. In races across the country, there were signs that voters see the party as having moved too far to the left, even as its progressive wing has been flexing its muscles. In Virginia, the exit polls showed that a majority of voters said the party is too liberal. New Yorkers elected Democrat Eric Adams as their new mayor after a campaign in which he made public safety a prime issue and presented himself as more centrist than liberal. In Minneapolis, voters overwhelmingly defeated a referendum to dismantle the police department a year after the Black Lives Matter movement had elevated the issue of police reform to the front of the progressive agenda. In Buffalo, Mayor Byron Brown, who lost the primary to socialist India Walton, appeared to have been reelected as a write-in candidate...."

Writes Dan Balz in "A sobering reality hits Democrats after Tuesday’s elections losses" (WaPo).

We'll see if Democrats quickly reset after this kick in the head. 

ADDED: Here's my post from last June when India Walton won the Democratic Party primary in Buffalo:

"Mommy!! I won!!! Mommy, I'm the mayor of Buffalo!!! Well, not until January, but yeah. Like, yes. Yes, mom."... The NYT article points out that Walton will be "the first socialist mayor of a major American city since 1960, when Frank P. Zeidler stepped down as Milwaukee’s mayor."

It was assumed she automatically win in the general election. Didn't happen: "Byron Brown claims victory in Buffalo mayor's race; write-in ballots swamp India Walton" (Buffalo News):

"At the very beginning, they said we can’t win, that it was impossible to win as a write-in,” the mayor shouted to cheering supporters. "But you know, you can never count a Buffalonian out."

"Public opinion polls in the 2020 presidential election suffered from errors of 'unusual magnitude,' the highest in 40 years for surveys estimating the national popular vote..."

"... and in at least 20 years for state-level polls, according to a study conducted by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). The AAPOR task force examined 2,858 polls, including 529 national presidential race polls and 1,572 state-level presidential polls. They found that the surveys overstated the margin between President Biden and former president Donald Trump by 3.9 points in the national popular vote and 4.3 percentage points in state polls. Polls understated the support for Trump in nearly every state and by an average of 3.3 percentage points overall. Polls in Senate and gubernatorial races suffered from the same problem.... 'Identifying conclusively why polls overstated the Democratic-Republican margin relative to the certified vote appears to be impossible with the available data,' the report states."

From "2020 presidential polls suffered worst performance in decades, report says" by Dan Balz at WaPo.

A muffled cry of pain: "The Democratic presidential campaign has produced confusion rather than clarity."

From Dan Balz at The Washington Post. I don't know why there would have been any expectation of "clarity," but the point is just it's an awful mess. So many candidates and no one seems to be what the people want in a President and experts imagine could beat Trump.

It's such a sad, dismal prospect for an opinion column. Am I actually going to read it? Ugh. I will try. I've copied the full text into my compose window and now I'm whittling it down to what's essential and worth quoting. Much of it is recounting what's happened so far — who got into the race, who was moderate and who was extreme, Obama's caution about too much extremism. I'm cutting that.

What continues to define the Democratic race is the absence of a candidate who has truly captured the imagination of voters.

Some things are defined by the lack of definition. Sometimes what comes into focus is fuzziness. Sometimes when you think the people are confused and need clarity, you're actually looking at something that is quite clear. We're not confused. We just don't like any of these candidates. There's your clarity if you want clarity.

And that's the result of my whittling-down approach to writing a post on a column like that. I ended up with only one sentence, and I only kept that because I was vaguely intrigued by the concept of "defin[ing]... the absence."

There's so much repetitious junk out there. But columns must be written. You do not have to read them.

"Just four states are likely to determine the outcome in 2020. Each flipped to the Republicans in 2016, but President Trump won each by only a percentage point or less."

"The four are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida. Many analysts point to Wisconsin as the single state upon which the election could turn."

Writes Dan Balz in WaPo.

As a Wisconsinite, I'm pleased and anticipating all the pandering, but I want to focus on this about Michigan, under the heading "Clinton lost big in Detroit...":



What happened in Detroit (and why won't that happen again)? The article doesn't really explain — except to refer to the declining population. Elsewhere in the column, there is talk about African American voters. Balz writes that there are 4 "demographic groups" that will be focused on, including "African Americans, and particularly younger African Americans, whose turnout levels will be critical to Democrats’ fortunes." And in talking about Milwaukee, there's this:

In 2016, Clinton suffered a falloff in the Milwaukee media market that was about double that of the state as a whole. Much of that erosion was concentrated in African American precincts in the city of Milwaukee. Combined with Trump’s big margins in the northwestern part of the state, that was enough to doom her chances.

Of course, we're deprived of any painfully honest discussion of how much the Democrats need black voters in big cities to control the electoral votes of the swing states and why they're having trouble getting these votes in the post-Obama era. Here's how Trump talked to black voters in Michigan in 2016:



"America must reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton, who sees communities of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future."

"For Democrats, the Mueller report turns upside down the politics of what lies ahead."

"From what seemed a position of strength, or at least the ability to stay on offense, they are now looking at the road ahead in a far more problematic position. The issue of impeachment was always in question, given House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s cautionary view. At this point, it is off the table. Beyond that are difficult questions about what investigations House Democrats should pursue and to what end. For nearly two years, Democrats have eagerly awaited the Mueller report, having already connected many of the dots of contacts between Trump associates and the Russians.... Democrats must now reckon with a far different set of political realities.... [I]s the absence of a conclusion or recommendation about obstruction a gift for the Democrats or a trap?... Trump claims 'total exoneration,' which is explicitly not true based on Mueller’s report. But it is exactly how he has played things as a candidate and as president, which is to say he exaggerates in his own favor and slams opponents as hard as he can.... Democrats put their faith in Mueller. Now they are questioning how and why he did what he did.... After two years of insisting that there was collusion, the Democrats have been undermined by Mueller."

From "For Democrats, the Mueller report turns their politics upside down" by Dan Balz (WaPo). I've been thinking that Barr's statement that Mueller didn't "exonerate" Trump on obstruction of justice is a trap for Democrats. They really ought to be careful — but they won't all be careful — about making new statements that will look bad when we get the actual text from Mueller.

Balz mentions (but doesn't link to) this Trump video, "Collusion Hoax!":

Abstention is a valid choice.

In a comments thread earlier this morning, richlb said:

Anne [sic] - I've tried to search and find your post from a few elections ago where you make an argument about NOT voting. I can't seem to locate it. On this election day, any chance to rerun it, or reference it?

In the comments, Meade located a post of mine from June 2012, "We're sending this mailing to you and your neighbors to publicize who does and does not vote":

This is an effort to shame and pressure people about voting, and it is truly despicable. Your vote is private, you have a right not to vote, and anyone who tries to shame and harass you about it is violating your privacy, and the assumption that I will become active in shaming and pressuring my neighbors is repugnant.

Not voting is a valid choice. If you don't have a preference in the election, don't vote. If you think no one deserves your vote, don't vote.

But this is a topic I've come back to. In April 2016, seeing President Obama appear on the "American Idol" finale, I wrote:

[Obama's] congratulations to the show morphed into a lecture on voting:

"Voting is the most fundamental and sacred right of our democracy. I believe it should be almost as easy as voting on 'American Idol,' and we're working on that. But when we choose not to vote we surrender that right."

Eh. What bilge. Voting is the most sacred right? Voting in elections should be like voting on "American Idol," where you call and text in multiple votes? And you surrender your right if you don't use it? No, you don't. Just as you have a right not to speak (as part of freedom of speech) and a right not to have a religion (as part of freedom of religion), the right to vote includes the right to abstain.

"Remember how great...?"

Why am I posting this old TV ad? Here's the sequence: 1. I did a post on some banal Dan Balz column "8 questions for the midterm elections: A blue wave or not?" 2. In the comments, Henry made fun of Balz for writing "blue wave... blue tsunami... blue tornado.. a strong tide, a riptide or just a blue surge" and further mixed the metaphor by quipping what any intelligent, humorous person should quip, "blue serge," 3. As Henry pointed out, there's an old song "Blue Serge Suit," and I looked it up and found a Cab Calloway version to embed, 4. I made a new tag, "Cab Calloway," and added it retrospectively, 5. One of the old posts was "Records From My Father, Part 5: 'Remember How Great...?'" which was #5 in my "Records From My Father" series, in which I wrote about the album "Remember How Great?," which was actually put out under the Lucky Cigarette brand, 6. That had me thinking about the old Lucky Strike slogan, and because of the resonance with today's most famous slogan — "Make American Great Again" — I wanted to show you that ad.

"The Senate may be out of reach for the Democrats in 2018, but please, if there is a God, let O'Rou[r]ke kick Cruz' sorry Canadian can to the curb."

Top-rated comment on "8 questions for the midterm elections: A blue wave or not?" by Dan Balz (WaPo).

ALSO: At WaPo, "Trump blasted ‘Lyin' Ted’ Cruz again and again. Activists want to remind Texans with a billboard":

On the market for a billboard, outside the biggest stadium in Texas we can find. #TxSen pic.twitter.com/VDSR5pzSzH

— Antonio (@AntonioArellano) September 1, 2018

IN THE COMMENTS: Henry delves into the Balz article and finds a fantastic paragraph and riffs:

Metaphor madness!

But is it a blue wave (enough to get to 23 pickups), a blue tsunami (Democratic gains of well beyond 25), a blue tornado (picking off Republicans but in a more haphazard and therefore less predictable pattern), a strong tide, a riptide or just a blue surge (that would keep Democrats short of their goal)?

One of these things is not like the other.

If not blue tornado, what? This [is] probably where Mr. Balz should have used riptide.

He has too many categories as it is. He needs to use riptide in place of tornado and figure whether strong tide and blue surge are the same or different.

But is it a blue wave (enough to get to 23 pickups), a blue tsunami (Democratic gains of well beyond 25), a blue riptide (picking off Republicans but in a more haphazard and therefore less predictable pattern), or just a blue tide (that would keep Democrats short of their goal)?

Blue surge, makes me think The Blue Serge Suit, a high-school-compilation staple when I was a kid, which is about a different kind of victory altogether.

Ha ha. I thought of blue serge suit before I got to Henry's pursuit of mixing up the metaphor even more than Balz did by throwing in a tornado. Maybe Balz was thinking of a Sharknado. Anyway, Henry prodded me to find this cool song:

He isn't hep to jive, he's only half alive
Hep cats call him square
You won't believe this, Jack
But all his clothes date back
To '29, I swear
He wears a blue serge suit with a belt in the back
No drape, no shape, just a belt in the back...
He wears high shoes and a pair of spats
If you dig that junk it'll drive you bats
Maybe someday he's gonna crack
And burn that blue serge suit with the belt in the back

Can someone explain to me why Chuck Schumer spoke at the Trump inauguration?

I've searched many articles and can't find an answer. If you leave out the religious speakers — doing invocations and benedictions — and the Supreme Court Justices administering the oaths, you only get — other than Trump himself — Inaugural Committee chair, Roy Blunt, who gave the opening remarks, and Schumer. Why Schumer?

Schumer's remarks were widely perceived as antagonistic to Trump. Why was Schumer allowed to step on Trump's big day? I don't think he was entitled to speak. I don't think there's a tradition of letting the other party insert a dissenting voice. So why did that happen?

Was it Trump's idea — perhaps some deal-making guile involving flattery and extracting buy-in? I noticed Trump being cozily friendly with Schumer at the Congressional Luncheon and the signing ceremony. Is this a campaign to co-opt Schumer?

But was the Schumer speech antagonistic to Trump? Here's the full text. I'm reading it. He refers to our "challenging" times and our aptitude for dealing with challenges. He praised democracy (without any suggestion that Trump didn't fully win the election). And he mainly used his time to read a letter from a Civil War soldier that showed fortitude and patriotism. That letter, Chuck Schumer says, gives him "solace, strength," and he hopes it "will give you the same."

I guess what's anti-Trump is the suggestion that some people are needing solace and strength to get through the Trump administration and the hyperbole of likening our post-election divisions to the calamitous breakdown that was the Civil War. It's not that big a deal.

I'm just wondering why Schumer was speaking at all.

ADDED: I just happened to turn on CNN and hear:

Maggie Haberman (of the NYT): "Schumer's speech... was not exactly sort of a come-together we're-all-in-this-together. It was essentially a party doctrine."

Dan Balz: "It was a pre-buttal."

Haberman: "Exactly. And it was much more so than we have heard in a while. I understand what Schumer is doing. But if you are Trump, you hear that and then you say, you're only yelling at me about why we're not doing things together."

Fake news!

What Schumer actually said is being forgotten and replaced by a fake story that Schumer went completely partisan and divisive. 

"Following a vote to leave the EU the former Mayor of London was called 'scum' and 'racist scum' by crowds waiting outside his home..."

"Wearing a blue suit and red tie [Boris] Johnson, a leading Leave campaigner, was forced to move swiftly as a large group of people chanted and screamed at him following the vote."

Johnson said nothing the dozens of journalists waiting outside his London home when he finally left. He was flanked by several police officers who escorted him to a waiting car, while one member of the public was heard to shout 'twat'....

A crowd of roughly forty cyclists and bystanders blocked a junction, taunting him with "where are you going Boris?".

One man yelled: "The pound is down, what do you say about that? Is it going to be all right, Boris? Is the UK going to be all right, Boris? Are we going to be all right, mate? Come on, man up."

Here's a picture of Boris Johnson, whose resemblance to Donald Trump is very weird.



He may be the next British Prime Minister (and David Cameron just announced, after the Brexit vote, that he's stepping down). And Johnson has been compared to Donald Trump. Here's former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg saying: "Perhaps Boris has looked across the Atlantic at the Republican presidential front-runner and decided that with enough bluster and bravado he can get away with ignoring the facts and saying whatever he wants."

And Donald Trump is in the UK right now. What's going on? WaPo columnist Dan Balz writes that Trump's trip may just be a coincidence (really?) but there are similarities in the "emotional issues of national and cultural identity at a time of growing demographic diversity, highlighted in both countries by often-angry debates over immigration."

In this new arena [of social media and cable television], Trump proved more skillful than his Republican opponents at mastering communication. In Britain, there are complaints that Cameron and others leading the “remain” campaign have been outdone in this category by the likes of Boris Johnson, the flamboyant former mayor of London and a Conservative member of Parliament, whose ambition to take Cameron’s job is well known....

And here's Politico's Joseph J. Schatz:

An American in London could be forgiven for having Donald Trump flashbacks Tuesday night. In the penultimate debate before Thursday’s landmark vote on leaving the European Union, held at Wembley Stadium, former London mayor Boris Johnson delivered what might be called his “Make Great Britain Great Again” speech, telling the British people that "if we vote leave and take back control, this Thursday can be our country's independence day.”

But rhetorical similarities to “Make America Great Again” aside, Boris Johnson is not Donald Trump. And for all the common misgivings about globalization in both countries, and the parallels being made between Great Britain’s nativist-tinged debate over leaving the EU and the rise of conservative populism in the United States, a vote for “Brexit” doesn’t exactly equal a vote for Trump....

... Cameron has appeased the anti-EU backbenchers in his ranks for years, but instead of strengthening him, the appeasement has expended him. To [Tim Oliver, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science] it’s very much like how GOP leaders stoked anti-Washington rage among their members, inadvertently fueling the rise of Trump. Cameron kept “throwing concessions to his Euro-skeptic backbenchers” in the same way that U.S. Republican leaders kept saying “no, no, no” to Obamacare and promising again and again that they would repeal it, Oliver said. That helped discredit the GOP establishment—and lead to Trump.

AND: Here's the NYT: "Populist Anger Upends Politics on Both Sides of the Atlantic." Excerpt:

“Basically, they took back their country,” Mr. Trump said Friday morning from Scotland, where he was promoting his golf courses. “That’s a good thing.”

Asked where public anger was greatest, Mr. Trump said: “U.K. U.S. There’s plenty of other places. This will not be the last.”...

Trump ties Cruz in Texas and leads Rubio by 16 in Florida.

According to the newest polls.

And... is it worth saying?... he's up by 5 over Kasich in Ohio.

Who are these last remaining opponents? What are they doing if they are not even able to show solid strength against Trump in their home states?

Maybe they're staying in so they can team up against Trump in the debates. Can you imagine a one-on-one debate between Trump and Cruz/Rubio/Kasich?

“The reality is that, until the field starts to narrow, it’s going to be very, very hard to take him out,” said Katie Packer, deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign and the leader of an anti-Trump super PAC. “I think people need to step up and start taking on Trump. Front-runners don’t just stumble. People trip them.”

That's from a Washington Post piece by Dan Balz and Philip Rucker titled "Can Donald Trump be stopped?" I only skimmed the article, which I picked out from an array of possible articles on this theme. They all seem so lame. I cherry-picked Packer's quote for lameness. How much money has her super PAC thrown around trying to trip Donald Trump? How much money will she rake in now in this effort to "start [sic] taking on Trump"? Here's the pitch she sent to donors 3 days ago. Excerpt: "I'm proud of the fact that the Washington Post reported that Our Principles PAC (OPP) is the 'biggest anti-Trump spender' to date...."

Oh, I did read this NYT piece: "Donald Trump Taps Foreign Work Force for His Florida Club."

Since 2010, nearly 300 United States residents have applied or been referred for jobs as waiters, waitresses, cooks and housekeepers [at Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach]. But according to federal records, only 17 have been hired. In all but a handful of cases, Mar-a-Lago sought to fill the jobs with hundreds of foreign guest workers from Romania and other countries.... The visas are issued through one of a handful of legal and often-debated programs through which employers can temporarily hire foreign workers when American labor is not available....

I can't help assuming that the NYT is looking hard to find instances of Trump's companies hiring people who are here illegally. They're finding that he followed the law. Noted.

"It’s amazing we survived," says Scott Walker's campaign manager Rick Wiley.

Quoted in a WaPo article by Dan Balz titled "Scott Walker is about to launch his campaign, with Bush and Rubio in his sights."

The enthusiastic reaction to Walker’s speech at the January GOP forum in Iowa produced some obvious dividends. The sudden and positive attention helped with fundraising and grass-roots organizing. But the scrutiny that came with it, compounded by Walker’s wobbly handling of various issues, brought the team its first crisis.

At the time, Walker was just beginning to build his campaign. He lacked the infrastructure to deal with the self-inflicted wounds. “None of our senior staff had even been to Madison,” Wiley said. “It’s amazing we survived.”

The small team stepped up its recruiting and brought on policy advisers who could provide Walker with briefings to become more fluent in key issues. By the end of March, the campaign decided to scale back. For the next month or so, Walker made few public appearances, concentrating on policy briefings and fundraising meetings.

“We had to slow it down,” Wiley said.

"I was shocked that Althouse even considers the possibility that Hillary would step aside for the good of her party."

"The idea seems preposterous," says a commenter at a post at Instapundit that linked to my "Dan Balz exposes the oldness and emptiness" from yesterday. I didn't remember expressing any belief that this was something Hillary would do, just something she could do. Let me reread myself:

If Clinton were to see that she's either going to lose in 2016 or destroy the future development of national-level stars in her party, she could decide against running, release the dammed-up streams of cash to the next wave of Democrats, and allow them to develop their reputations in the 2016 race. Assume the GOP is due for its time in the presidency, and let this next round of campaigning center on rebuilding the front ranks of the party. From that invigorating process, a star could emerge. A star emerged in '08 even with Hillary blocking the way. To hope to win in '16 using the same tired bullyism on the theory that there's no one up and coming seems lame compared to bold moves to repopulate the party.

I guess it seems that I am essentially making the argument to Hillary that she should step aside. Why make the argument if you don't think it could possibly be accepted? It works as an implicit criticism of Hillary: She's a selfish power seeker, uninterested in building the party. But I can see that I genuinely thought she might let go of her quest for the presidency. The country seems to switch parties every 4 years, and the Democrat is likely to lose. There's no hope of waltzing into the presidency after Obama, so why squander whatever respect she's accumulated over the years by putting your face on that loss, especially when it's predictable that everyone will blame her for preventing newer faces to emerge? She has an opportunity now to lead the party out of the wreckage of 2014. That would take foresight, grace, and generosity.

Yes, I know: I was shocked that Althouse would even consider the possibility that Hillary would act with foresight, grace, and generosity....

WaPo's Dan Balz exposes the oldness and emptiness of the Democratic Party.

He blames Obama and Hillary. And it's a problem that will only get worse if Hillary wins the presidency:

If Clinton were to win the presidency and serve two terms, the next opportunity for a new generation of Democrats to compete nationally would not come until 2024. The Democrats could go 16 years between competitive presidential nomination contests, wiping out opportunities for today’s younger generation to define or redefine the party apart from either the Obama or Clinton eras.

But at this point, if Clinton doesn't run, things are even worse, since the ranks are so thin. Not Martin O'Malley, after what just happened in Maryland. Balz assumes Jerry Brown at 76 is too old. (On his most recent HBO show, Bill Maher did a long, unfunny routine about the ageism of saying Jerry Brown is too old. Aren't we just terrible to display skepticism about an 80+-year-old President?)

Here's my observation. If Clinton were to see that she's either going to lose in 2016 or destroy the future development of national-level stars in her party, she could decide against running, release the dammed-up streams of cash to the next wave of Democrats, and allow them to develop their reputations in the 2016 race. Assume the GOP is due for its time in the presidency, and let this next round of campaigning center on rebuilding the front ranks of the party. From that invigorating process, a star could emerge. A star emerged in '08 even with Hillary blocking the way. To hope to win in '16 using the same tired bullyism on the theory that there's no one up and coming seems lame compared to bold moves to repopulate the party.

The solution to the problem of low turnout is to see it as a nonproblem.

WaPo's Dan Balz bawls about low turnout in "Everyone says turnout is key. So why does it keep going down?"

Boring!

I don't mean Balz is boring, though, of course, he is.

I mean hooray for boredom in politics.

It's healthy. These people who are incessantly trying to excite us about politics should feel horribly frustrated by our boredom. Our nonresponsiveness to their proddings and ticklings is the best thing we've got. No amount of money spent on advertising can move us. We've seen it all, and we've got lives to live.

Some people don't arrive at enough of an opinion to want to add their tiny bit of weight to one side as their fellow citizens determine which candidate wins. Their nonparticipation has meaning that deserves respect. There are innumerable reasons for nonparticipation, and one should not presume that the abstainers are lazy or numb. They may defer to the opinions of others. They may dislike all the candidates. They may think the candidates are similar enough that it's not worth putting time into teasing out the differences. They may have other things to do with that time. Better things.

We were talking about boredom in politics yesterday in this post about Hillary. Buzzfeed's Ben Smith had been musing about whether Hillary! could get women jazzed up about women!!! and in lust for seeing a — first!!!! — Woman President. And I said:

I'm sick of inspiration and claims of historiosity. We should all be perfectly jaded by now. Inoculated. It's healthful and wholesome. And so what if watching the campaign day by day is "a boring, grinding affair"? 

The quoted words were Smith's.

That's a problem for Smith, running his buzz-dependent website, but it's a nonproblem for the rest of us. Think of the time you can save not reading the websites that try to make something out of the presidential campaign every damned day. What will you do with all that time? Instead of thinking about how what happened in the last hour might be history, you could, for example, read history. May I recommend the Amity Shlaes biography of Calvin Coolidge?

Coolidge was boring. Good boring. Let's be boring for a change. I want a boring President. Stop trying to excite me.

In the comments, Freeman Hunt wrote:

I have paid much attention to these elections in the past, and I see no difference that my attention has made. I therefore plan to devote very little attention to this election until it is time to vote. At that time, I will select the most boring, competent person who aligns with what I'd like to see done.

The End.

I've started a new tag: I'm for Boring. Like Freeman, I do vote, but I'm not voting because someone has excited me, and I don't think I ever have, now that I think of it. And I don't want other people to get excited. If that means they don't even vote, I respect that. Thanks for not getting excited and impulse voting. Politics should be boring. I want the government to be boring.

In the comments yesterday, cubanbob said:

I could be wrong but it seems you are hoping for Scott Walker for president. No one ever called him Mister Excitement and he does appear to be reasonably competent and law abiding....

And I said:

Walker excited the hell out of people around here.

I think Romney is nicely boring. Bring him back. That would be especially boring.

And John Althouse Cohen said...

Maybe the Democratic nominee should be someone who may not be the most exciting politician...

John linked here:

"At some point, should she run, Hillary Clinton, who did not speak publicly at the ceremonies, will have to sort all this out."

"She will be asked to explain more precisely where she stands on issues of income inequality, economic growth, spending, taxes, entitlements and the trade-offs that will face the next president. Will she be able to be true to the New Democrat ideals that brought her husband to power and also accommodate the energy pulsing through the party’s progressive wing? The answers should begin to come later this year, as she nears a decision about whether to run."

Writes Dan Balz at the end of his column titled "Is New York’s de Blasio prompting a repositioning by the Clintons?" 

"At some point," Hillary, who hasn't spoken yet, will be asked to say something, something more precise, about all these things that she's refrained from speaking about for so long. At some point? At what point? Eventually there will be a point, and when it comes, what difference at this point does it make?

It's a style: Wait long enough and you can say the time has passed for addressing this problem. That's a conservative strategy by the way.

When you see ten troubles rolling down the road, if you don’t do anything, nine of them will roll into the ditch before they get to you.

I think President Coolidge said that.

The energy pulsing through the party’s progressive wing won't pulse forever. And when that throbbing tumescence abates, the calm steady woman will be there as ever, waiting for us all to acknowledge her rightful status as President of the United States.

IN THE COMMENTS: Tom Gallagher said: "Doesn't she need to write a book or two before running for president?" And I had to think: Has Hillary ever written a book?

How the Obama 2012 campaign — replete with hugely tusked mascot — mined and processed data.

Dan Balz writes about "How the Obama campaign won the race for voter data," quoting the campaign manager Jim Messina about the obsession with tracking and measuring data.

It took the technology team nearly a year, but it produced software that allowed all of the campaign’s lists to talk to one another. The team named it Narwhal, after a whale of amazing strength that lives in the Arctic but is rarely seen....

So, "amazing strength" and Arctic habitat are the distinguishing features of the narwal? Here's a picture to help you think about what these folks really said when choosing this name:



Back to Balz:

Just how much liberal bias is there in the Washington Post news and opinion?

Asks the WaPot ombudsman Patrick B. Pexton. He talks about the bias people see in the new articles and then moves on to the columnists:

One aspect of The Post that particularly irks conservatives is the columnists who appear in print and online in news positions (as opposed to those on the editorial and op-ed pages and the online Opinions section). With the exception of Dan Balz and Chris Cillizza, who cover politics in a nonpartisan way, the news columnists almost to a person write from left of center.

Balz and Cillizza are nonpartisan? That assertion screams liberal bias.

Is it any wonder that if you’re a conservative looking for unbiased news — and they do; they don’t want only Sean Hannity’s interpretation of the news...

They. That's telling.

... that you might feel unwelcome, or dissed or slighted, by the printed Post or the online version? And might you distrust the news when it’s wrapped in so much liberal commentary?

Yeah, they need to get a lot of conservative columnists if they want to get away with doing the news liberal-style. Isn't that the Wall Street Journal method?

Wisconsin "will be at the epicenter of American politics" for "at least the next two months."

Says Dan Balz at the Washington Post, explaining the importance of the recall effort to unseat Gov. Scott Walker.

This homegrown fight has national implications. Walker has become a symbol of Republican governance in today’s GOP. He is campaigning energetically and unapologetically, arguing that he took courageous action to deal with his state’s severe fiscal problems — the same thing Republicans are saying should be done nationally. Walker contends that his policies have been good for the state’s economy and its taxpayers.

His opponents see those policies almost exactly the way President Obama described the federal budget written by Walker’s Wisconsin soul mate, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, and passed recently by the House. Last week, Obama called the Ryan budget a radical document that would put the country in decline. That echoes the view of Walker’s opponents, who say his actions have hurt the state and unfairly punished state employees....

What do the Election 2009 results mean for Obama (and the congressional Democrats)?

In the WaPo, Dan Balz says:

Neither [the Virginia nor the New Jersey] gubernatorial election amounted to a referendum on the president....

Why not? Read... read... read... read... oh, here it is:

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Tuesday's races were in no way a reflection of public opinion about the president or his agenda. "Whatever's driving these voters, it wasn't attitudes toward the president," he said, noting that local issues and attitudes toward the candidates on the ballots were the major influences.

Why not? Because David Axelrod says not.

Axelrod warned against extrapolating into the future the shift among independents. He said he believed that many people who called themselves Republicans in the past now call themselves independents but are still voting for Republican candidates. "I don't think they portend long-term trends," he said.

He said the only race with real national implications was the congressional contest in Upstate New York.

Noted.

To be fair to Balz, he did get a Republican, Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, to agree with the proposition that the 2009 election was not "a referendum on the president." But on the substance of it, Barbour observed that "[t]he president's policies are very unpopular, and they are hurting Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey, New York."

In the NYT, Adam Nagourney says:

The results in the New Jersey and Virginia races underscored the difficulties Mr. Obama is having transforming his historic victory a year ago into either a sustained electoral advantage for Democrats or a commanding ideological position over conservatives in legislative battles....

... Mr. Christie and Mr. McDonnell won after decidedly playing down their conservative views on social issues.....

The critical question after this setback [in NY 23] is whether the conservative groups who had clearly signaled that they intended to press their advantage and challenge other Republican candidates they considered too moderate would now have the impetus or support to continue down that road.

Let's see now.... who to go to for quotes?

“[McDonnell] focused on the issues that are on people’s minds: jobs, taxes,” said Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, the head of the Republican Governors Association. “I don’t think there are a lot of governors who are more conservative than I am. But I try to run campaigns on what people are interested in.”...

[David] Axelrod acknowledged that Mr. Obama’s supporters had not shown up in New Jersey and Virginia, but he said he did not believe that meant the end of the Obama coalition.

“That doesn’t mean they won’t come out for us,” he said. “I think they’ll come out for national races. But this wasn’t a national race.”...

The Wall Street Journal enthuses:

The GOP has been flat on its back since the Obama ascendancy in last year's presidential election, but Republican Bob McDonnell's blowout victory over Democrat Creigh Deeds in the Virginia governor's race and Chris Christie's defeat of Jon Corzine in New Jersey should help dispel the party's gloom.

Yesterday in advance of the results, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was dismissing commentary on the impending bad news as "navel gazing." If so, navel gazing's bad reputation is suddenly looking up. The onrushing Obama Democratic machine has just hit a significant speed bump....

Mr. McDonnell ran straight into the teeth of the blue trend, explicitly campaigning against the policies of the Obama presidency. In at least one swing state that matters, the Obama Democratic ascendancy is on hold....

The overweening liberal-progressive confidence of late suddenly looks misplaced. The party's Blue Dogs have a basis for their misgivings. Republicans, too timid until now, have an opening to find ideas to give obviously anxious voters an alternative to the party in power.

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo said:

"Mr. McDonnell ran straight into the teeth of the blue trend"

But not straight into the yellow teeth of the blue trend, surely.