Why the Republicans Should Be Very Nervous

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TW: These kind of charts are very interesting to me. As you can see, self-identified Dems outnumber their Republican counter-parts across all age groups now, which in itself is a feat. More interesting though is the distribution. The Republicans are strongest in the 35ish to 45ish group, those are the folks of my generation and just after or those who came of age during the Reagan years. The Dems have two bulges, those folks 50ish to 65ish, the boomers/1960's generation but importantly is the second bulge those under 35.

My recollection from other studies is that party identification tends to be like other branding once established it is sticky. Those 30 and-unders may be voting Dem for a long, long time. There will be an opportunity for the Republicans in five to ten years as that the boomer bulge ages and declines in numbers. If the Republicans can somehow become relevant for tomorrows 18 year-olds then they can make progress. But with a person like Obama in the White House (not to mention the cadre of knuckleheads running the Republicans at the moment) that may be a tough goal.

Framing the Issue: We Do And We Don't

TW: I love these kind of polls. Essentially the same question asked different ways gets strikingly different results. And you wonder how biased media/politicians/pundits etc. are able to righteously run around in circles claiming intellectual superiority. It is occasions like these when intellectual honesty is sorely needed. But if there is one thing I have learned in life it is that intellectual honesty is a scarce commodity.

I am very tired of hearing pundits on the "bank bailout" worrying the Geithner plan might do this or that (understand the same ones whined about the Paulson plan) whilst concurrently they demand the government "do something".

As I have said before I do not know what is the answer but I strongly suspect the balance sheets are fried which is the problem, a big problem. If so, ideology one way or the other is not the issue, practical solutions must rule. If we are hesitating over semantics then we are fools.

From Joe Nocera at NYT (TW: good article if u r interested in more background on the bank situation):

"...As for the fact that the stock market fell Tuesday after his speech, I can't think of a less reliable barometer of whether Geithner's set of ideas will work. The instantaneous judgment of the market is as meaningless as a thing can be. "A few hundred points up or down in the market today or next week isn't material to what's at stake here," said Daniel Arbess, who manages the Xerion hedge fund for Perella Weinberg Partners. "What is important is that the government get this right, because another false start risks triggering years of economic malaise."
Arbess added: "You've got a situation here that has been in the making for decades. Everybody knows it is complex. It's not going to be resolved in two weeks." Point well taken.

Second of all, we need to face the reality that nobody can say with any certainty what will work and what won't. Nobody knows - not Geithner, not Lawrence Summers, not Paul Volcker, not anyone in or out of the administration. It is difficult even to evaluate what has already taken place. Was the original $350 billion in bailout money wasted because bad assets were left on the books to deteriorate further while the taxpayers' money was used to recapitalize the banks instead? Or did the recapitalization stave off disaster, keeping the system from collapsing and buying time? I've heard both arguments.

The truth is, solving a financial crisis amounts to a kind of sophisticated, high-stakes guessing game. Every proposed solution also has the potential to backfire.

..."When I talk to experts, after about two minutes they say, 'We should just nationalize,"' said Simon Johnson, a banking expert at the Sloan School of Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "That tells me that the consensus is moving in this direction, and we are all just afraid to say it."

Nationalization. I just said it. The roof didn't cave in."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/13/business/wbjoe14.php

Obama's Popularity

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TW: Polling is subject to bias, but the reporting of the polls is the source of the most bias. These polls seem pretty straightforward to me. The headlines should be:
1) Obama's support amongst Republicans declines
2) Obama's support amongst Dems and Indies remains very high.

Yet one sees headlines suggesting serious erosion of Obama's support. It will happen in time (i.e. as the market continues to go down) but...not yet.

A blog comment I saw today:
"not only will his popularity continue to slip, but all it will take is one terror attack on american soil and he's finished no matter how he responds. stocks will continue to slide, deficit will continue to skyrocket, poverty and unemployment will force more borrowing by the democrat congress.. it's the 1970s all over again. thank god we have sarah palin waiting in the wings."

Maybe 20% of the folks out there abide this sentiment, regarding terrorism, democrats and my gal Sarah. The polls will reflect their views as well, it is a free country after all.