Email from a reader:
A thought and a quesiton. It seems to me that for one reason or another we are at the moment prone to undue optimism and undue pessisim represented by the run up in the markets and in the near hopelessness about the environment. Both these extremes seem to me to be the result of a kind of communal mania, of living more in the mediatized world than in real life, and both produce bubbles of different kinds, one of which has already burst.
Do you think the Obama phenomenon could be a further example of such a bubble, a bubble tht stokes all of the aspirations of the academic left and African Americans yearning for a change? I wonder whether the working class isn't perhaps a better judge of these matters since they are less likely to believe in miraculous transformations. And what will happen if this bubble bursts? or I should say when it bursts?
I can say what will happen when it bursts: President McCain.
4 comments:
mccain's trading at 40 on intrade (vs. 60 for democrat)...seems not many are so optimistic as you on the certainty of his victory, as that 20 dollar difference seems substantial.
Nah. Sounds like wishful thinking.
If the Obubble bursts, it will do so 18 months or so into his first term. But I don't put the odds of bursting at any better than one in four or so. Given the myriad messes we're in after the last seven years, a blind three-legged anteater could accomplish meaningful change.
Since the working class are predominantly Christian, I think you underestimate their likelihood of believing in miraculous transformations.
Intrade? Is that the site that once had Hillary at 80 (or whatever it was)? What a bubble that turned out to be!
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