Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Good News for Rudy
This too, expect I did not: Romney to pull ads in South Carolina and Florida.
There are more delegates up for grabs in Florida than in all the early states combined. Florida is followed shortly by Super Tuesday. Romney's Michigan ties should carry him through there, though like NH, Michigan allows independent votes which help McCain. If Romney doesn't think he can beat Huckabee in South Carolina, then it's unlikely McCain can, though nothing so far has gone according to anyone's plan. Either way, the odds are looking better by the day for Rudy to end up as the tallest midget in Miami come the end of the month.
The great lie we are being told right now is how "it can all change in a second." Just because the hand on the clock ticks one second at a time, does not mean that the world is a series of stills flashing by like a movie. Polls and narrative hooks about "momentum" are fictional meringues whipped up to get past the fact that peoples' minds are in flux right up until the moment they vote. The framing of "if the election were held today" treats elections as if they were a solar eclipse in the time of Chaucer. If the election were being held today, the past six months would have been entirely different.
As for Hillary's astonishing, unprecedented, Shackleton-like--screw that--Lazarus-like comeback against unthinkable odds, it consisted of what, 5-10% of Democratic primary voters switching from Obama to her? Or maybe the 100 people who had always planned to vote for her but said "Obama" to a pollster on Sunday night on a whim changed their minds yet again? On that note, her NH victory sets her up to walk the bases in Michigan, and let Edwards take South Carolina largely uncontested, and thence to Florida where she could well decisively regain the upper hand. And that, friends, would be the best news the GOP could possibly pay for. ¶ 3:23 PM
This too, expect I did not: Romney to pull ads in South Carolina and Florida.
There are more delegates up for grabs in Florida than in all the early states combined. Florida is followed shortly by Super Tuesday. Romney's Michigan ties should carry him through there, though like NH, Michigan allows independent votes which help McCain. If Romney doesn't think he can beat Huckabee in South Carolina, then it's unlikely McCain can, though nothing so far has gone according to anyone's plan. Either way, the odds are looking better by the day for Rudy to end up as the tallest midget in Miami come the end of the month.
The great lie we are being told right now is how "it can all change in a second." Just because the hand on the clock ticks one second at a time, does not mean that the world is a series of stills flashing by like a movie. Polls and narrative hooks about "momentum" are fictional meringues whipped up to get past the fact that peoples' minds are in flux right up until the moment they vote. The framing of "if the election were held today" treats elections as if they were a solar eclipse in the time of Chaucer. If the election were being held today, the past six months would have been entirely different.
As for Hillary's astonishing, unprecedented, Shackleton-like--screw that--Lazarus-like comeback against unthinkable odds, it consisted of what, 5-10% of Democratic primary voters switching from Obama to her? Or maybe the 100 people who had always planned to vote for her but said "Obama" to a pollster on Sunday night on a whim changed their minds yet again? On that note, her NH victory sets her up to walk the bases in Michigan, and let Edwards take South Carolina largely uncontested, and thence to Florida where she could well decisively regain the upper hand. And that, friends, would be the best news the GOP could possibly pay for. ¶ 3:23 PM
