Most Unusual Comment of 2009 (So Far)

“We have a Black President now. I’m not saying Helio was responsible for that. But I think in a small way he was.” -Johnny Juice, reflecting on the passing of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu founder Helio Gracie and, apparently, saying that.

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Whither, Southern Politics?

Reflecting on the election results, Mark Schmitt gives Thomas Schaller’s Whistling Past Dixie thesis a B:
Obama easily collected enough electoral votes to win without any Southern states. But that Senate seat in North Carolina sure is useful for the new president to have, and those Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida victories certainly reduce the sense [...]

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Random Fact of the Day

Ernest Hemingway’s youngest child was a transsexual alcoholic doctor and father of eight children.

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The Complicated Politics of Progressive Foodism

Kurt Michael Friese at Grist takes up KFC’s challenge to “create a family meal for less than $10″ (rather than, you know, buying their family-size bucket of chicken with biscuits and mashed potatoes). And he succeeds. Unfortunately, he concludes his tale with the sort of well-intentioned, accidental elitism that hinders the effectiveness of much environmentalism:
I [...]

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A Few Election Reflections

1. When in doubt, blame the South. A Daily Kos commenter did some quick number crunching and found that when you take out the former Confederate states plus Kentucky and Oklahoma, Barack Obama and John McCain evenly split the white vote. McCain won the white vote on the whole only because of his 68 to [...]

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2008 Electoral College Vote Predictions

Alabama: McCain. Large (27%) black population, but the white population is simply too conservative to make this a viable possibility for Obama.
Alaska: McCain.
Arizona: McCain, but closer than he’d like.
Arkansas: McCain. Smaller (16%) black population than Alabama and similar problem with conservative whites makes it a difficult state for Obama. One place where Hillary Clinton might [...]

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Really, That Guy?

Sometimes it’s easy to forget why I chose academia over journalism, but then I am reminded. Stephen Hayes is a liar, a charalatan, and a fraud. He is probably one of the worst journalists ever, in the sense that he is not only of dubious talent but supplements this with a propensity for sheer distortion [...]

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Are the Pennsylvania Polls Wrong?

This is the polling trend for Pennsylvania.
Yet this is what people are saying about the race there: “I don’t believe there’s a double-digit lead.” “The history of the presidential elections here is different.” “The polls don’t necessarily reflect what will happen on Election Day. We’re not a state that’s accustomed to huge blowouts.” And so [...]

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Putting the Election in Historical Context

“This is 1964 territory,” Andrew Sullivan writes. Except…it isn’t. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson received about 16 million more total votes than Barry Goldwater did, relegating Goldwater to a mere 52 electoral college votes (collected solely from the Deep South and his native Arizona). Barack Obama is not going to beat John McCain so dramatically. It’s [...]

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Great Moments on Canvassing History

So a canvasser goes to a woman’s door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she’s planning to vote for. She isn’t sure, has to ask her husband who she’s voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, “We’re votin’ for the n***er!”
Woman turns back [...]

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