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Saturday, November 8, 2008
Anybody going out to dine tonight?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
because I doubt you’ll have a problem getting a reservation…:
(Washington, D.C.) The outlook for the restaurant industry worsened in September, as the National Restaurant Association’s comprehensive index of restaurant activity fell to a new record low….
“Nearly two out of three restaurant operators reported negative same-store sales and traffic levels in September, while 50 percent expect their sales in six months to be lower than the same period in the previous year,” said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of Research and Information Services for the Association.
Along with weak sales and traffic levels, capital spending activity remains extremely soft. Forty percent of operators said they made a capital expenditure for equipment, expansion or remodeling during the last three months, which equals the lowest level on record.
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Is the GOP now a regional party?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Republican Party dominates the South and has for quite a while. But conversely, the South more than ever now dominates the Republican Party. In fact, the issues that make the GOP the majority party in the South make it the minority party in most of the rest of the country.
The party will have a hard time breaking out of that trap, as an AP story suggests:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Tuesday’s elections leave little doubt that the Republicans’ Nixon-era strategy to win over white Southerners has been a resounding success. But have they lost the rest of the country along the way?
For all the talk of President-elect Obama’s inroads in “New South” states like Virginia and North Carolina, the numbers in the Deep South are stark. Some 90 percent of white voters supported Republican John McCain in Alabama and Mississippi, according to Associated Press exit polls. In South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia and Texas, it was about 75 percent or more.
Three of the Republicans’ four congressional pickups came in the region, which remains dark red from Charleston, S.C., to Dallas.
“The South ought to tell the Republican Party to hold its primaries down here because we’re the only region of the country that Republicans can count on,” said Bernie Pinsonat, a Louisiana pollster. “It’s the only base left.”
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‘Talkin’ ‘bout (their) g-g-g-generation’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If Obama proves a successful president — and given his “to-do” list that’s a big “if” — this is the kind of thing that could cement the Dems in power for a long time:
“President-elect Barack Obama’s 34-point margin of victory with voters under 30 was the largest in a generation, cut across lines of class, color and education—and the most impressive youth mandate in modern American history, according to an exclusive Politico analysis.
Sixty-six percent of voters under age 30 preferred Obama while just 32 percent favored McCain—nearly four times the size of John F. Kennedy’s lead with the group in 1960, which led him to famously declare in his inaugural address that “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”
In other words, never in post-war American politics have youth voted so differently than older generations as they did in 2008.”
