My thoughts are amply approximated by Richard Cohen’s column today.
Author Archive | David Bernstein
Starting a Column with a Lie?
Thomas Friedman in the New York Times: “Israeli friends have been asking me whether a re-elected President Obama will take revenge on Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu for the way he and Sheldon Adelson, his foolhardy financier, openly backed Mitt Romney. My answer to Israelis is this: You should be so lucky.” I’m pretty sure it’s […]
Those Right-Wing George Mason Law Students … Support Obama
It’s well-known that George Mason Law School has a libertarian and conservative-leaning faculty, unique among non-religiously affiliated law schools in the United States. What’s odd, though, is that law school guides consistently state that George Mason has a very conservative student body. Princeton Review, for example, ranks George Mason number 4 for have the “most […]
Heresy in the Legal Academy
Former VC guest blogger and UCLA law professor Richard Sander is a political liberal who has done some pioneering work on affirmative action mismatch: essentially, if law schools (and other educational institutions) dip too far into the applicant pool to fill their diversity goals, many of the purported beneficiaries of preference policies wind up being […]
A Few Thoughts about the Election
(1) The Republicans’ other demographic problem: Sure, the GOP needs to reach out to the growing Hispanic population. But the bigger problem is that single women vote overwhelmingly Democratic, and for the first time in American history there are more single women than married women. Single women are much more economically vulnerable than are married […]
Gary Johnson Gets about 1% of the Vote
From the little information available out there, it looks like Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson is getting about 1% of the vote, and doing so pretty consistently nationwide. This constitutes the Libertarians’ best showing since 1980, when they had a well-funded campaign (unlike this year) thanks to self-funded VP candidate David Koch, and also received […]
Trende on the Election: A Nailbiter
For those who can’t get enough election speculation, Sean Trende, whose work I think highly of, examines the relevant information and concludes that the national polls are more likely to be correct than the state polls (he was ambivalent on this before). He concludes that it’s going to be a very tight race, decided by […]
Some Final Election Wildcards
The recent national poll news is overall bad for Romney, suggesting a reversal in momentum in favor of Obama. The one possible saving grace is that this momentum may primarily be an artifact of increased Obama support in Northeastern states where Romney was not competitive to begin with. The Pew poll, which shows Obama up […]
My Election Prediction
I thinking about doing a post on my election prediction, but Ted Frank has written a post on his election prediction and I agree with almost every word. Bottom line: Obama is a 60-40 favorite. Before the hurricane, I would have said “tossup.”
Two Takes on the State-National Poll Divergence
National polls show a tie, or perhaps a tiny Romney lead. (Right now, Real Clear Politics average of polls shows a tie, but the larger a poll’s sample size, the better Romney is doing. And fwiw, I find it hard to take the National Journal’s poll with a five-point Obama edge seriously except as a […]
Just How Unpopular are Race Preferences in Admissions?
This unpopular: At Brown University, long known for being among the most politically correct universities in the country, and where Obama supporters outnumber Romney supporters by better than 9 to 1, only 35% of students think the university should consider race in student admissions or in faculty hiring. H/T Eric Muller, who provided a link […]
Blog 538 on Ohio
Nate Silver has a curious post up today. He points out that Obama is leading Romney by an average of 2.3% (according to Real Clear Politics, slightly more according to other averages) in Ohio polls. He then goes through all recent examples when there were at least three polls in a state ten days before […]
Ted Frank: Is 538 Wrong?
There have been many silly posts in the right-leaning blogosphere attacking Nate Silver at the 538 blog for his perceived pro-Obama tendencies. In fact, Silver created his model earlier this year, and has stuck with it as the campaign has progressed. So unless he’s lying about the results of his model, there’s no reason to […]
Why Libertarian Law Professors Tend to Support Romney
As Jonathan and Ilya have recently pointed out, Reason Magazine’s writers are overwhelmingly voting for Gary Johnson, or they are not voting at all. By contrast, most libertarian law professors of my acquaintance are supporting Romney. (And even back in 2008, when some libertarians supported Obama, this was a distinct minority position among libertarian law […]
The President They are Looking for No Longer Exists
Now there is only a politician called “Dances with Relative Abandon.”