Khalidi: Pushke Comes to Shove!
Will Greg Packer Outlast the MSM? Five years after being exposed (by Ann Coulter ) as "the entire media's designated 'man on the street' for all articles ever written" and banned by the AP , Greg Packer's triumph over the MSM is complete: Patterico documents his Friday humiliation of the New York Times. ... He will dance on their graves, and maybe give a celebratory quote to Mayhill Fowler. ... 2:07 P.M.
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Saturday, November 1, 2008
Went to a Halloween party dressed as The Bradley Effect. The elemental conceptual simplicity of my costume somehow failed to terrify, even in a Dem heavy Hollywood crowd. ... This may be the first election where average Web-surfing, procrastinating liberal comedy writers know more about the last Insider Advantage poll in Pennsylvania than Howard Fineman does.... Unfortunately, they thought the photo of George Deukmejian on my costume** was Robert Rubin.
**--Pinned to the red half of the costume under a blue flap that--easier to show than tell--flopped over to obscure a photo of long-serving L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley, whom they
mistook for an Asian man
. They had been drinking. ...[
Had you worn the White Liberal Guilt Effect costume, I would have been impressed.--emailer DM
It was at the cleaners.]
2:46 P.M.
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Friday, October 31, 2008
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Psst, Dittoheads: Obama has come out against reimposing the Fairness Doctrine . [ Through an aide, in an email--ed. Sure. But is is better to discount and downplay the anti-Fairness pledge on those grounds, or to play it up and lock Obama in? Depends whether you want to help McCain or free speech.] 11:54 A.M.
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A year is an eternity in politics ... but it will seem like three months: NBC's First Read :
[T]oday just happens to be the one-year anniversary of the MSNBC debate in Philadelphia that tripped up Hillary Clinton on the question of drivers’ licenses for illegal immigrants. It seems longer than a year, right?
Actually, it doesn't. It seems like it happened last month. I can't explain it--you'd think one implication of the Feiler Faster Thesis , much discussed in this space, is that any given period of time would seem longer because it's now typically more jampacked with twists and turns (as the campaign has, in fact, been). But all the FFT says is that we comfortably process information more quickly, which allows for the twists and turns.** It doesn't necessarily say anything about how those twists and turns will be remembered. ...
** High school poetry bonus : See A. Marvell : "Thus, though we cannot make our sun/Stand still, yet we will make him run." Would that make time seem longer, looking back? I don't think so, though the issue isn't directly addressed. ... 1:34 A.M.
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Thursday, October 30, 2008
The See-Saw Cuts Both Ways: Republicans have been gaining in the "generic" Congressional ballot , according to The Hill .
Republicans have cut the Democratic advantage in the generic ballot question in half over the past week, according to a new GW-Battleground poll. Democrats now lead by four points, their slimmest lead in more than three years. A week ago, according to the George Washington University pool, their advantage was eight points. [E.A.]
Is this the fabled See-Saw Effect, where the more Obama goes up the more Dem Congressional candidates go down? ... As someone rooting for an Obama victory coupled with a small Dem majority in Congress, I've worried that in all the last minute confusion the See wouldn't know which way to Saw , given the countervailing possibility that ticket-splitting voters would side with McCain and compensate by voting for Dems in downballot Senate and House races. ... But if the MSM Final Push to Victory. among other factors, really does help produce a big Obama closing surge, that could (perversely!) tip the ticket-splitters' lever against Franken, Martin, etc., no? ... Update: TalkLeft points out that the very same Battleground poll does not show Obama surging , but rather has him only three points ahead of McCain. I knew that! But the ticket splitting impulse could be rising, even if Obama's lead remains constant, as the possibility of his winning looms larger in voters' minds. (The poll in question didn't show McCain surging either--he was three points behind last week as well as this week.) ... P.S.: I'm not predicting! Just speculating on possible last-minute dynamics. Obama and the downballot Dems won't necessarily rise or fall in tandem. ... 7:17 P.M.
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Pushke Comes to Shove: Regarding Rashid Khalidi , here is what a friend of mine--a Jewish Democrat involved in "mainstream Jewish ... peace work"--wrote me:
its always about rashid..who has been a
buddy of mine for 20 years... and is from an old palestinian
family and is pro palestinian....but who has also worked with israelis
and jews (he has a blue and white pushke in his office!)