My wrap for Plum Line is up. I did it earlier in the evening, before Romney took Ohio (and Alaska), but the conclusion doesn't change now that Mitt Romney won those; it's a very good night for Mitt, even if it's not the close-to-sweep he might have hoped for.
My state-by-state predictions worked out okay, I guess. I missed two -- North Dakota and Oklahoma, which both went to Rick Santorum when I had pegged them for Romney.
I'm continuing to track Newt's futile campaign, and he had a terrible night. Outside of winning in Georgia, he not only failed to threaten elsewhere, but he couldn't even grab a second place finish. In the other nine states, he posted three thirds and five fourths, plus the failure to qualify in Virginia. That's awful! Amazingly, some people actually bought Newt's spin. Including, embarrassingly enough, Trip Gabriel in the NYT.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll have more in the morning, but that'll have to do it for now. The headline is that Romney has had it won for weeks now, and tonight was another solid step forward for him.
Wow. Trip Gabriel's piece reads like he read some reaction to the original draft and updated it to include a couple of skeptical notes. I'd be embarrassed too if I took Newt's speech seriously. After that first bit about how he'd stuck it to the liberal media Tuesday night, I was torn. On the one hand, I can't stand to listen to Newt Gingrich for long stretches. On the other hand, I knew this speech was going to be a comedy masterpiece. In the end, I figured there was something funnier on TV....
ReplyDeleteYou had OK pegged for Romney? I think you mean TN?
ReplyDeleteIn making your predictions, why did you ignore the "prediction markets"--the gambling emporium in Dublin (Intrade)? If you'd relied on it, you'd have got all the contests right except North Dakota. It seems "the distilled essence" of the polls and other relevant information is all to be found in the share prices.
ReplyDeleteWell, I got everything right except ND and OK. I didn't look at InTrade, though. My stab on OK was because the polling was really sparse there, and I figured it was worth a try...I bought into the idea that Newt was having a bit of a late surge at Santorum's expense, plus Romney was doing well nationally. Didn't work out.
DeleteI had the misfortune to hear at least parts of Gingrich's and Santorum's speeches last night. It's been rattling around in my head ever since.
ReplyDeleteIn a sense, I can understand Newt. He lies a lot. That I can understand. He says things like: Obama refuses to drill in the Gulf of Mexico; Obama refuses to drill off the coast of Alaska; Obama refuses to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Whatever your preferences may be on these issues, it seems pretty clear to me that they are all going through--not eventually, but right now--even if Keystone XL may be delayed in an effort to avoid the worst risks. Perhaps a Gingrich administration would push them through with more enthusiasm, more self-adulation, less caution, and perhaps more cataclysmic failures, but they are going through. He just lies about it. Now, there are different possible explanations about why he lies about it. He may be manipulating; he may be delusional; or he may be some combination of the two. But I can understand what he's saying. I can see the logic that links the various bits of fantasy to each other and to the bits of reality that break through. In coming weeks, when he says the exact opposite of what he's saying now, without ever acknowledging that there was a change, there will be some recognizable logic in that, too.
Then, there's Rick Santorum. He just leaves me confused. Perhaps I wasn't paying close enough attention, but here is what I heard. Obama wants the government to povide people with health insurance; therefore, Obama thinks he's smarter than the rest of us; therefore, Obama must be stopped. I just don't get it. I don't see the link from premise one to premise two, nor from premise two to premise three. Now when he says that universal health care will strip away our freedom, I understand that he is quoting the classics, since Ronald Reagan said the exact same thing about Medicare 45 years ago. Beyond that, I'm simply lost. Someone help me please.
SM -- the key is that that sneering "thinks he's smarter than we are" really means, or comes down to, "thinks he knows better than we do." That's the connection between fulminating against government bureaucracy and going all-out on the resentment. "Government bureaucrat" doesn't mean the lady at the Post Office, it means some number-cruncher who went to Princeton dictating what books your kids read and what food they eat at school, what subjects it's decent and indecent to expose your children to in media and advertisements, and whether debtors or creditors are favored in loan refinancing. To a degree, that kind of populism is popular everywhere: such elite-credentialed BosWash corridor technocrats as Matt Yglesias easily and heartily disparage the legacy of Wilson, for instance. But the pattern of it is popular everywhere: "these CEOs profiting hugely from others' sweat and tears," "these government bureaucrats amassing power at the expense of the people," "these pointy-headed academics telling my children everything I've taught them is wrong and contemptible," "these Washington centrist chickenhawk bipartisanship-fetishizing deficit scolds who think they represent Qmerica writ large," "these shady consultants, these vulture capitalists, these eccentric billionaires, these corrupt lobbyists" -- whatever. Obviously, there's something to it, and its limits are obvious, too. Which groups you fear and resent seems to have a lot to do with just the right level of exposure to them, so you're aware but they haven't been made to seem familiar and normal to you.
Delete(Confession: every time CSH starts talking about the fallibility of human nature and how terrifying are the vast powers strangers who know nothing of us and have no stake in our success have over us, for just an instant I think he's talking about, idk, business monopolies or something, before I realize he means the government.)
Huh. You say "pointy-headed academics" like it's a bad thing. :-)
DeleteI wasn't speaking for myself, but quoting my elders and betters ... although naturally I am in fact a Roundhead sympathizer ... down with King Charles! down with the decadent papist French!
DeleteP.S. I don't know how I hadn't realized that the extra dose of cranky I took this morning comes from the same source as my free time: it's a fast day.
P.P.S. Happy Purim JB (& all)!
Classicist,
DeleteCSH, at least, is a congenial conservative.
;) CSH is awesome, definitely one of my top two favorite middle-aged men with Midwestern Lutheran roots who comment on this blog ;)
DeleteEars totally burning. Full acknowledgement that defending oneself plays badly in this kind of setting, but I'm actually not much of a fan of big companies either. I like little companies, little people, entrepreneurs. (I fell in love with my wife around the time when she read that famous 70s book "Small Is Beautiful" at the start of our relationship).
DeletePretentiousness alert: I'd classify myself as first and foremost an internal controls guy, so I'd cop to some minimal trust in companies to the extent that the P&L and reporting requirements impose some internal controls on them.
But there are few things that bug me more than right wing economic commentators (*cough*Megan McArdle*cough*) who believe that the magic of the invisible hand causes big companies to be beyond reproach. Ugh. Someday we'll discuss the jobs crisis and I'll go off on a big company rant, how the mechanics of the P&L make it increasingly difficult for a big company to subsequently risk reversing larger operating margins that arose from firing people.
In the meantime, I don't know that anyone hates the malfeasance of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital with quite the white-hot ferocity that I do; I've written as much a few times here, but I've read the same almost nowhere else.
Though this post really sucks! Its almost better just to concede you're full of shit than go through the awkwardness of defending yourself in this type of forum :).
Remarkable thread. Just to clarify one point, King Charles spaniels are really cute. Don't know if that's the shape of their heads or what.
Delete@Jeff -- a toy breed? Pffft. Give me a Leonberger any day. However: I can hardly criticize your preference as politically incorrect, seeing as my cats are Siamese, if you please (as well as if you don't please).
Delete@CSH -- oh that Brandeisian curse of bigness! well, so long as it doesn't devolve into prejudiced bigness-shaming ... (and as to the rest, hush. I'm being silly)
(P.S. And why am I up so late? Because I slept all afternoon because it was a fast day. If only such simple, unitary explanations for disparate phenomena were more common.)
Classicist, a classic about the perils of size. You can have your Ten Commandments in your public square; give me the last paragraph of that iconic text and that would make me quite happy indeed!
Delete...........can I also not have the Ten Commandments in my public square? I like that option better.
DeleteSure, if you want to be all 'Constitutional literalist', I suppose that would be okay. If there's one thing I've learned, its that its easier to bend norms when the other person does so first. Easier to get Brandeis if someone else takes the Ten Commandments. But...don't have to...
DeleteI wasn't entirely convinced Romney had it won for weeks prior to Super Tuesday, but I guess now I am convinced. The revelations of Romney's enthusiasm for a national health care individual mandate back in 2009 were probably the last thing that could keep have kept him from winning the nomination. But they seemingly had no effect, further proving that conservative opposition to the mandate as the worst violation of the Constitution ever is completely insincere. I don't see what could stop him from winning the nomination at this point.
ReplyDeleteNot to be argumentative about this, but again, I don't see what's wrong with the NYT story. Maybe it's because I recognize all the news-writing conventions I used to deploy myself in my cub reporter days, but I'm having trouble imagining what you'd prefer such a story to say. Trip Gabriel accurately explains how the Georgia win "figure[s] into Mr. Gingrich's grand strategy for reanimating his candidacy," says it nonetheless wasn't enough to put him ahead of Santorum as the not-Romney, says "his path to the nomination remains improbable," quotes Merle Black suggesting that he can't win outside the South, and also says that "many energy economists" call his promise of $2.50 gasoline "simplistic."
ReplyDeleteThat's not buying Gingrich's spin, it's finding various ways to undercut it while still staying "objective" by prevailing standards. What's a reporter supposed to do, quote Chait calling Gingrich "an erratic, overbearing, morally repulsive tub of goo"? (Which I grant would not be inaccurate, but that's a different question.)
Chait said that? And he was so good about avoiding fat-shaming when people were saying Chris Christie must be a sloppy undisciplined unrefined (most fat-shaming has a pretty strong class component) &soforth. Memo to Chait: it's still wrong to insult people over their bodies even if the rest of your critique is better-founded.
Delete(Man, what am I (apparently) so angry about today?)
Jeff -- any real Gingrich Southern strategy would have had to include winning in OK and TN, and he finished third in both. The story of Super Tuesday for Newt was "total disaster", not "comeback, with limits."
DeleteComeback? The lede says he "saved a campaign that seemed teetering on the precipice of disaster two weeks ago." That's not comeback, it's survival. I agree that compared to what Newt needs, it was a "total disaster" -- but that's analysis, not news reporting (which is good; it keeps folks like you in business).
Deleteclassicist, leaving Chait aside for a moment, what would you say about editorial cartoonists who draw Gingrich as a rotund sort of fellow? I mean, they can't very well give him a bodily frame like Lincoln's, right?
DeleteBut caricaturists have to depict bodies in some way, though they can choose what to emphasize. It's okay when a caricaturist draws Sarah Palin in a skirt -- just not when the newspaper devotes pages to the make, size, and brand of her skirt ... Similarly, it is okay when caricaturists draw the President as black, even though that is also a stigmatized category -- it's just not okay when they compare him to a monkey.
DeleteAlso: in re: Lincoln -- the caricaturist's focus of exaggeration surely alights also on extreme skinniness. It just takes more extreme skinniness to be considered noteworthy than chubbiness.
I mean -- do you remember how thin or thick different cartoonists draw George Washington? I bet it varies plenty, but not by special design, so we don't notice.
Jeff: Is "survival" even relevant when discussing Newt's campaign? I get the sense that he's going to stay in the race as long as he can sell books, so it's not like he would have dropped out if he'd lost Georgia. When I read this "saved his campaign" line, it sounds like the reporter is saying that Gingrich's campaign has become relevant again, which simply isn't true.
DeleteMy point is that the reporter is attempting to do what political journalists routinely do in news stories, which is explain the political significance of the events being reported. That means making some (necessarily arguable) judgments, within limits, about what's likely to happen and what would likely have happened if things had gone differently. Clearly Gingrich IS still "relevant" inasmuch as other candidates are still reacting to him, urging him to drop out of the race, etc. He's still capable of winning states, of splitting the conservative and/or Southern votes, and of having an impact on later events including the convention. None of this is true of, for example, Buddy Roemer, who was also listed on yesterday's ballots.
DeleteIt would not be correct, therefore, for the NYT to give as much attention to Roemer as to Gingrich. It would also not be correct to take Gingrich's own claims of ultimate victory and world-historical significance at face value, or to call him "the Comeback Kid" or anything like that. The right call is somewhere in between. The reporter, it seems to me, is giving a plausible explanation of what just happened without offering obvious value judgments about it. Going further -- "disaster," tub of goo, he's in it to sell books, etc. -- isn't the job of reporters, it's the job of analysts and commentators.
classicist, I've always thought of George Washington as looking like a very expensive Chicken McNugget. And at last I've been vindicated:
Deletehttp://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/george_washington_chicken_mcnugget_isyYxc9XQUihVCCj9mlbdL
wow, can it be that The Apotheosis of George Washington and the statue of him as Zeus (which I'd forgotten about. Thanks, Internets! The tragic fate of letting the day pass without encountering a sternly shirtless Founder has been averted) have competition for kitschiest Washingtoniana? and will the chicken mcnugget get its own biography in Latin?
DeleteEr, there's probably a point about how non-cartoonish visual depictions can also choose to emphasize the bizarre and absurd in there somewhere ... which I gladly concede to you ...
Let's get a little context to Chait's quote. He said it back in November, in reaction to Newt's first polling surge:
Delete"I don’t even know what to say here. It has simply never occurred to me before today that there would be even the slightest chance of the Republican Party nominating Newt Gingrich.... Parties don’t nominate people like that. You nominate a telegenic front man, not an erratic, overbearing, morally repulsive tub of goo like Gingrich."
Chait here wasn't saying he hates Gingrich for being fat, he was expressing disbelief that one of the major parties would nominate someone who was so unattractive on both a superficial and substantive level. He was commenting on what he believes parties do, not arguing that it was fair.
This is only a partial defense of Chait. The way he phrases his argument suggests he's ridiculing Gingrich's weight, even if it's under the guise of predicting the behavior of voters. But it reflects the fact that Gingrich is practically a walking stereotype of a depraved, unlikable politician. It may not be fair to associate fatness with depravity and corruption, but the stereotype does exist, and there's some legitimacy in talking about how it may affect elections.
In the entire TV era, party nominees have usually met certain physical requirements. They don't have to be Hollywood hunks, but they usually have a neat, conservative appearance, they're usually fairly tall, only a few have been bald (Ike, Stevenson, and Ford), and only one had noticeable weight problems (Clinton), though he was hardly unattractive.
Chait should have phrased this idea in a way that didn't make it sound like Gingrich's weight was somehow connected to his truly negative traits, but I understood his point.
All I know is, nothing says "America" like George Washington crossed with a Chicken McNugget. Or a Pullus McMorsus, as they say in Latin (?).
DeleteAlso, what Kylopod said.
Delete@Kylo -- you're totally right, of course. I'm just disappointed because, as I noted earlier, Chait has been really admirable about combating more explicit versions of the prejudice.
Delete......and also I suppose because I've been reading Chait for like fourteen years (half my life!) and feel sort of invested ..........
@Jeff -- oh bravo! It captures so much in two little words that hereby I officially nominate "Pullus McMorsus" as the new "idolatry in crust." (I know you get the reference, but click through anyway. Trust me.)
DeleteTotally gonzo thread here. Anyway, continuing this descent into agreeable irrelevance, that food link reminds me of the time I tried to help a British friend make chili. It was my job to go buy the ingredients, and I could not for the life of me understand why she kept insisting we would need "mints." (Presumably, she couldn't understand why I seemed not to know the first thing about chili.)
DeleteHaha, I don't know what "gonzo" means (except that there's a muppet) and I don't understand the chili story! No fast day to blame it on now, either.
DeleteMarginally relevant: guess what greeted me upon my occasional glance at Washington Monthly this morning, very first thing on the blog:
* Rush compares lost sponsors to losing a few french fries in the drive-thru. I bet he would know.
You can't see me, Ed Kilgore, but I'm shaking my fist at you.
-- Ohhh, she was saying you'd need "mince." But what does that have to do with chili, still ... ? À propos, sort of: vanishing regional vocabulary note: in New York, what other people call "ground beef" was traditionally referred to as "chopped meat." (You know, when you asked at the appetizing store ;) ) But I haven't heard anyone call it that except my mom in -- well, in all the time I've been reading Jon Chait, probably.
Yeah, "mince / mints." Chili is sometimes (often?) made with ground beef. In some regions, anyway.
DeleteThe term "gonzo" dates me, but it should be a part of any classical education. It refers to a kind of free-associative riffing, possibly with chemcical assistance, that's crazy, serious, topical, semi-incoherent and occasionally brilliant, all at once. It was coined in the '70s to describe Hunter S. Thompson's trademark style. Wikipedia has an entry on it, a hilarious exercise in missing the point that may be the worst Wikipedia entry I've ever read. You can't really capture gonzo in encyclopedia entries; it has to be experienced. (I recommend starting with Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972. Truly captures a moment.)
P.S. on George Washington: The second of the editorial cartoons on this site pictures him as an armadillo. From 1777. I think he makes a better McNugget:
Deletehttp://blackhistory360.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/the-flight-of-congress-colonial-cartoon/
(Weird synchronicity, happening on that item just today.)
Is the armadillo about being well-shielded? or what?
DeleteThanks. So, I've heard the phrase "gonzo journalism," and had some sense that it was distinguished by unconventionality, but I'm not sure I could even have placed that as an adjective (as opposed to a proper name of some kind, like faik it was named after HST's guinea pig), let alone one of broader application.
So, uh ...... gonzo classroom teaching is copacetic, right? -- because if not, I may possibly be a little bit behind on my prep for spring term ;)
Not only copacetic, it's the royal road to truth. I suspect that Hunter Thompson got the idea from reading the Symposium.
DeleteAlthough I agree Romney continued his progress to ultimate victory, all the other candidates accomplished something that they will use to justify continuing, and which in turn a self-interested media will accept as a justification for treating this as an ongoing contest. Therefore, a primary process that is clearly damaging Romney's general election prospects will continue on largely unchanged.
ReplyDeleteIn that sense, by failing to kill any of the zombie candidates, Romney did poorly for himself, even though he didn't do SO poorly that he became unlikely to win the nomination.
Ah, but Brian....are these zombie candidates?
DeleteClassic D&D zombies just needed to be damaged enough to become inanimate corpses; the modern movie zombie usually just needs to be either damaged enough or damaged in the head/brain stem.
The real horror with zombies is always that there's so many of them. Individually, they're weak, and even small packs aren't that dangerous.
These candidates just won't die. Yes, they're walking dead, but I'm wondering if some other form of undead better describes them....demi-lich, perhaps? The mummies the Mummy movie seemed to keep going as pieces once hacked up.
To be fair, though, zombiepedia does claim that there are two movies that featured unkillable zombies (though, I've seen Return of the Living Dead, one of them, and I think they were killable in that one)
We don't really know the answer to this question, because Romney has yet to truly whack the head off of any of them.
DeleteAn example of head-whacking would be what McCain did to Romney and then Huckabee in February and early March of 2008, which forced them to drop out of the contest and endorse him. In 2004, Kerry similarly got rid of all the serious contenders but Edwards in just Iowa and NH, then took Edwards' head off on Super Tuesday.
This contest instead seems to be settling into the Obama-Clinton model, where the coalitions are stabilized and the vote shares in individual states become largely predictable (note a Gingrich withdrawal could help Santorum's coalition a bit, according to Nate Silver). Under such circumstances, Romney may never get his head-whacking moment with respect to at least two of the zombies (Santorum and Paul), and it may have to be Santorum that takes out the third (Gingrich).