John Sides directs our attention to a new paper from Claude Berrebi and Esteban F. Klor called “Are Voters Sensitive to Terrorism? Direct Evidence from the Israeli Electorate”. Key findings:

This article relies on the variation of terror attacks across time and space as an instrument to identify the causal effects of terrorism on the preferences of the Israeli electorate. We find that the occurrence of a terror attack in a given locality within three months of the elections causes an increase of 1.35 percentage points on that locality’s support for the right bloc of political parties out of the two blocs vote. This effect is of a significant political magnitude because of the high level of terrorism in Israel and the fact that its electorate is closely split between the right and left blocs. Moreover, a terror fatality has important electoral effects beyond the locality where the attack is perpetrated, and its electoral impact is stronger the closer to the elections it occurs. Interestingly, in left-leaning localities, local terror fatalities cause an increase in the support for the right bloc, whereas terror fatalities outside the locality increase the support for the left bloc of parties. Given that a relatively small number of localities suffer terror attacks, we demonstrate that terrorism does cause the ideological polarization of the electorate. Overall, our analysis provides strong empirical support for the hypothesis that the electorate shows a highly sensitive reaction to terrorism.

They conclude that the “terror effect” was enough to put Likud over the top in 1988 and in 1996.

To state what’s obvious to me, but apparently not to a majority of voters, what you’re see here is the dysfunctional codependence of competing nationalisms. Terrorist attacks lead to right-wing political policies that lead to repressive policies that lead to more terrorist attacks. This is good for violence-friendly leaders on both sides of the green line but makes both the Israeli and the Palestinian populations worse off than they would have been had the Palestinians eschewed violence and the Israelis elected dovish politicians. It’s particularly maddening to see how this played out in 1996 which was a real turning-point election.

One thing that’s been bugging me for the past several years is that America’s super-duper-duper wealthy — the kind who measure the net worths in the hundreds of billions — mostly seem to me to be using their money in unimaginative ways. But there are some worthy exceptions. Chris Hayes, for example, points to this Wired writeup of Jay Walker’s awesome library:

I’m enough of a power hungry megalomaniac that were I Bill Gates, I’m not sure I could resist the temptation to use my many, many, many billions of dollars to completely subvert American democracy. But I’d like to think I’d just build a cool library instead!

Reader V.S. recommends this brief article contrasting the bike-commuting experience in the Netherlands from the much-inferior one here in the United States. I’m largely in agreement with the sentiments expressed therein, though I do think things are changing in many American jurisdictions. I will note, however, that geography is a real factor here — Amsterdam is a lot flatter than Washington, DC which makes it a more appealing cycling venue.

I know a lot of Obama supporters who are refusing to let themselves get too optimistic about the outcome in November. What’s interesting is that one reason I often hear cited for this refusal to get too optimistic is that a lot of Obama supporters who were Kerry supporters seem to have convinced themselves that Kerry, too, looked very likely to win at this stage in the game and then unexpectedly lost on Election Day. The thing is, as Ezra Klein reminded us yesterday, Kerry’s defeat was actually predicted by the opinion polls. It’s true that Bush was leading in August, but he was clearly leading — albeit fairly narrowly — throughout September and October:

What’s interesting is that a lot of liberals got into some esoteric ideas about Kerry winning. As Ezra says:

Back then, I remember Democrats staying glued to Ruy Teixera’s blog as he explained, day after day, why the latest poll showing Kerry behind was really flawed and actually suggested the possibility of a lead.

I read that stuff, too, and it kept me from being totally despondent about Kerry’s chances. But I recall that on Election Day we did a poll at the office and I was the only one predicting a Bush victory even though the polls had Bush leading. The other factor, of course, is that the bad leaked exit polls that afternoon convincing a lot of people — this time including me — that Kerry was going to win after all. But none of that changes the fact that the Bush-Kerry race was just another example of the candidate who seemed to be winning going on to win.