Re: Whither America

[Shane Mage <shmage@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Hoover wrote:
> ... i mentioned poli sci guys christopher achen and larry bartels
> sometime ago and their paper ("blind retrospection: electoral responses
> to drought, flu, and shark attacks") about the impact of 'disasters' on
> elections, the two estimate that 2.8 million people voted against al
> gore in 2000 because their states were too dry or too wet" as a
> consequence of that year's weather patterns, achen and bartels think
> that these voters cost gore seven states, any one of which would have
given him the election...

On the other hand, if Gore had run on his image as a "radical
environmentalist" instead of running away from it, he would
have been able to point to [formerly] unusual weather patterns
as evidence of the effects of global warming and of the
need for the sort of proposals he had made in "Earth in the Balance."
He then would have won by a much larger margin (though the
Bushits might have been allowed to steal the election anyway).

Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not
consent to be called
Zeus."

Herakleitos of Ephesos