Bill de Blasio's 15 year old son Dante
Check out the de Blasio ad for Dante's list of why Bill de Blasio is different. It's been a long time since there's been a list like that in a campaign ad.
So the new NYC Qpoll has de Blasio at 30 and Weiner at 10 and that dude selling watches off a table on 42nd street just behind him.
— @DemFromCT
:
With strong support from white Democratic likely primary voters and voters critical of the so- called stop-and-frisk police tactic, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio leads the Democratic race for New York City mayor with 30 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
With four weeks to go, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has 24 percent, with 22 percent for former Comptroller William Thompson, 10 percent for former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, 6 percent for Comptroller John Liu, 1 percent for former Council member Sal Albanese and 7 percent undecided, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Grateful I made FP's Twitterati list,
http://t.co/... but wondering what I need to do to be called "tart-tongued" like @Asher_Wolf.
— @emptywheel
Marcy Wheeler's been a must read for ever since she's been blogging. We go back together to the late great
The Next Hurrah. Here's one of her last pieces there
from 2007 on FISA that shows that she's always known her stuff.
Unlike Marcy, a slew of reporters can't be bothered with actual policy and detail. They focus only on personality and horse race. Here is a reminder for them from AP:
You know all those polls that say Hillary Rodham Clinton has the lead in the race for president in 2016? Ignore them.
Polling on presidential preferences this far out is meaningless.
The pollsters who test hypothetical matchups are hanging a lot on their opening line: "If the election for president were being held today ..." But the truth is, the election is more than three years away, and a poll now cannot tell you how people will vote in the future.
Duh. Polls can tell you which constituency is passionate and which is not yet engaged. And they can also tell you which names will elicit the weary-but-it's-my-duty-to-explain to you why
this woman can't be President. For example:
Jonathan Chait:
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen mourns that Hillary Clinton lacks a "message." ("All she lacks is what she has always lacked — an overriding, stirring message.") It's true — Clinton has no campaign message. She also lacks a headquarters, campaign manager, website, ads, and logo, not to mention iPhone apps. It's almost as if the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign doesn't even exist yet.
John Mecklin has a terrific piece in
CJR on false equivalency in reporting.
Sometimes, a headline pretty much tells the whole, journalistically horrifying story. Late in July, Las Vegas CBS affiliate KLAS TV broadcast a short video report on back-to-school immunizations; the accompanying web article sported this headline, “Doctors Debate Need for Child Vaccinations.”
Well, no, they don’t, actually. The medical consensus in support of a standard series of childhood vaccinations is overwhelming. But the ensuing KLAS article (which closely tracks the station’s video report) essentially ignored reams of science that supports the efficacy and safety of immunization in protecting children from serious, often lethal diseases, in favor of exploring this jaw-dropping straw argument: “Vaccines have been debated for years in the medical field. While some doctors believe they are vital to a child’s health, other doctors believe in a more natural approach to disease prevention.”
In an unfortunate and disheartening display of false balance and failed reporting, KLAS reporter Diane Tuazon then proceeded to play out the alleged “debate” over immunizations by quoting a local pediatrician, who (along with the world’s assembled medical establishment) supports vaccination, and a local “holistic physician” who said parents should consider a variety of factors as they decide whether they are going to vaccinate their kids and look into “alternatives to vaccination.” The report goes on to assert that holistic doctors say parents should research “how to use diet to reduce the risk of infection.”
His piece was fair and balanced. KLAS? Not so much. But the topic (vaccines, public health, childhood preventable disease and the consequences of what's said and done about it) matter far more than the outlet reporting it.
Greg Sargent continues to be grounded in reality:
Republicans seem to think that if they kick enough noise about [the Affordable Care Act], it will reinforce the narrative that it is a catastrophe, helping them in 2014. But whether or not that will work among persuadable voters — for all I know the main target of it is the base — this particular case reinforces the incoherence and even potential political weakness of the overall GOP posture on health care.
After all, the GOP position is to repeal Obamacare, which is to say, to repeal all of the law’s consumer protections forever. Now Republicans are hitting Obama for delaying a portion of the consumer protections for a year?
