The Buffet Effect
Caught Tom Friedman, Christopher Hitchens and Arianna Huffington on Wednesday’s BBC Newsnight. I viewed it via HuffTV so I only got about 10 minutes of it but it was pretty insightful. Hitchens and Huffington are two people I always stop to listen to; Friedman not so much. But he did have something interesting to say about the election:
What truly made [Obama's election] possible was a once-in-a-century economic crisis that was so severe that it created what I like to call “The Buffet Effect” which counters the Bradley Effect… The Buffet Effect was where conservative Republicans tell the guys at the country club they’re voting for McCain, then go in and actually pull the lever for Obama because they understand not only the depths of the economic crisis but they wanted to honor their kids.
And, as Hitchens pointed out, this was in addition to the Republicans who were quite open about their intention to vote for Obama (e.g., Ken Duberstein, Colin Powell, Charles Fried, Christopher Buckley, etc.)
