Author Archives: olneyce

Just a little bit about percentages. There’s a big fight going on about Nate Silver and statistical modeling and such things. It’s all pretty understandable. People want to believe the best, and the nature of elections means that we don’t … Continue reading →

Today, I’m going to read the front page of The National Review.  I try to do this fairly regularly because A) it’s nice to see what the other side thinks, just as an occasional reality check, and B) it’s nice … Continue reading →

Yesterday I went through a laundry list of supposed advantages to the Electoral College. One that I forgot to cover (astutely noted by friend-of-the-blog, Brian) goes as follows: The Electoral College provides a more manageable mechanism to resolve election disputes, … Continue reading →

The Electoral College should be abolished. To me this is pretty uncontroversial, but given the nature of our Constitutional structure it is tremendously difficult to make even obvious changes. My previous post discussed the possibility that 2012 could become another … Continue reading →

With a reasonable (although not especially high) chance of an Electoral split again this year, I just wanted to stake out my position before the dust settles. The Electoral College is a silly system, which produces undemocratic results, and structures … Continue reading →

The ‘momentum’ narrative is in full-force these days, despite evidence to the contrary.  To wit: another post from John Dickerson at Slate (who I actually really like as a reporter – despite taking him to task twice in one week) … Continue reading →

Here in California we have a wonderful thing called direct democracy.  And by wonderful, I mean catastrophic.  The California initiative process is a pretty clear demonstration that as bad as government can sometimes be at organizing itself, it’s not nearly … Continue reading →

I Didn’t See It Coming – Belle & Sebastian Today in c’mon folks, think for a second, we’re talking about the gender gap.  A couple things: First, when one poll comes out which tells you that the gender gap is non-existent, … Continue reading →

Two Princes – The Spin Doctors Theory: most debates don’t matter very much to the outcome of elections primarily because both sides have a strong incentive to argue that they won. The media therefore reports the competing claims, and even if … Continue reading →

The Con– Tegan and Sara Shorter Mitt Romney: I’m totally different from Bush in that I value good things and he was a bad president who by definition cannot have valued good things because his five-point plan didn’t work. My … Continue reading →