TPM Reader JB thinks arc of the moral universe may be bending away from douchedom, and thus all the ruckus …
I have been thinking about the attacks on Nate Silver since I heard about them and think your rejoinder to Margaret Sullivan gets part, but not all of the story. The real story is that we are watching the twilight of the current horse-race elites. As data supplants visceral election appreciation, two groups stand to lose a lot: Horse race pundits and the Republicans who can sway them.
From TPM Reader JC …
A half-dozen GOP ads during Jeopardy tonight, here in Harrisburg, PA. Crossroads, Americans for Prosperity, new warm n’ fuzzy Romney ad, not sure about the others, but it was like getting beat down to the ground and, just as you’re getting up, boom, another punch. They were all good ads and, one after another, kind of overwhelming. They must think they can move the needle in PA. Can they? Disturbing thought for me.
Times public editor Margaret Sullivan has a post up taking Nate Silver to task for daring Joe Scarborough to a bet over who would win the election. Basically, she says making a bet like this diminishes the Times and he shouldn’t have done it. That may be so. I don’t know and don’t really care. Read More
The final week of the campaign is starting to remind me of the last week in 2008 when the McCain/Palin campaign went into full-out ‘Obama-loves-terrorists’ mode and ended with unknown McCain campaign volunteer Ashley Todd scratching a backwards B on her cheek to simulate the feral and pro-Obama black gang-bangers who would run America under the new Obama regime. Today the Romney campaign, which days ago seemed to have Florida close to wrapped, went on the air with a new ad claiming that Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro (actually Fidel Catro’s niece apparently) are “endorsing” President Obama.
Comparing Manhattan’s evacuation zones to the contours of the original island — for history and map buffs. Worth a look.
Today’s hot new polling charts on the big races and your daily check-in on the TPM Electoral Scoreboard.
New GOP SuperPAC ad in Ohio calls on African-Americans to ditch Obama and vote Republican because Lincoln freed the slaves.
Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg joins us at 4 PM for a Live Chat about polls and in particular the issue of cell phone voters and whether they may still be undercounted in this cycles polling. Get your questions in now.
There’s something more than vaguely ridiculous about the ‘news’ that Mike Bloomberg has endorsed Barack Obama. After all, Bloomberg is a Democrat. He was his entire life and a fairly major giver and only become a nominal Republican because of a very weird partisan politics of New York City. And he couldn’t even keep that up for very long as he eventually shed his nominal GOP affiliation and began running as an independent — as a matter of convenience and ballot position in 2009 he ran as a Republican again. Read More
I don’t put much stock in endorsements, but it’s notable that the New York mayor — who declined to endorse anyone in 2008 — frames his endorsement of President Obama today around the issue of climate change.