Greg Palmer

Just a quick note to mention that I’ll be on the RJ McKay Show in Philadelphia tonight around 9pm. Tune into WPHT (1210 AM talk radio) to hear you favorite political pundit (ie, me) pontificate about the Iowa Caucuses, the New Hampshire Primary, and what it all means for the candidates.

A friend and I decided to do top 3 picks and see who comes closer. I’m gonna put them here for the sake of keeping things out in the open.

Me:
1) Edwards
2) Clinton
3) Obama

Him:
1) Obama
2) Edwards
3) Clinton

Can’t wait to see who got closer…

Update: Looks like I’m the big loser here!

This evening I rolled out a new design for Keystone Politics. I never seem to be satisfied with the design, but this represents an improvement over the past color scheme and a professionalized look for the site. I’ll roll out specific new features over the next few days. Here are a few notes on key areas where I’m either testing a new feature or looking for ideas.

• Subscriptions: For the past few years, I’ve focused on RSS subscriptions. With this design, I’m testing whether we’ll see a better response rate from a daily headlines e-mail. Knowing the political audience, I think it will be a hit.
• Discussions: One of the biggest challenges on Keystone Politics is convincing our readers to participate in discussions on the site. I don’t think we made a big improvement in this area, but I’m going to be actively seeking out ideas.
• Revenue Opportunities: I finally caved and installed a leaderboard advertisement banner at the top of the page. I’ve resisted it for four years, but increased server costs mean that we’ve got to bring in more money.
• Cleaner Sidebar: We fit a lot of information into our sidebars; I think this look is cleaner than the last one.

Overall I’m happy with the new design, but I’ll be watching our analytics and metrics packages carefully over the next few days and weeks and making changes based on those measurements.

It’s coming down the the wire in Iowa and some candidates are airing their closing arguments during tonight’s 6 o’clock news. The ads are really representative of the differences in the style and intentions of the candidates. I hate talking about the mechanics of campaigning, because we should be focusing on the message. So listen to the message.

Here’s Hillary:

I can’t find an embedding link for Obama’s but it’s on his homepage here.

And then there’s my boy, John Edwards. He doesn’t even appear in this commercial, but it was more powerful to me than the other two combined.

Message:

Hillary - “Let’s be friends.”
Obama - “I like the sound of my own voice.”
Edwards - “I’m so money, I don’t even need to appear in my own commercial.”

I have very little to add to the hub-bub about Iowa except to echo Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson. It’s gonna be an exciting few weeks, starting with Thursday.

Sometimes I just fucking love politics.

The race in Iowa is such that nobody, and I mean nobody, can predict who is going to emerge victorious on January 3 — in either party’s caucuses.

We’re looking at a dead heat among Clinton, Obama, and Edwards on the Democratic side and a dogfight between Huckabee and Romney in the Republican race.

Polling over the holidays — when families are traveling — is a joke. So the instruments we pajama pundits usually use to gauge momentum are clouded by statistical burps that show Hillary up ten points in one poll or and down two in another.

I’m not a huge fan of the Politico, but I’ve got to say that their Kingmaker political prediction site is mighty cool. Politics nerds like me get to compete with each other and predict the minutiae of the important primary races. Of course, I should have known it was built by Publi.us, the same guys who created Fantasy Congress.

I was having lunch in midtown with my friend Jon(n) a few weeks ago when we started joking about how I’d make an excellent TV prognosticator/pundit. It’s my dream job, really; just set me in front of a camera and I’ll give you an opinion on just about anything you throw at me.

So Jonn threw out “the economy” and asked me for my 2008 outlook. I said that January would bring a downturn in the market as retail sales numbers disappointed investors, especially because they were employing steep discounts before the holiday to draw consumers into stores. Combined with the prospect of further downturns in the housing market resulting from upcoming rate adjustments on ARMs, it seems to me that the economy will be unstable for the next year (at least). It turns out I wasn’t far off the mark so far, though of course I couldn’t have predicted the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. As a news junkie and someone who follows world affairs on an hourly basis, that has pretty much shaped my day so far. The Times is running a photo of her at this morning’s rally; I presume it’s just moments before her death.

This LA Times article is fantastic. Anonymous EPA staffers have come forward to report that, with wide consensus, they advised Administrator Stephen Johnson to grant California’s request for a waiver to implement tougher pollution standards. Check this quote:

“California met every criteria . . . on the merits. The same criteria we have used for the last 40 years on all the other waivers,” said an EPA staffer. “We told him that. All the briefings we have given him laid out the facts.”

EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson announced Wednesday that because President Bush had signed an energy bill raising average fuel economy that there was no need or justification for separate state regulation. He also said that California’s request did not meet the legal standard set out in the Clean Air Act.

But his staff, which had worked for months on the waiver decision, concluded just the opposite, the sources said Thursday. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with the media or because they feared reprisals.

I’ll just preface this by saying that I am an Edwards supporter, but I found this both accurate and funny:

On the Democratic side, John Edwards is a tough call because he has the right idea. But there was a thing with Edwards from 2004 that I can’t seem to shake. And I’ve really, really tried. During one of the primary debates, Howard Dean stood up to answer a question. As was the campaign fashion at the time, Dean rolled up his sleeves. Then, behind him, I spotted John Edwards whose eyes suddenly widened at Dean’s sleeve-rolling as if to say, Oh crap, I should roll up my sleeves now or else I won’t be awesome like Howard. Then he quickly rolled up his sleeves.

(From Bob Cesca)

Favorite analogy all week, courtesy of the Guardian:

Bush is a bit like an unhinged iconoclast who has arbitrarily decided he doesn’t believe in cows, and loudly and repeatedly denies their existence until you get so annoyed you drive him to a farm and show him a cow, and he shakes his head and continues to insist there’s no such thing. At which point it moos indignantly, but he claims not to hear it, so in exasperation you drag him into the field and force him to touch the cow, and milk the cow, and ride around on the cow’s back. And, finally, he dismounts and says, “That was fun’n'all, but dagnammit, I still don’t believe in no cow.” And then he shoots it in the head regardless, just to be on the safe side. Just so it isn’t a threat.