And, it goes without saying, Jeb scarcely has a pulse.
We got a little bad news the other day-CNN has changed it's rules of qualification. Apparently they've gotten rid of the Kid's Table at least. But to make the main stage they now factor in early polls from NH and Iowa as well as national polls.
A candidate has to have either a 3.5% cumulative average over about a recent 5 week stretch or so, or a 4% average in one of the two states.
So under that criteria, Christie will likely make the stage. These rules seemed designed to achieve just this result-to give him a seat at the December debate-call it the Christie rules.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/11/cnn_s_new_debate_format_is_a_vast_improvement.html
The writer thinks it's an improvement-for one reason: it gets Christie in.
But there is a lot of good news in several new pols out today.
"New polls released Sunday show Donald Trump leading the Republican presidential pack, with significant leads over fellow first-time candidate Ben Carson in the immediate wake of the terror attacks in Paris."
"Among Democrats, majorities continue to favor former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/polls-donald-trump-ben-carson-216132#ixzz3sFsj12uk
As for HRC she's up as much as 60% to 34% in a an ABC/Washington Post poll. Overall, the RealClearPolitics average tracker has her at 55% to 30%
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
Bernie himself declared yesterday that if the elections were now he would lose. For once there is nothing to argue with him about. He is chalking this up to name recognition which is a brave face to put on it. In truth he is now firther behind than he had gotten in August and Stptember. At this point the only state he looks like he might get is NH after leading there by double digits before October.
"A new Fox News poll shows Trump with a 10-point lead among self-identified registered Republicans over Carson, 28 percent to 18 percent. Trump is up 2 points from the previous poll, conducted two weeks earlier, while Carson ticked down 5 points. It's the first time since mid-October that Carson failed to reach the 20-percent mark in a national, live-caller survey"
"A second poll conducted over the same time period, Nov. 16-19, shows Carson over 20 percent. The new ABC News/Washington Post survey has Carson at 23 percent, 9 points behind Trump, who is at 32 percent. Both are unchanged from the previous ABC News/Washington Post poll, conducted in mid-October."
"Beyond Trump and Carson, both polls show Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Texas) following in third and fourth place. In the Fox News poll, Rubio and Cruz are right on Carson’s heels, at 14 percent each. But in the ABC News/Washington Post poll, the senators lag behind, with Rubio at 11 percent and Cruz at 8 percent."
"Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — 5 percent in the Fox News poll, and 6 percent in the ABC News/Washington Post poll — is in fifth place in both surveys."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/polls-donald-trump-ben-carson-216132#ixzz3sFuj0Y70
Carson therefore seems to have clearly peaked. I don't know if it were any one thing. He probably could have ridden out any one thing with his supporters. But too many weird things have come up that he's had to explain.
He's fallen back considerably in NH from second down to 4th in the RCP NH. average; trails Trump by eight points in the natioal polls, but worst of all, he's trailing Trump in Iowa now by almost 5 points.
If he doesn't win in Iowa, that's a major setback for him. He was never going to win NH. Right now Trump seems setup to win both NH and Iowa. If so, all bets are off about the establishment restoring order anytime soon.
At this point, the only hope is that he has a weak ground game in one of those states but from what we're hearing, it's the opposite.
The other good news, is that Cruz is clearly a force, and is neck and neck with Rubio nationally, and leads him in Iowa. Right now Rubio is 4th there behind Trump, ,then Carson, then Cruz.
We got a little bad news the other day-CNN has changed it's rules of qualification. Apparently they've gotten rid of the Kid's Table at least. But to make the main stage they now factor in early polls from NH and Iowa as well as national polls.
A candidate has to have either a 3.5% cumulative average over about a recent 5 week stretch or so, or a 4% average in one of the two states.
So under that criteria, Christie will likely make the stage. These rules seemed designed to achieve just this result-to give him a seat at the December debate-call it the Christie rules.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/11/cnn_s_new_debate_format_is_a_vast_improvement.html
The writer thinks it's an improvement-for one reason: it gets Christie in.
But there is a lot of good news in several new pols out today.
"New polls released Sunday show Donald Trump leading the Republican presidential pack, with significant leads over fellow first-time candidate Ben Carson in the immediate wake of the terror attacks in Paris."
"Among Democrats, majorities continue to favor former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/polls-donald-trump-ben-carson-216132#ixzz3sFsj12uk
As for HRC she's up as much as 60% to 34% in a an ABC/Washington Post poll. Overall, the RealClearPolitics average tracker has her at 55% to 30%
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
Bernie himself declared yesterday that if the elections were now he would lose. For once there is nothing to argue with him about. He is chalking this up to name recognition which is a brave face to put on it. In truth he is now firther behind than he had gotten in August and Stptember. At this point the only state he looks like he might get is NH after leading there by double digits before October.
"A new Fox News poll shows Trump with a 10-point lead among self-identified registered Republicans over Carson, 28 percent to 18 percent. Trump is up 2 points from the previous poll, conducted two weeks earlier, while Carson ticked down 5 points. It's the first time since mid-October that Carson failed to reach the 20-percent mark in a national, live-caller survey"
"A second poll conducted over the same time period, Nov. 16-19, shows Carson over 20 percent. The new ABC News/Washington Post survey has Carson at 23 percent, 9 points behind Trump, who is at 32 percent. Both are unchanged from the previous ABC News/Washington Post poll, conducted in mid-October."
"Beyond Trump and Carson, both polls show Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Texas) following in third and fourth place. In the Fox News poll, Rubio and Cruz are right on Carson’s heels, at 14 percent each. But in the ABC News/Washington Post poll, the senators lag behind, with Rubio at 11 percent and Cruz at 8 percent."
"Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — 5 percent in the Fox News poll, and 6 percent in the ABC News/Washington Post poll — is in fifth place in both surveys."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/polls-donald-trump-ben-carson-216132#ixzz3sFuj0Y70
Carson therefore seems to have clearly peaked. I don't know if it were any one thing. He probably could have ridden out any one thing with his supporters. But too many weird things have come up that he's had to explain.
He's fallen back considerably in NH from second down to 4th in the RCP NH. average; trails Trump by eight points in the natioal polls, but worst of all, he's trailing Trump in Iowa now by almost 5 points.
If he doesn't win in Iowa, that's a major setback for him. He was never going to win NH. Right now Trump seems setup to win both NH and Iowa. If so, all bets are off about the establishment restoring order anytime soon.
At this point, the only hope is that he has a weak ground game in one of those states but from what we're hearing, it's the opposite.
The other good news, is that Cruz is clearly a force, and is neck and neck with Rubio nationally, and leads him in Iowa. Right now Rubio is 4th there behind Trump, ,then Carson, then Cruz.
O/T: Mike, you mike like this:
ReplyDeletehttp://informationtransfereconomics.blogspot.com/2015/11/does-market-monetarism-exist-in.html#comment-form
Yes, thanks for the link! This is real good stuff. We'll see if Sumner has a response
ReplyDeleteMike, since Jason brought up religion in his post on the cult of Sumner, I went to go find any "non religious" encounters my favorite "street epistemologist" had with people... I found three... two of which I'd seen before, but the 3rd one was new to me... it was a "twitter epistemology" ... you might enjoy this... this woman he engages with (not debates), is a loony tune. The goal of Anthony (the "epistemologist") is never to debate people but to get them to examine their own beliefs via questioning them. His style can drive you crazy if you're not used to it... he's so patient and polite to the point of unreality at times (some might read it as patronizing)... but he does his best with this dingbat, and fails, still... it's classic.
ReplyDeleteMike, this is just scary... the right wing conspiracy theory bubble substituting for reality:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/11/22/donald-trumps-outrageous-claim-that-thousands-of-new-jersey-muslims-celebrated-the-911-attacks/
Go Trump!
DeleteI wonder what percentage of the public will now accept that as true: that 1000s of Arabs in NJ were cheering as the towers came down?
DeleteI'll guess 52% of the public. 45% just because it's Trump and they hate the MSM... and now that Trump mentions it, they seem to remember it too... or was that an email they got from their Bill Joe Don Bob that was getting passed around? Hmmm, ... well doesn't matter, you know it happened cause the liberal media hates it and Obama says it didn't happen too, and King Obama always lies!
The other 7% will believe it because they're brain dead and they just absorb whatever they hear around them.
One time I got one of those stupid right wing conspiracy theory emails from my niece who's mother (my half sister) is a fundamentalist right winger. The email said that they took "In God we trust" off the new coin dollar... it was in all caps and giant typeface, with huge close up pictures of the coin. The CC list was huge... the usual tactic of trying to whip up paranoia. It was probably Obama's fault somehow. So the 1st thing I did was look for it on snopes... and they of course debunked this BS and showed a picture of the coin with "In God we trust" written on the edge. So within 45 seconds of receiving this email, I'd replied to all with a link to the snopes article, and a friendly suggestion to my niece to check it out on snopes next time before emailing everyone in her contacts book. Lol.... (I think that was the last email I ever received from her!).
I don't know if this is true, but here's a hypothesis:
DeleteDuring the French Revolution in Paris, every faction had it's own newspaper, with a very slanted view of the world. If one printed a rumor that the Queen was sexually molesting her son, a certain segment of the population believed it, and that was it.
This tradition of every newspaper in a country having a political slant and thus defining it's own reality to some extent continued in the US with "yellow journalism" etc. At some point radio came out, and changed everything: Now there was a great narrowing of the number of information sources, and the radio network or station would have to get a license to broadcast at a certain frequency. This continued through till the end of the broadcast days of television... a narrow set of news sources... all somewhat homogeneous. Republicans and Democrats both listed too and watched the same news shows. Now that's not necessarily all good, but it had some good points.
As the number of media choices exploded in the last few decades... with no broadcast license necessarily required anymore (just an IP address was sufficient), we have now returned to the days where everybody gets their news from their preferred biased source. The "drug of confirmation bias" as Jason put it began to work it's magic again. Thus there's no guard rail to keep the GOP from getting more and more crazy and lost in their own reality. Some of that goes on on the left too.
I'm very pessimistic where that all leads too. It seems to me that groups of people who reject reality are only grudgingly brought back to face the facts by the existential threat of total war (or the equivalent). That threat tends to focus minds and reward those societies who can keep their eye on the reality ball.... and punish those who can't.
I wonder if there's anything to my hypothesis and I wonder which way we're headed if there is.
I think you're history is largely accurate-except you left out one important point.
DeleteReagain ended the Equal Time provision. Before that, Rush Limbaugh and his talk radio clones weren't possible. If you had 3 hours of conservative view point then you had to have someone else come on with 3 hours of liberalism.
Now as to where we're going I'm more positive because I think this election is going to turn out to be a watershed in some very good ways. A lot of things are gong to be flushed out.
The base is going to splinter I suspect which will make it harder for them to even think of organizing against Democrats.
So the end of a kind of Golden Age of Objectivity came to an end with the end of Equal Time
DeleteWhat is kind of ironic is your mention of Revolutionary France. Today the GOP is the true Jacobin party
DeleteYes, I agree about Equal Time (the "fairness doctrine" as Rush used to say disparagingly). I agree about the GOP being the Jacobins as well.
DeleteAnd actually, Republican France was in a state of total war... there were some horrible times there when the war and the terror fed one another. There were decades of turmoil afterwards to sort that all out. Still one of my favorite scenes from history is when Robespierre lost control of the government: certainly not an instant fix, but it did bring the worst of the terror to a close. So my hypothesis about total war is probably a weak link... certainly the Nazis and the Soviets experienced this as well... but in a sense, Stalin did manage to see reality a bit better than Hitler (one could argue)... in the latter stages of the war... when Hitler started to fire all his generals and personally meddle more and more in military affairs... producing a string of stupid decisions. Some people think the West was happy to let Hitler stay in power since he was fucking everything up so bad post-1942. Stalin eventually learned to stop executing his generals, and let them run the war.
But I wonder what would happen if say China invaded North Korea... how long do you think Kim Jong Un would last?
Trouble is China wouldn't invade NK-as they are on the same side politically-even though on some level even China doesn't like them.
DeleteWhat saved France was dictatorship-Napoleon. LOL
Yeah, I know China wouldn't invade.
DeleteI hope that Trump ends up winning the election adopting David Icke's lizard people conspiracy.... and that's what cinches it for him... driving the base into wild enthusiam ... FINALLY somebody that willing to tell the truth about the lizard people!... and I'd like to see Coulter, Levin, Ingraham, Breitbart and Limbaugh follow him there... all of them start talking like delusional lunatics about lizard people. Lol... that would be funny... as long as Trump loses in the general by 25% or more. If he loses by 0.001%... that'll just depress me.
It probably won't be for another 8 or 12 years that a GOP candidate will get within 1% of winning on a David Icke lizard person conspiracy platform.
Delete538 says 25% of the US thinks the moon landings were faked. :^(
DeleteYes, I read the same Nate Silver piece. I don't know if you noticed but I left him lots of comments.
DeleteGive me a break-sure no one is paying attention yet. LOL.
But at least this is falsifiable. By his own words, if Trump wins Iowa and NH he has said by then the voters will be paying attention.
I didn't notice the comments, but I thought that you'd disagree (about Trump, not about moon landings) ... and for good reason: the ratings of those debates!
DeleteBTW, I saw two stories: one saying Carson walked back his support of Trump's version of cheering Muslims, and the other saying Ted Cruz is starting to separate from Trump... I was going to troll Breitbart (because I was sure they'd have an article or two about it), perhaps claiming that Cruz and/or Carson have now been unmasked as Cuckservative traitors.. trying to stab America in the face because they're siding with the MSM in their dastardly plan to embarrass the Donald!
DeleteBut I didn't see any Breitbart articles. Oh well.
I don't think this counts as a "response" from Sumner, but more of a coincidental posting on fiscal policy (and when it's appropriate):
ReplyDeletehttp://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=31323
Yes I read that latest from Sumner too. My one problem with Jason is his saying he won't write about it again.
ReplyDeleteSee this is why Scott always wins. LOL. He's indefatigable. I am too but I've been focused on politics lately not so much economics
Mike, did you see Rachel Maddow tonight (11/23/2015)?
ReplyDeleteShe and one of her guests (ironically enough a reverend: Rev. Weldon Gaddy) discussed Trump's repeated and insistent denial of reality (his outrageous slander against Arab Americans that "1000s and 1000s" of Arabs in Jersey City cheered when the towers came down on 9/11, and this was broadcast on many news outlets and is on the internet), and they both expressed my exact worry that Trump breaks too many taboos... now maybe you're right and it boosts HRC's chances ultimately (and I think you're right about that), and neither you nor I can do anything about it in any case, but I think Gaddy is right: he should get called on this. Is this lie of Trump's really so different than if he had claimed that a conspiracy of Jews (e.g. "Elder's of Zion") was behind the assassination of both Kennedy brothers, MLK, McKinley, Garfield and Lincoln... because Jews are enemies of freedom, God and America?
So that's why I'm always torn... I always have mixed feelings about Trump getting away with dangerous hate-mongering slander... getting rewarded for it actually. On the one hand it helps HRC and the Democrats. It helps alienate sub-groups of Americans from the GOP for perhaps a generation. That's good. On the other hand I hate the taboos being broken. When you think about it the social construct of these taboos is really all that separates us from Somalia or worse. I don't take their destruction lightly. Anyway, my feelings resonated with Rachel and Gaddy tonight... although, I did hate the way Gaddy seemed to imply that religious people have a monopoly on the truth... and so should universally be especially alarmed by Mr. Trump's antics and the fact that he gets rewarded for them.
That's what I was getting at before that if Trump goes full David Icky (or something equally as whack-a-doodle) and starts talking about lizard people... and the base LOVES it, and he easily breezes to the GOP nomination this year because of it... that it probably won't help him get elected this season. Probably just the opposite. But maybe in four years, full on delusionallity about lizard people will be the ticket? Or 8? Or 12?
There's no longer a William F. Buckley around to police the right and keep the Birchers ostracized. Buckley had power because everybody watched the same news... and since the Birchers were occupying a separate fantasy reality of their own creation, he knew they could be shamed. That institution has now been weakened.
A good example is my dad. Like I mentioned, he's always had "mainstream" beliefs. Mainline protestant church, evolution of course was OK, mainline Republican. Yet from my earliest memories he would always sit down to watch the news at a certain time with his martini... that's when the cartoons would get turned off (although sometimes he would watch Fred Flintstone for a bit with me.. until my mom complained). But the two of them would watch the news (we only had a few stations, and they all came from LA... 3+ hrs drive), and everyday they would read both the local paper (the only one) and the LA Times. He still does that! He still get's a paper LA Times every single day and reads it! (both he and his wife)... He's told me at various times over the decades that the editorials are generally too liberal for him, but he doesn't just skip it and go right to the stupid conspiracy theories you find on the web. So he sticks to that paradigm (even though he does also look on the web). He also watches public TV... and Bill Moyers.... Moyers again is generally too liberal for him, but he watches... he's not stuck in a fucking echo chamber bubble of insanity like a couple of my half siblings seem to be).
I guess what I'm saying is that in both my personal experience and from what I can tell of the rest of the country via various media sources... I find it extremely disconcerting the number of people out there who subscribe to conspiracy theories. This was not my experience growing up. Now of course **occasionally** a conspiracy theory is true... there really was a conspiracy to kill Lincoln for example. But almost always (I think Chris Matthews has pointed this out), the truth slips out and conspiracies are a disaster. Even the shabby one the GOP attempted to pillory HRC recently with the kangaroo court Benghazi hearings... clearly political from the get go, but it became unavoidably easy to see (even for the MSM) when multiple sources started spilling the beans. You can't keep it under wraps. Maybe you can for enough time to get what you want (Gulf of Tonkin?), but someone will likely spill the beans or it will go wrong somehow.
DeleteThat's what really amuses me: all these people are convinced the government is inept and incompetent, but when it comes to setting up a network of secret FEMA death camps... or faking the moon landing... suddenly they're masterful at it! The fact that nobody comes forward from the "inside" and spills the beans is just more evidence how good they are!... Lol
By chance, I ran into this guy's youtube channel. He goes on a good rant here about "crisis actors"... apparently an aspect of conspiracy theories I hadn't heard of before:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LzHNEgYekU