Jacob Christensen

I think Ola Nordebo has a point: Whatever the merits of Barack Obama making a big speech in Berlin, the Siegessäule is a slightly tricky choice of venue.

For readers without intimate knowledge of Berlin’s monuments: The Siegessäule was erected to celebrate Prussian victories over Denmark (take that, Anders Fogh!), Austria and France. A certain Herr Hitler had the monument moved to its present place and after World War II, the French wanted to blow up the whole thing but had to settle with the removal of some of the reliefs from the base of the column. The were put back during the 1980s.

Or maybe somebody among Obama’s campaign staff has hit the jackpot: Now the Republicans can’t accuse Obama of being pro-French.

Philip Klinkner of PolySigh compares polls from 2004 and 2008. One of many interesting observations:

Among older voters (the other age categories didn’t exactly match up across the two data sets) McCain is running much stronger than Bush. In 2004, Bush won this group by just 5 points, but McCain is winning by 12 points. This is no surprise since Obama’s support in the primaries was always weakest among this group, due at least in part to his race.

On the other hand, Obama is running no worse among whites overall than Kerry did in 2004, suggesting that if he’s losing any ground among older whites, he’s making it up among younger whites.

Caveats for taking early polls too serious apply.

New York Times summarises the Democratic primaries.

HT: Andrew Gelman.

William Douglas of McClatchy tells us.

As Clinton fell short of the presidential nomination, a number of campaign staffers and confidants close to the New York senator offered a postmortem on a campaign that started with $133 million war chest but ended millions in the red, that won the big state primaries but scoffed at delegate-rich caucus contests, that didn’t have a Plan B after the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday contests failed to secure her nomination, that misread a country’s mood and underestimated her young, upstart rival and his message of change.

Specifically on the caucuses (my emphasis):

The switch in managers, however, was unable to overcome what some Clinton staffers called perhaps the campaign’s most egregious blunder: dismissing the caucus states.

The Clinton camp thought that caucuses were attended by an elite few Democrats who didn’t reflect the will of regular voters. Obama, on the other hand, had a caucus strategy that helped him rack up delegates.

“They kept pooh-poohing them, Ickes and (Clinton campaign chairman Terry) McAuliffe,” the campaign insider said. ” ‘Caucus states don’t represent the people.’ Hell, they had delegates, didn’t they?”

The most damaging caucus state was Iowa, the insider said, because Obama’s victory in a predominantly white state convinced African-American voters who were still deciding between Obama and Clinton that he could win the nomination.

The Democratic primaries are for the Democratic voters to decide and the US presidential elections for the US voters to decide, but all things considered I definitively would prefer people to wear Obama t-shirts and put up Obama posters on their walls if Mao and Che Guevarra are the alternatives.

The question is who the mysterious link is. I know Kurrild-Klitgaard in real life, but is the link also a real life connection? In real life, I need three intermediate links to get to George W. Bush. Strange, but true.

Actually I’m procrastinating while writing about the 1994 general election in Denmark – you know, the one where Jacob Haugaard not only was elected to parliament but also turned out to be the median legislatior – but the present US presidential campaign also has its intriguing moments.

I give you Matthew Yglesias who notes that people from the Clinton campaign argue that as Clinton won West Virginia and as no Democratic candidate since time immemorial has won the presidential election without winning WV. Hence, Hillary Clinton must be the Democratic candidate or else…

Yglesias strikes back by noting that no Democratic candidate has won without winning Minnesota. So, Barack Obama must be the candidate or else…

To sum up: The Democrats can’t win. They might as well cancel the rest of their campaigns as well as the convention and let John McCain cruise to victory.

But wait: There’s more. The first to comment Yglesias’s post of cause has to note that a 72-year-old geezer has never been elected president. So McCain is out and who knows, perhaps Brian Moore will be the next president of the United States.

PS on a slightly more serious note: As far as I can see, this is the first election since World War I when none of the major candidates have had executive experience as either president, vice president or state governor.

John Sides on splitting and bandwagoning in the Democratic Party. But the really interesting claim is in the footnote:

Independents, by the way, favor Obama over McCain, 52-41. That difference should be close to statistical significance.

Media pundits agree that Obama is in serious trouble. The numbers tell us “not so”.

John Sides has more.

Talking your way into something and then out of it again.

And while we’re at it, here is Slate’s Hillary Deathwatch series. Remember, they got Gonzo last year.