Best of luck to Barack Obama as well. However, the truly momentous and inspirational aspect of yesterday’s result was my almost perfect prediction of it, as published in Crikey last Friday. Obama has carried the erstwhile red states of Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, Nevada, Florida and Indiana, with two states coming down to the wire: Missouri, where McCain leads by 5868 votes (0.2 per cent), and North Carolina, where Obama leads by 14,053 (0.4 per cent). I tipped Obama to gain all of these states and no more. I gather late counting of declaration votes is unlikely to change any leads, so it appears those 0.2 per cent of voters in Missouri have stood between me and my moment of destiny. Better luck next time, I guess. To those who tipped McCain victories or record-breaking Obama blowouts and find themselves wondering what my secret is, one simple piece of advice: believe the polls (or Intrade if you prefer – it will usually tell much the same story). They may not be perfect, but they will outperform your own “informed conjecture” well over 50 per cent of the time, no matter how clever you think you are.
If the last two states play out as expected, the final result will be 364 electoral votes for Obama against 174 for McCain, pending one complication: Nebraska, which along with solidly Democratic Maine divides its college votes by congressional district. Two of the three districts have stayed Republican, but in a third Obama trails by just 569 votes, and thus stands a chance to make it 365-173. In any event, the joint winners of the informal Poll Bludger tipping contest (thanks to Juliem for conducting this) will be David Walsh and Ron, who I gather will win a tie-breaker ahead of fellow 364 Club members Grog and Peter Fuller.
Finally, our good friends at UMR Research have published qualitative polling on Australians’ attitudes to the President-elect. Those who harbour an unfashionable element of cynicism about the great man might want to keep a sick bag handy.
780 Comments
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Well Obama is clearly getting good advice and understands it. He mentioned this in his first press conference.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/stupid-fiscal-tricks/
Adam @ 451,
FDR wasn’t the first to try for a third term. Though I think he was the first to try for a third consecutive term.
Theodore Roosevelt, after retiring at the end of his second term, came back four years later and unsuccessfully battled President Taft for the 1912 Republican nomination. He then ran as a third party candidate in the general election.
Ulysses Grant, also after a term on the sidelines, unsuccesfully sought the Republican nomination in 1880.
ltep @ 455,
Mate, try Z E R O terms, that would have been better
……
I wanted more of Keating
tp @ 461,
I think that is the way that they are headed, initially anyways. Saw a poll yesterday that said 64% of Repubs want Palin in 2012. Don’t think that those 64% realize that she is clueless so what does that say about them?
Mister 538 is famous!
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=caple/081107
501 TP, I think that Arnie has become a classic symbol for the problems you explained.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/us/07marriage.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Higher taxes? This guys a Republican how?
Cos he likes to kick ass and take names.
Chuck and Sly are Repugs as well aren’t they?
Sarah Palin and Alaska have a few budgetary problems looming due to recent oil price falls too.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/us/politics/09palin.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
David, yes you are right about TR and Grant. Wilson also *wanted* a third term, even though he was partly paralysed by his stroke. What I meant was that no-one before FDR was actually nominated for a third consecutive term by their party.
TR decided not to run for another term in 1908, after having served nearly all of the 1901-05 term following McKinley’s assassination, then the 1905-09 term in his own right, partly because that would have been seen as breaking the “no third term” convention. He then tried for the GOP nomination in 1912, but was beaten by Taft, before running as an independent and thus handing the election to Wilson. If anything TR’s behaviour reinforced the “no third term” convictions of conservatives.
It seems that Obama has picked that extra ECV in Nebraska.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/11/07/make_that_365_obama_on_track_t.html?hpid=topnews
Hypothetical
Would Bill C have won a third term against George W?
Ronster
I read that Bill is likely to be sent to Kashmir as a super-ambassador (temporarily) to stabilise the region which Obama thinks is crucial (something about it impacting on the Paki-Afghani power balance).
Also Franken is catching up in the late counting in MN, now only 221 votes behind Coleman. The manual recount hasn’t started yet. This race will probably end up in court.
amigo ronnie, didnt realise u r an old rocker.
I want the obama’s narrative not just fighting bush fire.
Diog, yr day in the sun tomorrow. Lima peru is a real surprise not a hick town at all
Diogenes, yes I think he would have done. Despite being impeached (though not of course convicted), he still had very high approvals at the end of his term.
Also, I now see the AL Senate race is drifting towards the Dem.
http://donklephant.com/2008/11/08/fivethirtyeight-thinks-alaska-senate-could-go-blue/
Sorry, that should be AK, not AL.
Adam
I suspect you are right. Bill’s approval rating was 65% at the end of his second term, which was the highest of any POTUS leaving office. I saw somewhere that anything over 50% approval rating for any incumbent basically guaranteed re-election. This graphic shows that his approval rating just kept increasing the longer he was in office. It’s pretty much the opposite of his successors.
PS I couldn’t find a graph of Howard’s approval rating through his terms. He was 43% in October 2007 which fits the 50% rule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Clinton_approval_rating.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:George_W_Bush_approval_ratings.svg
There is an interesting story here about ‘the Farmer in Chief’ which translates to what is Obama going to do about rising food prices in the US?
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/08/the-new-presidents-p.html
An interesting prospect in Alaska, but I think Stevens will, unfortunately, still manage to be elected. The eventual election for that spot will be interesting, but I suspect the Republicans will still manage to get a senator elected.
Apparently one of the most conservative Senators Jim De Mint is going to move to have Stevens expelled from the Senate in January if the Republican leadership doesn’t do so in December. They need 67 votes for an expulsion, so that means they’d need all the Dems, De Mint, and another 8 or 9 Republicans.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15392.html
Actually that article says that he wants to attempt to have the vote before the old Senate runs out in which case if all the Democrats voted for the expulsion then 16 republicans would be required to vote for it (with full attendance).
A followon from several earlier posts since the election where I’ve noted that the blacks really turned out Ohio to vote for Obama
….
Tickets to Bush’s departure ceremony sound like fun.
http://inaugural.senate.gov/
Landslide.
But thankfully the two term rule stopped it (oh that PM’s could only be PM for 2 terms…)
While the rule is good because of the inherent advantage of incumbency, I guess it cuts both ways – it would have been interesting to see if the Rebups would’ve eeven nominated GWB this year had he been able to stand…
I strongly doubt it, a 27% approval rating won’t win many elections.
Palin no longer thinks Stevens should resign:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/1108/Palin_walks_back_call_on_Stevens_to_resign.html
I loved this bit.
http://inaugural.senate.gov/history/daysevents/departure.cfm
Would’ve been pressured to do an LBJ I suspect…
Grog
I expected everyone to say Bill Clinton would have won a third term but it does beg the question of why Gore couldn’t win. His policies were almost identical and he didn’t have the sleaze problems Clinton had. In effect, a popular Administration was thrown out for no good reason I can see. It’s hardly as if Bush was a great candidate. I can see how Bush won his second term but not his first.
http://inaugural.senate.gov/history/daysevents/inauguraladdress.cfm
I think it was because Gore ran a poor campaign. He ran on an “us v them” platform that made his policies sound like they were far to the left of Clinton’s. He made himself sound like a risky change candidate, instead of continuing the Clinton years.
It was almost as if he didn’t want to win by riding on Clinton’s coat tails, hence he didn’t talk to Clinton at all during the campaign, and didn’t want him campaigning on his behalf.
That’s nothing compared to Strom Thurmond. More than 24 hours!!
Apparently part of the speech was a verbatim read out of the U.S. and South Carolinian constitutions.
Remember, he had to remain standing for that entire period. If he sat down, that would be considered the end of his speech!
Another bizarre speech was made by a representative in the Canadian parliament. Apparently Canadian Hansard records everything in French and English, with a translation created between the languages. The legislator had written a book in English, that he wanted translated to French for free, so he preceded to read out his entire book into Hansard so it could be automatically translated to French!
Thus, the very good rule in Australian parliaments that members/senators should not read speeches. It’s rarely applied but would be swiftly done if someone tried to pull something like that.
We have time limits for speeches thank fully!
IMO most speeches in our parliaments are generally boring and repetitive. Party discipline really stops our MPs from thinking for themselves about various issues.
What a clever idea.
In the Senate a few weeks ago Coonan took a point of order during QT that Conroy was reading his answer off his laptop, contrary to standing orders. The President ruled that Conroy was in order, because there is a gentleperson’s agreement that this standing order will not be enforced. That evening Coonan came in and spoke on some bill or other, reading every word verbatim. Some Labor members heckled, but no-one took a point of order. If the standing order against reading were enforced, Parliament would get through its business a lot quicker, because half the Members and Senators would never speak at all!
ShowsOn,
In regards to “speeches” per se, isn’t that what you are supposed to do out of QT when they ask leave to make a “ministerial statement” or “personal explanation”?
Yes Adam… it’s rarely applied but would be applied for something such as irrelevant reading from large slabs of books, newspaper articles etc.
Generally the way it’s gotten around is to say the senator/member is just referring to ‘copious notes’ which would obviously not apply to extensive quoting from a book, such as happened in the Canadian parliament.
Obama roasts his new Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (from 2005).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdphzxz64BY
I don’t understand why if a member has say 20 minutes for a speech why they go on and on and on even if they are just repeating themselves. Why don’t they just shut up and sit down after they have made their points?
Is it because they have promised to keep talking so the next speaker doesn’t need to be in the chamber until a specified time? If people only spoke for as long as necessary, rather than as long as they are entitled to speak, then that would force more MPs to actually attend the chamber, because they wouldn’t know when the person was going to stop talking.
Sometimes they don’t want to get through legislation early because they’re not ready to move onto the next item of business. Other times they want to filibuster. Also, if one side has 3 members speaking for 20 minutes then the other side will feel obliged to have the same amount for ‘balance’.
If they wanted to they could all just seak leave to incorporate speeches in Hansard and then things would really whip past quickly.
There is a standing order on relevance, and also one on tedious repetition, which are in part intended to stop filibustering, but of course time limits are the most effective way of doing that. But we can still see “filibustering by relay”, as the Coalition did in the Senate with the luxury car tax. I think every Coalition Senator spoke at least once, and since the government doesn’t have the numbers they couldn’t be stopped. This wasted a whole week of the Senate’s time.
The US Senate has no time limits, and cloture (the gag) can only be invoked by a vote of 60 Senators. So filibustering is alive and well there, though not as rampant as it used to be.
So did Labor Senators speak as well? Or did they just let Coalition Senators go one after each other?
Um, they’re politicians? They like the sound of their own voice.
I prefer the U.S. tendency where they just make the points they want them hand over to the next person.
Except of course if they are deliberately trying to waste time.
Some Labor senators spoke, but after a while the Coalition was just left to talk to itself.
To be fair, not many members “go on and on and on even if they are just repeating themselves.” Both sides have a system of distributing speaking notes to their members for each piece of legislation, so most of them can do a fairly coherent 20 minutes on a bill. The point of making speeches which no-one listens to is (a) to distribute in your electorate and put on your website to show that you’re doing your job, (b) to impress the whips in the hope of getting yourself promoted, (c) send out to revelant interest grous (unions, business, farmers, whatever), to show that you’re working for their causes, so they will help you get re-pre-selected and re-elected.
Technically a minister can close debate on a bill at any time by rising and speaking, then moving the reading of whatever stage the bills is at. In practice, however, that’s discouraged.
Also technically, the Government in the Senate can still close debate if they get the agreement of a majority of the chamber. If it’s obvious that senators are just seeking to waste the chambers’ time and senators want to go home on time that week it’s quite possible that can happen.
Just came across this fascinating piece in Salon.com which puts forth the thesis that there have been three American Republics, approximately 72 years apart, and it commenced a Fourth Republic between 2004 and now. The first half of each Republic is a period of “Hamiltonian” expansion, and the second half is a period of “Jeffersonian” contraction.
1st: Washington to Buchanan
2nd: Lincoln to Hoover
3rd: F.D.R. to G .W. Bush
4th: Obama
Highly Recommended: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/11/07/fourth_republic/index1.html
Ahh, this is what they mean! I kept reading articles where people were saying Obama marks the start of the 4th Republic, because of his ability to attract a broad voting coalition. I just didn’t know exactly what they meant.
I guess it is part of the “transformative election” thesis, that describes a dramatic realignment of voting tendencies.
But if that is the case, shouldn’t 1968 count as the end of one era? Because that election was the first big fracturing of the New Deal coalition?
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