Writing Archive

The Season for Perfect Games and Party Activists

Two of the biggest trends of 2010 so far have been incumbents getting tossed and pitchers having career years.  The balance of power in politics has shifted away from insiders and to activists, and the balance in baseball in the post-steroid era has gone from hitters to pitchers.
Summer is barely a week old and we’ve [...]

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Map of the Day: Mitt Romney (R-Detroit)

The Wall Street Journal’s most p0pular story today was about how Mitt Romney’s childhood home at 1860 Balmoral Dr., Detroit, Michigan is one of 10,000 houses that Mayor Dave Bing has pledged to knock down. Romney called it “sad” and blamed it on “liberal social policies” that have forced jobs out of the Motor [...]

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Geographically Speaking, Biden is a Smart Choice

Joe Biden, the blue collar, Catholic, foreign policy expert from Delaware is going to help Barack Obama in places like Pennsylvania’s 12th District. It’s hardcore United Mine Worker and United Steelworker country, the “Cradle of the American Steel Industry,” according to the Almanac of American Politics. It was settled by the irascible Scots-Irish that Jim [...]

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The Electoral Map Daily Compass 8.14

Three must-reads today:
Karl Rove identifies the four key battleground states in the Wall Street Journal. The Journal is behind a subscription wall, so I’ll give you some hints: two of the states are on the Hayes-Schembechler axis, one state is home to both Red Rocks and the Air Force Academy and one state invaded [...]

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Battleground Dispatches

IOWA: Des Moines Register’’s Beaumont reports that the Obama camp has 15 offices open in the Hawkeye State and plans to have 20 by the Fall, “while McCain is still plotting where to locate about half as many.”
McCain has never built an organization here.  Is there any way he can win Iowa?
MICHIGAN: You thought 20 [...]

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If Ruffini’s “Ohichigan” Model Works, Then…

Patrick Ruffini had an interesting post on Tuesday that essentially argued that McCain has no chance of matching Obama on a broad battlefield, so he might as put his chips on the Ohio/Michigan axis, which amounts to a combined 37 electoral votes:
“The trick this time will be to spin the Buckeye-Wolverine axis as the new [...]

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Obama Running Ads in Red States Where the GOP is Slipping

The Obama camp began airing ads today in seventeen battleground states, some of which are typical swing states and some of which are designed “to sort of drive McCain and Republicans crazy,” as Chuck Todd put it on “Meet.” The strategy being that Obama has no chance of winning Georgia, but it’ll keep the McCain [...]

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The Five Places McCain Should Go

Cross-posted at The Next Right.
Politico’s Charlie Mahtesian and Amie Parnes wrote an article yesterday about the “Five Places Obama Should Go,” and four out of the five areas they identified were places where he struggled against Clinton: Broward County, FL (Jews), Youngstown, OH (blue-collar, gun-owning Catholics), San Antonio (Latinos) and Mingo Couny, WV (“the heart [...]

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Cillizza Posts His Latest Electoral Map Line

Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza is releasing a new presidential electoral map line each Friday. Here is his latest list on Cillizza’s The Fix b.og, along with The Electoral Map’s own analysis. What do you think?
10. Florida (Bush, 52 percent)

The Fix: “Polling suggests that if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) is the nominee, [...]

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Will John McCain Paint the Map Red?

John Fund sure thinks so. In a Wall Street Journal column from Monday (that I put off until day because of the Potomac Primary), Fund explains how McCain gets to 270:

New Hampshire: “The Granite State went only narrowly to Mr. Kerry, a senator from a neighboring state, and Mr. McCain has unique advantages there. New [...]

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