I've encountered a fair bit of postmortem re: the Kentucky governor's race.
The Atlantic writes "Liberals Are Losing the Culture Wars" and ties this to the Democrats' small ideological tent.
NPR is roundly perplexed that the out-of-work Kentucky coal miners who benefited so handsomely from ObamaCare would prize their livelihoods over expensive, compulsorily-bought health insurance.
Slate is openly and deliberately spinning Tuesday as "a bad night for Democrats/liberals rather than a good night for Republicans/conservatives." As such, the off-year election means absolutely nothing for 2016. Nothing at all. Move along!
tryanmax, The general spin I've seen from the left is:
This was an off-year election, meaning only hateful old white guys vote, because they are sneaky like that, and it happened in redneck lands like Kensucky and Houston, so we good liberals never had a chance.
Of course, that doesn't explain why they projected the Democrat to win by 9% and why they were claiming this was a referendum on Obamacare... before they lost the referendum.
Tryanmax - I would have to say that Slate is partly right. Tuesday didn't mean anything in and of itself on a national election level. Because that is what the Democrats think of with elections...only what effects national policy. They don't see the bigger picture which is what has been going on in the state and local level - only 19 (soon to be 18) states have Dem Gov. Of those 19 (soon to be 18) states, only 7 have full Dem control. The Reps have gradually taken over the since 2010. Dems haven't recognized that people are not happy with what is going on in DC, are tired of being told to shut up and sit down and are using their votes in their states to be heard. Dems aren't listening to the not so distant thunder from the states.
Frankly I am surprised that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz continues to be the chairperson of the DNC. She really has done such a terrible job, I am surprised that she still gets elected in Florida.
Andrew, they can say that, but the record shows that it's Democrats who prefer off-cycle elections, whereas Republicans have been pushing for consolidation. FiveThirtyEight did a write-up on that just prior to Tuesday's elections. The article nicely pointed out that Democrat proponents of off-cycle elections defend it for bringing out an electorate that is engaged in the issues, which is exactly the same argument Republicans use for things like voter ID.
Bev and Critch, People in positions of power often manage to keep jobs for reasons completely unrelated to their ability to do the job. I suspect DWS is probably a trusted operative of Madame Clinton, and her real role is to hold the Democratic Party hostage for Hillary.
tryanmax, That's true. It is the off-year elections where groups like teachers unions and activists have the greatest influence. But keep in mind, this is Democratic analysis, so they are not bound by consistency or fact. My guess is that this was a huge red flag telling them that their side is not turning out at the moment, and they just don't want to believe it.
Clinton has stated that she is committed to Israel and can work with Netanyahu.
I doubt she can afford to give Netanyahu the black check that Republicans are inclined to, but there is still a lot she could do to improve the relationship.
Ben Carson is trying to win over younger blacks with a rap song. Twitchy loves it. I think its hilariously awful, but I'm a middle aged man who was cool for a brief shining moment 20 years ago (it was on a Wednesday) so I'm out of touch.
This is a must listen! Ben Carson cut a “rap ad” targeting African-American voters that will air on radio stations in “Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, Birmingham, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi, Memphis, Tennessee and Little Rock, Arkansas” over the next two weeks and it’s fantastic.
That the Democrats couldn't turn out their own base is the bottom line. Which probably explains the "nothing to see here" rhetoric in place of the usual "the new Republicans will have to work with us" talk.
I doubt Hillary will be able to get any portion of the base excited in 2016, though fear will probably drive Hispanics, Asians and gays to polls. Someone saying something remarkably stupid might push woman towards Hillary, but they seem pretty meh on her thus far.
My two younger sons, both in their twenties tell me that their normally liberal friends like Bernie, don't like HIllary and will just not vote for Hillary.
Anthony and Critch - I have a feeling that this election cycle is going to see a very low voter turnout margin. Dem Voters are more than likely to just not vote rather than be a part of Hillary. I think she's already lost the younger voters.
Politico is accusing Ben Carson of an egregious horrible terrible lie in his autobiography! He wrote a lovely anecdote about when he was 17 years old, he was a top ROTC member and had the opportunity to meet with Gen. Westmoreland who said that he could put in a good word for Carson if he wanted to go to West Point. Carson eventually decided not to take that road.
So the "BiG HUGE HORRIBLE TERRIBLE LIE!!!!!" is that Politico's crack journalists (or journalist on crack) investigated and could not find one shred of evidence that Carson ever applied to West Point! HAH!!!
Oh, wait...as he said in his book, he never actually applied or took the good Gen. up on his offer to put in a good word. So...no application, no evidence etc.
Bev, This reeks of journalistic cynicism. They are taking what is essentially a loose statement that translates into "I spoke with the General and other people at ROTC and they said I should apply to West Point, where I would get a full ride." And they have spun this hyper-technically to "I was handed a full scholarship to West Point."
I'm seeing more and more of this as the quality of journalists drop. They are substituting their own interpretations of what was said and then picking apart their interpretations with hyper-precision even though that is not what was ever said. It's conspiratorial thinking gone amok, like picking apart denials to see if they can squeeze in some incredible caveat.
I haven't read any of Carson's books, but I did just read the Politico article. Just from a structural standpoint, it's bad writing. The article switches rapid-fire between excepts from Carson's writing, quotes from his campaign manager, statements from West Point, and the journalist's own tortured interpretations of events, jumbling them all up so that anyone attempting to decipher which words are credited to whom is left thoroughly perplexed. This level of writing would not be acceptable at a high school newspaper. It's as if this hatchet job were written with an actual hatchet.
As for the tortured interpretations, one in particular sums up them all. From the Politico article: "If offered admission [to West Point], all costs are covered for all students; indeed there are no “full scholarships,” per se. It takes a certain level of genius to find that "all costs are covered" does not equal a "full scholarship." Besides, I don't know what vernacular Carson grew up with in Detroit, but where I come from, getting your school paid for is called a scholarship even if that's not technically correct.
Here's another MSM spin that makes no sense. Obama just made a grand announcement this morning that he has made his decision and is scrapping the Keystone Pipeline deal for good! Well, except the new Canada PM Baby Trudeau already said to little or no fanfare that he was rescinding any offer scrapping the pipeline last week.
tryanmax, I saw that and I focused on the exact same point. This reporter is creating a fiction by getting technical with words at some point and not at others.
Note that "free ride" is defined hyper-technically as "college scholarship covering costs you would otherwise need to pay." Hence, getting a free education and board is not a "free ride" because there is no specific scholarship attached. That is a strained technicality.
So this hyper-technicality is used to add meaning that is not present in what Carson says, i.e. that a particular type of scholarship was offered.
Then look at the other part. Carson never says he was offered admissions. To the contrary, he says that when he spoke to people who are not the admissions people at West Point, he was "offered" a free ride. In other words, it is clear that he has misused the word "offered" or he means it as something other than "offered by West Point itself." Most likely, he was told by these people that he would get a free ride and they offered to help him get it.
Yet, here the journalist takes the word "offered" and chooses to ignore any sort of reasonable analysis of the word so they can change its meaning to "offered by West Point." That is dishonest in an of itself. And then to play hyper-technical in the other section is even worse.
Army, Navy and Air Force marketing for their academies often use the word "scholarship" in their material. Also, having been a recruiter once, I can see other recruiters suing phrases like "free-ride" etc. to entice a young person to talk to them.
Oops! It appears now that Politico has kinda' sorta' has backtracked. The editors changed the headline without actually letting anyone know it was edited to a more tepid fabrication.
The West Point thing is strange. It's an argument about an irrelevancy. Carson hawking Mannatech supplements as a cure for cancer strikes me as much more troubling.
*Shrugs* Both issues are too inside baseball to do him any serious damage. Many conservatives are looking for charismatic outsiders, not moral paragons.
Anthony, I think that last statement hits the nail on the head. The media is trying to spin up the West Point and Mannatech stories as the lies of the century. I don't know whether it's inside baseball or just small potatoes, but neither seems like it's making waves. It is a bit early to tell, but let's see what makes the Sunday shows
The WSJ has demolished Carson's claim that he was praised by a professor as the most honest person in a class at Yale (the article he claims was written was never written and the class he claims he was the most honest man in didn't exist). Less definitively, nobody remembers him saving a bunch of white students during a race riot (which of course, doesn't mean it didn't happen).
Once again, I don't think those embellishments on what is now ancient history will hurt among his base.
In his 1990 autobiography, “Gifted Hands,” Mr. Carson writes of a Yale psychology professor who told Mr. Carson, then a junior, and the other students in the class—identified by Mr. Carson as Perceptions 301—that their final exam papers had “inadvertently burned,” requiring all 150 students to retake it. The new exam, Mr. Carson recalled in the book, was much tougher. All the students but Mr. Carson walked out.
“The professor came toward me. With her was a photographer for the Yale Daily News who paused and snapped my picture,” Mr. Carson wrote. “ ‘A hoax,’ the teacher said. ‘We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class.’ ” Mr. Carson wrote that the professor handed him a $10 bill.
No photo identifying Mr. Carson as a student ever ran, according to the Yale Daily News archives, and no stories from that era mention a class called Perceptions 301. Yale Librarian Claryn Spies said Friday there was no psychology course by that name or class number during any of Mr. Carson’s years at Yale.
Carson claims on Face the Nation that he has the Yale newspaper to back his psychology class story. We'll have to see what comes out. Also on FtN, it comes out that West Point themselves refer to their program as a scholarship.
I think the "I'm a threat to the secular progressive movement" statement that Carson made on Meet the Press today has greater potential to undo him than any of this picking apart his autobiography. Especially because he won't be able to back away from it. I see it now: the media were never after his credibility. They were after a sound bite like this. Cue the stories guffawing about secret societies, conspiracy theories and UFOs.
30 comments:
I've encountered a fair bit of postmortem re: the Kentucky governor's race.
The Atlantic writes "Liberals Are Losing the Culture Wars" and ties this to the Democrats' small ideological tent.
NPR is roundly perplexed that the out-of-work Kentucky coal miners who benefited so handsomely from ObamaCare would prize their livelihoods over expensive, compulsorily-bought health insurance.
Slate is openly and deliberately spinning Tuesday as "a bad night for Democrats/liberals rather than a good night for Republicans/conservatives." As such, the off-year election means absolutely nothing for 2016. Nothing at all. Move along!
tryanmax, The general spin I've seen from the left is:
This was an off-year election, meaning only hateful old white guys vote, because they are sneaky like that, and it happened in redneck lands like Kensucky and Houston, so we good liberals never had a chance.
Of course, that doesn't explain why they projected the Democrat to win by 9% and why they were claiming this was a referendum on Obamacare... before they lost the referendum.
Tryanmax - I would have to say that Slate is partly right. Tuesday didn't mean anything in and of itself on a national election level. Because that is what the Democrats think of with elections...only what effects national policy. They don't see the bigger picture which is what has been going on in the state and local level - only 19 (soon to be 18) states have Dem Gov. Of those 19 (soon to be 18) states, only 7 have full Dem control. The Reps have gradually taken over the since 2010. Dems haven't recognized that people are not happy with what is going on in DC, are tired of being told to shut up and sit down and are using their votes in their states to be heard. Dems aren't listening to the not so distant thunder from the states.
http://www.ncsl.org/Portals/1/Documents/Elections/Legis_Control_2015_Feb4_11am.pdf
Frankly I am surprised that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz continues to be the chairperson of the DNC. She really has done such a terrible job, I am surprised that she still gets elected in Florida.
Debbie Wassermann-Schultz has led her party to ruination...why is she still there? Easy, no one has the cojones to fire a Jewish female...
Andrew, they can say that, but the record shows that it's Democrats who prefer off-cycle elections, whereas Republicans have been pushing for consolidation. FiveThirtyEight did a write-up on that just prior to Tuesday's elections. The article nicely pointed out that Democrat proponents of off-cycle elections defend it for bringing out an electorate that is engaged in the issues, which is exactly the same argument Republicans use for things like voter ID.
The only surprise in those results was Kentucky, whose winner should give Carson and Trump hope.
2016 should also be great for local Republicans since on the off chance she wins Clinton won't have coattails.
Anthony, In Clinton's case, they are called entrails. (A little witch joke! :) )
Bev and Critch, People in positions of power often manage to keep jobs for reasons completely unrelated to their ability to do the job. I suspect DWS is probably a trusted operative of Madame Clinton, and her real role is to hold the Democratic Party hostage for Hillary.
tryanmax, That's true. It is the off-year elections where groups like teachers unions and activists have the greatest influence. But keep in mind, this is Democratic analysis, so they are not bound by consistency or fact. My guess is that this was a huge red flag telling them that their side is not turning out at the moment, and they just don't want to believe it.
I would be worried if I were them though.
Clinton has stated that she is committed to Israel and can work with Netanyahu.
I doubt she can afford to give Netanyahu the black check that Republicans are inclined to, but there is still a lot she could do to improve the relationship.
http://forward.com/opinion/national/324013/how-i-would-rebuild-ties-to-israel-and-benjamin-neta/
Ben Carson is trying to win over younger blacks with a rap song. Twitchy loves it. I think its hilariously awful, but I'm a middle aged man who was cool for a brief shining moment 20 years ago (it was on a Wednesday) so I'm out of touch.
http://twitchy.com/2015/11/05/better-bars-than-eminem-ben-carson-has-a-new-rap-ad-targeting-african-american-voters-and-its-fantastic-audio/
This is a must listen! Ben Carson cut a “rap ad” targeting African-American voters that will air on radio stations in “Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, Birmingham, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi, Memphis, Tennessee and Little Rock, Arkansas” over the next two weeks and it’s fantastic.
That the Democrats couldn't turn out their own base is the bottom line. Which probably explains the "nothing to see here" rhetoric in place of the usual "the new Republicans will have to work with us" talk.
I doubt Hillary will be able to get any portion of the base excited in 2016, though fear will probably drive Hispanics, Asians and gays to polls. Someone saying something remarkably stupid might push woman towards Hillary, but they seem pretty meh on her thus far.
My two younger sons, both in their twenties tell me that their normally liberal friends like Bernie, don't like HIllary and will just not vote for Hillary.
Anthony and Critch - I have a feeling that this election cycle is going to see a very low voter turnout margin. Dem Voters are more than likely to just not vote rather than be a part of Hillary. I think she's already lost the younger voters.
Politico is accusing Ben Carson of an egregious horrible terrible lie in his autobiography! He wrote a lovely anecdote about when he was 17 years old, he was a top ROTC member and had the opportunity to meet with Gen. Westmoreland who said that he could put in a good word for Carson if he wanted to go to West Point. Carson eventually decided not to take that road.
So the "BiG HUGE HORRIBLE TERRIBLE LIE!!!!!" is that Politico's crack journalists (or journalist on crack) investigated and could not find one shred of evidence that Carson ever applied to West Point! HAH!!!
Oh, wait...as he said in his book, he never actually applied or took the good Gen. up on his offer to put in a good word. So...no application, no evidence etc.
Bev, This reeks of journalistic cynicism. They are taking what is essentially a loose statement that translates into "I spoke with the General and other people at ROTC and they said I should apply to West Point, where I would get a full ride." And they have spun this hyper-technically to "I was handed a full scholarship to West Point."
I'm seeing more and more of this as the quality of journalists drop. They are substituting their own interpretations of what was said and then picking apart their interpretations with hyper-precision even though that is not what was ever said. It's conspiratorial thinking gone amok, like picking apart denials to see if they can squeeze in some incredible caveat.
I haven't read any of Carson's books, but I did just read the Politico article. Just from a structural standpoint, it's bad writing. The article switches rapid-fire between excepts from Carson's writing, quotes from his campaign manager, statements from West Point, and the journalist's own tortured interpretations of events, jumbling them all up so that anyone attempting to decipher which words are credited to whom is left thoroughly perplexed. This level of writing would not be acceptable at a high school newspaper. It's as if this hatchet job were written with an actual hatchet.
As for the tortured interpretations, one in particular sums up them all. From the Politico article: "If offered admission [to West Point], all costs are covered for all students; indeed there are no “full scholarships,” per se. It takes a certain level of genius to find that "all costs are covered" does not equal a "full scholarship." Besides, I don't know what vernacular Carson grew up with in Detroit, but where I come from, getting your school paid for is called a scholarship even if that's not technically correct.
The media sure do hate this guy.
Here's another MSM spin that makes no sense. Obama just made a grand announcement this morning that he has made his decision and is scrapping the Keystone Pipeline deal for good! Well, except the new Canada PM Baby Trudeau already said to little or no fanfare that he was rescinding any offer scrapping the pipeline last week.
tryanmax, I saw that and I focused on the exact same point. This reporter is creating a fiction by getting technical with words at some point and not at others.
Note that "free ride" is defined hyper-technically as "college scholarship covering costs you would otherwise need to pay." Hence, getting a free education and board is not a "free ride" because there is no specific scholarship attached. That is a strained technicality.
So this hyper-technicality is used to add meaning that is not present in what Carson says, i.e. that a particular type of scholarship was offered.
Then look at the other part. Carson never says he was offered admissions. To the contrary, he says that when he spoke to people who are not the admissions people at West Point, he was "offered" a free ride. In other words, it is clear that he has misused the word "offered" or he means it as something other than "offered by West Point itself." Most likely, he was told by these people that he would get a free ride and they offered to help him get it.
Yet, here the journalist takes the word "offered" and chooses to ignore any sort of reasonable analysis of the word so they can change its meaning to "offered by West Point." That is dishonest in an of itself. And then to play hyper-technical in the other section is even worse.
The whole thing is deceptive.
Army, Navy and Air Force marketing for their academies often use the word "scholarship" in their material. Also, having been a recruiter once, I can see other recruiters suing phrases like "free-ride" etc. to entice a young person to talk to them.
Sorry no post today. Busy day. Busy, busy, busy.
Oops! It appears now that Politico has kinda' sorta' has backtracked. The editors changed the headline without actually letting anyone know it was edited to a more tepid fabrication.
The West Point thing is strange. It's an argument about an irrelevancy. Carson hawking Mannatech supplements as a cure for cancer strikes me as much more troubling.
*Shrugs* Both issues are too inside baseball to do him any serious damage. Many conservatives are looking for charismatic outsiders, not moral paragons.
No embellishment or lie (if any) Carson has told is likely to match Clinton's sniper fire story :) .
Anthony, I think that last statement hits the nail on the head. The media is trying to spin up the West Point and Mannatech stories as the lies of the century. I don't know whether it's inside baseball or just small potatoes, but neither seems like it's making waves. It is a bit early to tell, but let's see what makes the Sunday shows
The WSJ has demolished Carson's claim that he was praised by a professor as the most honest person in a class at Yale (the article he claims was written was never written and the class he claims he was the most honest man in didn't exist). Less definitively, nobody remembers him saving a bunch of white students during a race riot (which of course, doesn't mean it didn't happen).
Once again, I don't think those embellishments on what is now ancient history will hurt among his base.
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/ben-carsons-past-faces-deeper-questions-1446861864-lMyQjAxMTI1NTAxNzgwMTcxWj
In his 1990 autobiography, “Gifted Hands,” Mr. Carson writes of a Yale psychology professor who told Mr. Carson, then a junior, and the other students in the class—identified by Mr. Carson as Perceptions 301—that their final exam papers had “inadvertently burned,” requiring all 150 students to retake it. The new exam, Mr. Carson recalled in the book, was much tougher. All the students but Mr. Carson walked out.
“The professor came toward me. With her was a photographer for the Yale Daily News who paused and snapped my picture,” Mr. Carson wrote. “ ‘A hoax,’ the teacher said. ‘We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class.’ ” Mr. Carson wrote that the professor handed him a $10 bill.
No photo identifying Mr. Carson as a student ever ran, according to the Yale Daily News archives, and no stories from that era mention a class called Perceptions 301. Yale Librarian Claryn Spies said Friday there was no psychology course by that name or class number during any of Mr. Carson’s years at Yale.
On a related note, Carson has thanked the biased media for helping his fundraising soar.
If the media wanted to damage his support among Republican primary voters, they would hurt him more by praising him :) .
http://www.mediaite.com/online/ben-carson-thanks-biased-media-for-his-good-fundraising-week/
We the People have made 10,000 donations each day this week, raising $3.5M this week alone. Thank you biased media.
Saw Trump on SNL. Some of his bits were very funny but as is usually the case with SNL it was more miss than hit.
Carson claims on Face the Nation that he has the Yale newspaper to back his psychology class story. We'll have to see what comes out. Also on FtN, it comes out that West Point themselves refer to their program as a scholarship.
I think the "I'm a threat to the secular progressive movement" statement that Carson made on Meet the Press today has greater potential to undo him than any of this picking apart his autobiography. Especially because he won't be able to back away from it. I see it now: the media were never after his credibility. They were after a sound bite like this. Cue the stories guffawing about secret societies, conspiracy theories and UFOs.
Post a Comment