More On the Caddell/Schoen Nonsense

Here's Tom Scocca at Slate ending up with the same conclusions I did.

It's not the anti-Obamaism of the Caddell/Schoen piece that bothers me, it's the radical stupidity of it combined with its radical dishonesty.

This is the very best evidence of irrationality and intellectual dishonesty: taking something to be a reason for p when it suits you, and taking to to not be a reason for p when that suits you.

And this, of course, is the M.O. of the ODS crowd. Loss in the mid-terms? Not a reason for, say, Dubya not to run again...but, of course, a reason for Obama not to run. Politically divided country? You know the drill...

Consistency is a minimal condition on rationality. If you can't universalize your reasons, then you're being irrational. But nobody is stupid enough to think that the following is true:

Any president whose party loses the mid-terms should not run again

Similarly for:

Whenever a president faces a politically-divided country, he should elect not to run again.

(And here, of course, we are simply ignoring the fact that the main engines of division are currently on the right...)

I mean, listen: I am 100% willing to listen to reasoned criticism of Obama, the Dems, the country, humanity...anything. But do not bother me with this kind of asinine sophistry from lackwits like Caddell, who has, so far as I can tell, never in his life had two neurons to rub together.

Just freaking stop it, WaPo. You cannot honestly tell me that this is the best crap you could find to run.