Sunday opinion.
National Journal:
The rally, Stewart said, would be judged on its "color and size." And thus began, in mockery of the heavy attention paid to the demographics of August’s Glenn Beck rally, Stewart asked the audience to count off, one by one, enumerating its race and gender, deploying "Daily Show" correspondents throughout the crowd to interview attendees.
"I think we’re in good shape," Stewart said.
So, crowd size?
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert just opened their ‘Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Fear,’ and for many, the big question is "how many people are in attendance." While its far too early to know a real number, Comedy Central has estimated the crowd size to be between 400 million and 6 billion people.
WaPo LTE:
In the Oct. 24 Outlook section, editor Carlos Lozada implores Jon Stewart to "Cancel the rally. For our sanity." Then he says: "I know, I know, it's a satire, a sendup of rallies, a rally against rallies, a mockery. . . . I get it."
Obviously not.
NY Times editorial:
Shrill political attacks have saturated the airwaves for months, but behind them is the real problem of this demoralizing election: the dark flow of dollars, often secretly provided by donors with very special interests.
Tyler Cowan:
Over all, it turns out that the continuing arrival of immigrants to American shores is encouraging business activity here, thereby producing more jobs, according to a new study. Its authors argue that the easier it is to find cheap immigrant labor at home, the less likely that production will relocate offshore.
Sasha Issenberg:
An increasingly influential cadre of Democratic strategists is finding new ideas in the same place Malchow did: behavioral-science experiments that treat campaigns as their laboratories and voters as unwitting guinea pigs. The growing use of experimental methods — Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote, calls them "prescription drug trials for democracy" — is convulsing a profession where hunches and instinct have long ruled. Already, experimental findings have upended a lot of folk wisdom about how votes are won. The most effective direct mail might not be the most eye-catching in the mailbox but the least conspicuous. It is better to have an anonymous, chatty volunteer remind voters it’s Election Day than a recorded message from Bill Clinton or Jay-Z. The most winnable voters may be soft supporters of the opposition, not the voters who polls say are undecided. ("Undecided" may just be another word for "unlikely to vote.")
Jon Ralston on the slight Dem lead in NV early voting:
- If Harry Reid is not ahead when those first numbers pop up on Election Night – the tallies of the early and absentee votes – he probably will lose.
- Reid may need to win Washoe County to offset losses in rural Nevada. The Democrats are down by 13,000 votes now, so it is not unreasonable to assume Reid will lose the cow counties by at least 25,000 votes. If Reid wins Clark County by 35,000 votes plus – a tall order -- he could afford to lose Washoe. But not by a lot.
- These numbers indicate Angle probably needs a double-digit win among independent and other voters. If Reid can keep that margin in single digits, he probably will be re-elected.
And now we wait....
Added: More Ralston:
Atmospherics are terrible for Reid, but he will hold on