Wailing Into The Void

She did what she had to do as far as rallying the troops behind Obama goes.  There will be plenty of stubborn holdouts who will continue to refuse to get behind the Democratic nominee, but that isn’t on Hillary anymore.  She seemed to be at her best when talking about the things that she is most passionate about, especially healthcare.  She’s also a great attacker, so I wished she had spent a little more time bashing McCain.  What she did do was pretty good, nevertheless.

 

They’re wild and very unpredictable.

For most Americans, it’s probably Obama:

The Tax Policy Center, a research group run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, has done the most detailed analysis of the Obama and McCain tax plans, and it has published a series of fascinating tables. For the bottom 80 percent of the population — those households making $118,000 or less — McCain’s various tax cuts would mean a net savings of about $200 a year on average. Obama’s proposals would bring $900 a year in savings. So for most people, Obama is the tax cutter in this campaign.

Welcome to my blog.

Life is getting kind of boring.  This blog doesn’t really fill the hole.  Not that I put all that much effort into this blog, mind you.

One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers lays it out.

Reports coming out of Denver indicate Hillary Clinton will release her delegates.

If Joe Biden is not the Democratc vice presidential nominee,  I will shut down this blog.

The conventional wisdom among the cognoscenti seems to be that a vice presidential candidate doesn’t normally effect the outcome of an election.  I’m not sure how we can know this for sure.  It’s not like we can run elections in alternate universes with different vice presidential candidates in order to determine that there were any appreciable differences in electoral outcomes. 

I wouldn’t expect a vice presidential pick to gain or lose a candidate a large number of votes but I wouldn’t expect the effect to be completely negligible either.  I’ll concede that the margin of victory in most states in most elections is usually large enough to make whatever effect the vice presidential candidate has moot, but in recent elections we seem some razor thin margins. In 2000, five states were decided by margins of 0.5% or less.  In 2004, three states were decided by margins this small.  This year seems to be shaping up to be very close as well.  Who’s to say, if Obama ends up squeaking by in a state like Florida, that it wasn’t Biden who pushed him over the top?

Carl Pavano takes the hill tonight.