Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Friday, May 28, 2010

Reid and the three fold bet

By Dave Anderson:


Daily Kos is highlighting some potentially good poll numbers forSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid.  He is in the ballpark now instead of being blown out by three no-name Republican candidates. 



According to the poll, Chicken Sue Lowden leads Reid by three, 42%-39% -- a huge drop from February when she led by a 52%-39% margin. Danny Tarkanian now leads 42%-41%, also a huge drop from his 51%-40% lead in February. And most shocking of all: Reid actually leads Sharron "Tea" Angle, 42%-39%. In February, Reid trailed 44%-42%


The margin change is impressive, but it still shows Reid in an extremely weak position.  His topline number moved one point against Tarkanian, and stayed still against both Lowden and Angle.  This is after the Chicken implosion by Lowden and Angle's advocating privatizing Social Security in a state which has a large number of retirees in it.  Reid's only chance of holding onto his seat is to make his opponent dangerously unacceptable and risky.  He is embracing the Democrat's three-fold bet for 2010:




  • Discredited Republican Party will make swing voters hold their noses before voting GOP or voting at all.

  • Teabagger v. Establishment Republican civil war

  • Democrats would maintain the money edge



Reid will have the money edge.  He is seeing the Teabagger (Angle) and Establishment (Lowden) civil war, and both candidates are embracing some of the worse failures of Bushism (slashing the social safety net and exposing individuals to more systemic risk or the full embrace of know-nothingism and prideful ignorance).  And he has successfully seen people sour on his opponents without warming up to him.  This is the template and the absurdist extreme of many Democratic incumbent re-election strategies this year. 






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