Bad Day for George

George Stephanopoulos must have gotten short-changed on sleep before taping his show for this weekend.

First, in his interview with Jimmy Carter, he didn't really get past Carter's admission that all of his children and their spouses, his home town and Congressional district all were for Obama, but that he (Carter) wouldn't need to endorse anyone until the convention. Don't worry, the Obama campaign is counting him as a sure delegate vote in their counts. On the real news item related to this, Carter's plan to visit Gaza to try to get Hamas to take steps to enter the peace discussion, Stephanopoulos didn't get at all into the content of the discussion. Is Hamas looking to be an equal partner to Fatah, or to represent the territory under its control--Gaza--while Fatah would negotiate for the occupied West Bank? I'm sure the outcome sought is an end to hostility, but something about the strategy to be pursued in getting there might have enlightened us viewers a bit.

Next, he had on National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. Hadley affirmed that Carter, as a private citizen, can do what he wants, though the government's policy is that his mission is "unhelpful". He called for reversal of Hamas' "coup" in Gaza--George didn't see fit to challenge that characterization, referring to the argument that the coup was actually a failed Bushite covert operation by Fatah that blew back (see the April Vanity Fair). Then Hadley and George had a long conversation about China, the Olympics, and Dubya's plan to attend--ostensibly the brave thing, to speak openly before the Chinese about their violations of human rights (as if). Through that whole conversation, Hadley referred to what China's doing in "Nepal", and how the international community is speaking out about it. At least six times he referred to these abuses in Nepal. George fell right in with the discussion.

George and Stephen, Nepal is an independent country with its own problems--monarchy or Maoism?--but China is relatively innocent of aggression against it. The geographical/cultural entity being agressed against is called "Tibet".

Finally, Donna Brazile in the panel discussion talked about what Hillary would have to do, to take back control of the nomination race. She said Hillary would need a win by 15%, to which Stephanopoulos said, "So she'd need to get over the 60% mark?"

No, 60% minus 15% is 45%; she doesn't need for vote totals to exceed 100% of those cast. 57-42% (with one percent for all other) would do the job.

Rasmussen Update

Speaking of voting margins, the (two-tailed) victory margins for Pennsylvania and Indiana are the most interesting thing going in the CNN Political Market. I'm doing better in that one than in Rasmussen--I think the result of inferior competition and simpler propositions, though I do like these ones about whether the Democratic margin will be 0-5, 6-10, 11-15, or more than 15% (no matter who wins), just as I like Rasmussen's ones on the number of Democratic seats in the houses of Congress, or on the Bushite approval rating in quarterly Gallup polls. More interesting, betting-wise, than the simple 0-1 propositions on the individual primaries, nomination, general election, and Presidential/senatorial/gubernatorial elections by state.

In terms of those, Pennsylvania gone back from 70-30 Clinton to 80-20 after this week's Obama "bitter" gaffe (see below). Most of the other races are not so interesting (basically defined as between 40-60 and 60-40, or showing a lot of movement): the one exception is the Indiana primary, which today showed a 49% bid for each side. I think generally interest has waned a little during this unnaturally long hiatus in primaries, not to mention those like me who have already committed all their funds to bets or to margin calls around those bets.

I'm betting on the 0-5% margin range in Indiana, and on 6-10% for Pennsylvania, and against 11-15% margins for either.