Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Monday morning quarterbacking from your favorite gasbags and opinionators.

Paul Krugman:

Last Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kinds of things we’ve grown accustomed to, including large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption "National Socialist Healthcare." It was grotesque — and it was also ominous. For what we may be seeing is America starting to be Californiafied.

The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn’t a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership — in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. Senior lawmakers were in attendance, and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings.

Ross Douthat: Berlin Wall ceremonies are an open invitation to be pompous and portentious. Here's my offering. Sigh. So many cold warriors are sad that they have no cold war any more.

Krugman (blog):

If I had to make a guess, the fastest progress in the technology of daily life — the biggest changes — probably came between the 1880s and the 1920s. But good stuff has been happening all along.

EJ Dionne:

Here's a story you may have missed because it flies in the face of the dreary conventional wisdom: When advocates of public programs take on the right-wing anti-government crowd directly, the government-haters lose.

Fred Hiatt:

The House bill would move us toward universal health coverage -- and bankruptcy.

Remember the days of Woodward and Bernstein?  The Post doesn't.

Stu Rothenberg:

Where there are winners, there are usually also losers. None of the major public pollsters was dramatically wrong in Virginia, but Research 2000, which polled for DailyKos, showed McDonnell with only a 10-point lead in late October, primarily because it overstated Deeds' support.

In New Jersey, the Monmouth University/Gannett poll erred when it showed Corzine up by 2 points in its last survey. But by far the worst-performing survey in either state was Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for Democracy Corps in New Jersey.

Democracy Corps polling showed Corzine pulling ahead in his race in early October and stretching his lead to 4 points (41 percent to 36 percent for Christie) among likely voters and 5 points in a higher-turnout electorate in its Oct. 29 to Nov. 1 survey. The survey showed Daggett drawing in the midteens. He actually drew just less than 6 percent.

Stu is right. The more Deeds ran away from Obama, the more his support collapsed. The exit polls I saw don't say when. The turnout was 33 D, 37 R, 30 I for Gov in 2009.  In 2008 it was 39 D, 33 R, 27 I. Also, in 2008 it was 11% 65 and older, this last week it was 18%. McDonnell turned out his voters, but not Deeds.