Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Apparently “baby killing” is not such an effective scare tactic anymore

Law, Politics, , , , ,

Today marks the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and a new poll reveals that the ruling is more popular now than it’s ever been before:

Seven in 10 adults say the Supreme Court should not overturn its landmark decision establishing abortion rights, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll.

That is the highest level of support for Roe v. Wade in the poll’s 24 years of tracking the question. Only about one in four said the court should overturn its verdict.

Michael Tomasky zooms out:

Same-sex marriage approval. Marijuana legalized. Now this. It continues to amaze me how the country has flipped culturally. I think this is probably Obama’s biggest impact, more than health care or anything else. He’s changed the political culture of the country. In some senses by doing particular things–repealing don’t ask, don’t tell. But in other senses just by being Barack Obama.

In accepting him as their president (which 70 percent of Americans happily do, even when they may disagree with this or that policy), Americans appear also to have accept in some internal way that it’s a different time and a different country now. It seems natural that that psychic change would first manifest itself in certain shifting cultural attitudes, as these are low-hanging fruit compared to the big policy changes that face ferocious opposition in Washington.

It may also be that it’s not really Obama who made these changes, that they were well in formation when he just happened to come along and embody them. I think here of the Beatles as an analogy. They certainly changed the culture and the world and led a revolution, but many societal factors were lined up in harmony just waiting for someone to come along and pop the cork: the rise of the teenage demographic, the end of conscription (in Britain, which gave young males more freedom), and so on. Everything came together and boom it all went. Same kind of thing here.

“A personable middle-aged man.”

Humor, Politics, , , ,

That’s the sensible description of Barack Obama, as written by China’s state-run Xinhua:

Barack Obama, a personable middle-aged man, inaugurated as the first African-American president of the United States four years ago with an ambitious oath — “Yes, we can.”

However, when Obama swore in for a second term as the country’s top leader on Monday, a man with eyebags, black spots and white hair stepped on the stage.

The article ends on a gloomy note:

Apparently, sad moments overwhelmed happy ones in Obama’s first term, as the number of things he can’t do is far beyond those he can. Even his own doctor admitted that President Obama now looks eight years older than four years ago.

Whether the next four years could be easier for him remains a mystery, but it is for sure that Obama, buried in unstopping affairs at home and abroad, could never be any younger.

Returning the favor to Bibi

Politics, , , , ,

Alan Berger thinks President Obama should pay Israel a visit just ahead of the nation’s January 22 elections:

A politician is expected to reward friends and punish whoever dares to cross him. So Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s barely veiled backing for Mitt Romney not only bent the unwritten rule requiring Israeli leaders to preserve a posture of immaculate neutrality in US elections; it meant that Obama owes the Israeli pol some sort of payback.

If Obama’s past performances can be taken as a reliable guide, there is little chance he would retaliate against Netanyahu by meddling in the Israeli election scheduled for Jan. 22. But he should. Not for the petty motive of settling scores with Netanyahu, but to safeguard the true long-term interests of Israelis, Americans, and all the peoples of the Middle East…

Considering that a new party to the right of Netanyahu’s Likud is polling 12 to 14 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, that Likud’s own list is now dominated by radicals impatient with democratic restraint, and that Israel’s centrist and left-leaning parties seem to be in steep decline, an Obama speech could hardly be expected to enable someone other than Netanyahu to form the next government. In Israel’s parliamentary system, however, the shape and disposition of a government is often determined in the bargaining, balancing, and bribing with ministerial portfolios that go under the rubric of forming a coalition. And the right sort of speech from Obama could have a crucial effect on the post-election process of deal-making.

Steering clear of the cliff

Politics, , , , ,

Joshua Green wonders what might have been, had President Obama been willing to maximize his leverage from the fiscal cliff:

Even before the deal was settled, many liberals were outraged at how much he was willing to concede to avoid going over the cliff — an event for which every poll showed Republicans would be blamed. Most Republicans were terrified at the prospect.

Nonetheless, Obama agreed to raise income tax rates only on households making $450,000 or more; establish a generous inheritance tax exemption; and lightly tax dividends and capital gains. The income-tax threshold alone sacrifices $200 billion compared with what he had once insisted on. But the revenue sacrificed isn’t terribly important.

What is important is that Obama yielded on resolving the budget deadlines, the most consequential being the need to raise the debt limit. Already, Republicans are threatening default without deep cuts in return. Had Obama been willing to go over the cliff, they probably wouldn’t be, since the public would be furiously blaming them. By pulling back, Obama passed up a chance to “break the fever” (as he likes to put it) that afflicts the Republican Party and led it to oppose nearly all that he has done during his presidency.

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What the presidents read

Books, Politics, , , , , ,

The literary site Full Stop has just posted my short piece on presidential reading lists:

In this golden age of American polarization, it is no surprise that even one’s reading is subject to the scourge of partisan bickering. During this year’s presidential campaign, Amazon.com actually produced an interactive map detailing which states’ customers were buying conservative versus liberal titles and coloring those states red and blue, respectively.

Even politicians are now just as often producers as consumers of the written word: today, penning a flag-waving bildungsroman-esque memoir is nearly a prerequisite for launching a presidential campaign. Obama authored Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope; Mitt Romney wrote No Apologies. If Herman Cain fends off his circling sexual harassment accusers in the dually relevant courts of law and public opinion, perhaps he will release a recipe book of pizza toppings.

Winning votes, one by one

Politics, Technology, , , , ,

The story of Barack Obama’s data-driven campaign approach is still being told. Building on their 2008 success, the Obama data junkies assembled a truly astounding, state-of-the-art framework to microtarget advertising and fundraising appeals to the individual level. The MIT Technology Review just ran an eye-opening three-part article on how the team put the data monstrosity together:

Many of those who went to Washington after the 2008 election in order to further the president’s political agenda returned to Chicago in the spring of 2011 to work on his reëlection. The chastening losses they had experienced in Washington separated them from those who had known only the ecstasies of 2008. “People who did ‘08, but didn’t do ‘10, and came back in ‘11 or ‘12—they had the hardest culture clash,” says Jeremy Bird, who became national field director on the reëlection campaign. But those who went to Washington and returned to Chicago developed a particular appreciation for Wagner’s methods of working with the electorate at an atomic level. It was a way of thinking that perfectly aligned with their ­simple theory of what it would take to win the president reëlection: get everyone who had voted for him in 2008 to do it again. At the same time, they knew they would need to succeed at registering and mobilizing new voters, especially in some of the fastest-growing demographic categories, to make up for any 2008 voters who did defect.

Obama’s campaign began the election year confident it knew the name of every one of the 69,456,897 Americans whose votes had put him in the White House. They may have cast those votes by secret ballot, but Obama’s analysts could look at the Democrats’ vote totals in each precinct and identify the people most likely to have backed him. Pundits talked in the abstract about reassembling Obama’s 2008 coalition. But within the campaign, the goal was literal. They would reassemble the coalition, one by one, through personal contacts.

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Extremism, rejected

Politics, , , , ,

The latest CNN/ORC poll highlights American disillusionment with the Republican Party:

Fifty-three percent of people, including 22 percent of Republicans, said the GOP’s views and policies have pushed them beyond the mainstream. The number is up dramatically from previous years. In 2010, fewer than 40 percent thought the party was too extreme.

Democrats were considered to be a “generally mainstream” party by 57 percent in the new poll.

“That’s due in part to the fact that the Republican brand is not doing all that well,” said Keating Holland, CNN’s polling director.

Light at the end of the long, dark tunnel?

Media, Politics, , , , , , , , , ,
[tweet http://twitter.com/JonathanJewel/status/281451508585885696] [tweet http://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/281460641825435649]

Today, President Obama announced his intention to put a plan for gun control before Congress by the end of January:

The president’s pledge came as House Republicans restated their firm opposition to enacting any new limits on firearms or ammunition, setting up the possibility of a philosophical clash over the Second Amendment early in Mr. Obama’s second term.

“This time, the words need to lead to action,” Mr. Obama said, referring to to past mass shootings that prompted outrage but led to little or no legislative changes.

He said the proposals would not be just about weapons. “We are going to need to work on making access to mental health care at least as easy as access to guns,” he said.

At an appearance in the White House briefing room, the president said he had directed Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to lead an interagency effort to develop in the next several weeks what the White House says will be a multifaceted approach to preventing similar mass shootings and the many other gun deaths that occur each year.

Mr. Obama, flanked by Mr. Biden, did not offer any specifics about the proposals. But he promised to confront the longstanding opposition in Congress that has previously blocked broad gun control measures.

“I will use all the powers of this office to help advance efforts aimed at preventing more tragedies like this,” Mr. Obama said. “It won’t be easy, but that can’t be an excuse not to try.”

The White House press corps responded by…asking about the fiscal cliff:

“We are going to need to work on making access to mental health care as easy as access to a gun,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re going to need to look more closely at a culture that all too often glorifies guns and violence.”

His words, following five days of extensive news coverage and national debate, were intensely focused on gun violence. He addressed no other topics. Yet judging by the questions that followed his address, most of the members of the Washington press corps had other things on their minds.

“I’d like to ask you about the other serious issue consuming this town right now, the fiscal cliff,” was the first question, from The Associated Press’s correspondent, Ben Feller.

Mr. Obama answered. Then came the next question, again about the so-called “fiscal cliff”: “What is your next move?” Then: “You mentioned the $700,000, $800,000 — are you willing to move on income level?” And so on, for at least 15 minutes, before a question about gun violence was finally asked, by David Jackson of USA Today.

What does Top Chef have in common with the 2012 presidential election?

Miscellaneous, , , , , , , , ,

Screen Shot 2012-12-13 at 10.52.11 PM

Although it has existed for some time, I started playing around with Google Trends today and discovered some very useful tools. One is called Correlate, and it allows users to enter time-series or state-level data and then query Google’s aggregated search history.

Just for fun, I entered Obama’s 2012 popular vote percentages by state and then queried the database. The term whose search frequency is the most strongly correlated with Obama’s state-level voting percentages (as measured by the Pearson correlation coefficient) is…”top chef,” with a coefficient (r) of 0.8702. As you can see above, on the left is a map of Obama’s voting percentages by state (greener means a higher percentage of people in that state voted for him in the 2012 presidential election), and on the right is a map showing state-level frequencies of the search term “top chef.” They’re really quite similar.

And here are the rest of the top 10, with their corresponding r-values:

2. december 24 (0.8642)

3. july 18 (0.8593)

4. alia (0.8569)

5. december 18 (0.8547)

6. slum (0.8545)

7. lede (0.8495)

8. august 20 (0.8462)

9. july 11 (0.8418)

10. july 22 (0.8414)

In other news, procrastination from final exams is a very real phenomenon.