Category Archives: Politics

Thought for the Day: August 3, 2011

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Even if 92% of Newt Gingrich’s Twitter Followers Are Fake that still means that more than 100,000 putatively real people actually follow him on Twitter.

Posted in 2012 Election | 2 Comments

Shorter Obama Press Conference

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

“I tried repeatedly to surrender to the House GOP, but they wouldn’t take even my most abject surrender. I have summoned them back to the White House tomorrow morning in another attempt to force them to accept it. If worst comes to worst, and they will not accept my surrender, I am prepared to accept theirs, but I really don’t like it, and will use the opportunity to campaign against Democratic values in the next election.”

Posted in 2012 Election, Econ & Money | 15 Comments

I Shouldn’t Have, But It Felt Good

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

A very nice lady called up raising money for the Obama re-election campaign.

I told her that I was not planning on giving to any Republicans this year.

Posted in 2012 Election | 6 Comments

Orrin Hatch Tries to Look Even More Far-Right

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Lauren Weinstein catches Sen. Orin Hatch trying to airbrush his legislative record to make it more Teaparty-compatible:

Hatch wants to keep his job — and the birthers present a serious problem for him. You see, back only eight years ago, when Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger (for all his faults, still a quite moderate, non-wacko guy) was in his ascendancy with the GOP, Hatch proposed a constitutional amendment — the “Equal Opportunity to Govern Amendment” [“Presidential Eligibility Amendment”] — to allow persons born abroad (like Schwarzenegger) to become president!

This bit of history has become rather inconvenient for Hatch, when he needs to appeal to Tea Party and birther zealots.

…

Apparently until a couple of days ago, the details of Hatch’s proposed amendment were still available in the direct archives of his Web site, listed along with his other legislative efforts over the years. But there’s a gap in that list of pages now, seemingly where mention of the amendment used to be present.

via Lauren Weinstein’s Blog: Google Exposes Senator (Sloppily) Trying to Delete History for Birthers.

Of course, looking like you wanted to do Schwarzenegger a favor isn’t going to win you friends with anyone these days.

Posted in 2012 Election | 5 Comments

Unofficial Final Results Coral Gables Election April 12, 2011

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

7917 ballots cast, including 3836 absentee. That’s 48.5% of the votes cast via absentee!

Mayor

Jim Cason 3056
Tom Korge 2087
Don Slesnick 2721

Group 4

Alvarez 485
Holmes 100
Martin 309
Quesada 3780
Rosenblatt 1775
Sanabria 1240

Group5

Kerdyk 5758
Naomon 1689

Source: Coral Gables TV live broadcast.

OK, back to my normal blogging starting tomorrow.

Posted in 2012 Election | 8 Comments

Obama’s Rope-a-Dope Strategy

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

This TalkLeft article articulates something I’ve been worrying about for a while. (See How To Lose An Argument In Order To, Maybe, Win An Election.) The basic idea is that Obama is playing to lose on the budget and the economy, and maybe even social security. The idea is to goad the Republicans into making outrageous demands by signaling preemptive surrender to them.

When the GOP seizes on the red meat being trailed in front of them and enacts their plans, it causes pain.   The plan then is to blame them for all the pain, collect lots of campaign money from Main Street, and get re-elected.

I hope this is wrong, but where is the evidence for that proposition?

The cheerfulish form of this theory is that if you have a weak hand all you can do is get the other side to overplay theirs in order to spark a reaction that will strengthen your hand; i.e. the is just the sort of long game that great n-dimensional chess players engage in.  But it’s not a cheerful process, and in a world of path-dependence lots can go wrong on the way.

Posted in 2012 Election, Econ & Money | 7 Comments