“The McCain campaign is roughly in the position where Vice President Gore was running against President Bush one week before the election of 2000,†said Steve Schmidt, Mr. McCain’s chief strategist.
Here are Bush v. Gore poll numbers throughout the fall of 2000. Um, yeah, not so much.
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The New York Times has endorsed Barack Obama (big surprise).
What’s really cool is that the Times has also posted links to all its presidential endorsements, going back to Abraham Lincoln in 1860:
We have great confidence in his pacific and conciliatory disposition. He seems to us much more likely to be too good-natured and tolerant towards his opponents, than not enough so. Rail-splitting is not an exciting occupation. It does not tend to cultivate the hot and angry passions of the heart. It is much less stimulating in this direction than the business of overseer on a slave plantation. It teaches a man to strike heavy blows, and to plant them just where they are needed — but he learns, also, to deal them only when they are needed.
Tidbits: the Times endorsed FDR’s opponent, Wendell Willkie, in 1940. (It endorsed FDR in 1932 and 1936 and again in 1944.) It endorsed Republicans in 1948, 1952 and 1956; since then, it’s endorsed the Democrat every time.
As regular readers of my blog know, I’m into weird statistics.
Well, it turns out that right now there are six consecutive Tony Award winners for Best Musical playing on Broadway: Hairspray (2003), Avenue Q (2004), Spamalot (2005), Jersey Boys (2006), Spring Awakening (2007), and In the Heights (2008). I wonder if this is a record? I’m talking about original productions that have won Best Musical, not revivals of shows that originally won Best Musical or productions that won Best Revival.
Anyway, the current situation is going to last only until January, when Hairspray, Spamalot, and Spring Awakening all close.