No end in sight

Minor contribution to this lead in the US section.

There was something for all the contestants to hang on to on Super Tuesday. But Mitt Romney still looks like the eventual winner 

Mar 10th 2012 | ATLANTA, WASHINGTON, DC, AND YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO | from the print edition

“WE’RE counting up the delegates for the convention, and it looks good,” declared Mitt Romney on March 6th—“Super Tuesday”—the biggest single day in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. And so, up to a point, it did: Mr Romney, the front-runner, won six of the ten states holding primaries or caucuses, including a narrow victory in Ohio, the most fiercely contested. He performed just as well in terms of delegates to the Republican convention in August, where the nominee is formally selected, securing over half of those on offer. He now has well over twice as many delegates as his closest rival, Rick Santorum, and is over a third of the way towards the 1,144 needed to prevail. And yet it was still a lacklustre night, in many ways, for the presumed but unloved nominee. [More...]

Mitt Romney dodges a bullet

But the narrowness of his victory in Michigan portends a long struggle ahead 

Mar 3rd 2012 | NOVI, MICHIGAN, COLUMBUS, OHIO, AND NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE | from the print edition

Jointly composed with Jon Fasman and Christopher Lockwood. I reported from Novi, Michigan.

ON FEBRUARY 28th a trickle of Democrats arrived to vote in Michigan’s Republican primary, as permitted under the state’s primary rules. They came to defeat the presumed Republican front-runner, Mr Romney. Democrats see him as the most dangerous opponent to Barack Obama, and relished the chance to promote Rick Santorum, a social conservative whom they think would be a lot easier to beat. In what became quite a nasty contest, with plenty of mudslinging all round, Mr Santorum encouraged the ruse.

Despite it, Mr Romney snagged a modest victory in Michigan, beating Mr Santorum by 41% to 38%, as well as romping home in Arizona, by 47% to 27%. A loss for Mr Romney in Michigan might well have been fatal. Not only did he grow up there, his father was a popular former governor. But Mr Romney also badly needed to demonstrate his appeal to the Midwestern voters who will be crucial in any general election. Scoring such a narrow victory means that he failed to do so very convincingly.

Michigan is a big and diverse place, with everything from the kind of rich suburbs that Mr Romney grew up in to grim, distressed industrial cities such as Flint, Pontiac and Detroit. Little wonder then that it is a vital swing state, with a useful 16 votes in the electoral college that actually chooses the president. On the face of it, Mr Romney’s stronger economic credentials might seem to commend him to voters looking for a turnaround for America. But matters are more complex in a state where the car companies are crucial—and where many voters believe that Mr Romney would have preferred their industry to go bankrupt than to get money from the government to help it survive.

Exit polls showed that Mr Romney’s Michigan voters were older, wealthier and better educated than Mr Santorum’s. In other words, when Mr Santorum called the president a “snob” for wanting to send everybody in America to college, he was making a naked, and rather successful, appeal to class resentment. [More...]

The Chicago way

Capital of corruption

Feb 25th 2012 | CHICAGO | from the print edition

ON MARCH 15th the former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, will start to serve a 14-year sentence for corruption in a federal low-security prison. In this part of America, he is treading a well-worn path. Over four decades, four governors (out of seven) have been convicted of corruption. [More...]

By Shankarnikhil88 (Own work)

Boffins wanted

Scientists are already helping to shape the Obama campaign

Feb 11th 2012 | CHICAGO | from the print edition

 There’s no escape Correction to this article IN A presidential election the incumbent enjoys many advantages. One of the less obvious may be the leisure to recruit a strong team of boffins. Team Obama has long been scouring the nation for scientists. It has sought out computing experts, mathematicians, programmers and statisticians. Many are already hard at work at the campaign’s headquarters in Chicago. [More...]

Photo: J.Crocker

Unionisation: Another one takes the plunge

Indiana becomes the 23rd “right-to-work” state

Feb 4th 2012 | CHICAGO | from the print edition

INDIANA, like many manufacturing states in the Midwest, has long felt the pain of seeing jobs go overseas. In his seven years as Republican governor, Mitch Daniels’s response has been to offer a strong diet of pro-business legislation. In the past few years Indiana has cut its corporate tax rate by nearly 25%, established one of the highest R&D tax credits in the country and started work on a $10 billion infrastructure-improvement plan.

Until recently, though, Mr Daniels had resisted calls to make Indiana what is known as a “right-to-work” (RTW) state. RTW legislation allows employees to decide whether to financially support a union. Without such laws unions can insist that all workers pay dues to help fund the cost of negotiating a contract with an employer, whether or not they wish to formally join the union. Now, however, Mr Daniels says he believes the state needs to sign up as well. The new legislation was passed by the state Senate on February 1st and was signed by Mr Daniels that very day, making Indiana the 23rd RTW state in America—and the first such state in the nation’s old manufacturing belt. [More...]

The pros and cons of Moon Base Gingrich

Jan 30th 2012, 21:38 by N.L. | CHICAGO (Online only)

AS VOTERS in space-mad Florida consider their options in tomorrow's Republican primary they may wonder if Newt Gingrich’s idea for a moon base is a shameless appeal to their parochial interests. But they'd be wrong to doubt his sincerity. For nearly three decades Mr Gingrich has been touting space colonisation; he co-founded the Congressional Aviation and Space Caucus and wrote a book that called for more space exploration. He is as space mad as the Floridians he hopes to win over. But that raises another question: how mad is this idea?

That depends. The idea for a moon base was a feature of George W. Bush’s space policy. But there is a world of difference between sending small groups of astronauts to a lunar base for months at a time, as Mr Bush envisioned, and having tens of thousands of people living permanently on the moon, as Mr Gingrich envisions. [More...]

Picture: Wikimedia Commons, dbking

Oiling the wheels

Jan 14th 2012, 18:09 by N.L. | CHICAGO Online blog only ..

ONE might have expected a humble presentation from Bob Dudley, head of BP, who spoke at the Economic Club of Chicago yesterday. In 2010, his company was responsible for a disaster in the Gulf of Mexico when an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 men, injured 17 others, and released more oil into the ocean than any other accident in the history of the industry. But it was not to be that way. Instead, and reading between the lines, Mr Dudley had an interesting new year’s message for a country in the middle of hard economic times: you need us as much as we need you.

In the middle of 2010, BP’s reputation was in tatters. And let’s face it, 5m barrels of crude oil spilling into the Gulf were bound to upset the natives. But as the crisis unfolded, politicians made things much more difficult for BP by publicly tearing strips off the company. Eager to stay in tune with the nation, and cast off an image of impotence, the administration said it would keep its boot on the throat of BP, and the president even declared he was ready to “kick ass”. [More...]