The debt ceiling negotiations in August 2011 and the fiscal cliff negotiations of this past December both produced the same significant result: an immediate and substantial drop in consumer confidence. It is clear we have entered a new phase where the dysfunction and paralysis in Washington is having a significant and deleterious impact on how […]
read moreRepublicans captured 49.4{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222} of the two-party vote for Congress in 2012, yet won 54{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222} of the seats in the House. This gap between the Republican vote and the seats they won is on the high side, but certainly not without precedent over the past 40 years. If you began your career as a Republican trying […]
read moreHere are three things you probably have not heard much about as regards turnout on Tuesday: Forty-two percent (42{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222}) of the drop in turnout is coming from the nine percent (9{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222}) of the vote that comes from the “Hurricane Sandy region” of CT, NJ, and NY. Turnout was UP in the nine swing states. And […]
read moreThe Iranian hostage crisis, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, Lehman Brother’s collapse and the recessions that defined the 1980, 1992 and the 2008 presidential campaigns … these are the signal events that changed and then defined the last 30 years of American politics. They are joined now by another signal event: The debt […]
read moreNot including the post-9/11 response, the average presidential approval rating bumps up 13{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222} for an average of 22 weeks.
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