Why Elections Matter: Chief Justice Robert's New Yorker Profile

kos over at Daily Kos highlights this key graf from Jeffrey Toobin's profile of Chief Justice John Roberts in the latest New Yorker

After four years on the Court, however, Roberts’s record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative. The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society. In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.

Thanks, John Kerry! But if we didn't have Bush's second term we probably wouldn't have Obama's first term and Democratic control of the US House and Senate.

But this also highlights why Obam's choice to replace Justice David Souter is so important.

The Difference Between the 2004 and 2008 Elections

Kevin Drum posts the county-by-county red-blue maps from the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. As he says, if you squint you can tell the difference between a "center-left" and a "center-right" nation. (It's the one on the right)

POLL: Obama Leads in FL, OH, PA

TPM Elelection Central has this report on a Quiinnipiac poll which shows that Barack Obama is leading John McCain in three "swing states" of Florida (27 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (21 electoral votes) and Ohio (20 electoral votes). In 2004, if John Kerry had won Ohio he would have been elected president.

Florida
Obama (D) 47%, McCain (R) 43%
Margin of error: ±2.6%

Ohio
Obama (D) 48%, McCain (R) 42%
Margin of error: ±2.6%

Pennsylvania
Obama (D) 52%, McCain (R) 40%
Margin of error: ±2.5%

This is the first poll to show Obama leading in Florida. If the election were held today, Barack Obama would be elected President. Unfortunately, exactly four years ago, John Kerry was also polling ahead of George W. Bush (and we all know what happened in November 2004!)