(Obviously I couldn't fairly participate in this myself, and anyone did participate would rely on my honestly reporting the outcome.)
As of today I think the probability that I vote for a Democratic presidential candidate in November 2008 is greater than 3/4.
Oddly enough most of the best links explaining why this is the case come from Slate. In no particular order:
Baptists versus Mormons (I've known about this feud for at least 20 years now; I mistakenly believed it was common knowledge)
John Dickerson thinks Mike Huckabee jokes too much: That's actually NOT one of the things I dislike about Huckabee -- in fact it's a sign that he'll do surprisingly well. (On the issues, though, the chances that he'd win the GOP nomination greatly affect the probability that I'd vote Democratic.)
Mickey Kaus notes that the Edwards campaign has a scandal to deal with: Can you guess why the failure of the Edwards campaign would significantly increase the probability that I vote for a Democrat? (Free trade is arguably the most underrated cross-partisan issue of this campaign.)
Over at Reason, Jesse Walker breaks down the Republican race.
My latest impression of various GOP candidates, in roughly the order that I'd have ranked them a few weeks ago:
1. Rudy: Maybe I'm a bad libertarian for failing to cower in fear here, but I utterly fail to understand what make Giuliani any more statist than any other candidate apart from his being so wrong about the Second Amendment. All that said, he lost me the day he interrupted a speech to take a cell phone call, and hasn't campaigned nearly well enough to lure anyone back onto any sort of bandwagon.
2. Fred: I readily agree that politics are a necessary evil, and distrust anyone who takes great joy in the political process for its own sake. So I sympathize with someone who actively avoids 24-hour campaign mode. That said, when the best thing you have going for you is "he's that guy from Law & Order!" it's not a good idea to give common people the impression that you hate them. I'm dumbstruck by how quickly his incompetent campaign made him into a laughingstock.
3. McCain: If I voted in a primary tomorrow, I'd vote for McCain for game-theoretic reasons. Everything I like and hate about him is well worn in this forum.
4. Romney: It's bitterly ironic that a religious right darling is eating Romney for lunch, given the extent to which he prostituted himself to the conceit that he was "one of them." He could have run an entirely different campaign, as a fiscal conservative / social moderate who was great at running things. That he didn't says... something... about him.
5. Ron Paul: So right about so many things, yet so wrong about the one issue that gets him the most notice. Unfit for office in my opinion. (Yet if forced to choose between Paul and Huckabee, I'd take Paul hands-down.)
Posted by Matt Bruce at December 19, 2007 05:35 PM