Motley Moose – Archive

Hey all!  I just thought I’d do something nobody’s really been doing of late.  I’m going to tell you why I’m a Democrat, why I believe in the party and why I agree with much of the ideology.

My mother was a union-member air traffic controller with the FAA.  Her job was pretty much to keep civilian air traffic (and if I recall correctly, the occasional military flight) safely taking off, landing, and in the air as needed.  This is an incredibly difficult and stressful job.  It is also one of the most important functions of our government.

The fact that my mom had this job had a bigger impact on my formative years than I realized at the time.

Okay folks, this one’s going to be brief.  Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight has a good piece on the merits of these recent shifts in party-identification and weighting and so forth, I recommend you read it.  http://www.fivethirtyeight.com…

(Crossposted at MyDD)

However, that analysis, however clever or correct, isn’t what I’m here to tell you.  Stop blaming the damned pollsters, it’s counter-productive if not outright STUPID!

In other words….TEH RULZ.

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The Moose Is Watching

Motley Moose is a community blog focused primarily on American Politics. The site was a joint effort by twenty-five active political bloggers (a healthy mix of long-time Obama supporters, ‘Clintonistas’, centrists, libertarians, and non-partisan moderates) who had become tired of the trolling and flame wars found on many political sites. The idea was to build a post-partisan site that could move forward instead of looking back. The Motley Moose springs from the rich history of Progressive Blogs including MyDD (aka “The Blogfather”) and  DailyKos.

The Moose has grown far beyond those original 25 bloggers by becoming a ‘home base’ for many long-time as well as new political bloggers.  In separating ourselves from the political blog herd, we set out to build a new place to gather that had clear lines of moderation, fostered a strong community, promoted reasoned discourse and well-researched diaries, and included a healthy dose of snark and dry wit.  While we trend to the Left, we are focused on political pragmatism because we believe that without a dialogue from across the political spectrum, we’ll never be able to move forward, beyond partisanship and rhetoric, and make progress on the challenges we face.  We have built a strong community on which the success of the blog rests, and we believe that one blog and one blogger can make a difference in the world.

We wholeheartedly believe that there can be progress through politics.  We invite you to join the discussion!

Motley: Having elements of great variety or incongruity.

Moose: A reference to the Bull Moose Party (the first Progressive Party) and a nod to our Progressive beliefs.

The Moose was born on Wednesday, September 10, 2008.

How do I write a Diary?

We call this a “miss” in Florida:

Just a wee bit of rain (OK, dumping buckets, our neighbors’ dock is underwater and with a few more inches so is our lawn).

GrasstopsUSA.com is worried: “Alert: GOP May Capitulate on Drill Here, Drill Now – what?  Can’t we count on them to even keep their stupidest promises?

What’s going on in your worlds?

Yes, that’s the margin of Barack Obama’s victory over John McCain if the world got a vote.

According to a BBC World Service Poll of twenty two countries Barack Obama is preferred to John McCain by four to one:

On average 49% preferred Mr Obama to 12% in favour of Mr McCain… On average 46% thought US relations with the world would improve with Mr Obama in the White House, 22% that ties would stay the same, while seven per cent expected relations to worsen. Only 20% thought ties would get better if Mr McCain were in the Oval Office.

Now I know ‘foreign support’ can be counterproductive for Democrats. I remember the Guardian in 2004 organising a campaign to get British people to contact Americans in Ohio to persuade them to vote for Kerry… Look how well that worked.

Cross Posted at MYDD

Welcome to Motley Moose, the first netroots Progressive blog to be created by a consortium of dedicated bloggers.  The Moose was created by twenty-five active writers who have been contributing to the tradtional Progressive Blogs such as MyDD (the Blogfather) and DailyKOS.  We felt it was time for a new type of forum to add to the matrix that has flourished on the Intertubes, something that is more focused on the  

So the Obama campaign has gone dark in Georgia and is moving some of that staff from Georgia to North Carolina.  And so the last round of polling makes North Carolina and Montana look a lot less likely to swing our way.  So it goes.

Virginia still looks good.  North Dakota, oddly enough, still looks good.  Colorado, New Mexico, and Iowa still look fantastic.  We’re still up in New Hampshire.  Yes, we’ve won some of those states, off and on, in the last few cycles.  We have not done so consistently.  There is a point to this, and mark it well.

(Crossposted at MyDD)

Before the end of the Democratic primary process there was much speculation about Barack Obama’s support among women. The fact that Obama’s support amongst women was weak while he was running against a woman candidate gave many pundits all the excuse they needed to suggest that support would remain weak once the primaries ended. They were obviously wrong, as the current polls show.

Another premise put forward by some pundits is that women vote more with their emotions than on the issues. They are as wrong about this as they are about Obama’s weakness with female voters. All that is needed to disprove this claim is to look at women’s voting patterns over the years.

Women have always favored the Democratic Party over the GOP. The Democratic Party is also the party with the best record and issues platform when it comes to women’s issues. Put those two factors together and it becomes apparent that women have been voting on the issues all along.