Month: January 2012

Josh Barro has a smart post on unemployment benefits. The conclusion:

A social stigma against unemployment encourages the unemployed to re-enter the workforce even if it does not significantly raise their incomes relative to collecting benefits—leading to greater overall economic output and, in the long term, improving the well-being of the unemployed.

Recessions and their aftermaths are special, and we should worry less than usual about disincentives to work. But we also shouldn’t take our eye off the long game—convincing ourselves that unemployment is involuntary will lead to policy errors in the long run even if it helps us make the right decisions today.

A Dish hero:

McCain's entire opposition file on Romney can be viewed here. Suderman reacts:

The McCain campaign’s 2007 “book” on Romney—a complete record of the McCain team’s opposition research on their primary rival that Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski leaked last night—doesn’t contain much in the way of brand new information, but it certainly reinforces the picture of Romney as a person whose governing style goes whichever way the wind blows. In extensive detail, the book documents Romney’s various turns on major issues—how he changed his mind on the Bush tax cuts, gun ownership, abortion, and immigration, just to pick a few issues. Romney’s flip-floppery is so pervasive that it cannot be summed up except to say that it is a fundamental part of his political self.

Full oppo file after the jump:

McCain 2008 Oppo File

It's commonly argued that China's government can only survive with rapid economic growth, but Yu Liu and Dingding Chen think [pdf] that such progress will also bring down the Communists:

It is true that the Chinese state is still very strong, with enormous fiscal, repressive, and even normative strength. But growing faster yet are the expectations of ordinary Chinese. With the memory of the Cultural Revolution fading, the benchmark of good performance is shifting. Younger Chinese are increasingly unlikely to compare their living standards with those of the revolutionary years. The opening up of China and the rapid rate of urbanization have created a new set of reference points, and people increasingly take a secure lifestyle for granted, seeing education, medical care, and decent housing as welfare entitlements.

The pollster that is best at reaching the GOP base now puts Gingrich 3 points behind Romney nationally:

The story in the new numbers, taken Tuesday night, is Gingrich’s jump 11 points from 16% two weeks ago. Romney’s support is essentially unchanged from 29% at that time, while Santorum is down six points from 21%.

Hmmmm.

Pew reports that Paul could do quite well as a third-party candidate:

The survey finds that a third-party campaign by Ron Paul would clearly work to Obama’s advantage: In this scenario, 44% of registered voters say they would favor Obama, 32% would back Romney and 18% would back Paul.

And has a perfectly reasoned response. My thanks, and I do understand that bloggers have lives and can't read anything immediately. But they don't have to post immediately on the subject either, without taking time to do it justice.

A reader writes:

Megyn's producer said the show today was fully booked – they just did a segment of a man sledding down a hill …

White Center, Washington, 2.30 pm

An addendum to my point below:

If he had started out his term as a fierce partisan of the left, he would have betrayed a core campaign promise: to try and move us toward a less fractured and polarized national debate. I agree he failed, but I also believe the GOP is almost entirely at fault. The point of my piece is that Obama cannot force the GOP to change; but he can demonstrate their unreason and in the long game, defeat them. But revealing their extremism and intransigence is important. It's the preliminary to beating them.

The latest NYT/CBS poll has the following data:

60 percent say Mr. Obama is attempting to work with Congressional Republicans to try to accomplish something; 27 percent say Republicans in Congress are making the same effort to work things out with the president.

There is strong public support for politicians to start cooperating. At least 80 percent – regardless of party identification – say Republicans and Democrats should compromise some of their positions in order to get things done.

Majorities of Democrats and independents say Mr. Obama is trying to work with the Republicans and only a third of Republicans agree. But nearly half of the Republicans surveyed do agree with Democrats and independents on one thing: Congressional Republicans are not working with the president to make progress on the legislative agenda.

Now imagine he wins the election decisively. How much longer could the GOP stay this extreme and obstructionist? And these polling numbers show both that independents want compromise and they think Obama is the one most willing to do so.

Meep, motherfucking meep – if you keep eight years as your time-frame. And given that strategy, why on earth would the center or the left abandon Obama now?