I’m not sure if this makes me laugh or cry:
You will hear junk that John McCain disrespects women and calls his wife a cu** from the Obama people but let’s be serious people, would you have stayed if your husband treated you like that? Me either.
This from a Hillary supporter who says she’ll vote for McCain. I don’t believe this needs any further comment.
I’m starting my own (though I somehow doubt new) Status of the Electoral College map which I hope to update every Tuesday or so.
For all states I use in this order: 1) The pollster.com polling average, 2) the average of polls conducted in the past month, 3) the last poll conducted, 4) the 2004 Election results
Here is the map for June 10th. Notes are below:
Update: I just noticed that I can’t do math and that North Dakota should be light red not grey, and that the number should be McCain 206, Obama 202, Too Close to Call, 130. Sorry.
Update II: Map Fixed
My first edition of the map just shows how close this race is right now: McCain and Obama are within 4 EVs in states they lead by at least 5%, and 130 electoral votes up for grabs.
Now, I should first note states for which a pollster.com average is not yet available, and what I used if not:
Alaska (2 polls in past month)
Arkansas (1 poll in past month)
Colorado (2 polls in past month)
Connecticut (1 poll in past month)
DC (2004 Election Results)
Delaware (1 poll in February)
Georgia (2 polls in past month)
Hawaii (1 poll in February)
Idaho (1 poll in February)
Illinois (1 poll in February)
Indiana (1 poll in past month)
Louisiana (1 poll in past month)
Maine (1 poll in past month)
Maryland (1 poll in February)
Mississippi (2 polls in past month)
Montana (1 poll in April)
Nebraska (2 polls in past month)
Nevada (1 poll in past month)
North Dakota (1 poll in March)
Oklahoma (1 poll in April)
Rhode Island (1 poll in February)
South Carolina (1 poll in past month)
South Dakota (1 poll in March)
Tennessee (1 poll in April)
Utah (1 poll in past month)
Vermont (1 poll in February)
West Virginia (1 poll in last month)
Wyoming (1 poll in last month)
So obviously this isn’t necessarily the most reliable map. Hopefully polling for the general election will start to pick up now that the Democratic primary is over. However, some notes:
Democrats worried about Connecticut and Republicans worried about North Dakota can feel better in the fact that no poll has been done on any of those states in more than a month.
Democrats worried about Michigan and New Hampshire and Republicans worried about Virginia and North Carolina have more to worry about though, as there is enough polling in those places to seriously suggest that these will be contested states.
Now, onto each candidate’s pros:
Obama Pros
The good sign for Obama is that he is starting to take some normally battleground states and effectively taking them off the table. States in this group include Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington. Also a state like New Jersey, which in many elections pass might have been in the “to close to call” category, is in the “weak obama” category right now.
Also, Obama is making inroads in some traditionally red states. Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, and Virginia are all too close to call using the pollster averages while he is keeping most other battle ground states lost by Kerry close, such as New Mexico and Ohio. The only real battleground states Obama doesn’t have a grip on yet are West Virginia and Florida. On top of all this, Obama actually has a large enough lead in Colorado to take it out of “to close to call” and add it to the “weak Obama category.”
McCain Pros
One of the good things for McCain right now is that he isn’t really losing a grasp on any traditionally red states at this point in time, other than Colorado. Florida is in the “weak McCain” category, and traditional battleground states such as Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are all in the “too close to call” category.
For McCain, the states which are leaning towards him or are battle grounds, for the most part, look very similar in 2008 as they did for Bush in 2004, which is exactly where McCain hopes to keep the race. He wants to fight in Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, not in Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada, Louisiana, and Indiana.
You can always see the most recent map here.
Update:
States not polled in over 100 days:
DC, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
States not polled in over 50 days (not including above):
Oklahoma, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Tennessee.
I’m playing with different themes since I still haven’t found one I like. As a result, the look of the webpage may change.
Update: OK, It looks better now. I’ll see if I’ll work on it more.
With each day, Clinton keeps taking away any last remnants of hope her hold-out supporters have left.
Ben Smith adds:
I’d initially failed to grasp a technicality here: Clinton has not formally released her delegates.
Apparently formally “releasing” her delegates would mean that states which have yet to select a delegate slate couldn’t or at least wouldn’t have to select delegates for Clinton, and she at least wants her supporters who were chosen as delegates to go to the convention.
But I mean, really, delegates can technically choose how they vote – even on the first ballot, and asking them to “support Obama” is as close as one can get to releasing your delegates as you can without actually doing it.
Dean and Bradley waited until the convention to release delegates, probably so they could influence the party platform, and Hillary may do the same, but she’s obviously not going to try to contest Obama’s nomination at the convention, despite the hope and dreams of the hold-outs.
This is the problem with being moderate economically: I look at the economic of gas prices, and I basically feel all the hope drain out of my body.
Yes, it is outrageous that the top 5 oil companies made $116 billion (pdf) in profits in 2007. The flip side to this is that wildwide income for those same companies amounted to $1 trillion, 467.2 billion. That means profits for those five companies made up 7.9% of income.
From what I can tell from the DOE spreadsheets, the average price of gas over all grades in 2007 was $2.91 a gallon. That basically means that if 100% of oil company profits went towards the price of gas, we would have saved just about 23 cents per gallon of gas – taking it down to $2.68 a gallon. Applying it to today’s average price of gasoline, it would amount to about 31.8 cents per gallon, which would take it down to about $3.70 a gallon on average.
In other words, as obscene as making $112 billion a year is, in the whole sceme of things, it isn’t necessarily all that much. It might help, but it clearly isn’t even close to the full answer we need.
The biggest thing to go around Washington recently is this windfall profits tax. While that sounds great politically, realistically it won’t make any more difference in the price of gas than getting rid of the federal gasoline taxes. It may also ultimately raise prices as well. The theory behind the tax is that oil companies would lower their profits (and thus cut the price of gas) to avoid paying the tax, when it is just as likely they’ll increase prices and increase their profits that much more to make up for paying the tax.
Also, while the gas companies getting out of paying taxes is bad, suddenly dumping more taxes on them by eliminating tax breaks for the oil companies is likely to just lead to higher prices still.
Now, those who are more conservative than I am in economics might look at these numbers and be like “well, if prices would go up if raised taxes, wouldn’t prices go down if we eliminated taxes on oil companies?”
The answer to that is: in economic theory, yes. In economic reality, probably not. People are already used to paying $3 something a gallon for gas. If you axe taxes on oil companies, which are they most likely to do? Keep the price where it is and just pocket the savings, or actually lower prices?
If the gasoline industry was one where all the major companies weren’t joined at the hip, there may be some hope that competition between them would lead to lower prices. The problem is that the gasoline industry is one where the companies, even if they don’t “formally” collude, do a lot of winking and nodding at each other in regards to gasoline prices.
Unless one of the major oil companies takes the chance of actually lowering their prices in response to a tax break, we’re not going to see savings. Also, tax breaks for oil companies in the past have failed to lead to corresponding lower prices at the pump.
So in that regard, lowering taxes won’t help any more than raising taxes.
All this is complicated by the fact that every decision on this matter should be driven by one question: will it lower prices. Not by how much it will punish oil companies, or what economic theory the action is supposed to follow, but what will actually lower prices.
As going through all this suggests, the answer to what can lower prices is a pretty grim answer: basically nothing other than just using less of it.
