Susan Estrich, on Fox last night, put out an interesting piece of misinformation, asking “When was the last time a first-time Democract won Iowa and went on to win the presidency.” The answer, it turns out, is 1976 (forgetting for a moment the oddity that in ’76 Carter was actually beaten by “uncommitted).
Her implication was that Obama’s victory isn’t significant because the Iowa winner almost always loses. “Wow — so I guess Iowa doesn’t really matter does it? Good to know.” Um. Not quite.
Extreme Punditry
Election reflection: in which I coin the word “underpunditizing”
One thought this happy night. I think this is (even) bigger than race. The pundits are underpunditizing(tm) this thing when they make that the focus. The impulse to support Obama comes from a massive hunger to stop the madness, to save this country, to tame all those hatreds, to learn the lessons of Bosnia and Serbia and Shiites and Sunnis, to dig deep and steer this raft away from the waterfall. We can hear the waterfall. We can see the spray. Dig deep.
OK, two more thoughts:
Democrats and Republicans
I was thinking the other day (and as an aside, shouldn’t virtually all blog entries really start that way?), that both the Democratic and Republican parties are driven by the strong desire to learn the lessons of the 1930s — to avoid the catastrophic mistakes that led to World War II. The Republicans are afraid … Read more