Word-cloud analysis of inaugural addresses

We ran the full text of the speech through tag cloud generator Wordle.net for one view of the event, and just for the sake of historical context we ran George W. Bush's second inaugural speech through as well. Update: After one reader suggested it, we've also added word clouds from Bill Clinton's second inaugural speech and Reagan's first below. Second update: By reader request, we've added Lincoln's first and second inaugural speeches as well.

The most common words in the Obama and Bush speeches were dramatically different.

ReadWriteWeb: Word Cloud Analysis of Obama's Inaugural Speech Compared to Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Lincoln's

The cluetrain left the station some time ago

There are many ways to measure how screwed Republicans are after the last election.

You can look at the avalanche of swing states that broke big for Barack. You can look at the demographic shifts that left McCain-Palin with decisive wins only among voters over age 60 and towns with populations under 50,000. Or you can look at my emergency telegram from John McCain.

For the uninitiated—and that would be anyone under 60—telegrams were the instant-message of the horse and buggy era, the Internet boom of the 1850s.

Telegrams don’t exist any more. Western Union sent its last telegram without much fanfare in 2006, after modern technology (beginning with the telephone) left it nothing more than a sentimental novelty.

But nostalgia is apparently alive and well at the RNC. They’ve been sending these same fundraising letters since at least the 1970s, when a portion of the population could still equate “telegram” with “urgent.”

Technology Gap - John Avlon @ The Daily Beast

Pricelessly (and tellingly) a source interviewed for this article goes on to describe McCain's election strategy as "...trying to scare the Abe Simpson vote."

And: on Meetup.com, McCain was not only comprehensively outdone by Obama, but in sheer numbers, by Bob Barr!

Socialism? You're soaking in it...

Conservatism's current intellectual chaos reverberated in the Republican ticket's end-of-campaign crescendo of surreal warnings that big government -- verily, "socialism" -- would impend were Democrats elected. John McCain and Sarah Palin experienced this epiphany when Barack Obama told a Toledo plumber that he would "spread the wealth around."

America can't have that, exclaimed the Republican ticket while Republicans -- whose prescription drug entitlement is the largest expansion of the welfare state since President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society gave birth to Medicare in 1965; and a majority of whom in Congress supported a lavish farm bill at a time of record profits for the less than 2 percent of the American people-cum-corporations who farm -- and their administration were partially nationalizing the banking system, putting Detroit on the dole and looking around to see if some bit of what is smilingly called "the private sector" has been inadvertently left off the ever-expanding list of entities eligible for a bailout from the $1 trillion or so that is to be "spread around."

The seepage of government into everywhere is, we are assured, to be temporary and nonpolitical. Well.

"Socialism"? It's already here - George F. Will, Washington Post, 15 November 2008

Another "how he did it" article

Clive Crook, blogging at the Financial Times:

The best, most thorough, and most straightforward account of how Obama did it appears, aptly enough, on the website of Reader’s Digest, written by my friend and former colleague Carl Cannon.

Ten Reasons Why Obama Won -- Carl Cannon @ ReadersDigest.com

This is so meta, and I've always wanted to do this...

The Reader's Digest version of a story on Reader's Digest:

I. John McCain’s age: It turned out that this factor trumped race.

II. The shrinking Republican brand

III: Candidate Obama really was ‘The One’: Charisma comparable to JFK or a young Reagan.

IV: Young voters fell for Obama early—and stayed with him

V: Democrats closed the “technology gap”—and then some: Politics 2.0, and it was owned by young people, Democrats, and the Obama campaign.

VI: Money talks: This is a campaign that raised in excess of $600 million—more than it needed, more than it could spend...

VII: Intangible reason Number 1 (international opinion):In the Netherlands, 92 percent for Obama, 8 percent McCain. In Germany, 85 percent to 7 percent. This phenomenon wasn’t only present in western Europe. It existed in Asia (Taiwan’s preference was 81 percent for Obama to 6 percent for McCain.) It was true in South America, as Brazil's numbers were 78 percent to 11. It was found in Australia, a predominately white nation and member of President Bush’s “coalition of the willing”—where Obama was favored over McCain 76 percent to 10 percent.

VIII: Intangible reason Number 2; the "Bradley Backlash"

IX: The sour mood of the electorate.

X: The global economic crisis.

Unreasonably great expectations

With such a great victory come unreasonably great expectations. Many of Mr Obama’s more ardent supporters will be let down—and in some cases they deserve to be. For those who voted for him with their eyes wide open to his limitations, everything now depends on how he governs. Abroad, this 21st-century president will have to grapple with the sort of great-power rivalries last seen in the 19th century (see article). At home, he must try to unite his country, tackling its economic ills while avoiding the pitfalls of one-party rule. Rhetoric and symbolism will still be useful in this; but now is the turn of detail and dedication.

Mr Obama begins with several advantages. At 47, he is too young to have been involved in the bitter cultural wars about Vietnam. And by winning support from a big majority of independents, and even from a fair few Republicans, he makes it possible to imagine a return to a more reflective time when political opponents were not regarded as traitors and collaboration was something to be admired.

Oddly, he may be helped by the fact that, in the end, his victory was slightly disappointing. He won around 52% of the popular vote, more than Mr Bush in 2000 and 2004, but not a remarkable number; this was no Roosevelt or Reagan landslide. And though Mr Obama helped his party cement its grip on Congress, gaining around 20 seats in the House of Representatives and five in the Senate, the haul in the latter chamber falls four short of the 60 needed to break filibusters and pass controversial legislation without Republican support (though recounts may add another seat, or even two). Given how much more money Mr Obama raised, the destruction of the Republican brand under Mr Bush and the effects of the worst financial crisis for 70 years, the fact that 46% of people voted against the Democrat is a reminder of just what a conservative place America still is. Mr Obama is the first northern liberal to be elected president since John Kennedy; he must not forget how far from the political centre of the country that puts him.

Great Expectations of Barack Obama (lead story to The Economist cover package, 6 November 2008)

A rich vein the Republican party is ignoring

Commentators who talk about whether the Republican party moved too far to the right, or too far to the center, miss the point. There are different kinds of “right.” See this New York Times graphic on independent voters, which picks up on some of the themes we’ve talked about in our work on libertarian voters. Lots of independents — as well as voters who identify with one of the major parties — hold broadly libertarian, or “fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” views. A lot of those voters moved from voting Republican to voting Democratic between 2000 and 2006, and it looks like they did so again this year.

As we had predicted, Republicans racked up further losses in the most libertarian parts of the country, such as New Hampshire and the Mountain West. Obama won affluent, educated voters and professionals. And if conservative Republicans continue to respond to the loss of educated voters by declaring themselves proud to be “real Americans” who don’t care much for book learning and Darwinism and elite stuff, they will only accelerate the process.

Big-government conservatism, a toxic combination of the religious right and the neoconservatives, lost badly on Tuesday. But the voters didn’t give a ringing endorsement to big-government liberalism. Fifty-nine percent of voters call themselves “fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” and that’s a rich vein the Republican party is ignoring. If Obama governs as a centrist, he may make it very difficult for the Republicans to recover. But a candidate in either party who presented himself as a product of the social freedom of the Sixties and the economic freedom of the Eighties would be tapping into a market that both parties have yet to nail down.

Cato@Liberty.org: A sweeping rejection of President Bush

Hot dish

Since Carrie tipped me to it, I've spent too much time reading Secrets of the 2008 Campaign at Newsweek.

North Carolina (unofficially) in the Obama column

It looks like Obama will hold on to his slim margin of victory in North Carolina, the state I was born in (and grew up in.)

This is absolutely incredible to me.

As the article excerpted below notes, North Carolina has long had a well-deserved reputation as "one of the more moderate states in the South on race issues," but let's face it, that's a pretty weak statement; major elections were turning on the exploitation of racial issues in North Carolina well into the 1980s and 1990s.

It's about like saying that apartheid South Africa, back in its day, had one of the better human rights records compared to other countries in Africa; it's absolutely true, but it's true only because things were so unimaginably awful elsewhere.

At any rate... check out how far we've come in 50 years.

As part of the Old Confederacy, North Carolina had a legacy of slavery and segregation. But it has been regarded since the 1940s as one of the most moderate states in the South on race issues. And it is a state that has undergone rapid Sunbelt growth in recent decades, with millions of new residents moving here from around the country.

In the unofficial returns, Obama led Republican John McCain by 13,746 votes. Gary Bartlett, the state elections director, said Obama should be considered the unofficial victor. Bartlett said an estimated 40,000 provisional ballots still must be counted, but based on experience, the outcome is not likely to change when the State Board of Elections certifies the results on Nov. 25.

[...]

Henry Frye, a 76-year-old Greensboro lawyer, was the first black elected to North Carolina's state legislature in the 20th century and later became chief justice of the state Supreme Court.

In 1956, as an Air Force captain who had been admitted to UNC's law school, Frye tried to register to vote in his home, Richmond County. He was required to name five signers of the Declaration of Independence and the 12th president of the United States. When he failed, he was not allowed to register. Like Chambers, he did not expect to see a black president in his lifetime.

He said Obama's strength in North Carolina was the result of the nation's problems.

"The right circumstances have to come together," Frye said. "The thing that may have pushed it over the top is the terrible economic news we've had over the last month or so.

"But beyond that, the most significant thing is that North Carolina can vote and will vote for a minority."

By Wednesday afternoon, Obama had won 2,123,332 votes in North Carolina to McCain's 2,109,586.

Obama Turns Tide in NC (News and Observer, 6 November 2008)

Update: AP "officially" calls NC for Obama.

Into the wilderness

Rod Dreher on the future of the GOP:

...[T]he Obama Democrats' greatest ally will almost certainly be the addled Republican Party, which will be wandering around for some time like a google-eyed Wile E. Coyote after he's had an anvil dropped on his head. The recriminations on the right will make the Night of the Long Knives look like a knitting-needle ticklefest.

The civil war among conservatives will be between an enraged rump of die-hard knotheads and a disparate group of reformers. The knotheads believe that Obama's victory came thanks to the treason of some conservative intellectual elites and McCain's failure to be more like Reagan, whatever that means 20 years after the Gipper left the White House. Sarah Palin is the standard-bearer for the talk-radio faction within knotheadism, and Mitt Romney will emerge as the GOP establishment's last stand.

The reformers — well, they believe a lot of things, but most of all they believe that the GOP is intellectually exhausted and has to chart a new path to remain politically viable. But where should the party go? There is no clear answer — especially because in many ways the Bush presidency was supposed to be the center-right evolution away from doctrinaire Reaganism. But at least this bunch is asking hard questions instead of retreating into a self-justifying revanchism. Unfortunately, if the Tory party's example is any indication of the GOP's future, it will be years before the reformers find their David Cameron.

GOP Viewpoint: We Got The Thumping We Deserve (Rod Dreher @ NPR)

And the whole wide world reacts

Reactions to Obama's election from around the world, collected by the Financial Times.

The electorate's new map

Innumeracy in the news

I am not a statistician and I do not play one on the Internet, even at my blog. But an ABC News report breathlessly relates the following factoid, with no context:

Despite the possibility of Obama becoming the nation's first black president, the turnout of black voters as a percentage of the national vote was at 13 percent, just slightly higher than in 2004, according to early exit polls.

OK, what key fact are we missing?

Hint:

About 12.4% of the American people are Black or African American,^[2] most of whom are primarily descendants of Africans who lived through the Slavery era in the U.S. between 1619 and the 1860s and emancipated during the American Civil War. Black Americans are the largest racial minority as opposed to Hispanics and Latinos, who are the largest "ethnic" minority.

Racial and ethnic demographics of the United States (Wikipedia)

In a high-turnout situation, you simpletons, you'd expect the racial demographics of the voting population to be very similar to the racial demographics of the overall population, no?

Up early in the morning

Since beginning to cohabit, Carrie and I have lived through a bunch of elections, especially if you count primaries and local stuff.

I don't remember when we started doing this, but it was pretty early: we'd try to be at the polling place by 6:15 AM, and generally by 7 AM we would sit down for a hearty breakfast at the neighborhood coffee shop (not a Starbucks, more like a diner).

At some point it became a tradition, so I'm looking forward to doing that tomorrow.

Speaking of Starbucks, if you visit tomorrow and tell them that you voted, a tall coffee is on them, free gratis.

We'll be watching the returns come in on CNN... and we'll be glued to fivethirtyeight.com too.

Here's what to watch for as the returns come in.

P.S. Thank you for helping keep enrevanche one of the relatively few places on the Interwebs where people talk politics (and other topics) in the comments in mutually respectful tones. Virtually speaking, this is my house, and y'all are all good houseguests.

Letters to the next President, from students

This election season, Google and the National Writing Project invited middle and high school students to make their voices heard by writing letters to the U.S. presidential candidates.

Guided by teachers and mentors, students across the country composed their thoughts on the issues they care about most – everything from gas prices and the economy to education and the war in Iraq.

Using Google Docs, a free online writing tool, the students wrote and published their letters for the entire world to see.

Want to know what they had to say? Click on the button to the right to see for yourself.

Writing Our Future: Letters to the Next President

OK, this was funny

McCain brought the funny last night on SNL.

• On a purely objective basis, Johnny Mac is funnier than Obama. (Obama is wittier, which is different.)
• Cindy McCain is a hell of a good sport.
• Tina Fey must be very relieved at the prospect of going back to just writing for and appearing in 30 Rock after 4 November.

A willingness to engage in self-deprecating humor is a very becoming trait in a public figure. With a few significant exceptions, conservatives seem to be better at that than liberals.

I wonder why? Not a rhetorical question, I genuinely do.

Nixon, who nobody thinks of as funny, appeared on Laugh-In, which I hope I won't insult by describing it as the Saturday Night Live of its day; LBJ, a scabrously funny man in private (LBJ on lobbyists: "...if you can't eat their steak, drink their whiskey, [enjoy carnal knowledge of] their women and vote against 'em the next morning, you have no business in this business") wouldn't have done it in a million years.

A militantly nonpartisan look at the issues

The good people at Public Agenda have assembled a Voter's Survival Kit containing nonpartisan analysis of the key issues in next week's election.

I doubt that there are too many enrevanche readers who are still in the "undecided" column, but even if you've already made up your mind, you just might learn something from Public Agenda's coverage.

More of this, please.

A party that can be roused in time of deep crisis only by fear and tribalism

The real McCain, whoever that is or was, may still believe that major swathes of the Religious Right represent "agents of intolerance" in our politics. But he has decided to stake both his election and the Republican Party's future upon them—from the barely coded racial refrain of "Who is Barack Obama?," to the rallies with shouts of "terrorist" and "kill him," to the corrosive choice of pipeline-prayer Sarah Palin as his running mate and heir apparent.

Tax cuts or no tax cuts, a party that can be roused in time of deep crisis only by fear and tribalism—a party that a supposed moderate is now deeding to its most extreme elements—can scarcely serve as a safe home to liberty or the voters who cherish it.

Two years ago, I wrote a book imploring the Republican Party not to follow its worst elements off a cliff—not to evolve, in short, into an insular party with little-to-no appeal outside of the rural, the southern, the Evangelical. As the McCain campaign flames out in a ball of Rovian disgrace, scorching the center in an attempt to fire up the base, it's difficult to reach any other conclusion than that the battle for the soul of the Republican Party has been lost.

Ryan Sager: The Rove Realignment - Have libertarians been driven out of the GOP? (Reason, 28 October 2008)

Have libertarians been driven out of the GOP?

Why, yes. Yes, we have.

Hat tip: Chap

Oh, lord... the candidates got served...

There's only one way to settle this thing.

John McCain vs. Barack Obama... Dance-off!



Hat tip: Kottke

Neuroscience and the undecided voter

As we enter the final week of a seemingly endless election campaign, opinion polls continue to identify a substantial fraction of voters who consider themselves “undecided.” Although their numbers are dwindling, they could still determine the outcome of the race in some states. Comedians and other commentators have portrayed these people as fools, unable to choose even when confronted with the starkest of contrasts.

Recent research in neuroscience and psychology, however, suggests that most undecided voters may be smarter than you think. They’re not indifferent or unable to make clear comparisons between the candidates. They may be more willing than others to take their time — or else just unaware that they have essentially already made a choice.

Your Brain's Secret Ballot (New York Times, 27 October 2008)

Stretching beyond her range

Gov. Palin has shown the country why she has been so successful in her young political career. Passionate, charismatic and indefatigable, she draws huge crowds and sows excitement in her wake. She has made it clear she's a force to be reckoned with, and you can be sure politicians and political professionals across the country have taken note. Her future, in Alaska and on the national stage, seems certain to be played out in the limelight.

Yet despite her formidable gifts, few who have worked closely with the governor would argue she is truly ready to assume command of the most important, powerful nation on earth. To step in and juggle the demands of an economic meltdown, two deadly wars and a deteriorating climate crisis would stretch the governor beyond her range. Like picking Sen. McCain for president, putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time.

The Anchorage (AK) Daily News, explaning their editorial endorsement of Obama/Biden (25 October 2008)