Rove on Obama's chances

Karl Rove wrote a column in the Wall St. Journal arguing that Obama will lose in 2012. Rhodes Cook at the Center for Politics and Peter Lawler at Big Think responded. Neither engage Rove's points directly, but they make the general point that there is little sign of real opposition to Obama within his party.

Rove's primary argument is that the economy sucks, which is true, but if employment were improving Obama would win in a landslide. A bad economy just means Obama has to work harder for a narrower win. Rove's demographic arguments, that Obama is in trouble with Jewish, black and young voters, are a joke. Losing share among Jewish voters is a perennial and empty scare tactic. Democrats getting a smaller share of black voters is also unlikely, especially so in Obama's case. Rove only lightly touches on Latinos and other minorities, probably because the growing minority population in the states he cites swamps any diminished enthusiasm for Obama.

The rest of his demographic argument rests on job approval numbers, which don't have a strong correlation to voting patterns and are thus weak predictors of electoral performance. Rove's policy argument uses sleight of had to shift attention to an abstract 'Obamacare' from the massive approval, even among Republicans, of Obama's specific policies on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and health insurance.

Rove's last argument, that voters don't like politicians who point out their policy differences with their opponents, is absurd on it's face.

Oracle's case against Android narrows

In a report that should surprise no one, the USPTO rejected 17 of 21 claims of one of Oracle's patents. Patent claims are a poor way to maintain competitive advantage in software, and are usually a clear indication that the agressor is losing the technology race. Groklaw has the details on how many claims were rejected. Given Google Android's open source nature, I expect Oracle's case will at best result in minor changes to the Android Dalvik VM.

I'd prefer that Google deprecate Java and switch to their concurrent, elegant language go, but I doubt Oracle can effect that change.

Obama's Infrastructure

Mike Tomasky presents a nice review of Obama's 2012 swing state infrastructure in Newsweek: Obama's 2012 Game Plan. Fear replaces hope, and the machine supplants enthusiasm. These are the details behind the optimism for Obama's prospects I discussed previously -- infrastructure, demographic shifts and Republican overreach and misgovernment. Tomasky closes with the Buckeye State:

And then there’s Ohio. Big numbers in Franklin County—home to the state capital of Columbus, Ohio’s largest city—are crucial to Democratic hopes. Again, the trend is evident: Al Gore won the county 49–48 in 2000, when 414,000 votes were cast. Kerry won it 53–45, with 517,000 total votes. Obama: a 59–40 blowout on the strength of 575,000 total votes.

It’s pretty difficult to imagine another nearly 20-point win. But Greg Schultz, the county’s Democratic chairman and the state director for OFA, says an on-the-ground network exists today in a way it didn’t even in 2008. “There’s a structure that remains in place today that is self-organizing,” he boasts, even in Republican-leaning parts of the county like Westerville.

Another factor that might motivate Democrats in Franklin, and across Ohio: the unpopular Republican governor, John Kasich.

Has Stephen Elop doomed Nokia?

Yes.

Obama's prospects

I've been pessimistic about Obama's prospects, largely because of his abysmal economic record. But posts like this from London's conservative Telegraph persuade me that he is in good shape:

But there is also the distinct possibility of an electoral rout of the president if the economy goes further south. “Hope and change” might have played well in 2008, but it is a message that will likely ring hollow in November 2012, with an American public that is deeply disillusioned with the direction Obama is taking the country.

Gardiner's economic argument has some weight, but his political argument is fallacious. The Democrats 2010 loss was not epic, it was a mid-term, low-turnout loss. It seemed bigger because of the success of Obama's 2008 turnout, i.e. the turnout drop-off from 2008 to 2010 was larger than usual. 2012 looks good for Democrats because the Democratic base is getting energized for a number reasons, while the Republican base is becoming discouraged. One reason is the extremism of Republicans, nationally with the Ryan Medicare voucher plan and locally with unpopular governors and state legislators. Another reason is killing Bin Laden, which improved Obama's approval among older voters. A third reason is the effectiveness of the Obama campaign infrastructure.

Paul Ryan and the Republican small government agenda are deeply unpopular in polls, even among conservatives. The opposite of what Gardiner implies.

The muddled and contradictory arguments, and either ignorant or disingenuous poll reading, show me that there is no strong argument for an Obama loss. The economy will get worse, and the election will be close, but the infrastructure Obama is building and the collapse of the Republican infrastructure under Steele mean Obama wins a close election.

Wall St. notices Nokia's problems

Via Forbes, Bernstein Research analyst Pierre Ferragu notices that Nokia is screwed:

In a fast changing market, Nokia is losing ground very rapidly. The profit warning for the second quarter provided evidence that the next couple of years will prove very challenging, with the gross margin and market share trends of the last 4 quarters continuing, if not accelerating even more. The collaboration with Microsoft now appears to us unlikely to be successful, as Nokia’s brand is losing ground too fast and the window of opportunity for an alternative ecosystem is vanishing rapidly. Even modeling a scenario in which Nokia stabilizes next year leads us to believe that the stock will under-perform over the next twelve months.

Nokia's window is closing and analysts are underestimating how hard it will be to put the pig of WP into a low end poke of a Nokia phone. WSJ sees the same thing, and realizes the problem is Android (an OS designed for the low end) on cheap Asian phones.

(to plug my day job, I found these via Trove.com)