The Media Market

Listening in on the locker room chit chat is always enjoyable when you hear the play-by-play strategies being analysed by the winning team. So, here is another post from the emergin Democrats - what we can learn about the ads of 2006.

So, once again there were half-truths coming out of the media craze - especially in the media from overseas (i.e. Europe). This is mainly due to the lack of knowledge among many (but not all) European journalists together with the political expectations based on their own political convictions.
Ruy Teixeira has a nice post on the micro-macro analysis of how predictions of the mid-term result could be conducted and the pros and cons of these approaches. It explains alot about how winner-take-all elections can mess up any hypothesis about aggregated outcome.

UPDATE (SENATE RACES):

George Allen lost to Jim Webb in Virginia by 8.000 votes. This seems to be the outcome when close to all the ballots have been counted. Any presidential bid from Allen in 2008 is thereby a long-shot.

In one of the many Governor's races Jim Davis lost to Charlie Crist in Florida, and just as expected Hillary Clinton held on to her Senate seat with an easy win in NY. Being a Democrat, Davis is more right-wing than most Republicans. And these two races kind of proves the point that the country is divided. I have a hard time seeing how Hillary will win a state like Florida in 2008. Still - she is gonna run for sure. But the Democrats will have a hard time recapturing the South, which is further proven by the race in ... Tennessee where Democrat Harold Ford was unable to beat Republican Bob Corker (in the race for the seat which was previously held by Bill Frist).

For the GOP, Maryland proved to be a litmus test. Michael Steele, famous for cuddling with a puppy, got 44 percent in a predominantly Democratic, black state. A loss nonetheless, however the question still is up - if this is a new trend where the GOP can get strong backing from minority groups, if they are able to find the right candidate.

Pennsylvania, until today represented by two Republican senators (Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter) saw Santorum get defeated bigtime by Democratic contendet Bob Casey. If we want to talk about hardliners in terms of Moral voters, Pro-life, marriage-amendment, anti-stem cell research-ideas Santorum was the man in a state that is far from dominated by these ideas. The big win by Casey shows that maybe the old Compassionate Conservatism is not working in states north of the Mason-Dixon line.

In the Nut-meg state, Connecticut Democratic challenger Ned Lamont lost to old-time party incumbent (and nowadays independent candidate) Joe Lieberman. This was probably one of few races where the Iraq war did play a major role. The media has otherwise tried to drum up the idea that all the races were to be viewed as referenda on Iraq. CNN polls show something slightly different with "Iraq" and "fight against terrorism" getting almost the same percentages. It seems plausible that these figures show the electorate's political labels of the very same thing = security.

UPDATE (PRESIDENTIAL BID 2008)

Democrats
Hillary Clinton
(Top contender, but too polarizing both in her approach and in politics. I think it will be bad for Democrats if she comes out on top.)
John Edwards
(The DNC need a voice from the South. Edwards might be up for it again.)

Republicans
John McCain
(A strong bi-partisan candidate. War-hero, POW in Vietnam, a strong record of reaching out to Democrats in Congress. However, not the first choice of the moral conservatives.)

Rudy Guiliani
(Definitely not the conservative voters' main choice. But strong name-recognition.)

Kent Ekeroth, a member of the Swedish Democrats (a ethnocentrist/nationalist progressive party) has been fired from his job at the embassy in Tel Aviv. According to the ambassador it is considered anti-democratic to hold views that are in line with Harvard professor Samuel P Huntington. Political dissidents have always been considered threats to national security and treated accordingly. But a member of a Swedish party that holds seats in regions throughout Sweden - is he really a threat to Sweden. Or is this merely an unconstitutional way of treating a political minority? I think the question is easily answered.

Following my recent post on social democratic delusions and US libertarians' views on Sweden, I found one thing that might draw people from both camps to this northern country. This is an oldie but a goodie - Sweden : Heaven and Hell - that depicts Sweden in a shall we say less than a truthful way. I've spent most of my life here and still hasn't come across too many of the clubs referred to in the movie trailer.

... even fictional ones, you might add. As most Virginians know by now, their Democratic candidate James Webb writes novels which includes chapters about women who have sex - for real, in fiction... For some reason this seems to upset his Republican opponent George Allen. Or maybe Allen is just not too confident with "the issues" in the campaign. So dirty tricks it is. It is not so much that I find dirty tricks well... er... dirty as to how the dirty tricks are played out in Virginia. A candidate is attacked for writing a book where women get undressed and do some hanky-panky action with some equally undressed men in the bedroom? Doesn't Allen know that Virginia is for lovers?