BASEBALL DIARY:
Tigers 3, Diamondbacks 1: the Tigers take 2 of 3 from Arizona, and finish an 8-1 home stand. Encouraging...but let's see how they do as the schedule gets tougher. Key stat from yesterday: Max Scherzer got the win, allowing just 1 run in 7 innings. Scherzer is now 3-2 with a 3.94 ERA in his last 5 starts. The Tigers need him to be a reliable starter...
And it was Rangers 5, Astros 4 (10 innings): the Rangers had a good weekend too, sweeping Houston and moving to 13 games over the .500 mark. One key to recent Rangers' success has been Josh Hamilton, who had 5 hits yesterday, plus a single to drive in the tying run in the 9th inning, and a single to score the winning run in the 10th.
POLITICS UPDATE DEPT:
So the Democrats gambled that passing ObamaCare, despite its unpopularity with the voters at the time, would in the end benefit them. That gamble appears to have failed:
"The Democrats made a strategic choice to pass health reform even though they knew it did not have majority support. They assumed passage would generate a positive initial response from the media—which it did. They also hoped that, with time, voters would see reform in a more favorable light, and that health care would not pose an issue in the midterm elections. Were the Democrats right? If our polling is correct, they were not. In January, we asked voters in 11 states that could have competitive Senate races in November—Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio and Pennsylvania—how they felt about health reform and how they were likely to vote. The polls were conducted by YouGov using a panel of Internet users selected to represent registered voters in each state. We found widespread opposition to reform—and to the Democratic senators who voted in favor of it. Last month, we went back to the same voters and asked the same questions. We found that public opinion about health reform is roughly stable, and opposition to reform appears to be an important determinant of voting intention in the midterm elections—particularly for political independents."
