It’s official: the Angry Right of 2009 is verifiably more insane than the Angry Left of 2001-2005. How do I know? Because of this poll: The poll asked this question: “Do you think that Barack Obama legitimately won the Presidential election last year, or do you think that ACORN stole it for him?” The overall top-line is legitimately won 62%,… Read more »
I don’t understand what the Hell this is, but it doesn’t involve the Yankees winning the World Series, and it does involve hottt Putin-on-Kim-Jong-Il action, so I’m going with it. I think Andrew Sullivan would call this a “mental health break.”
TNR‘s Jonathan Chait, writing before last night’s results became known, quotes a bunch of GOP talking points from 2001, downplaying the significance of Dem victories in Virginia and New Jersey (e.g., “it’s laughable to suggest that this has any national implications,” and “anybody that tries to predict what this means for next year is nuts”). Chait then accurately sums up:… Read more »
Maine is the devil you know Maine is the heaven below Maine, at the top of the chart Has crushed my evil heart —John Linnell Andrew Sullivan appears to be conceding defeat on the gay marriage amendment in Maine, but Doug Mataconis says it’s still “way too close to call.” With 69 percent of the precincts reporting, the tally is… Read more »
To the extent there’s a broader lesson to be drawn from tonight’s results, Andrew Sullivan nails it, I think: How easily we forget. We get caught up in the health insurance fight, we game the Beck-Palin subculture, we chatter about Israel and Iran, we obsess about marriage equality … while the voters who do not do politics for a living… Read more »
The Yankees and Phillies were nice enough to take a day off from their little baseball playoff thing today, to allow the good citizens of New Jersey to vote for their governor. So tonight, instead of debating who’s the bigger idiot, Charlie Manuel or Joe Girardi, New Jerseyites will be voting on who’s the bigger idiot, Jon Corzine or Chris… Read more »
Stephen Colbert on Joe Lieberman, presented without comment: (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)
Nate Silver, in a post asking how Democrats regained the momentum on health care, makes an interesting observation: [T]he tea party/town hall movement that dominated the headlines in August is at this stage somewhat immature, with a lot of sound and fury but not so much focus — sort of where liberals were at in 2002/03 before the failures of… Read more »
I didn’t realize that ACORN, the Teamsters, and/or the Chicago Daley Machine had the ability to rig International Olympic Committee elections, but National Review‘s Ramesh Ponnuru apparently thinks they do: Does anyone seriously believe that the president would take a quick trip to Copenhagen with the possibility of coming back empty-handed? If the president is going, it’s because he knows… Read more »
[NOTE: Because this post is stirring such a vibrant discussion, I’m bumping it up a bit (update: re-bumped!) so it won’t scroll off the page yet. -ed.] I have a modest proposal for Pajamas Media’s Roger L. Simon, who writes that “ACORN is a poster boy for the welfare state in all its manifestations. This is no sideshow. It’s the… Read more »