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- Kevin Drum looks through some exit polls and finds that the largest demographic swing to the Republicans this year came from people who didn't vote in the 2008 election, although "the actual number of people in this category is small enough that it's not especially important." I would guess these are the conservative voters who were dissatisfied with their choices two years ago and knew their vote wouldn't matter in a year shaping up to be a Democratic landslide. Democrats had a similar problem this year but the result was far more severe.
- David Weigel makes the point that all the attention lavished on right-wing bomb tossers by the liberal blogosphere does little to actually remove these people from office and assists in boosting their national profile (he cites Michele Bachmann as a prime example). I agree, but that doesn't mean they should be ignored, either. Public officials who spread misinformation should be called out on it, and that is what the "professional left" has built online over the last decade. This, of course, has led these pols to bypass all media and stick exclusively to right-wing news media.
- Daniel McCarthy speculates: "And were [Ron] Paul to bolt the GOP and run as an independent or Libertarian -- something I don’t expect to happen, but which Republican kingpins need to think about -- the GOP would almost certainly forfeit the White House." Hmmm. Something less than 2 million votes were cast for third-party candidates in 2008 -- clearly not enough to swing an election. Even in 2004, when the winning margin was only 3 million votes, total third-party votes were less than 1.2 million. So a Paul upset would have to be on par with Ross Perot in 1992, and I think that greatly overestimates Paul's general appeal.
- Remainders: Republicans will be defending plenty of marginal districts in 2012; I never thought John Boehner would sound (somewhat) more reasonable than his Senate counterpart; this headline distills the misplaced focus of much of the political media; and Mark Penn thinks mass murder would be an excellent opportunity for Obama to "reconnect" with the country.
--Mori Dinauer
