Planet Abell

In this age of moral equivalence, your inner bad guy is relentlessly held against you — until I do the same thing. And then I get to say a) I am no worse than you, and b) You did it first. It's a push. So it is that GOP VP candidate Paul Ryan's fact-challenged convention speech is judged on one set of criteria, and his malapropisms on another. On the former, well, he's Romney's running mate, these are the campaign's talking points, and he's just doing his job — reinforcing the message sanctioned by the top half of the ticket. On the latter, well, those are just "Bidenisms." But then in what seemed like a relaxed moment Ryan inexplicably exaggerated his performance in a marathon some 20 years ago. Yes, one's memory does play tricks, but as these things go (especially for a P90X boot camp guy) claiming you ran a sub three-hour marathon when in fact it took you more than four hours (worse than Sarah Palin's PB, but I digress) takes a little...

Bernd Debusmann raises an interesting point in his latest Reuters column : Does the VP selection of Paul Ryan mean that GOP presidential candidate Romney has conceded the so-called Latino vote? Put aside the usual caveats — that voting blocs are usually more complicated than we assume, that they are motivated by single interests and swayed by personality and tribalism — and Debusmann makes a convincing case Ryan is perhaps the least likely to help with Latinos "Of all the potential running mates Romney could have picked from." There has been plenty said about the importance of the Hispanic vote independent of the veepstakes during this endless campaign, but very little analysis about Ryan in this context since his VP candidacy was announced Saturday morning. The "Hispanic vote" looms large in electoral analysis. Bush garnered  more than 40%  of the Hispanic vote in his 2004 win, but John  McCain only 31%  in his 2008 loss. Both showings were conside...

O K – so the most composed person at the Democratic debate was Brian Williams. And Dennis Kucinich seemed mainstream by comparison to Mike Gravel. And Joe Biden didn’t muck up his a Calvin Coolidge moment by being even slightly verbose about being too verbose. But anyone looking for something other than lackluster job interviews was bound to be disappointed despite the chorus of hype by every MSNBC talking head on the payroll. It's a shame that neither Barack nor Hillary showed off why they are considered first tier candidates rather than maybe just the best of the lot at raising money (ask Howard Dean about the difference). What is Edwards waiting for -- and I don't mean the suspiciously long time he took to answer a question about who his moral authority is (I guess Edwards' opposition to gay marriage stems in equal parts to "my lord," his wife and his father). The First Taste is -- Dull People: these early debates are for political junkies. Given NBC’s onerou...