Author Archive | David Bernstein

Haaretz: She’s very religious! She’s rural! She’s folksy! She’s not an intellectual! She drops her “gs” and says “you betcha”! Interestingly, the converse of the negative stereotype of the urban, slick, militantly secular, fast-talking Jewish intellectual that used to circulate widely in rural America. The rural folks seem have mostly gotten over it, and the […]

The New York Times cites a recent study as showing that professors’ ideology does not influence their students’ ideology. If one actually goes to the original source, however, one learns, that the scope of the paper is exceedingly modest. What it shows is that taking an individual class from a random political science professor cannot […]

Here’s a video of my adorable second cousin Isaac as “Barack Obama.” Maybe he’ll be the first Jewish president.

According to this story, the answer is that the two most Republican-leaning segments of the Jewish community, Orthodox Jews and “Russians,” are younger on average than other Jews. And I would add that the effect is likely understated, because Haredi/ultra-Orthodox Jews are unlikely to be reachable by pollsters, and the more recent Russian immigrants have […]

Last week, I praised Obama’s display of knowledge in his infamous 2001 interview about the Constitution and redistribution when he was a state senator. It was impressive. But when you run for president, I suppose you wind up saying silly things like this about California’s Proposition 8: “I’ve stated my opposition to this. I think […]

Today’s polls released so far show everything from a 47-45% Obama lead (well within the margin of error), with 8% undecided, in the TIPP poll, to a 52-43-5 result in the “Gallup expanded.” The CBS and ABC News polls, so far the most favorable to Obama, aren’t out for today. So the polls are predicting […]

by a previously reasonable commentator goes to Joe Klein, who wrote the following in response to claims that Obama associate Rashid Khalidi is anti-Semitic: “I’ve never met Rashid Khalidi, but he is (a) Palestinian and therefore (b) a semite, so the charge of anti-semitism is fatuous.” In other words, because Arabs are “semites” they can’t […]

Here is McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb just dying to bring up the Rev. Jeremiah Wright when asked whether Obama has any anti-Semitic connections, but adhering to McCain’s order that Wright is off the table. (And, for the record, while there are reasons to be suspicious of Wright’s attitudes toward Jews, including his closeness with Farrakhan […]

We all had a good chuckle a while back when an obscure columnist claimed that McCain-Palin’s invocation of “socialist” to describe Obama’s economic policies was a code word for black. Well, here are the less obscure John Judis of The New Republic and Matthew Yglesias of Think Progress saying more or less the same thing, […]

No surprise: he’s for it. And just to be clear, when Obama defends affirmative action, he is defending, specifically, decisions that rely on race as the decisive factor, what some call “racial preferences”: The [Harvard Law Review] Selection Committee first identifies the group of candidates whose excellent performance, either in the classroom or on the […]

A thoughtful piece by Stuart Taylor: When John McCain and many other Republicans ask, “Who is the real Barack Obama?” there is an implication that maybe he is somehow sinister or extremist. I don’t believe that. But I do think that there are two very different Obamas. Both are extraordinarily intelligent, serene under pressure, and […]

In past election cycles, I really haven’t had a strong preference among the candidates. I voted for the Bernstein/Bernstein ticket in 2004, and can’t really remember who I voted for, or for that matter whether I voted, from 1988 to 2000. But I’m much more of a Republican partisan this time, for a few reasons: […]

Courtesy of a reader, here is an LA Times article from 1990 about Obama’s Harvard Law Review experience that I hadn’t seen before. The only revelation? Some details about a research paper Obama wrote for Laurence Tribe on abortion. I’m guessing that this was research for Tribe’s book Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes, which appeared […]

Sen. McCain wants the L.A. Times to release the video in its possession of a 2003 farewell dinner for Palestinian activist and one-time PLO ally (and some claim spokesman) Rashid Khalidi. No wonder. In 2005, the New York Sun reported: In Chicago, the Khalidis founded the Arab American Action Network, and Mona Khalidi served as […]

I agree with co-blogger Ilya (below) that McCain started this campaign with some serious disadvantages, and one can argue that it’s surprising that the presidential race is as close as it is. On the other hand, consider this: Kerry, Dukakis, Mondale, McGovern, and Humphrey. Those are the last five northeastern or midwestern liberals to win […]