Sunday opinion.
Ezra Klein:
The votes are (mostly) counted. The Republicans have clearly and decisively won. But did the Democrats actually lose?
They lost the election, certainly. And many of them lost their jobs. But the point of legislating isn’t job security. It’s legislation. And on that count the members of the 111th Congress succeeded wildly, even historically.
Didn't someone say "elections have consequences"? The 2008 one did.
Mark Blumenthal:
In Nevada, polls predicted the wrong winner of this week's Senate election. Or did they? While public media polls in late October consistently gave a slight advantage to Republican Senate challenger Sharron Angle, the internal campaign polls gave Democrat Harry Reid the edge and campaign pollsters on both sides attribute the difference to a combination of greater care in modeling the demographics of the electorate, more persistence in reaching all sampled voters and the added value of registered voter lists.
Nate (just a blogger) Silver continues to take apart Rasmussen.
Rasmussen Reports didn’t do any of these three things [to address pre-election GOP bias]. Its pollsters didn’t provide cogent explanations of why their results were different; the only explanation they offered — that it had to do with their likely voter model — turned out not to hold water. Rasmussen also didn’t "fix" its house effect: it was quite persistent throughout the whole cycle. And their polls did quite poorly, rather than extremely well, on Election Day.
Nor has Rasmussen been any more willing to engage in a discussion about the issues in its polling after the fact. When I asked Scott Rasmussen for comment Friday morning, he wrote me a terse e-mail that said he "can’t imagine any need to respond," and he has been similarly dismissive with other reporters.
Rasmussen doesn't respond to bloggers. Or the NY Times. And how this plays out will be interesting in terms of whether the NYT connection helps Nate any (he was doing fine without it.)
Frank Rich:
President Obama can make a comeback, but only if he figures out what he has to come back from and where he has to go.
Don't worry. That's what we're here for.
NYT Editorial:
If the lame duck Congress is responsible — a big if — it will require the wealthy to pay more and shield the vulnerable from increases.
Everyone else would keep their tax breaks in the near term, but be put on notice that fixing the budget will require tax increases and spending cuts as the economy recovers. Then the next Congress must pick up where the lame ducks leave off, by undertaking broad tax-and-spending reform to bring revenues in line with outlays.
Indulge me. Because I live in true blue CT, the Land of Steady Habits:
CT Post:
When a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate sinks $50 million into a losing campaign, it's natural for the less-monied runners-up for the GOP nomination to wonder if they would have performed better.
Neither uttered the specific words "I told you so," but in separate interviews former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons and economist/radio host Peter Schiff maintained they were better candidates than wrestling executive Linda McMahon.
Given that the media savvy McMahon was surprisingly unlikeable (43/50 fav/unfav in the last Q-poll), we have seen it's hard to separate the nasty campaign from the candidate. Simmons would have been stronger, Schiff would have been a national joke.
Colin McInroe on the CT Gov election:
It started on Tuesday night when I realized that the city of Bridgeport, although dimly aware that there was some kind of election thingy happening, had not obtained anywhere near enough ballots. This is like inviting 25 people over to your house when you have a six-pack of beer in the refrigerator.
Their back-up plan, I believe was to allow people to circle the entrée that most resembled their favorite candidate on a Cheesecake Factory menu and put that through the scanner, but this is, strictly speaking, not considered standard electoral practice.
New Haven Register editorial:
A win is a win. A day after Dan Malloy is inaugurated as the state’s next governor, it won’t matter if he won by one vote or 100,000. But, Malloy’s apparent squeaker of a victory is certainly no mandate. He barely beat his Republican opponent, Tom Foley, who did far better than the rest of the Republican ticket in attracting unaffiliated voters.