A nugget from ARG’s new PA poll showing Clinton with a 20 point lead:
23% of likely primary voters say that excessive exposure to Obama’s advertising is causing them to support Clinton. This compares to 19% of likely primary voters in Ohio who said that excessive exposure to Obama’s advertising in that state caused them to support Clinton.
Heh. That should teach them. But it won’t.
Along with its various derivatives, ‘misspeak’ has become one of the signature verbal workhorses of this interminable political season, right up there with ‘narrative,’ ‘Day One,’ and ‘hope.’ It carries the suggestion that, while the politician’s perfectly functioning brain has dispatched the correct signals, the mouth has somehow received and transmitted them in altered form. ‘Misspeak’ is a powerful word, a magical word. It is a word that is apparently thought capable, in its contemporary political usage, of isolating a palpable, possibly toxic untruth, sealing it up in an airtight bag, and disposing of it harmlessly.
(Hat tip: Goddard).
Matthew Hutson at Psychology Today on irrational beliefs:
Magical thinking springs up everywhere. Some irrational beliefs (Santa Claus?) are passed on to us. But others we find on our own. Survival requires recognizing patterns—night follows day, berries that color will make you ill. And because missing the obvious often hurts more than seeing the imaginary, our skills at inferring connections are overtuned. No one told Wade Boggs that eating chicken before every single game would help his batting average; he decided that on his own, and no one can argue with his success. We look for patterns because we hate surprises and because we love being in control.
And yet real faith comes, I think, when we realize that we are not ultimately in control. Until then, we cling. Then we let go.
Megan and Tyler Cowen debate the economics of a male birth control pill. Best if I keep out of this.
Poulos expands upon my and Ross’s responses to Kagan.
"Seeing Hillary go on about how Obama has contempt for folks in small town America, how he’s elitist, well … no, it’s not because I think she’s either. I never have. But after seeing her hit unfairly with just the same stuff for years, it just encapsulates the last three-plus months of her campaign which I can only describe as a furious descent into nonsense and self-parody. Part of it makes me want to cry. But at this point all I can really do is laugh," – Josh Marshall, TPM.
A history of the cubicle.
Well: it’s her last chance, so I guess you can’t blame her. But better not to get heckled.
Gallup’s post-bitter latest:
Ezra on campaign reporting:
It’s not damaging because we think it foretells him doing something harmful to the country. It’s not damaging because it suggests his policy agenda is poorly conceived, or his priorities are awry. If you think of policy and politics as two circles in a Venn diagram, this is damage that only exists in the politics circle, and doesn’t even come close to the area of intersection. We reporters have to cover it, of course, because it’s Really Important, and matters more than the housing plans of all the candidates put together. But it matters in a completely self-referential way, it matters only because it matters, not because it means anything about Obama, or illuminates anything about his potential presidency. It’s a hollow scandal.
Those housing plans, by contrast, don’t "matter" in a way that convinces the media to cover them, or to relentlessly hound McCain about the inadequacy of his proposal. They don’t "matter," but they are meaningful. And this is why I don’t like writing about the campaign. It’s full of hollow scandals and ignored travesties. But you have to cover the hollow scandals, because they’re are blown up until they’re definitional in the campaign. And that leaves me writing about high-profile non-events in a way that helps cement their importance, even if I’m writing to deride their legitimacy.
If you’re ever interested in really getting to the bottom of what’s wrong with political journalism, incidentally, spend some time thinking about the fact that most of its leading practitioners came up through campaign reporting, and writing about verbal gaffes and off-the-cuff comments is what they trained to do. The tone of political journalism is set by people who are thrilled — on a professional level — that Obama said this thing, and now we can cover this story.
