Author: Andrew Sullivan

Always wait for Pareene:

Incumbents are in trouble, unless they are "outsider" incumbents. An incumbent can become an outsider by having an opponent who is friends with insiders, as long as those insiders aren't the Club for Growth or, again, Bill Clinton.

Women are expected to do great in November, unless they are from Washington, or are considered part of the "establishment." (As long as your definition of the establishment does not include eBay.) Again, if you are endorsed by Sarah Palin, none of this applies.

The Tea Parties won big, except that they might've helped the GOP lose big in November, which would be a victory for the Tea Parties. Mitt Romney is in serious trouble.

Voters are very, very angry, so only expect between 90 and 95 percent of Congress to be reelected.

Nan Hunter is made hopeful by them:

If the questions are any indication, the Walker opinion will be a blockbuster, at least in terms of its scope, depth and detail. Court decisions generally take an analysis far enough to resolve the particular issues presented, but no farther. But from the beginning of this case, Judge Walker has indicated a willingness to dig deeper, by forcing both sides – plaintiffs and defendants initially both resisted the demand for extensive evidence on the ground that it was unnecessary – to come up with evidentiary support for the kinds of quasi-philosophical arguments that make constitutional law so fascinating.

Paul Hogarth goes point by point through several of the questions.

(Image: Graph Jam)

McArdle checks the pharmaceutical pipeline:

In many ways, the task facing researchers is simply more difficult than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Back then, chemists had big fat targets like angiotensin, a protein that causes blood vessels to constrict. Scientists knew it caused high blood pressure, and better yet, they were pretty sure they could develop a small molecule (that is, one that can easily enter the bloodstream) that would hit what they were aiming at. Best of all, hypertension provided an enormous market. Driven by similar finds in other areas, an age of blockbusters dawned: the Lipitors and Prilosecs and Allegras.

These days the targets seem smaller, fewer, and farther away. The best-understood diseases already have a lot of good drugs treating them. New treatments need to prove that they have better efficacy, fewer side effects, or something like a longer-lasting dose that makes them superior to the pills already on the market. Longman likens this process to chasing an Olympic sprinter—who has a head start.

A new Gallup poll finds that Americans are most worried about terrorism, the debt, and health care costs. Avent sighs:

We don't need polls asking what the public thinks is a "top threat". We need polls that lay out some realistic choices, and ask the public what it wants to do about them. We have to start structuring our political conversation to lead towards solutions, not to throw back an ever-amplifying reflection of the country's inchoate frustration.

A graph to keep in mind the next time you throw back a couple:

In the dark bars up there are the number of drinks the college students thought they would have to drink in order to have the adverse consequences listed. The white bars are the ACTUAL number of drinks they'd have to have.

Jeff Jacoby defends crude:

“Oil may be the single most flexible substance ever discovered,’’ writes the Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce in “Power Hungry,’’ a new book on the myths of “green’’ energy. “More than any other substance, oil helped to shrink the world. Indeed, thanks to its high energy density, oil is a nearly perfect fuel for use in all types of vehicles, from boats and planes to cars and motorcycles. Whether measured by weight or by volume, refined oil products provide more energy than practically any other commonly available substance, and they provide it in a form that’s easy to handle, relatively cheap, and relatively clean.’’

Golnaz Esfandiari sketches them:

There was no Twitter Revolution inside Iran. As Mehdi Yahyanejad, the manager of "Balatarin," one of the Internet's most popular Farsi-language websites, told the Washington Post last June, Twitter's impact inside Iran is nil. "Here [in the United States], there is lots of buzz," he said. "But once you look, you see most of it are Americans tweeting among themselves."

A number of opposition activists have told me they used text messages, email, and blog posts to publicize protest actions. However, good old-fashioned word of mouth was by far the most influential medium used to shape the postelection opposition activity. There is still a lively discussion happening on Facebook about how the activists spread information, but Twitter was definitely not a major communications tool for activists on the ground in Iran.

The Golden State has rejiggered its primary process. The two candidates with the most votes in the primaries, regardless of party, will make it on the general election ballot. Ambers looks at the consequences:

Who funded the initiative? Chamber of Commerce types, who know that pragmatic candidates won't want to alienate business interests in the state. It was opposed by activists from both parties, who believe it to be an incumbent protection measure of first order.

Seth Masket was against the proposition:

 As I've mentioned before, the research on this subject suggests that this won't do a whole lot to reduce partisanship in California's legislature, and even if it did, weak partisanship isn't necessarily something to aspire to.  Beyond that, this new law will reduce the number of minority party candidates appearing on the general election ballot.  If you like to vote Peace & Freedom or Libertarian or Green, or if you're a San Francisco Republican or an Orange County Democrat, you're not going to find many candidates from your party on the general election ballot anymore.

Ed Kilgore is also wary of the new system:

In a possible glimpse of California's political future in a "jungle primary" system, the non-partisan primary for state Superintendent of Public Instruction featured a twelve-candidate free-for-all in which the two candidates with most polarized views, retired school superintendent Larry Aceves and Democratic legislator Tom Torlakson, will apparently meet in a runoff…

The definitive account:

Friedersdorf deals with Thiessen's latest nonsense:

The phrase “war criminal” is loaded with negative connotations and often used pejoratively in political discourse, but that doesn’t change the fact that whether or not someone has committed war crimes is a legal question, not a moral one. A patriot is someone who loves their country. It is perfectly possible to be a patriot, to perform patriotic acts in a war, and to commit a war crime in the course of doing so. A dispassionate analysis renders the point rather obvious, which is why Mr. Thiessen’s readership at AEI should be insulted by the post. Apparently he thinks that by using loaded terms like “war crimes” and “patriot” he can write a post that makes no sense without anyone noticing.