Is PBrower destined to be a hack?
Hacks don't discuss the mechanics of elections and don't try to use history as a guide to the future. hacks speak of "waves of the future" and use bad methods of statistics.
I have a big peeve with statistical extrapolation -- that is, looking at a short-term trend and using it to forecast the distant future. In effect, don't use December forecasts to predict what will happen in June.
Sure, I have my ideological bias. I am a liberal and a humanist. I worked on behalf of a Democratic Congressman who has lost to some Bible-thumping stooge of Big Oil and Wall Street hedge-fund managers who have almost no constituency in his district, and I despised the results. I have much contempt for dictatorship and oligarchy, for dirty tricks (including Orwellian propaganda), and for ideologies that debase people. But who here doesn't have an ideological bias?
Liberalism and humanism have elevated humanity. Conservatism at its best protects what is good from radical challenges (including Communism, Nazism, and Fascism) that destroy what is good. Unfortunately, what passes for conservatism these days is a ringing endorsement of superstition, bigotry, irresponsible hierarchy, and pervasive corruption. America will be a better place when conservatism rediscovers the need to foster something worthy of preservation.
Ah, humanism, aka "Godless Statism".
