Drudge

For years, I was a big reader of Drudge. Was never a fan of Drudge, though I recognized his entrepreneurial acumen. In fact, I despised most everything that he stood for, from rancid politics to integrity free journalism, the endless lying. But I visited the site ALL THE TIME. And the reason was simple. Before social media and (for me) before the TPM “talk” email account gave me a steady traffic of pointers to important stories from everywhere it was just a great way to know what was happening – both in the most basic sense of what was happening and also what was being talked about.

And then maybe half a dozen years ago I just lost interest.

How The Fever Breaks

The White House and the Obama campaign get a lot of guff for resting their second-term hopes on the idea that the GOP will self-moderate after another disappointing loss. I get that this sounds absurdly naive on its face. Romney’s the squish who, if Obama wins, will have lost along, most likely, with Tommy Thompson and Scott Brown in what Republicans could construe as the failure of moderation as a political strategy.

But I think one post-election event will force Republicans to grapple with the question.

If the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year, it’ll give President Obama about $4 trillion in revenue over the coming 10 years. That’s way, way more than he asked for, more than he presumably wants, more than the economy can easily bear, and so everyone will have a great deal of incentive to negotiate backwards from it.

‘Extraordinary Originality and Dedication’

Photos and brief bios of the 23 recipients of the 2012 MacArthur fellowships.

Crosstabs - October 5th

Kyle Leighton introduces the new Senate Scoreboard:

Full size version.

Our Experiment with Long Form Journalism

First, lemme just say it. The name may not last through the launch period since half the people who hear ‘TPM Singles’ think we’re starting a TPM dating service. That might be awesome or tragic, depending on your view of these things. But that’s not it. So I wanted to explain what we’re doing with this new and TPM’s first experiment in longform journalism.

Shrewd, Interesting

Romney camp reveals plans for special empathy zingers at Wednesday night debate.

More On The Pennsylvania Decision

A TPM reader who is also an elections official in Connecticut responds to me saying that the Pennsylvania decision sets up an ”odd, maybe even nonsensical, regimen”:

What Did The Penn. Judge Actually Do?

Ryan Reilly has our full report on this morning’s strange ruling in the Pennsylvania voter ID case.

Judge Partially Blocks Penn. Voter ID Law

Just in.

Ryan Reilly will have our full report shortly, but my quick read through the judge’s decision is that it creates an odd, maybe even nonsensical, regimen where polling officials are required to ask voters to produce a photo ID, but must allow voters to vote regardless of whether they have proper ID – and must still count those ballots.

Conservative Pundits Agree!

Conservative pundits are unanimous: Mitt’s blowing it. And they’ve got just the advice he needs to get back on track.

They’re All Great!

In what may have been the key exchange in last night’s debate in the Massachusetts Senate race, Sen. Scott Brown (R) was asked to name his model Supreme Court justice.

Let me see here, that’s a great question. I think Justice Scalia is a very good judge. Justice Kennedy is obviously very good. And Justice Roberts, Justice Sotomayor, I think they are qualified people who actually do a very good job.

Moderator David Gregory wasn’t buying that and pressed Brown to pick one. But with the live audience already booing his mention of Scalia, Brown wasn’t going to be pinned down.

“Well I don’t need to pick one. We have plenty of justices up there, and I’m proud of the ones we have,” Brown demurred.

Here’s the exchange:

Mitt and the Debate

I wanted to share a few thoughts on Wednesday night’s debate.

As we all know, both campaigns are going out of their way to lower expectations, portraying their guy as something close to pre-verbal, shambling, perhaps suffering from early on-set dementia, certainly barely able to stand on their own in a debate. That’s nonsense and you can also assume that what the campaigns are currently signaling about their strategies is at least as likely to be mind-games as any real clue about what they plan to do.

Having said all that, what seems to be get forgotten is that Obama is not that good a debater. He’s fine. But if you go back to the 2008 primary debates he always struck me, at least, as a little tepid and uninspiring. Same with the Obama/McCain debates. Again, perfectly fine. But the speech or the rally is Obama’s real medium. Debates aren’t where he excels.