For Class on 11/30: the First Family

It's Thanksgiving week and along with the focus on food (and black friday shopping and football...) Thanksgiving is often connected with family. The first family is often a fascination of many Americans. The Kennedy administration was often referred to as Camelot, due to the hope and optimism paid to the Kennedys and the first family, along the lines of European royalty. Jaqueline Kennedy along affected culture and style across the country and many first ladies have had direct connections to particular policy areas (none more so that Hillary Clinton, who helped design a health care reform bill). First Lady Michelle Obama, an accomplished lawyer and former boss to her husband, has her own official office and policy areas including the Let's Move campaign. She also has a huge following (also see here) and approval rating substanitally higher than her husband. The children of presidents have also recieved a lot of attention but are often kep out of the spotlight (see Clinton, Chelsea, and Obama, Sasha and Malia).

1. What role does the first family (or more specifically the first lady) play in our understand of, or connection to the president?
2. What role, if any, should the first family play in a president's image and/or campaign?

Enjoy your thanksgiving everyone!

For Class on 11/30: Forecasting the 2012 Election (Double Blog Opportunity)

This Blog will be available for two now three weeks. Once again you can earn two blog credits by substantially adding to the conversation at two different times. We will discuss this blog on 11/30.

OK, we probably shouldn't do it but we all constantly make predictions. We, as a society are addicted to predictions and it's easy to make them because incorrect predictions are a dime a dozen and correct predictions, especially unlikely ones, can get you noticed. There is perhaps no place where this comes into play as regularly as politics where predictions are used so often that we start to assume they are reliable. They aren't. But political predictions based on good social science can carry a bit more weight. This past weekend Nate Silver (who now writes a blog for the NY Times and used to run an independent prediction site knows ans fivethrityeight that used extensive and relaible models) wrote a very interesting piece predicting the 2012 race based on three factors (or variables to use good social science speak): Obama's favorability a year before the election, the economic growth measured by GDP, and how extreme the poltiical views of his opponent are. Read (or thoroughly skim) the article here, and play with the interactive feature predicting the popular vote winner here. You may also want to look at the leading market based prediction service known as intrade, where you can wager on just about anything and use the market to predict what will happen. There are a ton of political markets on the site but the Obama reelection market can be found here. be sure to take a look at how their market works and how best to use it.

1. After reading this interesting article do you think that this prediction model should matter at all? What is useful? What is not?
2. If you looked at the intrade site, do you think that is a better prediction model? Why? Why not?
3. What factor(s) (or variables) not included in Nate Silver's model do you think will play a  major role in determining who wins in Nov. 2012?

For Class on 11/14: Midterm Review Blog

Midterm Review Blog

This week please use the blog to review for the exam. Feel free to post general or specific questions or thoughts and then respond to each others posts. You do not need to write anything more than brief blog entries but I strongly encourage you to check into the blog regularly to look for questions and to help share ideas to review for the exam. The more entries that you add the better for everyone. Make sure to review other entries so that you have correct concepts before the exam.

A couple of hints:

1. Use the review sheet (but don't psych yourself out) it is supposed to help you.
2. Make sure that you have core concepts for each of the sections down, as you begin to connect those large concepts work to include other ideas and identifications connected to those core ideas.
3. Make sure to review readings and class notes.