A Hand Grenade From William Galston At TNR

William Galston at TNR, in a post titled "It's The Ideology, Stupid", ponders exit poll data from 2006 and 2008 (skipping past the Presidential boost to turnout) and delivers a cold dose of reality to the reality-based community.  A snippet:

So the 2010 electorate does not represent a disproportional mobilization of conservatives: If the 2010 electorate had perfectly reflected the voting-age population, it would actually have been a bit more conservative and less moderate than was the population that showed up at the polls.

Geez, the Dems were net beneficiaries of their Get Out The Vote effort?  That was a subtle effect.

Mr. Galson also rocks another emerging meme about how the (utterly predictable) decline in the youth vote hurt the Dems:

What about age? The conventional wisdom before November 2 was that seniors enraged or terrified by changes in Medicare would turn out in droves to punish those who voted for health reform while young people disillusioned by Obama’s failure to create the New Jerusalem would abstain. That did happen, but only to a modest degree. Voters of ages 18-29 constituted 12 percent of the electorate in 2006; 11 percent in 2010. Voters over 65 were 19 percent of the total in 2006; 23 percent in 2010—noticeable but hardly decisive. If 65 and overs had constituted the same share of the electorate in 2010 as in 2006, the Republicans’ share would have declined by only .7 percent—about one-tenth of their actual gains.

George Will strikes similar notes in "A recoil against liberalism".

I imagine Dem activists and their media enablers will promptly scuttle back to what they imagine are the truly pressing topics.  I look forward to their fiery internal debates on who is more frightening, Sarah Palin or Christine O'Donnell.

Comments

[Pagar]

"Sounds like Franken in Minnesota."

Sounds like 2004 in Washington State. What were the results there? After extensive exposure of voter fraud by Stefan Sharkansky @ Sound Politics.com , the Democrats voted to make it much harder for citizens to trace down voter fraud and to go to mail in ballots.
Not one single thing done to cure voter fraud. The latest election, voter fraud is unmentioned

[bunkerbuster]

Nothing demonstrates JOMer’s lack of intellectual integrity more spectacularly than the meme that Obama’s a dummy.

The president graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law with a juris doctorate, yet DoT calls him “badly educated” and Jack preposterously whines that he still needs to see Obama’s transcripts … lol.

Obama wrote two best-sellers BEFORE becoming president. And if you take the time to read either, you’ll find they are well written and very well developed, obviously the product of an intelligent observer with well above-average self-awareness.

The president is the only one since Kennedy, perhaps, to have written a best-seller BEFORE becoming president. He’s probably the ONLY president of our era to have written TWO of them and quite possibly the only president to have written his own.

Writing a best-selling book is not just an intellectual achievement, it’s also a persuasive evidence of fortitude.
Obama also taught constitutional law. No one has ever claimed he distinguished himself as an intellectual or as a teacher, but there is zero evidence that he may be anything but well-above average intelligence and, more important, well above his Republican challenger.
Presumably, JOMers would have been satisified with a Palin presidency. Yet her academic record is something less than mediocre:
Hawaii Pacific University
1 semester (that was fast!)
North Idaho College
2 semesters
University of Idaho
2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters
B.A. in journalism

For the record, I couldn't care less about Palin's academic background. I'm perfectly willing to assess her fitness for office on the basis of the policies she advocated in Alaska and on her public statements since then.

Of course if Obama’s record were anything like Palin’s, JOMer’s would be calling him a totally uneducated moron absolutely unworthy to hold public office of any kind. Ditto were his record like that of McCain, who’s only academic record is graduating 893rd out 898 at the U.S. Naval Academy. Talk about affirmative action, does anyone imagine for one second McCain would have gone anywhere were it not for his well-connected white parents and, indeed, grandparents, who made their military careers back when people who looked like Obama weren’t even allowed through the door.

Then there’s the comparison with Bush II. W’s stupidity was cosmic, in the sense that the best political tactic he could come up with was to act dumber than he actually was so as to soothe the intellectual insecurities of rubes who were about to get shafted by his economic ideology and killed by his foreign policy. No liberal ever said Bush was stupid to the core. They joked, of course, about the stupidity of his public persona, but everyone always acknowledged that he could not possibly be as dumb as he appeared to be when presenting himself in public.
W’s second memoir -- his first is out and available free on the Internet (which it damn well should be, as it was written by paid White House staffers…lol) -- will offer case closing evidence as to how small minded the man really is. Meanwhile, it will be entertaining as always to watch Republicans in coming months searching for someone dumb enough to play the Reagan/Bush/Palin role in their psychodrama politics of anti-intellectual resentment.

[Jane (sit on the couch or save your country)]

Bubu,

Obama was an affirmative action student, who was given a pass both on admission and grades. Everyone knows the trick with Harvard is getting in, and back in those days, they were throwing money at blacks to come. So that is certainly not a credential.

No one actually believes Obama wrote either of those books. He doesn't even recall what is in them.

Obama was an "instructor" of constitutional law and by all reports not a good one. Anyone can be an instructor, as long as they have an in at the school and a law degree. None of that is any credential in constitutional law. And in fact he has demonstrated repeatedly that he wouldn't know the constitution if he fell over it.

He has no job experience, no executive experience, and spent his entire elected career voting "present". Nothing he has done to date indicates he knows anything about anything.

On top of that he has absolutely no integrity. Both Bush and Palin put him to shame in experience, credentials and integrity. Obama is by far the worst president this country has ever seen. And anyone who does not at this point recognize that is not only stupid but cowardly.

[Chubby]

great post Jane.

funny, isn't it, how much they hate their beloved and well used "x is stupid" meme when it is their their own ox being gored

[Captain Hate]

quite possibly the only president to have written his own.

Even the troll admits doubts regarding who did the writing. I'm pretty sure it wasn't Preznit Pun Intended.

[Jim Ryan]

What Jane said.

Plus, colleges love to have non-white Harvard-degreed people take some of the teaching load for low pay.

[Threadkiller]

Nice "shellacking" you gave bungduster, Jane.

[Boatbuilder]

Sure, Bubu, he wrote them himself just like JFK wrote his.

Ever stop and ask yourself why or how somebody with no accomplishments would write not one but two memoirs before he even achieved any elective office? or why anyone would publish them? Doesn't it even suggest to you you that, just as in JFK's case, somebody with an agenda was pulling the strings? Aren't you curious as to who that might be?

[cathyf]

(Why do we have to call it "extending the Bush Tax Cuts"? How about--"Maintaining the current level of taxes?"

How about "reversing the Democrats' scheduled tax increases"?

[cathyf]

Or another version: "canceling the Democrats' scheduled tax increases"

[Rob Crawford]

How about: "not letting Democrats steal more money"?

[sbw]

I don't have Bubu anymore, thanks to the Narcisolator troll blocker, but anyone who felt the compelling urge to feed the trolls, despite Clarice's armed and cocked pistolas, would point out Jack Cashill's authoritative debunking of "Dreams" and no one should claim Zero wrote it without presenting a countervailing study somewhat more compelling than, "Did too!"

[Rick Ballard]

"not only stupid but cowardly"

What a fine motto for BOzo, Jane.

Any ideas as to what superpowers the new TanMan action hero should possess? (bgates and hit are particularly solicited.)

[DrJ]

Rick,

Only cojones and spine.

[Porchlight]

And a sense of humor, which I think he has. A clip from the interview with Bret Baier:

BAIER: Are you going to start over?

BOEHNER: Start over — that’s where we were a year ago, that’s where we were six months ago. We’ve not changed our position on this at all. We told the president down at the Blair House during the seven-hour Obama infomercial that we ought to stop and start over. And we laid out the eight or nine common-sense ideas we had that would bring down the costs of health insurance.

This kind of thing really gets under Obama's skin (cf Palin).

[Red Dog]

"And we laid out the eight or nine common-sense ideas we had that would bring down the costs of health insurance. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. Boo Hoo. Sniff, I just can't help it. I care too much for the American people HOOOOOOOONK!"

====John Flaccid Bohner

Good one, Pooch. Is there really crying in politics?