So much grooviness, so little time

• Larry Bartels finds that voters consider the economy a president inherited when evaluating presidential economic performance. Models accounting for the 2009 economy predict a strong Obama victory next year; models ignoring 2009 predict he'll lose.
• Steve Smith shows that congressional Democrats are no less unified than congressional Republicans.
• Nick Confessore argues for an expanded party model. Not really new for political scientists, but good for the NYT.
• Mann and Ornstein: "True Independents and swing voters aren’t best captured through clever centrist political positioning. They have almost no ideological frameworks with which to judge the candidates and parties; they are quintessentially referendum voters, with low levels of information and focusing almost exclusively on performance."
• Jon Bernstein suggests a fairly plausible political nightmare scenario for next year.
• Dave Weigel: "Prediction: Cain wins Iowa caucuses. Gets up to give speech. Says: 'The Aristocrats!' Walks offstage, having told best joke ever."
• A bleak chart.
• Via Steve Greene, evidence that oenophiles have no idea what they're talking about. (But I'm sure my dad would have gotten it right.)
• Speaking of my dad, an ophthalmology poster we co-authored won a third-place prize in Vienna.
• My university considers me a "person to watch." In a good way, I hope.