The really inside scoop on tomorrow night’s Wisconsin recall elections is that neither side appears to have a clear idea of what’s going to happen. The polls are neck and neck. And on top of that, this kind of recall election is so unprecedented that there simply aren’t any good models for how to predict turnout one way or another. Here’s the latest data on what to expect tomorrow night.
You know how sometimes in real life and perhaps more often in police procedurals you’ll have a story where there’s a hostage crisis and negotiators successfully bargain to get the hostage released. But somehow through some mix of incompetence and carelessness the hostage takers manage to inadvertently let the hostage get killed anyway?
Starting to sound kind of familiar.
This piece on CNN Money says that “market observers tried to say the downgrade by itself shouldn’t matter — that it was expected and that the United States still has a strong credit rating … But the market wasn’t buying it.” And then it goes on to note that investors are rushing to buy up US Treasuries. Which seems to suggest that in fact the downgrade has not affected investors belief in the relative security of US debt. Indeed, it seems to be the only possible explanation of this move. Read More
In the S&P’s argument for downgrading the US credit rating, the analysts placed particular focus on the GOP’s refusal to contemplate any revenue increases as a way of getting the country’s finances in order. Now Cantor is telling Republicans not to give into the pressure for compromise on taxes.
Tomorrow’s the big night in Wisconsin. And election clerks in the state are bracing for big turnout. As I noted earlier, unlike a lot of elections where we broadly have a good idea of what’s going to happen, in this case the polls are so close and there’s so little history of this kind of an election that no one really knows what’s going to happen.
From TPM Reader JG …
I think S&P bashing is not well-founded and misses the crucial point: that Speaker Boehner owns this downgrade because of the hold-up power he gave to the Tea Party faction. On S&P: their rating failures on mortgage backed securities and their mixed record on sovereign debt is beside the point. Fact is, an AAA credit does not threaten to default on its obligations.
I guess the situation is so jaw-dropping now that we’re down, I’m down, to simply stating the obvious. But has there ever been a debt crisis not at all sparked by a sovereign debtor’s inability to finance its debt obligations but a simple threat not to do so? Is there any precedent for it?
No two times are the same. And the economic travails of the 1970s were entirely different from what we have today — they were tied to inflation, oil shocks and what seemed at least like low growth — not massive contractions and ‘first world’ debt crises. But with the mix of roiling economic crises, mushrooming riots spreading across the United Kingdom, it’s hard not to think we’ve been transported to a different decade, a different era. And certainly not a better one.
Immigration reform is to Rick Perry what health care reform is to Mitt Romney — which is to say that Perry was relatively progressive on the issue before the Republican Party demanded an unwavering hardline. Perry even had his own immigrant-friendly state law that he’s still defending like Mitt defends RomneyCare. Benjy Sarlin has the story.