It was on the grounds of the Supreme Court's "usurpation" of matters that he said should have been left to the states. Again, very high-minded in theory, but of little consolation in practice to the black residents of those affected states.

Obviously BTF leans left, politically.

(Nor for that matter did Brown and its enforcement mechanisms desegregate them. They're still very segregated. I'm not going to bother looking up exact figures, but they're likely just as segregated now as they've been in 40 years.)

Sorry, but something in your various positions here doesn't quite add up. A majority of independents + a greater majority of declared partisans + a roughly equal number of Republicans to Democrats doesn't add up to a tied race.

Thought experiment: if in 2003 we had good intel that Hussein was at a bar in Baghdad, instead of sending in special forces, we simply target that area with a 25 kiloton bomb. We get him and kill 125,000 folks in Baghdad. More or less moral than what we've done up to now in Iraq?

(Nor for that matter did Brown and its enforcement mechanisms desegregate them. They're still very segregated. I'm not going to bother looking up exact figures, but they're likely just as segregated now as they've been in 40 years.)

Obviously BTF stands to the left of doctrinaire libertarian economic theory (Randianism) and Tea Party social throwbackism. I will not acquiesce to this being labeled "leans left, politically."

(1) So, sure, I'm in favor of limited war in the sense that the first move of the action shouldn't be genocide. If we can win, quickly, with a small detachment of soldiers, great. (2) But war is inherently about killing and holding land. If we aren't willing to do those things, we shouldn't do them.

Hussein held the place together. There was no getting rid of Hussein and installing a single stable government. We still haven't done this. And we've murdered 125,000 (or so) people to produce it. However, it wouldn't have been Somalia. The major factions were pretty well organized with well developed systems outside Baghdad. Iraq would have fragmented and there would have been a civil war. But that was happening however we got rid of Hussein. (as it did, in fact, happen).

Georgia could always secede and leave the rest of us in peace.

Braves' fans. Game, set, match.

This week's Quinnipiac polls, for example, apparently passed 99 percent of respondents through its LV screen. I'm quite sure we're not going to get 99 percent turnout this year.

So ... you're rallying around tribe and soil here? I thought you'd (*) transcended all that.

I know there are a fair amount of people on this thread from NYC. I'm curious as to their take (and others, too!) on whether the Marathon should go forward as planned. Bloomberg claims that it brings $350M into the local economy and will be a sign of NYC's "tenacity and vitality." Others, including the Manhattan borough President, are concerned that it will further strain already-strained first responder and other resources.

Thoughts?

Archie Bunker didn't become a sensation because he got his comeuppance.

Do you have a source for this assertion? Thanks.

Front page of the results. (The number is actually a little over 96 percent, but we're not having 96 percent turnout, either. Not even close.)

My take is he said if we're going in, go all in and win the damned thing. Which got the Daisy commercial. All in all, I think that should be the way we fight wars. If we fight them, it's to the death, spare no one sorts of deals. However, we should only very rarely fight them.

Front page of the results. (The number is actually a little over 96 percent, but we're not having 96 percent turnout, either. Not even close.)

Thanks. That does seem a bit high compared to the 90% of registered voters who voted in 2008. I would assume people who are willing to participate in a poll are more likely to vote than the average registered voter.

Is turnout higher in swing states.

From the numbers I've seen, turnout in 2008 was closer to 72 percent, out of the ~88 percent of all eligible Americans who were registered.

Any thoughts on consumer confidence, Joe?

From the NYT: "Of the 206 million citizens 18 and older, 71 percent were registered to vote. Among those who were registered, 90 percent voted in 2008."

From the Census: "Of all registered individuals, 90 percent reported voting, up slightly from 89 percent in the 2004 presidential election."

while Romney supporters could be increasingly optimistic because Romney's chances of winning have greatly increased since September.

Granted it would have caused a ton of future wars but America (the rest of the country that is) would be better off if most of the Confederate states had been allowed to leave.

Not at all my recollection. Archie was routinely shown to be a buffoon, and getting shown up as a narrow minded, comically ignorant bigot was a regular highlight of the series.

From what you've said about Q-Piac, it looks as if you'd only have documented faith in the CNN/Opinion Research poll. But their results only differ by 2 points from Quinnipiac's, ...

As much of a drag the old Confederacy (plus some underpopulated midwest additions) is on the rest of us, it's hard to imagine WWI or WWII going well if we had let the South go.

but distinctly and importantly, NOT to perceive his bigotry and narrow-mindedness as anything but backward, harmful, regrettable, and problematic.

It's just that in general, when shown a slew of polls that show a 2012 electorate that's as Dem or even more Dem than 2008, and/or polls projecting a 2012 turnout rate that's as high or higher than 2008, and these polls show only minor Obama leads, I'm confident that history is a solid guide.

This looks like survey data rather than actual data. From the studies and news reports in 2008, over 184 million Americans were registered while less than 132 million votes were cast in the presidential election. That's a lot closer to 72 percent turnout than 90 percent turnout.

I think Romney is going to lose by at least 3 points and it might just be 5 points.

Wouldn't the CSA have had just as much interest in joining the allies as the US did?

Fun to speculate.

The New South, as of 2012, is white and hispanic, with perhaps 1% of the population black.

This is incredibly bullish for Obama

The census data I linked above says only 146.3 million were registered in 2008, with 131.1 million voting. When figuring out what percent of people who say they are registered to vote are likely to vote, we should look at what percent of people who say they are registered to vote actually vote.

The South (Confederacy) provided about 20% of the men for WWII.

Yeah, but Mike was a nitwit too

Is there history of slews of polls leading up to an election all projecting mistaken voting patterns?

The latest CNN poll of Ohio has Gary Johnson as a potential spoiler: Obama 47, Romney 44, Johnson 5...though they also have it as Obama 50 and Romney 47 without third parties.

Wouldn't the CSA have had just as much interest in joining the allies as the US did?


It's not clear that they would, no. Even if they did, keeping a slave society going post-1860 would have seriously harmed their economy relative to the industrial revolution. The South would have been even more of a 3d world country than it was for WWI, and it would have lost out on the New Deal in preparation for WWII. Then too, it would have been reluctant to send troops overseas if they were needed for domestic repression.

The New South, as of 2012, is white and hispanic, with perhaps 1% of the population black.


An enslaved population couldn't easily leave (and the reduced USA probably wouldn't have wanted them), and once slavery ends I think inertia keeps a large percentage of the black population in situ. An Apartheid Confederacy wouldn't be much worse than what actually existed in Mississippi in the pre-Civil Rights era, and Mississippi is 36% black today.

I don't remember all the specifics, but didn't a lot of exit polls in 2004 show Kerry had won to the point where even Bush thought he had lost? Maybe that's not quite what you're asking though.

The original New Left dates from the first sit-in movement in Greensboro on (to be exact) February 1st, 1960. It began at black colleges, but quickly picked up white sympathizers in the form of support groups and parallel institutions, one of which was SDS. This early New Left was closely associated with nonviolent and political resistance to racist institutions. Its base was within historically black (and heavily Christian) colleges, the southern black churches, and generally pacifist-inclined whites from the North, with a few rather heroic native white southerners like Bob Zellner and Sam Shirah thrown in the mix. This version of the New Left more or less ended with the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the escalation of the war in Vietnam.

Supporting someone's right to do something you find distasteful is an unmistakable sign of tolerance and the proper way to function in a pluralist society. The modern liberal simply has no conception of this truism. Which is bad enough in itself; that they have expropriated the mantle of "tolerance" is worse.

You know what the New Left was, what was referred to as the New Left, what characterizes the New Left—social engineering based on preferences for select groups—just like the old discrimination, only with different favorite classes.

Good point. I assumed a mass exodus, but for no compelling or even good reason. When do you imagine slavery ends in the South if a reasonably tight border is maintained on the Missouri Compromise through the 19th century?

Well, I doubt they are all going to vote period and I would guess a person who voted for Obama and now doesn't is less likely to vote at all then a person who voted for Obama and will do so again. I also don't know how you can say you can't see how Obama could win while losing all that support since the poll you are referencing has Obama ahead.

Joe's been arguing that nearly every single poll has been oversampling Democrats. I'm wondering if there is a history of this many polls leading up to an election all oversampling one party.

Yes, Archie was presented as a real human being, and yes, the viewing audience was meant to identify with his humanity and his strengths as well as his flaws -- but distinctly and importantly, NOT to perceive his bigotry and narrow-mindedness as anything but backward, harmful, regrettable, and problematic. The show was a morality play presented with gentle humor, and Archie's bad old social habits were the villain of the piece.

(Nor for that matter did Brown and its enforcement mechanisms desegregate them. They're still very segregated. I'm not going to bother looking up exact figures, but they're likely just as segregated now as they've been in 40 years.)

The fact that you seem to associate these three whitebread politicians with anything remotely resembling a lack of patriotism only shows how strong a hold the Republicans' talking points still have in elements of the popular imagination.