Post-partisan addendum

Wikipedia's article on the Independent voter treats as an unresolved controversy whether independents are more uninterested, poorly informed, and inactive, or to the contrary full of passionate conviction and highly knowledgeable. I thought this controversy had been more or less fully resolved in The Myth of the Independent Voter (Bruce Keith, David Magleby, Candice Nelson, Elizabeth Orr, Mark Westlye, and Raymond Wolfinger, 1992): there are two different kinds of independents, a high-information type who are leaners with one party or another, and a low-information type who are true independents, and who may be the people who decide our elections (like the groundhog of fable, depending on whether they see their shadows on the way to the polls). I just wanted to note that a retrospective analysis from 2010 by Magleby, Nelson, and Westlye updates the numbers and shows that the pattern persists--available here.

The Choice between Vice and Virtue, by Jan van den Hoecke (1611-51). The young man is Hercules, saying, "I'm voting for the blonde--I think she'll keep interest rates down."

Post-partisan depression

I wonder how often this story gets written? I don't think I've seen it with this much front-page splash:

Jonathan Gabhart, a 21-year-old college student from Spencer, Iowa, is leaning toward voting for Ron Paul because of the Texas lawmaker’s unpolished speaking style — a “high-pitched, squirrelly voice,” as he put it. “He seems like a real person because of his eccentricities.”

Nancy Weaver, a 60-year-old retiree in Grinnell, Iowa, favors Representative Michele Bachmann because the congresswoman raised 23 foster children. “That’s a huge endeavor for any man or woman,” she said.

Iowa and New Hampshire Republican voters interviewed by Michael Barbaro and Ashley Barker at the Times knew nothing or next to about candidates' policy positions and programs but lots about their families and personal quirks, and were making their decisions on that basis. But isn't this actually pervasive, among Republicans and Democrats and those crusty old independents alike?

We hear that former job creator-by-attrition--or is it creative destroyer of jobs? ("I am Shiva, destroyer of jobs!")--Willard Mitt Romney is now offering a stump speech that describes President Obama as an adherent of this truly lost historical crypto-anarchist clubhouse Communism:

"[Theodore] Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.

"In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing—the government."

Holy cannoli, Emily, I just got used to having a socialist president, an' now it turns out he's the whole fracking Khmer Rouge?

The President in traditional Cambodian scarf or krama, in found art from the Siem Reap–resident bloggist and web designer Jinja, via Travel-Artist. Yes, it makes me happy too. Set me up for indefinite detention without charge, target me for execution by drone, I just can't stay mad at him. I'm sure we'll get an explanation sooner or later.