Twitter roundup

From my Twitter feed (8/3-8/8) Brendan Nyhan Aug 9, 2011 at 3:13 AM
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	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Obama re-elect odds now down to dead-even on Intrade - bid 50.0, ask 50.1 http://j.mp/pQeHXe (caveat: low volume)
	Time and Sales Chart - Barack Obama to be re-elected President in 2012 Show:Closing pricesTime and Sales Time Zone Europe - LondonEurope - UTC/GMTUS - Eastern TimeUS - Central TimeUS - Mountain TimeUS - Pacific TimeAsia - Hong Kong
	Aug 9, 2011 at 1:14 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @jbouie: http://j.mp/qwp7XG @mattyglesias uses the case of James Monroe's administration to make a defense of political parties and partisanship.
	James Monroe And The Need For Partisanship My main takeaway from Harlow Unger’s The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness is that the life of James Monroe was not particularly interesting compared to that of...
	Aug 9, 2011 at 1:04 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @JustinWolfers: In my whole life I don't think I've ever seen the DC conventional wisdom as firmly at odds with standard textbook economics. #AusteritySucks
	Aug 9, 2011 at 12:59 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @abuaardvark: Maybe if Obama tells a good story today about GOP bad guys the markets will rally, jobs appear, Congress cooperate, and Asad flee Syria.
	Aug 9, 2011 at 1:15 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Overhyped: "individual state campaigns" http://j.mp/of4ToA Obama's win in 2008 was a relatively uniform swing vs Kerry '04.
	Obama Team Now Focuses on Tough Re-Election Campaign - NYTimes.com Despite the advantages of incumbency and the absence so far of a strong opponent, President Obama’s re-election is far from assured, analysts say.
	Aug 8, 2011 at 12:59 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Douthat on the seductive fiction of realignment: "next election may be no more transformative than 2008 turned out to be" http://j.mp/nl44uc
	Waiting for a Landslide - NYTimes.com How dreams of a final victory are downgrading our politics.
	Aug 8, 2011 at 12:56 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan More on the Groseclose-Milyo media bias paper @monkeycageblog - statistical results found not to be robust http://j.mp/qZ9RNM
	More on the Groseclose-Milyo Measure of Media Bias — The Monkey Cage From a forthcoming paper by John Gasper. Find it here (pdf).
	Aug 8, 2011 at 12:44 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan The disaster of US patent law -- stories from Mark Cuban http://t.co/5lY8tRw (top 2 posts) and This American Life http://t.co/3iWQZro
	blog maverick My last two posts were designed to stimulate discussion. But lets talk the real problem that regulators, public companies, investor/shareholders and traders face. The problem is that Wall Street...
	When Patents Attack! | This American Life Why would a company rent an office in a tiny town in East Texas, put a nameplate on the door, and leave it completely empty for a year? The answer involves a controversial billionaire physicist ...
	Aug 7, 2011 at 7:30 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Drew Westen the latest to say Obama's problems could be fixed w/better messaging http://j.mp/oVASY0 Highly unlikely - see http://j.mp/aFHzmJ
	What Happened to Obama’s Passion? - NYTimes.com There was a story the American people were waiting to hear — and needed to hear — but he didn’t tell it.
	Judis vs. Judis on presidents and the economy - Brendan Nyhan Back in January, I predicted the birth of a thousand "Why Obama is failing" narratives: It's time to lay down a marker on punditry about the Obama White House. During the next eleven months, it ...
	Aug 7, 2011 at 6:31 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @ClaytonNall: Westen in NYT: Obama shld learn from FDR's 1936 "I welcome their hatred" speech. But that speech was on 10/31/1936 w/ landslide in the bag
	Aug 7, 2011 at 6:35 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @kwcollins: Why does the NYT keep giving space to evidence-free claims that political fortunes would improve if leaders just said X?
	Aug 7, 2011 at 7:21 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @kwcollins: At no point in Westen's op-ed does he present anything resembling evidence, beyond the banal observation that narratives make good messages
	Aug 7, 2011 at 7:21 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @kwcollins: Westen does reference sound research on the sources of policy influence (e.g. public opinion of wealthy), but if anything ...
	Aug 7, 2011 at 7:21 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @kwcollins: ... that suggests that Westen's proposed fixes (Better speeches! Simple narratives! My magic paragraph!) are unlikely to change anything.
	Aug 7, 2011 at 7:21 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @dgardner: Nyhan on Westen, a few years ago. http://bit.ly/r2vHyB
	Drew Westen's academic guru tricks - Brendan Nyhan Kevin Drum nails something that makes me crazy -- the way that wannabe gurus like George Lakoff and Drew Westen use academic credibility to legitimate ideas that aren't backed by specific resear...
	Aug 8, 2011 at 1:08 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan John Sides on Westen's op-ed: "We can learn little...from...speeches never given and the alleged character flaws implied" http://j.mp/nOZr8u
	Script Doctor — The Monkey Cage Drew Westen's indictment of Obama is right on several secondary points about public opinion, but fundamentally wrong in its portrayal of presidential power within American politics. Even though ...
	Aug 8, 2011 at 2:22 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Yet more on flaws in Westen's piece: Mischaracterizing FDR to Indict Obama @monkeycageblog http://j.mp/n6NuVN
	Mischaracterizing FDR to Indict Obama — The Monkey Cage Part of Drew Westen's piece suggested that Obama should have followed the example of FDR: I asked Eric Schickler, a political scientist at UC-Berkeley who has done research (forthcoming) on publ...
	Aug 8, 2011 at 10:21 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Agreed - a must-read. RT @smotus: Awesome takedown of Drew Westen's NYT piece by Chait. http://t.co/qncbecD
	Drew Westen's Nonsense | The New Republic There are some strong criticisms to be made of the Obama administration from the left, especially concerning Obama's passive response to the debt ceiling hostage crisis, and his frightening will...
	Aug 9, 2011 at 1:12 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Agree with @mattyglesias on this - Rick Perry Is Electable Enough http://bit.ly/q46Pit
	Rick Perry Is Electable Enough I’ve recently seen a surge of stories that seem to me to be geared toward creating false confidence that Rick Perry is somehow a laughably unelectable character who Barack Obama is destined to b...
	Aug 5, 2011 at 1:33 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @GrahamDavidA: Get elected during a period of economic boom? RT @TheFix: What Barack Obama can learn from Bill Clinton. http://ow.ly/5VtuY
	What Barack Obama can learn from Bill Clinton - The Fix - The Washington Post Barack Obama turns 50 years old today, a milestone that comes at a political crossroads of sorts for his presidency. The nation's economy continues to struggle, the Dow is faltering and voters s...
	Aug 5, 2011 at 1:22 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @MysteryPollster: Considering low Congressional approval, it's causes, consequences http://t.co/UaOUgyp
	Congressional Job Approval Nears 'Lowest Ever' Levels: What Can Turn It Around? This article has been updated to include a new New York Times/CBS News poll released Thursday night. WASHINGTON -- The new CNN/ORC International poll conducted Monday night shows congressional j...
	Aug 5, 2011 at 1:17 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Extrapolation driven by 92 (banking scandal) MT @fivethirtyeight 14% Cong. app. corresponds to 90-100 House losing seats http://t.co/3HeoTNJ
	Surveying the Electoral Damage of the Debt Debate - NYTimes.com There aren't any winners here, but you can argue that Republicans have sustained more damage.
	Aug 5, 2011 at 1:15 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @richardmskinner: doubt we will see '92 level of retirements - last yr members could convert campaign $ to personal use
	Aug 5, 2011 at 11:05 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @daveweigel: Checking in with birthers b/f Obama's birthday. They literally just changed slogan to "Where's the REAL BC?" http://slate.me/nnQ7VP
	Undead Birtherism
	Aug 4, 2011 at 2:39 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Ray Fair forecasting Obama 53.4% based on implausible economic growth forecast http://j.mp/o9VPF7 More realistic estimates->narrow GOP win
	Vote-Share Equations: November 2010 Update Predictions: The current and past predictions of VP and VC using the economic forecasts from the US model are: The prediction of an Obama victory with 53.4 percent of the two-party vote is condi...
	Aug 3, 2011 at 5:15 PM

Comments

[Rob]

To be sure, Drew Westen is wrong about many things: mischaracterizing FDR, falsely claiming that Bush's tax cuts went "largely to the wealthiest Americans" (actually about 20% goes to those in the top two brackets), claiming that better messaging would solve Obama's problems while ignoring some of that messaging that exactly fit Westen's prescriptions. But he got some things right:

Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted "present" (instead of "yea" or "nay") 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.

It has to be said, however, that Westen's vision of how Obama ought to conduct his presidency seems oddly familiar.

On a different subject, perusal of the White House web site reveals a preoccupation with the underserved: underserved youth, underserved communities, underserved markets. (Careful editing is required here, lest "underserved" be mistyped as "undeserved," which is not at all the desired message.) If some communities are underserved, the implication is inescapable that other communities are overserved, or at the very least, served.

Many commentators expect Obama to run a negative campaign in 2012, blaming Republicans for the nation's troubles, but a positive theme is staring him right in the face: "Obama 2012--America, you've been served!"

[MartyB]

James Taranto also has some useful comments about Weston's piece at the WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904007304576496210107745664.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

[David in Cal]

I continue to be surprised at some people's unawareness of the federal government's looming financial disaster. E.g. Yglesias has an analysis that's very sensible from a political POV, but he ends by implying that "some forceful central bank action" can prevent a double dip recession. What forceful action does he imagine would accomplish this? They've already driven interest rates down to nearly zero. The enormous ongoing deficit has caused a drop in the US debt rating with more drops threatened. Increased deficit spending would make this already intractable problem even more horrendous.

Nate Silver wrote:

the remaining proposals consist entirely of spending cuts while still reducing the debt significantly

In reality, the remaining proposals don't reduce the debt significantly; they let the debt keep increasing by over a trillion dollars a year.

I imagine Silver was merely writing carelessly. He no doubt meant that these proposals make the debt lower than it would be without these proposals. Still, he's missing the big point. The agreement to raise the debt ceiling was nowhere near adequate to satisfy the financial markets. Its inadequacy is what led S&P to reduce the federal government's credit rating. And, further drops are in the card without some unimaginable combination spending cuts and tax increases.

IMHO twelve months from now when the deficits are still running well over a trillion dollars a year, when inflation is rising, and when the stock market is still in the tank, nobody will remember who "won" the current debt limit battles. These battles will be seen as a fight over trivia.

[Rob]

For pure entertainment, it's hard to beat the Administration's push-back against the S&P downgrade. It seems the problem isn't the massive deficits, it's that S&P had the nerve to call attention to them. Suddenly we have some insight into how Obamacare intends to bend down the cost curve: if the x-rays are bad, retouch them!

[David in Cal]

Twitter's word limit results in some confusing posts. Brendan quotes Justin Wolfers brief comment:

"In my whole life I don't think I've ever seen the DC conventional wisdom as firmly at odds with standard textbook economics"

What alleged conventional wisdom is Wolfers talking about? What standard textbook economic principle is he alluding to? Does it relate to tax cuts? Stimulus spending? The risk of continuing multi-trillion dollar deficits? My impression is that these things are controversial among both DC insiders and economists, That is, I don't think there is a single CW nor a single standard textbook position on these questions.