First the independents spurned him. Then the babies. Now, in a truly stunning development, Obama is losing the under-30 demographic:
The college vote is up for grabs this year — to an extent that would have seemed unlikely two years ago, when a generation of young people seemed to swoon over Barack Obama. Though many students are liberals on social issues, the economic reality of a weak job market has taken a toll on their loyalties: far fewer 18- to 29-year-olds now identify themselves as Democrats compared with 2008.
It's almost as if libertarians and conservatives still stand on a vast swath of common ground. What an irony that it would take a generation of college students to remind us of this fact, and that it would be Barack Obama himself who would awaken them to it. The long night of the Obama Zombies might come to an end at last.
In this case, the California Constitution. Over at the WSJ's Law Blog, Ashby Jones reports that the Pacific Justice Institute has failed in its attempt to force Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown to defend Prop 8.
Think about it: the voters of a state have lawfully amended their Constitution, and the executive branch responsible for upholding the State Constitution refuses to defend the voters' choice. Aren't they duty-bound to defend Prop 8, provided it is at least arguably consistent with the federal Constitution? Surely Prop 8 meets that minimum threshold, Judge Walker's activist ruling notwithstanding.
Should the executive branch (state or federal) treat the Constitution like a cafeteria plan -- picking and choosing the bits that they want to defend? Isn't that a dangerous precedent?
What a great time we had last night at the Rico-Suave Super-Exclusive Get-Together! How about those screaming fans and the gate-crashers who failed the "Name Claire's Cats" test and had to be escorted off the premises by the bouncers? Wild, huh?
Anyway, I really enjoyed meeting you all last night but woke up with this odd feeling that something was missing. Then I realized what it was: We opened up all these interesting threads, conversationally, but now they're just hanging out there, even though I've had a night to sleep on them and I still have more to say.
So I'm going to open them up again here, all in one go. Those of you who participated in the conversations can just take it up where we left off. Maybe you'd help me out by filling in the details and explaining where we were when we said goodbye.
Those of you who weren't there--here's what you missed. It's not too late to join the conversation.
1) Spiral Dynamics:What does the theory say, and how can it help us understand the foreign policy outlook of the Obama Administration?
Commentary's Jennifer Rubin has an excellent post picking up on a Politico story why President Obama is unlikely to go to Ground Zero on the 9/11 anniversary this year. In her post, she also links to an MSNBC video of then-President Bush speaking with that fireman there atop the rubble. She says it still makes her cry. I suspect she's not alone.
At the Wall Street Journal, Professors Cherlin and Wilcox press down firmly on an uncomfortable truth. "The grim employment picture" facing the children of the baby boomers, they write, "is familiar, but what's less widely known is that they are losing not only jobs but also their connections to basic social institutions such as marriage and religion. They're becoming socially disengaged, floating away from the college-educated middle class."
These working-class couples still value marriage highly. But they don't think they have what it takes to make a marriage work. Across all social classes, in fact, Americans now believe that a couple isn't ready to marry until they can count on a steady income. That's an increasingly high bar for the younger working class. As a result, cohabitation is emerging as the relationship of choice for young adults who have some earnings but not enough steady work to reach the marriage bar.
Cherlin and Wilcox drive home the point that marriage, like religious faith, has traditionally offered working-class Americans a sort of personal and cultural backstop in difficult economic times. ...
With 2012 less than 500 days away and just a few months left before the November midterm elections, there is no better time to predict the 2012 Republican presidential ticket, because no one else in their right mind would dare.
Yes, I am aware that predictions of this nature are usually worthless, but they are fun nevertheless, and who doesn’t need some fun in these last depressing days of President Obama’s Orwellian-sounding “Recovery Summer”?
(Which leads one to ask: Does “Recovery Fall” start in September? Or did Recovery Fall eclipse Recovery Summer way back in June?)
These are questions for another time. But as for the 2012 GOP ticket, my prediction as of now is: Governor Haley Barbour and Governor Mitch Daniels.
This would be a historic governor-governor ticket.
In fact, back in March of this year, I co-wrote a Daily Beast column with Mark McKinnon about the strong possibility that the 2012 GOP presidential and vice presidential nominees would come from the statehouse. Now it’s time to stick my neck out and predict these two governors will be the eventual headliners. ...
With apologies to the advertising agency responsible for creating Dos Equis Beer’s "The Most Interesting Man in the World," say hello to "The Most Insufferable Man in the World," who happens to bear a striking resemblance to a certain Chief Executive.
When someone within earshot says, "Thank God," he says, "You’re welcome."
He takes Joe Biden seriously.
He looks at Mt. Rushmore as a work in progress.
He reads the Constitution every day...looking for loopholes.
He appears on The View because he thinks the hosts are hot.
At Presidential news conferences, he found Helen Thomas’s questions to be coherent.
He reads Frank Rich columns with a straight face.
He thinks he looks really cool on a bicycle.
When it was determined that Jeremiah Wright would be too controversial a choice for Attorney General, he was willing to settle for Eric Holder.
When D.C. recently doubled its parking meter rates, many folks called it a tax hike. But it’s not. It’s a price hike — on a product already being subsidized by the taxpayers.
Parking is an issue where I think Left and Right should agree. Liberals want people to drive cars less. Conservatives want markets, rather than government, to set the price of things.
It turns out that we could do some good by ending government subsidies and getting rid of laws that require developers to build parking. Tyler Cowen, a free-market economist, discussed this in a NY Times Op-Ed headlined “Free Parking Comes at a Price.”
For liberals and conservatives, is the issue a win-win? Is anyone in the mood right now for a win-win? And what about the way the parking issue exacerbates divisions on the right? At least some of the right's more traditionalist observers consider free parking to be of a piece with the broader set of zoning regulations that spread suburban sprawl -- destroying, as they argue, the fabric of healthy culture and community. I for one am open to a grand bargain on free parking. ...
Have you seen this video? Our James Poulos forwarded it to me, and I swear it gave me goose bumps. And country music doesn’t, as a rule, give me goose bumps. But this song, expressing so thoroughly what so many Americans have been saying for so long, is just wonderful. Besides, any video that includes a line from Uncle Ted Nugent gets my happy endorsement.
This video meshes nicely with what our own Mark Steyn said today while guest hosting for Rush when he made a fascinating observation about 9/11. Perhaps you heard it too? The one and only bright spot in that day’s awful events took place when the heroic people on Flight 93 learned what three other aircraft had wrought, and decided that theirs’ would not be the fourth such attack.
You see, the entire alphabet soup of government agencies, including the FBI, CIA, NSC, DOD, and EIEIO, were powerless to thwart the attacks. In the end, it was self-sufficient Americans; independent minded, liberty-loving, fiercely-courageous free men and women who defeated the terrorists on the aircraft and denied them their goal of an attack on either US Capitol or the White House. ...
Some of you were aggrieved to think that the Flyover States weren't on my schedule. I want you to know that you are! I am, in fact, flying over you right now--and while I don't have Internet access, I'm thinking of you warmly. You look great down there!
I should have thought of this before so we could have synchronized our watches and waved to each other.
And seriously, if you flyover folks find someone to pay for my plane ticket and put me up in a hotel, I am definitely not too much of a Coastal elite to land next time. I fly toward themoney, wherever it is.
Whoa, we just entered Coastal airspace! Bye for now, Flyover States! That was too brief, but I'll be back, I promise.
All my best,
Claire
PS: Obviously, I wrote this a few hours ago. Hello, California!
A friend just gave me a copy of a letter he came across in the Hoover Institution archives. The letter appears on the stationery of the U.S. Committee for Friendship with the German Democratic Republic [that is, East Germany] at 85 East 4th Street, New York, N.Y. Dated December 1990, the document is in places sort of funny. In other places, not so much. “Dear Friend,” it begins,
for a number of years you have supported the U.S. Committee for Friendship with the German Democratic Republic. This letter is to thank you for your interest and support and to inform you that the Committee is closing its doors. The unification of Germany has ended its tasks.
A committee for friendship with East Germany? Almost four decades after the brutal suppression of the East German workers' strike and almost three decades after the construction of the Berlin Wall? What did it take to persuade these people to stop behaving like stooges? The Communist state they admired had to become defunct.
The whirlwind of events of the past year have just culminated in the first all-German elections. ...
The Caucus [scroll down] sounds another note in what seems set to become a crescendo:
Senator Russ Feingold, a three-term Democrat from Wisconsin, is championing himself as the underdog as he faces an unexpectedly tight race with a Republican neophyte. Jeff Zeleny explains that control of the Senate could very well hinge on who wins the Wisconsin Senate race.
Senator Russ Feingold says he should not be considered the front-runner in his bid for a fourth term. If that self-appraisal is true, Democrats face a greater risk of losing their majority in the Senate than they believed when summer began.
“Frankly, I love being the underdog,” Mr. Feingold said. “Let me have it.” [...] “Clearly if somehow I lost, it would be a sign that we’re getting close to the line,” Mr. Feingold said in an interview on a recent day of campaigning. “We won’t lose, but it is something that is legitimate for me to mention — this seat could determine things.”
As his predicament suggests, Republicans have a better opportunity to win back the Senate than they had once imagined. Their chances of reaching a majority in the House still remain greater. ...
Jennifer Rubin on a new, rather surprising poll out of Ohio:
This, from Democratic pollster Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling, caused quite a stir yesterday: “[B]y a 50-42 margin voters [in Ohio] say they’d rather have George W. Bush in the White House right now than Barack Obama. Independents hold that view by a 44-37 margin and there are more Democrats who would take Bush back (11%) than there are Republicans who think Obama’s preferable (3%).”
To all those Democrats who continue run on the premise that they'd be better than Bush, I say, "Go ahead. Make my day."
As has been reported, the U.S. Department of Justice has sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio for "refusing to cooperate with a civil-rights probe into police practices and jail operations."
This is one tough nut to crack. I wrote about it a year ago on Forbes, and still am about two minds of this issue. Arpaio raises questions about civil rights in the old style, i.e. protection against government abuse and overreaching, which is one of the great concerns of libertarian theory. If the states will not enforce against their own, the whole original theory of equal protection suggests that the federal government should step in against those forms of differential enforcement.
That is the gist of many of the charges against Arpaio, on the merits of which I have no independent judgment, even if the stories that I have read suggest that his behavior does raise very serious problem. So at this point, the effort of Arpaio to narrow the inquiry at an early stage of the investigation seems to me to be premature. The effort to gain suit thus looks right. ...
It almost doesn't matter precisely how many seats the Democrats lose in November. If you read the Wall Street Journal this morning, you know that they're seriously rattled.
When things like this happen, people lose their jobs. When an administration bumps along with such low approval ratings, the knives start coming out. People start calling other people (people described in newspapers as "friends of the president") and they start talking about who should go. "This guy (or gal) is killing you," they'll whisper to the president. "You've got to shake up the team," the people who talk to people will tell him.
And there will be leaks in the press -- authorized or not; substantiated or not -- about Who Is Going to Go?
But why wait? Let's talk about it now. My guess is that Hillary Clinton is gone by the end of the year -- her choice, not his. Also: Rahm Emanuel is gone, maybe even before the midterms.
Amid a broaderdiscussion about law school reform, Paul Horwitz opines that "what many law students are saying is not so much that they want training as that they want jobs. Simply creating 200 professional law schools with professional training won't achieve that result if the demand for legal services is still lower than the supply of graduates; nor will mandatory articles of clerkship." He continues:
we would answer this complaint better simply by eliminating a substantial number of law schools, regardless of the theory-vs.-practice debate. [...] It is true that a more practical approach might better serve clients, but most of the discussion so far seems to have focused on what students and graduates want rather than what clients need. If our interest is in students rather than clients, then I should think that eliminating law schools, not reforming them, is closer to the remedy we ought to be seeking.
Not that I'm advocating this! There appears to be a great demand for law school spots despite the economy. ...
The Obama administration is trying to guilt-trip you into buying a hybrid. According to Heritage's The Foundry, the EPA is going to start giving your car a report card--"A" for electric cars and hybrids, "C" for pick-up trucks, and probably "F minus" for Humvees.
The government proposed labeling each new passenger vehicle with a letter grade from A to D based on its fuel efficiency and emissions, part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to promote electric cars and other advanced-technology vehicles....
Currently, the labels must show how many miles per gallon a car gets and its estimated annual fuel cost. Under the proposed changes, a new label design would carry a large letter grade assigned by regulators.
Under the system, the only cars that would receive an A-plus, A or A-minus would be electrics and plug-in hybrids, the government said. Many compact and midsize vehicles would get Bs, while bigger and more powerful models such as sport-utility vehicles and pickup trucks would get Cs or C-minuses because they burn more petroleum and pump out more carbon dioxide, officials said.
What I like most about Larry Sabato, the keen observer of the political map from the University of Virginia, is that he often infuriates me with his political analysis. Not because he's wrong, but because he's right. He tells me things I don't want to hear.
So it makes it sweeter -- a lot sweeter -- when he tells me something I do want to hear. From his Crystal Ball post this morning:
Given what we can see at this moment, Republicans have a good chance to win the House by picking up as many as 47 seats, net. This is a “net” number since the GOP will probably lose several of its own congressional districts in Delaware, Hawaii, and Louisiana. This estimate, which may be raised or lowered by Election Day, is based on a careful district-by-district analysis, plus electoral modeling based on trends in President Obama’s Gallup job approval rating and the Democratic-versus-Republican congressional generic ballot (discussed later in this essay). If anything, we have been conservative in estimating the probable GOP House gains, if the election were being held today. ...
There are a lot of smart people here; some probably even have a bit of the political junkie in their veins. So maybe someone can explain this to me: How is it that Mr. Obama, after a year and a half of almost uniformly unpopular policies, with unemployment still at levels barely seen in a generation, with economic growth essentially non-existent, and having made a mockery of his “post-partisan” promise in record time, still manages to hold a 46-47% (Real Clear Politics average) job approval rating? I find this utterly baffling.
My bafflement has two sources. The first is simply arithmetic. In round numbers, polls consistently show the American public to be about 25% “liberal,” 40% “moderate,” and 35% “conservative.” (The most recent polls actually tend to show about 40% “conservative,” but never mind.) For Obama to have a 46-47% approval rating and a 48-49% disapproval rating implies (since all the remaining “Obama conservatives” could fit inside a very small phone booth) that “moderates” are saying they approve of Obama’s job performance by something like a 3:2 margin. ...
In the Wall Street Journal today, Stanford economist Michael Boskin examines the Obama recovery--and finds it nearly nonexistent. Then he examines what the left intends to do about it--and finds they want to make matters even worse.
[T]he left is frantically calling for a second "stimulus" and demanding tax hikes for the "rich"—a.k.a. our most productive citizens and small businesses. The rehashed ideas include such nonsense as massive infrastructure spending financed by a national infrastructure bank, an old Carter idea; yet more aid to the states; and even that worst of ideas, "general revenue sharing," which would force citizens to pay future federal taxes to fund the debt used just to send revenue back to their states.
These ideas would do a lot more harm than good. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, we have the best economic system among the advanced economies, "if we can keep it." That will require fundamental policy changes, not doubling down on the failed big government experiment of recent years.
