Saturday various & sundry

A few items of interest:

- Jake Tapper on the latest Benghazi fallout

If Obama has a shred of sense or humility he is dreading Monday's debate on foreign policy.

- Steyn: The Great Binder Blunder

Yes, indeed. Romney wants to return us to the 1950s, when a woman’s place was in the binder, when every predatory male had his little black binder, and condescending misogynists would interview applicants for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts and smirk, “Why, Miss Jones, you’re beautiful without your binder . . . ” It was the age of patriarchal sitcoms when the little lady would greet her man at the front door with his pipe and binders, where girls were told they could aspire no further than to ace Home Ec and thereby persuade some eligible young man to put a ring file on their finger.

Read the rest.

- Joe Biden is now (literally!) waving physical binders around at campaign appearances. (His presence on the stump is in itself a sign of desperation, no? He must offend at least twice as many people as he charms, right?)

- A must-read from Mark Kirsanow: What's Not Optimal

- Ouch:


What a falling off was there.

- A couple of fascinating pieces on the phenomenon known as the preference cascade. First, Jim Geraghty:

When campaign strategists and political analysts go out on camping trips — they do, you know — they end the night by gathering around the campfire and telling stories of a terrifying, unstoppable, voracious and mysterious force that preys on vulnerable political campaigns: the Preference Cascade. [. . .]

“An old-timer I know said he had the Preference Cascade gobble up one of his candidates once,” he said quietly. “He said it was like a nightmare. You think you’re doing fine, you have enough folks whose default setting is to vote for your guy, and then . . . BOOM. Suddenly, day by day, things get worse. The undecideds start jumping onto the bandwagon of the other guy, and they just won’t stop. They tune out your guy and just about everything he says. Attack ads that normally would be called ‘tough’ or ‘hard-hitting’ start getting mocked as ‘desperate’ or ‘flailing.’ Volunteers stop showing up. Your early voters taper off. It used to be nobody mocked your guy, and suddenly he’s the butt of the jokes of the comics.”

A shiver ran down the spines of the younger campaign strategists. “Does the Preference Cascade give any warnings?”

Bruce McQuain thinks so. Read them both.

- Polls: RCP has Obama and Romney at a dead heat nationally but I'm feeling optimistic. How about you?


Most recent posts here. Follow us on Twitter here. Amazon store here.