IOWA — January 30, 2016 — Bernie Sanders campaign staffers were reeling yesterday in the wake of a prediction by WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan that their candidate will win both the Iowa and New Hampshire Democratic primaries.
“I was watching Bernie Sanders speak last week at a town hall in Bedford when an early intuition became a conviction: Take Mr. Sanders seriously,” Noonan wrote in Friday’s column.
As Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan points out, Noonan famously predicted Mitt Romney’s victory in 2012, even though he was consistently behind in national polling, because Noonan had personally seen more Romney yard signs.
“It’s not quite as devastating as a prediction of a win from Bill Kristol,” noted a Sanders campaign staffer, who commented on the condition of anonymity. “But I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t updating my résumé to send to the Hillary people.”
Although Noonan, proprietor of the Peggy Noonan School of Political Prognostication, is most recently known for predictions based on hard data like yard signs, she typically advocates relying on internal monologues that produce convictions such as the one that prompted the prediction regarding Senator Sanders’ prospects. An example of that process can be seen in the video below:
Another Sanders staffer who was seen cleaning out her desk said only, “Game over, man. Game over.”
debbie
Here’s where she runs into trouble:
Noonan’s more a jinx than anything else.
ETA: I hope she speaks to Kasich’s inevitability very soon.
Mai.naem.mobile
I know I’m hurtling towards old farthood because I look at Bernie and his supporters and I turn into DFH thumper. I love the the S&G America ad but jeez, are you kidding me? Not a chance. The GOP done too good a job pitting white working class people against every other group except ofcourse for rich white men.
Baud
Haha. Onion level quality, Betty.
Germy
People like Noonan and Jon Karl and Brooks WANT Sanders to win the nomination, because they’ve convinced themselves he can’t win in the general.
And they want to see HRC lose the nomination.
Germy
And Noonan (and the others) believe if they say a thing often enough, that thing will become true.
Like a toddler with a media platform.
Gravenstone
@Germy: Pretty much this. It’s clear now that the Republican media establishment (and likely the political one as well) want to push Sanders because they see him as more vulnerable to whichever ambulatory slime mold their process horks up.
amk
I will wait till kristol/ dick hackperin chimed in.
Wag
@Germy:
And the fact that they’ve convinced themselves that Bernie will lose,and are advocating his nomination, thus “ensuring” a GOP victory, is the precise reason that Bernie WILL win, should he get the nomination
Tommy
Oh yard signs. I recall years and years ago taking a grad level class in politics. The professor who had run a few national campaigns said yard signs are worthless. Sure they make the person that puts them in their yard feel good, only reason we make them. But if you try to gauge the support of a campaign by them you have no clue what you are talking about.
Germy
@Wag: I don’t know. Villagers are pretty skillful at framing reality. Last night commenters were discussing the Gore/Bush debates, and how the MSM convinced everyone Gore had “lost” (especially voters who hadn’t watched the debate).
Baud
@Tommy: When I volunteered for Obama in 2012, that’s what they told us also. Yard signs and bumper stickers are meaningless.
Kay
@Tommy:
Yard signs were a huge controversy here. The Obama campaign didn’t believe in them “yard signs don’t vote” but older Democrats want them. We had to go to Toledo and buy some from a union because they wouldn’t shut up about it. It went on for weeks. Hundreds of emails were exchanged on the Yard Signs Scandal. We had a former judge give an impromptu rant at the headquarters about how he was never donating to Obama again unless they sent us yard signs because “what are they doing with the money”?
Betty Cracker
@Germy: Missed that conversation, but I remember the reactions to the Bush-Gore debates at the time, and it was all about prior media narrative framing, IMO. Expectations for Bush were so low that all he had to do was not crap himself on stage to be declared the winner.
Betty Cracker
@Baud & @Kay: Huh. I was an Obama volunteer in 2008, and they sent me a yard sign unsolicited, IIRC. They must have assumed I’m an old fart!
debbie
@Tommy:
Yard signs seem like passive bullying. I remember a couple McCain supporters keeping their signs up until spring. A local Republican judge gave a very partisan speech introducing what was supposed to be a nonpartisan judicial forum. She won, and a supporter living across the street kept her sign up until June.
Amir Khalid
@Kay:
Yard signs? You mean, like signs for people to put in their front yards? How did that odd custom ever develop in America?
Tommy
@Kay: Oh I know. You have to print them because it makes people, as I said, feel good to have them in their yard. If somebody wants to help a campaign they’d be far better talking to their friends and neighbors. Phone banking for an hour. Yards signs do nothing to help a campaign get votes.
hueyplong
OT, but my son sent me an email the text of which was “Did you see what they did to Cruz last night?” The attachment was that scene from Goodfellas when Pesci opens the door to the room where he’s supposed to get made and gets shot in the face.
I have no idea why I never thought of the fact that Cruz is a lot like Tommy. Moving up but pretty well hated and going to get it from his own in the end.
No doubt, watching at home, Peggy Noonan said, as Tommy was opening the door, “Everyone will have to kowtow to Tommy now” and William Kristol was talking about how he’d certainly end up replacing Paulie as the Don.
Betty Cracker
@debbie: One of my neighbors still has a faded McCain-Palin sticker on his truck. I’ve always assumed it’s a cry for help!
Germy
@debbie: Yes, I’ve noticed that passive-agressive yard sign bullying. I lived in a red town in 2008 and 2012, and the McCain/Palin signs and the RMoney signs stayed up for months and months and months after Obama was sworn in. The message? “Not MY president!”
satby
@Baud:
God, I hope so, because Trump yard signs are starting to spout around here.
Gimlet
Another conservative pundit reshaping reality
David Brooks
Cameron argued that both sides in the debate over poverty suffered real limitations because they still used 20th-century thinking
The welfare state and the market are important, but, he argues, “talk to a single mum on a poverty-stricken estate, someone who suffers from chronic depression, someone who perhaps drinks all day to numb the pain of the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. Tell her that because her benefits have risen by a couple of pounds a week, she and her children have been magically lifted out of poverty. Or on the other hand, if you told her about the great opportunities created by our market economy, I expect she’ll ask you what planet you’re actually on.”
He laid out a broad agenda: Strengthen family bonds with shared parental leave and a tax code that rewards marriage. Widen opportunities for free marital counseling. Speed up the adoption process. Create a voucher program for parenting classes. Expand the Troubled Families program by 400,000 slots. This program spends 4,000 pounds (about $5,700) per family over three years and uses family coaches to help heal the most disrupted households.
Cameron would also create “character modules” for schools, so that there are intentional programs that teach resilience, curiosity, honesty and service.
NotMax
@Tommy
People here are so polite that they will generally grant permission to put up a yard sign to anyone who asks.
So it is not at all uncommon to see the same property festooned with signs or with banners on fences or walls for candidates who are diametrically opposed.
The other technique way too common here (not to mention potentially hazardous) is clusters of supporters standing right at the edge of busy roadways, waving signs for their candidate of choice.
MazeDancer
The media does not like substantive issues. Boring. The media loves Trump. The coronation has already started.
It will be months of clips of Trump saying repulsive personal things about Hillary. With no pushback. Just more fawning about how brilliant a strategist Trump is and another round of lies about Hillary.
If the nominee is Bernie, it will just be Socialist over and over and over. The Revolution
ution will not be televised. Because issues are boring. Trump is exciting. Elections are wrestling. At least Bernie likes to yell.
eta: sorry edit won’t let me edit ution
Germy
I actually saw some signs being stolen one afternoon. It was weird, and I regret I never reported it.
This was a few years ago, and the signs were for local races. It was a red town, which meant the Repub candidate signs greatly outnumbered the dem signs.
I was driving along a country road, and I saw a dude pulling dem signs out of the ground and throwing them in the back of his pickup truck. I drove slowly, and our eyes actually met. He had a look on his face that I can only describe as “small town right wing smirk” (I’ve seen the same expression on bad contractors as well as racist dogwhistlers).
I don’t know why I didn’t report it. I wished I had gotten his license plate, but at that time in my life I just didn’t want to get involved. I wish I had.
Tommy
@debbie: To me yard signs are strange. Or somewhat strange. Why I stopped flying my LSU flag outside on game day. People were like dude why push your fandom this much. I got a little LSU license plate but long ago felt pushing and pushing wasn’t that cool for lack of a better word.
Amir Khalid
Do you have a rice cooker? In my part of the world, we eat a lot of rice, and no kitchen is complete without one.
Gimlet
@Tommy:
Why I stopped flying my LSU flag outside on game day. People were like dude why push your fandom this much.
I’ve always considered it a subset of “nationalism”, and “tribalism”.
satby
What does it say about the state of the country that Bernie and Trump are both shouty?
I dread being shouted at for the next 4 years.
Tommy
@NotMax: There is a yard, right in the middle of the primary and secondary school. Huge yard. The place is a wholesale for yard signs. But again I come back to my first point. They don’t matter in getting people to vote.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
It’s the land of of the free and the home of Burma-Shave.
satby
@Amir Khalid: I do. Had to get a new one when I moved, because the son who helped pack up my kitchen “forgot” to pack my old one.
Baud
@satby:
I won’t shout at you. I’ll simply glower disapprovingly.
Germy
@NotMax: In ‘The Big Store’ (1941) Groucho Marx gets a compliment on his poetic skills and replies: ‘Thank You, I worked five years at Burma Shave!’.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Around here, Obama yard signs were quite useful for target practice.
Tommy
@Amir Khalid: Amen brother. Next to my Aeropress for coffee and my electric kettle my rice cooker is the best thing I have in my kitchen.
NotMax
@Tommy
I have met folks who have no hesitation about saying they always vote for whichever campaign provides the best swag.
Germy
@OzarkHillbilly: Are they shooting at Hillary signs yet?
Betty Cracker
@Tommy: I agree that a yard sign by itself isn’t going to sway many voters, but I’m not so sure they are completely ineffective. They deliver an impression (in the ad unit sense, I mean) if nothing else, and seeing yard signs in the neighborhood could give a fence-sitter a sense of what the local sentiment is, for what that’s worth.
Tommy
@Betty Cracker: Not remotely trying to pick a fight but have you voted for somebody based on the number of yard signs in our area? They just don’t work.
Germy
One thing George W accomplished was this: during and immediately after his presidency, whenever we’d have local elections, all the republican candidates’ mailings never mentioned the word republican.
The democratic candidates would admit they were democrats, but whenever I got a red, white & blue glossy thing in the mail, if it didn’t mention party affiliation, I knew they were republicans.
So that’s something, I guess. Making them ashamed to admit their party affiliation. Quite an accomplishment.
That, plus all the RW internet commenters who suddenly started calling themselves “independents” while repeating the same old republican talking points…
Amir Khalid
Whoops. The rice cooker question was meant for the food post in another tab.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
I knew Scott Brown was going to beat Martha Coakley by the amount of signs that sprung up before that special election. Since it was just the two of them running in the middle of the winter, it was pretty clear that the motivation was one sided.
NotMax
@Tommy
As with bumper stickers, they aren’t meant to sway decision making so much as to get a name out there so people become familiar with it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Germy: I haven’t seen any yard signs at all yet. DEM or GOP. I did see a TRUMP bumper sticker the other day.
Schlemazel
@Amir Khalid:
Yes, typically they are on a wooden stake or wire frame that pushes into the ground. It is a way to show support for a candidate, it can provide a gauge of support in peoples minds if they see many signs it can create a sense of popularity and inevitability, I think their value is marginal though I planted signs as far back as the 50s, dad even had a side business retailing out the wooden stakes.
Baud
@Schlemazel:
Was the vampire hunting business more active back then?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@OzarkHillbilly:
I saw a Perry 2016 sticker here in a suburb of Boston back in the fall. I almost ran into the back of them in amazement. When I was in Maine recently, I saw a couple of Ben Carson signs. I wonder if they’re still up. Anecdotes are not data, but the two old white GOPers I work with are horrified about Trump and are struggling with the whole what to do what to do what to do.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I didn’t have any of that. The worst thing I ever got was an antiabortion screed left in the seat of my car during Kerry. I was mostly mad because they used my pad to write it, which was on the car seat.
For some reason I felt using my paper was much more offensive than writing a crazy screed at me. I went on and on about the paper use. They should probably target people who can at least focus on the message :)
Scout211
Re: Yard Signs
During the prop 8 election here in California, it was scary to me to learn that so many of my neighbors were anti-gay bigots. Yet, it was illuminating.
Betty Cracker
@Tommy: No. As I said, I don’t think yard signs alone sway many voters at all, and my guess is that their effectiveness — and the effectiveness of any advertising form, for that matter — decreases in inverse proportion to the level of voter commitment. But I don’t think yard signs are completely worthless. Peer pressure is a thing, and outdoor signage is a multi-billion dollar industry for a reason.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
Out here in the world, we call those “alcohol induced auditory hallucinations” and send people to rehab when they get reported.
Schlemazel
I saw a tweet from Bloody Bill the night of the last debate saying Rubio is a lock. If there was a kiss of death THAT would be it. Krystal’s streak will remain intact. Peggy probably just came to, pushed the rose’ bottles aside to find the gin and realized she had a piece due. Through the Juniper infused haze it was tough to come up with something hep and out of the box with her usual depth of knowledge. This is the smelly stuff she excreted.
Randy P
@Betty Cracker: Yep, they do that. You can see the border between the Democratic university neighborhood and the Republican working-class neighborhood very sharply defined by yard sign prevalence.
When there are minor elections, especially special elections, sometimes yard signs are what make me aware that the election even exists.
@Amir Khalid: Check out the Wikipedia article for what they look like. You won’t see that many on a private lawn; that is some kind of public space, probably just outside the legal boundary at a voting location.
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
Yes. I splurged and got a good one.
VidaLoca
I have a friend who has been an activist in electoral support fieldwork for Democrats locally since 2004. She is obsessive about yard signs and puts a serious amount of time into making sure they get planted on behalf of whatever campaign she’s working on at the moment. Every campaign, she carefully records the contact information of everyone who took a yard sign (not to mention, everyone she had a positive contact with at the door or by phone) and keeps it for herself. She doesn’t just turn it over to the campaign or the Party because they just throw it away.
Over the years she’s developed quite the data base which she can now deploy in support of any candidate she likes. When she’s doing field support that’s who she tries to mobilize first — the people she knows who were supportive last time.
That’s how you make yard signs effective. They don’t mean much in changing the outcome of this campaign, but they can help you come next campaign.
Schlemazel
@Baud:
Wouldn’t have worked, they were pine not oak.
Somehow he met a guy who had a farm just north of Minneapolis who had a bunch of saws and jigs (as well as 15 kids for labor) and dad started buying for signs for local campaigns. The guy said he was going to stop production because it was not busy enough so dad worked as his salesman, he sold to surveyors and several other businesses. I am sure he did it for free despite it costing him time and money. It kept the guy in business for at least 10 years.
Satby
@Baud: I can live with that. But you always had my vote.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Heh. A buddy of mine had his shot up. Repeatedly. At the time I was still in town, so the worst I had was getting it stolen and one time when I was sitting on my porch somebody driving by screamed something at me that sounded a whole lot like “NI**ER LOVER”. But maybe the were just admiring my flower beds and it was really “ZINNIA LOVER”.
Satby
@Germy: Yeah, none of them will call themselves Republican in the literature sent around here either. Even though, as one admitted when he was canvassing for votes ” wouldn’t get elected if he wasn’t Republican. Not sure it’s always shame though, sometimes I think it’s them trying to imply Republican is the normal “default” party of “real Americans”, so no need to say it.
Randy P
@Germy: It’s still the case around here that a blue sign or campaign poster is likely to be a Republican. Or an entire slate of Republicans.
And that’s another thing lawn signs do: they associate a bunch of names together and give name recognition to the lower tickets.
retiredeng
@debbie: Months after Elizabeth Warren beat Scott Brown there were Brown yard signs still in the yards of the reddest towns in MA. We wondered if the residents thought Brown could still win if the signs stayed up forever.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: You could see that on the ground. I remember driving around in late October 2012, and the Romney campaign had just carpet-bombed New England with yard signs. Especially if you went to a fairly Republican place like Hampstead, NH, you just saw one in front of every single house. Obama’s campaign didn’t bother; their yard signs weren’t even very good signs, and I think you needed to donate money to get one; they used them as a source of funding, not as a free giveaway, because they knew that the signs were worthless as advertising.
different-church-lady
Don’t you need to put a parody tag on this so that the most deadly earnest campaign supporters in the history of politics can figure it out?
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: I’ve heard that yard signs can actually be useful in obscure local races where establishing name recognition for the candidate is the main struggle.
dogwood
@Schlemazel:
Peggy Noonan is a charter member of the Hate All Things Clinton Club. She was proObama in ’08. She’s a sorry case. She might have been a decent political writer if she hadn’t become a hack. As a writer I think she’s far more skilled than David Brooks who’s a boring talentless hack. She’s wasted the last 35 years pretending Ronald Reagan is her boyfriend.
Matt McIrvin
@Randy P: Blue or white are popular background colors for everyone’s signs, regardless of party. Donald Trump’s yard signs are blue; they’re by far the presidential-campaign yard signs I see most often now. I saw some Carson ones really early on.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin: Hardly a scientific anecdote, but when I was a child one of my uncles ran for state rep and 10 year old me was recruited to help distribute flyers. Everywhere we went there were blizzards of yard signs for his opponent, ‘SHANNAHAN’, — roughly three times the number my uncle had. I didn’t think my uncle stood a chance.
Both my uncle and Shannahan got clobbered by a guy named Paul Tsongas. None of us had ever heard of him, and I don’t remember seeing a single sign with his name on it.
danielx
@Gimlet:
Brooks’ columns over the last sixty days or so have constituted one long scream of Villager despair. Five stages of grief, no less. If we owe Donald Trump and Ted Cruz for anything at all, it is the reduction of David Brooks to a quivering mass of incoherence.
Applejinx
re. Peggy Noonan: boy, the pundit zeitgeist is weird these days.
If THEY think socialism is the hep new trend I have no idea what’s going to happen to the MSM. God knows they haven’t got a second to think about policy or underlying forces driving such a shift. It’s all personality with them, purely a spectator sport, so the rationalizations they must be going through blow my mind.
WaterGirl
@Germy: “Like a toddler with a media platform.”
Change that to toddlers (plural) and we’ve got a great rotating tag line.
WaterGirl
@Kay:In 2007 / 2008 there were Obama yard signs all over in Iowa, and people could not get enough of them. I felt like they contributed to the excitement about Obama – I think they helped people feel like it was okay to vote for Obama.
Germy
@danielx:
Well, to be fair he was always incoherent. Only lately he’s begun quivering.
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl: The signs may have actually been useful for Obama at that point, since he was still establishing himself as a major national candidate.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I think they help, too. Especially with low information voters or people who are normally more engaged but are busy.
For instance, if the evil right-wing guy across the street puts a sign out, then I know who to stay away from! It works the other way around, too I think it can really help in the primaries. If people know you are known as politically active and people o see a sign in your yard, that’s an easy no-direct-contact way of getting like minded people to consider your candidate.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
We used to do these summer parades. There’s one in each town and they coordinate, so they start in June and go ’till September. The town centers are run down- it’s all chopped up rental properties and that’s where the people who sit on porches and yell things live and that’s where the parades run thru. It used to bother me until I did the voting rights work because you get really familiar with who votes and who doesn’t, and I think the turnout among porch yellers hovers around .03% :)
Porch yellers, like yard signs, don’t vote.
Germy
@WaterGirl:
Oh my god! I have the same situation. The highly-political, outspoken racist guy across the street from us actually lets me know exactly who NOT to vote for.
Randy P
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s now. During the W era and before, Republican signs were proudly red and blue meant Democrat. Blue was a “popular background color” only for Democratic candidates. There was a marked shift when W fell out of popularity.
It is a simple fact that you used to see a lot of red signs, and all signs are blue for both parties now.
shomi
Man some of you people really are on crack. There is a reason that Republican hacks like Noonan want Sanders to win. Because even Trump would have a shot winning against Sanders.
Sanders will never win the primary. The establishment won’t let him just like they the other sides establishment will never let Trump win. Because both sides know that means they lose.
Matt McIrvin
@Randy P: Surely only during the W era. The identification of red with Republicans and blue with Democrats did not exist until the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election.
In most other countries, it’s the reverse: red is a left-wing color, blue conservative. I suspect that never caught on in the US because the fear of Commies was so great that the Democrats never wanted to be “Red”. But until 2000 there wasn’t any particular color association with the major parties. On the other hand, I don’t have trouble believing that campaign signs used a lot of different colors.
Matt McIrvin
@shomi: I agree that Sanders probably won’t win the primary.
But what’s the mechanism by which the establishment will keep Trump from winning?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@debbie: Agreed on the “bullying”. There are a couple of homes in our neighborhood that take it to the next level. One in particular is at a corner at a prominent intersection in the subdivision. Every election they have a ~ 6′ x 10′
signbillboard in their yard for the latest RWNJ Savior in state politics. Fortunately, they have always lost, but it’s very annoying to see such things. Yeah, we know you’re a Teabagger, billboard man. You don’t have to hit us over the head with it…Cheers,
Scott.
opiejeanne
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve been wondering that myself, how will they stop Trump?
The only yard signs I’ve ever had were for local elections; one was a really nice piece of artwork and we framed it and still have it hanging in our breakfast room. It looks nothing like a campaign poster, other than having the candidate’s name. This was Riverside California, and the sign had oranges and the Mission Inn in the background. Loveridge. He was a teacher at UCR and a neighbor.
There was a house divided in our neighborhood, signs for opposing mayoral candidates on either half of the yard. Everyone thought it was hilarious, and the local paper did a little interview with the husband and wife. It was the same house with battling flags on the porch on the 4th of July: the wife was British.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Germy:
Yup. Same here in NoVA.
I think that’s a big reason why much of the press started talking about the Tea Party in 2008 as well, and why “both side do it” shifted into overdrive , etc. – the word Republican became so toxic to so many people that they had to find a different way to talk about the parties.
“Washington is broken…” “Congress can’t do what the American people want…” “Politics is so divisive these days …” It lets them talk about things without blaming Republicans.
It’s the same thing with the Teabagger candidates for President. When they announced, they’d often say “I’m running for President of the United States!!11” rather than “I’m running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States!!11”.
I hope HRC (or Bernie or MOM) remember how toxic the word Republican is and use it frequently in the fall. Even supporters of the GOP don’t want that word used…
Cheers,
Scott.
Just Some Fuckhead
With Peggers on our side, who can be against us?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Kay: Yep, same here. I drove all over our area trying to find yard signs, finally was forced to donate money to get two yard signs from an Obama campaign office 30 minutes from my house. It looked nice in a sea of McCain red in my neighborhood.
different-church-lady
@Just Some Fuckhead: Is it true you got even Obama to apologize for his tone?
Just Some Fuckhead
@different-church-lady: The pivot from treating HRC as the antichrist in 2008 to the savior of the Democratic Party in 2016 is causing a lot of cognitive dissonance.
Uncle Cosmo
@Matt McIrvin:
True, but there’s more to it than that. A threshold presence of lawn signs (as we call them in MD) can also elicit curiosity & interest. (“Who is this person Doe [or Roe or Shmoe] running for clerk of the vagrants’ court? I’d like to know more about him/her.”)
And that threshold presence–doesn’t need to be an infestation, a few here & there in well-traveled streets will do just fine–along with the presence of campaign workers at polling places on election day, also helps solidify the credibility of a less-well-known candidate. Voters are herd animals, & they like to think that there are at least a few other beasties in their chosen candidate’s herd–never mind the secrecy of the ballot.
At 25 I was the campaign manager for a fellow a year younger, a political unknown with boundless energy running for the MD House of Delegates as a reform candidate in the teeth of the mighty Democratic machine. We didn’t put out a lot of lawn signs or bumper stickers–hell, we funded the campaign on shoestrings & crab feasts–but we knocked on every door in the district, usually with the candidate right alongside us, & come election day, we bent heaven & earth to put at least one volunteer with at least one uprooted lawn sign at every polling place handing out literature. It helped that there were 3 seats per district & we only needed to be a voter’s 3rd choice–but we prevailed. I am firmly convinced it would not have happened had we not had that visibility on the lawns & presence at the polls reassuring the voters that Hey,this candidate is serious, you’re not throwing one of your 3 votes away…
In all likelihood I’ll be tooling up to NH in a few days to campaign for my friend Martin O’Malley–& I hope to hell the staff arranges to have as many of us as possible in full MOM regalia prominently stationed at polling places on primary day. We might not convince many voters who aren’t already leaning his way, but that presence will reinforce the resolve of those who are.
Heliopause
On the one hand the last couple of polls had strong results for Clinton. On the other hand those polls (Gravis and PPP) have had a Clinton lean this cycle. If forced to guess I would say that Clinton will win but by a smaller margin than those two polls indicate. Des Moines Register comes out at 5:45 PM today.
Keith G
Re: Bumper stickers. On the back of my 4 Runner is a faded sticker which bears scratch marks from 12 years ago when someone tried to remove it. During that time a popular bumper sticker around my area had been, “W the President”. My bumper sticker read, “F the president”.
waspuppet
I just want to point out that we can debate, and laugh at, Noonan’s old prediction of CUM ON FEEL THE YARD SIGNZ based on how pointless it was, but I just want to point out that like pretty much everything else she writes, it was a straight-up lie.
She mentioned seeing an eruption of Rmoney signs in the “tony areas of Northwest D.C.” Well, #1, I live in a tony area of Northwest D.C. and she was just straight-up making it up. #2, she makes “Northwest D.C.” sound like an enclave when it’s about 3/4 of the city.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Baud: Really. One of your best evahs, Betty.
Ruckus
@danielx:
it is the reduction of David Brooks to a quivering mass of incoherence.
Really he’s always been this. He’s like WF Buckley. A rabid conservative who knows big words and speaks well. Just that everything he said was crap, wrapped in nice paper and bow. IOW delivery fine, delivered product is still shit.
Pablo
Bernie is scheduled to be on the cover of the February issue of Sports Illustrated.