A Rejoinder to the ‘New Normal’

Our longtime TPM Reader JB says man up …

Your reader “JM” offers a counsel of despair, one that very honestly I rather expect from Democrats (especially the most liberal Democrats) during times of political adversity.

Which Side Are You On?

From TPM Reader JM …

I have been helping a legal immigrant prepare for the citizenship test by reviewing American civics with him. In this process, what has come to my attention is that the trend of constitutional amendments is to expand the scope of who can vote. Out of a total of only 27 amendments to the constitution in our history, a significant portion deal with this expansion of the scope of who can vote. Of course now blacks and women can vote because of amendments to the constitution (15th and 19th amendments). It is also interesting to note that 2 of the last 4 amendments to our constitution have had to do with expanding the vote- for those who can’t afford a poll tax (24th amendment), and for those only 18 years old(26th amendment).

The New Normal?

TPM Reader JM takes a look into a dark future …

I feel compelled to write in part to put together many things that all of you already know and have been reporting on your website for the past couple years. But with the release of the May unemployment numbers–and the strangely widespread consensus that Romney is now the frontrunner (that was fast)–I’ve had some time to reflect on just how damaging the Great Recession has really been.

All Of A Piece

I hadn’t noticed this when it first came out. But early last month Jonah Goldberg went on a general tirade against the role of young voters in politics, arguing – perhaps in jest, perhaps not – that the voting age should be changed back to 21 or made even higher.

Our Big Survey

Longtime readers know, we do a big annual survey every year. And this is the week. We do this every year for a really straightforward reason: TPM is supported by paid advertising. And we need to be able to tell advertisers the kind of people who make up our audience. This point is really important: We do not collect, let alone share, any information about individual people. This is all composite information about the audience as a whole. That helps us sell ads, which allows us to keep building the site and reporting the news. Simple as that.

So when you see the survey on Wednesday, if you can, please take a few minutes to fill it out. It’s really critical for keeping TPM growing and strong.

Thanks in advance from all of us here at TPM.

Too Much Time on Their Hands

A judge has tossed out a lawsuit World Net Daily brought against Esquire for a story making fun of the publication’s birtherism.

Sad But Possibly True

Ezra Klein makes the case that Romney might actually be the more effective Keynesian in 2013 because Republicans would let him govern and not be focused on crashing the economy.

It’s a more detailed version of what David Frum has been saying: Vote Republican, it’s too dangerous to have us in opposition.

Get Ya Yer Videos

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we just debuted three new original video shows here at TPM. And to put all our video at your fingertips (original shows and awesome rapid-fire clips) we’ve just rolled a new video landing page linked right over there on the upper right hand side of the site, right above LiveWire.

Please take a look; let us know what you think and if there are any improvements you’d suggest.

Has Partisanship Jumped the Rails of Demography?

Interesting new data from Pew. It won’t surprise any of us that partisan affiliation has grown more intense over the last 25 years. But according to this data from Pew basically all other measures have remained stable. In other words, we’re no more divided – according to this data – on racial or gender or education or income grounds. But now it’s party affiliation that is the big dividing line throughout American society. Partisanship is the big, big outlier. Take a look.

Latest on the Florida Purge

Two Florida counties stop voter roll purge.

Jubileeing It Up

Scenes from the weekend celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee.

Why Polls Matter

In today’s episode of The Set-Up, I look at the Massachusetts senate race and how most pundits don’t seem to have noticed that state voters don’t seem to care about Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Cherokee heritage scandal’ …

For full size version, click here.

Etch-A-Sketchy?

Mitt Romney’s pick of Mike Leavitt to head up his transition team is resurfacing the barely concealed conservative misgivings about Romney. Here’s why.

Sounds Familiar

Romney camp defends weak jobs record: He inherited a bad situation.

‘Miracle Material’

Scientists find one more reason to get excited about graphene.

60 Years And Counting

Photos of the 60 years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign – from Charlie Chaplin to Ronald Reagan to … flame-throwing robots.

The War On … Everything!

Pay Attention to the Numbers

I saw a story today saying that this last week was the worst of the campaign so far for Elizabeth Warren because of continuing revelations about her purported Cherokee heritage. And yet if you look at the actual poll numbers her favorability ratings are unaffected. And she remains in the same deadlocked race she’s been in for the last couple months.

It’s the kind of mocking, credibility-impugning story I too would have thought would hurt her.

And yet abundant poll data, from multiple pollsters, shows it’s had no effect at all. No change in net favorability, no change in the horse race number and very few voters saying they even care.

The Week In 100 Seconds

The Wrap

On this week’s calls for more direct intervention in Syria: