I have been sitting on this trying to calm down.  I try to avoid getting personally invested in particular policy disputes beyond giving my best guess at what  think and writing it on this blog.  I’m not a political party sort of person.  When I was young and foolish I was an involved Young Democrat. [...]

The incoming head of the Minnesota State GOP has a statement on today’s State Supreme Court Ruling in favor of Al Franken.  
Today’s ruling wrongly disenfranchised thousands of Minnesotans who deserve to have their votes counted.  Alongside Senator Coleman, the Republican Party of Minnesota has fought to make sure every vote counts and all voters [...]

Not to sound like Yakov Smirnov, but in America, most people think that a Presidential election that came to people (who mostly worked for the Republican Party - I mention this only to say that they were unlikely to get violent as they were essentially a publicity stunt) was a sad moment in American history.

In [...]

Another reason to oppose electing judges… over half of my paper ballot was circling votes for incumbent judges who ran unopposed.

The best analysis of how party coalitions are formed in American politics that I have encountered is Gary Miller and Norman Schofield’s “The Transformation of the Republican and Democratic Party Coalitions in the U.S.” in the most recent Perspectives on Politics.  The abstract of their article reads:
Because the space of policies is two-dimensional, parties in [...]

There’s some soul-searching going on in light of the fact that most people don’t seem to expect McCain to convert his 3.6% 1.9% chance of winning.  I would advise someone in the Republican party to examine Galston and Kamarck’s excellent essay “The Politics of Evasion” about the Democratic Party in the late 1980’s.  The party and era [...]

Professor Brian Kalt is dissapointed with Senator Biden’s legal views:
First, when asked why he supported the decision in Roe, Biden said “Because it’s as close to a consensus that can exist in a society as heterogeneous as ours.” That’s a preposterous answer, for three reasons. First, anyone who can put the words “Roe” and “consensus” [...]

The Washington Post is up in arms about the truth with an article about falsehoods perpetuated by both campaigns and the EJ Dionne question “Does the Truth Matter Anymore?” Candidates poison the information market for their own gain, embarrssing themselves with such nonsensical logic as Republican Strategist Mr. John Feheery’s analysis in the article:
“The more [...]

You can’t have three candidates, the voting system we have and rational outcomes.   You either have to have a preferential  ballot, multi-round elections, a round-robin system, with multiple candidates, or the system we have now where you pick who you like best and TWO AND ONLY TWO CHOICES.  So, Mayor Bloomberg or any other third [...]

The famous phrase from Monty Python, “I’m not dead yet!” is one that is itself alive and well in the Edwards campaign, as he currently leads in the polls in Iowa. If Edwards wins in Iowa and finishes respectable in New Hampshire, do his national poll numbers matter? If this holds up, it [...]